top of dead things on top of old river mud on top of what was left in the outhouse.
I stood at Uncle Gene. His death didn’t heat up much sympathy. What occurred to me was that he wouldn’t leap up suddenly and hit his wife anymore. When she found out he was dead, I wondered if she would feel like a bird that had just figured out the cage door had been left open. I hoped so. I liked to imagine her burning his clothes and dancing around the fire and taking a piss on the whole mess after it had gone black and cold.
But that broken neck wasn’t all that was horrible about his body. There was something else. His hands was cut off at the wrist from jagged strikes. It was the same for Constable Sy, who had been bound to the table with wraps of rope. The lantern had been placed by his head so whoever had done him in would have a close light to work by. The jar with the buttermilk was empty, and the jar itself had bloody fingerprints on it. Whoever had done this had paused in his work to refresh himself.
The picture of an animal of some kind had been carved into Constable Sy’s forehead; a duck with a ruler and a pocketknife could have made pretty much the same mark.
If Constable Sy had lived, he’d have needed two patches, cause his other eye had been scooped out, and flies was crawling around inside his head. There was a spoon lying on the table, and it was bloody, and I had a pretty good idea how the eye had been taken out.
Constable Sy had been cut and stabbed in a lot of places. You could see where his wrists had been placed on the table and struck. There was deep chop marks in the wood. His head was thrown back and his mouth was open and his tongue was torn out. His shoes was off and his toes had been whittled down to nubs so there was only the bones left, poking out like little wet sticks. The badge he always wore on his shirt pocket was missing.
I felt sick. I carefully set the hammer on the pistol down and put the gun back in my overalls pocket.
“What sort of design is that etched into his head?” Terry asked, leaning over Constable Sy. “Is that representative of some breed of cat?”
I looked at Terry, sniffed the foul air loudly so as to add to what I was about to say. “I wouldn’t hold it up as an example of much, but it looks like a skunk to me.”
“Oh,” he said.
It was spine-chilling to think we might have just missed Skunk catching up to us, or that he was out there now looking for us. I guess he saw Uncle Gene and Constable Sy as standing in the way of his progress, trying to do what he had been hired to do, so he had taken them out. Or maybe he thought they had the money, or knew where it was. Whatever the reason, if we had been here when he came, we’d have been tortured, and no doubt we’d have given up the goods, as well as our lives. Course, if he hadn’t come, and the reverend hadn’t showed up with that board, the same thing could have come about with Constable Sy and Gene before he got there. I wondered by how many minutes we had missed Skunk showing up.
A short time before, I was mostly sure there was no Skunk; now there was no way I could doubt him. No way I couldn’t fear him. He was out there, and his stinky self was looking for us.
We each took one of the tow sacks that Terry had brought from the raft and gathered up the rest of our goods, including a few tins of food and a bit of bread. Then Terry scratched around for the key he said was hidden in the door frame. He found it right off. Outside the house, standing on the end of the porch, I put my sack aside and leaned over and vomited. When I did, and Terry smelled it, it was just one stink too much. He leaned over and tossed up his insides, too.
When we was finished doing that, we scratched our feet in the dirt to get the blood off our shoes, then went out to the well and pulled up the bucket. There was a dipper hanging there on a stout cord, and we dipped water from the bucket and took turns drinking.
As we did, I looked over and seen the front door of Reverend Joy’s car was slightly open. I nudged Terry, and he saw what I was talking about right away. Hefting the flashlight, he started over there. I pulled the pistol and followed.
At the car, Terry looked through the windshield, then back at me. He shook his head, opened the front door so we could see inside clearly. The reverend’s blanket and pillow was in there. They was pushed around, not neat like he usually left them. There was blood smears from fingers all over the dash and all over the pillow and the back of the car seat. I noticed then that there was blood on the inside and outside door handle. That same smell from the house came rolling out of there like a speeding truck. It hit us hard enough we had to back up. I thought for a moment I was going to throw up again.
“He slept in the car,” Terry said. “Skunk. He killed Constable Sy, chopped him and Gene up, came out here, and spent the night in the car. That’s some guts.”
“That’s some crazy,” I said.
Terry looked down at his hand, lifted it, and showed it to me. Where he had taken hold of the car door he had gotten blood on himself. We went back to the well. I poured water over his hand and rinsed it away.
“Let’s get the money and ashes and leave,” I said.
“Gladly,” Terry said.
“You think this Skunk fellow has given up on us?” I said.
Terry shrugged. “How can we know? I doubt it. I think he likes what he does. I didn’t even consider there really could be a Skunk, but now I’m scared to death there is. I owe Jinx an apology.”
“If he was following us, after taking a sleep, he might be going along the river now,” I said. “Mama and Jinx are on that sandbar waiting on us. If he gets there first-”
I let that hang.
Terry hustled over to the work shed and unlocked it. It was tight in there with lumber from the reverend’s projects. There was a birdhouse in the corner, almost finished. Terry moved toward the back, bent down by the wall, and pulled at one of the boards. It creaked and the nails slipped out. There was a surprising lot of room between that board and the outside boards. Inside was two good-sized lard buckets.
Terry pulled them out by their wire handles and set them on top of the lumber. He found a screwdriver, used that to pry open the lids. Inside the cans was something wrapped in old hand towels. He took out first one, then the other, unwrapped them. There was a fruit jar wrapped up in each hand towel. One held the ashes, the other had the money.
“I wanted you to see how I arranged the money and what’s left of May Lynn,” he said. “I preferred you to know what was what.”
“Now I know,” I said. “Close them up, and let’s get.”
We gathered up our tow sacks. I put one can-I don’t even know which one-in my bag, and Terry put the other in his. I shoved the pistol in my overalls and we got out of there.
17
We figured since Skunk must have a bit of squirrel blood in him from living in the woods, he would take the shorter, surer route of moving close to the river. The way things grew along the river from the reverend’s house to the raft was thick, and we thought for us the better choice would be to do as we had done before. Go wide. Maybe that way we could stay away from Skunk.
Skunk. It was so hard to get the idea of him being real wrapped around my mind. Finding out he was real was like finding out the Billy Goats Gruff was real and didn’t like you personally.
In the daytime it wasn’t so scary traveling through the marshes, and at first we was making good time. We saw lots of snakes as we went, even a spreading adder, which isn’t all that common. They ain’t poisonous, but they can give a person quite a start, rising up like they do with their head fanning out like they’re a cobra.
We also saw what the snakes was looking for-mice and rats. There was one spot we come to where they ran through the marsh grass thick as fleas on a mangy dog’s hide. There was lots of crows cawing, and we could see where wild hogs had torn up the land. The heat from the day made the marsh heat up and smell bad, but compared to what we had smelled in the cabin, it was like French perfume. That thunder we heard the night before we could hear again, and there were new flashes of lightning in the daylight sky.
“That rain seems determined to come,” I said. “But it keeps taking a rest.”
“I can’t say that I blame it,” Terry said. “A rest would be nice.”
He was right about that. After trudging through the mud the night before and after seeing what we had seen,
