“I see him,” Terry said.
And then we didn’t see him. The flash was gone and the thunder boomed and the river churned on.
The water carried us along and the rain picked up and the lightning kept flashing, more often now, and the thunder came up behind it quick-like; it was so loud it made the water in the river shake, and it made me shake, too.
I don’t know how long we sped on like that, but in time the river began to narrow again, which is the way the Sabine does, and we was coming to a place where we could see a sandbar poking out into the water from the shore. I immediately thought that would be Skunk’s moment to reach us.
Way the lightning was coming now, our wet path was lit up every few seconds. I used the flashes to look toward the bank, then toward the sandbar, but I didn’t see Skunk. Maybe the rapid river had carried us so far beyond he couldn’t catch up.
It was so damn miserable being out there in the water on that fraying log, I was thinking maybe we could get off of it at the sandbar, go through the woods the rest of the way. If we were ahead of Skunk, maybe we could stay ahead.
Whatever the good or the bad of that plan, the idea got dropped, cause there was a long lightning flash, and I saw Skunk running above on the bank. He would be coming up on the sandbar about the same time as we was, though it lay below where he was on the bank by a good twenty feet.
“Paddle wide,” I said.
We each had just one arm to spare on either side of the log, and our legs to kick with, but we went at it, thrashing around like a monstrous catfish. The log veered, but Skunk jumped. I saw him do it in one long flash of the lightning. He looked for a moment like he was pinned in midair. The tree limbs in the background looked like bony fingers clutching at him. Then he came unstuck and landed on the sandbar as gentle as a cat. The lightning went away, and it was so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.
“Kick,” I screamed above the growl of the river. And kick we did, thrashing our legs in the water and pulling with our free arms.
When the lightning flashed again, there was Skunk, running out to the tip of the sandbar just as we were about to sail around it. He wasn’t no more than ten feet away when I grabbed that pistol on the cord around my neck, swiveled it toward Skunk, and told Terry, “Duck.”
Terry bobbed his head down and I fired. I didn’t even know if that pistol would work, cause it had gotten some water, that’s for sure, but the shells was tight, and it fired. There was a brief, bright blast, and I saw the bird under his hat cut loose and fly away. Skunk startled and stopped, and then there wasn’t any light, though I could tell even in the dark that Skunk had moved his arm real quick, and then I heard Terry scream.
PART THREE
18
We sailed around the tip of that sandbar even as Skunk was running down it trying to reach us. Terry was taking on something terrible, yelling out loud, and in another flash of lightning I saw why that was. That hatchet Skunk had been carrying was now sticking in our log, right near his hand. It was just a glimpse in that brief light, but I saw right away that the tip of Terry’s finger on the hand clutching the log was chopped off clean and spurting blood. That damn Skunk had thrown the hatchet at him.
There wasn’t no time to worry about such things, though, and we kept kicking and waving in the water with our free arms. When I glanced back, I saw Skunk going into the water. His head bobbed like a big fishing cork. That derby hat seemed stuck to his head; a birthmark couldn’t have been on him any tighter.
Water got deeper and wider and swifter, and pretty soon we were really moving along-so fast I thought I was going to lose my grip. Finally I had to use both hands to clutch the log, and so did Terry. We were still kicking at the water, but mostly now the river and rain was hauling us along lickety-split.
I peeked back, expecting to see Skunk right behind me, but I couldn’t see him anymore. I didn’t know if the water had taken him under or if he had given up and swam for shore. Maybe he was out there and I just couldn’t see him, because there was not only the dark but there was all manner of limbs and logs and such blasting along on the river’s swift current.
I kept hoping the rain would quit, but it didn’t. It wasn’t a running rain by any measure; it was what Mama always called a deluge and what Jinx described as being like a cow pissing on a flat rock.
The lightning kept on sizzling across the sky, and there was a time when it shot a bolt out of the blackness and hit a tree by the riverbank, blazed it up like a torch. The light from it threw itself across the water and made the current look like a river of blood. I could feel the heat from the fire all the way out to where we was. I could also see something else. A hump in the water near the shore, and then the hump come up, and went back down, diving and fighting the current, and then I saw that hump reach the bank and glide up it, and flow into the woods like a shadow. I couldn’t make it out good, but I figured it was Skunk. How he had swum in that swirling mess and been able to make it to shore was beyond me. I thought maybe my eyes was playing tricks on me and what I had seen was a beaver, made to look larger by the licking flames of the lightning-lit tree.
The river carried us on. The bag strapped on my back was heavy with water. If I could have taken the time to let loose of the log with my other hand, I might well have got my pocketknife from my overalls and cut myself free of it. That wet bag was like someone was riding on my back, tugging me down.
Finally the storm slowed enough and cleared enough that there was a little heavenly light, and I recognized that we had been in that place before, and that the raft should be parked up on a sandbar not too far away.
Sure enough, we hadn’t gone along much further when I saw it. It wasn’t in the same place exactly, as the water had gotten high enough to have pressed it off the bar and against the bank. In fact, the sandbar wasn’t there no more. It was either washed away or underwater, or a little of both.
Terry and me quit drifting with the flow of the river, and started kicking and flailing our free arms. It was a hell of a battle, and we couldn’t make our log do what we wanted. We sailed right on by the raft. There wasn’t anyone standing or sitting on it, and I hoped they was inside the hut, which was a reasonable thought. But it also occurred to me they could have been washed off and drowned. Then I told myself if that was true, how come the raft was tied to a big tree root at the bank? Someone had to do that, and that meant someone had to be alive when the raft was banged up to shore. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t have been carried off later by a rush of water. All these thoughts was pounding around in my head like they was wearing army boots. I was trying to sort them out when we finally got the log veered and was close enough to shore to let loose of it and swim for it. The last I seen of our log and the hatchet stuck up in it, it was sailing away, blending with the rest of the branches and twigs that had come loose and were floating in the water.
The bag had been heavy before, but now, without the log for support, it almost dragged me under. Once again, I wanted to be shed of it, but swimming for my life didn’t allow it.
Eventually we got to a spot on the bank where it wasn’t high, and we got hold of some roots sticking out, and just clung there for a time trying to get our breath and strength back. Right then I felt like a horse that had been rode hard and put up wet without its oats.
After a time, I crawled up on the bank, the wet bag damn near pulling me back in the water. When I got up there, I stuck out a hand and helped Terry up. The hand he gave me was the cut one, and I could feel his warm blood on my flesh as I yanked him onto shore. We both lay there on our backs with the rain coming down on us, not moving, not able to think for a long while. Eventually, we got up and I found my pocketknife and cut the bags off of us. We paused to get the flashlight out of Terry’s bag. It was wet, but by unscrewing it and taking out the batteries and shaking out the water, putting it together again, we was able to make it work. We used it to check the contents of our haul. Everything in the way of food I had in the bag, except the canned goods, was ruined. The lard bucket looked to be sealed as tight as before. I took it out and used my knife to pry off the lid. It was dry inside, and the jar
