“She’s jumped out of that tree plenty,” I said. “How’d that kill her?”
“It didn’t,” Terry said. “I looked down at her, and she looked up and laughed. Not in a fun way, like we’d had a bit of a disagreement, but like she knew why I had done it. That I was in fact a sissy, and couldn’t live up to what she thought a man ought to be. The worst part was she saw all that as something funny and pathetic. I was so irate I leaped off that limb at her, gathered my feet beneath me cannonball-style. And I hit her, too. I remember looking down just in time to see her face look up at me, and I observed her expression change. It went from humor to fear, and I have to admit that in that brief moment, it pleased me. I hit on top of her. It was a hard hit. It drove both of us down deep in the water.
“When I floated up, I wasn’t angry anymore, just frightened. I knew how hard I had dropped on her. I searched for her, but she wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Then I saw her pop up in the moonlight like a cork. I think she shook her head a little, like there were cobwebs in her brain. She was drifting downriver, and I started swimming for her, hard as I could, but it seemed like the harder I tried, the more rapidly she was swept away. I couldn’t catch up. She tried to swim, but she couldn’t swim fast enough to defeat the current. She screamed, Sue Ellen. She screamed, and she called my name, and then she went under.
“I was at the end of my strength. I didn’t leap after her. I knew if I did, I would drown as well. I struck out for shore. It didn’t seem to me I was going to make it. Part of me didn’t want to, but the other part of me, the cowardly part that wanted to live, just kept swimming. Next thing I knew I was on the shore. I looked out over the water, to see if I could find her, but I couldn’t. She had gone under, and as far as I could tell, she hadn’t come up.”
“Jesus, Terry.”
“That isn’t the worst of it. I ran along the shore, calling her name, but nothing. And then I came to a place where the river turned, and there she was. She had washed up in a bend and was banging up against the shore. I grabbed her and tugged on her until I managed to haul her from the river. I don’t know how far I pulled her, but when I looked back at the river it was a far distance from me. I laid her out in the grass. I talked to her. I yelled at her. I sat her up, bent her over, thinking some of the water would come out of her, but she was gone.
“I didn’t know what to do. I panicked. I started wandering around aimlessly. I finally walked back and got my clothes and got dressed. I got her dress because I couldn’t stand for her to be naked like that. I pulled it on her body as best I could and left her there, decided to go home. It made sense all of a sudden. I would just go home. I was almost home and I thought: I left my friend lying back there dead in the grass and I didn’t plan to tell anyone. I can’t explain it. I thought if I tried to tell someone what had occurred, they might think I murdered her…Which I guess I did. Before I got home, I veered back to the place on the river where my stepfather had deposited all my mama’s sewing materials. He had become angry, and didn’t merely demand she quit, he made me help him load all her equipment, everything that had to do with her sewing business, in the back of his truck. We drove down to the river, backed to where it sloped off, and I had to get in the truck bed with him and help him toss everything out. He thought he’d shove the sewing machine out and it would slide into the river. It didn’t make it all the way. It ended up partially in the river, partially on land.
“I remembered that event walking back home, and at the time, I thought it best to hide May Lynn’s body. It doesn’t seem smart at the moment, but back then the idea arrived in such a fashion I convinced myself it was a stroke of genius.
“There was some wire with the sewing machine. It had come out of the pickup. It was wire for binding bricks into piles, and it had been in the back of the truck. Some of it came out when we pushed Mama’s equipment out. I got the wire and coiled it up and tried to carry the sewing machine.
“The machine was heavy. It took me hours to move it, having to stop and put it down and rest, dragging it most of the time. But I managed to get it to where her body lay. I carried her down to the river, went back and tugged the machine to her, fastened it to her with the wire. I pushed it off in the water, and she went with it. I got down in the water then, and ducked under and held my breath. I tugged on that sewing machine until I arrived at a drop-off I knew was there because I had fished the area before. Then I swam out and went home. I snuck in. I had snuck out to see May Lynn earlier. I had been gone so long I thought for sure I’d end up being discovered. Maybe I wanted to be. But everyone was sound asleep. I lay down and tried to sleep, but couldn’t. A few days later you asked me to go fishing. When you told me where, I knew it was the spot where I had pulled her off into the water. I kept thinking she would be deep enough it wouldn’t matter. I also knew if she was found, that would throw suspicion off of me. On top of that, I couldn’t believe it had happened. It seemed like a horrible dream. And then we pulled her up. I knew when we were tugging on that line what it was. Knew as sure as I know I now have one arm. I should have confessed, but…I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
“After that, all I could think about was getting her out to Hollywood. Before we had gotten into that spat, that’s what she had talked about. She said she was going. I didn’t know about the money. Not then. But now, thinking back on it, I understand that she had the money and she had the plan. And that night, in a moment of stupidity, I changed those plans. I killed her.”
I considered on this a long time. “It was an accident, Terry. If it happened the way you said. It was an accident.”
“It happened how I said. I jumped on top of her. I meant to do it. But I didn’t mean for that to happen. You have to believe me.”
“I do,” I said.
“Accident or not, it doesn’t make me innocent,” he said. “But I want you to know I didn’t mean for her to die.”
The door opened. Jinx came in; she lay across the bed and put her arm across Terry’s chest. “I heard all that. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, too. Instead I had to lean up against the door like a thief.”
“I would have told you,” Terry said. “She asked, so I told her. I had plans to reveal the same thing to you.”
I glanced through the open doorway. Unlike Jinx, Mama hadn’t heard a thing. I could hear her gently snoring. I think you could have set a firecracker off and she wouldn’t have heard it.
I closed the door silently. Jinx kept hugging Terry. He patted her arm with his good hand.
“She shouldn’t have teased you,” Jinx said.
“That’s no excuse,” he said.
“Well, it wasn’t right,” Jinx said. “You are how you are, and May Lynn could think pretty high and mighty of herself at times. You ain’t got no need to get cured of nothing. I’ll tell you this, if it’ll make you feel any better. I tried to kill the old woman here, and on purpose, not by any accident. But the gun didn’t have no good bullets in it. It just clicked, and then she died on her own.”
“That’s best,” Terry said.
“I consider it a disappointment,” Jinx said.
24
It was decided not to tell Mama about what Terry had told us, least not right away, and that if it was told, we’d leave it to him to do it. I can’t say it felt good to find out how May Lynn had died, but I believed Terry’s story, and it made me feel some better to know he hadn’t just outright murdered her.
We was locked up in that house for a day without much water, and with no real good food to eat, just the last of those greens Mama had cooked up, and they had soured. It finally got to where it was go out and get something to eat or just get in the closet with the old woman and wait for death. I wasn’t certain Skunk was still out there anywhere, but if the stories about Skunk was true, then he could be. But my fear of Skunk couldn’t feed us. I had to get some kind of groceries pulled into the house, even if they was blackberries and frog legs.
There was also the matter of the old woman in the closet. She had already started to stink. She had to be taken out and buried, if for no other reason than so we could stay in that cabin in peace.
I was thinking on all this, bored, prowling around the house, looking for food goods-dried beans or peas, or a very large mouse-and I come upon an old tin box. I opened it. There was some faded blue ribbons inside, a bit of string and such, and there was some old photographs. They was of a young girl and an older man. He was standing with his hand on the girl’s shoulder. He had an expression like something inside him had backed up and stoppered and had turned rotten. The little girl had to be the old woman many years back. I could see something about that
