rest.
I paddled quickly through them, spreading the school, and one did indeed try to climb up the side, but I brought the boat paddle down on him hard and he went back in the water, alive or dead I couldn’t say.
As I paddled around a bend in the river, I saw where the wild briars grew, and in that moment I had a strange sinking feeling. Not only for fear of what I might find in the briar tunnels, but fear I might find nothing at all. Fear I was all wrong. Or that the Goat Man did indeed have Tom. Perhaps in Mose’s cabin, and had been keeping her there, waiting until I was out of sight. But if that was true, why had he given my gun back? Then again, he wasn’t bright.
He was a creature of the woods, same as a coon or a possum. He didn’t think like regular folks.
All of this went through my head and swirled around and confused itself with my own fears and the thought of actually cutting down on a man with a shotgun. I felt like I was in a dream, like the kind I’d had when I’d had the flu the year before and everything had swirled and Mama and Daddy’s voices had seemed to echo and there were shadows all around me, trying to grab at me and pull me away into who knows where.
I paddled up to the bank and got out and pulled the boat up on shore best I could. I couldn’t quite get it out of the water since I was so tuckered out from paddling. I just hoped it would hang there and hold.
I got the shotgun out and went up the hill quietly and found the mouth of the tunnel just beyond the tree, where me and Tom and Toby had come out that night.
It was dark inside the briars, and the moon had gone away behind a cloud and the wind rattled the briars and clicked them together and bits of rain sliced through the briars and mixed with the sweat in my hair, ran down my face and made me shiver. July the Fourth, and I was cold.
As I sneaked down the tunnel, an orange glow leaped and danced and I could hear a crackling sound. I trembled and eased forward and came to the end of the tunnel, and froze. I couldn’t make myself turn into the other tunnel. It was as if my feet were nailed the ground.
I pulled back the hammer on the shotgun, slipped my face around the edge of the briars, and looked.
There was a fire going in the center of the tunnel, in the spot where Tom and I had seen the burn marks that day, and I could see Tom lying on the ground, her clothes off and strewn about, and a man was leaning over her, running his hands over her back and forth, making a sound like an animal eating after a long time without food. His hands flowed over her as if he was playing a piano. A huge machete was stuck up in the dirt near Tom’s head, and Tom’s face was turned toward me. Her eyes were wide and full of tears, and tied around her mouth was a thick bandanna, and her hands and feet were bound with rope, and as I looked the man rose and I saw that his pants were undone and he had hold of himself, and he was walking back and forth behind the fire, looking down at Tom, yelling, “I don’t want to do this. You make me do this. It’s your fault, you know? You’re getting just right. Just right.”
The voice was loud, but not like any voice I’d ever heard. There was all the darkness and wetness of the bottom of the river in that voice, as well as the mud down there, and anything that might collect in it.
I hadn’t been able to get a good look at his face, but I could tell from the way he was built, the way the fire caught his hair, it was Mr. Nation’s son, Uriah.
Then he turned slightly, and it wasn’t Uriah at all. I had merely thought it was Uriah because he was built like Uriah, but it wasn’t.
I stepped fully into the tunnel and said, “Cecil?”
The word just came out of my mouth, without me really planning to say it. Cecil turned now, and when he saw me his face was like it had been earlier, when Tom was being bounced on his knee and the fireworks had exploded behind him. He had the same slack-jawed look, his face was beaded in sweat.
He let go of his privates and just let them hang out for me to see, as if he were proud of them and that I should be too.
“Oh, boy,” he said, his voice still husky and animal-like. “It’s just gone all wrong. I didn’t want to have to have Tom. I didn’t. But she’s been ripenin’, boy, right in front of my eyes. Every time I saw her, I said, no, you don’t shit where you eat, but she’s ripenin’, boy, and I thought I’d go to your place, peek in on her if I could, and then I seen her there, easy to take, and I knew tonight I had to have her. There wasn’t nothing else for it.”
“Why?”
“Oh, son. There is no why. I just have to. I have to do them all. I tell myself I won’t, but I do. I do.”
He eased toward me.
I lifted the shotgun.
“Now, boy,” he said. “You don’t want to shoot me.”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
“It ain’t something I can help. Listen here. I’ll let her go, and we’ll just forget about this business. Time you get home, I’ll be out of here. I got a little boat hid out, and I can take it downriver to where I can catch a train. I’m good at that. I can be gone before you know it.”
“You’re wiltin’,” I said.
His pee-dink had gone limp.
Cecil looked down. “So I am.”
He pushed himself inside his pants and buttoned up as he talked. “Look here. I wasn’t gonna hurt her. Just feel her some. I was just gonna get my finger wet. I’ll go on, and everything will be all right.”
“You’ll just go down the river and do it again,” I said. “Way you come down the river to us and did it here. You ain’t gonna stop, are you?”
“There’s nothing to say about it, Harry. It just gets out of hand sometime.”
“Where’s your chain and coin, Cecil?”
He touched his throat. “It got lost.”
“That woman got her hand chopped off, she grabbed it, didn’t she?”
“I reckon she did.”
“Move to the left there, Cecil.”
He moved to the left, pointed at the machete. “She grabbed me, I chopped her with that, and her hand came off. Damndest thing. I got her down here and she got away from me and I chased her. And she grabbed me, fought back. I chopped her hand off and it went in the river. Can you imagine that… How did you know?”
“The Goat Man finds things in the river. He hangs them on Mose’s shack.”
“Goat Man?”
“You’re the real Goat Man.”
“You’re not making any sense, boy.”
“Move on around to the side there.”
I wanted him away from the exit on that other side, the one me and Tom had stumbled into that night we found the body.
Cecil slipped to my left, and I went to the right. We were kind of circling each other. I got over close to Tom and I squatted down by her, still pointing the shotgun at Cecil.
“I could be gone for good,” Cecil said. “All you got to do is let me go.”
I reached out with one hand and got hold of the knot on the bandanna and pulled it loose. Tom said, “Shoot him! Shoot him! He stuck his fingers in me. Shoot him! He took me out of the window and stuck his fingers in me.”
“Hush, Tom,” I said. “Take it easy.”
“Cut me loose. Give me the gun and I’ll shoot him.”
“All the time you were bringin’ those women here to kill, weren’t you?” I said.
“It’s a perfect place. Already made by hobos. Once I decided on a woman, well, I can easily handle a woman. I always had my boat ready, and you can get almost anywhere you need to go by river. The tracks aren’t far from here. Plenty of trains run. It’s easy to get around. Now and then I borrowed a car. You know whose? Mrs. Canerton. One night she loaned it to me, and well, I asked her if she wanted to go for a drive with me while I ran an errand. And she liked me, boy, and I just couldn’t contain myself. All I had to do was bring them here, and when I finished, I tossed out the trash.”
“Daddy trusted you. You told where Mose was. You told Mr. Nation.”
“It was just a nigger, boy. I had to try and hide my trail. You understand. It wasn’t like the world lost an upstanding citizen.”
