Joe Lansdale - Edge of Dark Water

“Did you steal money?”

“We stole stolen money.”

“Stealing is stealing,” Mama said.

“I know that, and to tell you the truth, I can live with it.”

She didn’t argue with me. She sat there waiting for me to say more, so I told her all about it, including how there was a body under the money, and who it was. I told her how Jinx had been chased and hit, and how she fought back, and how we helped her. I told her we planned to dig May Lynn up, unless something changed in the next few hours.

Mama sat silent for a long time after I finished telling my story. “A body?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m so weak,” she said, and for a moment I thought she was going to slide off the log.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” I said. “I said some things to you I shouldn’t have, and now I’m a thief and pretty soon a grave robber.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m not weak from what you’ve done. I’m weak from living the way I have. Lying in bed so much hasn’t done me any good, either. I should never have left Brian, and I should never have settled.”

“You were protecting him,” I said.

She shook her head again. “I didn’t think I was good enough for him. I wasn’t never good for anything, to hear my mama tell it, and when I met Brian, for a moment I thought I might be worth something. Then when I got pregnant, I felt bad, and dirty. I didn’t want to make Brian dirty. But mostly I believed I got pregnant because the Lord was telling me who I was, and that I was being punished, and that my lot in life was always to be an unhappy one.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Not how I meant it, dear. I come to the conclusion just this morning that if he’s a loving God, he wouldn’t do that kind of thing, and he isn’t punishing me at all. I’m punishing myself. I listened to those men talking, and I heard Don say he didn’t care what happened to you. He said that after Cletus said if they got the money back, he’d give Don and Gene some of it. Offered them fifty dollars apiece, but Don argued him up to seventy-five apiece. He said they couldn’t help him find you, he’d hire that colored man that lives in the woods.”

“Skunk?”

“Yeah. Skunk.”

“There ain’t no Skunk.”

“I have heard different,” Mama said.

Mama also believed in signs and angels and ghosts, so I didn’t take her thoughts on Skunk seriously.

“Seventy-five apiece, huh?” I said.

“That’s what Cletus finally offered,” she said.

“Considering it’s a thousand dollars missing, that’s not that good a deal,” I said. “But at least I know how much I’m worth, along with Jinx and Terry. Did Cletus mention it was stolen and there was a dead body under it in a once-nice suit?”

“He didn’t.”

“Well, I guess selling me out for a hundred and fifty dollars between the two of them is better than Don and Gene doing it for nothing,” I said. “That’s the stepdaughter rates, I figure. I wonder what they’ll trade their own kin out for.”

“That’s a lot of money in these times,” she said.

I stared at her.

“I didn’t mean he should do it. Just saying.”

“You ought to get back before they miss you,” I said. “I got to warn Terry and Jinx.”

“I’m not going back. I’m going with you,” Mama said.

“You are?”

“Why I brought the bag,” she said. “It’s got some things for both of us in it. I even put your good dress and shoes in there.”

“Thank goodness for that,” I said. “I hope you brought the dresser from my room. The one with the mirror.”

“You might need that dress along the way,” she said. “You never know who you might meet.”

“Traveling with us, that makes you a thief, too.”

“Then we will all be thieves together,” she said. “You see, Sue Ellen, today, as the cure-all wore off, I had a dream of a big black horse, and it was following me along this riverbank. It was a big horse, and just kept getting closer. And then I saw this white horse up ahead, in the brush, and somehow I knew if I could get to that white horse, and swing on its back, that it would ride me away from the black one.”

“Maybe it’s a nice black horse,” I said.

“I don’t think so, hon. I don’t think so.”

“Did you get to it?”

“I woke up. So no. What now?”

* * *

It sounds pretty bad, but I left Mama sitting on that log and went to warn Terry first cause he was the closest. Mama just didn’t have the strength for a lot of scouting around. I left her there thinking about horses.

It took me a while to get out of the river bottoms and into the crooked-built town. I went along, watching carefully, and as I was walking to Terry’s place, trying to figure how I could get to him without being discovered by his stepfamily or his mama, down the road he come, walking in the moonlight, moving in such a way it looked as if he had one foot in a ditch and the other on something slick. He had two shovels slung over his shoulder. He saw me and raised his hand.

When we met up, I spilled out all that Mama had told me. I didn’t mention she planned to go with us. I thought I’d save that tidbit.

“Damn,” Terry said. “I assumed I’d already have May Lynn dug up by the time you and Jinx showed. I knew pretty soon Cletus would put two and two together as far as Jinx and myself went, so I started making trips. That’s how I hurt my ankle. Stepped in a hole.”

We started walking together in the direction of the graveyard where May Lynn was buried.

“Trips?” I said.

“I’ve already been to the graveyard, and I carried a tarp out there to put the body on. I’ve made three trips, taking supplies we’ll need. I have a wheelbarrow there as well. I’ve been busy. But I haven’t dug up the body yet. Why I brought the shovels.”

“Jinx is probably there by now,” I said.

“Works out right,” Terry said. “By the time they come to tell my mama and the stepdummies what’s what, we’ll have May Lynn dug up, and they’ll have no idea where we are. I got a surprise in store, too.”

It took us about a half hour to get to the place where May Lynn was buried. When we got there, Jinx was sitting on the ground by the grave with her little bag of goods. When she saw us coming she sprang to her feet.

“It done took you long enough,” she said.

“I was here before you,” Terry said.

“I figured that, all this stuff being here,” Jinx said. “But still, I been waiting and thinking Cletus would be after me like a pig on a mushroom since he knows Sue Ellen and she knows us.”

“Good figuring,” I said. “That is, in fact, in motion.”

I filled Jinx in quick-like. She said, “Mama, she knows I’m going. I couldn’t just leave her. I told her.”

“How’d she take it?” I asked.

“She took it good,” Jinx said. “She took it so good I almost stayed. She told me I might ought to go even if I hadn’t stole nothing; that there’s not a thing here for me, and that maybe there’s something out there. She said a colored girl might have a chance out in California or up north, but here there wasn’t nothing but raw fingers and tired bones. I’ll write her when everything blows over-Daddy, too, where he’s working up north. I almost figure I’m doing it for them, giving myself a chance. Besides, me having hit that white man with a stick upside the head isn’t going to set well around here.”

“I reckon that’s right,” I said.

“Take a shovel,” Terry said, handing me one of them.

I took it, and me and Terry started digging.

After a while I traded out the shovel with Jinx, and as I was sitting on the ground beside the grave, it really hit me. We was digging up May Lynn’s dead body.