Joe Lansdale - Edge of Dark Water

Except for Mama, we were hesitating. She, on the other hand, had gotten up and was starting to move toward the hill. Reverend Joy took note of it and quickly took her arm and led the way up. I don’t know what he said to her as they walked away, but she thought it was funny. She giggled. I hadn’t heard her do that in a long time. Actually, I hadn’t never heard her do it quite like that, way a schoolgirl will do when she’s playing some kind of game or the other.

When Mama and the Reverend Joy was a little ahead of us, I said to Jinx and Terry, “I’m not sure I like this.”

“He might know we’re on the run and is gonna turn us in,” Jinx said.

“I doubt our pursuers have spread the word,” Terry said. “They want to keep that money quiet. But he might have a car, and with him attracted to your mama, he may be generous enough to give us a ride to Gladewater and we won’t need the raft. Come on, let’s not let your mama out of our sight.”

We gathered up our stuff, including the money and May Lynn’s ashes, and followed Reverend Joy and Mama up and over the hill.

The Reverend Joy’s house wasn’t big, but it was solidly made of logs and had split shingles. It rose up higher than most single-floor houses. The shingles was coated over with a thin brushing of tar to keep out water, and I could see tar paper sticking out from under them at the edges. The roof was shiny in the sun. The front porch was tight, with firm steps, and had a rocking chair on it.

Out front of the house was a black car with a coating of dust and a front right tire and wheel missing. The axle on that side was up on some wood blocks and there was grass growing around the car like hair around a mole. A half dozen crows were camped on it and had speckled it like a hound pup with their white droppings; they gave us a beady look as we came up. With his car up on those wooden blocks, looked to me like we wouldn’t be talking the reverend into taking us anywhere.

There was a well house out front, too. It was nicely built of seasoned lumber. It had a roof over it with a platform out to the side where you could step up and take hold of the rope and work the pulley to drop the bucket down the well. There was a pretty good-sized shed nearby, too. It was made of logs, like the house, and had the same kind of shingles. It had an open place with a roof over it and a long bench under it, and another section that was closed in by walls and a door. There was an outhouse not far away and it was painted blood red; it had been built recent, and a few spare two-by-fours and the like lay near it in the yard.

Only the garden looked out of step. It was a pretty big square with some buggy squash growing on top of badly hoed hills, and a line of beans that were yellowed and withering. The whole thing looked as if it was begging to be set on fire and plowed under, so as to be put out of its misery.

On a hill, not real far away, was a church. I figured that would be the reverend’s church, and this would be the house the congregation provided.

Inside the house there was a window on every wall, two on each of the long walls. The windows was all lifted to let in air, and there was outside screens over the windows to keep out bugs. It was cooler inside than I would have thought, and that was probably on account of the tall ceiling. He had a new icebox in one corner and everything in the house was scattered about and old enough to have been found in a pyramid in Egypt. But there was plenty of it. We all took a seat at a big plank table in the center of the room. The reverend got some glasses out of a cabinet, went to the icebox, took an ice pick, and went to chopping us some chips. He put them in glasses, and from another part of the icebox he got out a pitcher of tea and poured tea into the glasses.

We sat and looked at each other and sipped our tea, which was made with lots of sugar; it was so sweet it made my head swim, but it was cold and wet and I was glad to have it.

The Reverend Joy lost interest in the rest of us and spent his time looking at Mama. It was the kind of sick look a calf has for its mama.

“You on some kind of picnic?” he asked her.

“A pilgrimage of sorts,” Mama said. “We are off to see what we can see.”

“Is that a fact?” he said.

“It is,” Mama said.

“Well, I’m sure glad to have you in my house, and that God has brought us together,” Reverend Joy said.

“Or the river,” Jinx said.

“What’s that?” he said.

“Maybe the river brought us together, and not God,” Jinx said.

“Aren’t they the same?” Reverend Joy said.

“They might be, but if they is the same,” Jinx said, “that same river that will get you together for a glass of tea will drown you or get you snakebit.”

The Reverend Joy grinned at Jinx. She looked a mess, as all of us was, except Mama. Then again, she hadn’t dug up two bodies, burned up one in a brick factory, wrestled goods onto a boat, and poled and paddled down the river. That sort of thing had taken the freshness out of the rest of us. But Jinx, she was special messed up. She had bits of pine straw in her pigtails, and the sides of her pants showed damp dirt. I figured when she got up from that chair her butt would leave enough mud you could plant a fair stand of corn in it and have room left over for a hill or two of cucumbers.

“You don’t sound like a strong believer in the Word or the Heart of the Lord,” Reverend Joy said, never losing his smile.

“I got my own thoughts,” Jinx said.

This was true, but I knew her well enough to know they weren’t under lock and key and could come out and be seen with only the slightest bump of suggestion. I was hoping Reverend Joy would leave it there, but like the rest of his breed and politicians, he just couldn’t.

“I suppose you’re one of those wants to see a miracle before you’ll believe,” he said.

“That would be a good start,” Jinx said. “I think that could get me in the boat right away.”

The Reverend Joy chuckled a bit, like he was giggling over something silly a kitten had done, and maybe at the back of that giggle he was thinking about a sack to go with that kitten, along with some rocks and a trip to the river. “Miracles happen every day.”

“You seen one?” Jinx said.

“The bluebird that sings in the morning,” he said. “The sun that comes up. The-”

“What I want to see,” Jinx said, “is something a little more surprising and less regular.”

“Don’t be rude, Jinx,” Mama said.

After that remark the reverend lost his smile and it got so quiet in the room you could have heard a sparrow fart from the top of a tall pine tree. I was thinking that when I got the chance, I’d have to pull Jinx aside and explain to her how you just had to let religious folks run their thoughts out, because if you didn’t believe what they did, they would keep coming back at you with it until you finally was a believer or lied or drowned yourself just to get some peace.

Finally a smile came back to visit the Reverend Joy’s face. “I know a man that had a terrible accident. He got a wagon turned over on him and it crushed his chest. By the time they got him to the doctor he was dead. They laid him out and called the family, and when they come in to look at him, he woke up.”

“He wasn’t never dead, then,” Jinx said. “The dead don’t wake up.”

“It was a miracle.”

“Wasn’t never dead,” Jinx said again.

“Doctor said he was.”

“Doctor was wrong,” Jinx said.

“Now, you weren’t there,” Reverend Joy said.

“Was you?”

“Jinx,” Mama said.

“No, but I got it on good word,” the reverend said.

Jinx nodded and sipped her tea. “Did this man got a wagon rolled on him get up off the table and go on with things like nothing ever happened?”