Joe Lansdale - Edge of Dark Water

“You were a boy,” Mama said to Reverend Joy. “You did something wrong. You stole and you told a horrible lie, but you were young and frightened. It’s not an excuse, but it is a reason.”

“Sounds like an excuse to me,” he said. “I was evil.”

“If that’s true, you’ve shown the evil has been cleansed. You have been saved, Jack. You have saved others. You’ve been baptized, of course, and therefore you have been redeemed. You’re a good preacher.”

“Good or bad, I’m done now. There’s nothing left for me here. I don’t deserve to ask it, but I’m asking you. Can I go with you downriver? Away from here? I don’t know where I’ll go in the end, but away from here. Will you have me with you?”

“I suppose it’s up to the children, at least to some extent,” Mama said. “They will have to be asked. Frankly, I’m uncertain what it is I want to do next. But I suppose whatever it is I’ll first have to go downriver.”

“What about your first love-the man in Gladewater?”

“I don’t know,” Mama said. “That was a long time ago. The idea of him and what we had got me out of bed and on the raft, but I don’t know it’s such a good idea to dig up the past like an old grave. What’s in it might stink.”

I hadn’t thought about that. Hadn’t considered that Mama and Brian would meet and things wouldn’t go back to where they were some seventeen years ago, that we wouldn’t be just one big happy family. It was another one of those revelations, and I didn’t like it. Basking in ignorance has much to be said for it.

“Will you have to tell the children what I have done?” he said. “Should I?”

“I suppose not,” Mama said. “Another time, maybe, if you want to get it off your chest. But there isn’t any going back in time, for me or for you. We got to wear our crowns of thorns. We can talk all we want, but we can’t take them off.”

“My thorns are sharper,” he said, “but I suppose that is as it should be. I’m sick to death with the memory, and I wanted you to know. Somehow, telling you makes me feel better. Not about what I done, but it helps me bear it. I hope I haven’t handed you a burden.”

“Nothing I can’t carry,” Mama said.

“I appreciate that, Helen. I really do. Shall we leave tomorrow? I have to resign my church, which I might as well anyway. It doesn’t mean I have to actually write out a resignation letter. I just need to go. It does no good to preach to the wind. I have to leave the cabin. It’s given to the preacher to use, and I won’t be the preacher anymore.”

“All right, then,” she said. “We can load the raft tomorrow morning. Then we can leave.”

I saw Mama take the reverend’s head in her hands, and their shadows mixed. I knew she was kissing him. More and more I realized I didn’t know Mama at all.

They talked awhile, and held hands, and the Reverend Jack Joy even cried. She put her arms around him, and they leaned together and kissed again, and it was real kissing, what Jinx calls smackie-mouth.

I didn’t want to see no more of it, so I got up and sneaked back into the house and onto my pallet, lay there with my mind full now of Jaren and his last moments, burning up, chained to a stump, all for a lie. And then I had to think about Mama, and how she was more than I knew as a person, and that she and the reverend was down there on the raft, kissing, and maybe more. I couldn’t find any way to lose the thoughts, or to get hold of them.

Wasn’t long after I laid down that the door opened, and I seen Mama’s shape in the frame, and behind and above her, I seen more heat lightning dancing across the sky. Also behind her, I saw Reverend Joy heading toward his car. Then Mama eased the door closed and moved noiselessly to the bedroom.

In spite of all that was bothering me, I eventually nodded off.

My sleep was soon spoiled by the sound of lumber splitting. I sat bolt upright, and so did everyone else in the house, cause the door had been kicked back and broken apart; there was two hat-wearing shapes in the doorway. They brought with them the smell of liquor and sweat. One of them was holding a flashlight. It was shining across the room, right on my face, and it was blinding me. Jinx moved on the floor, said something in surprise, and one of the shapes kicked her hard enough she let out her air and was knocked tumbling. She twitched just enough that I knew she wasn’t knocked out.

Mama came into the room instantly, and when she did, one of the shapes quick-stepped toward her. A hand struck out, and she went down with a scream.

“Stop it, damn it,” I said, coming off my pallet and to my feet.

“Unladylike as always,” said a familiar voice. “You best sit back down before I hit you, Sue Ellen.”

The flashlight beam that was resting on me hopped around the room. I couldn’t help but look where it went. It came to rest on Terry’s pallet, where he was sitting up.

The voice said, “There’s the sissy.”

“Where’s the damn preacher?” said the other man. I recognized that voice, too.

After a moment, both shapes moved deeper into the room. Then one of them spotted a lantern with the flashlight, and the lantern got lit. The lamp lighter was that one-eyed Constable Sy, and the other one, the kicker and hitter, was the man I had always known as Uncle Gene.

Well, now,” Uncle Gene said. “If it ain’t my brother’s wife, Helen, in another man’s house, along with her sassy-ass daughter, the sissy, and a runaway nigger. Where’s the preacher?”

It was easy to figure. They had been looking for us for some time now. All they had to do was ask along the river until they come to the right person, and someone who had seen us talked. With the reverend’s congregation being on the outs with him, they had most likely been swift to say something, not realizing, of course, that the men looking for us was more than bill collectors. Course, I guess it could have been something they did by meaner purpose, and if that was the case, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was the Fried Chicken with Too Much Salt Lady.

“I’m not going back,” Mama said, coming off the floor and to her feet. She had a hand pressed against her face where she had been hit.

Gene took a seat by the table. “I know that, Helen. Where’s the preacher?”

“He’s gone off,” I said. “They got rid of him at the church. Didn’t like his living arrangements. He’s gone off.”

“That right?” Sy said. He had his hand on his holstered gun, letting it rest there like a bird that had lit on a post. Right then, I believed that story about what that holster was made out of. “Gene,” he said, “go look in the back room, see if you can find a preacher. Bring him out, drawers or no drawers.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself for thinking such a thing,” Mama said.

“Now, don’t get special on me, girl,” Gene said. “You lowered your own drawers down before you took up with my brother. You done that, didn’t you? It ain’t like no one else has ever been under the bridge. Only thing I got to wonder is if you were charging a toll.”

Even in the dark I could feel embarrassment come off Mama like heat off a fire. Gene went past her on his way to the room, paused to slap her on the butt. “You know,” he said. “Always figured, you and me could have a good time, and I think we might still.”

Mama wheeled and spit in his face.

Gene wiped the spit off with his sleeve and grinned at her. “Oh, your time is coming, honey. You can bet on that.”

“Quit jawing and go look,” Constable Sy said.

Gene went on. While he was in the bedroom looking around, Constable Sy said, “All of you might as well cooperate. I’m with the law.”