Joe Lansdale - Edge of Dark Water

I put a piece of wood in the wheelbarrow, looked over at the old woman and her gun. Out in the sunlight, I could see the whites of her eyes was weepy and red, and the eyes themselves was dark as wet pecan shells. She didn’t have but a few rotting teeth in her mouth.

“Listen, ma’am, I have to tell you there’s a wounded boy down there by the river. He traveled here with us. We just wanted some food, and had to leave him there for a while. My mama was supposed to be watching him, but she abandoned ship.”

“I was worried about you,” Mama said.

I plowed on. “We don’t want no trouble. We’ve cleaned your house, and gathered up wood. We been here for hours, and he’s been down there, hurt. I ain’t asking to get shot, but I got to go down there and get him. That’s all there is to it. Fact is it will probably take two of us to bring him back.”

The old woman pursed her dry lips and narrowed her weepy eyes. “I tell you what. I’ll keep this mother of yours, and you and this girl go down there and get him. I’ll take a look at him. You don’t come back right smart, I’m going to shoot your mama in the head.”

“All right,” I said. “But you got to give us time to get down there and get hold of him and bring him back. He’s a good-sized boy and he can’t walk at all, so we got to tote him.”

“Just get on with it.”

We went down there, and Terry was still lying in the boat. Me and Jinx tugged him out of it, being careful as we could, and laid him gently on the ground. Then we pulled the boat all the way on shore, dragged it under a tree. There wasn’t no time to waste, so we didn’t try to hide it, just left it. I took our two lard buckets out of it, carried them over to where a bunch of blackberry vines grew, and pushed the cans down in them. It wasn’t a great hiding place, but it was something.

Terry was out of it, and he had a fever hot as the devil’s ass. I got him by the legs and Jinx got his arms, and we managed our way up the riverbank and onto the grass field. We had to put him down a few times and regroup, but we stayed with it.

It had already been getting late when we went down there, and now the sun was angling off behind some trees in a big red glow. Within half an hour, it would be dark.

We got Terry up to the house, and when we did, the old woman was standing there in the doorway with her pistol. She waved the pistol at us, and we carried him inside. She had us lay him out on an old woven rug that might have been some color or another once. Mama was sitting in a chair, her hands in her lap. Near the fireplace was all the wood we had gathered up. The wheelbarrow was by the fireplace.

“I know we ain’t a concern of yours,” I said. “But he sure needs help. If you could just let me attend to him best I can.”

“You go over there and stand by your mama,” she said, then swung the pistol at Jinx. “You too, girl.”

Me and Jinx went to opposite sides of the chair where Mama was and sat down on the floor. I had made up my mind that soon as the chance opened up, I was going to jump that old bat, take my odds with gunfire. I was fed up. My take was if I could get my hands on her, them old bones would get snapped like dry kindling.

The old woman bent down on her knees, the way a horse will do when it goes to settle down before it falls on its side. She did a bit of that until she was off her knees and on her butt. She laid the pistol on the rug beside Terry, reached out, and felt his forehead.

She glanced up at us. “There’s a well out to the side. One of you girls, but not both, go out there and crank up a bucket of water and bring it back.”

I went out and did that. When I came back and sat the bucket down, the old woman wasn’t paying me a lot of mind. The gun was lying on that dusty rug within easy reach. But I hesitated. She was looking at Terry’s hand, and there was something about the way she did it made me think she might even know what she was doing. I went over and sat down on the floor again.

“That hand ain’t no good,” said the old woman. “You there,” she said to Jinx. “Go over there to that trunk, open it up, and bring me that long wooden box out of it.”

Jinx brought the box. This time the old woman had hold of the gun. I guess all that business she had said about having a slave when she was a child and selling it off made her realize Jinx might be in a bad mood. Anyway, Jinx put the box down, and the old woman had me roll over a log of firewood. I couldn’t figure what that was about, but when I was done with that, I went back and sat down on the floor again.

The old woman rolled up the sleeve of the injured arm, and when she did, I let out a gasp. Not only was the hand looking dark and full of sin, so was the arm, near up to the elbow. She put her bony fingers on the side of his neck.

“He ain’t got much pulse,” she said. “He ain’t gonna last no time at all with that arm on him. He may not last long with it off.”

“Say what?” I said.

“You get that bucket of water I had you bring up, and pour it in that pot by the fire. Take down the pot hanging there, stoke up the fire, and put the water on to heat. I’m going to have to take that arm.”

“Take it?” Jinx said.

“It’s got to come off,” said the old woman.

“The hell it does,” Jinx said.

“It ain’t no skin off my nose neither way,” said the old woman. “But it needs to come off, and I know how to do it.”

“You could let us go and we could take him to the doctor,” I said.

“I could, but I ain’t going to,” said the old woman. “Besides, I ain’t got no car, and I ate my plow mule, which is why the house was a mess. I went out and shot him and it didn’t kill him, and he run in here through the open door and we had a hell of a fight. I bet I shot him four times. He was kicking and bucking and throwing turds. He made quite a mess of the place. Even when he went down, I had to reload and shoot him another couple of times. I was right fond of that mule. I point that out to let you understand that you people I don’t even know. So don’t try to get feisty.

“What I’m telling you gals is, by the time you’ve toted him out, even if I was to let you go, he’ll be deader than a dirt clod. Even with his arm off he don’t have a big chance. He’s gotten bad off.”

We just sat there stunned, trying to take in all she was saying.

The old woman patted the wooden box.

“This here is a surgeon’s box,” she said. “My daddy was a surgeon in the Civil War, and after the war he was a doctor way out on the far side of Texas, near a town called Mason. When I was just twelve or so, I helped him nurse folks. I know how this is done. I helped him do it a few times, and I even done it a couple times myself when he was older and sick and took to the bottle. Didn’t no one know I did it, as the patients was under ether. But I knew the way to go about it from watching Daddy. I’ll have to cut through quick, lay out a flap of skin, and saw through the bone. I can do that before you could wipe your ass.”

“You can’t do that to him,” Jinx said, her eyes wet with tears. “He’s too pretty to lose an arm.”

“Everyone is prettier today than they will be tomorrow,” the old woman said. “But dead ain’t pretty at all.”

“I ought to grab up a piece of firewood and stove your head in,” Jinx said.

“You could try that,” the old woman said. “But I know how to give him a chance. I can’t do that with my head stove in. And this here pistol is known to my hand. It was my daddy’s, and he killed Yankees with it. It’s been converted to cartridges, and it’s got six in it. I’m a good shot. I’ve killed plenty of game and a crazy mule, and when I was young and pretty as your mama there I once shot a suitor who didn’t know where to keep his hands. After he was dead, my daddy and brothers hung him to a tree and rode past him on horses and hit him with clubs until you wouldn’t have known if he was a man or a side of beef. So I got the stomach for it.”