Joe Lansdale - Edge of Dark Water

“Why would you help us?” I asked.

“I don’t rightly know,” the old woman said.

Mama said, “His arm is bad, kids. It’s real bad. He’s getting worse by the moment.”

“You mean we ought to cut it off?” I said.

The old woman spoke before Mama could. “You don’t, I got some shovels tucked up under the back of the house there. They’ll fit you girls’ hands good enough to dig a grave.”

I looked at Terry. He hardly seemed to be breathing.

“Go ahead and do it,” Mama said.

“What?” I said. “How come you get to choose?”

“Someone’s got to.”

“She’s just a mean old woman wants to cut something off, anything, and on anybody,” Jinx said. “You don’t get to say nothing. He’s our friend, not yours.”

“I can do it or I can’t,” the old woman said.

Jinx said, “Can we get a close look at him?”

The old woman picked up the pistol and scooted back on her butt a ways, said, “Gander all you want, but come at me, and I’ll shoot.”

Jinx moved over first, and I went right behind her. She leaned down, her eyes right close. “Terry,” she said.

He didn’t say nothing back. His eyes was rolled up in his head, white as fresh chicken eggs.

She touched his sweaty forehead. “He’s so hot, Sue Ellen.”

I touched him, too, and I was quick in agreement. “It’s like there’s a brush fire burning inside of him.”

We looked at his arm. It was mostly black now, and swollen up about the size of a plumped-up ham. There was red streaks above the black part, and meat was starting to peel off the arm. It smelled strong of rot. It was oozing pus, and flies had laid maggots in it.

“I don’t think there’s no choice,” I said, looking at Jinx.

“I don’t want to make that call,” she said.

“Ain’t there a doctor somewhere near?” I said to the old woman.

“You could take him by boat, if I was to let you leave, and I won’t do that. I need you people to help me out. I’m old. I ain’t got nobody else.”

“Only friends you can have is the ones you keep at the end of a gun barrel,” Jinx said.

“I reckon that’s true,” the old woman said. “And I can live with that.”

I looked to Mama. I had learned to take my own advice over the years, but now I wanted some.

“What do we do, Mama?”

“A doctor would be best,” Mama said. “But even a doctor couldn’t save that arm. It’s already lost. The only thing now is to not lose Terry. It’s better to lose a piece of him than all of him.”

“Listen to her,” said the old woman.

“We should have took him right away to a doctor,” Jinx said. “When he first got hurt.”

“Shoulda, woulda, coulda,” the old woman said.

“Cut it off, you old bat,” I said, tears in my eyes. “And do it right. Do it right, or gun or no gun, so help me, I’ll kill you and hang you in a tree and beat you with a stick like your father and brothers did that poor man.”

“Once you’re dead it don’t matter,” the old woman said. “Nothing matters then.”

“Do it, then!” Jinx said. “Do it! Do it and get it over with, you old witch!”

“Y’all push back there, and I’m going to need you, woman,” she said, nodding at Mama. “And you two are going to have to do what I say when I call on you. Make sure that water’s hot.”

The old woman opened the wooden box. There was a leather strap in there, and she took it out and fastened it on Terry’s arm above the elbow and tightened it off with a metal screw from the box. She got out a little bottle and put it on the floor.

“That would have been ether,” she said, “but I ain’t got no more of it. He’ll have to do without it.”

“What is it for?” Jinx said.

“It puts a person under, makes them loopy,” she said. “They don’t feel so much pain.”

“So what’s Terry got for pain?” Jinx asked.

“He ain’t got nothing but me quick at work,” she said. “He might come out of his doze, and if he does, you got to hold him down. You got to hold his head, arms, and legs. You may have to put your butt on him, but you got to hold him down.” She laced her old, gnarly fingers together and cracked them gently. “Let’s get started.”

The old woman fastened the leather strap and twisted the screw. Pus oozed out all over Terry’s hand, wrist, and forearm.

“I’m going to cut beneath the elbow, down as far as seems smart. I’m going to cut a lot of bone and keep as much skin as I can, but a lot of it’s rotten. I may not get to flap it after all. I might have to nub it at the bone, which ain’t as good. But we got what we got.”

The old woman looked at us. “I’m going to push this pistol aside now, and you can wrestle it away if you have a mind to. I ain’t so strong anymore. But you do, this boy won’t get the surgery. If you nab it after the surgery, I may decide not to close it up right. You got to leave the gun to me. I see in your eyes you got plans, but I’m telling you, when he’s cut and sawed and sewed, you’re going to need me to make sure he don’t go under. He might anyway. But you got to leave me be, cause if he’s got any kind of chance, that chance is me.”

There were saws and an assortment of blades in the box. The old woman picked out what she needed, had us take them and dump them in the pot of water, which was now boiling something fierce. She cranked the screw some more, tightened the strap on his arm. Terry groaned once, and then lay silent and still.

There were tongs in the box, and she had us dunk those in the water and use them to get hold of the instruments, lift them out of the water, and place them across the box. I figured if she was trying to be clean, there was a chance the box wasn’t all that sanitary, but we was beyond that moment. This was as good as it was going to get, and I knew it.

When the instruments was cooled a mite, she clicked them into the saw handles with her hands, which didn’t look all that clean themselves, said, “Now you better hold him.”

It was as bad as you might think. She went with the knife first, and she cut into the meat, and deep, and when she did, Terry started to scream. He tried to sit up, but Jinx sat on his head, like an elephant on a stool. I had hold of his legs, Mama his good arm, and the old witch had the other arm by the oozing wrist. She cut around that arm like she was notching an arrow, and then she chunked the knife aside and grabbed a saw and went at it. She sawed fast. When the bone was near cut through, she stopped and sat back and sweated and breathed heavy.

Terry was screaming loud enough to wake the dead, and considering Jinx had her butt square on his head, it was quite a feat. He tried to get loose of us, but we held him down.

“I ain’t as young as I used to be,” said the old woman. “I’m tuckered out, but I ain’t through the bone yet. And the saw’s done got dull.”

Without a word, Mama grabbed up another blade, fastened it in the old blade’s place. She got to work, finishing up the job in a few seconds. When she had it done, the old woman, who had cut the arm in such a way as to leave a good-sized flap of good skin hanging, folded it over, got a needle and stout thread from the box, and went to sewing.

Somewhere during all this, Terry quit screaming or moving, and for a moment, I thought Jinx had smothered him with her butt. But when she got off of him I saw right off he was breathing. He was passed out.

The old woman was breathing heavily, and I thought I could hear her heart knocking against her chest like a moth beating its wings inside a jar.

Jinx got the pistol off the floor. “Now that he’s sewed up,” she said, cocking it, “I figure I can just go on and put a bullet through your head.”