Joe Lansdale - Edge of Dark Water

When I finished, I wasn’t sure he believed all or any of our story, but he nodded at things while I talked, the way you will to someone you think may not have all their marbles.

When I finished with it, Captain Burke ran his hand through his hair, said, “We got pretty much a mess here, don’t we?”

Me and Jinx didn’t argue with that.

“What we going to do about it?” he asked.

We didn’t offer any words of wisdom.

“I guess I got to think on it before I decide,” he said. “First, though, I reckon we need to go get your mama and this Terry fella, and I want to see this Skunk, and that old woman you say you left leaning up against the house.”

I figured my criminal life was about to come to a bad end, but it didn’t work out quite like that.

Here’s what happened. Captain Burke hired a greasy trapper with three fingers missing (said a gator got them) and a motorboat; he motored us back up the river. Captain Burke looked silly sitting in the boat with his hat on, it being a ten-gallon. He had stuffed the inside of it with paper to make it fit, and it stood out from his noggin all the way around.

We stopped at where Skunk was hung up. They pulled the boat on shore enough so that it didn’t float away, got out, and stood there and looked at Skunk, who was even worse for wear than before. His neck had grown thin, and it was starting to rot.

Captain Burke got him a stick and poked Skunk a few times, causing him to swing back and forth. He poked him another time and darn if his head didn’t pop off, and let me tell you, that was a nasty sight.

“Who’d have thunk that there?” said the greasy trapper. “You’d think a head that big gonna have a neck that’s not gonna wear so quick, wouldn’t you?”

“He ain’t got no better neck than nobody else,” Captain Burke said.

“That there supposed to be that Skunk fella that comes to get folks and such?” the trapper asked, since Captain Burke-who, when it got right down to it, was kind of a blabbermouth-had told him the whole story.

“Yep,” I said.

“Ah, he don’t look like so much to me, he don’t. No, sir. Not so much.”

“Yeah, well,” Jinx said. “He ain’t alive. I don’t reckon the dead look like much no matter who they was.”

“Well, now,” said the trapper, “that’s a point you got there, it is. I’m just saying how he looks.”

They left Skunk where he fell, and we motored on up the river some more to where we had stopped when we first come to the old woman’s house. We went up the hill and to the house. I knocked on the door, and Mama answered it and let us in. Terry was able to get around better now, go to the outhouse proper, instead of going in a pan with the results thrown out one of the busted windows, as this was a thing he told us right away, right there in front of strangers. But I guess if I had had my arm cut off and had been having to do my business in a pan, I would have been pretty excited about the change as well. In the short time we had been gone, three days about, they had eaten up all the squirrels we had laid in, and the berries and grapes, too.

Captain Burke looked over Terry’s amputated arm and nodded his head at the work. “You say that a woman lived here done that?”

“Yes,” Terry said. “She’s leaning up against the house, with what’s left of my arm in a box.”

Mama went over and opened up the shutters, and there she was, still in the same place, but shrunk some in the blanket, and good and ripe, with that saw box still cradled and open on her forearms, the remains of Terry’s arm lying up in it.

“Uh-huh,” said the trapper, looking out the window. “I knowed this old woman some, a time back. She was like an old poison snake, but without the sweetness. Nobody had anything to do with her come these last ten years. She’d done got so sour wasn’t no one wanted anything to do with her. I thought she was done dead.”

Well, we buried the old woman again, and the trapper said a few words over her. About how she was mean as hell, but still she was dead and we ought to be polite, or some such thing. While he was talking I sort of drifted away, watching a blue jay in a tree.

Finished, we walked down to where Skunk was. The trapper and Captain Burke buried Skunk and his head in the side of the riverbank, which seemed foolish to me, as it wouldn’t be long before time washed him out of there. But to tell the truth, I didn’t really care. I wasn’t all that concerned about how Skunk had ended up, though there was moments when I’d consider how he had been treated when he was young; his tongue yanked out, hit over the head with a boat paddle, near drowned, and made to live in the woods. When I’d consider all that, I’d at least have a moment or two of some sad feelings for him. But they passed quicker than they came.

When they had Skunk buried, the trapper said to the bank where he had been tucked, “Good luck in hell,” then we walked back to where the boat was. It turned out the boat wasn’t big enough for all of us, which was a thing we had tried to tell Captain Burke from the start. But he had his mind set, so here we was. It was decided they’d take Mama and Terry to Gladewater, and it would be seen to that they got put up in a boardinghouse. Me and Jinx said we’d stay and wait our turn. When they was out of sight down the river, me and her went back up to the house and got the lard cans with the money and May Lynn’s ashes. We dug a hole near the briar patch and buried them, and made some little markers with rocks.

I guess it was near dark when Captain Burke and the trapper showed up, and we got loaded and made our way to Gladewater. Mama and Terry was over at the boardinghouse. Captain Burke went and got Mama but left Terry there, cause he was still feeling weak from all that blood loss. The trapper went away, and me and Jinx just waited around in the street until we seen Captain Burke and Mama coming our way.

Mama had had time to clean up and wash her hair, and she had been given a dress by the landlady; she looked good and fresh, and Captain Burke, like most men, was smitten.

When we all got to the jail, Mama went in back and talked with Don. When she came out, she said, “I talked to him like you suggested, Captain.”

“And?”

“He says he killed that man to keep him from having me and Sue Ellen killed. He said he doesn’t like Terry and doesn’t have any feelings for Jinx one way or the other.”

“Figures,” Jinx said.

Captain Burke looked at Mama. “Was he rough with you? Is that why you run off?”

Mama nodded. “Yes. Yes, he was, and that is why I ran off. But I think now he’s done. He was just trying to protect us in the end. It might not make him a good person, but it doesn’t make him evil. He was trying to do one thing right.”

That was our complete story. Reverend Joy didn’t come up again, and neither did Gene or Constable Sy. It didn’t seem to bother Captain Burke at all. None of the story we told would have been worth a damn for any solid law enforcement, even if it was mostly true, but Captain Burke seemed satisfied with it. I reckon when it comes to police matters, law is pretty much where and how you find it. And how much work there is to it for them, and how much money there is or isn’t in it.

In our case, there was too much work and no real money for Captain Burke, and at the bottom of it all, like lots of people in those kinds of positions, he didn’t really give a damn.

“I’ll cut him loose, then,” he said in a big way, spreading his hands. “We’ll call him killing that Cletus fella self-defense. Hell, we’ll just call everything even and not hurt our heads too much over it.”

“Sure,” Mama said, like any of it made sense.

Captain Burke told Mama he wouldn’t mind taking her to the cafe for dinner tomorrow if she was agreeable, and she said, “Maybe.”