Joe Lansdale - Edge of Dark Water

I strolled down the street toward where the river was. It was a pretty good walk, but the night was nice and I enjoyed it. I could smell the river and hear it before I got to it. Where I ended up was the spot where Captain Burke had loaded me and Jinx in the motorboat and taken us back upriver.

I sat on a smooth part of the ground, in a spot where I could see the water. The river wasn’t too far away from me. I could have spit from where I sat and hit the edge of that dark water without any trouble. It was not a bright night. All there was of the moon was a thin slice of silver, like a curved knife blade. Still, it was bright enough on the brown water I could see it good. The river flowed along like nothing had ever happened on it, to us or anyone else. It was just the river. I had the sudden idea it was like life, that river. You just flowed on it, and if there came a big rain, a flood or some such, and some of it was washed out, in time it would all wash back together. Oh, it might look some different, but it would be the same, really. It didn’t change, but the people on that river did. I knew I had. And Mama had, and so had Terry, and maybe Jinx-but with her, it was hard to tell.

But that old brown snake of a river, it pretty much stayed the way it was, running from one end to the other, out to the great big sea.

I got up and brushed myself off and walked back to the boardinghouse. I went in the room and quietly lifted the lard bucket with May Lynn in it, held it for a moment, and silently thanked her, because in her own way, even if I was a little mad at her, she had put us all together, made a family of us, sent us downriver to find out who we was and where we was going.

I picked up my ticket and placed the bucket down tenderly. I sat by the window with the ticket in my hand, waiting for the first crack of light.