James Dickey - Deliverance

Thad and I are getting along much better than before. The studio is still boring, but not as boring as it was. Dean is growing up well, though he is a strangely silent boy. He looks at me sometimes from the sides of his eyes, and seems about to speak in a way he has not spoken before. But that is probably only my imagination; he has never said anything except the things any boy would say to his father. Otherwise he is sturdy and uncomplicated, and beginning to be handsome. Lewis is something of an idol to him; he is lifting weights already.

Because of the associations she had for me, I looked up the girl in the Kitt’n Britches ad and took her out to dinner a couple of times. I still loved the way she looked, but her gold-halved eye had lost its fascination. Its place was in the night river, in the land of impossibility. That’s where its magic was for me. I left it there, though I would have liked to see her hold her breast once more, in a small space full of men. I see her every now and then, and the studio uses her. She is a pleasant part of the world, but minor. She is imaginary.

Martha is not. In summer we sit by a lake where we have an A-frame cottage—it is not Lake Cahula, it is over on the other side of the state, but it is also a dammed lake—and look out over the water, maybe drinking a beer in the evening. There is a marina on the other side; we sit and watch the boats go out, and the water skiers leap from the earthside to their long, endless feathery step on the green topsoil of water. Lewis limps over from his cabin now and then and we look at each other with intelligence, feeling the true weight and purpose of all water. He has changed, too, but not in obvious ways. He can die now; he knows that dying is better than immortality. He is a human being, and a good one. Sometimes he refers to me as “U.C.,” which means—to him and me—“Unorganized Crime,” and this has become a kind of minor conversation piece at parties, and at lunch in the city with strangers.

Sometimes, too, we shoot archery at the lake, where Lewis has put a bale and a field target in a beautiful downhill shot, about fifty-five yards, between trees. We shoot dozens of aluminum arrows, but I have never put another broadhead in the bow. My side wouldn’t allow it; I can feel it cry out at the idea. Besides, there is no need to; the bow I use now is too light for hunting.

Lewis is still a good shot, and it is still a pleasure to watch him. “I think my release is passing over into Zen,” he said once. “Those gooks are right. You shouldn’t fight it. Better to cooperate with it. Then it’ll take you there; take the arrow there.”

Though Lake Cahula hasn’t built up like the one we’re on, there are indications that people are getting interested in it, as they always do any time a new, nice place opens up in what the real estate people call an unspoiled location. I expect there are still a few deer around Lake Cahula—deer that used to spend most of their time on the high ground at the top of the gorge—but in a few years they will be gone, and perhaps only the unkillable tribe of rabbits will be left. One big marina is already built on the south end of the lake, and my wife’s younger brother says that the area is beginning to catch on, especially with the new generation, the one just getting out of high school.