Christopher Buehlman - Those Across the River

The very bottom.

Well, if God is up there, He’s a real card. He must split His Holy paunch laughing when one of us speaks in such superlatives. Because the bottom can always, and I mean always, be lowered.

I WAS AWAKENED by burning.

Mustache was standing on my cage pissing on me.

I just lay there, laughing under him.

He laughed, too, then he said, “My laughin’s cuz it’s funny to piss on somebody. Maybe you laughin cuz it’s funny to get pissed on. I don’t reckon to find out. Now wait for the shake. Alright. Sweet dreams, punkin.”

Then he left me alone and it got dark again, and cold.

I didn’t even bother with the wet horse blanket.

I focused all my energies on a new and important mission.

But, try as I might, I couldn’t die.

IN THE EARLY hours of the morning, I was visited. I came to slowly, then started shivering so hard I could hear the cage rattling a little. I was aware of a presence, and I cocked my head and saw that the stars were cut out in the shape of a strong man with a bald head. Hector. He was like a field of darkness, sitting Indian style.

“Why did you come to this place?” he said.

“What place?” I said in a pathetic little croak.

“Georgia.”

“I was writing a book.”

“About what?”

I couldn’t remember. Then I could.

“About you. About the slaves. Killing my great-grandfather.”

The end of his cigar glowed as he drew in, then let out a puff of smoke that made the stars shiver.

“Maybe I should let you go write that book. Would it be a good book?”

“Yes. It would have been.”

“But you weren’t there. It would be lies.”

“It still would have been good.”

He grunted and drew at his cigar again.

“How would you imagine that he died? Bravely, or like a coward?” Hector said.

“I don’t care anymore.”

“Guess.”

“Both. Like everybody.”

He grunted again.

“Yes, both. Bravely until he felt the silver burn him. Then he turned wolf and ran. But we had him cornered. So he turned man again to die. And even though the spear was through him, he bit my face. So I could be this. His gift to me.”

“Why don’t you fall on your spear?” I said. “Like a noble Roman.”

He drew on the cigar again, then casually moved the burning end towards my eye. I turned at the last second and he only burned the skin near my eyebrow. I moved to the other end of the cage.

“It was a pleasure speaking with you,” he said.

And he was gone.

IDON’T KNOW how long I stayed in that cage. Days. I wasn’t whipped any more; they said they’d wait until I was stronger. But I didn’t get stronger. Although I still accepted water, I stopped eating. My back was in agony. It rained. It dried out. The cold was a constant. Hector visited me more than once, but he didn’t always speak. He was watching me rot. Presiding over my slow dying. It was so slow. Every time I closed my eyes I hoped I wouldn’t open them again.

On the last day I dreamed about my mother. I was just a little boy again and she was sad and beautiful and pregnant with Johnny, and she was trying to clean something off my face. The washcloth hurt. I wanted to squall, but had to hold it in because there was a monster in the next room and if it heard me, it would come and take the baby out of her, and it would be my fault. Despite the fear in the dream, it was so much milder than the reality I woke up to that it didn’t feel at all like a nightmare. I didn’t want to let go of her face, such a hard face to remember but so clear in the dream. It was awful to wake up in a cage, but worse to remember she was still dead.

Then I was confused.

I couldn’t understand why I smelled smoke.

I opened my eyes and saw that there was a fire in the wild brush up against the side of the house, and someone was shouting.

La Boudeuse was catching fire.

Something rushed towards my cage and I shrank from it.

A man. A short, bearded man with a hatchet.

He smelled like kerosene.

With three loud blows, he busted the chain that held my door shut, and swung it open.

“Mr. Nichols, you made bail. Let’s go.”

Whose voice was that?

“If you don’t get out of there now, I’m going to leave you with your new friends.”

Not Southern.

“Move your ass!”

Martin Cranmer.

I moved my ass.

As well as I could, at least; my legs felt like they were made of wet, sodden lumber, and my back was so tight I couldn’t stand up all the way. Another figure moved towards us, fast, and I croaked “Look…” because “look out” was too much to say.

“It’s alright, she’s with us,” he said.

Eudora. My beautiful, ruined Eudora, barefoot, in a nightshift. I smiled.

She had my gun.

Martin hoisted me up over his shoulders the way you’re supposed to carry the wounded, and he ran. That kerosene smell again, and woods, and beeswax. And I understood. He was one. He had always been one.

He ran with me on his shoulders faster than I ever could have run unburdened; he leapt over fallen trees and cut through rotten ferns and he never stumbled, and he made little noise. Dora kept up. He stopped once to cough, horrible hacking coughs, but he shook it off.

“Remind me not to smoke so much,” he said, but then picked me up again and we kept on.

That stuck with me.

That his lungs bothered him seemed important to me, but I didn’t know why.

Daylight broke and a cool dawn turned into a temperate morning. The woods rushed by full of birdsong and falling leaves. We were going by Uphill Rock now, and he put me down and told Dora to be ready with the gun.

After we were past it, he hoisted me again and we made for the river.

“If you were going to ask what that was about, save your breath,” he huffed. “There’s a cave entrance near that rock, and that’s where they sleep when they go on four legs. They always go there after they carouse on the full moon. I would have preferred to wait until the day after the moon, when they go down there and sleep like the dead; it’s the one day you know where they all are. But you wouldn’t have made it that long. The house is their house, and that’s their den. I wouldn’t visit, if I were you. Nothing but hides and bones down there, the kind of shit they love. And not just pigs’ bones, either. The boy stays there sometimes, but I guess he’s at Sunday school today.”

I smiled weakly, thinking about how Lester and I had made camp there when Saul was missing. Right on top of their lair. No wonder I dreamed of women eating pigs’ heads. Maybe I hadn’t dreamed it.

When we got to the river, I didn’t recognize the crossing point, but that made sense. If I were them, I would try to ambush us at the raft.

This was a wider, shallower part of the river. I waded it, supported by Martin on one side and Dora on the other. I thought about how pleasant it would be to die right there, to slip from between them and let myself fall into those cold waters and forget everything.

While we were crossing, I said into Dora’s ear, “Are you still my wife?”

“If you can stand it.”

PAST THE RIVER, Martin was hacking terribly, too tired to carry me any farther. Dora went to pick me up, but I wouldn’t let her.

Martin stepped in front of me, and whispered evilly, between muffled coughs, “They’re coming. Four of them, maybe five. I never thought I’d say this to a man, but get on your wife or I’ll coldcock you.”

Martin helped her get me into the easiest carry, and we went on.

We made the cabin.

Martin bolted all the windows and doors while Dora put me on the bed.