Hush a minute, Sylder said, taking the light from him. She was already some thirty yards below them. When the light hit her she turned her head back and her eyes came pale orange, ears fanned out and floating, treading the water down before her with a tired and grim determination. She had her mouth turned up at the corners in a macabre and ludicrous grin as if to keep out the water.
Ho, gal, Sylder called. Ho, gal. They were moving down the creek too, raking through the brush. She’s fixin to drownd herself, someone said.
Ho, gal, Ho …
He never even felt the water. He couldn’t hear them any more, hadn’t heard them call since he left them somewhere back up the creek when he hit the bullbriers full tilt, not feeling them either, aware only of them pulling at his coat and legs like small hands trying to hold him. Then he was over the bank, feet reaching for something and finally skewing on the slick mud, catapulting him in a stifflegged parabola down and out into the water, arms flailing, but not falling yet, not until he had already stopped, teetering thigh-deep, and took a first step out into the current where he collapsed forward like a shot heron.
But he didn’t even feel it. When he came up again he was in water past his waist, the soft creek floor squirming away beneath his feet as if he were walking the bodies of a colony of underwater creatures clustered there. He could see a little better now. There was no light on the bank and he thought: I come down too far. And no voices, only the sounds of the creek chattering and rocking past all around him. Then he went in again, over his head this time, and came up treading water and with something heavy pushing against his chest. He got his arms under it and lifted. Lady’s head came up and her eyes rolled at him dumbly. He reached and got hold of her collar, the creek bottom coming up and sliding off under his feet, falling backwards now with the dog rolling over him and beginning to struggle, until his leg hit a rock and he reached for it and steadied himself and rose again and began to flounder shoreward with the dog in tow.
They came with the light and Sylder looked at him huddled in the willows, still holding the dog. He didn’t say anything, just disappeared into the woods, returning in a few minutes with a pile of brush and dead limbs.
One of the men was kneeling with him and stroking the dog, examining her. She looks all right, he said, don’t she, son?
He couldn’t get his mouth open so he just nodded. He was beyond cold now, paralyzed.
The other man said: Son, you goin to take your death. We better get you home fore you freeze settin right there.
He nodded again. He wanted to get up but he couldn’t bear the rub of his clothes where he moved.
Sylder had the fire going by then, a great crackling sound as the dry brush took, orange light leaping among the trees. He could see him in silhouette moving about, feeding the blaze. Then he came back. He gathered the quivering hound up in one arm and motioned for the boy to follow. You come over here, he said. And get them clothes off.
He got up then and labored stiffly after them.
Sylder put the hound by the fire and turned to the boy. Lemme have that coat, he said.
The boy peeled off the leaden mackinaw and handed it over to him. He passed it around the trunk of a sapling, gathered the ends up in his hands and twisted what looked to be a gallon of water out of the loose wool. Then he hung it over a bush. When he looked back the boy was still standing there.
Get em off, he said.
He started pulling his clothes off, the man taking from him in turn shirt and trousers, socks and drawers, wringing them out and hanging them over a pole propped on forks before the fire. When he was finished he stood naked, white as a slug in the cup of firelight. Sylder took off his coat and threw it to him.
Put it on, he said. And get your ass over here in front of the fire.
The two men were behind him in the woods; he could hear them crashing about, see the wink of their light. One of them came back toting a huge log and dropped it on the fire. A flurry of sparks ascended, flared, lost in the smoke pulling at the bare limbs overhead, returned tracing their slow fall redly through the dark trees downwind.
He sat in a trampled matting of vines, the long coat just covering his buttocks. Sylder made a final adjustment to the pole and came over. He lit a cigarette and stood regarding him.
Kind of cool, ain’t it? he said.
The boy looked up at him. Cool enough, he said.
The clothes had begun to steam, looking like some esoteric game quartered and smoking on the spit. Then he said, What’d you do with the coon?
Coon?
Yeah. The coon.
Goddamn, the boy said, I never saw the coon.
Oh, Sylder said. But his voice was giving him away. Hell, I figured you’d of got the coon too.
Shoo, the boy said. Over his teeth the firelight rippled and danced.