“Is there a phone here?” I asked.
He looked as though he didn’t know whether there was or not.
“I’ve got to get an ambulance out here,” I said. “And I’ve got to get to the highway patrol. People are hurting, and one’s dead.”
I let him make the calls, because I didn’t know where on earth the station was. “Just tell them there’s been an accident on the river,” I said. “And tell them where to come, but tell them to come quick. I don’t think I can last, and there’s another man hurt worse than I am.”
He hung up, finally, and said there’d be somebody along toreckly.
I sat down and tilted back in a chair and was perfectly still, getting my story together one more time, the most important time. But back of the story was the reason for the story, and the woods and the river, and all that had happened. There must be some way for me to get used to the idea that I had buried three men in two days, and that I had killed one of them. I had never seen a dead man in my life, except a brief glance at my father in his coffin. It was strange to be a murderer, especially sitting where I was sitting, but I was too tired to be worried, and didn’t worry, except about Bobby’s ability to remember what I had told him.
A car or two went by, and I waited to hear one slow down. My side hurt, but the pain was in repose, and lay there under my arm, a part of me that I had made, and could live with. I wondered if I should tell whatever doctor dressed it that I had gored myself on my own arrow, or that I had cut myself on the canoe when we turned over, since there were several places on it where the banging around it had taken on the rocks had forced the metal apart and made flanges and projections that might conceivably cut. I decided to go with the arrow, for there might still be some paint in the wound, and some parts of the wound were clean-cut by the razorhead, and the jagged aluminum wouldn’t have done that.
I began to take on so much weight that I could not get up, and then I could not even get my head up. I could feel my still body still trying to make paddling movements. I thought I was stiff, but I must not have been, for when someone touched my bare arm at the shoulder where I had cut off the sleeve the muscles jumped tight again. It was a Negro ambulance driver.
“Have you got a doctor with you?”
“We got one,” he said. “We got a good one; he young and good. What in this world happened to you, man? What in this world? Somebody shoot you?”
“The river,” I said. “The river happened to me. But I’m not the one; I’m just the only one who can move. We’ve got a man back down across the bridge who’s bad hurt, and the other fellow had to stay with him. Also one was killed, or I guess he was. We couldn’t find him.”
“You want to come show us where your man is at?”
“I’ll come if I can get up. If I sit in this chair much longer I’m going to fall out of it.”
He went to my good side and I rose like a mountain into the air of fan belts, where a few cheap cockeyed pairs of dark glasses formed on a piece of yellow cardboard.
“Hold on to me, man,” he said.
He was slight and steady, and I put my good arm around his shoulders, but my knees were going; the world was going.
“You can’t make it,” he said. “You sit right back down.”
“I can make it,” I said, as the glasses focused again.
I told the boy at the store to tell the police where we were going, and the driver and I walked out into the sun where the little white county ambulance sat. The doctor was in the front seat writing something. He looked up and got out all in the same motion.
He opened the back doors. “Bring him around here and let him lie down.”
I crawled onto the stretcher and turned on my back. It was hard to do; I didn’t want to turn loose the driver. He not only felt good to me, but he felt like a good person, and I needed one bad; just that contact was what I needed most. I didn’t need myself anymore; I had had too much of that for too long.
The young doctor, sandy haired and pale, crouched beside me.
“No, no,” I said. “It’s not me. I can wait. Go back across the bridge. There’s a man in a canoe who’s got a bad fracture. It may have hemorrhaged in some way. Let’s get him looked after first.”
We drove down the highway—a land-motion of machines, and peculiar—to the bridge, and I got out one more time. I probably didn’t have to, but I thought it would be best.
Lewis was still in the canoe, stretched out and sweating, his shirt half-dark and his arm over his eyes, and Bobby was talking to the man and boy who had been fishing. I knew Bobby must have been testing his story out on them, and I hoped he had made good use of the time to get it straight; the others looked as though they believed him. It is hard to disbelieve injured, exhausted men, and that was a great advantage.
The driver and the doctor helped Lewis out of the canoe and onto the stretcher. The County Hospital was in Aintry, about seven miles off. We got ready to go, but while we were standing around the ambulance the highway patrol drove up, the siren droning faintly. A short fellow stepped out, and then a rough-looking blond boy. I got ready.
“What’s going on?” the blond officer said.
“We’ve had a bad accident,” I said, swaying a little more than I was actually swaying. I cut that out; acting might ruin the whole thing. “One of our party drowned in the river about ten miles upstream.”
He looked at me. “Drownded?”
“Yes,” I said. I believed I had got past the first of it, like the first of a bad set of rapids. But there was no way out except to keep on.
“How do you know he drownded?”
“Well, we capsized in the rapids, and it was just every man for himself. I don’t know what happened to him. He may have hit his head on a rock. But I don’t know. We just couldn’t find him, and I don’t see how he could not be drowned. I hope he’s not, but I’m afraid he is; he has to be.”
While I was talking I looked him in the eyes, which was surprisingly easy to do; they were sharp but sympathetic. As I went through some of the story that Bobby and I had rehearsed on the river, I made it a point to try to visualize the things I was saying as though they had really happened. I could see us searching for Drew, though we never had. I saw these things happen at the place near the yellow tree, and for me they were happening as I talked; it was hard to realize that they had not taken place in the actual world; as I saw him taking them into account, they became part of a world, the believed world, the world of recorded events, of history.
“Well,” he said, “We’ll have to drag the river. Can you show us ‘bout where it was?”
“I think so,” I said, not wanting to appear too sure, but fairly sure. “I don’t know if there’s a road in there, but I believe I’d know the place if I could get to it. We’ve got a hurt man, though. We’ve got to get him to a hospital.”
“OK,” he said, a little reluctant to have the situation pass from his jurisdiction to the doctor’s. “We’ll check in on you at the hospital later.”
“Fine,” I said, and crawled back into the ambulance beside Lewis.
We rode, and this kind of riding, though it wasn’t what I had got used to, was never better. The tires crunched at last and we stopped. I sat up, a little at a time. We were off in a field, and alongside us was a long flat building that looked like a rural high school. A warm wind was blowing over it. The doctor opened my vision wide, a door in each hand. “This is it, buddy,” he said. “Take it easy; we’ll get your friend out. Just go along with Cornelius.”
I took hold of the driver again, and we went through some glass doors, up a ramp, into a long hall that appeared to run out of sight, ending in a window the size of microfilm, way off and across.