But the man wasn’t dead. The boy was already on the bank, catching his breath and teetering with the dry rollings of his breakfastless stomach, when he heard a voice out of the void, hollow and half lost among the chatterings of the creek.
Hey, the call came.
He turned, hanging to a jagged sapling, saw in the shade below him a movement among the wreckage, a pale face against the dark interior of the car, the man propped up on his hands looking at him. Hey you, he said.
He hung there looking at him. A sweep of lights tracked the shadows of the mountain and a car hammered the bridge, echoing the noise of its passage in the creek. Finally he said: What do you want?
The man groaned. There was a moment of silence and then he said, Goddamn, man; how about giving me a hand.
Okay, he said. He wasn’t afraid any more, just cold, sliding down the mud and into the creek again and then squatting in the water facing the man, wondering what he should say. He could see him quite clearly now, there was a dark smear of blood down the side of his face. The man looked at him, a suggestion of a grin breaking painfully on his face. Played hell, didn’t I? he said.
You hurt? His own words rattled like bb’s through a clatter of teeth. He started to say something else but a further chill rendered him inarticulate, his palsied jaw jerking like an idiot’s.
I don’t rightly know, the man was saying. Yes. Here … he reached out one hand and the boy steadied it on his shoulder while the man drew up one knee and stepped out into the water. Then he pulled the other leg out, his face wrinkling with pain, and so was standing in the creek, his hand still on the boy’s shoulder in an attitude of fatherly counsel. When he started for the bank the hand withdrew for a moment, one faltering half-step, and then flew back and clamped there like a predatory bird striking. Whew, the man said. I must of busted the shit out of my leg.
It took them some time to get up the bank, the boy trying to push him up and him pulling himself along by trees, roots, handfuls of dead grass, holding the leg out behind him. Then they sat in the weeds at the edge of the field breathing white plumes into the cold morning air. In the quarter-darkness the fields looked like water, flat and gray. The boy was wet and cold; everything was wet and very cold. The man ran his hand along his leg trying to tell whether it was broken or not. His trousers were clammy against his skin. The boy sat in front of him hugging his shoulders and shivering, his toes lifeless, squishing in his boots when he wiggled them and sand and grit rasping in his socks. He said: Your head’s bleeding.
The man ran his hand along the side of his face. Other side.
He reached across and his hand came away sticky with blood and he wiped it on his trouser leg and turned to the boy. You want to do something for me?
Sure, the boy said.
Go down and get them keys then, and let’s get the hell out of here.
The boy disappeared over the cut of the bank; the man could hear him in the water. Presently he came back and handed the keys over.
Thanks, he said. Here. He took the boy’s hand and turned it over. What’d you do here?
The boy looked down at his palm. There was a black and jagged line across it.
You jest do that? the man asked.
The boy looked at it dumbly. No, he said. I don’t think so. I must of done it when I fell in the creek. Before …
The man dropped the keys in his pocket and struggled to his feet. Well, come on, he said. We better get ourselves patched up. This way, he added, seeing the boy start for the road. He motioned toward the field and set off with a hopping gait, muttering under his breath Whew, Mother.
The boy followed him for a few paces, then quartered off to the creek again and the man watched him go, his legs disappearing in the mist, then the rest of him, so that he seemed to be gliding away toward the line of willows marking its course like some nightwraith fleeing the slow reaching dawn until the man wasn’t sure that he had really been there at all. Then he came back with a pole and handed it to him. Thanks, the man said.
They moved on across the field, through vapors of fog and wisps of light, to the east, looking like the last survivors of Armageddon.
Their path led them up the creek, along the edges of the fields that terminated there — a curve of fields and the creek and the cupped slope of the mountain rising up to their right along which shafts of light now appeared laterally among the ghostgray trees. They struggled through the last fence, the boy holding the wire and trying to help him and him cussing, crossed a plank bridge at the fork of the creek, out through a cattle gate and onto the road, Henderson Valley Road.
The boy fastened the gate behind them and the man said, We got to stay off this road. They might of found it by now what with the light and all.
They crossed the road and started up a steep dirt drive on the other side. We can call here, the man said. The boy could see him better now. He needed a shave and the blood crusted on the side of his face was broken in fine cracks like old dark pottery where he winced with the pain of his slow progress, leaning heavily on the pole and breathing hoarsely. He was leanhipped and tall and his poplin jacket hung loosely about his shoulders. The boy thought he must be awfully cold dressed no warmer than that and wet to the knees besides. His own feet he couldn’t feel at all now; they were like hooves rattling inside his boots. He hadn’t stopped shivering the whole time. The drive climbed and turned and then there was a house.
It was an older man came to the door, a tremendous paunch slung in a gray and ragged undershirt drooped pendulously over the waist of his trousers like a sacked hog carcass. Out of a meaty face, jowled and white-stubbled with beard, two porcine eyes regarded them, blinking. Hot-toe-mitty, he said, slow and evenly. Then: Well, come on in if you’re able. They entered, the man hobbling in with his pole and the boy following. The room was warm and suffused with odors of cooking meat.
Hey, old woman, their host called out, they’s two fellers here jest fell out of a aryplane.
A woman came to the door at the far end and looked at them. Lord God, she said. She looked as if she might be going to say something else, then she clamped her jaw shut and disappeared with an air of briskness.
The room itself was comfortable with the new catalog store prosperity of china lamps, linoleum floors, a Warm Morning heater in front of which he installed himself while the two men stood talking. They paid little attention to him and he just watched them, the injured man waving his arms, telling the story, the other scratching alternately belly and head and saying Godamighty softly to himself from time to time by way of comment. After a while the woman came to the door again and called them in for coffee.
As they started for the kitchen the younger man motioned at him. This here is … he nodded to the boy.
John Wesley, he said.
John Wesley. This here is June Tipton — and this is his Mrs.
Mrs Tipton nodded back at him as they entered the kitchen and said, How do, John Wesley.
They sat down at the table and June said to the woman: John Wesley’s the one what pulled Marion out of the creek.
She looked at her husband and then to him and smiled appreciatively. The one called Marion was fishing through his pockets for cigarettes. That’s right, he said. I might near of drownded.
She smiled again. After a while she turned to her husband and said, What all was he doin in the creek?