"Hap. You okay?"
Leonard grew out of the darkness, limped toward me. He was holding his pistol. I answered, "Just barely."
"I got to thinking about things," Leonard said. "He went from not wanting to cooperate to being awfully anxious to cooperate. He wanted me to come even when you didn't. I got to wondering why he was so eager to get us down here. I'd have been here sooner, but the leg isn't working so well."
"I'm just glad you came . . . shit!" I glanced where Tim had been lying. He was no longer there.
Leonard wheeled with the gun and I got hold of the flashlight. I shined it about the graveyard. Tim, walking as if he were imitating the scarecrow in the Oz movie, was making bad time toward the far side of the graveyard, toward the woods. He got to the barbed wire fence, fell against it and stuck there, his upper body bending over it, as if he were trying to fold in half. Then I heard a loud cracking, a roar, like the sound of a freight train magnified by ten. In the glow of the flashlight I saw a tall silver mass of flying needles coming out of the forest. Pines snapped and crackled into toothpicks. Great oaks screamed as they were pulled from the ground.
The mass of silver needles was a great wall of water. Before I could say, "I'll be a sonofabitch," the wall came down on us like a thousand pianos falling, and the great gray mountain of wetness pushed Leonard and me together and carried us away.
We held to each other and the water carried us high up, then under, and I couldn't breathe, and it was the marsh all over again, only worse, because the power of the water was so awesome there was no fighting back, no swimming. It churned us up and carried us through the heights of trees. We clung to each other and breathed again. Then it was down once more into choking darkness and confusion. A moment later, we were on top of the water again, coughing, and the next thing I knew I was hung in a tree, my body slamming against the tree trunk. There was a great weight tearing at my right shoulder, and I realized it was because I was holding on to Leonard and the water was jerking at him and trying to take him and my shoulder with it.
"Let go, Hap, you stubborn sonofabitch!"
I could see Leonard's shape now, at the end of my arm, and the bastard let go of my hand, but I held his wrist and gritted my teeth. It was like the marsh, and I hadn't let go and we had made it, and I wouldn't let go this time.
"Let go!" Leonard said, "or it'll take us both!"
"Then it will," I said.
I heard Leonard laugh. A choked water laugh. A crazy laugh. Then he snapped his wrist loose of my fingers and the dark churning water pulled him from me, washed him away.
Chapter 30
A few hours before morning a hot gold corkscrew of lightning hit the top of a pine across the way and knocked it in half and caught it on fire. The rain sizzled in the flames and the tree burned out quickly and the fiery limbs that fell off of it were consumed by the flooding waters.
Then the rain stopped and the clouds split open like cotton candy being torn by greedy fingers and the wind blew their remnants away. A great gold moon rose high up and was visible through the summit of the trees—a pocked Happy Face against black velvet. I looked at the stars and thought first of my father, pointing out the shapes in the heavens, then of Florida and how we had once made love in her car and lay on her car hood afterwards looking at the stars, feeling as if they were near and belonged to us.
In time the moonlight and starlight brightened even more and I spied a strange configuration in a massive oak, as if nature had made an image of the crucified Christ out of debris and put heaven's spotlights on it. I watched it for a long time, uneasy with it, then nodded some, thinking of Leonard.
Dawn came rosy, as if it had never rained, and the moon was dissolved by sunlight and the sun itself was a bleeding red boil that did little to warm the chilled air. The water below me had dropped ten feet, but it was still a rush of mud and wreckage. A bloated cow was wedged between a pine and a sweet gum, and with the water no longer rushing, I could hear flies working the carcass, getting their breakfast. I ached all over. I was freezing. My coat and clothes crinkled and popped with ice when I moved. Ice fell out of my hair.
I tried to stretch, get positioned on the limb some way I wouldn't ache, but that wasn't possible. Nothing was comfortable. But as I moved I could see the shape in the oak clearly.
It was Florida. Her corpse, mostly devoid of flesh now, her left leg missing from the knee down, was hung up in the oak amidst a wad of limbs and vines and shattered lumber. Her stick arms were spread wide and her skull was tilted down on the neck bones, held together by peeling strips of flesh and muscle. Hungry crows were so thick on top of her skull, flapping their wings, pecking at her flesh, they looked like windblown black hair. One arm was raised slightly higher than the other, and the skeletal hand pointed to the sky.
I closed my eyes, but in time I was drawn to look again, and after an hour or so I felt so strange and disconnected with reality her corpse was no longer horrifying; it was like part of the decor.
By midday I was hungry and freezing and feverish, beginning to feel as if I was going to fall because I couldn't keep my grip anymore. My hands were like claws. My calves and thighs ached with cramps. When I stood up on the limb to shake my legs out, I could hardly keep my balance. Something was moving and rattling in my chest, and its name was pneumonia.
The sun bled out its redness and turned yellow and rose in the sky like a bright balloon full of helium, but still it gave no heat.
The air was as cold as an Arctic seal's nose and there was a slight wind blowing, and that made matters worse, turned the air colder and carried the stench from Florida's corpse and that of the bloated cow—which I named Flossy—to me as a reminder of how I would soon end up.
A few mobile homes floated by, mostly in pieces. A couple of rooftops drifted into view later on. I thought I might drop down on one of the roofs as it floated by, ride it out. And I think I was weak enough and stupid enough right then that that's exactly what I would have done, but the roof I had in mind hit a mass of trees, went apart, was washed away as splintered lumber.
I had become a little delirious with fever. Sometimes I dreamed I was still holding Leonard's wrist, and I was about to pull him into the tree with me, then I'd realize where I was and what had happened, and I'd go weak and wonder how it would be to drop from my limb and let the water have me.
After a time, I heard the helicopter. At first I thought the chopping sound was in my head, but finally I looked, and high up like a dragonfly, was a National Guard helicopter.
Then it was low, skimming over the trees, beating furiously, rattling the dry limbs of winter, making me colder. My coat was so soaked in water, so caked with ice, speedy movement was difficult, but I did my best to stand on my limb and wave an arm.
The helicopter passed over, started climbing. As I watched the copter soar up and away, I felt as if the world were falling out from under me. I slowly sat down. Then the copter turned back, dropped low.
It hovered over the tree where Florida's corpse was wedged, and I realized they had spotted her, not me. I waved and screamed and jumped up and down on my limb like an excited monkey. The copter moved slowly in my direction, a few yards above my tree and beat the air. A rope with a life basket was lowered out of its door.
They couldn't get too close because of the limbs, and I couldn't
get far enough out to get hold of the basket. I tore off my coat and tossed it, inched my way out on the limb, heard it crack, but kept going. The basket was six feet away and the limb was starting to sag, and I knew this was it. Die dog or eat the hatchet. I bent my knees, got a little spring like a diver about to do a double somersault, and leaped into space.