Deliverance - James Dickey [102]
ran as though immortally. I could feel it -- I can feel it -- on different places on my body. It pleases me in some curious way that the river does not exist, and that I have it. In me it still is, and will be until I die, green, rocky, deep, fast, slow, and beautiful beyond reality. I had a friend there who in a way had died for me, and my enemy was there. The river underlies, in one way or another, everything I do. It is always finding a way to serve me, from my archery to some of my recent ads and to the new collages I have been attempting for my friends. George Holley, my old Braque enthusiast, bought one from me when I hired him back, and it hangs in his cubicle, full of sinuous forms threading among the headlines of war and student strikes. George has become my best friend, next to Lewis, and we do a lot of serious talking about art; more than we should, with the work load the studio has been accumulating. I saw Bobby only once or twice in the city, just nodding to each other in public Places. I couldn't tell from looking at him how he was, but he had returned to the affable, faintly nasty manner he had always had, and I was as glad as not to leave him alone; he would always look like dead weight and like screaming, and that was no good to me. I later heard that he quit the company he was working for and tried to go into business with a partner running a Chicken-in-a-Basket drive-in and carry-out near a local engineering college, but it failed after a year and he moved to another city, and then, I heard, to Hawaii. Thad and I are getting along much better than before. The studio is still boring, but not as boring as it was. Dean is growing up well, though he is a strangely silent boy. He looks at me sometimes from the sides of his eyes, and seems about to speak in a way he has not spoken before. But that is probably only my imagination; he has never said anything except the things any boy would say to his father. Otherwise he is sturdy and uncomplicated, and beginning to be handsome. Lewis is something of an idol to him; he is lifting weights already. Because of the associations she had for me, I looked up the girl in the Kitt'n Britches ad and took her out to dinner a couple of times. I still loved the way she looked, but her gold-halved eye had lost its fascination. Its place was in the night river, in the land of impossibility. That's where its magic was for me. I left it there, though I would have liked to see her hold her breast once more, in a small space full of men. I see her every now and then, and the studio uses her. She is a pleasant part of the world, but minor. She is imaginary. Martha is not. In summer we sit by a lake where we have an A-frame cottage -- it is not Lake Cahula, it is over on the other side of the state, but it is also a dammed lake -- and look out over the water, maybe drinking a beer in the evening. There is a marina on the other side; we sit and watch the boats go out, and the water skiers leap from the earthside to their long, endless feathery step on the green topsoil of water. Lewis limps over from his cabin now and then and we look at each other with intelligence, feeling the true weight and purpose of all water. He has changed, too, but not in obvious ways. He can die now; he knows that dying is better than immortality. He is a human being, and a good one. Sometimes he refers to me as "U.C.," which means -- to him and me -- "Unorganized Crime," and this has become a kind of minor conversation piece at parties, and at lunch in the city with strangers. Sometimes, too, we shoot archery at the lake, where Lewis has put a bale and a field target in a beautiful downhill shot, about fifty-five yards, between trees. We shoot dozens of aluminum arrows, but I have never put another broadhead in the bow. My side wouldn't allow it; I can feel it cry out at the idea. Besides, there is no need to; the bow I use now is too light for hunting. Lewis is still a good shot, and it is still a pleasure to watch him. "I think my release is passing over into Zen," he said once. "Those gooks are right.