Deliverance - James Dickey [16]
plays something: the guitar, the banjo, the autoharp, the spoons, the dulcimer -- or the dulcimore, as they call it. I'll be disappointed if Drew doesn't get to hear some of that stuff while we're up here. These are good people, Ed. But they're awfully clannish, they're set in their ways. They'll do what they want to do, no matter what. Every family I've ever met up here has at least one relative in the penitentiary. Some of them are in for making liquor or running it, but most of them are in for murder. They don't think a whole lot about killing people up here. They really don't. But they'll generally leave you alone if you do the same thing, and if one of them likes you he'll do anything in the world for you. So will his family. Let me tell you about something that happened two years ago." "All right." "Shad Mackey and I were running Blackwell Creek. The creek was low and things got sort of dull. We were doing nothing but paddling and it was hot as hell. Shad said he'd rather take his bow and hunt rabbits downstream. He got out, and we said we'd meet where the creek comes into the Cahula River, way down below where we're going to be. He took off into the woods on the east side, and I went on down the creek. Saw a wildcat drinking that day, I remember. "Anyway, I got on down to the river and pulled the canoe up on the bank and stretched out on a rock to wait for him. Nothing happened. I kept listening, but outside the regular woods noises, I couldn't hear a thing. It started to get dark, and I was beginning to get worried. I didn't want him out there by himself in the dark, and I didn't want to be out there either. I wasn't ready for it. You know, I wasn't ready. I didn't have anything to eat. I didn't have a bow with me, like a damned fool. I had a pocketknife and a ball of string, and that's all." "You should have looked on that as a challenge, Lewis," I said, not able to resist. He was not touchy about these things at all; he knew he couldn't be swayed. "It wasn't the right kind," be said. "Anyway," he went on, "I was lying on a big rock, and the cold was coming up into me, bone by bone. I happened to look around, and there was a fellow standing there looking at me. 'What you want, boy, down around here?' he said. He was skinny, and had on overall pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I told him I was going down the river with another guy, and that I was waiting for Shad to show up. It wasn't easy for him to believe that, but gradually we got to talking. Sure enough, he had a still near there. He and his boy were working it. He took me back about a quarter of a mile from the river. His boy was building a fire. "We sat down and talked. 'You say you got a man back up there hunting with a bow and arrow. Does he know what's up there?' he asked me. 'No,' I said. 'It's rougher than a night in jail in south Georgia,' he said, 'and I know what I'm talking about. You have any idea whereabouts he is?' I said, no, 'Just up that way someplace, the last time I saw him.'" I felt like laughing. For all his fanaticism about preparedness, Lewis was forever getting himself and other people into situations like this. And I was damned well hoping that this wouldn't be another one. "What happened then?" I asked. "The fire was blazing up. The shadows were jumping. The fellow stood up and went over to his boy, who was about fifteen. He talked to him for a while, and then came about halfway back to me before he turned around and said, 'Son, go find that man.' The hackles on my neck stood up. The boy didn't say a thing. He went and got a flashlight and an old single-shot twenty-two. He picked up a handful of bullets from a box and put them in his pocket. He called his dog, and then he just faded away." "He did? Just went off?" "He went off where I pointed. That's all he had. That and his father. That's the something I'm talking about. I don't care bow much you argue with me. I know it. Dependability. The kind of life that guarantees it. That fellow wasn't commanding his son against his will. The boy just knew what to do. He walked