Deliverance - James Dickey [19]
that we turned onto another concrete road that sagged and slewed and holed-out and bumped ahead, not worth maintaining at all. It was still about forty miles to Oree. We had to get there, hire two men to drive the cars back down to Aintry and then go downriver and find a campsite and set up camp. If possible, we also wanted to buy some more supplies. We had time, but we didn't have any to waste. Lewis speeded up; a bad road always challenged him. The canoe bumped and grated overhead. We were among trees now, lots of them. I could have told you with my eyes closed; I could hear them whish, then open to space and then close with another whish. I was surprised at how much color there was in them. I had thought that the pine tree was about the only tree in the state, but that wasn't the case, as I saw. I had no notion what the trees were, but they were beautiful, flaming and turning color almost as I looked at them. They were just beginning to turn, and the flame was not hot yet. But it was there, beginning to come on. "You look at these trees," Lew said. "I' ve been up here in April when you could see the most amazing thing about them." "They look pretty amazing now," I said. "What do you mean?" "Have you ever heard of the larva of the linden moth?" "Sure," I said. "All the time. Tell you the truth, no." "Every year when the larvae are ambitious -- larvas is larvae -- you can look at the trees and you see something happening." "What?" "You can see a mass hanging. A self-hanging of millions of 'em." "Is this another put-on?" "No, buddy. They let themselves down on threads. You can look anywhere you like and see 'em, wringing and twisting on the ends of the threads like men that can't die. Some of them are black and some are brown. And everything is quiet. It's so quiet. And they're there, twisting. But they're bad news. They eat the hardwood leaves. The government's trying to figure some way to get rid of 'em." It was a warm day. Everything was green, and through the green there was that subtle gold-coming color that makes the green hurt to look at. We passed through Whitepath and Pelham, towns smaller than the others, and Pelham smaller than Whitepath, and then began to wind and climb. The woods were heavy between the towns, and closed in around them. "Look for deer," Lewis said. "When there's not much mast, they come down to the cornfields and along the roads." I looked but didn't see any, though at one curve in the road I thought I saw something dart back into the woods to the right. But the leaves where I thought it had gone in were not moving, so probably it was my imagination. Finally we came to Oree. It was evidently the county seat, for it bad a little whitewashed building it called the town hall; the jail was part of it, and an old-fashioned fire engine was parked at one side. We went to a Texaco station and asked if there was anybody there who'd like to make some money. When Lewis killed the engine, the air came alive and shook with insects, even in the center of town, an in-and-out responding silence of noise. An old man with a straw hat and work shirt appeared at Lewis' window, talking in. He looked like a hillbilly in some badly cast movie, a character actor too much in character to be believed. I wondered where the excitement was that intrigued Lewis so much; everything in Oree was sleepy and hookwormy and ugly, and most of all, inconsequential. Nobody worth a damn could ever come from such a place. It was nothing, like most places and people are nothing. Lewis asked the fellow if he and somebody else would drive our cars down to Aintry for twenty dollars. "Take two of you to drive this thing?" the man asked. "If that was the case we'd need four," Lewis said, and didn't explain. He just sat there and waited. I glanced up at the prow of the canoe, the book coming at us from above. After a long minute Drew and Bobby drove up beside us. "See what I mean?" Lewis said. The other two got out and came over. The old man turned as though he were being surrounded. His movements were very slow, like those of someone whose