Deliverance - James Dickey [35]
above where he had been. I was heaving and sweating as I drew in the fog and let it back out, a sick, steaming gas. Like that, I went downhill, part of the time with my band at arm's length in front of my face. I saw the tents -- one of them, then another thing like it -- as low dark patches with something structured about them, clearly out of place here. Lewis was up, trying to make a fire with wet twigs and branches. As I unstrung the bow, the others came out too. "What about it, buddy?" Lewis said, looking at the two empty slots in the quiver. "I got a shot." "You did?" Lewis said, straightening. "I did. A spectacular miss at fifteen yards." "What happened? We could'a had meat." "I boosted my bow hand, I think. I psyched out. I'll be damned if I know how. I had him. He was getting bigger all the time. It was like shooting at the wall of a room. But I missed, all right. It was just that little second, right when I turned loose. Something said raise your hand, and before I could do anything about it, I did it." "Damn," Bobby said. "Psychology. The delicate art of the forest." "You'll get another chance," Drew said. "We got a long ways to go yet." "What the hell," I said. "If I'd hit him I'd be back in the woods now, tracking. He'd be hard to find in this fog. So would I." "You could've marked the place you shot from and come back and got us," Lewis said. "We could've found him." "You'd have a time finding him now," I said. "He's probably in the next county." "I guess so," Lewis said. "But it's a shame. Where's my old steady buddy?" "Your old steady buddy exploded," I said. "High and wide." Lewis looked at me. "I know you wouldn't have, Lewis," I said. "You don't need to tell me. We'd have meat. We'd all live forever. And you know something? I wish you'd been up there and I'd been with you. I would'a just unstrung my bow and watched you put it right into the heart-lung area. Right into the boiler room. The pinwheel, at fifteen yards. What I was really thinking about up there was you." "Well, next time don't think about me. Think about the deer." I let that ride and went to drag the stuff out of the tents. Lewis finally got a kind of fire started. When the sun began to take on height and force, the mist burned off in a few minutes. Through it the river, which we could hardly make out at first, showed itself more and more until we could see not only the flat of it and the stitches of the current but down through it into the pebbles of the stream-bed near the bank. We had pancakes with butter and sorghum. After we finished, Lewis went over to the stream to wash out the cooking stuff. I pulled all the air mattresses out on the ground, unscrewed their caps and lay on each in turn until the ground came up to me through it and I was lying on the last sigh of air I had pumped into it the night before. We rolled the tents, wet and covered with leaves and pieces of bark, and lashed them into the canoes. I asked the others if they thought we might team up differently this time, for I was afraid that Lewis in his impatience might say something unpleasant to Bobby, and, since Bobby suddenly seemed to me on the edge of exasperation with himself for coming, I thought it would probably be best if I took him on. Drew would not have laughed, or laughed in the right way, at the cracks that were Bobby's only means of salvaging his civility, and I figured I would. "How about it, tiger?" I said to Bobby. "OK," he said. "How far can we get today, do you reckon?" "Beats me," I said. "Well get as far as we can. Depends on the water, and how many places we have to walk through. Everybody including the map says there's a gorge down below here, and that sort of bothers me. But there's nothing we can do about it now." Bobby and I got in and shoved off, and right away I could tell I was in for a hard time. I was not in awfully good shape myself, but Bobby was wheezing and panting after the first hundred yards. He had no coordination at all, and changed the canoe from what it had been with Drew's steady, serious weight in front to a nervous, unstable