Deliverance - James Dickey [41]
man put the barrels of the shotgun under Bobby's right ear and shoved a little. "Just take 'em right on off," he said. "I mean, what's this all ..." Bobby started again weakly. "Don't say nothin'," the older man said. "Just do it." The man with the gun gave Bobby's head a vicious shove, so quick that I thought the gun had gone off. Bobby unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his pants. He took them off, looking around ridiculously for a place to put them. "Them panties too," the man with the belly said. Bobby took off his shorts like a boy undressing for the first time in a gym, and stood there plump and pink, his hairless thighs shaking, his legs close together. "See that log? Walk over yonder." Wincing from the feet, Bobby went slowly over to a big fallen tree and stood near it with his head bowed. "Now git on down crost it." The tall man followed Bobby's head down with the gun as Bobby knelt over the log. "Pull your shirt-tail up, fat-ass." Bobby reached back with one hand and pulled his shirt up to his lower back. I could not imagine what he was thinking. "I said up," the tall man said. He took the shotgun and shoved the back of the shirt up to Bobby's neck, scraping a long red mark along his spine. The white-bearded man was suddenly also naked up to the waist. There was no need to justify or rationalize anything; they were going to do what they wanted to. I struggled for life in the air, and Bobby's body was still and pink in an obscene posture that no one could help. The tall man restored the gun to Bobby's head, and the other one knelt behind him. A scream hit me, and I would have thought it was mine except for the lack of breath. It was a sound of pain and outrage, and was followed by one of simple and wordless pain. Again it came out of him, higher and more carrying. I let all the breath out of myself and brought my head down to look at the river. Where are they, every vein stood out to ask, and as I looked the bushes broke a little in a place I would not have thought of and made a kind of complicated alleyway out onto the stream -- I was not sure for a moment whether it was water or leaves -- and Lewis' canoe was in it. He and Drew both had their paddles out of water, and then they turned and disappeared. The white-haired man worked steadily on Bobby, every now and then getting a better grip on the ground with his knees. At last he raised his face as though to howl with all his strength into the leaves and the sky, and quivered silently while the man with the gun looked on with an odd mixture of approval and sympathy. The whorl-faced man drew back, drew out. The standing man backed up a step and took the gun from behind Bobby's ear. Bobby let go of the log and fell to his side, both arms over his face. We all sighed. I could get better breath, but only a little. The two of them turned to me. I drew up as straight as I could and waited with the tree. It was up to them. I could sense my knife sticking in the bark next to my head and I could see the blood vessels in the eyes of the tall man. That was all; I was blank. The bearded man came to me and disappeared around me. The tree jerked and air came into my lungs in great gratitude. I fell forward and caught up short, for the tall man had put the gun up under my nose; it was a very odd sensation, funnier than it might have been when I thought of my brain as thinking of Dean and Martha at that instant and also of its being scattered, material of some sort, over the bush-leaves and twigs in the next second. "You're kind of ball-beaded and fat, ain't you?" the tall man said. "What do you want me to say?" I said. "Yeah. I'm bald-headed and fat. That OK?" "You're hairy as a goddamned dog, ain't you?" "Some dogs, I suppose." "What the hail," he said, half turning to the other man. "Ain't no hair in his mouth," the other one said. "That's the truth," the tall one said. "Hold this on him." Then he turned to me, handing the gun off without looking. It stood in the middle of the air at the end of his extended arm. He said to me, "Fall down on your knees and pray, boy. And you better