Deliverance - James Dickey [46]
it. If we connect up with the law, we'll be connected to this man, this body, for the rest of our lives. We've got to get rid of him." "How?" I asked. "Where?" Lewis turned his head to the river, then half lifted his hand and moved it in a wide gesture inland, taking in the woods in a sweep obviously meant to include miles of them, hundreds of acres. Another expression -- a new color -- came into his eyes, a humorous conspiratorial craftiness, his look of calculated pleasure, his enthusiast's look. He dropped the hand and rested it easily on the bow, having given Drew and me the woods, the whole wilderness. "Everywhere," he said. "Anywhere. Nowhere." "Yes," Drew went on excitedly, "we could do something with him. We could throw him in the river. We could bury him. We could even burn him up. But they'd find him, or find something, if they came looking. And how about the other one, the one who was with him? All he's got to do is to go and bring ..." "Bring who?" Lewis asked. "I doubt if he'd want anybody, much less the sheriff or the state police, to know what he was doing when this character was shot. He may bring somebody back here, though I doubt it, but it won't be the law. And if he does come back, so what?" Lewis touched the corpse with his bow tip and put his eyes squarely into Drew's. "He won't be here." "Where'll he be?" Drew asked, his jaw setting blackly. "And how do you know that other guy is not around here right now? It just might be that he's watching everything you do. We wouldn't be so hard to follow, dragging a corpse off somewhere and ditching it. He could find some way to let the police know. He could bring them right back here. You look around, Lewis. He could be anywhere." Lewis didn't look around, but I did. The other side of the river was not dangerous, but the side where we were was becoming more and more terrifying to stand on. A powerful unseen presence seemed to flow and float in on us from three directions -- upstream, downstream and inland. Drew was right, he could be anywhere. The trees and leaves were so thick that the eye gave up easily, lost in the useless tangle of plants living out their time in this choked darkness; among them the thin, stupid and crafty body of the other man could flow as naturally as a snake or fog, going where we went, watching what we did. What we had against him -- I was shocked by the hope of it -- was Lewis. The assurance with which he had killed a man was desperately frightening to me, but the same quality was also calming, and I moved, without being completely aware of movement, nearer to him. I would have liked nothing better than to touch that big relaxed forearm as he stood there, one hip raised until the leg made longer by the position bent gracefully at the knee. I would have followed him anywhere, and I realized that I was going to have to do just that. Still looking off at the river, Lewis said, "Let's figure." Bobby got off the log and stood with us, all facing Lewis over the corpse. I moved away from Bobby's red face. None of this was his fault, but he felt tainted to me. I remembered how he had looked over the log, how willing to let anything be done to him, and how high his voice was when he screamed. Lewis crouched down over the dead man, a wisp of dry weed in his mouth. "If we take him on the river in the canoe we'll be out in the open. If somebody was watching he could see where we dropped him in. Besides, like Drew says, the river's the first place anybody'd look. Where does that leave us?" "Upstream or down," I said. "Or in," Lewis said. "Or maybe a combination." "Which combination?" "I'd say a combination of in and up. Suppose we took him downstream along the bank. We're heading downriver, and if we wanted to get rid of him as fast as possible, we'd bury him or leave him somewhere along the way." Again, his idea fitted. The woods upstream became more mysterious than those downstream; the future opened only on that side. "So ... we take him inland, and upstream. We carry him to that little creek and up it until we find a good place, and then we