Deliverance - James Dickey [78]
the city. I worked around the canoe to land, and faced Bobby. "Is this what you call first light?" "Listen," he said, "Lewis has been having a bad time. Once I thought he died. He's awful bad hurt." "You would have died, yourself. He was waiting for you up there. You didn't do what I told you, and you would have died. He could have shot you fifty times, because you did what you did, and because you didn't do what you should've done. You better look up here at this light, baby. You better look at your own hands and feet, because you liked not to have had them anymore." "Listen," he said again. "Please listen. I couldn't get him in the canoe at all until I had enough light to see what I was doing. He blacked out two or three times before I ever got him in. I'll tell you, I wouldn't want to spend another night like that. I would've rather been trying to climb up, with you." "Fine. Next time, maybe." "How did you do it? I never thought you could do it; I never thought I'd see you again. If it'd been me I don't know but what I'd've just taken off, if I'da been able to get to the top." "I thought about that," I said. "But I didn't." "You did exactly what you said you'd do," he said. "But it's not possible. I don't believe it. I cant believe it. I really can't, Ed. This is not happening to us." "Well, we've got to make it unhappen. Question is, how?" "I don't know," Bobby said. "Do you really think we can? I mean, really?" "I do really," I said. "With all this bad luck, luck is running with us." "And you killed him? You killed him?" "I killed him and I'd kill him again, only better." "Did you ambush him?" "In a way. I set the problem up the way it seemed best to do. And he came right to me." We walked over to the shattered body on the rocks, with two or three parts of the denture plate beside the head; he had hit the rocks right on his face. We turned him over; the face was unbelievable; more unbelievable than anything else. I could hear Bobby catch his breath. Then I heard the breath speak. "It looks like you shot him from the front. How ..." "I did," I said. "I shot straight into him. I was in a tree." "A tree?" "Yes, there are a lot of them around when you're in the woods, you know. Really quite a lot." "But ...?" "He didn't see me until be was hit, and maybe not even then. I think he was just getting on to where I was when the arrow hit him. He shot a good many times. Did you hear anything?" "Maybe once; I'm not sure. Probably not; it was just that I was listening so hard. But, no, I didn't hear anything." "There he is," I said. "Another one." He looked at my side. "But he shot you, didn't be?" His voice was full of the best stuff I had ever heard in it. "Let me look," he said. I unzipped, and the flying suit fell away. My shorts were soaked and dried with blood, with more coming. "Boy," he said. "Something really gored you." "I fell out of the tree onto the other arrow," I said. "I wonder if it would've made any difference if I hadn't sharpened it so well before we left home? And I'm sure glad I don't use four-bladed heads." "I tell you," he said. "It's unbelievable. That arrowhead is meant to open you up." "That's just what it's meant for. And it opened me up. But I think it's a clean wound, and there ain't many of them. I think the river got most of the paint out of me." I looked down at my hurt. The climb down and the fall had torn it all the way open, from the half healing and clotting that it had been trying to do in the woods. I was coming out of me, but not as fast as I might have been. I took off my shorts and stood there bleeding and naked, and took the bloody sleeve I had already cut off and used it to hold the shorts into the wound. Then I put what was left of the suit back on. "Let's finish up and get going," I said. We were standing with the corpse, and it was ready. The rope was piled on and off the body, and the frayed part that had broken was giving off glassy hairs where the thing had happened, high up above. "Are you sure ...?" Bobby asked. I faced into him, into his open mouth and bloodshot eyes. "No," I