Deliverance - James Dickey [79]
said. "I would say it was, but I'm not that sure. Maybe if we could get him to hold a gun on you, you could tell me. Or maybe if we could give him back his face, we could tell that way. But I don't know. The only thing I know is that we're here, like we are right now. Let's get him in the river. Let's get him in good." We went up and down the bank looking for rocks the right size, going back and forth across each other, dreaming. With both hands I took up part of the river and tried to wash the main rock where his face had smashed and there was a lot of blood. On both knees I washed it, and the blood came. It was on the sand and going into the sand, and there was no more of it. I went back to rock-hunting with Bobby, and we piled up five or six mean-looking stones next to the body. I cut the rope into sections and tied the rocks onto the man with the biggest one around his neck, squeezing the arrow wound together and almost out of sight. "Not here," I said. "Out in the middle of the river, where it's hardest to get to." We struggled with him and with each other, and he and the rocks made it, finally, into the canoe with Lewis, who shifted slightly as if to make room for somebody who belonged there, pretty much as a person would shift to let a familiar body get back in bed with him in the middle of the night. The canoe moved very badly, with all the weight. We left the bank and for a moment were just going downstream, too tired to do anything else. The sound of rapids was somewhere in front of us, carrying terror once more, amongst so much other terror. Bobby steadied the canoe while I got to my knees among the blood, vomit and rocks and lifted two of the rocks clear and shoved them over the side. The canoe yawed and I braced back to equalize the weights. The body was straining to get out, but hung on the gunwale. I lifted out another rock and it pulled one of his legs over the side but he was still with us. I picked up the last rock, the one around his neck, and heaved it out with the last energy of all. The wound of his neck tore open bloodlessly -- I thought the head had come off -- and he was gone. He was gone so completely into the river that he seemed never to have had anything to do with it, or it with him. He had never been in the world at all. I dipped my hand in the stream and left his blood with him. We were by ourselves, moving. We turned a long corner. The river freshened before us and around us, and I drove in the paddle, exerting no strength but digging in anyway. We went through some small rapids without much trouble, and I thought of fun. The canoe just followed the channel of its own accord. On each side the cliffs began to fall; to fall away. They fell and then got back up again almost as they had been, but their authority was leaving them. Every time they rose it was not quite as high. The sun was behind us, and the pressure on my back shoved us forward. I was glad for it; gladder than it is possible to be. But I could not keep my head up. My side was stiff and sopping with blood, and my chin kept ending up on my chest and my eyes were blurring into the bottom of the canoe where Lewis lay with one hand over his eyes. I put a hand on my forehead and tried to pull up my eyelids by lifting the skin of my forehead and keeping it lifted, but I was still asleep, looking at the world as though my eyes were closed. I've got to lie down somewhere, I thought; if I don't I will fall back into the river. That seemed not such a bad prospect, to tell the truth. It would have been wonderful to give all my weight to the water one more time, maybe for good. This was too hard; this was just too hard. It was, and I knew it. Anyone would have known it. We went over some little rapids that shook us and picked up our speed a little, but not much. They were deep and powerful, but the channels were clear and we rode through them without much maneuvering. I was sure we didn't have much farther to go. Where would we come out? What was there to see, that men had made, that would tell us? What would we see when we got off the river