Deliverance - James Dickey [81]
The only comparison I had to go by were the descriptions of President Kennedy's assassination, the details afforded by eyewitnesses, doctors and autopsy reports which I had read in newspapers and magazines like most other Americans had, at the time. I remembered that part of Kennedy's head had been blown away. There was nothing like that here, though. There was a long raw place under the hair just over his left ear, and the head there seemed oddly pushed in, dented. But there was no brain matter showing, nothing blown away. "Bobby, come here," I said. "There's something we've got to decide about." I pointed at the place on Drew's head. Bobby peered, his eyes reddened more, and he leaned away. We hung on the rock, panting. "Is this a gunshot wound? "Ed, you know I wouldn't know. But it sure doesn't look like it to me." "Look here, though." I showed him the scratch under the hair. "Knowing what we know, it looks to me like he might have been shot and just grazed. But whether this place killed him or not, I don't know." "Or whether it was made by a rock, after he'd gone in," Bobby said. "If we work this right, well never have to explain to anybody but ourselves," I said. "But I'd like to know. I think we ought to know." "How can we know?" "Lewis would come nearer knowing than we would. Let's take Drew over to him and give him a good look." We picked Drew up again and dragged him to the canoe. We sank down with him until the back of his head was level with the gunwale and was leaning on it. "Lewis," I said quietly. He didn't answer; his eyes were closed and he was breathing hard. "Lewis. Give us just a second. It's important. It's very important." He turned his head and opened his eyes. Bobby and I held Drew with three hands, and I turned Drew's head and went under his hair to the place I wanted Lewis to see. "Lewis, was be shot? Did a bullet make this?" A flicker of the old interest crossed his eyes. He raised his head as much as he could and stared into Drew's hair. "Well, was he shot? Was he? Was he, Lewis?" He shifted, very slowly, over the center of the stream, his eyes to mine. My brain flinched; I did not know what was coming. He nodded, hardly a motion at all, and then sank back. "Grazed," he said. "Are you sure? Are you sure?" He nodded again, and retched weakly, almost in the same movement. He kept on nodding, and Bobby and I looked at each other. We peered at Drew's wound again. "Maybe," Bobby said. "Maybe, is it," I said. "It'll have to be. But we can't have anybody examining him. We can't tell, but there are those who can, and if we have to explain a man with a gunshot wound the whole thing'll come out." "Are we going to get out of this? I don't see how we can. I really don't." "We're almost out of it now," I said. "What are we to do with Drew?" "We're going to sink him in this river," I said, "forever." "O Lord. O Lord." "Listen; it's exactly like I just said. Exactly. We can't afford for somebody who knows about these things to examine him. If we go back without him, we just had some bad luck. We're a fucking bunch of amateurs, anyway. And let 'em try to disprove that! We came up here to run this river without knowing what we were getting into, which is also the God's truth. We did all right for a while, then we spilled. We lost the other canoe. Lewis broke his leg in the rapids, and Drew drowned. Anybody'd believe that. But we can't explain somebody killed with a rifle." "If he was." "That's right: if he was." A faint light came through Bobby's eyes, then either darkened or died. "There's no end to it," he said. "No end." "Yes there is," I said. "This is the end. This is all we have to do, but we've got to do it right. Everything depends on it. The whole works." I fumbled around in my lower leg pocket and got out the extra bowstring. I tied it around a good-sized rock and then around Drew's belt, square-knot on square-knot. We put the rock in the canoe, and I took Drew's body in the kapok jacket and laid it back in the water, wading forward with him past the rapids, hauling and bullying him gently along. When