Deliverance - James Dickey [87]
to take on so much weight that I could not get up, and then I could not even get my head up. I could feel my still body still trying to make paddling movements. I thought I was stiff, but I must not have been, for when someone touched my bare arm at the shoulder where I had cut off the sleeve the muscles jumped tight again. It was a Negro ambulance driver. "Have you got a doctor with you?" "We got one," he said. "We got a good one; he young and good. What in this world happened to you, man? What in this world? Somebody shoot you?" "The river," I said. "The river happened to me. But I'm not the one; I'm just the only one who can move. We've got a man back down across the bridge who's bad hurt, and the other fellow had to stay with him. Also one was killed, or I guess he was. We couldn't find him." "You want to come show us where your man is at?" "I'll come if I can get up. If I sit in this chair much longer I'm going to fall out of it." He went to my good side and I rose like a mountain into the air of fan belts, where a few cheap cockeyed pairs of dark glasses formed on a piece of yellow cardboard. "Hold on to me, man," he said. He was slight and steady, and I put my good arm around his shoulders, but my knees were going; the world was going. "You can't make it," he said. "You sit right back down." "I can make it," I said, as the glasses focused again. I told the boy at the store to tell the police where we were going, and the driver and I walked out into the sun where the little white county ambulance sat. The doctor was in the front seat writing something. He looked up and got out all in the same motion. He opened the back doors. "Bring him around here and let him lie down." I crawled onto the stretcher and turned on my back. It was hard to do; I didn't want to turn loose the driver. He not only felt good to me, but he felt like a good person, and I needed one bad; just that contact was what I needed most. I didn't need myself anymore; I had had too much of that for too long. The young doctor, sandy haired and pale, crouched beside me. "No, no," I said. "It's not me. I can wait. Go back across the bridge. There's a man in a canoe who's got a bad fracture. It may have hemorrhaged in some way. Let's get him looked after first." We drove down the highway -- a land-motion of machines, and peculiar -- to the bridge, and I got out one more time. I probably didn't have to, but I thought it would be best. Lewis was still in the canoe, stretched out and sweating, his shirt half-dark and his arm over his eyes, and Bobby was talking to the man and boy who had been fishing. I knew Bobby must have been testing his story out on them, and I hoped he had made good use of the time to get it straight; the others looked as though they believed him. It is hard to disbelieve injured, exhausted men, and that was a great advantage. The driver and the doctor helped Lewis out of the canoe and onto the stretcher. The County Hospital was in Aintry, about seven miles off. We got ready to go, but while we were standing around the ambulance the highway patrol drove up, the siren droning faintly. A short fellow stepped out, and then a rough-looking blond boy. I got ready. "What's going on?" the blond officer said. "We've had a bad accident," I said, swaying a little more than I was actually swaying. I cut that out; acting might ruin the whole thing. "One of our party drowned in the river about ten miles upstream." He looked at me. "Drownded?" "Yes," I said. I believed I had got past the first of it, like the first of a bad set of rapids. But there was no way out except to keep on. "How do you know he drownded?" "Well, we capsized in the rapids, and it was just every man for himself. I don't know what happened to him. He may have hit his head on a rock. But I don't know. We just couldn't find him, and I don't see how he could not be drowned. I hope he's not, but I'm afraid he is; he has to be." While I was talking I looked him in the eyes, which was surprisingly easy to do; they were sharp but sympathetic. As I went through some of the story that Bobby