Deliverance - James Dickey [99]
After four hours I passed slowly from the Country of Nine-Fingered People and Prepare to Meet Thy God into the Drive-ins and Motels and Homes of the Whopper, but all I could see was the river. It came at me between rocks -- and here the car would involuntarily speed up -- it came at me in slow loops and green stillnesses, with trees and cliffs and lifesaving bridges. And I could not leave off worrying about the details of the story we had told, and what the ramifications of any one of them might be. I was sure about Lewis, as sure of him as I was of myself, but who could be that sure of either, of any man? But I was not sure of Bobby. He drank an awful lot, and a person will say, a lot of times, exactly the most perverse and self-incriminating thing he can think of when he is drunk enough, and when he is like Bobby. But what would keep his mouth shut about the truth was himself kneeling over the log with a shotgun at his head, howling and bawling and kicking his feet like a little boy. He wouldn't want anybody to know that, no matter what; no matter how drunk he was. No, he would stay with my version of things. The version was strong; I had made it and tried it out against the world, and it had held. It had become so strong in my mind that I had trouble getting back through it to the truth. But when I did, the truth was there: the moon shone and pressed down the wild river, the cliff was against my heart, beating back at it with the pulse of stone, and a pine needle went subtly into my ear as I waited in a tree for the light to come. I was on the final four-lane now; I had eaten in almost every drive-in along here. I had shopped in about half the stores in the shopping center where I was now turning off, and Martha had shopped in them all. I went up the long residential hill, away from the moan of the great trucks and Amoco rigs. I turned off again, and went curving easily home. It was about two o'clock. I drove into the yard and knocked on the back door. They were going to save me, here. Martha opened the door. We stood for a while feeling each other closely and then went in. I took off my brogans and stood them in the corner and walked around on the wall-to-wall carpeting. I went out to the car and took the knife and belt and slung them off deep into the suburban woods. "I could use a drink, sugar," I said. "Tell me," she said, looking at my side. "Tell me. What happened to you? I knew something like this would happen." "No you didn't," I said. "Not anything like this." "Come lie down, baby," she said. "Let me have a look." I went with her to the bedroom, where she put an old ragsheet on the bed, and I lay down on it. She pulled off my shirt and looked, with pure, practical love, and then she stepped to the bathroom for three or four bottles. The whole medicine cabinet looked like a small hospital itself, packed into the wall. She came back shaking bottles. "Give me that drink, love," I said. "Then we can get into all this playing doctor." "All doctors play doctor," she said. "And all nurses play nurse. And all ex-nurses play nurse, especially when they love somebody." She brought me the bottle of Wild Turkey, and I turned it up and drank. Then she started soaking through the bandage with some household mystery from the bathroom. It came off me shred by shred, and the inside was bloody indeed. The stitches were slimy with blood and some other bodily matter; whatever I had at that place. "You're all right," she said. "It's a good job. The edges are pulling together." "Good news," I said. "Can you fix it up again?" "I can fix it," she said. "But what happened to you? These are cut wounds, clean edges, most of them. Did somebody get you with a knife? An awful sharp one?" "I did," I said. "It was me." "What kind of an accident ...?" "No accident," I said. "... Look, let me go see Drew's wife. Then I'm coming back and sleep for a week. Right with you. Right with you." She was professional and tender, and tough, what I would have hoped for; what I knew I could have expected; what I had undervalued. She put antibiotic salve all