The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [187]
Usually when there was whiskey at a square dance, the party was over when some of the men got so drunk they started a fight. There wasn’t any fight this time, just a big argument: no less than six different men, all of them intoxicated, each claimed that he had shot Sull Jerram. But nobody awarded the honor and the prize to any one of them.
And that was the end of June. Next morning July was upon us. Hot, and humid, but heavenly because the worst man who ever came from Stay More was no longer among the living. Folks said they weren’t going to let Sull Jerram be buried in the Stay More cemetery. Tilbert Jerram, his next-of-kin in town, said he figured Sull would be just as happy to be buried in Jasper, so that was where they were going to bury him, and Irene, who was still his legal wife, let it be known she didn’t plan to attend whatever funeral they were going to give him.
That same July morning was a scorcher, and my labors in the garden left me lathered with sweat. I was so eager to get washed off at my little waterfall that something along the way scarcely caught my eye, and I had to turn back and look again to make sure: the bent-down mullein stalk, the one I’d named after Nail, was standing proud and tall.
Off
He had reached the point of no longer expecting to get to the opposite shore. The current of the swift Arkansas had been more than he had bargained for or could have struggled against. Within a minute after plunging in from the south bank, with his shoes tied together and wrapped around his neck, he suffered a bad cramp in his left calf and had to stop swimming and try to get the cramp out: several repetitions of pulling up on his foot and bending his toes back and then kicking his leg straight out finally removed the cramp from his left calf, but then a cramp in his right foot stopped him, and while working on that foot, he noticed the log coming swiftly at him, nearly upon him before he saw it, and thrashed wildly to get out of its way, just in the nick of time, or perhaps not soon enough: a jagged limb on the log raked his hip and cut deep into his skin.
He had not even reached the midpoint of the narrow river crossing before beginning to wonder if he would be able to make it. Each time he paused for breath or to turn over and swim on his back for relief, he found himself dodging a log or limb or being spun around and sucked under by a whirlpool. Once when he had resurfaced, disoriented, after fighting a sucking whirlpool, he swam a good distance back toward the closer south bank before realizing his mistake, and he was tempted to continue in that direction.
But he reversed himself and kept going, although aware that the current had forced him far below the narrow crossing, out into the broadened expanse of floodplain. He alternated between breaststrokes, backstrokes, and sidestrokes, the last especially whenever a wave of the current hit him and he needed to keep watching where he was going. He had reached what seemed to be midway of the broadened river, beyond which there was no turning back, before realizing that he simply had no energy remaining, no strength, that his months of incarceration without exercise had left him totally out of condition for such a marathon. By then it was too late. Out in the middle of the broadened channel the current was still so strong that he had ceased to make more than a feeble effort at fighting across it, not really making any progress but continuing to swing his arms overhead, just to keep himself from surrendering to the river.
Finally he had no choice but to grab hold of the next large log that came floating past, and to cling to it for a long time, as it carried him downstream. He wanted to hang on to that log forever, or until it carried him to New Orleans or wherever it was headed. But he knew it would eventually reach Little Rock, a place he never wanted to see