Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [64]
I didn’t say anything. He continued, “How far you headed?”
I had a choice. Lie or tell him the truth. I had a feeling that lying wouldn’t get us any farther downriver while the truth might. “All the way if I can manage it.”
He was in mid-bite. “All the way to St. Marys?”
“Unless something stops us.”
He finished his sausage-dog and wiped his hands on his T-shirt. “You know if that hurricane dumps a bunch of rain on us that this river is going to change overnight.”
I nodded. “Yeah, she will.”
He pointed north toward Folkston. “I’s raised up yonder. Never been down the length of her. Always wanted to. I’d like to see Reed’s Bluff.”
“It’s worth seeing.”
He stared off into the river. “Maybe I will.” His eyes narrowed. “Folks say once you get up there that you can see where the river ends. That true?”
“Yes.”
“She perty?”
A nod and a quick glance at Abbie. “She’s…beautiful.” Abbie’s forehead was flush and the telltale blue vein had popped out on her left temple. I knelt down and she just moaned. I flipped open the Pelican case, discreetly cracked the cap on a dexamethasone syringe and pushed out the air. Then I slid it into Abbie’s thigh. Syringe empty, I capped it and closed the case.
A minute passed. Link swallowed loud enough for me to hear it. Eyes wide, he glanced at his truck. “Ya’ll…maybe need anything?” He said all this while rubbing his thigh.
I stared downriver. “Time and distance. And maybe a little more flow.”
He raised an eyebrow and his voice lowered. “Have I seen her afore?”
“Probably.”
“She famous? A model or something?”
“At one time.”
“She alright?”
How exactly should I answer that? “She’s been sick a long time. And…we needed some fresh air so I brought her where I knew she’d get it.”
“Well…” He chewed on his bottom lip a minute. “I hope you make it. Both of you.”
I spread a pallet on the beach beneath the low-lying limbs of an oak tree. They were thin, long and grew up out of the tree only to swoop down over the beach, brush the sand’s surface, then rise back up above the water where they hung thick with leaves. Other than Link, we kept to ourselves.
Link had jowls the size of a bulldog and his fingers were three times as fat as mine, but that had little negative effect on his ability to play a guitar, because after he’d fed the troops, he lifted a Gibson out of the back of his truck and lit the strings on fire. I’d never seen someone’s fingers move so fast across the strings of anything. I turned to Abbie. “Who is this guy? He ought to be on the Grand Ole Opry.”
A fellow next to us heard and nodded. “He has been. And he’s a regular at the Woodbine.”
Woodbine is the South Georgia version of the Opry. He pointed his longneck at Chef. “Link there plays by ear, and he ain’t never had no lessons.” He swallowed, the foam dripping off his chin. “Perty good, huh?”
“I’ll say.”
Link played twenty to thirty songs with seamless transition, well-disguised improvisation and no rest. His music soaked the air with something I can only describe as resonance. He said very little because his hands were saying enough and he took every request without looking at a single note. Here was a guy who looked like he ought to be driving a tractor or mucking manure out of stalls and yet he was by far the most talented musician I’d ever seen. He blazed through blue grass, country, Southern rock and classical. If there were limits to his repertoire, we never saw them.
Around ten, a bunch of folks waded into the water, girls climbed onto the guys