On the River Styx (2 page)

Dewey Floyd rode up alongside. He yanked that stick of his out of the gun holster and took to swatting the dry stalks in half as he rode. His horse was used to that funny sound a stick makes, but mine’s ears stuck up sharp, and he was all shivery under the saddle.

“Pentland’s all riled about somethin, ain’t he?” I said.

“Ain’t he.” Floyd repeated it softly. He took an extra hard cut at a cornstalk, and my horse jumped sideways. “Take keer on that pony,” he said, not looking over. “He don’t like no weight back o’ the saddle, even yore hand.”

“What you keep that stick around for?”

“Don’t know for sure. Time I was livin in the woods, I kinda liked the feel of it in my hand.”

I know he was looking me over, out from under his hat, and still switching the stick.

“I figger Pentland told you some about me?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he sorta did.”

The way he was talking made me feel kind of funny.

“That’s okay, Mister Webster, don’t trouble yourself none. He allers tells ever’body right off ’bout how he’s the
las’ thing ’tween me and damnation.” He laughed quietly, still looking at me the way a coon looks out of a tree. “He ain’t told you nothin that ain’t so, I guess. A feller’d never catch on that him and me’s brother-in-laws. Maybe he ain’t told you that part yet.”

“Nope. What I mean is, you don’t have to tell me nothin.”

“I reckon I don’t, no. Don’t pay me no mind, Mister Webster, I jes feels like talkin. Thing is, my sis has got herself married off to this here Pentland, and that’s how come I’m here. They don’ want no poacher fer kin to the bes’ dog trainer in Georgia, which folks say Pentland is, and so they took me on long as I’d keep my nose clean. He’s worryin hisself to death about that.”

He laughed again. “Never knew a Yankee yet wasn’t worryin on
somethin
,” he added.

“It looks like you’re doin a good job,” I said.

“Eatin’s good. Job don’t pay nothin to speak of, and it ain’t news that me and Pentland got no use fer the other. Hell, I’d go back to the woods but fer the dawgs. I’m gittin mighty attached to them dawgs. How’d that li’l Sadie ’pear to you?”

“She’s good. You handled her good.”

Floyd nodded his head. “She’s a right fine dawg, Sadie is. I done all the work on her and I’d like a lot to have her fer mine. These two ain’t bad neither.”

We were coming up behind Pentland. The sun was right back of the pines in front of us, so bright I could only just make out the dogs. They were close to twenty yards apart, both on nice points.

“Two sets of birds,” said Floyd.

Pentland walked in fast, yelling at the setters to hold. He
flushed two birds over the near dog, taking one, and swung over and killed a single that got up wild in front of the other dog after the first shot. He made it look harder than Floyd did, but a nice double all the same. Then he was yelling again, dead, dead, and they found the birds fast, only they brought ’em right over to Dewey Floyd.

“What do you want to go calling ’em in like that for?” Pentland hollered at Floyd. “Dammit, you’re going to fix these dogs so’s they’ll come to nobody else!”

He come stomping over toward us, Buster behind him.

“He didn’t call ’em, Mister Pentland,” I said, kind of uneasy.

“Seems like them ol’ dawgs jes took a min’ to come to Mistuh Dewey Floyd,” whispered Buster, looking scared, and then Floyd had his horse over between Buster and Pentland.

“You, Buster, get to hell back to them wagons,” Floyd said. He cut Buster’s horse across the rump with his stick, and the nigger lit out down the ridge and over the cornfield, all arms and legs and flapping leather.

That was it, right there. Talking soft and slow all the time, nice as hell to the dogs and niggers, and then he takes and cuts a horse like that.

Floyd didn’t look at Pentland at all. He come back past me, grinning a funny grin, and saying, “Look at that nigger boy ride, Mister Webster, jes you look at that nigger boy ride.”

Then he was trotting away, switching his stick in the dew grass, and the dogs right on his heels.

Pentland jammed his gun back in its saddle holster. He wasn’t saying a thing. I turned my horse back, and pretty soon he caught up. He was glaring like I was supposed to say something.

“I’d like to get a look at some more dogs,” I said.

The rest of the day there wasn’t much trouble, and I got to see the whole of both rigs. I never seen two men handle dogs like Floyd and Joe Pentland; there wasn’t much to be said between them except they run the dogs different ways. Maybe it come from being a poacher, but Floyd knew the country like he was a part of it, and right where the birds was every time. That takes a man that’s lived in the woods alone.

I
GOT BACK THERE
a few weeks later with an order for the three best setters Pentland was selling and the lemon bitch pointer if I could get her.

You could see right away that things was different. Dewey Floyd was leaning against the stable like before, switching dust with the stick, and there was the nigger right beside him. I didn’t know it was Buster right off because he didn’t have no boots, and niggers generally look pretty much the same. But he said “Mawnin, Mistuh Webstuh,” and I knew it was him, only he sure looked different without the boots.

Dewey Floyd peered out from under his hat.

“Mornin,” I said. “I come to take that lemon bitch away from you.”

“No you ain’t.” He said it like it didn’t need no explanation.

Buster stared at Floyd, kind of fidgety. “Mistuh Webstuh, we-uns ain’t wid de dawgs no mo’.”

“Buster, you go on up to the house, tell ’em Mister Webster come, you hear me?”

Buster shambled off, looking back over his shoulder. Floyd watched him go.

“Looks kinda sorry without them boots, now don’t he?”

“What happened?”

“Hell, I don’t know. One night las’ week I lit into some rotgut, some o’ thet sour mash, and come back here and—well, there was a kind of a ruckus, and now me’n Buster is workin here in the stable.” Floyd was staring at the ground all the time, kind of tired and tight, watching the end of the stick fooling in the dust.

“I’m sorry to hear it. I sure liked the way you run them dogs.”

Joe Pentland was coming down the road to the stable. Floyd was watching him all the time he was talking.

“You see, Mister Webster, a man like me ain’t got no place with dawgs. A man what would do what I done, he’s a sight better off in the woods. Some of these days I aim to go back, ’cause when I’m here, ain’t nothin seems to go right.”

Pentland said good morning. “I’m going right down to the pens and get them setters for you, Webster.”

He went ahead, then stopped and looked at Floyd. “You ain’t paid to lean on that wall, but since you’re so busy shooting off your mouth, why not tell Mister Webster why I can’t sell him the pointer? Why don’t you tell him that?”

Pentland turned to me. “You remember the dog I mean. Sadie. The dog
Mister
Floyd liked so well. Come home here drunk and beat her to death with that damn stick there.” He spat on the ground and walked off.

I didn’t feel much like looking at Dewey Floyd right then, so I looked at the ground. All I could see was the stick switching back and forth, back and forth, in the dust in front of his shoes. It made me jumpier’n hell, and I glanced up at him. I saw his face. And I’m tellin you right now, it ain’t that nigger boy beat Pentland to death, I don’t care
what
they say.

Floyd was looking after Pentland in that funny way of his, not angry at all, just sort of funny. He went right on talking as if Pentland had never come by, but he didn’t take his eyes off him a minute. “You see, I was mighty close to all them dawgs, and that li’l one were my fav’rit. Sadie were a real stylish dawg. I jes don’t know rightly what it was, how I could come to doin it. But I did it, sure’n hell.”

Dewey Floyd put his stick up under his arm and took out some paper and tobacco. He was talking so quietly I could hear the soft blowing and shifting of the horses through the wall behind him.

“Sober,” he said, “I couldn’t take this stick to no dawg that way, no more’n I could a pony nor a nigger. But a man …”

He paused a minute to fix the tobacco in his cigarette.

“Now you take a man … Time comes, I reckon I could do that easier’n nothing.” He ran his tongue along the sticking edge of the paper, squinting out at me from under his hat.

1951

T
he morning of the fifth day, Dave Winton eased the dragging hook over the side for the last time, wincing at the
thunk
of the twin hook tossed heavily into the water on the other side of the boat and the vicious hum of the outgoing line sawing back and forth over the gunwales. Joe put his hook out that way because it was easy, but to Dave the method made an uneasy difference: Joe’s hook, if only because of the haste with which it plunged each morning into the bay, was the one which was certain to seek out the body.

Dave secured his line around the middle seat and turned to the older man for instructions. Joe Robitelli was already settled comfortably in the stern, just as he had been for four days: he hadn’t even changed his shirt. The oars lay untouched on the floor of the dinghy.

“Want me to start, Joe?”

“Start what?”

“The oars. We have to keep dragging, don’t we?”

“Picket boat’s gone, ain’t it?” Joe shrugged his shoulders and lay back.

“You said that the drowned man always shows up on the fifth day.”

“That’s right. Today or tomorrow, or for sure the day after.” Joe dragged a small canvas bag from beneath his head. “Look,” he said, “Good Old Joe finally got wise to hisself.” He hauled two hand lines and a wet bait package out of the bag and spread them triumphantly on the stern seats. “How about that, Dave? And I got six cans of beer to go with it. A regular fishin party.”

“You said we were sure to find the guy today.”

“Take it easy, kid. Relax. Have a Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.”

“Okay,” Dave said, “that was fine the first four days, but sooner or later, we’re supposed to find this guy. Maybe we’re on top of him right now.”

“Look, we ain’t supposed to do nothin but sit here, so we might as well have a good time for ourselves. If the guy comes up, the guy comes up, but while we’re waitin, I robbed some bacon from the galley for bait and got us six beers from the lighthouse boys.”

Dave watched him rig some bacon rind onto the hooks. Joe, glancing at him, winked and sang mournfully, “We three—are all a-lone—” with pointed emphasis on the “three,” and winked again. Dave bent over the oars to hide the irritation in his expression; they were pressed against the side of the boat by Joe’s ankle. “What’s up, Joe?”

“What’s up, Dave?” Joe studied the baited hooks, his brows wrinkled in concentration.

“Look, I’ll do the rowing if you don’t want to.”

Joe glared back at him. Their faces were uncomfortably close in the drifting boat. “Look, kid, I been tellin you Christ’s sake relax for four days now, and here I got you all fixed up with fish lines and beer, and you’re still bitchin!”

“What about those people waiting on shore? What do you want to do, keep them waiting all week?”

“It don’t
matter
what I want to do, they’re gonna wait anyway. So take it easy.”

Dave stared at the water eddying silently around the dragging line. He thought about those gloomy people on the pier in their vacation clothes. Right now the hooks were fumbling along the belly of the bay like two clubfect, scraping and turning and raking the seaweed off the rocks in search of the drowned man. This very moment they could be pulling through the rotten clothes like fingernails through soggy paper.

Joe was leaning back, arms spread and a fish line in each hand, his white cap over his eyes and a cigarette loose in his mouth.

“I guess I’ll row awhile, just for the hell of it,” Dave said.

Joe shrugged his shoulders and took his foot away from the oars, then hitched one of the fish lines around a cleat and pushed the cap back with the free hand, unveiling a stare of disbelief.

“What in hell are you provin, Davey Boy?”

“Nothing.” Dave licked his lips. “I just don’t feel right about those people ashore, I guess.”

“I don’t give a good goddamn
how
you feel about them people ashore. Didn’t the Old Man tell em go home and
wait, but no, they gotta camp out here and raise a stink till we find him. They’d be yellin at us to get out here if there was a hurricane goin on, especially the ones like you, with a lot of dough and no sense. All we’re out here for is to make em happy thinkin we’re doing somethin, understand? We ain’t even got a outboard motor.”

Joe sucked violently on his cigarette.

“The Old Man hisself wouldn’t act no different than what I’m doing. I been at this game a long time, and you ain’t nothin but a kid, I don’t care how much dough you got, just remember that.”

There was nothing to offer in defense of a wealthy family. Dave pulled the oars quietly. Joe was still glaring at him as the tension evaporated between their faces.

Then Joe laughed shortly, pulling his cap back over his eyes. “Look, Dave, all I’m sayin is, this bay’s six miles across, and all we got is two lousy draggin hooks and a ten-foot dinghy. There ain’t a prayer of findin the guy.”

“Okay. Maybe I feel like getting a little exercise.”

Joe flicked his cigarette over the side. It stuck on the flat bay water like a leaf on the mud. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what you wanna do, Davey, get a little exercise.”

D
AVE CUT VICIOUSLY
at the bland-faced water, and the oar, skating over the surface, arched a leaf of spray onto Joe’s shirt. A thick brown hand came up slowly, pushed its fingers over the drops, then drifted upwards to the cap, pushing it back over the forehead. Joe’s eyes were bright with suspicion, observing Dave’s reddening face. One hazel eye winked in a sleepily patronizing manner before the thick hand rose again, methodic as a derrick, adjusted the cap over the eyes, and fell back over the stern.