“It may be Freeman’s doin’,” Dover admitted, “but I doubt it, boys. Older you get, the more you learn how to recognize things for what they are. That old woman’s got The Power, and there’s no doubt about it. I could curl your toenails with some of the stories I know.”
“You think we’ll be all right, keepin’ watch on that tree?” R. J. said.
“Don’t see why not,” Dover answered matter-of-factly. “I just got my doubts about what we’ll see, that’s all. But we’d have to be up and back early. The search starts again tomorrow. Sheriff said we’ll keep it up until we found somethin’.”
*
We returned to Black Pool Swamp in pre-night, in that wisp of time when the light of day has the look of a thin sheet of ice, hurriedly melting.
Dover cautioned us that we were not camping; we were on a mission, and the tiniest nerves in our bodies would have to be alert.
“No fires, no talking,” Dover said. “We’ll take turns sleepin’ and watchin’. Freeman’s sneaky.”
There were seven of us, including Dover, and the odd number confused the watch order.
“Ought to be two at a time,” insisted Alvin.
“Yeah, but that leaves us one short, or one too many, dependin’ on how you look at it,” observed Dover. He thought for a moment. “Tell you what, I’ll be awake anyhow, so let’s just take the six of y’all and draw straws.”
Otis argued that Dover could not stay awake all night. Dover dismissed Otis with an indignant stare and broke six pine needles into various lengths—two short, two long, and two between short and long. We drew for watch, short to long. Otis and R. J. had the first turn, Alvin and I were second, and Wesley and Paul were last.
We selected a sentinel’s position on a ridge thirty yards away from Freeman’s beech tree. It was an obstructed position because of the undergrowth of dwarfish swamp bushes, but it had two advantages: we were above Freeman’s tree, and we were on a mat of pine needles; pine needles did not crackle when you moved.
“All right,” whispered Dover. “I don’t want nobody sayin’ nothin’ for the rest of the night. If you see anything, shake the rest of us.”
*
Silence. Night. Nerves on ready. I thought: nothing will escape me; I have lived these terrible moments before. I remembered the Germans and the Japanese and how they had tried to slither like worms through our net of death in the Big Gully, and how we had pressed our ears to the ground and plotted their creepy movements with the radar of our hearing.
I pressed my ear to the ground. Nothing. Perhaps the cooling of Earth. Nothing more.
I could hear only the breathing, the minor note of breathing, lungs stroking unevenly, lapsing into an involuntary syncopation of labored rhythm. The breathing. And night. Everywhere night.
Freeman’s tree was shapeless in that early darkness. It was a blob. A shapeless blob shoved into other shapeless blobs, flat and deeper than deep pits that are bottomless in the eye of imagination. It would be the best time of the night for Freeman to slip unnoticed past our blind spying, and return to his rites of supernatural medication—if, indeed, the rites were for Freeman.
And then the light began. At first, barely there. Light like dew from the tilted spoon of the quarter moon; light from the spears of stars, hurled millions of miles and pinging off the waxy shields of leaves; light of foxfire, sprinkled haphazardly in phosphorescent dots over the carpet of Black Pool Swamp, glowing in never-blinking eyes.
The light pulled Freeman’s tree up from the blob, lifted it like a fighter rising from the lap of his ring corner, his body shimmering in the reflection of his might, and behind the rising figure of Freeman’s tree, smaller trees thrust outstretched but untouching fingers, throwing the fighter forward.
Then we could see plainly the tree, bold in its reach and spread. Dover had not seen the Snake Spell and we tried to tell him, by mouthing, the location of the snakes, but Dover did not understand and mouthed back, “Where?” Wesley motioned for him and Dover edged forward on his elbows and stared down the barrel of Wesley’s finger. When he saw the snakes, his eyes widened in astonishment.
“Lordamercy,” Dover exclaimed in a loud whisper.
A chorus arose: “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
Dover slipped back to his position and stared at the tree. He was mesmerized.
*
Otis nudged me out of sleep and dreams and leaned to whisper in my ear.
“I’m sleepy,” he complained. “You and Alvin take it.”
“O.K.,” I replied in my smallest voice. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know. Dover’s got the watch in his pocket.”
“Where’s he?”
“Asleep,” sighed Otis. “Been asleep for a half hour.”
“See anything?”
“Nothin’. Oh, yeah. R. J. thought he saw a scorpion. Better keep lookin’.”
“Yeah.”
I rolled out of the quilt and Otis wiggled into my place. He stretched once, and his body slowly contracted into the curl of a comma. He was asleep in five minutes.
Alvin signaled that he was awake and on duty. He pointed one of his long, skinny fingers toward Dover and laughed soundlessly, mocking Dover’s grand determination to stay awake the entire night. Paul began to snore easily and I jabbed him with my foot. He rolled on his side and the snoring stopped.
Freeman’s tree also slumbered. Its massive limbs drooped and the crown of its growth was limp and folded. Occasionally, the wind would whirl under and up, lifting the leaves lazily, and the tree seemed to shudder, as though flipping away an insect.
Below us, in the swamp, a beaver slapped its paddle tail against the water and the sound cracked like a bullet zinging off a rock. Dover snapped out of his sleep.
“What’s that?” he whispered, breaking his own commandment.
“Beaver,” Alvin said softly.
“Uh—see anything?” asked Dover.
“Naw,” answered Alvin.
Dover looked at me. I shook my head.
Dover yawned, stretched, checked the motionless bodies of Wesley and R. J. and Otis and Paul. He pulled his watch from his pocket. “One-thirty,” he whispered. “Y’all keep it till three.”
“You gonna stay awake?” asked Alvin.
“Of course I am,” Dover hissed. “I been awake.”
Alvin grinned and winked at me. “Oh…” he said.
Dover did not sleep. He rested one eye at a time. The blue eye and then the brown eye. He looked strange, demented, one eye closed as easily as other people close both eyes.
At three o’clock, we woke Wesley and Paul, and Alvin and I tried to sleep, but we could not. We were awake. We stared at the stars and plagued Dover by mimicking his eye trick. The seriousness of our mission weakened in that game—until Wesley heard me giggle and kicked me sharply.
“Quit it,” he warned.
“That’s what I say,” added Dover.
*
At five o’clock, the sky began to pale into a gray sheet and the stars began to withdraw, washed out by the antiseptic warning of day.
Dover stood and stretched and nudged Otis and R. J. with his foot. “C’mon, boys, let’s get up,” he said in his normal voice. “We got to get up and get back to the truck, so’s we can be back at the Wynns’ house by six.”
We were only a mile from our house, but Dover had parked his truck near Rakestraw Bridge and that was a two-mile hike. Dover did not want anyone to know we were not at Wind’s Mill; he could not explain why he had camped in Black Pool Swamp, watching a tree.
R. J. rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Anything happen?” he asked.
“Nothin’,” Paul answered. “Nothin’.”
“Them snakes still there?” Otis wanted to know.
“Yeah,” Dover said lazily.
Otis stood and kicked the circulation back into his cramped legs. He stared at Freeman’s tree. “Where?” he asked.
“Where, what?” Alvin replied, rolling up his q
uilt.
“Where’s the snakes?”
“On the limb.”
“Where on the limb?”
“Can’t you see nothin’, Otis?” snapped Wesley.
“You show me, Wesley. By granny, I must be blind.”
Wesley walked to him and looked at the tree. His mouth opened slowly. He took two steps down the hill. “Dover,” he said.
“Yeah, Wes?”
“They’re not there.”
“What?”
“The snakes.”
The snakes were gone. Vanished. We ran and stumbled down the hill, toward the tree. Dover had a flashlight and beamed it on the limb.
“I don’t believe it,” Dover exclaimed, looking up at the limb. “What happened?”
“Let me have the flashlight,” Wesley said. “Here, Dover.”
“What…?”
“Here. Just shine it here.”
Dover turned the beam toward the ground, toward the ritual fire. The three pyramids of ash had disappeared, completely. It was as though they had never existed.
“Oh, Lord,” R. J. whimpered.
“What happened?” I begged. “Wesley…?”
“I don’t know,” Wesley admitted, his voice quivering.
“Boys, let’s get—get out—of here,” advised Dover.
“You right,” Alvin added. “Let’s go. And fast.” He turned and began running in his long-legged stride.
The rest of us followed.
16
WE DID NOT SPEAK AGAIN until we had emerged from the woods and into Harley Vandiver’s pasture. There we stopped to roll and tie the bedding we had been dragging, and in the thinning darkness I could see that we were all sweating profusely.
“Didn’t nobody see nothin?” asked Dover, wiping his face with his sleeve. “Nothin’ at all?”
We mumbled, “No.”
“I can’t believe it. I just can’t,” continued Dover. “We was lookin’ at that tree every minute and didn’t see nothin’. I tell you, boys, that’s the work of that old woman. Mark me, that’s it.”
“Maybe we just didn’t see what happened,” argued Wesley.
Dover cocked his head and looked at Wesley with an astonished expression. “Now, that’s just what I been sayin’, Wesley. We didn’t see nothin’. Nothin’ at all. You can’t expect to see what witches do.”
“That’s not what I mean, Dover.”
“What’re you sayin’, Wes?”
“I mean, maybe we just couldn’t see. There’s lots of sticks and vines and things like that down there, and we were a long way off. Maybe we looked so hard, we just missed it.”
Alvin disagreed. “You mean you think them snakes never was there?”
“No,” Wesley said. “They were there. They were there when we got there, but that don’t mean that a possum didn’t crawl out on that limb and pull them off. A possum will eat anything, I hear.”
“What about them ashes? What about them?” R. J. demanded.
“They could’ve been blown away in the wind,” answered Wesley.
“Wesley,” Dover said, speaking slowly, “you and me and everybody here knows that a possum didn’t drag away them snakes. You and me and everybody here knows that the Snake Spell don’t work unless them snakes is cut down and buried. Even when it’s meant for good. Now, what you say, well, that’s not the answer, plain and simple. Maybe we won’t never know what the answer is, but me and you and everybody here knows that’s not it.”
“I guess you’re right,” admitted Wesley after a moment. “But we still better not say anything.”
Dover nodded. “I’m not arguin’ that. There’s bound to be some people wantin’ to blame everythin’ on that old woman. When it’s light, we’ll go on back down there and look around. Maybe we can find somethin’.”
*
We did not have to return to Freeman’s tree, or to Black Pool Swamp, to find Freeman.
As we drove into the yard of our home, we saw a crowd of men gathered around the barn. My mother’s Ford was parked near the barn door and two men were inside the car, packing the back seat with quilts and pillows. The other men watched, quietly.
Lynn met Dover’s truck and said in a loud, but funeral whisper, “They found Freeman, Wesley. Found him down in the barn. He’s passed out.”
“When?” asked Dover, excited.
“This morning. Daddy found him when he went to feed the mules. Mama’s been down there tryin’ to put a gauze bandage on his leg. Louise said it was full of pus and infected and might have to be cut off.”
“Good Lord,” exclaimed Dover. “They better get him to a doctor.”
“That’s what they’re fixin’ up the car for,” explained Lynn. Her voice trembled. “Louise said Freeman looked about dead, Wesley. She said he looked awful.”
Dover parked his truck beneath a pecan tree and we sprinted for the barn. Halls Barton stopped us.
“Don’t go in there, boys,” Halls said sternly. “That barn’s full of people now. They’ll be bringin’ him out in a minute.”
We huddled and waited.
“How bad’s he hurt, Halls?” asked Dover.
“Bad” was the answer, and the word fell like a sentence of death. “He must of lost all his blood, way it looks. Mrs. Wynn’s tryin’ to clean him up.”
“Is Odell in there?”
“He’s inside. He’s pretty tore up,” Halls Barton said.
We waited. Inside the barn, men moved about on the heavy flooring, and we could hear murmuring. Then the men began to spill out of the door, waving their arms, pushing away a crowd that had already stepped aside. Mother and Louise came out, with bandages and bottles of medicine and a wash basin in their hands. Mother was crying. His eyes were red dots. Fear masked his face. His lips quivered and the left side of his face twitched. We rushed forward to see Freeman.
Freeman looked dead. His face was ashen. Ashen. Ashes. Freeman’s face was coated with ashes.
“It was Freeman,” whispered Dover, stunned. “It was Freeman who done it.”
Wesley reached and touched Freeman’s arm. He said, very quietly, “Freeman?”
Freeman opened his eyes. They were dry—filmed in a dry, dull membrane. He tried to smile, but the smile fell in an avalanche from his cheeks. He opened his mouth, closed it.
“The car’s ready, Odell,” someone said. “Let’s get him to the doctor.”
Odell Boyd surrendered Freeman to the waiting hands of men in my mother’s Ford. They eased him gently to the quilts, holding his leg tenderly.
“Put a pillow under that leg,” dictated Mother, and one of the men obeyed her.
“He’s ready, Mrs. Wynn.”
“Fine,” replied Mother. “We’ll take him to Royston. Somebody better go get Rachel, but don’t tell her he’s bad hurt. Just that he’s been found.”
“We’ll do that, Mrs. Wynn,” volunteered Dover. “C’mon, boys, let’s get to the truck.”
My father called, “Don’t get in the way, boys.”
“We won’t,” I promised.
We raced to Dover’s truck. Garry was sitting at the steering wheel, pretending to drive.
“C’mon, Garry, get out,” ordered Wesley.
“I’m goin’,” Garry protested.
“No, you’re not. Now get out,” Wesley said.
Louise promised Garry he could carry the towel used to clean Freeman’s leg, and Garry left, appeased.
As we rode toward the Boyds’ home, Dover began to pat out the road’s rhythm by slapping his hand on the dashboard. “I don’t know how he done it, but ol’ Freeman plain made fools outa us, and that’s all there is to it,” he reasoned. “Yessir, Freeman may be half dead, but he’s not changed one iota.”
*
Rachel Boyd was confused by Dover’s news that Freeman had been found. Her mind locked in a mild trance and she asked for her husband.
“Odell’s with Freeman,” Dover told her in a gentle manner. “You come with us, Rachel, and we’ll be tak
in’ you to the hospital.”
“But Odell just left a little while ago,” she protested. “He was goin’ to be first for the search party.”
“Yes’m,” replied Dover. “Well, that’s where he was when Mr. Wynn found Freeman. He was right there with him.”
“Oh…” Rachel Boyd said, and then she said nothing else. She walked out of her house and slipped into Dover’s truck. She did not hear our subdued hellos and she did not answer. She stared out of the truck window as Dover drove—stared at the landscape jerking away in the opposite direction.
*
At the hospital, Rachel Boyd embraced my mother in the lobby, begging for comfort. I was very moved by that embrace. Two mothers. One had buried a son; the other was suspended by uncertainty, and both understood yearnings that are contained only in the womb. “He’ll be fine,” counseled Mother. “Come on. I’ll wait with you.”
Mother led Rachel Boyd into the waiting room, with its gathering of nervous, silent people. Odell Boyd was sitting beside an ashstand, holding an unlighted cigarette. He stood and looked at his wife, but he did not speak. He sat again and began to roll the cigarette in his hand, staring past the cigarette, staring into the hospital floor, into nothingness. Rachel Boyd and Mother sat opposite him, and Mother repeated, “I’ll wait with you, Rachel.”
*
And they waited. In silence. Holding hands.
It was not the first time Freeman’s parents had been in the hospital, sitting, waiting, afraid to move. Freeman had almost died when he was seven. He had had a ruptured appendix and suffered unbearably until Old Doctor (we called him that; his name was Dr. Tutt Hill) cut him open and cleaned him out. Old Doctor was indelicate in his report of the operation. He said, “It was like drainin’ a septic tank.” That remark was repeated over the years by every person in Emery, and was considered extremely humorous.
Freeman had bragged excessively about his bravery in facing death. He wore his scar like a medal and anytime his one-upmanship was challenged, he would rip up his shirttail and point triumphantly to the evidence of his ordeal. “Death,” he had advised us, “will put you to thinkin’. I know. I’ve faced it. Twice. I was about to die anyhow, and then Old Doctor took his knife to me. Shoot, it takes a man to face Old Doctor’s knife.” But Freeman’s finest description of his operation was of the experience of gagging on ether. “I thought I was fallin’ into the longest, darkest, never-endin’ tunnel in the world,” he said. “I kept tryin’ to pull that thing off my nose, but I didn’t have the strength to move. And I just kept fallin’ and fallin’ and fallin’. I thought I was fallin’ into another world.”