Crum

Chapter 19

165 Chapter 19 It was three o’clock in the afternoon of a stifling day in early August and I was going down to the river to say goodbye and to get my brains beat out. It was a ritual. I wouldn’t have called it that then—it didn’t come to me until many years later—but it was a ritual and there was no escaping it. There had been one at each stage of my life in Crum and there would be one, now, when I left. There was no way out. But if I was going down to the river to get my ass kicked, by God at least they were going to have to work at it. This time they were going to have to pull out all the stops. The stench of the river found me before I found it. With the water down to only waist deep in most places, the sluggish stream simply could not carry the load of garbage piled up along the banks. At least six different guys had stopped by the house to ask me to come down to the river for a swim. They knew it was my last day in Crum and they wanted to make sure I got a proper send-off. The bastards were there now. I could hear them splashing and shouting, the noises ringing sharp, loud, through the heat that layered the valley . I knew they would be spread out, each waiting to be the first to see me as I topped the rise of the river bank, each wanting to be the first to fall silent and to settle down in the water. Well, screw them. I was scared and they were the reason for my fear and I have always hated things that frightened me for no good reason. I didn’t know about rituals, so I didn’t know then that they didn’t understand what they were doing, either. I topped the rise of the river bank and half-galloped down the slope. I pasted a large grin 166 across my face, waded into the water, and floated and pushed my way out toward the middle. Time slowed down. The sun beat on the surface of the river and reflected back into my face, and I could feel the heat on my shoulders and back as I moved into the water. The river was hardly flowing fast enough to make noise and the others in the river were silent for a minute or so. There were no clouds in the sky. It was one of those Appalachian August days when the heat is so intense that nothing moves, and everything bakes that’s caught in the narrow river valleys. It was one of those days where just opening your eyes makes your forehead sweat. The others were nearer the Kentucky side, lounging around the large rock that was our diving platform. Four of them sat on the top, three more bobbed around in the slow current. The water was about chest deep at most and the shallow parts just came up to my knees. I had spent the last week selling everything I owned, everything except my old rifle. I sold the stuff quietly, trying not to stir up questions , holding off the poking and prying that I knew would come if word got around. But the word did anyway, and so now I was going to have to beat it out of there before I had planned, just bug out without telling anybody. Slip away. Just me and an old cardboard suitcase. I forgot about the ritual, but it didn’t forget me. And here we were in the stinking Tug River, seven bodies and a victim. Things started pleasantly enough. It actually was sort of nice. Of course, nobody said “sorry to see you go” or anything like that. But then, guys didn’t do that. We were just sort of loafing there, us guys who had known each other for all those years, just lollygagging around in the river, letting the sun beat down and the river wash up and talking about all those things that were usually talked about, like we’d done a thousand times. 167 Ott Parsons was there, his big mouth spouting cuss words and streams of river water. He was trying to climb on the rock and the others...