The Bottoms Read Free Page A

scratched.
    The bramble tunnel went on for a good ways, then I heard a rushing sound, and the tunnel widened and we came out on the bank of the roaring Sabine River. There were splits in the trees above and the moonlight came through strong and fell over everything like milk that had thickened, yellowed, and turned sour.
    Whatever had been pacing us seemed to be good and gone.
    I studied the moon, thought about the river. I said, “We’ve gone some out of the way. But I can see how we ought to go. We can follow the river a bit, which ain’t the right direction, but I think it’s not far from here to the Swinging Bridge. We cross that, we can hit the main road, walk to the house.”
    “The Swinging Bridge?”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “Think Mama and Daddy are worried?” Tom asked.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Bet they are. I hope they’ll be as glad to see these squirrels as I think they’ll be.”
    “What about Toby?”
    “We just got to wait and see.”
    The bank sloped, and there was a little trail ran along the edge of the river.
    “Figure we got to carry Toby, then bring the wheelbarrow. You can push it forward, and I’ll get in front and boost it down.”
    I carefully picked up Toby, who whimpered softly, and Tom, getting ahead of herself, pushed the wheelbarrow. It, the squirrels, shotgun, and shovel went over the edge, tipped over near the creek.
    “Damnit, Tom,” I said.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “It got away from me. I’m gonna tell Mama you cussed.”
    “You do, and I’ll whup the tar out of you. ’Sides, I heard you cussin’ plenty.”
    I gave Toby to Tom till I could get a footing and have him passed to me.
    I slid down the bank, came up against a huge oak growing near the water. The brambles had grown down the bank and were wrapped around the tree. I put my hand against it to steady myself, jerked back quick. What I had touched hadn’t been a tree trunk, or even a thorn. It was something soft.
    When I looked I saw a gray mess hung up in brambles. The moonlight was shining across the water and falling on a face, or what had been a face, but was more like a jack-o’-lantern now, swollen and round with dark sockets for eyes. There was a wad of hair on its head, like a chunk of dark lamb’s wool, and the body was swollen and twisted and without clothes. A woman.
    I had seen a couple of cards with naked women on them that George Sterning had shown me. He was always coming upwith stuff like that ’cause his Daddy was a traveling salesman and sold not only Garrett snuff, but what was called novelties on the side.
    But this wasn’t like that. Those pictures had stirred me in a way I didn’t understand but found somehow sweet and satisfying. This was stirring me in a way I understood immediately.
    Her breasts were split like rotten melons cracked in the sun. On closer examination I realized the brambles weren’t brambles at all, but strands of barbed wire tightly wrapped around her swollen gray flesh.
    “Jesus,” I said.
    “You’re cussin’ again,” Tom said.
    I climbed up the bank a bit, took Toby from Tom, laid him on the soft ground by the riverbank, stared some more at the body. Tom slid down, saw what I saw.
    “Is it the Goat Man?” she asked.
    “No,” I said. “It’s a dead woman.”
    “She ain’t got no clothes on.”
    “No, she ain’t. Don’t look at her, Tom.”
    “I can’t help it.”
    “We got to get home and tell Daddy.”
    “Light a match, Harry. Let’s get a good look.”
    I considered on that, finally dug in my pocket. “I just got one left.”
    “Use it.”
    I struck the match with my thumb and held it out. The match wavered as my hand shook. I got up as close as I could stand to get, due to the smell.
    It was even more horrible by matchlight.
    “I think it’s a colored woman,” I said.
    The match went out. I righted the wheelbarrow, shook mud out of the end of the shotgun, put it, the squirrels, and Toby back in the wheelbarrow. I couldn’t find the