Cy in Chains Read Online Free PDF Page A

afraid now. With his hands tied, there was nothing he could do. If Strong decided to push him back into the water, he was done for. Something hard poked him in the back. The barrel of Sconyers’s pistol.
    Cy kept moving, watching every step so he wouldn’t slip and tumble down the embankment. If he was going to die in the river, he didn’t want it to be from his own mistake.
    The maze of vines and low-hanging branches made the going slow. Branches snapped Cy in the face because he had no way of pushing them aside. Strong kept shouting for Travis. Nothing. They stopped often and scanned the river. Still nothing. A long time passed, and the fear in Cy’s belly grew.
    â€œThere!” Sconyers shouted. Travis, his shirt torn away by the force of the water, was caught on a dead cypress tree sticking up like a bony finger from the middle of the river. The boy’s face was pressed against the trunk, his left arm pinned, and his right floating free and seeming to point downstream.
    Strong cried out, then bit his own knuckles.
    Cy felt his legs buckle, and he collapsed onto his knees.
    â€œNo time for prayin’,” Strong cried. “Get up!”
    Cy obeyed. “I’s sorry, Mist’ John. Oh, God, I’s so sorry.”
    â€œYou ain’t got time to be sorry just now. There’s a job to do.”
    â€œSir?”
    â€œGo get my boy! You think I’m gonna leave him out there for the fish to eat?”
    â€œHow can I—”
    â€œLet him go!”
    Sconyers undid the rope.
    â€œNow tie one end around his waist.”
    Sconyers did that, too.
    Cy shrank from the white man’s touch, but at least his hands were free.
    â€œYou’re gonna swim out there,” Strong told him, “get the bod—get my boy, and bring him back. We’ll hold the rope.”
    Cy wanted to run away, hide, be anywhere except here by the river that had killed his friend, being forced to go back into it by a man mad with grief.
    â€œI got to piss first,” Cy whispered. “Please, sir.”
    â€œGo on, then. I ain’t stopping you.”
    They turned away while Cy relieved himself. His bowels wanted to move too, but that would have to wait. So would the vomit that rose in his mouth again. So would his tears.
    â€œAll right, Mist’ John. I’s ready.”
    â€œRemember: You swim out there, get him, and hold him tight. We’ll pull you back. Got that?”
    He nodded. “Yes, sir.”
    Cy stumbled down the bank and tried to hold his footing just above the water. There was nowhere to wade in; he’d have to jump. His body begged him not to do it. The first time he told himself to go, his legs refused.
Come on
, he commanded them. When he hit the water, the cold shock jolted him just as hard as it had before. The men put tension on the rope to keep him from being pulled downstream. That helped.
    When he reached Travis, a sob rose in his throat. It took all the strength he had to free the boy’s arm, catch him around the waist, and pull him close. He hated how Travis’s eyes, the color of a robin’s egg, gazed unseeing into his own. The dead boy’s head fell forward against Cy’s left shoulder. Having him so close was almost more than Cy could stand, and for a second, he considered simply letting the body go. But Travis deserved better.
    Cy couldn’t swim now, not with both arms wrapped around Travis’s body. He hoped Strong and Sconyers would be able to haul him back to shore.
    â€œReady?” Strong shouted.
    â€œYes, sir.”
    It took a while, but finally Cy and his burden reached the bank. The father, oddly calm, seized his son’s body and cradled it against his heaving chest. With careful steps, he made his way up the embankment.
    â€œC’mon, you,” Sconyers told Cy. He waved the pistol toward the top of the embankment. “Up there.”
    Above them, Strong was sobbing. When they reached the top,