The Thicket Read Online Free PDF Page A

it, but I was able to grab some roots sticking out from the bank and cling to them. My body was floated up and sucked at, but I held onto those thick roots, and then the water devil passed and I was dropped. I scrambled to peek around the edge of my den, saw that twister tearing across the river, veering, making landfall, spitting pieces of trees in all directions. It made with a last howl, as if injured, and died out quick as it had come, collapsed into the woods with a rattle of leaves and limbs and a swirl of mud and water.
    I touched my head. It was bleeding some, but considering what had just happened, it was nothing at all. I worked my way out of the den and crawled onto the shoreline. I had to crawl. I couldn’t stand up. I felt weak as a newborn kitten. I sat down on the bank and looked out at the river. It was still raining, but not hard.
    Wagon parts and ferry parts were washing by, and with them I saw the body of the ferryman. He was facedown in the churning water, his right arm bent behind his back in a way you can’t make it go when it fits correctly in the shoulder socket. His hand was twisted up, too, and his fingers were wiggling, as if he were lifting them off his back in a friendly little wave; it wasn’t him moving them, though, it was the water. The river churned him on and under and out of view. I tried to get up, but had to sit down again. The sky seemed to be on the bottom, the land on top.
    That’s when I felt hands on my shoulders, looked up to see a man and a young woman beside me. It was the man had his hands on me. He was a thin fellow with a big hat that near swallowed his head. He couldn’t have looked any sillier if he’d been wearing a bucket on his noggin. He said, “You all right there, boy?”
    “I been better,” I said.
    “I hear that,” he said. “I seen it all happen. Me and Matilda.”
    “That’s right,” the woman said. “We seen it.”
    Like him, she was soaked. She was bareheaded and dark-haired and had a long face with a chin that carried extra room on it. If she had been an ounce thinner and her clothes more worn, I could have seen her backbone and maybe the countryside beyond it.
    “It just blowed that whole damn thing away,” said the man.
    “Did anyone make it?” I said.
    “I don’t know who died,” said the man. “But there were three men and a girl and some horses got to the other side. A fat fellow and a big man rode on one horse, and a nigger and a girl on another. I don’t think she was happy to go with them.”
    “Did you see an old man’s body anywhere?”
    “Nope,” said the man. “We didn’t. There’s a big sorrel horse in a tree over there, though.” He pointed. I looked in that direction and could see one horse leg hanging out of a shattered elm on the bank of the river.
    “That’s why they’re riding double,” I said. It wasn’t exactly a revelation, but that’s what came out of my mouth.
    “Reckon that’s right,” he said.
    “You see any mules?” I asked.
    “When they were on the ferry,” he said, “and then a little bit in the river. One was flying through the air and the other two was in the water. I ain’t seen them since. They was there, then they wasn’t. I figure they’re down there with the catfish, or maybe the way that wind was blowing you’ll find one up your ass later.”
    The woman snickered like a horse, and the man liked that she did. He laughed a little. I wasn’t up for a lot of humor myself.
    “Did you know any of them people got to the other side?” Matilda asked.
    “I knew my sister, Lula, and my grandpa. He was shot. He was dead before the water devil hit. Those men took my sister. I got to get her back.”
    “By the time you swim the river, get to the other side, go after them on foot, they’ll be farther ahead of you than you can catch up. That water is still rough, too. I don’t think a gator could swim it right now. You’ll be better off to see some law on this matter. Can you get to