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your feet?”
    I found that with his help I could, but once there I was wobbly.
    “We ought to be taking you somewhere,” said the man. “Me and the wife come down to try out the new ferry, go over to the other side for a picnic, just for the hell of it, you know. We was watching from the hill. Planned to catch a ride across when that ferry fella got through hauling you folks over, and then we seen that twister.”
    “I ain’t never seen a twister before,” said Matilda. “On land or water.”
    “I’ve seen three or four,” said the man, “but never a little one like that, and running right down the river. That was something, all right. I heard some niggers talking once about a thing like that, a twister in the river, but I thought it was just nigger talk.”
    “It just didn’t seem real,” Matilda said.
    “It was pretty real,” I said.
    The man patted my shoulder.
    There wasn’t any use trying to go into Hinge Gate for the law, because the pox was running through the town and there were armed guards at both ends of it. I thought for a moment, said, “If I could get you to take me into Sylvester, I’d appreciate it. I know it isn’t the nearest town, but it’s not quarantined like Hinge Gate. I’d give you money, but I haven’t got any.”
    “That ain’t no problem,” said the man, showing me a big row of horse teeth. “Sylvester ain’t but a few miles. It ain’t a problem at all. Hell, boy, we come from Sylvester. What’s your name?”
    “Jack,” I said.
    “Mine’s Tom,” he said.
    Their wagon was parked up on the hill. It had a cover over it, like a covered wagon of old. I could see it from where I sat, looking over my shoulder. They helped me up, one at either side of me, and guided me to the wagon. When we got there, they lowered down the back end and had me sit on it. They broke out some sandwiches and some warm tea in a big fruit jar, insisted I ought to eat and drink. It’s the way we Southerners do things. A tragedy happens, first thing you need to do is eat and have some tea or coffee.
    It did help, though. When I had some of my strength back, if not all my piss and vinegar, I asked them to get me into Sylvester so I could speak to the sheriff. I wanted to look for Grandpa, too, but knew that bullet had done him in before the storm. I was sick about his body washed away somewhere, but with Lula kidnapped time was wasting, so I had to make the choice, and I made it for the living.
    They rode me to town, dropped me off at the sheriff’s office. It was clear as we came in that there had been some doings, because the town was like someone had turned a box of cats upside down and let them loose. People were moving about quickly, and there was activity at the bank. Across the street from it, I saw the law office of that fellow Cowton Little that Grandpa had told me about; his name and business were stenciled across the window glass clearly in white paint. But I couldn’t get my mind on that, outside of touching my overalls pocket to feel the damp deed inside of it. There was just too much to draw my attention, like the wagon pulled up in front of the bank, and there was a pair of boots sticking out of the back end of it, and whoever belonged to those boots, the rest of him was covered up with a stained tarpaulin. The street was splotched over and wet in spots. There were dark pools of what looked to be blood turning black on the boardwalk in front of the bank. Down from that a few paces was a dead horse. Right by the door to the bank was a plank that had been leaned against the wall. There was a dead fellow propped on the plank, and a man in the street had a Kodak camera set up, one of them kind with an accordion eye on it. He was taking the man’s picture. Even from a distance, I could see that dead fellow was all shot up. Part of his head was missing, though curiously he still had on a kind of shallow-brimmed hat; it was lifted up a little on one side, and that was the side where his