Chapter Twenty-Five

      When Roy got home, he went out behind the store and burned every piece of clothing he had on, including his shoes. In the shower he stood beneath a steady stream of scalding-hot water until his skin turned pink. When he opened the bathroom door, a cloud of steam followed him out.

      In the kitchen he opened the refrigerator and commenced to eat every piece of food it contained.

      Carolyn had been standing at the bedroom window when the Buick pulled into the yard and Roy climbed out. She had run outside pelting questions: “What happened? Where you been? What y’all do to that boy?”

      If she had not seen Roy climb out that car, she would have thought she was looking at a dead man, because his face was so still and pale.

      Roy didn’t answer any of her questions, nor did he mumble a word for most of the morning. He had left his voice near the river, and when it finally found him again, it spewed out of his mouth in great, sorrowful wails of regret.

      The last time J.W. could remember sleeping as soundly as he did that day was when he was in the war.

      He woke in the late hours of the afternoon with the previous night’s events scattered through his mind like the remnants of a dream.

      He stumbled to the bathroom, and as he stood at the toilet relieving himself, his eyes floated over to the heap of blood-splattered clothes. He began to reel with laughter.

      Moe Wright, his wife, Hank, and the other boys sat up all night long waiting for J.W. and Roy to return Emmett. When the sun came up, and Emmett still wasn’t home, Moe climbed into his pickup truck and drove down to Bryant’s grocery store.

      Roy was behind the counter.

      “Morning,” Moe Wright managed steadily.

      “What can I get you, Moe?” Roy said without looking at the old man.

      “My boy. My grandnephew.”

      Roy wished he could go to one of the shelves and pull Emmett from amidst the canned goods, bags of flour, and tins of sardines—if he could do that, he would hand the boy right over to Moe and say, No charge, Moe.

      Instead, Roy moved to the register and hit the cash sale button. The drawer slid open and he peered down at the money. It was eighteen dollars and seventy-two cents—he knew this because in an effort to wash Emmett’s face from his mind he had counted and recounted the money. And now he withdrew it from the drawer and began counting it again.

      “Ain’t he home?” Roy mumbled as he thumbed through the bills.

      “No suh, he ain’t.”

      “Well, I don’t know where he could be. We slapped him around some and then put him out just down the road from your house.”

      Moe knew a lie when he heard one. “Have a good day Mr. Bryant,” he said, and walked calmly out of the store.

      He went to the sheriff and the sheriff assured him that he would look into the matter. And he did; that very night he questioned J.W. Milam as they sat playing poker.

      “Moe Wright says you and Roy took one of his boys out for a whipping and didn’t bring him back. Is that true?”

      J.W. rolled his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. He smoothed his hand over the bald part of his head, but kept his eyes on his cards.

      “Yeah, we took him and then brought him back.”

      “You brought him back to the house?”

      “Nah, we let him out down the road some.”

      “Oh,” the sheriff sounded, and then abruptly folded his hand.

      Three days later, the Sunday morning sky was splattered with thick clouds when Carson Long woke up determined to get some fishing in before church.

      At the river, he cast his line out over the water and sat down on the old wooden crate that doubled as a stool. A breeze rattled the tree limbs and filled Carson’s nose with the putrid stench of rotting flesh, causing him to double over and puke up the fine breakfast his wife had made for him.

      He dragged his shirttail over his mouth and then used it to cover his nose. Figuring it was a dead animal— possibly a dog—he set out in search of the corpse.

      Barely thirty paces away from his fishing spot, Car-son came upon a thick swarm of blue bottle flies. He combed his arms through the air and the flies scattered. When he looked down, his stomach lurched again.

      He couldn’t drive. Not after seeing what he’d just seen. His hands were trembling too badly and his eyes kept tearing up. So he walked to Moe Wright’s house on shaky legs.

      Moe opened the door and offered Carson a somber good morning. He stepped out onto the porch tugging the straps of his overalls over his shoulders. There were circles beneath his eyes as thick and dark as crude oil.

      Carson looked into the man’s strained face. If there was another way to say it, an easier way, Carson would have done so, but there wasn’t.

      “I think I found your boy.”

      Moe scratched his stomach. “Where?”

      “Down by the river.”

      Moe excused himself and disappeared back into the house. When he returned he was wearing a blue cotton shirt and a brown baseball cap with a picture of an elk on the lid.

      “We have to take your truck,” Carson said.

      When they reached the river, Carson offered his hand to the old man as they descended the short hill that led to that place where the blue bottle flies were feeding.

      “That him, ain’t it?”

      Moe placed the hat over his face. When he spoke, his words were muffled. “I can’t be sure.”

      The clouds parted and a shaft of sunlight beamed straight down