“N-No, Jared!” Ben cries in horror, actually seeming to cringe at the sight of the knij. He is finally ready. It takes him a little longer, that’s all, he ain’t a kid like these other ones. But now—!

Never mind her smart mouth, never mind her insolent way of laughing, never mind the whole township. Let them all show up and watch if they like. He slips it to her, what she’s wanted all along, what all her kind want. He slips it in and sinks it deep. He continues giving orders even as he rapes her. Up and down his ass goes, tick-tock, just like a cat’s tail. “Somebody take care of him! Or do you want to spend jrty years rotting in Shawshank because of a nigger boy’s tattle?” Ben seizes one of Kito Tidwell’s arms, Oren Peebles the other, but by the time they have dragged him as far as the embankment they have lost their heart.

Raping an uppity nigger woman with the gall to laugh at Jared when he jll down and split his britches is one thing. Drowning a scared kid like a kitten in a mud-puddle… that’s another one altogether. They loosen their grip, staring into each other’s haunted eyes, and Kito pulls jee. “Run, honey!” Sara cries. “Run away and get—"Jared clamps his hands around her throat and begins choking. The boy trips over his own berry bucket and thumps gracelessly to the ground. Harry and Draper recapture him easily. “What you going to do?” Draper asks in a kind of desperate whine, and Harry replies “What I have to.” That’s what he replied, and now I was going to do what I had toin spite of the stench, in spite of Sara, in spite of my dead wife’s shrieks. I hauled the roll of canvas out of the ground. The ropes which had tied it shut at either end held, but the roll itself split down the middle with a hideous burping sound.

“Hurry/” Jo cried. “I can’t hold it much longer!” It snarled; it bayed like a dog. There was a loud wooden crunch, like a door being slammed hard enough to splinter, and Jo wailed. I grabbed for the carry-bag with Slips ’n Greens printed on the front and tore it open as Harry the others call him Irish because of his carrot-colored hair—grabs the struggling kid in a clumsy kind ofbearhug and jumps into the lake with him. The kid struggles harder than ever,’ his straw hat comes off and floats on the water. “Get that!” Harry pants. Fred Dean kneels and fishes out the dripping hat. Fred’s eyes are dazed, he’s got the look of a fighter about one round from hitting the canvas. Behind them Sara Tidwell has begun to rattle deep in her chest and throat like the sight of the boy’s clenching hand, these sounds will haunt Draper Finney until his final dive into Eades Quarry. Jared sinks his fingers deeper, pumping and choking at the same time, the sweat pouring off him. No amount of washing will take the smell of that sweat out of these clothes, and when he begins to think of it as “murder-sweat,” he burns the clothes to get shed of it. Harry Auster wants to be shed of it all to be shed of it and never see these men again, most of all Jared Devore, who he now thinks must be Lord Satan himself. Harry cannot go home and face his father unless this nightmare is over, buried. And his mother! How can he ever face his beloved mother, Bridget Auster with her round sweet Irish face and graying hair and comrting shelf of bosom, Bridget who has always had a kind word or a soothing handler him, Bridget Auster who has been Saved, shed in the Blood of the Lamb, Bridget Auster who is even now serving pies at the picnic they’re having at the new church, Bridget Amter who is mamma,’ how can he ever look at her again—or she him—if he has to stand in court on a charge of raping and beating a woman, even a black woman?

So he yanks the clinging boy away—Kito scratches him once, just a nick on the side of the neck, and that night Harry will tell his mamma it was a bush-pricker that caught him unawares and he will let her put a kiss on it—and then he plunges the child into the lake. Kito looks up at him, his face shimmering, and Harry sees a little fish flick by. A perch, he thinks. For an instant he wonders what the boy must see, looking up through the silver shield of the surface at the face of thejllow who’s holding him down, thejllow who’s drowning him, and then Harry pushes that away. Just a nigger, he reminds himself desperately.

That’s all he is, just a nigger. No kin of yours.

Kito’s arm comes out of the water his dripping dark-brown arm. Harry pulls back, not wanting to be clawed, but the hand doesn’t reach Jr him, only sticks straight up. The fingers curl into a fist. Open. Curl into a fist. Open. Curl into a fist. The boy’s thrashing begins to ease, the kickingjet begin to slow down, the eyes looking up into Harry’s eyes are taking on a curiously dreamy look, and still that brown arm sticks straight up, still the hand opens and closes, opens and closes. Draper Finney stands on the shore crying, sure that now someone will come along, now someone will see the terrible thing they have done the terrible thing they are in fact still doing. Be sure your sin will find you out, it says in the Good Book. Be sure. He opens his mouth to tell Harry to quit, maybe it’s still not too late to take it back, let him up, let him live, but no sound comes out. Behind him Sara is choking her last. In front of him her drowning son’s hand opens and closes, opens and closes, the reflection of it shimmering on the water, and Draper thinks Won’t it stop doing that, won’t it ever stop doing that? And as if it were a prayer that something is now answering, the boy’s locked elbow begins to bend and his arm begins to sag,’ the fingers begin to close again into a fist and then stop. For a moment the hand wavers and then I slammed the heel of my hand into the center of my forehead to clear these phantoms away. Behind me there was a frenzied snap and crackle of wet bushes as Jo and whatever she was holding back continued to struggle. I put my hands inside the split in the canvas like a doctor spreading a wound. I yanked. There was a low ripping sound as the roll tore the rest of the way up and down.

Inside was what remained of them—two yellowed skulls, forehead to forehead as if in intimate conversation, a woman’s faded red leather belt, a molder of clothes… and a heap of bones. Two ribcages, one large and one small. Two sets of legs, one long and one short. The early remains of Sara and Kito Tidwell, buried here by the lake for almost a hundred years.

The larger of the two skulls turned. It glared at me with its empty eyesockets. Its teeth chattered as if it would bite me, and the bones below it began a tenebrous, jittery stirring. Some broke apart immediately; all were soft and pitted. The red belt stirred restlessly and the rusty buckle rose like the head of a snake.

“Mike/” Jo screamed. “Quick, quick/”

I pulled the sack out of the carry-bag and grabbed the plastic bottle which had been inside. Lye stille, the Magnabet letters had said; another little word-trick. Another message passed behind the unsuspecting guard’s back. Sara Tidwell was a fearsome creature, but she had underestimated Jo… and she had underestimated the telepathy of long association, as well. I had gone to Slips ’n Greens, I had bought a bottle of lye, and now I opened it and poured it, smoking, over the bones of Sara and her son.

There was a hissing sound like the one you hear when you open a beer or a bottled soft drink. The belt-buckle melted. The bones turned white and crumpled like things made out of sugar—I had a nightmare image of Mexican children eating candy corpses off long sticks on the Day of the Dead. The eyesockets of Sara’s skull widened as the lye filled the dark hollow where her mind, her prodigious talent, and her laughing soul had once resided. It was an expression that looked at first like surprise and then like sorrow.

The jaw fell off; the nubs of the teeth sizzled away.

The top of the skull caved in.

Spread fingerbones jittered, then melted.