But maybe Dad had gone off. The red car sat still. The stranger had said how Dad was passed out but it didn't feel like Dad was here: the woods were big, empty and full at once, like they had been before Dad came. Buddy inched closer; he thought he could be a shadow when he moved, nothing could hear him, smell him, feel him circle: in his dreams he could walk the swinging bridge, dance across it, and the bridge never moved or swung, only held still. Like a feather moved above each cross Buddy had carved in the wood. Now he stepped down the spongy, leaf-strewn earth of the steep bank, pretending to fly. There, he was beside the car, and he looked in to see what the stranger had made. It was like a picture: Dad was still and the snake was still and the front of Dad's shirt was dark like he'd sweated through it. The snake was vanished; it was only hung loose around Dad's neck like a piece of round tube, and the dull color of the tube hung down along Dad's leg to his knee. The snake wasn't real anymore; it was just a thing, empty like dead things were empty. If Dad could be empty, like a shell, Buddy thought there would still be a space of air around him, a space where things hummed and tried to get away.
Quietly, both hands, Buddy pushed down the thin metal handle of the door latch. The latch gave and the car door swung open. Buddy stepped closer, see if Dad was breathing. Dad lay back like a sleeper; he never slept so quiet. Always, passed out or drowsing, on the porch, in the bed, at the kitchen table, he twitched and moved, like he was awake and raging somewhere. Now he just lay still. In his shirt pocket, Buddy saw the round form of the ring. He exhaled a whisper of breath and the breath itself seemed to draw his hand near. He let his hand hover upwards, closer, closer, then down. He fixed his eyes on the little circle beneath the fabric of the shirt and saw the cloth move as his fingers touched inside Dad's pocket. He felt the sharp gold prongs of the setting with his forefinger. There. He let his eyes close, just for an instant. In that moment, he began to step back and away, and he heard Dad's eyes open. A click, like a sound inside a lock.
Dad's hand shot across to grip Buddy's wrist. His long fingers closed like a vise and no one moved, as though the hand grasped and pinched of its own accord. They tottered on a line or an edge, then Dad's voice said, in a questioning rasp, "You. Who you been."
Out his head, Buddy thought. "The car wrecked," he said.
Dad pulled himself upright, nearly lifting Buddy off his feet and through the open door of the car. "Get me out," he said, and pitched forward. He fell sideways onto the ground like a sack of stones and the stones smelled sour. Buddy fought to get out from beneath him and thought the stones were full of rot and pulp, breaking inside the bags of Dad's clothes. Dad's shirt was ripe and wet and his pants were stained and the juice would leak out on Buddy and the juice would burn. Buddy kicked to get free and felt himself pummeling air as Dad rolled him over and threw him in the car. The door slammed closed and Buddy was in the driver's seat, his face pressed to the open window. Just level with the blunt rim of the rolled-down window glass, he saw Dad's eyes peer in. Dad's eyes moved side to side in their lit slits and his forehead was smeared with red in the crease between his brows.
The long form of the snake had fallen away. It must be in the grass at his feet. Dad's hands appeared over the edge of the open window. He was panting, holding on and looking. He disappeared then, and Buddy heard him circling the car on all fours, slapping the metal chassis with his open palms, staying low like something in the car might see him. Buddy felt him jumping onto the rear bumper again and again as the car bounced, and there was a tearing, ripping scrape as the front of the car nosed downward through the woody flesh of the pines. When Dad opened the other door and pitched himself through it, the car finished its three- or four-foot drop back onto four wheels. Dad sat very still, whistling through his teeth. Then he crouched down low, his long legs folded into the floor of the passenger side, and turned himself to kneel across the front seat, his arms bent at the elbows. His eyes darted to one side and the other, and he pulled a rope from under the seat.
Buddy lunged for the open window on his side, but Dad got him by one shoulder and pulled him nearly flat. The rope whipped around his arm in a flurry and Dad tied the other end to his own wrist. "You gonna drive," Dad said, and pushed him back upright behind the wheel.
"Ain't no road," Buddy whispered.
Dad was crouched down below Buddy, half on his haunches, and he moved to turn the key in the ignition. He shifted himself around to face forward, half on the seat, and straddled one leg over to reach the gas with his foot. Buddy felt the car throb, then Dad put it in reverse and they lurched backward, the tires spinning for purchase in the soft earth. "Turn the wheel!" Dad shouted, and Buddy did, and they rammed backward again, and backward and forward till the car had tilted away from the trees and was easing slowly down the grade. "Now steer around them trees," Dad said, and he stayed low, like something in the woods might see him.
The ground leveled out and the car bumped over soft ground and big roots. The grade of the earth pitched gently downward and Buddy felt Dad lift off the gas so the car idled forward slowly, humming. The trees were white pine whose scraggly lower branches started twenty feet up and flared to feathery plumes. Buddy could see off in every direction through their staggered, singular forms, off to where the trees grew smaller, closer together, and the layered floor of needles stayed brown. Buddy knew these woods were the oldest; here were the tallest trees, the towering conifers whose piny, top-heavy shade kept the forest floor free of brush. Nothing grew in such dense shade but dappled mushrooms and jewely ferns and the scaly fungus that ran like reptilian stripes on the north sides of the big tree trunks. Light cut through in bright bars from a long way up, and the shady air itself seemed nearly golden. Needles inches deep muffled all sound and the car seemed to ride on pillowy swells. They rose and fell in subtle waves like the ground breathed into them and out, and above them the dense, green-hung branches subtly moved. Dad hunched down lower in the seat. He sighed and the noise was like a whimper.
"Ain't nobody out here," Buddy said.
Silence came up around his words.
"I know what's out here," Dad whispered.
They were passing through a slant of heightened sunlight and the air seemed moted with dazzled particles. Long brown needles dropped at intervals, twirling down along the top of the car in soft, minute tappings.
Buddy listened. All the sounds came to him like secrets, with little directions inside. He kept trying to hear; he felt quiet, like he was waiting. He knew Dad might have forgot about the rings. He might have forgot about everything.
"Where we going?" Buddy asked softly.
"We going to a place you know," Dad said. "Place you been to. We're gonna hole up awhile, till it gets good and dark and they're buildin their goddamn fire and you can skedaddle your ass in to get more of what you got this morning." He laughed a harsh, single squawk. "Chip off the ole block, except I ain't your ole block, am I." He peered into the forest, his eyes just clearing the dash.
The stranger had made the car safe. It was like Buddy steered in slow motion, easing over bumps and shapes, and the metal wheel hummed a soothing vibration through the little grooves where Buddy's fingers fit. There was a red smear on the inside of the windshield and Buddy fixed his gaze just below it, where the big trees seemed to mark a path of widest passage. Steering around one or the other wooden column, he glimpsed alligatored bark, ridged and mossy. Buddy wanted to stay here in the car, in the woods, where Dad wouldn't move much or look at him. He could hear Dad in the stillness.
"Uh-huh," Dad said to himself, "get to the river, outa them trees."
Buddy gripped the ridged black steering wheel. It was hard to talk, like his mouth was full of cotton air, and his heart hammered, muffled, a long ways off, in his ears. "You going to hurt me?" he asked softly.
"Hurt you?" Dad spit through his teeth and a glistened spray of saliva moved out through the open window. The spray seemed to move in one feathery arc, so slowly. "I ain't never hurt you," he said. He turned to look at Buddy and his face was lit in the gold light. Buddy saw the blond hairs of his brows and the glimmer of his red lashes and the deep-cut lines around his mouth. "What you know about hurt," he breathed.
Buddy was careful not to move, only whispered, "You getting set to leave with them rings, right?"
"I get me a stake. Damn right."
"And you won't be coming back here neither, I bet."
Dad's eyes looked wet. He leaned in closer, his head level with Buddy's shoulder, saying each word in a sharp hiss. "No, I ain't coming back. You going to have her all to yourself again." The gray of his irises looked faceted and shattered, like lit-up glass, and his pupils were tiny black spots. The spots seemed to pull at Buddy, suck him in.
"I'll help you get those rings," Buddy said. "You don't have to tie me up or nothing. I'll help you leave."
"Bet you will."
"You better off by yourself," Buddy said. "Then can't nobody keep up with you."
"That a fact." Dad laughed a long, syrupy growl in his throat and pulled his shoulders in tight, staying low. His eyes left Buddy's face and shifted side to side, raking the concave frame of the windshield. Beyond the glass the giant far-flung trees were giving way to smaller pines as the car made its way into brighter light. Suddenly Dad reached over and turned off the ignition. The car shook and they lurched to a stop.
Buddy breathed. The car sat like a beached boat in the green. They waited in the burnished sun of late afternoon, all the green color bright and still after the shade of the pines. Buddy heard the chatter of creatures and squirrels and, not far off, the hushing roll of the river.
Dad motioned him to keep still. He opened the glove box and took out a big flashlight and a pint bottle in a paper bag. "I got me a headache," he murmured, "hell of a headache." He took the bottle out of the bag and drank a long swallow, then jammed it into the rear pocket of his pants. The flashlight he went to put in his shirt pocket, but first he took out the ring. He held it up to Buddy, then put it on the second finger of his right hand. It fit just below the first knuckle, and the stone seemed to blink like a little star.
Suddenly the door was open and Dad was pushing him out, clambering after him with his long limbs unfolded. "We're downriver of the camp," he said quietly. "Ain't nobody gonna see us, and you're gonna keep your mouth shut." They walked fifty feet through trees and came out at the riverbank. Here the water was not so wide as up above. They walked down the bank a ways to where a big stand of oaks had fallen over into the river, their tangled roots flung up in a wall of earth. "We gonna cross here," Dad said. "Walk across these trees and swim the rest."
The oaks spread in a flung gash across the water, though their uppermost branches fell short of the opposite bank. "I can't climb over them trees tied up to you this way," Buddy said.
"You ain't gotta climb nothing," Dad said. "You get on my back. I'll do the climbing. That way I know you'll hang on."
Buddy stepped away but the rope tugged and Dad grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up over his back. Dad was walking on the tree and Buddy had to grasp him round the waist with his knees and hold on with his arms. Like being tied to the lurch of a bandied horse high in the air, the whole river to fall into. He shut his eyes to keep from struggling, not to upend them both. Buddy could swim the river, he'd done it before when the water was calm, but he wondered if Dad could even swim. He might go crazy if they hit the water, pull Buddy down like a flailing log, and the river would close like a flood around them. Dad tilted and lurched, leaving it to Buddy to hold on, and Buddy listened for the river, its hush and swoop, the warble of its deep spaces eddied around the bridge of trees. Once he opened his eyes and saw them surrounded by a throng of whale-gray branches, the uppermost spires half naked of leaves, and he thought he felt the beginning of a gargantuan give and roll, a little groan as the trees shifted, but he held on and Dad kept climbing, grabbing and lurching.
Then he stopped, and they were at the farthest point of the big trunk's spread. Buddy moved as if to slide down, plant his own feet on the broad curve of the bark. "Stay where you are," Dad called out. He nearly had to yell over the sound of the river, and he threw the flashlight the rest of the way over the water to the bank in one strong heave. Then, before Buddy could talk or move, Dad jumped. Buddy opened his mouth wide but no sound came, and they were dropping through the air. The river must have come up fast but Buddy saw it approach for a long moment, like a wet wall with all the colors swimming in its greeny slosh, and there was a loud bang, like a crash, as they went under.
But there was light around them, light in the heavy soup, like they'd dragged down splashes of daylight, and the darker, bluer deep of the water pulled at them, surging and cold. Buddy felt himself stretch free, as though the water had taken hold; he spread his limbs in a watery glide, floating off on the tether of rope. The rope tugged. Dimly, beneath him, he felt the surge of Dad's motion, colors and glints in the dark wet moving past him, and the lifted strands of Dad's light hair wavered up like a long weed. Buddy grasped its wafting length with both hands and Dad pulled him through the dark glitter like a fish. The river grew thicker and heavier, cut with swoops of light, and the water had begun to rumble in Buddy's ears like a fast-approaching train, squeezing him, when they surfaced in a sharp crack. Buddy gagged and choked. Dad tossed his head and the water flew off him in strings. He gained his footing and hauled Buddy along by the rope, and they were walking out of the river.
Dad didn't wait for him to get his breath, only heaved him over a high shoulder and carried him like a sack of feed up the soft bank. Buddy heard himself gasping, breathing long drafts of air, and he could make out an upside-down version of the woods above Turtle Hole. Finally he saw a glimpse of the oval water far to his right, and Dad had walked through the trees to stand behind the diving rock, the big boulder that overhung the water. He slung Buddy down to stand against the rock.