nine o’clock
They had found the road at last—two faint scars and a powder of unbearable dust upon a raised levee traversing the swamp. But between them and the road was a foul sluggish width of water and vegetation and biology. Huge cypress roots thrust up like weathered bones out of a green scum and a quaking neither earth nor water, and always those bearded eternal trees like gods regarding without alarm this puny desecration of a silence of air and earth and water ancient when hoary old Time himself was a pink and dreadful miracle in his mother’s arms.
It was she who found the fallen tree, who first essayed its oozy treacherous bark and first stood in the empty road stretching monotonously in either direction between battalioned patriarchs of trees. She was panting a little, whipping a broken green branch about her body, watching him as he inched his way across the fallen trunk.
“Come on, David,” she called impatiently. “Here’s the road: we're all right now.” He was across the ditch and he now struggled up the rank reluctant levee bank. She leaned down and reached her hand to him. But he would not take it, so she leaned further and clutched his shirt. “Now, which way is Mandeville?”
“That way,” he answered immediately, pointing.
“You said you never were over here before,” she accused.
“No. But we were west of Mandeville when we went aground, and the lake is back yonder. So Mandeville must be that way.”
“I don’t think so. It’s this way: see, the swamp isn’t so thick this way. Besides, I just know it’s this way.”
He looked at her a moment. “All right,” he agreed. “I’ll guess you are right.”
