So they get the plane and tie it to the chalk-line and enter the water again. Pa comes back along the bank. He stops for a while and looks at us, hunched, mournful, like a failing steer or an old tall bird.
Vernon and Jewel return, leaning against the current. “Get out of the way,” Jewel says to Dewey Dell. “Get out of the water.”
She crowds against me a little so they can pass, Jewel holding the plane high as though it were perishable, the blue string trailing back over his shoulder. They pass us and stop; they fall to arguing quietly about just where the wagon went over.
“Darl ought to know,” Vernon says. They look at me.
“I don’t know,” I says. “I wasn’t there that long.”
“Hell,” Jewel says. They move on, gingerly, leaning against the current, reading the ford with their feet.
“Have you got a holt of the rope?” Vernon says. Jewel does not answer. He glances back at the shore, calculant, then at the water. He flings the plane outward, letting the string run through his fingers, his fingers turning blue where it runs over them. When the line stops, he hands it back to Vernon.
“Better let me go this time,” Vernon says. Again Jewel does not answer; we watch him duck beneath the surface.
“Jewel,” Dewey Dell whimpers.
“It ain’t so deep there,” Vernon says. He does not look back. He is watching the water where Jewel went under.
When Jewel comes up he has the saw.