Fiends by John Farris

down there, easy.
    He looked along the shaded riverbank in both directions, hearing voices and the sounds of crowbars and hammers, but no one was near him. Twenty feet below, the river gurgled and splashed around the flotsam in which the packing crate was lodged.
    He whistled up Hawkshaw and went back to the cove where his father and mother were laying out the picnic lunch on a tablecloth. Birka wore a white waist, a blue worsted skirt, and a pink rhododendron blossom in her hair; some of the same color had seeped into her cheeks. Her eyes still had the milky cast of sickness, but she hadn't coughed all morning and was gayer, humming to herself as she spooned potato salad from a brown stone crock onto the china plates they'd brought. She squeezed Arne's hand and scolded Hawkshaw for being so muddy; then she tossed him a biscuit with a slice of salt pork in it.
    "I found something," Arne told them. "A big box." He described it for them with his hands. "Do you want to see it?" he asked his father.
    "After we've et," his father said, pouring buttermilk for them and cold sassafras tea for Birka. She sat on a needlepoint cushion with her back against a wagon wheel, nibbled some potato salad and watched the drifting clouds with a half-formed, contented smile. A strong breeze raked hair across her forehead. The horses ate sweet grass and flashed their brisk tails at flies.
    Arne convinced his father to bring with them a hundred-foot length of new rope stored beneath the springseat of the wagon.
    "Whatever it is," his father said, as they walked back to the bluff where Arne had seen the crate, "I can't say it's ourn to keep."
    "But if we don't pull it up, it'll just fall back in the river someday! Then nobody'll own it!"
    "Well, let's have us a look."
    From the edge of the bluff his father studied the crate lodged in the branches of the flood-swept trees. Just out of his reach, even when he went down on his stomach with a hand extended.
    "I could climb down there," Arne volunteered.
    "You could fall in, too." He gave one of the branches a shaking, but the tangled mass didn't budge.
    "I'll be careful. Can you make out what that writing says?"
    "No. The crate looks to be upside down." Arne was sure that, even if the lettering had been easier to see, his father probably wouldn't have been able to read it. He'd only finished fifth grade, and was often self-conscious about his lack of learning.
    Arne took one end of the rope, passed it through his belt, and climbed down slowly, finding the nearly bare limbs scum-slippery and the entire mass suddenly uneasy beneath his modest weight. He realized that if the flotsam shifted and went down quickly into the river, he could be trapped in an underwater maze. But he had a hand on his prize and wasn't about to give it up. He threaded the rope through a handle on the crate. Then came the difficult part: he had to balance himself, feet on a branch, hip against the end of the crate, while he used both hands to tie a good knot.
    His father gave him encouragement, then said, "That'll hold. Get back up here now."
    He kneeled and held out a hand to give Arne purchase as he climbed up the last three feet through the branches. Arne was flushed with accomplishment.
    "Maybe it's tools," he said.
    "Might be." His father tightened up on the rope he had belayed around his waist. The crate moved, slipping sideways from its niche.
    "Careful it don't fall and pull you in after!" Arne said, admiring the swell of his father's biceps, the arching of his shoulders and heavily muscled back.
    "Get a hold of my belt and toe in," his father instructed. His feet were solidly spread. He gripped the rope with both hands. "I'm going to haul it up here now."
    They were both prepared for a lot of dead weight, but when the crate slid free of the enclosing branches he staggered slightly backward, Arne dropping to his knees behind him.
    "Ain't tools," his father said, taking a new grip on the line and pulling, almost effortlessly,