Note: If you skipped the first chapter: Willard had killed the journalist for personal reasons. It happened a little further downriver, after Lance and Willard had left Kurtz's compound. The journalist was killed with a knife on the muddy shore, while Lance stayed on the adrift boat. (Though, I know how the journalist was supposed to die, as I watched the workprint)
Lance, the puppy (Told by Lance)
Slowly, the wall of blackest darkness approached. I could still hear them; the drums, I heard them distinctly, calling, bewitching, spellbinding, dazing. I heard them as clearly as the pounding rain on the huge leaves of the black thicket in front of me. This night seemed endless, the rhythm monotonous.
A new sound and a tremor broke the monotony, as the boat ran aground in the mud of the shore. It was out of control. No one navigated it.
The black wall of trees was as close now, as if it was bending over me, stretching out its arms at me and whispered to me. The dark being that lurked in it, stared at me with sparkling eyes. It's voice became clearer and it called for me:
"Lance, Lance hey. Snap out of it! Lance. Are you okay? "
The horribly, dark creature wiped its arm across its face and assumed human shape.
"Okay – ", I answered, or I just repeated the question.
"You don't look good," the creature replied with Willard's voice.
Out of breath he sat down right beside me on the floor, put a blood stained hand on my knee and, after a few more, strained breaths he said:
"Shit. What a mess I got us in. Will you help me move her back on the river? "
I looked at him and Willard nodded, trying to encourage me.
"Okay," I muttered. Did I really said that?
Willard got up again and climbed over the boat's rail. After a while I heard him calling me again. His voice sounded far away and indistinct.
"Lance, come on!"
"Now?"
Another eternity passed, untill Willard sat beside me again.
We sat there in silence for a long time. In the rain. Next to us I heard the slosh of the rainwater flowing out of the boat, above us was the eternal black sky, ahead of us the eternal black jungle.
"There is no tomorrow", I had to let Willard know. I closed my eyes.
When I opened my eyes again, the dark night had turned into orange haze. The hum of the engine had replaced the platters of the rain. We drove again. I got up and looked at the river. Only dimly the trees distinguished against the sky.
I sat down behind the pilot-house, on the place which Willard had previously claimed for himself most of the time and listened to the radio. The haze had slowly changed its color. First it was orange, then pink, then yellow, and now it slowly turned white, or maybe it was just about to take on the color green. It was not as dense as it could be sometimes, but wafted past in clouds, leaving only occasional looks at the shore.
I heard Willard muttering to himselve, but I focused more on the music. Only:
" ... Lies – lie to save the own skin", I could hear.
I looked at him. He was silent again, his head resting on the steering-wheel, his hands slid down slowly and his shoulders twitched.
" ... A liar, a liar – how can I ... "
He dropped to the ground and buried his face in his arms. Lost in my own, little world of thoughts, I said:
"Chief", to him.
I crept up behind him and put my arms around him. I felt compelled to comfort him, for me also occupied a strange sadness. In retrospect, I sobbed louder than he did. I did not understand what moved him so very much, after all during the last days we had gone separate ways. But what was it I did during that time? It was hard to remember, it was as if I had just learned to walk.
