Gone South (23 page)

Pain was throbbing through his body. He had pushed himself too far. But there was still a distance to go, and he couldn’t give up. Get seven or eight hours of sleep, he’d feel better. Drive after dark, down into the swampland. They know ’bout the Bright Girl there. Go south, you’ll find her. You His hands, you gone have to steer her the right direction.

Crazy old man. I’m a killer, that’s what I am.

Dan turned over onto his side and curled his knees up toward his chest.

You His hands.

And with that thought he slipped away into merciful and silent darkness.

“Y
OU KNOW
E
LVIS, ALMOST
gave up singin’ when he was a young boy. Signed on as a truck driver, and that’s what he figured on bein’. Did I tell you I used to be a truck driver?”

“Yes, Eisley,” Flint said wearily. “Two hours ago.”

“Well, what I was meanin’ is that you never know where you’re goin’ in this life. Elvis thought he was gonna be a truck driver, and look where he went. Same with me. Only I guess I ain’t got to where I’m goin’ yet.”

“Um,” Flint said, and he let his eyes slide shut again.

The sun was hot enough to make a shadow sweat. The Eldorado’s windows were down but the air was still, not a whisper of a breeze. The car was parked on a side road under the shade of weeping willow trees, otherwise they couldn’t have stayed in it as they had for almost twelve hours. Even so, Flint had been forced to take off his coat and unbutton his shirt, and Clint’s arm dangled from its root just below the conjunction of Flint’s rib cage, the hand clenching every so often as if in lethargic protest of the heat. The reflexes of Clint’s hand had kept Mama entertained for a while, but now she lay asleep in the backseat, her pink tongue flopped out and a little puddle of drool forming on the black vinyl.

There was one cracked and potholed highway from Houma to Vermilion, no other road in or out. It had brought Flint and Pelvis along its winding spine south through the bayou country in the predawn darkness, and though they hadn’t been able to see much but the occasional glimmer of an early morning fisherman’s lamp upon the water, they could smell the swamp itself, a heavy, pungent odor of intermingled sweet blossoms and sickly wet decay. They had crossed a long, concrete bridge and come through the town of Vermilion, which was a shuttered cluster of ramshackle stores and clapboard houses. Three miles past the bridge, on the left, was a dirt road that led through a forest of stunted pines and needle-tipped palmettos to a gray-painted cabin with a screened-in porch. The cabin had been dark, Lambert’s car nowhere around. While Pelvis and Mama had peed in the woods, Flint had walked behind the cabin and found a pier that went out over a lake, but because of the darkness he couldn’t tell how large or small the lake was. A boathouse stood nearby, its doors secured by a padlock. Lambert might or might not be on his way here, Flint decided, but it was fairly certain he hadn’t shown up yet. Which was for the best, because Pelvis let out a loud yelp when a palmetto pricked him in a tender spot and then Mama started rapid-firing those high-pitched yips and yaps that made Flint’s skin crawl.

They’d driven back to Vermilion and Flint had used the phone booth in front of a bait-and-tackle shop. He’d called Smoates’s answering service and been told by the operator on duty that the light was still green, which meant that so far as Smoates knew, Lambert hadn’t been caught. Flint had found a dirt side road about fifty yards south of the turnoff to the cabin that he could back the Cadillac onto and still have a view through the woods. It was here that they’d been sitting since four o’clock, alternately keeping watch, sleeping, or eating the glazed doughnuts, Oreo cookies, Slim Jims, and other deadly snacks from Eisley’s grocery sack. They had stopped at a gas station just south of Lafayette to fill up and get something to drink, and there Flint had bought a plastic jug of water while Pelvis had opened his wallet for a six-pack of canned Yoo-Hoos.

“I swear,” Pelvis said between sips from the last can, “that’s an amazin’ thing.”

Flint remained silent; he was wise to Eisley’s methods of drawing him into pointless talk.

“I swear it is,” Pelvis tried again. “That little fella inside you, I mean. You know, I went to a freak show one time and saw a two-headed bull, but you take the cake.”

Flint pressed his lips together tightly.

“Yessir.”
Slllurrrrp
went the final swallow of the Yoo-Hoo. “People’d pay to see you, they surely would. I know
I
would. I mean, if I couldn’t see you for free. Make you some money that way. You ever want to give up bounty-huntin’ and go into show business, I’ll tell you everythin’ you need to —”

“Shut — your — mouth.” Flint had whispered it, and instantly he regretted it because Eisley had worn him down yet again.

Pelvis dug down into the bottom of the sack and came up with the last three Oreos. Three bites and they were history. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Really, now. You ever think about show business? All jokin’ aside. You could get to be famous.”

Flint opened his eyes and stared into Pelvis’s sweat-beaded face. “For your information,” he said coldly, “I grew up in the carnival life. I had a stomach full of ‘show business,’ so just drop it, understand?”

“You was with the carnival? You mean a freak show, is that right?”

Flint lifted a hand to his face and pressed index finger and thumb against his temples. “Oh, Jesus, what have I done to deserve this?”

“I’m int’rested. Really I am. I never met nobody was a real live freak before.”

“Don’t use that word.”

“What word?”

“Freak!”
Flint snapped, and Mama jumped up, growling. “Don’t use that word!”

“Why not? Nothin’ to be ’shamed of, is it?” Pelvis looked honestly puzzled. “I reckon there’s worse words, don’t you think?”

“Eisley, you kill me, you know that?” Flint summoned up a tight smile, but his eyes were fierce. “I’ve never met anybody so … so
dense
before in my entire life.”

“Dense,” Pelvis repeated. He nodded thoughtfully. “How do you mean that, exactly?”

“Thick-skulled! Stupid! How do you think I mean it?” Flint’s smile had vanished. “Hell, what’s wrong with you? Have you been in solitary confinement for the last five or six years? Can’t you just shut your mouth and keep it shut for
two
minutes?”

“Course I can,” Pelvis said petulantly. “Anybody can do that if they want to.”

“Do it, then! Two minutes of silence!”

Pelvis clamped his mouth shut and stared straight ahead. Mama yawned and settled down to sleep again. “Whose watch we usin’ to time this by?” Pelvis asked.

“Mine! I’ll time it on my watch! Startin’ right now!”

Pelvis grunted and rummaged down in the sack, but there was nothing left but wrappers. He upturned the last Yoo-Hoo can to try to catch a drop or two on his tongue, then he crumpled the can in a fist. “Kinda silly, I think.”

“There you go!” Flint rasped. “You couldn’t last fifteen seconds!”

“I’m not talkin’ to
you!
Can’t a man speak what’s on his mind? I swear, Mr. Murtaugh, you’re tryin’ your very best to be hard to get along with!”

“I don’t want you to get along with me, Eisley!” Flint said. “I want you to sit there and zipper your mouth! You and that damn mutt have already messed things up once, you’re not gonna get a chance to do it again!”

“Don’t blame that on Mama and me, now! We didn’t have nothin’ to do with it!”

Flint gripped the steering wheel with both hands, red splotches on his cheeks. Clint’s hand rose up and clutched at the air before it fell back down again. “Just be quiet and leave me alone. Can you do that?”

“Sure I can. Ain’t like I’m
dense
or any thin’.”

“Good.” Flint closed his eyes once more and leaned his head back.

Maybe ten seconds later Pelvis said, “Mr. Murtaugh?”

Flint’s eyes were red-rimmed when he turned them on Eisley, his teeth gritting behind his lips.

“Somebody’s comin’,” Pelvis told him.

Flint looked through the pines along the road. A vehicle — one of only the dozen or so they’d seen on the road all day — was approaching from the direction of Vermilion. In another few seconds Flint saw it wasn’t a station wagon but a truck about the size of a moving van. As the truck grew nearer, Flint made out the blue lettering on its side:
BRISCOE PROCESSING CO.
Under that was
BATON ROUGE,
LA. The truck rumbled past them and kept going south, took a curve, and was gone from sight.

“I don’t think Lambert’s comin’,” Pelvis said. “Should’ve been here by now if he was.”

“We’re waitin’ right here. I told you waitin’ was a big part of the job, didn’t I?”

“Yessir,” Pelvis agreed, “but how do you know he ain’t been caught already? We could sit here till crows fly back’ards, and if he’s done been caught he ain’t comin’.”

Flint checked his wristwatch. It was eighteen minutes until four. Eisley was right; it was time to make a call to Smoates again. But Flint didn’t want to drive into Vermilion to use the phone, because if Lambert was coming, it would be across that bridge and Flint didn’t care to be spotted. It would be easier to take Lambert when he thought he was safe in the cabin rather than chasing him north on the highway. Flint looked in the direction the truck had gone. There had to be some trace of civilization farther south. He unfolded his Louisiana roadmap, one of a half-dozen state maps he always kept in the car, and found the dot of Vermilion. About four or five miles south of that was another speck called Chandalac, and then Highway 57 ended three miles or so later at a place named LaPierre. Beyond that was swampland all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

The truck had to be going somewhere, and there had to be at least one pay phone down there, too. Flint started the engine and eased the Eldorado out of its hiding place. He ignored Pelvis’s question of “Where we headed?” and turned right, the sun’s glare sitting like a fireball on the long black hood.

In the brutal afternoon light they could see the type of country they’d driven through in darkness: on both sides of the road the flat, marshy land was alternately cut by winding channels of murky water and then stubbled with thick stands of palmettos and huge ancient oak trees: Around the next curve a brown snake that had to be a yard long was writhing on the hot pavement on Flint’s side of the road, and he figured the truck had just crushed it a couple of minutes earlier. His spine crawled as the car passed over it, and when he glanced in the rearview mirror he saw two hulking birds that must’ve been vultures swoop down on the dying reptile and start tearing it to pieces with their beaks.

Flint didn’t believe in omens. Nevertheless, he hoped this wasn’t one.

They’d gone maybe a couple of miles when the spiny woods fell away on the right side of the road and the sun glittered off a blue channel of water that meandered out of what appeared to be primeval swamp. Just ahead was a white clapboard building with a tin roof and a sign that said
VERMILION MARINA
&
GROCERIES,
and jutting off from shore was a pier where several small boats were tied up. One larger craft — a shrimp boat, Flint thought it was because of the nets and various hoists aboard — had just arrived and its crew was tying ropes down to the pier. And there sat the Briscoe Processing Company truck as well, parked next to the clapboard building with its loading bay facing the pier. Beside the marina, near a sun-bleached sign that advertised live bait, chewing tobacco, and fresh onions, stood a phone booth.

Flint pulled the car to a stop on a surface of crushed oyster shells. He buttoned up his shirt and shrugged into his loose-fitting suit jacket. “Stay here,” he instructed Pelvis as he got out. “I’ll be right back.” He’d taken three strides toward the phone booth when he heard the Eldorado’s passenger door creak open and Pelvis was climbing out with Mama tucked under his arm. “Just go on ’bout your business,” Pelvis said when Flint fired a glare at him. “I’m goin’ in there and get me some vittles. You want anythin?”

“No.”
Vittles,
Flint thought. Wasn’t that what Granny fixed on “The Beverly Hillbillies”? “Wait. Yeah, I do,” he decided. “Get me a bottle of lemon juice, if they’ve got it. And don’t go in there and flap your lips about Lambert, hear me? Anybody asks, you’re here to do some fishin’. Understand?”

“You don’t think I’ve got a lick of sense, do you?”

“Bingo,” Flint said, and he turned his back on Pelvis and went into the phone booth. He placed a call through to Smoates’s office. “It’s Flint,” he said when Smoates answered. “What’s the situation on Lambert?”

“Hold on a minute.”

Flint waited, sweat trickling down his face. It had to be over ninety degrees, even as the sun began to fall toward the west. The heat had stunned Clint, who lay motionless. The air smelled of the steamy, sickly sweet reek of the swamp, and his own bodily aroma wasn’t too delicate, either. He wasn’t used to being unclean; a gentleman knew the value of cleanliness, of crisp white shirts and freshly laundered underwear. These last twenty-four hours had been a little slice of hell on earth, and this swampland looked like Satan’s paradise, too. From where he was standing, Flint could see four men unloading cargo from the shrimp boat. The cargo was greenish-brown and scaly, with long snouts bound shut by copper wire, four stubby legs fastened together with wire as well.

Alligators, he realized with a staff. The men were unloading alligators, each three or four feet long, from the deck of the boat and then carrying them to the Briscoe Processing Company truck and heaving them into the back. The men’s workclothes were wet and muddy, the boat’s deck heaped with maybe twenty or more live and squirming alligators. But there was a fifth man —  slimmer than the others, with shoulder-length grayish-blond hair and wearing blue jeans and a Harvard T-shirt — who stood apart from the workers and seemed to be supervising. As Flint watched, the man in the Harvard T-shirt glanced at him and the sun flared in the round lenses of his dark glasses. The glance became a lingering stare.