Gone South (32 page)

“Gimme a minute. Heart’s beatin’ awful hard. See, I get dizzy spells. That’s why I had to quit my stage show. Is it on straight?”

“Crooked to the right.”

Pelvis made the adjustment. “I passed out onstage last year. Oldie Goldie’s Club in Little Rock. They took me to the hospital, thought I was about to croak.” He paused to draw a few slow, deep breaths. “Wasn’t the first time. Word went ’round, and I couldn’t get no more jobs. Gimme a minute, I’ll be fine. Can you breathe? I can’t hardly breathe this air.”

“You weigh too much, that’s your trouble. Ought to give up all that junk you eat.” Flint was staring down the channel, gauging the distance that Lambert must be putting between them. The going had to be hard on Lambert, too, but he’d probably push himself and the girl until they both gave out. When he looked at Pelvis again, Flint thought that the wig resembled a big, spongy Brillo pad stuck to the man’s head. “I’ll give you three minutes, then I’m goin’ on. You can either stay here or go back to the car.”

Pelvis didn’t care to lose the protection of Flint’s light. “I can make it if you just go a step or two slower.”

“I told you it wasn’t gonna be easy, didn’t I? Don’t fall down and drown on me, now, you hear?”

“Yes sir.” His misshapen wig was dripping water down his face. “I reckon this washes me up, huh? I mean, with Mr. Smoates and the job and all?”

“I’d say it does. You should’ve told him about this, it would’ve saved everybody a hell of a lot of trouble.” Flint narrowed his eyes and glanced quickly at the flare. Maybe they had fifteen minutes more light. Maybe. “You’re not cut out for this work, Eisley. Just like I’m not cut out to … to dress up like Elvis Presley and try to impersonate him.”

“Not impersonate,” Pelvis corrected him firmly. “I’m an interperator, not an impersonator.”

“Whatever. You ought to cut out the junk food and go back to it.”

“That’s what the doctor told me, too. I’ve tried, but Lord knows it ain’t easy to pass up the peanut butter cookies when you can’t sleep at three in the mornin’.”

“Yes, it is. You just don’t buy the damn things in the first place. Haven’t you ever heard of self-discipline?”

“Yes sir. It’s somethin’ other folks have got.”

“Well, it’s what you
need.
A whole lot of it, too.” He checked his wristwatch, impatient to get after Lambert. But Pelvis’s face was still flushed, and maybe he needed another minute. If Pelvis had a heart attack, it’d be hell dragging that bulk of a body out of the swamp. Flint had become acutely aware of the flare sizzling itself toward extinction. He watched Mama licking Pelvis’s chin, her stubby tail wagging. A pang of what might have been envy hit him. “How come you carry that mutt around everywhere? It just gets in the way.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t leave Mama, no sir!” Pelvis paused, stroking Mama’s wet back before he went on in a quieter voice. “I had another dog, kinda like Mama. Had Priss for goin’ on six years. Left her at the vet one weekend when I went on the road. When I got back … the place was gone. Just bricks and ash and burned-up cages. Electrical fire, they said. Started late at night, nobody was there to put it out. They should’ve had sprinklers or somethin’, but they didn’t.” He was silent for a moment, his hand stroking back and forth. “For a long time after that … I had nightmares. I could see Priss burnin’ up in a cage, tryin’ to get out but there wasn’t no way out. And maybe she was thinkin’ she’d done somethin’ awful bad, that I didn’t come to save her. Seems to me that would be a terrible way to die, thinkin’ there was nobody who gave a damn about you.” He lifted his gaze to Flint’s, his eyes sunken in the green glare. “That’s why I wouldn’t leave Mama. No sir.”

Flint turned his attention to his watch again. “You ready to move?”

“I believe I am.”

Flint started off, this time at a slower pace. Pelvis drew another deep breath,
whooshed
it out, and then began slogging after Flint.

Ahead, Dan still gripped Arden’s hand as they followed the channel around a curve. He glanced back; they’d outdistanced the light, and he thought the bounty hunters must’ve stopped for some reason. His eyes were getting used to the dark now. Up through the treetops he could see pieces of sky full of sparkling stars. The water was still deepening, the bottom’s mud releasing bursts of gaseous bubbles beneath their feet. Sweat clung to Dan’s face, his breath rasping, and he could hear Arden’s lungs straining too in the steamy heat. Something splashed in the water on their left; it sounded heavy, and Dan prayed it was simply a large catfish that had jumped instead of a ’gator’s tail steering a set of jaws toward them. He braced for the unknown, but whatever it had been it left them alone for the moment.

Looking back once again, he could see the green light flickering through the undergrowth. They were still coming. Arden looked over her shoulder, too, then concentrated on getting through the water ahead. Her vision had cleared, but where she’d banged her skull against the dashboard was raw with pain. She was wearing out with every step; she felt her strength draining away, and soon she was going to have to stop to catch her breath. She wasn’t on the run; it was Dan the bounty hunters were after, but when they’d take him away they’d take the man she had come to believe was her best hope of finding the Bright Girl. From a deep place within her the voice of reason was speaking, trying to tell her that it was pointless to go any farther into this swamp, that a wanted killer had her by the hand and was leading her away from civilization, that she probably had a concussion and needed a doctor, that her brain was scrambled and she wasn’t thinking straight and she was in the most dangerous place she’d ever been in her life. She heard it, but she refused to listen. In her right hand was clutched the small pink drawstring bag containing what had become her talisman over the years, and she fixed her mind on Jupiter’s voice saying that this was the man God had provided to take her to the Bright Girl. She had to believe it. She had to, or all hope would come crashing down around her, and she feared that more than death.

“I see a light,” Dan suddenly said.

She could see it, too. A faint glow, off to the right. Not electricity. More like the light cast from a candle or oil lamp. They kept going, the water at Dan’s waist and above Arden’s.

Shapes emerged from the darkness. On either side of the channel were two or three tarpaper shacks built up on wooden platforms over the water. The light was coming from a window covered with what looked like waxed paper. The other shacks were dark, either empty or their inhabitants asleep. Dan had no desire to meet the kind of people who’d choose to live in such primitive arrangements, figuring they’d shoot an intruder on sight. But he made out something else in addition to the shacks: a few of them, including the one that showed a light, had small boats — fishing skiffs — tied up to their pilings.

They needed a boat in the worst way, he decided. He put his finger to his lips to tell Arden to remain silent, and she nodded. Then he guided her past the shack where the light burned and across the channel to the next dwelling. The skiff there was secured by a chain and padlock, but a single paddle with a broken handle was lying down inside it. Dan eased the paddle out and went on to the third shack. The boat that was tied there held about six inches of trash-filled water in its hull. There were no other paddles in sight, but the leaky craft was attached to a piling only by a plastic line. In this case beggars couldn’t be choosers. Dan spent a moment untying the line’s slimy knot, then he pulled himself as quietly as he could over into the boat though his foot thumped against the side. He waited, holding his breath, but no one came out of the shack. He helped Arden in. She sat on the bench seat at the bow, while Dan sat in the stern and shoved them away from the platform. They glided out toward the channel’s center, where the current flowed the strongest, and when they were a safe distance away from the shack, Dan slid the stubby paddle into the water and delivered the first stroke.

“Grave robbers!” a woman’s voice shrilled, the sound of it startling Dan and making goose bumps rise on Arden’s wet arms. “Go on and steal it, then, you donkey-dick suckers!”

Dan looked behind. A figure stood back at the first shack, where the light burned.

“Go on, then!” the woman said. “Lord’s gonna fix your asses, you’ll find out! I’ll dance on your coffins, you maggot-eaters!” She began spitting curses that Dan hadn’t heard since his days in boot camp, and some that would’ve curled a drill sergeant’s ear hairs. Another voice growled, “Shut up, Rona!” It belonged to a man who sounded very drunk. “Shut your hole, I’m sleepin’ over here!”

“I wouldn’t piss on your face if it was on fire!” Rona hollered across the channel. “I’m gonna cook up a spell on you. Your balls gonna dry up like little bitty black raisins!”

“Awwwww, shut up ’fore I come over there and knock your head out your ass!” A door whacked shut.

Dan’s paddling had quickened. The woman continued to curse and rave, her voice rising and falling with lunatic cadence. Then she retreated into her hovel and slammed her own door so hard Dan was surprised the place hadn’t collapsed. He saw the light move away from the window and he could imagine a wizened, muttering crone in there stooped over a smoking stewpot with a goat’s head in it Well, at least they had a boat though they were sitting in nasty water. The phrase
up Shit Creek
came to him, but they did have a paddle. When he glanced back again, he no longer saw the green flare’s glow. Maybe the bounty hunters had given up and turned away. If so, good riddance to them. Now all he could do was guide this boat down the center of the bayou and hope it would lead them eventually out to the Gulf. From there he could find somewhere safe to leave the girl and strike out on his own again.

He didn’t like being responsible for her, and worrying about that knock she’d suffered, and feeling her hand clutch his so hard his knuckles cracked. He was a lone wolf by nature, that’s how things were, so just as soon as he could, he was getting rid of her. Anyway, she was crazy. Her obsession with the Bright Girl made Dan think of something he’d seen on the news once: hundreds of people had converged from across the country to camp out day after day in an Oklahoma cornfield where a farmer’s wife swore the Virgin Mary had materialized. He remembered thinking how desperately those people had wanted to believe in the wisdom of a higher power, and how they’d believed that the Virgin Mary would appear again at that same place with a message for mankind. Only she’d never showed up, and the really amazing thing was that none of those hundreds of people had regretted coming there, or felt betrayed or bitter. They’d simply felt that the time wasn’t right for the Virgin Mary to appear again, but they were certain that sometime and somewhere she would. Dan couldn’t understand that kind of blind faith; it flew in the face of the wanton death and destruction he’d witnessed in ’Nam. He wondered if any of that multitude had ever put a bullet between the eyes of a sixteen-year-old boy and felt a rush of exultation that the boy’s AK-47 had jammed. He wondered if any of them had ever smelled the odor of burning flesh, or seen flames chewing on the small skulls. If any of them had walked in his boots, had stood in the dirty silver rain and seen the sights that were seared in his mind, he doubted they would put much faith in waiting for the return of Mary, Jesus, or the Holy Ghost.

Dan paddled a few strokes and then let the boat drift. Arden faced southward, the warm breeze of motion blowing past her. The water made a soft, chuckling sound at the bow, and the bittersweet swamp was alive with the hums and clicks and clacks of insects, the occasional sharp keening of a night bird, the bass thumping of frogs and other fainter noises that were not so identifiable. The only light now came from the stars that shone through spaces in the thick canopy of branches overhead.

Dan started to look back, but he decided not to. He knew where he’d been; it was where he was going that concerned him now. The moment of Emory Blanchard’s death was still a bleeding wound in his mind, and maybe for the rest of his days it would torture him, but the swamp’s silken darkness gave him comfort. He felt a long way from the law and prison walls. If he could find food, fresh water, and a shelter over his head — even the sagging roof of a tarpaper shack — he thought he could live and die here, under these stars. It was a big swamp, and maybe it would accept a man who wanted to disappear. An ember of hope reawakened and began to burn inside him. Maybe it was an illusion, he thought, but it was something to nurture and cling to, just as Arden clung to her Bright Girl. His first task, though, was getting her out, then he could decide on his own destination.

The boat drifted slowly onward, embraced by the current flowing to the sea.

Pelvis held Mama with one arm and his other hand gripped the back of Flint’s soggy suit jacket. The green flarelight had burned out several minutes before, and the night had closed in on them. Pelvis had been asking — begging was the more correct term — Flint to turn back when they’d heard a woman’s voice hollering and cursing ahead. As they’d slogged on through the stomach-deep water, Flint’s left hand slid under his shirt and supported Clint’s head; their eyes had started acclimating to the dark. In another moment they could make out the shapes of the tarpaper shacks, a light moving around inside the nearest one on the right. Flint saw a boat tied up to the platform the shack stood on, and as they got closer he made out that it had a scabrous-looking outboard motor. It occurred to him that Lambert might be hiding in one of the darkened shacks, waiting for them to move past. He guided Pelvis toward the flickering light they could see through a waxed-paper window, and at the platform’s edge Flint said, “Stay here” and pulled himself up on the splintery boards. He paused to remove the derringer, then he pushed Clint’s arm under his shirt and buttoned up his dripping jacket. He held the derringer behind his back and knocked at the shack’s flimsy door.

He heard somebody scuttling around inside, but the knock wasn’t answered. “Hey, in there!” he called. “Would you open up?” He reached out, his fist balled, to knock a second time.