The Brat (9 page)

A
NARROW CHANNEL
showed ten feet from the far side, The opening was obscured by a clotted wall of elephant vine, choking in a gnarled tangle of mangroves. I thrust the prow of the boat straight at the channel, passed through the vine. The water was crystal for a few feet over sand bottom before the boat once again glided above black depths.

I had one last quick look at DeGreef over there on the opposite bank, watching me disappear. Keeping out of his way would be a problem now. He’d been flayed as much as he could stand.

I took careful note of where I was going, marking the way, and drove on deeper along the channel. It was straight for a time, then slowly began to curve. You could only sense it, not see it. The channel began to narrow. I slowed the kicker, then turned it off and sat there listening.

The sound of a car’s engine reached me from back by Kaylor’s cabin. I started the kicker, turned the boat and headed back to where I’d been. For a moment, not recognizing the passageway through which I’d come, fear tapped me on the shoulder. Then I saw the elephant vine. I turned and drifted sidewards to the screening vine and looked across.

The white sedan was just vanishing in front of a rolling dust cloud along the road away from Kaylor’s cabin.

I nosed the boat through the vine, turned it along the waterway, heading for the river. This stream cut into it below Rona’s home. It was the only way I knew of coming directly to the first reaches of the swamp. I had to go in there and find out about those shots.

Taking the boat close to the far shore, I searched the area I’d figured the shots came from. There was a tall, bearded cypress far in there, and more distant, a stand of withered pine. I turned the boat back toward Kaylor’s.

The two series of trees would line up in the approximate direction of the shots.

I worked the boat along the stream, through one bad stretch of choking water lilies, and finally under a plank bridge. In a few minutes I was on the river.

This was different. You couldn’t see the strong pull of slow current, but it was there, the black depths threatening. Then the river began to shallow and spread, and far down there were the swamp beginnings again.

I pushed past the Hellings’ house. The place was silent.

I’d gone perhaps two hundred yards toward a broad channel, stretching for a look at the cypress with that peculiar beard of Spanish moss, and the stand of pine, when I heard a call.

“Sullivan?”

It was Rona.

For an instant I debated going over there. The memory of her stirred me sharply. Somehow I found myself wanting to believe everything she’d said was true. She was a disturbingly hot little dish, but maybe too disturbing for what I had ahead of me right now.

She stood on the high bank of the river, to the right, under a sun-yellowed willow clump. The sun shone down through the trees, highlighting the curves of her body under a fawn-colored skirt that was tight and another white blouse. She waved, motioning me to shore.

I slowed the kicker and went over there. She stood about four feet above me on the bank.

“What are you doing, Sullivan?”

“I’m going in there.”

“You’re mad at me?”

“Not exactly.”

She smiled, but her face looked strained, the eyes steady and dark as she watched me. She glanced back over her shoulder quickly, then stepped forward, slid lightly down the slope of bank, and jumped into the boat. She was wearing ankle-high moccasins, laced tight.

“Keep it close to the bank,” she said.

She moved gracefully. The boat barely rocked, only settled, then leveled off. She stepped into the stern, knelt on the bottom, looking at me. The warmly tanned and smooth protrusion of her breasts was revealed through the open front of her blouse as she leaned forward.

“Did you catch him?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Evis right away? It could have saved a lot of trouble.”

“The sheriff—DeGreef,” she said. “He was here just a few minutes ago. He’s looking for you. It’s the second time he was here.”

“Fine.”

Her face became stern. “I wasn’t going to tell you anything. I wanted to help you get away, Sullivan—like I said.” She looked down. “There wasn’t much time. I had to tell you how I felt—I wanted you to know. I know how it sounded, but I can’t help it.”

The golden chain gleamed around her throat, flowed between the shadowed cleavage of her breasts.

“You look awful tired, Sullivan.”

I said nothing, trying to figure what in hell to do.

“Was Kaylor gone?”

I told her about the air boat and she nodded, glanced off toward the jungle wall, then back at me. She laid one hand gently on my arm, squeezed her fingers.

“You look like positive hell,” she said. “Have you eaten today?”

“I’ve got to go in there.”

“Those shots! Am I right?”

I nodded, rolled up the cuffs on my shirt. The heat beat down, and I felt nauseous.

“You’d never find that place—not alone. You’d be lost in a matter of minutes. Sullivan, I meant what I said before. We can both leave, right now. I don’t care where we go. We could change our names….”

I shook my head. “I’m going in there. I’ve got to. For Christ’s sake, try and understand that. I’ve got to find her—it won’t be long before this place is overrun with the Law. It’s the only chance for me.”

She stared at me, her breasts rising and falling under the gap in her blouse. I couldn’t turn my gaze away and she didn’t move, watching me and knowing. I suddenly realized she wasn’t being bold. It was something else. She simply wanted me to look at her, see her, touch her, know her, understand her. It was her way. She didn’t look the type who rolled in the bushes every night with all the fishermen and swampers. Then I knew I was going nuts. To think like that! How could I tell? I looked at her slightly parted lips and into her eyes. The eyes were very steady, her hand rested on my arm again. God damn it! How could I tell anything at all?

“I’ll take you in there,” she said. “If that’s where you’ve got to go.”

“Sure. And tear your clothes off.”

“I’m sorry,” she said soberly. “But how do you expect me to … what I mean, is—I’ve got to do certain things!”

She stood up slowly, watching me steadily, as if she were trying to find out something that puzzled her.

“You wait right here,” she said. There was a shadowed frown, and the lips were set. She leaned down again and, looking at me that way, drew the palm of her hand across my face. Then she turned and leaped for the bank. She ran up the bank, paused at the top.

“You wait right there, Sullivan. Don’t you dare go off.” She ran toward the woods in the direction of the house.

I knew I would wait. I would wait a long time. I turned the kicker off and held to a root that spiraled from the bank, watching the black water slowly move past.

There was absolutely no sound. Then, very far away, I heard the steady, perfectly spaced cry of a bird. It went on endlessly, slow and strident, one note, from vast distance. I waited for it to stop, but it didn’t.

I thought of Evis and leaned forward with my head in my hands, closed my eyes. The boat started to drift away from the bank. I grabbed wildly for the root, caught it, and sat there thinking about Evis: all we’d had together, how I’d loved her, what she’d done to me. And I knew I had to find her again, not only to get that money, but to see her—to try and see beneath the shell she’d shown me for two years. What was in her that made her the way she was? If I didn’t find her, I’d never have any peace, I knew that. But I didn’t know what would happen to me when I saw her. And for a brief moment it was as if we were together again, and there she was leering up at me, waiting on the bed with the hot eyes in the soft pink light of night, panting the words, drawing me into her. Or the early days in the printing shop before I’d hired anybody, and she’d stop in right at a moment when I’d be thinking of her, and she’d lock the door on the way in, and run to me, saying, “I had to see you, honey, or I’d go crazy. Hurry.” And the thing was, I’d be maybe worse than she was, wanting her so much the world wheeled. Any place. Every place. The world could have burned down around us. And there’d be the tenderness and the wildness, too. All exactly right. Sometimes she’d just fall down flat, dress flying, round knees wide, soft red mouth, “Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee!”

And it didn’t let up.

Home the same night. The bed of the damned. Only it wasn’t the bed of the damned then. It was just how wonderful she was, and how much I loved her. Christ almighty, I’d have done anything for her—and she’d have done anything for me.

Or was it
to
me?

Sullivan, you poor, stupid bastard.

So where would you ever find another woman like that? Who did that to you, only didn’t have the other part—the Evis evil? A new promise when Rona touched your arm, looked at you. Evis’s sister, like a fresh starting right in the middle of an absolute hell of remembering. Right then, a blank—for a minute there had never been an Evis.

Just for a minute.

So maybe it would all wash off? And I could go through the same paces again, and the path would be a new path.

Only how about it when you see her? What then, Sullivan?

What if you can’t find her? What then?

You’ve got to find her!

I shut it all off and sat there, not even thinking. The dregs washed around inside me. A little more of that and I’d be nuts.

“Sullivan! I’m back.”

She stood on the bank, holding something wrapped in a newspaper. A canteen was slung from her right shoulder, banging against her hip. A rifle was caught on her left shoulder, hanging by a leather sling. The hilt of a knife jutted from one side pocket.

“I came as fast as I could.”

“Good thing you did.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Hurry up.”

I drew the boat around and in another moment she was on the middle seat of the boat. She glanced at me, removed the canteen, handed it over. Then the package.

“Start the motor,” she said. “I’ll tell you where to go. You can eat as we move along.”

I tried to tell her where I’d placed the shots. I tried to explain something of how I felt, and how I had to find Evis.

“Never mind that,” she said. “I understand that. I’ve done lots of waiting, too, I reckon. Besides, I think you need food.” Her smile was short, eyes averted. “Come on, get going. They didn’t see me take those things from the house, but they’ll suspect when they see the rifle’s gone. It’s the only one we have.”

I picked up the old starter rope and set down the package. The motor roared again, cutting across the silence.

• • •

The food and water revived me. It was as if my brain had been apart from me, out of my skull. The crazy monologue ceased. She was damned right. I needed food more than I’d realized. She’d brought a cold steak, a baked potato, also cold, four slices of bread, and the water. She apologized that the food wasn’t hot.

After I ate, all I wanted was a cigarette. I hadn’t had one since yesterday. She brought out a sack of Bull Durham and rice papers from her pocket and handed them to me. I grinned at her and felt the unused muscles in my face. It was strange to grin. I rolled a smoke as we left the river shallows and moved across deep water holes.

It was a picnic in purgatory.

• • •

We cruised through what seemed an endless flat field of hyacinths. I’d been doubtful of crossing, but she’d insisted I head straight into them.

It began to get hot. The sun was a blend of dazzling white that seemed to spread across the entire sky.

“Where could they have gone?” I said, talking above the sound of the kicker.

“No telling. If Berk Kaylor’s with them, then we’ve got to worry. But if Evis is alone—” She shrugged. The gold chain of the locket flashed between her breasts. “Evis knows parts of the swamp—but only parts. She’s got a very bad sense of direction. With that, you’re a fool to go in there.”

“But they had an air boat. Kaylor did, anyway.”

“Berk has one, yes. If Evis and this other man left from Kaylor’s, they didn’t have one, though.”

“You don’t seem at all worried.”

She was seated with her legs close together, hands clasped across her knees, watching me.

I suddenly found myself doubting her; just as I had to doubt anybody connected with over one hundred thousand dollars. You can be a fool, and then go right on being a fool—but it’s got to end someplace. There was no telling what went on inside a woman’s head.

“There’s your cypress, Sullivan.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

“I like the sound of your name. See the cypress?”

We approached it and swung by. The roots stood high in the water, the tree stalwart and bare against the high bright sky, moss-clotted against the one side.

“I figured those shots came from right around here.”

“Not quite,” she said.

“They could have been anything, I suppose.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “You get to know the sounds of different guns. Strangers seldom come into this section.” She pointed to the left, where there was a thickening jungle growth attaining a fairly high line against the sky.

“That’s where the shots came from,” she said. “In there. I can almost tell you the exact spot. I know this water, Sullivan—just as you know the streets of your home town. We aren’t far afield, yet.”

Excitement touched me. Rona moved toward the stern.

“Better let me take the boat, now,” she said quickly. “It’s not easy getting around along here.”

“I can handle it.”

“Quick. I’m not fooling!”

We rapidly neared the jungle. Birds shrieked and screamed, wildly flying. A crane flipped water and took off. Then it was quiet again, with only the sound of the kicker.

Rona stood frowning at me.

I swung the boat along the edge of growth. Mottled limbs shot past and roots arched out over the water as if they’d been carved there. The water was mirror still. We slid under a thick tenting of green into a liquid spattering of pale silver that leaked through and sparked dazzlingly against the water.