In for the Kill

41

Bocanne, Florida, 1980

Myrna sat in the worn gray vinyl recliner and watched her flickering TV screen. Television wasn't much in the isolated shack. The blues on the screen were greens, and the fleshtones so yellow it appeared that everyone was jaundiced. Myrna didn't have cable, being so far from town, and she couldn't afford one of those new revolving dishes. The beat-up antenna on the house's roof had been struck by lightning and hadn't worked worth a damn since. Sam used to climb up there and adjust the thing toward the signal, but now Sam was gone.

He was sure as hell gone.

And so was Sherman.

Myrna set her beer can on the floor, then got up from the recliner and took a few bent-over steps so she could change the channel and pick up local news.

The truth was, she didn't much care about the quality of the picture. What interested her was information. The TV was at least good enough to receive local channels, and since Sherman had disappeared, Myrna always watched the noon and nightly news.

It had been almost a month now since she'd pursued her son through the swamp, sending piercing spotlight beams into the blackness, calling for him to return, knowing he could hear her or at least hear the rumbling and rattling of the old pickup truck.

But he hadn't replied. When she'd turned off the truck's engine from time to time to listen, her calls were met only with the teeming, vibrant indifference of the swamp. It had been infuriating, almost like an insult.

Sherman had surprised her. He'd been raised at the edge of the swamp and knew what it was, how it could kill. Of course, he also knew what might happen if he returned home. But boys that age didn't think logically. Even after she'd given up and returned to the house, she'd waited and waited, thinking he'd stomp up onto the porch and open the door tired and hungry and hopeless, needing his mother.

Sherman had surprised her, all right. It had been almost a month since he'd run away. He must be dead. He'd chosen his own eventual but certain death in the swamp rather than at her hands.

That puzzled Myrna. Sherman must have thought there was some slight chance that he might talk her out of it, that she'd show him some mercy. After all, she was his mother. Yet he'd faced up to reality.

Still, he was a boy.

With a man's balls, she thought, not without some motherly pride, as she sat sipping beer and waiting for a commercial to end.

Myrna was human, and Sherman was her son. But if time didn't heal, it at least produced a scab. She went days now without thinking about Sherman. There were some bad ways to die in the dark waters of the swamp, and for a long while after his flight her sleep had been interrupted by dreams. But Myrna was a hard and practical woman. That was what the world required of her. She slept well enough, and thought less and less about Sherman as the weeks passed. It wasn't as if she'd had a choice. She told herself that often. She hadn't made the goddamned rules. The world had. Men had.

She settled down into her recliner with a beer to watch the television noon news out of Tampa, as she did every day. It had become so routine she'd almost forgotten why.

"Following up on an earlier story…" said the voice from the TV.

One of the regular anchors, a made-up, jaundiced blonde with too much hair and lipstick, was back. "…the child who's come to be known only as the Swamp Boy still hasn't been identified. He was found wandering the road in Harrison County yesterday, his leg injured, apparently by an animal, judging by the bite marks. He was carrying no identification and still hasn't spoken. Doctors say that other than the leg injury he's physically healthy but in a state of shock. They're hoping that someday soon he'll be able to say his name and tell us who he is"-the anchorwoman put on a serious pout and leaned toward the camera-"and what happened to him."

A photo of the Swamp Boy appeared on the screen. Sherman. Hair long and tangled, face gaunt, eyes wild-but Sherman.

Myrna put her beer can down on the floor and sat back in the recliner, closing her eyes and digging her fingertips into the warm vinyl arms. She couldn't look at the TV screen.

Harrison County. Twenty miles away. My God! He survived somehow, lived somehow on his own in the swamp. All that time…

He doesn't know his name. Doesn't remember.

But he will. The doctors will give him drugs. Hypnotize him. He'll remember. He'll talk.

Myrna felt a sudden panic and stood up from the chair.

Then she took a deep breath, waited for her heartbeat to slow, and retrieved her beer and finished it in a series of gulps. She hadn't thought this day would come, but at the same time she'd been waiting for it. It was a miracle that anyone, let alone a nine-year-old boy, could survive the night in the deep swamp, but miracles seemed to attach themselves to Sherman. Sam Pickens used to talk about how odd Sherman was, and how smart. How very smart.

He'll know. He'll remember. He'll talk.

Myrna knew what she had to do. She turned off the TV, went directly into the bedroom, and began to pack.

By the time people learned from the photograph who Sherman was and the authorities came to see Myrna, they found only the empty shack. It was assumed something bad had happened to her, that she'd been killed or had become lost and died in the swamp. It wasn't unusual for dead bodies never to be recovered from the swamp's dark landscape. She became simply another brief story, another unsolved mystery. Not the first to live on the edge of the vast darkness and one day disappear into it.

Over the coming years, from her anonymity and place of safety, she would read and hear about how the Swamp Boy was identified and had finally talked. But his story about how he'd wandered away from home on his own to go fishing and gotten lost wasn't at all what had happened. Myrna didn't know if Sherman couldn't remember the truth, or had chosen to lie. The mind could blank out certain horrors, but Sherman could be devious.

As his biological mother, she admitted to a certain satisfaction as she read from time to time about how intelligent he was, how, as a ward of the state, he'd been tested and found to have an amazingly high IQ. He was given favoritism, scholarship opportunities, as he was shuffled through a series of institutions and foster homes. Sherman made the most of those opportunities.

Myrna knew that by now he might remember at least something about the time before the swamp, yet he must not have spoken of it, or surely it would have been on the news. She could understand why he would remain silent, considering how people's view of him would change if he revealed his part in what had happened; the boarders who'd disappeared, and whose Social Security checks had continued to be collected and cashed. He'd been a child and wouldn't be in any legal jeopardy, but still, people would have and share their thoughts.

At times Myrna had her own thoughts about Sherman and smiled with motherly pride. Her son. So smart.

Smart enough not to talk.