Swamp Sister

13

When the knock sounded on his door, Shad already had his boots and pants off. Hayday, he thought, she timed that right close, and excitement poured through him as he started for the door. This was what he'd been waiting for all day. This would wash away the bad taste of Iris Culver.

"Let me in, Shad. It's Margy."

He blinked. Margy? Why in hell's name was it Margy? Where was Dorry? Something's gone wrong. Something's cold gone wrong. He said "Hold on," and went back for his jeans. He was getting as jittery as a man with sow bugs in his shorts.

He went to the door and opened it, didn't say anything, just looked at Margy and then stepped aside. She came in barefooted and quick, and not looking at him after the first time. She stopped just inside the door and stared at the cabin as though expecting great changes.

"Dorry sent me," she said.

She appeared subdued to him, and as he pushed the door shut he sensed that his temper was growing unhandy.

"I didn't reckon it was your ma. Has anything happened to Dorry?"

She shook her head. "No. But Mr. Ferris is up to our place."

Now Mr. Ferris was here to plague him. Iris – Iris must have phoned that damn Yankee after he ran out on her. No – couldn't be. Wouldn't be enough time for the insurance man to come that far. Who then?

"What's he doing at your place?"

"Come to check the money you give Pa. Got him a list of all the serial numbers of the bills that come from the Money Plane, and he's ben gathering up all of 'em that you've passed out like a drunk fool, and he knows thataway that you've gone and found hit."

"He's coo-coo!" Shad snapped automatically.

Serial numbers. That was something he hadn't counted on. The fat was surely in the fire now.

"Why's he coo-coo?" Margy asked. "Ever'body knows you found the Money Plane."

"Ever'body's got him a big mouth."

She looked at him challengingly. "Shad Hark – you goan stand there and tell me you ain't found it?"

"I ain't fixing to stand here and tell you nothing about it. You ner nobody else."

"But you did find it, didn't you, Shad?"

"Shut up on it." He turned away slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Where's Dorry?"

"She stayed up to home to keep Mr. Ferris busy while I come down here."

"Busy how?"

Her eyes sparked at that, and he liked the way she looked.

"I'll kindly thank you to know my folks is to home, Shad Hark," she said coldly. Shad grinned.

"Why you always flying off at me thataway? Did I even pull your pigtails en something when you was little?" he wanted to know.

Margy looked down at her bare feet, then she looked at his beltline. "Dorry says you'n her fixing to run away. Says you got that money hid, and when you git it you'n her goan be long gone."

"She did, huh?"

That Dorry. Had everything figured out as nice as a dress pattern. Well, she was right, but was it safe to trust Margy? He supposed so, anyway, it looked as though he'd have to trust someone.

"Is that what you got against me?"

She looked at his eyes. "You're a thief. And now you're fixing to steal my sister."

He caught her wrist, not to hurt, but to give emphasis to his denial.

"You got no call to brand me thief 'less you know fen certain I got that money out a the Money Plane. And if your sis has it in mind to tag after me, that's her idee."

"Shad -" her voice was low, "you love Dorry?"

Love? Well, did he? He hadn't really thought about that, ever, about anyone. You always say "I love you" to the girls you get in the bull-grass and the hay, but they expect that, whether they believe it on not, because it's part of the game. You accept a brother like Holly just because he is your brother; and it was impossible to love the old man; and he'd never really known his mother So who had he ever loved? He knew the driving something he felt for Dorry was a far cry from love, from the true meaning of the word. He'd learned that from the books Iris Culver had given him. It had baffled him at first, but later he'd begun to understand.

"Shore," he said. "Shore I love her." It didn't hurt to lie a little, did it? There wasn't any sense in getting Margy mad again, was there? And anyway, this something that made him hunger after Dorry -you might as well call it love.

"And you goan marry with her?"

Was he? He hadn't thought of that either, no more he bet than Dorry had. "Yeah. If'n she wants me."

Margy nodded, looking away, looking at the cabin again.

"Well," she murmured, "she's her own woman. I got no call to try and cut acrost on her. Got her an idee she wants out a this swamp, wants big things out a life."

"Well, you cain't blame her none fen that. So do I."

Margy said nothing to that. She said, "She wants you to meet her at the old Colt place tomonry night at nine. She says you to git out of here now because Mr. Ferris is fixing to come at you tonight. I guess that's all."

Shad looked around at the cabin. Funny, now that he had to leave he realized he was going to miss the old scow. It wasn't such-a-much, but it had its comfort.

"Look a-here, Margy, you see anyone tail you down here? You see Jort Camp er Sam Parks about in the woods?"

"No. Why should I? Why should they want to come after me?"

He shrugged. "Lots of them damn fools ben moseying after me all day. I kin shake'em when I want, but I just got a notion that Sam is tagging me like a man's shadow at high noon."

"Well, if he be, you'll never shake him. You know Sam."

Shad grinned. "You don't know Shad."

"Well -" she said, looking at the deck again. "Well -"

"Well -" Shad said, helping her look.

Now that it was time to say goodbye and there was nothing else to be said, they were embarrassed. He looked across at her without raising his head. She was a cute little thing. He reckoned that was the word for her. Cute. Perky nose, big-eyed, shy-lipped. Not a sex box like her sister, like most. And suddenly he had the absurd compulsion to put his arms around her; not to get fresh or gay with her, just hold her protectively; wrap her in cellophane and put her away for himself.

"Well -" she said, and she started edging toward the door. Shad put out his hand. "Friends?"

She looked up at him, her eyes enormous and very brown but not coquettish on shy. "Yes." And she took his hand.

"Thanks fer helping me – us, Margy."

She nodded. "You'll take care of her, Shad? You won't hurt her ner run out'n her? She – she's kind of flighty someways, needs have people help her."

"I'll be good to her, Margy. I promise it."

She opened the door but didn't go all the way out. She looked up at him. "Good luck, Shad," she said.

He watched her go in the dark, then stepped back and closed the door, stared at it for a moment.

"I'm shone God going to need it," he said.

There was no sense in hanging around waiting for trouble, because trouble waited for no one. He got out his carbine and wrapped it as well as he could in his denim jacket running the barrel up one sleeve, folding the nest night about the stock, trigger-guard and bolt action. Then he tied the lace of the right boot to the lace of the left and looped the clodhoppers about

his neck. He cocked his felt hat on his head and looked at the cabin again. The old ball-dialled clock oven the bunk was still holding its own, still proclaiming the time to be 5:32.

He shrugged, blew out the lamp and made for the door.

The lamplight still bright in his eyes, he found himself standing night-blinded on the porch. He closed his eyes, waited, and then opened them and looked at the backwater. Moonlight. That was going to give Sam a big edge.

He looked at the dark line of underbrush, backed up by the reaching black woods, and sensed the presence of Sam Parks, felt the woods colt's eyes boning out of the night. But the only way he could be certain was to trick him. You just didn't catch Sam off base unless you could surprise him, and that took some doing because Sam wasn't human in the woods.

Shad moved abruptly. He wheeled around the corner of the cabin, went quickly along the gangplank and out onto the bank, heading upsiough. Git your walking legs out, Sam, he said. We got us some rambling to do.

Jort Camp saw Shad come off the shantyboat and knew he didn't stand a waddle-bottomed bear's chance of tailing him without Shad knowing about it within five-six minutes.

"Kin you holt to him?" he whispered to Sam.

The corners of Sam's lips punched into his cheeks like a cat's grin. "Shone's water's wet," he said.

"Then git. I'll double back on that air Ferris fella and see what he's up to. We got to keep him shed of Shad. I ain't about to have him walk off with that eighty thousand."

"See you back to your place," Sam said. He glided into his familiar crouch, feeling wildly elated now that there was action he could handle. The fidgets, the self-torture of his abject morality, all were left behind in the bush. Sam was all business. Quicken than a wolf could sneeze and recover he was gone.

Jort grinned. "Damn old fox," he muttered.

He'd been thunderstruck an hour ago when he'd seen Mr. Ferris arrive at Mears' place. He hadn't counted on that happening quite so soon. Now that Mr. Ferris was in the picture, he and Sam would have to look spry. That Ferris fella had come along to get the eighty thousand out of Shad.

And later when Margy had slipped out of the rear of the house and ran for the woods, Jort had understood that too, Sam had told him that Dorry had shacked up with Shad the night before, and that first thing the next morning she had run off for Tonkville and had returned that afternoon in a new dress. Yeah, that took a lot of guesswork, he reckoned not. Now she'd sent her little sister down to the backwater to warn Shad about that Ferris fella. So Jort had tagged after her just to be sure.

And he had another idea going, maybe he ought to have a quiet little chat with Dorry Means. It was just possible that hot little piece had already found out from Shad where he had the money hid. Yeah, and she could do it, too. It was shore God's laughter the way some fellas let a little bit of fluff drag 'em around on a leash.

Shad went along the bank for a while, then abruptly darted left into the bush, going at it in a running crouch. He went ploughing through the brambles with catclaws picking after him vindictively, disputing his passage; held to his course for nearly one hundred yards, then cut left again, dodging among the paw-paws, and crossed back on his own trail, coming to light under a tupelo bush where he could see the glimmer of the backwater through the shrubbery.

He held his breath, listened. Something was rustling the dead leaves off to his right but there was the sweet, pungent scent of mink along with it, so that was nothing. He gave Sam another minute and then shook his head. Nope. If Sam's out here, then he's already swung around in back of me again. Son-o-bitch is harder to lose than a tick on a doe's butt.

Far off a night-running hound cut loose and fified the woods with round-note blues. Then a pack joined him, and in a moment all the hounds were wailing as if they were going to be paid for it. Shad decided to put the baying to good advantage, to cover his own noise. He shoved up and went humpbacked through the bush again.

He came out on the bank and approached the weir. The leading-off silver shoulder of falling water was spilling in monotonous, uniform splashing. Shad stepped onto the ankle-deep rocks and started picking his way across, not too carefully. Gaining the far shore he went at the bush as though he meant business, as though he meant to be long gone. But he wasn't. He went twenty-some feet into the leafy darkness and then cut back to the screened fringe of the bank.

But three-four minutes passed and there was no sign of Sam or anyone else. Don't it just beat all? The little bastard's skipped up-slough and crossed where she shallows. Bet my money he's sitting five yards off laughing at me right now. He stood up and started north.

He broke into a fast run, skimming through chokeberry, catclaw and smilax, cutting up his trail, first night, then left and straight on, and then left again, and brought up panting and stumbling just where he wanted to be, in a boulderdeep glen lorded over by an old lichen-skinned oak. The oak had a hollow hide-hole and Shad had known about it since boyhood. It was just possible that this was one hollow tree in the woods that Sam wasn't acquainted with. He doubted it though, but it didn't really matter. He dropped to his knees and shoved the denim-wrapped carbine and his boots inside the black opening. Then he pushed up and got out of there fast.

He made a wide swing back to the weir, necrossed it and ran down the line of woods past the shantyboat. He approached the lake carelessly, hoping now that Sam would spot him; trotted out onto the beach and entered the water; walked in up to his chest and then submerged himself and started swimming blind.

The first shock of it on his shouldenblades and the back of his neck seemed as cold to him as a well-digger in the Klondike, but he held at it, swimming fast and froglike underwater, aiming in the general direction of a distant hummock he'd spotted.

He swung around under water and surfaced on the far side of the mound. It was a stick and silt-built affair rising a yard high. He pulled himself along in the water touching the prongy, sticky heap gingerly, and eased his head over the tapering hump at the north end. Beyond his back – two hundred feet on – was a projecting tongue of woodland. If Sam was in the bush somewhere, he'd expect Shad to make for that tongue. Shad stayed where he was, scanning the shore.

Suddenly he saw what he wanted – a slow, searching glimmer-pale object poked above the bushes and panned left to right and slowly back to left again. Hayday! He knew it all the time. There was old Sam, wondering where he'd got off to.

The object he took for Sam's head pulled down and was swallowed in the dark shrubbery. And there was nothing else. Shad grinned. The old fox. And him hating water the way he does, he thinks to cut around on me like he done afone in the backwater, and try to pick me up again on the tongue.

Shad pulled himself along to the south end of the hummock, filled his lungs with air and submerged. He set out in the black murk for shore, hitch-kicking soundlessly.

He touched down in a maiden cane bed and crawled into the shadowy pool sink that was the mouth of the bridgecreek. After that he had no trouble getting away under the coven of night.

But his rambles were far from over. He slipped down to Sutt's Landing and found that his skiff was still where he'd left it. And that was a load off his mind. Moving the skiff to a hiding place was the only reason he'd gone through all that business with Sam. He had to have the skiff in a spot where he could get at it quick.

He stepped into the skiff, cast it loose and pushed the end of the stub pole down into the muck and shoved off. He followed along the shore where he could use the pole, where he had the protection of the shadows, and worked his way on down to Horseshoe Lake, just beyond the Culver place. There he rammed the boat into a need thicket, secured it to a breather with the painter, and slogged off into the woods again.

He had to go all the way down to the backwater and across the weir to get his gear and then return to the skiff before he could call it a night. He was really beginning to miss the shabby comfort of the shantyboat.

He was careful in the woods as he approached the old oak. He circled the glen twice before he deemed it safe to go on in. The glen waited cool, shadow-still. He squatted between two grotesque, moon-grey roots and rummaged around in the hide-hole for his gear. He pulled out boots and denim jacket.

For a moment he couldn't believe it. He clutched the jacket, twisting it, expecting to come up short against the ramrod feel of the carbine. Then he shook it, and then he felt along the left sleeve, and still not believing it, along the right. Nothing. He rooted in the hide-hole up to his shoulder and neck but all he could find were old mice skulls and bird feathers.

Shad squatted back on his haunches and shook his head. That Sam.

The new sun hung low over the swamp when Mrs. Taylor opened the door and stepped out on the porch. A saffron glare lay on the weed patch in front of the shanty and slanted on the road between the skinny trees. She could see Shad coming up from the landing, and heard Rival's insistent hiss right behind her, "You git him on in here. Go on now, hear?" And a moment later she heard the other door close, but she didn't look back. She watched Shad coming and hated it.

"Hi, Shad!" she called suddenly. "Where you going at this morning?"

The boy stopped short, startled, looking like he was ready to take off for the bush, and she wished he would. Then he grinned and came some into the yard.

"Just gitting up to Pa's place fer a spell. Got to see him about something."

She nodded, fussing nervously with the hem of her apron. "Bet you won't find much that goes fer a breakfast up there."

"Bet I won't at that – less hit's some corn Pa had left in the jug when he drunked hisself blind last night."

Well go on then, the top layer of her thoughts said, go to drink the blame corn. Don't make me bring you in here. She hesitated, a little trembly smile nearly lost in her beefy face and said, "Well, I just got some fixings left from last night. You're kindly welcome to that."

Shad said all right and thankee and came up the steps followed her into the shanty. Outside the morning had a touch of the chills and Shad, having slept the night in the skiff in his damp clothes, felt as brittle as glass. The room was rosy bright and glowing warm from the fire in the limestone fireplace, and something was perking in the big black pot hooked to the end of the long swivel bar

Mrs. Taylor put a plate down and said, "Set, Shad."

She didn't look at him and knew she should, but couldn't. She started mixing corn pone in the skillet watching what she was doing, wondering how to come at it, what to say exactly, and wishing Rival wasn't standing just ten feet away listening behind the door.

"When you going at that swamp again, Shad?" she asked suddenly.

Shad had just tilted back in his chair, giving himself a good stretch and yawn, and her question suspended him.

"Oh, I don't know. I ain't in no great hurry, I reckon."

"No," she said. "I reckon not."

And then they said nothing, and they both sensed that there was a great deal to be said, and neither of them wanted to come at it. Mrs. Taylor put the hot pone on his plate and said, "I got some wild salat and sowbelly here."

"Don't go to no bother."

"Tain't no bother."

She dished up the mustard greens and passed him the vinegar, and then she sat down across the table from him. Shad ate, keeping his eyes on the food. He knew something was wrong – different somehow. There was a mouse in the meal, somewhere.

"Where do you usually go at in that swamp, Shad?" she asked.

"Up Breakneck way."

"Tain't much up thataway. Rival says Breakneck's all played out fen skins."

Shad talked around a mouthful of pone. "I try some other creeks too."

"Oh. Which ones?"

"I disremember."

He knows I'm fishing him, she thought desperately. And he's going mean overn hit. But she had to take the plunge for Rival's sake, hers too, because what belonged to Rival belonged to her – problems, pain, security, and a cussed little of that they'd ever had to share.

"I was wondering, Shad, if'n you wouldn't want somebody to go along with you in there next time; it so big and lonely and dangerous-some and all fer one man."

Shad looked at her.

"What I was thinking was that now Rival's got the manure started out in the south ploughing and has got him all the pullets weeded and is nearly done ditching that waste piece-" She couldn't seem to control her volubility now that she had started, and was aware that she wasn't really saying anything, but was only racing word after word in a frantic effort to screen her purpose, and was aware too that Shad realized it, and so she finished with a rush, "- he thought he'd go at that swamp fen a spell, too." Shad said nothing.

"And git him some skins," she added lamely.

Shad went tsk at his chipped tooth and looked at his plate again.

Why don't he say something? she asked. Why do he just sit there statue-dumb? "Rival's powerful good with traps, you know, Shad. Kin build him a deadfall like nobody – and he's handysome in the swamp too. A man like Rival would be a big help to you, Shad, and company as well, and – and we thought on him going with you because Rival says they ain't nobody knows the hide-holes of mink and otter and coon like you, and – and we could shore use that money, Shad – the pelt money, I mean."

Why cain't I shet up? Why cain't I just sit here and keep my big mouth shet and stop a-hammerin him with words? And why do Rival got to stand in there like a shaky hant just a-pantin over ever word I say, and me knowin hit, and Shad gittin all mean, and me feelin like a ma to him and wantin to mama him, but got to be a wife to Rival and stand by him and do what he says because he's the man of the family and hit's his job to do to support us, and the pore old fella all saddled with debt at Sutt's, and the land all fallow and not fit for raisin nothin except rocks?

Shad put down his fork and stood up.

"Yeah," he said stiffly. "I know what you mean." He looked at her. "But I ain't fixing to take me no partner."

She watched her fat fingers work along the apron hem.

"Well, I just thought it – being so lonely and all – Rival needing some work and -" Her voice went off somewhere by itself and she abjectly let it go. The sowbelly and mustard green water went ploop! in the pot and she looked at it because it was something to do.

Shad dug into his jeans and brought out a fifty-cent piece and put it on the table by his unfinished plate. She looked at the money as though it were a slap in the face.

"I tolt you yesterday I didn't want no money fer breakfast."

Everything about him was still ramrod-stiff. "That was yesterday," he said. "Today I'm paying. See you."

But she couldn't let him go like that. She stood up quickly, letting the apron unravel out of her pudgy hand "Shad -"

He looked back at her, his eyes as friendly as two knotholes in a planed board.

"Take care, Shad," she murmured.

"I aim to." And then he was gone and all she heard was his boots clumping down the steps, and then nothing.

She touched the table with the tips of three fingers, holding them there, as if her equilibrium demanded the tactile awareness of material things.

Rival Taylor opened the fan door and came into the room. He was a rawboned man with a kinked up back from too many years of stooping; his hands were wide, brown and like scuffed leather, made for holding tools, for gripping plough shafts, and they were too big and spare for his wrists. He scowled at his wife. "Why you done let him git away like that?" he wanted to know.

"I done said just as much as I could," she said, but not defensively. She was staring at the fifty-cent piece.

Rival put his oversized hands together and worked the palms one against the other. "Thought he was a friend of yourn?"

"I reckon he thought so too," she said softly. "But not now."

And then he went on the defensive.

"Well, damn-hit-all, hit seemed like a good idee, didn't it? Him having all that money out there, and us down to beans, and him being a good friend of yourn. Seems to me like if you'd tried, he'd a took me along and let me help him and give me a share. I ain't greedy. I don't want much. Just a little piece of her would a done. If mebbe you'd just gone about hit a little diff -"

"You goan plough that south field today?" she cut in.

He blinked, then did something with his head and face as though saying "Aw, what the hell." He nodded. "Yeah."

"Best git at it then."

He said "Yeah" again and turned away. He knew it wouldn't do any good to pick at her now. She'd freeze up and he might just as well go out and address himself to the privy door. He tramped on out with his back in a stoop, his big tool-holding hands open and hanging at his sides like an old pair of stiff working gloves waiting to be fitted to the next job.

Mrs. Taylor roused herself and went over to the south window, stood looking out at the fields. He'll make it yield, she thought, something, somehow, because it's a pant of him. And it's a part of me, too, because he's my man. Mebbe that's wrong, mebbe we're a part of it; mebbe we're its property. And I reckon that ain't saying much -to belong to the land instead of the land belonging to you. Because, God, it's such pore, pore land.