Swamp Sister

19

The night was silver and black when Shad stumbled down the backwater bank and onto the gangplank of the shanty-boat. He was damp from having come downriver on logs, but he didn't mind it. Too beat to mind anything. Besides, the night was warm.

Inside, he found a match, got the lantern going, and then brought a can of beans and a spoon to the table. When he sat down it was as if he'd done something permanent, as though from now on he and the chair were one. His eating was automatic. He didn't think about it or even taste the cold beans. He was filling a void.

The can empty, he stood up and pulled off his clothes. Nothing -no, no goddam thing had ever looked better than his bunk. He climbed in groaning like an old man, drew up the blanket and closed his eyes. Immediately he felt like a submerged rock all wavering with undulating weed. Goan buy myself a God-awful big bed with my money, was the last thought he had.

At first the dream was only bothersome. It was Jort's face, all sweaty and unshaven and pig-eyed and rot-toothed, and the mouth kept asking the same question – You think fer a minute we don't know what you and Dorry Mears was up to? And why did it bother him? What was there about the sentence that didn't make sense? Every time he'd try to get hold of it in words, Jort would say it again – You think fer a minute we don't know what you and Dorry Mears was up to?

So finally he hit at the face, only to discover that it belonged to Tom Fort. And Tom was saying, What you done with my girl? I want her back. You give her back, hear? And then more faces and more mouths saying what had he done with her? And hands pawing at him, shoving him around, not letting him get his fists up where he could hit back. What you done with her? the mouths wanted to know. Where you got her? We want you should tell us where you got that old Money Plane. We want a share of her. You goan tell us? Or we got the stuffing to beat outn you?

And finally himself shouting back at the mouths. You don't give a good damn about Dorry. You all the same. Money, that's all you care about. Money, ever' last one of you. And them clamouring. Yeah, yeah, the Money Plane. Where you got her? Money We want that money. And then Edgar Toll's silly face too, slobbering- tongue wagging, hitting at him with a big stick. Kill un, he yelled. Kill un. And then all of them hitting him, and him not able to fight back, and Margy Mears in there too, saying what she had said to him the last time she had seen him, Take care of yourself, Shad – Shad -.

"Shad – Shad, wake up now, hear?"

Normally he awoke as though it were judgement day, coming right up to startled attention. But today it was a long painful road back, a sort of sticky, misty passage out of warm darkness into vague, unfriendly light. And the path was flickering with half-formed images and nonsensical objects. One of them seemed to be Dorry – Dorry bending over him, saying something – wake up, he guessed.

He smiled hazily and put a hand out for her, pulled her down to his chest. Hello, sugar baby, he thought he said, and he cupped his free hand around her right breast. Funny – she'd lost weight, hadn't she?

Instantly the girl was all action and loud indignant protest, even slapped him.

"Shad Hark! You gone crazy? _Stop that_ what you're doing?"

Shad got all of his eyes open then and looked at Margy. Her obsidian eyes sparked black fire. "If you weren't down I'd slap you good, and you so free with your hands." Then, surprisingly, she shut up and looked away.

"That's right," he said. "Never hit a man when he's down."

He looked around at the cabin. It was morning.

"What are you doing here, Margy?"

"Pa sent me down to see did you lock the shantyboat after you."

That didn't make too much sense to him. He propped up on one elbow and rubbed at his face. "How's that? What's hit his business?"

"Well, hit's his shantyboat, ain't it?" she demanded. "If you goan run off with his daughter, least he kin see is his boat still all right." Then she dropped her indignation. "Shad – where's Dorry?"

Shad looked at her. For a moment he wasn't sure that he had successfully left the nightmare. "Home, ain't she? How in hell should I know where is she? What's your fool old man mean, me running off with his daughter?"

Margy put her hands akimbo and looked at him impatiently "What do you mean what does he mean? Why, ever'body knows you'n Dorry ben gone fer days."

Dorry gone? He sat up. The first part of the dream was bothering him again. Jort – Jort Camp. He took hold of the blanket and looked at Margy. "Look out. I'm getting up."

She stepped back quickly. "Well, I'll thank you kindly to remember, Shad Hark, that I'm not a girl that can be -"

"Stop kicking up a fuss over nothing. I got my shorts on." He grinned. "And there ain't much to see nohow – or so some have told me."

"I'll just bet they have." But she turned her back.

He trotted out to the porch, doused a bucket of water over his head, then washed his face and rinsed his mouth. It tasted like an old tobacco pouch.

Margy was still facing the table when he went for his pants.

"It's safe. They's nothing fer you to bust your eyes over."

Her look was arctic. "Ain't that a relief," she said caustically.

He grinned at her. "Oh, I dunno, some gals might consider hit a disappointment." Then he hurriedly cut her off before she could snap back. "Look a-here, Margy," he said seriously "I ain't run off with your sis. I ain't even seen her. I ben three days and nights tooling around out in that old swamp like a blind man in a cornfield."

The look in her eyes wasn't quite disbelief.

"You ain't lying, Shad?"

"God's truth, Margy. I was out there on my lone looking fer that Money Plane – but I didn't find hit. And that's the truth, too."

She couldn't understand it. "Jort Camp and Sam come back night afore last," she said. "They told my Pa and Joel Sutt and that Mr. Ferris that they ben put gator-grabbing. Said they seen you'n Dorry going downriver in your skiff. Said they figured you was running off."

Shad couldn't believe what he heard. "_Seen me and Dorry running off down river?_ Why that goddam Jort and Sam was out in the swamp with me the first day. They wanted that money but I slicked out on'em. They knew I didn't have Dorry with me!"

She didn't know why she had always wanted to trust Shad. It was something about him; maybe the way he acted, moved or looked. She remembered a day when she was twelve. She had met Shad and Tom Fort coming along the road. They'd stolen a watermelon from Uncle Peebie's place and were taking turns toting it. Tom had leered at her that way fifteen-year-old boys always did; had made an insulting remark. He'd thought it really funny, thought it funny when she'd blushed and started to turn off the road, half in shame, half in fear.

But Shad hadn't thought it funny at all. "Shut your goddam mouth," he'd told Tom, and he'd meant it and right now, anyone could tell. "What's wrong with you?" Tom had wanted to know. "Ever-body knows how her sis -" "She ain't her sis," Shad had pointed out. "She's just a kid." And then he'd nodded at her, as if saying It's all right. He don't mean it. And he'd given Tom a shove in the back.

She came a step, then another, toward him.

"Shad, you think something's happened to Dorry and Jort knows it?"

He rubbed at the back of his neck. "Dunno. Where's Jort and Sam at now?"

"They and that Ferris left fer the swamp again yesterday morning."

There was something wrong about it.

"Mr. Ferris went with'em?" He shook his head. "He ain't got the sense I thought he did."

"What's it mean, Shad?"

"Means they think I'm still in the swamp. They're either laying fer me at Breakneck, er they're scouting the north creeks fer that Money Plane. Well, all I kin say is that Mr. Ferris better hope they don't find it; because if they do – then he kin count his minutes on earth on one hand. That Jort -"

But Mr. Ferris' life expectancy wasn't his problem. He snapped his fingers and went out on the porch for a gunny sack. Back in the cabin he started loading all his canned foods into the sack. Margy watched him with large, perplexed eyes.

"What are you goan do?"

He didn't look up. "I got time and blood invested in that Money Plane. Ain't nobody taking that away from me. I got to swipe me another skiff and git back into that swamp right fast."

She stared at his humped back. "What about Dorry, Shad?"

"What about her?"

"Well, she's ben missing fer days. Don't it mean nothing to you?"

He straightened up and turned to look at her, the halffilled sack hanging from his square fist. Neither of them said a word. He let the sack go with a clunk and came over to her.

"Margy," he said softly "I guess you think me four kinds a bastard, don't you? But you cain't know how much that money means to me. You don't know what I ben through already trying to git hit.

"Right now old Jort'n Sam and that Mr. Ferris is out there tearing that swamp to pieces trying to find my money. And they got them a fair idea of the general direction in which hit's hid, too. It ain't but a matter of time afore old Sam with that goddam eagle eye of his spots my blaze marks, and then -"

He didn't like the way she just stood there, not saying anything, just looking up at him. A small girl, with enormous watchful eyes. He scowled and looked away

"You kin think what you want," he muttered sourly. "I don't know what's happened to Dorry. And right now I ain't got the time to worry about her."

"You don't love her, Shad?"

He met her eye. "No," he said honestly. "I guess I never did. It was just that I – well -" So how do you explain to a girl like her that one look at her sister and something goes BLOWIE! in your brain.

Her gaze pulled down. She looked at the finger nails of her right hand. Shad did too, absently noticing that they were clean.

"I know," she murmured. "I know how it is with Dorry and boys."

Shad nodded. He'd never before been embarrassed when talking sex with a girl, and he didn't quite know what was wrong here, and didn't have the time to give it more thought. "I got to go, Margy," he said. But he couldn't when she looked up at him, couldn't just walk out on that look in her eyes that he didn't understand.

"Shad – you won't be coming back this way again?"

"Not if I find that money I ain't. Cain't afford to."

He almost didn't catch what she said – it was so low and unexpected.

"Take me with you, Shad."

Now that it was in words, she was glad. Now she could finally admit it to herself. So she had loved him from that first night on her pa's porch, when they had swapped insults, maybe before that, maybe from the time she was twelve and he had stopped Tom's dirty mouth, maybe even before that.

He was tender with her – as she intuitively knew he would be -the only girl he had ever been tender with. He didn't even kiss her. Somehow a kiss would be the wrong contact at that moment, and he seemed to know it. He put his hands on her shoulders, lowering his head.

"You want to go with me – out there?"

She nodded.

"We mebbe won't git the money," he said.

"I don't think we will. I think there's too much against us. That ain't why I want to go."

No, it wasn't. He knew that, and so he said, "I'm sorry I said that about the money. You ain't like your sis."

"No. I ain't like her at all."

He'd be a fool to take her out there. It wasn't safe for one thing. And even if it was, even if he could outfox Jort and Sam and Mr. Ferris, even if he could find the Money Plane again, why would he want her tagging along? She was little and not much on build and a man could find a prettier girl by looking in almost any direction.

"If you go with me," he said slowly "I might git you kilt."

Her head made an even, soft bob. "I know. But I got it to do."

And then he kissed her, but not as he had ever kissed before. And it seemed to erase all the others – all the wet lips, and he wasn't sorry.

Funny, he thought, the way things work out.

The day was as brilliant as a washed window. Nature had scrubbed her house.

Margy sat on the middle thwart, facing forward; Shad was right behind her, standing with the stob. They had left the river an hour ago, and now were well on their way up Mink Creek heading for Tarramand Lake. It was roundabout and they were going to have a haul-tail time of it in the water lettuce and palm bogs; but it was safer than going directly to Breakneck.

Getting a skiff hadn't been any problem at all. Margy had gone along to Sutt's Landing and rowed off in her pa's boat. No one had paid her any mind. Getting a rifle had been something else again. She had slipped up to her folks' place and had taken Bell's carbine and a box of ammo. Shad had said, "Fine," and hadn't thought anything more of it. Now the carbine was up in the bow and he might just as well heave it overboard for all the good it was going to do him.

The first gator they had seen was just as they were entering Mink Creek. He was a lazy, minding-his-own business type of bull, but he was big and Shad hadn't wanted to be caught napping.

"Hand me the carbine," he'd said. "Where you got the ammo?"

"Here,"she'd replied, and had lifted a small canvas pouch.

"What you got in there?" he'd wondered.

"Nothing much. Just the box of bullets and some things."

"What things?"

"Just things."

Shad reached and picked the pouch from her hand.

There wasn't much; the ammo box, a carefully folded and freshly laundered nightie and Dorry's half-empty bottle of Sin's Dream.

Margy's head was down. He could see her cheeks were red.

He pulled his grin off and said, "Bet it smells mighty nice.

Then he had looked at the ammo. Then at the carbine. Then at the ammo again.. 30 carbine.. 30-06 ammo.

But it wasn't her fault. She didn't know anything about guns and calibres. So he didn't let on that she had made a mistake. The milk was spilt and what could you do about it?

A place like Breakneck had a stately solitude that gave it an imposing beauty; the lake was deep, the water clean, the fishing fair, and gators had never favoured it as a place to set up housekeeping.

Tarramand Lake had nothing to recommend it. It wasn't really a lake; it was just big and the swampers tagged that name on it as a reference. It was a prairie, so shallow a man could wade across most of it. Stobbing a skiff across was another matter. A bitch of one. When the pickerelweed and the water lettuce weren't holding you up, then it was the submerged log litters humping under the flat bottom and rearing the bow a foot out of the water, and if you didn't think so much of that, then there was the God-awful cypress knees rising here, there, every damn where like tank traps.

It was well into afternoon by the time they reached Tusca Creek, and after two hours there Shad threw in the towel for the day He hid the skiff in maiden cane, picked up their belongings and led Margy through the hurrah thicket onto a pine island.

"You sit tight right here, honey," he ordered. "I'm going to scout around a little. They's a hut somewhere hereabout, and if'n I find hit we'll spend the night there."

She agreed and it was that simple. He went off feeling pretty good. She just up and left her life in his keeping. What he said was law. Yeah, it was a good feeling to have someone to care for, to protect. He looked back from the low lying palmettos. She was standing with the tall swamp pines rising behind her, and she waved.

It was the long, hushed hour of twilight when he returned. He was grinning with confidence and he told her about it as they walked.

"I found the hut first – just half-mile along here. Then I scouted t'other side of the creek and found an old skinny looking waterway I think we kin git the skiff down. Should take us into Money Plane Creek. We'll have a crack at her first thing in the morning."

His euphoria took on a never-never aspect, and he looked up and around with wondering eyes. The swamp, the sameness of it, the way it was becoming a part of them because they were together, gave him an unrealistic feeling.

"Funny," he said compulsively "Now that I don't see 'em – Jort and the others – it's like they don't exist fer me."

"Don't say that," Margy said sharply.

"What?"

She trembled. "When you took off an hour ago I went to feeling that I didn't exist – just because you couldn't see me. I never felt like that afore. It – it left me -"

He took her hand and squeezed it. What she had just imparted to him touched him as nothing else ever had. But the responsibility that went with it was frightening.

She was childlike about the hut. Like a little girl playing house in a pup tent. She whisked out the dirt floor with a palmetto frond, and brought in an armload of pine needles to lay a fresh bed, and then picked up the old deerskin pouch and showed it to him.

"You see this?"

"Yeah. Hit's Holly's."

"Holly? Oh – your brother's." She looked through the doorway at a far reaching bay studded savanna. "What you reckon become of him?"

"Dead. If he ain't then he must a turned wild."

"But he couldn't stay out here fer four years and him coo-coo!"

Shad scratched at his chin. "Dunno, Margy. I've heered of it happening afore. Old-timers tell of a Yankee boy went to got lost in here during the Civil War. Ever'body figured he was dead right off, but then one day in the '70s old Jim Dawes' granddaddy seen him wandering around out here. All naked he was and bearded, and his hide as tough as gator-skuts, but he still had that funny little mashed down cap them Yankees wore on his head.

"Story goes old Granddaddy Dawes give him a shout. Didn't do no good though. Yankee fella looks up all wild eyed and takes off into the titi. Granddaddy Dawes wasn't about to go after him, because he says that wild Yankee had a club with him the size of a sycamore trunk.

"Other people seen him from time to time too, least they'd say they did. I wouldn't know. Nobody never mentions him no more."

Margy shivered and gave a little laugh. "Mebbe them kind a people never die. Mebbe he's still in here – somewhere."

"Uh-huh. Mebbe. Mebbe him and Holly's teamed up."

Then they let the subject go; both aware that they were only stalling. He looked at her. After a moment she lowered her eyes.

"Margy -" he whispered.

She didn't look up. She held out her hand.

Outside and all around them it was a night of the first age. It was like the creation of the earth all over again. A gang of night-feeding ducks took off across the moon with a great batter of noise, and everything else continued its pattern.

In the morning he found one of his markers.

He was heading for home base now. He knew it. There was the big prairie with the log litter on the right, and there was where the land picked up again, the gator ground. It was the end of the rainbow.

"We're's almost there, Margy." He said it reverently.

She sat on the center thwart, facing him as he stobbed, watching him. She looked off to her left and shivered. Something that was too refined for the senses to understand touched her and her blood chilled, as though hostile shadow had fallen over her. But there was no shadow. Water, tules, silt, titi -.

"Shad," she said. "If something should go wrong -" she turned back to him, "if mebbe somebody beat you to that money er -"

He held back on the pole, staring at her, his eyes narrow and warm. "What in hell's name you talking about?" he demanded. "Ain't nobody beating me to that money. That's my money."

She looked down at her moccasin-clad feet.

"Yes, I know. But things kin go wrong – sometimes."

"Not this time they ain't."

"I just don't want you feeling bad if they should, is all."

He started stobbing again, all starchy with determination and righteousness, watching the gator ground in the distance. Fool girl. There wasn't nobody going to take that money from him, noway. It was his. He'd gone balling through hell's gate to keep it and he'd do it again if he had to.

"When we git there," he said stiffly, "I'm leaving you in the skiff. That old slough ain't a safe place. It's a razor hole."

She didn't say anything.

He glanced down at her and frowned. He felt bad about shouting at her. She'd just been trying to help him; he knew that. But he just couldn't stand the idea of anyone else getting that money. He eased up on the pole, wondering if he should apologize. Poor little kid – She was looking past him, downwake, and he didn't understand at first what was wrong when he saw her eyes go wide with alarm. It caught him off guard.

"Shad – pull in ashore."

"What?"

"They's somebody coming."

It hit him where he lived. Something inside of him leaped and he spun about, holding hard to the pole, and way down the prairie he saw Jort Camp's big skiff coming. He could make out Sam's scrawny figure crouching aft with the pole, and up forward was someone who had to be Mr. Ferris.

Shad hissed. "Ain't _I never_ goin git 'em off my back?"

But it was no time for tears and he knew it. Blood, yes, but crying was for when you couldn't do nothing else. And he knew what had to be done now, and it was a wonder to him that he hadn't known it right from the first minute he'd found the Money Plane. He probably had known it deep down, but hadn't had the sense to recognize it. But it was going to be bad – without a gun it was going to be tailbusting bad.

He shot the skiff ahead, looking wildly around at the jungle. He had to get them well past the gator pond where the Money Plane was. There wasn't any chance of outrunning them and that meant he'd have to land. But the south bank was out – the Money Plane was there; and the north bank was clear to hell and gone across the prairie and Jort would cut him off in midwater if he tried that.

"What're you fixing to do, Shad?" Margy was gripping the gunwales, staring back at Jort's skiff with dread fascination.

"Shet up. Got to think." And he had to think about her too, not just himself now. God's grandpa but he'd been a fool to bring her into this. He'd known it was a mistake when he said yes. She couldn't outrun men like Jort and Sam, and she couldn't fight them.

Desperation made a punching bag of his nervous system. He was wild on the end of that pole now, nearly offbalancing himself twice for a header into the water. Got to land her, he thought. Got to ditch her and go at this business like I knew what I was doing. He'd rather have the swamp get her than Jort and Sam.

The prairie was skinning down to a slow, flowing waterway, and a bend in the south bank was coming toward them. He looked around and then up. A lone lop-eared cabbage palm soared high and mighty above the swamp. It couldn't be more than one hundred yards off.

"Margy," he said, "look up there. See that cabbage palm? In a minute now we're goan around a bend in the bank. Soon's we do I'm going to land you and take off up-slough. Want you to git in the jungle and make your way over to that palm. Want you to stay there till I come back fer you. You understand me, Margy? Stop shaking your fool head that way!"

"No," she said, and she was pleading. "No, Shad. No, I ain't goan leave you."

"You're goan do what I say! You're going over to that palm and you ain't goan budge till I come for you."

"No. Please, Shad. They'll kill you." She was crawling toward him now, reaching for his leg. "I want to be with you. If something happens to you, I got to be there too."

And he was a believer when he glanced at her face. But he couldn't have it that way He scooted the skiff around the bend and down-dragged on the pole as a canopy of fronds swatted at them, turned the bow in and shoved it onto the mud. Then he squatted, grabbing her.

"Margy honey, you got to do what I tell you. Hit's the only way."

"No – Shad -" She was still trying to get at him, trying to get where she could wrap herself around him.

He slapped her hard with his hand, snapping her face away from him, grabbed her hair and pulled her back around. Her eyes were enormous, staring up at him.

"Goddam you, now you listen at me. I'm your man now and you got to do what I tell you. I got that right and if I don't got it then you ain't no woman fer me. You goan a-git in that jungle and keep out of sight and wait fer me by the cabbage palm."

She was dragging air through her mouth, her eyes wide and brown, both her hands clawed in his knees.

"Honey," he said, "you just gitting us both kilt this way. Give me the chance to save us."

She stared at him.

He nodded to her encouragingly "Go on. Git out now. Git into the thicket." He gave her a little shove to get her started. "It's my job to protect us," he said. "You got to let me go at it best way I see fit. That's it – keep a-going."

She went like a sleepwalker, stepped out of the skiff and her feet sucked down in the mud. She looked back at him. "Shad -"

He straightened up and grinned at her.

"Hit's all right, honey. I'll be back fer you, hear? No matter what happens, I'll be back. Git on now."

He shoved off and looked back. The palmettos were just closing over her. And then he realized he had wanted to tell her he loved her. But it was too late.