Swamp Sister

22

How long it had gone on he didn't know, but it seemed that all his life he had heard it – someone crying Shad – Shad – Shad over and over, and he couldn't understand it.

But it ended the giggle fit.

He sat up with his nerves vibrating like strummed guitar strings and saw Margy running along the bank; and it struck him suddenly that had she been her sister, Dorry, she would have stopped first to gawk at the Money Plane. But Margy never took her eyes off him, and for a second he thought she was going to run right over him. And then she was down in the mud and in his arms and clinging to him tightly.

He got her set back from him a bit so he could see her face, and he tried to be angry with her and said, "Thought I told you not to budge till I come?" But he was too happy because he was alive and she was alive and with him, and he pulled her back to him and hugged her again, keeping one hand in her hair and liking its tactile quality.

"I heered that shot," she said. "I thought – I just couldn't wait no longer -"

"All right. Calm down. Nothing's wrong now. That shot was just Mr. Ferris having his last say."

She straightened up on her knees and looked at him, and she'd never looked prettier to him, with her blouse all catclawed and her face mud-streaked and her hair wild and going every-which-way.

"What happened to him? Did you kill him?"

"No. He's down in the bottom of the slough gitting his self gator-drowned." And that gave him the trembles again because it might have been him. "I never seen such a gator. He was pure-out crazy"

She turned and looked at the water. The surface was placid and black except where the reflection smeared it green. She shivered.

"What about Jort and Sam Parks?"

"Dead. At least Jort be. Sam's gone off coo-coo in the pindowns." He thought for a moment. "Margy, Mr. Ferris was a thief – just like the rest of us."

She didn't care about Mr. Ferris.

"You didn't find out nothing about Dorry, Shad?"

He looked at the water. He had a pretty good idea what had happened to Dorry. He reckoned that like Holly and Sam she was long gone without a trace. "No," he said. "She probably run off with some drummer. We'll probably hear some day"

Margy didn't pursue it, but she didn't believe it either. She held Shad's hand. It amazed him that she hadn't once asked about the money.

"That eighty-thousand dollars is down to the bottom of the slough," he told her.

She nodded. "Let it stay there."

He looked at her. "What?"

"Let it stay there. That's where hit belongs."

He couldn't believe her. "You done hit your head on a breather er something? _That money's ours_. Hit belongs to you and me, Margy."

She looked down at the mud without expression and shook her head.

"No, it ain't ours. It ain't nobody's. I don't want it."

"Well, I'll be bitched fer fair." He stood up and started taking down his pants.

"What you fixing to do?"

"That don't take no heap of guesses. Fixing to git me into that slough and find my money"

She got up and moved back from him. "No. No, Shad. Don't go to do it. I don't want you to. I don't want you gator-et."

He stripped the soggy pants from one leg. "Stop fretting. That old gator is long gone to his cave by now. Having Mr. Ferris fer Sunday dinner."

"Leave hit there, Shad. Please leave hit there. It's wicked money – blood money. It does nothing but evil. Look how many people it's hurt since it come into this swamp. If that gator don't git you, and if you bring it back up, you'll just be bringing up trouble again."

"You kin call it trouble if you want," he snapped. "But I call it eighty-thousand dollars."

She stared at him for a moment, and then said, "All right – mebbe you better. You goan need it to buy you a new girl with."

He was stooping for his knife but he paused.

"What in God's name you talking about now?" he demanded. "I got you. You're the only girl I want."

"Well, you ain't goan have me long. Because if you go in that slough – I won't be here when and if you come out again."

He straightened up and smiled. "Now, Margy Now, honey -"

She stepped back quickly. "Don't you come at me, Shad. You ain't gitting around me thataway."

"All right, honey, all right. You just scared of that old gator gitting me, ain't that all?"

"That and other things. I ain't goan list'em fer you twice. What makes you so blame blind, Shad? Cain't you understand I never did want that money? All I ever wanted was you. And reckon I wanted you right from that first night you come to our place to see Pa, and you all high-hat and cocky on the porch there and the way you went to smile at me and -"

Abruptly she started crying, making a soft, body jerking, offbeat sound of it. "I just plain love you. And you wanting to throw it all away, and not caring a hoot what becomes of us er -"

He went to her and held her trembling body against his damp one. He didn't say anything, just held her and looked over her head at the pond. No one he'd ever known had loved him, not for just himself. I always ben a loner, he thought I always ben looking in windows and wanting what none of my family never had.

And she would leave him, too. He knew it because she was that way. If I come out a that slough I'll be rich and I'll be alone. He held her out from him and looked at her.

"You want me – just like this? With thirty-some dollars to my jeans?"

Her eyes were all glassy with tears. "With er without the dollars," she said. "Er the jeans too."

Shad nodded. He felt like a split shopping bag; everything was dropping out. "All right, honey," he said. "Anything you say"

Then she was wrapped around him again, laughing and whispering and crying all at once, and none of it made sense because he couldn't concentrate on it. He couldn't get his eyes off the pond.

I ben through hell's furnace room fer that money. I ben gator-chased and buckshotted and fist-fighted and near drownt – and now I'm just cold putting my back to it and walking off. Just like it didn't matter a-tall.

"Let's go home, Shad."

He blinked at her. "Home?- Yeah – home. All right."

He picked up his pants and pulled them on. Margy started up the bank toward the thicket.

"Let's hurry, Shad," she called to him. "Let's go fast and git out a here."

"Yeah."

He started up the slope, his head low, watching his feet. He'd go back to his trapping and maybe he'd go in for Spanish moss gathering as a side line; might even try some gator-grabbing now that Jort was out of the business- little ones. And he supposed he would go on looking for Holly's body and probably Sam's too. Yeah, he'd be coming out here again.

He paused near the edge of the thicket and looked around at the pond and the Money Plane, planting the image of the place firmly in his mind. It didn't do any good, he knew, to argue with a woman right when she'd made up her mind. Any fool knew you might as well go beat a dead horse. Yeah, but later-.

"See you," he murmured.

He smiled at Margy and started after her.