Swamp Sister

8

He was alone in the morning. It didn't surprise him. He grunted and got up, found his pants and counted his money. He wouldn't put it past Dorry to – but no, he had fifty-some dollars left.

He fetched a bucket of water and gave himself a stand up bath on the porch, then dressed, lighted a cigarette, and left the shanty.

He followed the path to the road and started east. He'd rustle up a meal first, then do some shopping. He'd have to see Iris Culver, and that was going to be like cutting a wounded bear off from the bush. He could expect trouble from that quarter.

He came upon silly Edgar Toll, sitting in the dirt smack in the middle of the road before his ma's shanty. A hulking youth with a face like a pan of greasy dough, ornamented with big angry purple pimples and long shiny hairs that grew out of his nose almost touching his lip. Mouth always swinging open, sometimes drooling, witless and with little to say for himself, he'd stand around in nooks and corners like a guilty secret and try to lick his nostrils, cow-like.

Folks were used to Edgar, used to seeing him hulking about in a sort of bewildered waiting. But Shad could never cotton to the moron. He felt an instant loathing, as though he were about to be dumped into a putrid swamp whenever he approached the fool.

But it was more than just a moronic ailment with Edgar. Something was twisted inside -his right and wrong guidepost. He was forever hunting up helpless little creatures, anything, bugs to non-pit vipers, to torture them. Today it was a frog.

The moron had the frog, back flat on the road, holding it with one hand. He was disembowelling it with a sharp stick.

"Sweet Lord!" Shad cried. Then he cuffed Edgar hard alongside the ear, spinning him into the dirt. "You goddam idjut! I ort to God rip your stupid guts out!"

He looked at the frog, scrabbling helplessly in its own mire, and winced. Not because a living thing had been despoiled, but because this living thing had been helpless, and because the despoiling had been done by a human being. He couldn't understand that.

Something had to be done. The thing was in agony. But what? "Oh Lord." he said. He raised his boot and brought it down with a slam. Edgar came to his feet awkwardly, dripping dirt and tears. He was clutching the sharp stick, inexpertly, like a woman with a dagger.

"You – you damn – you damn Sh-sh-shad!" he cried. "I'll kill'n you!" He came at Shad in a shuffling duckfooted run.

Shad stepped aside adroitly and left-jabbed the moron hard in the mouth. Edgar went down like a bag of nails, sprawling out in the dirt. He beat at the road with his hands, opened his red mouth like a fire bucket and bawled, "Ma! Mama!"

Mrs. Toll clumped out onto the porch glaring fiercely right and left. A slovenly old creature, a widow woman who grubbed a living for herself and her idiot son out of the wood somehow. No one was certain just how. She hitched at her ragbag skirt, drape-hanging it on her shapeless frame, and started screaming at Shad.

"I seen you! I seen you! You dirty swamp critter. You hitted my pore boy! You hitted my baby, you-" She went insane with her insults.

And Shad, hating the scene, hating the old lady and her idiot son, and the frog the idiot had made him stamp to death, shouted back.

"Shet up! You stupid old cow! Why don't you lock that goddam fool son of yourn up. Why don't you -"

Old Mrs. Toll caught up a wood-chopping axe and came down from the porch at a wobble-legged run.

"I'll fix yer! I'll chop yer! Beat my pore baby! I'll -"

Shad Hark was no fool. He turned and made tracks, his ears ringing with Mrs. Toll's cackle, "Lookit him! Lookit him, Edgee! Lookit him go! The big brave swampman arunning from an old woman! Hi! There he goes, the dirty, cowardly, spineless, gator-lovin' pig!"

Shad high-tailed down to the next shanty – Rival Taylor's – and came to a panting halt. "Goddam idjuts!" he gasped. "Ort a lock 'em both up." Then his mind slipped back to reactivate the scene, and he started laughing and couldn't help it. "What a God handsome sight I must have made coming fox-fast down the road with the crazy old witch axe-swinging after me!"

He shook his head and looked up. Mrs. Taylor came out on her porch carrying a pan of water.

"Shad," she called. "What's ben going on up the road there? Somebody run over Edgar agin?"

Shad grinned. "I run him over with my fist, Mrs. Taylor. And old Mrs. Toll took after me with a hatchet."

Mrs. Taylor pursed her lips and tsked disagreeably.

"You shouldn't ort a done a thing like that, Shad. Pore Edgar."

She swished the pan of greasy water outward like a fisherman casting a net. The water plopped on the ground, fanned into a silver shield and fell again.

"Well, now that you're here, you want a cup of morning coffee?"

Shad smiled, nodding. Mrs. Taylor was offering him the coffee so she could get the full story of why he'd hit pore Edgar; he knew that swamp women had to get their entertainment from some source. At least gossip wasn't a cardinal sin.

He followed her into the house, saying, "Got me a fiftycent piece here that I'd purely like to see go fer a breakfast. Grits is fine, if they're handy."

Mrs. Taylor looked at him, the empty pan still in her hand. "Why ain't you et to home, Shad?"

"Ain't living to home, is why. I cleared out last night."

Mrs. Taylor said tsk again, shook her head and said, "My!" Then -"Well, sit, Shad, while I redd up the table."

She was getting more than she'd bargained for and she tried to be offhand about it, as if someone had brought her a gift she'd been expecting and didn't much care about. "Want to tell me about hit, son?"

Shad ducked his smile. "No'm. I'll tell you about Edgar, though."

He ate and she had a cup of coffee with him. And then when he brought out his pack of tailor-mades he didn't know what else to do but offer her one. The way Mr. Culver always did to Iris Culver.

Mrs. Taylor cried. "Shad! Me take a devil stick? Don't you come trotting in any of your hanky-panky tricks on me. What would Rival say?" Then she laughed and flapped her apron. "And me a fat old woman!"

Shad grinned. "Go on," he said. "I was thinking if mebbe you were to tell me what night Rival stays out with the hounds, I'd just come sneak-footing by this way-"

"Whaah!" Mrs. Taylor let out a shout of laughter and put her pudgy hands up to her apple cheeks. "Shad Hark, you are the one! Now you just stop that air teasing. And me old enough to be your ma!"

Shad liked her. He sort of wished she was his ma. She was real, she was a part of the Purpose. Not artificial, useless like Iris Culver – at least useless for practical living. And Dorry? Would she be like Mrs. Taylor someday? He kind of doubted it. Mrs. Taylor would have been a pioneer wife-had there been anything left to pioneer. He looked at her, seeing her unconsciously as the embodiment of oldfashioned home life.

"Why'd you say poor Edgar?" he asked suddenly, sensing that she had answers to things he couldn't understand. "You know he tortures frogs and mice and things."

Mrs. Taylor looked serious. "You cain't really say hit's his fault, Shad. I know cutting up frogs ain't a nice thing to do, but Edgar got a lot of good in him."

"Must have," Shad agreed. "He don't never let none of it out."

"You hush and listen to me. I knowed that pore boy since he was borned. And when he was a little fella he warn't mean. He warn't smart, but not mean. Wasn't till after you other lil' boys come at him all the time he started to change. A-throwing sticks and rocks at him, a-chasing him home and calling him idjut all the time -"

"Not me. I never done those things to him when we was little."

"I know you never, Shad. You always hung away from him, likn you were feered of him. But them othern did. I remember one day-pore lil' fella couldn't ben but eight- they tied cans to his lil' tail and chased him home to his ma. Like a dog, Shad.

"So you see? One day he found out he could catch him little crawly things, things that couldn't fight back, and he started taking some of his hate out on'em. Hate got to come out someways, Shad. It shore God do."

Shad stared at the table, thinking about hate. Then he grunted and stood up. "Mebbe," he said, not wholly convinced. "But I just think he's dangerous as a walleyed bull." From his jeans he dug some of the dollar bills Joel Sutt had given him for change.

"You put that money away, Shad Hark. I ain't setting up no coffee shop here, you know," Mrs. Taylor said crossly.

"What give you the idea hit's fer you?" Shad wanted to know.

He put five of the dollars down on the table, letting them stack crisscross one on the other. "Here. Give 'em to that old fool Toll woman. You don't have to tell her I give 'em to you."

Mrs. Taylor looked at the money. Her eyes turned damp when she smiled, and he thought it was funny the way you could catch some people that way.

"Why, Shad," she said. "You got a soft spot in you wide as a boat-bottom."

"Go on," he snapped. "You gitting foolish along with your other ailments. Bet in another year Rival won't be able to tell the difference 'tween you'n Edgar – if'n Edgar goes to not wearing his pants."

Mrs. Taylor let out another holler of laughter, and her voice followed Shad out the door and onto the porch. "Shad, don't you go to showing all that money of yourn to those girls you always chasing after. They'll take it off you in one night. You hear me, Shad?"

He felt pretty good when he went into the yard.