Gone South

by Robert R. McCammon

  Looking back once again, he could see the green light flickering through the undergrowth. They were still coming. Arden looked over her shoulder, too, then concentrated on getting through the water ahead. Her vision had cleared, but where she’d banged her skull against the dashboard was raw with pain. She was wearing out with every step; she felt her strength draining away, and soon she was going to have to stop to catch her breath. She wasn’t on the run; it was Dan the bounty hunters were after, but when they’d take him away they’d take the man she had come to believe was her best hope of finding the Bright Girl. From a deep place within her the voice of reason was speaking, trying to tell her that it was pointless to go any farther into this swamp, that a wanted killer had her by the hand and was leading her away from civilization, that she probably had a concussion and needed a doctor, that her brain was scrambled and she wasn’t thinking straight and she was in the most dangerous place she’d ever been in her life. She heard it, but she refused to listen. In her right hand was clutched the small pink drawstring bag containing what had become her talisman over the years, and she fixed her mind on Jupiter’s voice saying that this was the man God had provided to take her to the Bright Girl. She had to believe it. She had to, or all hope would come crashing down around her, and she feared that more than death.

  “I see a light,” Dan suddenly said.

  She could see it, too. A faint glow, off to the right. Not electricity. More like the light cast from a candle or oil lamp. They kept going, the water at Dan’s waist and above Arden’s.

  Shapes emerged from the darkness. On either side of the channel were two or three tarpaper shacks built up on wooden platforms over the water. The light was coming from a window covered with what looked like waxed paper. The other shacks were dark, either empty or their inhabitants asleep. Dan had no desire to meet the kind of people who’d choose to live in such primitive arrangements, figuring they’d shoot an intruder on sight. But he made out something else in addition to the shacks: a few of them, including the one that showed a light, had small boats — fishing skiffs — tied up to their pilings.

  They needed a boat in the worst way, he decided. He put his finger to his lips to tell Arden to remain silent, and she nodded. Then he guided her past the shack where the light burned and across the channel to the next dwelling. The skiff there was secured by a chain and padlock, but a single paddle with a broken handle was lying down inside it. Dan eased the paddle out and went on to the third shack. The boat that was tied there held about six inches of trash-filled water in its hull. There were no other paddles in sight, but the leaky craft was attached to a piling only by a plastic line. In this case beggars couldn’t be choosers. Dan spent a moment untying the line’s slimy knot, then he pulled himself as quietly as he could over into the boat though his foot thumped against the side. He waited, holding his breath, but no one came out of the shack. He helped Arden in. She sat on the bench seat at the bow, while Dan sat in the stern and shoved them away from the platform. They glided out toward the channel’s center, where the current flowed the strongest, and when they were a safe distance away from the shack, Dan slid the stubby paddle into the water and delivered the first stroke.

  “Grave robbers!” a woman’s voice shrilled, the sound of it startling Dan and making goose bumps rise on Arden’s wet arms. “Go on and steal it, then, you donkey-dick suckers!”

  Dan looked behind. A figure stood back at the first shack, where the light burned.

  “Go on, then!” the woman said. “Lord’s gonna fix your asses, you’ll find out! I’ll dance on your coffins, you maggot-eaters!” She began spitting curses that Dan hadn’t heard since his days in boot camp, and some that would’ve curled a drill sergeant’s ear hairs. Another voice growled, “Shut up, Rona!” It belonged to a man who sounded very drunk. “Shut your hole, I’m sleepin’ over here!”

  “I wouldn’t piss on your face if it was on fire!” Rona hollered across the channel. “I’m gonna cook up a spell on you. Your balls gonna dry up like little bitty black raisins!”

  “Awwwww, shut up ’fore I come over there and knock your head out your ass!” A door whacked shut.

  Dan’s paddling had quickened. The woman continued to curse and rave, her voice rising and falling with lunatic cadence. Then she retreated into her hovel and slammed her own door so hard Dan was surprised the place hadn’t collapsed. He saw the light move away from the window and he could imagine a wizened, muttering crone in there stooped over a smoking stewpot with a goat’s head in it Well, at least they had a boat though they were sitting in nasty water. The phrase up Shit Creek came to him, but they did have a paddle. When he glanced back again, he no longer saw the green flare’s glow. Maybe the bounty hunters had given up and turned away. If so, good riddance to them. Now all he could do was guide this boat down the center of the bayou and hope it would lead them eventually out to the Gulf. From there he could find somewhere safe to leave the girl and strike out on his own again.

  He didn’t like being responsible for her, and worrying about that knock she’d suffered, and feeling her hand clutch his so hard his knuckles cracked. He was a lone wolf by nature, that’s how things were, so just as soon as he could, he was getting rid of her. Anyway, she was crazy. Her obsession with the Bright Girl made Dan think of something he’d seen on the news once: hundreds of people had converged from across the country to camp out day after day in an Oklahoma cornfield where a farmer’s wife swore the Virgin Mary had materialized. He remembered thinking how desperately those people had wanted to believe in the wisdom of a higher power, and how they’d believed that the Virgin Mary would appear again at that same place with a message for mankind. Only she’d never showed up, and the really amazing thing was that none of those hundreds of people had regretted coming there, or felt betrayed or bitter. They’d simply felt that the time wasn’t right for the Virgin Mary to appear again, but they were certain that sometime and somewhere she would. Dan couldn’t understand that kind of blind faith; it flew in the face of the wanton death and destruction he’d witnessed in ’Nam. He wondered if any of that multitude had ever put a bullet between the eyes of a sixteen-year-old boy and felt a rush of exultation that the boy’s AK-47 had jammed. He wondered if any of them had ever smelled the odor of burning flesh, or seen flames chewing on the small skulls. If any of them had walked in his boots, had stood in the dirty silver rain and seen the sights that were seared in his mind, he doubted they would put much faith in waiting for the return of Mary, Jesus, or the Holy Ghost.

  Dan paddled a few strokes and then let the boat drift. Arden faced southward, the warm breeze of motion blowing past her. The water made a soft, chuckling sound at the bow, and the bittersweet swamp was alive with the hums and clicks and clacks of insects, the occasional sharp keening of a night bird, the bass thumping of frogs and other fainter noises that were not so identifiable. The only light now came from the stars that shone through spaces in the thick canopy of branches overhead.

  Dan started to look back, but he decided not to. He knew where he’d been; it was where he was going that concerned him now. The moment of Emory Blanchard’s death was still a bleeding wound in his mind, and maybe for the rest of his days it would torture him, but the swamp’s silken darkness gave him comfort. He felt a long way from the law and prison walls. If he could find food, fresh water, and a shelter over his head — even the sagging roof of a tarpaper shack — he thought he could live and die here, under these stars. It was a big swamp, and maybe it would accept a man who wanted to disappear. An ember of hope reawakened and began to burn inside him. Maybe it was an illusion, he thought, but it was something to nurture and cling to, just as Arden clung to her Bright Girl. His first task, though, was getting her out, then he could decide on his own destination.

  The boat drifted slowly onward, embraced by the current flowing to the sea.

  Pelvis held Mama with one arm and his other hand gripped the back of Flint’s soggy suit jacket. The green flarelight had burned out
several minutes before, and the night had closed in on them. Pelvis had been asking — begging was the more correct term — Flint to turn back when they’d heard a woman’s voice hollering and cursing ahead. As they’d slogged on through the stomach-deep water, Flint’s left hand slid under his shirt and supported Clint’s head; their eyes had started acclimating to the dark. In another moment they could make out the shapes of the tarpaper shacks, a light moving around inside the nearest one on the right. Flint saw a boat tied up to the platform the shack stood on, and as they got closer he made out that it had a scabrous-looking outboard motor. It occurred to him that Lambert might be hiding in one of the darkened shacks, waiting for them to move past. He guided Pelvis toward the flickering light they could see through a waxed-paper window, and at the platform’s edge Flint said, “Stay here” and pulled himself up on the splintery boards. He paused to remove the derringer, then he pushed Clint’s arm under his shirt and buttoned up his dripping jacket. He held the derringer behind his back and knocked at the shack’s flimsy door.

  He heard somebody scuttling around inside, but the knock wasn’t answered. “Hey, in there!” he called. “Would you open up?” He reached out, his fist balled, to knock a second time.

  A latch slammed back. The door swung open on creaking hinges, and from it thrust the business end of a sawed-off shotgun that pressed hard against Flint’s forehead.

  “I’ll open you up, you dog-ass lickin’ sonofabitch!” the woman behind the gun snarled, and her finger clicked back the trigger.

  Flint didn’t move; it swept through his mind that at this range the shotgun would blast his brains into the trees on the other side of the bayou. By the smoky light from within the shack, Flint saw that the woman was at least six feet tall and built as solidly as a truck. She wore a pair of dirty overalls, a gray and sweat-stained T-shirt, and on her head was a battered dark green football helmet. Behind the helmet’s protective face bar was a forbidding visage with burning, red-rimmed eyes and skin like saddle leather.

  “Easy,” Flint managed to say. “Take it easy, all I want to do is ask —”

  “I know what you want, you scum-sucker!” she yelled. “You ain’t takin’ me back to that damn shithole! Ain’t gettin’ me in a rubber room again and stickin’ my head full of pins and needles!”

  Crazy as a three-legged grasshopper, he thought. His heart was galloping, and the inside of his mouth would’ve made the Sahara feel tropical. He stared at the woman’s grimy-nailed finger on the trigger in front of his face. “Listen,” he croaked. “I didn’t come to take you anywhere. I just want to —”

  “Satan’s got a silver tongue!” she thundered. “Now I’m gonna send you back to hell, where you belong!”

  Flint saw her finger twitch on the trigger. His breath froze.

  “Ma’am?” There was the sound of muddy shoes squeaking on the timbers. “Can I talk to you a minute, ma’am?”

  The woman’s insane eyes blinked. “Who is that?” she hissed. “Who said that?”

  “I did, ma’am.” Pelvis walked into the range of the light, Mama cradled in his arms. “Can I have a word with you, please?”

  Flint saw the woman stare past him at Eisley. Her finger was still on the trigger, the barrel pressing a ring into his forehead. He was terrified to move even an inch.

  Pelvis offered up the best smile he could find. “Ain’t nobody wants to hurt you, ma’am. Honest we don’t.”

  Flint heard the woman draw a long, stunned gasp. Her eyes had widened, her thin-lipped mouth starting to tremble.

  “You can put that gun down if you like,” Pelvis said. “Might better, ’fore somebody gets hurt.”

  “Oh,” the woman whispered. “Oh my Jesus!” Flint saw tears shine in her eyes. “They … they told me … you died.”

  “Huh?” Pelvis frowned.

  “They told her you died!” Flint spoke up, understanding what the madwoman meant. “Tell her you didn’t die, Elvis!”

  “Shut your mouth, you Satan’s asshole!” the woman ranted at him. “I’m not talkin’ to you!” Her finger twitched on the trigger again.

  “I do wish you’d at least uncock that gun, ma’am,” Pelvis said. “It’d make an awful mess if it was to go off.”

  She stared at him, her tongue flicking out to wet her lips. “They told me you died!” Her voice was softer now, and there was something terribly wounded in it. “I was up there in Baton Rouge, when I was livin’ with Billy and that bitch wife he had. They said you died, that you took drugs and slid off the toilet and died right there, wasn’t a thing nobody could do to save you but I prayed for you I cried and I lit the candles in my room and that bitch said I wanted to burn down the house but Billy, Billy he’s been a good brother he said I’m all right I ain’t gonna hurt nobody.”

  “Oh.” Pelvis caught her drift. “Oh … ma’am, I ain’t really —”

  “Yes you are!” Flint yelped. “Help me out here, Elvis!”

  “You dirty sonofabitch, you!” the woman hollered into his face. “You call him Mr. Presley!”

  Flint gritted his teeth, the sweat standing out in bright oily beads on his face. “Mr. Presley, tell this lady how I’m a friend of yours, and how hurtin’ me would be the same as hurtin’ you. Would you tell her that, please?”

  “Well … that’d be a lie, wouldn’t it? I mean, you made it loud and clear you think I stand about gut-high to an ant.”

  “That was then. This is now. I think you’re the finest man I’ve ever met. Would you please tell her?”

  Pelvis scratched Mama’s chin and cocked his head to one side. A few seconds ticked past, during which a bead of sweat trickled down to the end of Flint’s nose and hung there. Then Pelvis said, “Yes’m, Mr. Murtaugh’s a friend of mine.”

  The woman removed her shotgun from Flint’s forehead. Flint let his breath rattle out and staggered back a couple of steps. “That’s different, then,” she said, uncocking the gun. “Different, if he’s your friend. My name’s Rona, you remember me?”

  “Uh …” Pelvis glanced quickly at Flint, then back to the madwoman. “I … believe I …”

  “I seen you in Biloxi.” Her voice trembled with excitement. “That was in —” She paused. “I can’t think when that was, my mind gets funny sometimes. I was sittin’ in the third row. I wrote you a letter. You remember me?”

  “Uh …” He saw Flint nod. “Yes’m, I believe so.”

  “I sent my name in to that magazine, you know that Tiger Beat magazine was havin’ that contest for a date with you? I sent my name in, and my daddy said I was the biggest fool ever lived but I did anyway and I went to church and prayed I was gonna win. My mama went to live in heaven, that’s what I wrote in my letter.” She looked down at her dirty overalls. “Oh, I — I must look a fright!”

  “No ma’am,” Pelvis said quietly. “Rona, I mean. You look fine.”

  “You sure have got fat,” Rona told him. “They cut your balls off in the army, didn’t they? Then they made you stop singin’ them good songs. They’re the ones fucked up the world. Put up them satellites in outer space so they could read people’s minds. Them monkey-cock suckers! Well, they ain’t gettin’ to me no more!” She tapped her helmet. “Best protect yourself while you can!” She let her hand drop, and she looked dazedly back and forth between Flint and Pelvis. “Am I dreamin’?” she asked.

  “Rona?” Flint said. “You mind if I call you Rona?” She just stared blankly at him. “We’re lookin’ for somebody. A man and a woman. Did you see anybody pass by here?”

  Rona turned her attention to Pelvis again. “How come they tell such lies about you? That you was takin’ drugs and all? How come they said you died?”

  “I … just got tired, I reckon,” Pelvis said. Flint noted that he was standing a little taller, he’d sucked his gut in as much as possible, and he was making his voice sound more like Elvis than ever, with that rockabilly Memphis sneer in it. “I wanted to go hide someplace.”

  “Uh-huh, me, too.” She n
odded. “I didn’t mean to burn that house down, but the light was so pretty. You know how pretty a light can be when it’s dark all the time? Then they put me in that white car, that white car with the straps, and they took me to that place and stuck pins and needles in my head. But they let me go, and I wanted to hide, too. You want some gumbo? I got some gumbo inside. I made it yesterday.”

  “Rona?” Flint persisted. “A man and a woman. Have you seen them?”

  “I seen them grave robbers, stealin’ his boat.” She motioned across the channel. “John LeDuc lived there, but he died. Stepped in a cottonmouth nest, that’s what the ranger said. Them grave robbers over there, stealin’ his boat. I hollered at ’em, but they didn’t pay no mind.”

  “Uh-huh. What do you get to if you keep followin’ this bayou?”

  “Swamp,” she said as if he were the biggest fool who ever lived. “Swamp and more swamp. ’Cept for Saint Nasty.”

  “Saint Nasty? What’s that?”

  “Where they work on them oil rigs.” Rona’s gaze was fixed on Pelvis. “I’m dreamin’, ain’t I? My mama comes and visits me sometimes, I know I’m dreamin’ awake. That’s what I’m doin’ now, ain’t that right?”

  “How far’s Saint Nasty from here?” Flint asked.

  “Four, five miles.”

  “Is there a road out from there?”

  “No road. Just the bayou, goes on to the Gulf.”

  “We need a boat,” he said. “How much for yours?”

  “What?”

  “How much money?” He took the opportunity to slip the derringer into his pocket and withdraw the wet bills he’d taken from the girl’s wallet. “Fifty dollars, will that cover the boat and motor?”

  “Ain’t no gas in that motor,” she told him. “That ranger comes ’round and visits me, he brings me gas. His name’s Jack, he’s a nice young fella. Only he didn’t come this week.”