Either the Nunns had that loot themselves, or somebody who did have it had spent part of it here. You almost had to eliminate Nunn; he’d been a peace officer and if he were trying to pass off hot money he’d do it where it wouldn’t leave such a clearly marked trail. He’d realize the dangers inherent in the whole thing.
I grinned in the darkness as it suddenly occurred to me that in all these suppositions and theories I had taken it for granted that anyone stumbling into the orbit of that missing bag of loot through no matter what set of unusual circumstances would automatically be another crook who’d try to cash in on it, instead of an honest man who’d merely call the nearest cop and turn it in. This calm assumption was clearly based on Godwin’s Law of Character Erosion, which states that the attrition of honesty varies inversely with the square of the distance and directly with the mass of the temptation.
I tried to think of some way of pumping her as to who had spent those two twenties. But no matter how obliquely I went at it I’d arouse suspicion. The circumstance of my showing up here for the first time within hours of her visit to the store might look a little odd in itself, without doing anything else to attract attention. It was a long time before I went to sleep.
The sound of a car driving into the clearing waked me just at dawn. I looked around the interior of the crude little cabin. It was roofed with corrugated sheet metal and its flooring was of splintery, unfinished pine planks. Aside from the bed the only furnishings were a sheet metal stove for heat during the duck season and a wooden packing box on which stood a pail of water and a wash-basin. I hurriedly washed my face, dressed in khaki fishing clothes, and went outside with a dixie cup of water to brush my teeth. It was one of those rare combinations of time and place that always made you a little sad at the thought of dying and never seeing its like again. There was an almost poised stillness about it, as if the day were waiting to explode. The surface of the narrow inlet, walled in by high-crowned and shadowy timber, was unbroken and dark, and little feathers of mist curled off it to hang suspended against the backdrop of the trees. Before me and a little to the right eight or ten skiffs were moored to a float that ran out from the shore like something lying on a mirror. Everything was wet with dew.
The man who had driven up in the car had apparently gone into the main building. I went over and entered. The lantern was burning again, its white light issuing from the doorway to blend with the gray tones of dawn. Jewel Nunn, in shorts and a man’s shirt, was frying eggs on the grill. She glanced up sullenly as she heard the screen door open, and I saw that her eyes were puffy and faintly red as if from sleeplessness or crying. Nunn himself was taking some spinning lures from the showcase. He nodded curtly. The other man, presumably the one who had called last night, was sitting at the counter. He turned his head to look around at me. I didn’t know him. He was a slender, graying man in his fifties, neatly dressed in pressed khakis that obviously were not his standard garb. A doctor, you would have said, or perhaps an attorney, or bank official.
He nodded pleasantly. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” I said. I sat down on the stool at the left end of the counter and ordered some coffee and two eggs. We ate silently.
The other man finished and paid for his breakfast with a dollar bill. Nunn came out of the doorway leading to the rear. He was carrying a small outboard motor.
“You about ready, Godwin?” he asked.
“No hurry,” I said. “Just tell me which boat.”
“What kind of motor you got?”
I nodded to the one he was carrying. “Same thing.”
“Take number six then.”
He and the other man went out. I heard them collecting gear from the car as I finished the eggs. I stood up and took a five from my wallet, moving along the counter until I was standing over the cigar box as she made change. There was only the same money in it there’d been last night. Well what had I expected? The whole thing looked silly.
I went out. It was fully light now. I went back to the cabin and draped my bedding over a wire outside between two trees so it would sun during the day. I unlocked the station wagon and carried the motor down to the float. Nunn and his passenger were loaded and apparently ready to go, but he was fiddling with the motor. He looked up and nodded to a skiff that had a crudely painted numeral 6 on the bow. I clamped the motor on the transom and lit a cigarette before going back for my tackle.
When I came back and began putting the stuff in the skiff they were still sitting there. The gray-haired man was looking impatient, but he said nothing. Nunn appeared in no hurry to start; he was still puttering around the motor and bailing out the skiff. When I had my gear loaded he made a couple of half-hearted pulls with the starter rope.
“I thought you overhauled these motors,” he said with a sour glance in my direction.
“We did,” I said. “Try opening the shut-off valve.”
He grunted and turned it. On the next pull the motor took hold. “Follow us if you want to,” he said, throttling it down so he could be heard. “Best fishing is up where we’re going.”
“Thanks,” I said, wondering at this burst of generosity. His passenger was paying for his guide services; it was a little strange he’d offer them to me for nothing.
They started up the inlet between the walls, of trees. I cranked the motor and followed, with no intention of sticking with them all the way up. I liked to fish alone, aside from the fact it was discourteous from a sporting standpoint to freeload where somebody else was picking up the tab for the guide.
Javier was not a single large lake in the accepted sense of the word; it was rather a lake system. The only open body of water of any size was at the lower end, an expanse of fairly shallow water perhaps a little less than a mile wide and only slightly longer. Beyond that it was a vast network of sloughs, channels, and swampy areas in heavy timber, all connected by waterways passable to outboard craft. Some of the sloughs and channels were quite extensive, running up to a quarter mile in width. I wasn’t afraid of becoming lost: years of hunting and fishing had made me at home in this kind of terrain, and in my tackle box I carried a large-scale county map that showed it all in detail. We came out of the inlet into open water, keeping close to the weed beds and old snags of trees along the eastern side. The sun was not up yet, and the air was cool and fresh. Once I saw a flash of white in the edge of the timber as we startled a deer drinking in the shallows. The swirls of feeding bass could be seen now and then among the pads.
Nunn veered off to the left and entered a channel in the upper end. I continued straight ahead. In a few minutes I cut the motor and let the boat drift as I began setting up the fly-rod. I was near the north end of the open water myself, but to the eastward of the channel in which Nunn and his passenger had disappeared. Directly ahead another winding and timber-walled channel came in, bearing off to the north and east. The boat came to rest and I shipped the oars, kicking it ahead now and then between casts into pockets among the pads off to my left. After five minutes nothing had struck the silvery streamer fly I was using, so I removed it from the leader and fastened on a green, cork-bodied popping bug. I dropped it in a small opening thirty feet away, twitched the line to make it gurgle, and a bass smashed it, erupting from the water with a head-shaking leap as I set the hook. I worked him away from the pads, wore him down, and slipped the net under him to work the hook out of his mouth. I lost the next two, and then landed another which I also released. For a half hour I gave myself up wholly to the sheer joy of fishing, and the baffling riddle of those twenty dollar bills was gone from my mind. The sun came up and it began to be hot. There was no breeze at all and the surface of the lake was like glass.
As abruptly as it had started, the fishing went dead. I changed lures a half-dozen times with no success. I stopped casting, and just as I was lighting a cigarette I heard an outboard motor somewhere to the northward of me. Nunn, I thought. Apparently he wasn’t finding the fishing any better and was moving around. Then I bec
ame aware the sound was coming from the channel directly ahead of me. I looked around over my shoulder and saw the boat as it came into view around the first bend. It was a skiff with a small outboard. There was one man in it. He came on out into the open lake, changed course slightly, and passed about seventy-five yards away, headed toward the inlet at the lower end where the camp was located. I waved, and he lifted a hand momentarily in greeting, a small man in overalls and a big, floppy straw hat. It wasn’t a rental boat; all of Nunn’s were green. Probably a local, I thought; he apparently had no fishing gear with him. A few people lived up there in the swamps, mostly muskrat trappers and perhaps a moonshiner or two.
I took up the rod again and went on fishing, but I was only going through the motions now, while my mind returned to the same old questions. The sun grew brassy, and was reflected with an eye-searing glare off the surface of the lake. After a while I saw the man in the big straw hat come out of the inlet in his boat, headed back up lake. He went past some fifty yards off, lifted his hand in a brief greeting, and entered the channel from which he had come in the first place. He had what appeared to be a carton in the forward end of the skiff. Shopping, I thought, remembering the small stock of groceries they kept at the camp.
The morning dragged on. I had a few desultory strikes from panfish, but the bass had apparently gone to sleep for the day. I began to be thirsty. This was a waste of time; the whole thing was stupid, anyway. Just what I expected to find? And how? The absurdity of it caught up with me and I cranked the motor with a feeling of disgust. Go on back to town and forget it.
I headed down lake and looked at my watch as I entered the mouth of the narrow inlet. It was after eleven. Returning to town now after reserving the cabin and boat for two days was going to look a little odd, but I’d just say I didn’t feel well. What difference did it make, anyway? I cut the motor and began gliding up the float in the shade of the trees along the bank, and in the sudden silence I thought I heard a car somewhere out in the timber beyond the clearing. It sounded as if it were going away, and then it faded out and I wasn’t even sure I’d actually heard it. I made the skiff fast to the float and started to loosen the clamps to remove the motor from the transom. Never mind, I thought; it could wait. Right now I was too parched and dehydrated to think of loading the station wagon before I’d had something to drink.
The somnolent hush of midday lay over the clearing. I crossed to the large building and entered. Jewel Nunn was sweeping the floor of the lunch-room. She turned, with something tense and apprehensive about her face, but it was gone instantly when she saw who I was. “Oh,” she said.
I wondered what she had been afraid of. And why had she kept her back to the door, if she were afraid? She certainly must have heard me stepping up on the porch.
“You have anything cold to drink?” I asked.
“Just cokes,” she said.
“I’ll have one. And a glass of water, if I might.”
She went around behind the counter and opened the icebox. I tried again to think of some way of broaching the subject of those twenty-dollar bills without causing her to wonder why I’d ask about an odd thing like that. There didn’t seem to be any. Maybe I was slowing up.
She uncapped the bottle and poured me a glass of water from a jar in the icebox. I took a long drink of the water and then began on the coke. She started to return to her sweeping. I took out my wallet and extracted a ten-dollar bill, intending to settle up for the cabin and boat.
She glanced at it, and reached under the counter for the cigar box. Setting it on top, she opened it and glanced inside. “Haven’t you got anything smaller?” she asked.
She thought I merely wanted to pay for the drink. I started to explain I was leaving, but then it occurred to me I ought to take one more look into that box before committing myself. That was what I’d come out here for, wasn’t it? I moved a casual step nearer and glanced down.
There was no twenty in it, new or old. Besides the silver it contained only some ones, a couple of fives, and a ten. Well, I asked myself disgustedly, are you satisfied? Ready to go home now?
“I wanted—” I began, and then stopped suddenly, my eyes riveted on the ten-dollar bill. It was on top, in plain sight. And along one end of it was a narrow, reddish-brown stain.
Five
Maybe it had been there all the time. The only thing I’d been watching for was a twenty, so I could have overlooked it. No. I thought swiftly. Last night there had been nothing in that box except ones and fives. This morning the other fisherman had paid for his breakfast with another single, while I’d given them a five.
Somebody had come in here and paid for something with that ten, receiving one of the fives in change. And it had been this morning. I could feel the hair prickle along the back of my neck.
“Haven’t you got anything smaller than that?” she asked again.
I snapped out of it. She was staring at me curiously.
“Oh, I said. I poked a hand in my pocket and found a quarter. “Here you are. And give me another one while you’re at it. I’m really thirsty.”
I still had my own ten in my hand when she turned to open the refrigerator. It took only a fraction of a second to drop it in the box and pick up the other one. When she swung back around I was putting it in my wallet. I put the quarter on the counter and she gave me a nickel from the box in change, entirely unaware of the switch. There was no reason she should notice it; that stain was so narrow along the end you’d never pay any attention to it unless it had some significance for you. I was wild to examine it, but it’d have to wait. Right now there was something more important.
I sat down on one of the stools and took another drink of the coke. She walked back to where she’d left the broom leaning against the wall near the small window at the end of the room.
I lit a cigarette and swung around on the stool. “Did you ever model clothes?” I asked.
The broom stopped. She turned. “No. Why?.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. The way you walk, perhaps. You never had any training at all?”
She shook her head. Her eyes watched me, but you couldn’t read anything in them. “What made you think I had?”
I gestured with the hand holding the cigarette. “Form. Line. Flow. Call it anything. Look. Walk over to the door and back.”
Her eyes were hard and suspicious at first, and I thought she was going to tell me to go to hell. She didn’t, however. She leaned the broom against the wall and did as I said. I watched her. She’d had some natural grace to begin with, but now it was all broken up and jagged with self-consciousness. Well, I’d make her self-conscious.
“Bring those feet together!” I snapped. “What are you doing, straddling a fence?”
She stopped and gasped.
I didn’t give her a chance to say it. “I am sorry, Mrs. Nunn,” I said hurriedly. I smiled, and held up a hand in a mock gesture of defense. “Look, I mean . . . Forgive me, won’t you? It just slipped out. It’s a hard thing to explain. . . .”
“What do you mean?”
I shook my head and smiled at her again. “I’m sorry I barked like that. I didn’t stop to think. But look at it this way: the impact of a minor flaw in anything is intensified in direct proportion to the flawlessness of the rest of it. You understand, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
She wasn’t sure of anything now. Any of them over the age of three can see through flattery the way you can through a pane of glass—when they want to. But they can’t cope with a change of pace. Destroy their frame of reference just once and they never get oriented again, especially if you keep crossing them up.
You could see her deciding things were getting out of hand and that it was time to blow the whistle. “Well!” she said. “I must say you’ve got a nerve.”
When retreat is indicated, attack. Toujours l’audace. It can get you many a fat lip, but plenty of times it’ll work, if you know precisely where to stop the offensive.
I fastened the slow stare on her, starting at her ankles and going north across the long bare legs and the denim shorts, the sucked-in waist, the curves at the front of her shirt, and finally coming to rest on a white face and a blazing pair of eyes. It was deliberate, and infuriatingly obvious. She drew in a sharp breath.
“Oh,” I said in sudden confusion, as if it had just dawned on me. “Please, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way at all. It was just the reverse, in fact. I was imagining you in an evening gown.”
She circled this warily, looking for a place that wasn’t loaded.
“Women who can wear clothes,” I said, “look so wonderful wearing them.” I stared at her thoughtfully and then went on,
“Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes”
“What’s that?” she asked wonderingly.
“Robert Herrick,” I said. I picked up the other bottle of coke and walked casually over and put it in her hand. She looked up at me a little cautiously, still trying to figure it out. I left her standing there as I strolled over to the screen door and stood gazing idly out at the sun-blasted clearing.
“This is a beautiful place here,” I said.
There was no answer for a moment. Whoever it was in that car, I thought, the one I’d heard as I came up to the slip. But maybe there’d been somebody here before that.
“Why . . .?” she asked behind me. “I mean, what was that you meant about my feet?”
“I wish you’d forget that,” I said. “It was nothing, really, and I’m sorry.”
“But why did you say it? Most women walk with their feet about that far apart. Don’t they?”
“That’s right,” I said. “And on most women it doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Why?”
“Because they walk like pack animals to begin with.”
Girl out back Page 5