River Girl

by Charles Williams

  Now what to do? I looked up and down the lake, afraid again of other boats or fishermen, but the long reach was devoid of any form of life or movement. I was alone in the whole immensity of the swamp here in the bright heat of the middle of the day, but still I could feel the stirrings of panic within myself. Perhaps it was because already, without thinking about it, I knew what I was going to have to do and I was afraid of it. The oil on the surface of the lake was something I couldn’t do anything about, except possibly to spread and scatter it by running through it with the boat and motor, but the oil in itself might not be too dangerous. After all, it would eventually disperse, collecting on the big leaves of the pads and the old snags and growth along the banks, and whoever saw it would probably believe that someone had spilled some fuel while refilling the gasoline tank of his motor, and think no more about it. But this other thing, this oil bubbling up here in one spot, a drop at a time and maybe going on for weeks, putting more and more on the surface, would be sure to arouse curiosity and eventually somebody would start dragging for whatever was down there. I had to stop it.

  I sat still, thinking. The valve was probably shut off. There was very little chance that the fuel was leaking out there. That meant, then, that when the motor had come to rest there in the mud on the bottom it had been nearly upright, or tilted in that direction, and as air escaped from the tank and water forced its way in, the water naturally pushed the fuel up into the top of the tank, where it was escaping now, drop by drop, and might go on indefinitely.

  I had been trying to evade it in my mind, dodging around it and never coming face to face with what I knew; but now, with all other escape cut off, I turned and faced it. I had to go down there. But could I? I could feel the weakness and revulsion take hold of me at the thought. He had been down there a little over twenty-four hours, in that warm water, and I knew that by now he wasn’t alone. I shuddered. I just couldn’t do it.

  Was there any other way? I knew there wasn’t. The water was twelve feet deep and I couldn’t reach it with an oar. Trying to drag the anchor over it would be a futile waste of time. It had to be that way or not at all. It wouldn’t take four seconds, I thought. All I would have to do would be to locate the valve, make sure it was shut, and then tip the motor down so the water and fuel inside the tank would change positions. I could do it in one dive. And it’s either that or go away and leave it the way it is, knowing that sooner or later somebody is going to get curious about the source of all that oil bubbling out of the bottom of the lake. I stood up in the boat and started unbuttoning my shirt.

  The water was warm. I lay in it, naked, alongside the boat, with one hand on the gunwale, trying not to think of anything except the motor. I can’t wait all day, I thought. If I don’t do it now I’ll lose my nerve. Shutting my mind to everything, to all thought, I took a deep breath and dived. I seemed to go on for a long time, pulling myself down with powerful strokes of my hands, wanting to turn back but forcing myself to go ahead. It must be twenty feet deep instead of twelve, I thought wildly, and then I felt the soft mud under my arm. I was against the bottom. This was the terrible part of it now. Pulling upward against the water with my hands to keep myself flat against the mud, I groped around with them, feeling for the motor. There was no use in opening my eyes to try to see, for at this depth in the discolored water there would be no light at all. I swung my arms around wildly and felt nothing. My lungs were beginning to hurt and I thought of the boat above me, knowing I had to come up carefully as I approached the surface or I might bang my head into it. I couldn’t wait too long. Putting my feet against the mud, I sprang upward, bringing my arms up over my head to feel for the boat. I missed it and came out of the water gasping for breath.

  I can’t give up, I thought, my mind still focused with that terrible intensity on just one thing—the motor. I gulped a deep breath and dived again. When I was against the bottom I started sweeping it again with my arms, and then my left hand brushed against something just at the ends of my fingers. I turned toward it, feeling my skin draw up tightly with revulsion. It was a shoe. Bringing my right hand around, I groped with it, moving a little, and felt the canvas coat. I was fighting desperately now to keep from being sick here twelve feet under water and drowning myself with the retching. I had my hands on the frame of the motor, and with some detached portion of my mind that still hadn’t quite given itself up to the wildness I was able to orient myself. It was tilted against his doubled body in an almost upright position, just as I had thought it would be. Fighting at the panic, I ran my hands along the frame, feeling for the valve, and found it. It was tightly shut. Bringing my feet under me, I squatted upright alongside the motor and lifted, rolling the whole wirebound and terrifying mass of his body and the motor over 180 degrees until he was lying on his other side with the outboard upside down and its tank stuck into the soft and sucking mud. It wasn’t until then, until I had started to shove upward toward the air and clean sunlight, that I felt the final horror, the thing I had feared more than all the rest. It brushed against my naked leg, hard and solid and cold, and then when I threshed wildly it was gone somewhere into the darkness. It was a turtle.

  I held weakly to the boat, and in a minute I was able to climb in and collapse naked and dripping on the seat, waiting for the wildness to go away.

  Eighteen

  When I had dried a little in the sun I put my clothes back on, felt for the envelope that contained the money to be sure it was still safe, and sat looking out at the surface of the lake. No more drops of oil came up, and I felt sure I had solved it. As for that already spread out over the water, there was nothing I could do about it. I decided against trying to spread and disperse it by running though it, on the theory that it would do more harm than good. It would look more like an accidental spillage if it were all in one place.

  I started the motor and headed back to the boat landing. After tying up at the float, I finished the job I had started before, filling the gasoline tank, and looked at my watch. It was three-fifteen. I went up the trail through the trees and out into the hot sunlight of the clearing. The old hound was nowhere in sight. When I went into the house, nothing had changed at all. It was all exactly as I had left it, except that the spot on the floor that I had scrubbed was dry now. I walked out into the kitchen and looked around there, finding nothing out of place. There wasn’t a chance anyone had been here.

  Going back into the front room, I stood there for a moment before the dresser, remembering the day she had taken out the hook for me and how beautiful she had been even in that terrible dress and with the roughly cut hair uncombed. I could almost feel her there with me in the intense, hot stillness, and I wanted suddenly with an almost overpowering longing to see her now. It’s only until tonight, I thought, or early tomorrow morning. I’ll see her then. And then, all at once, I was conscious there was something different about the room. Something that had always been there before was gone now, and I missed it. Then I knew what is was. I no longer heard the ticking of the clock. It had run down and stopped. It doesn’t matter, I thought. I’d better get out of here now, before I start seeing him instead of her. I took a last look around. There was nothing that could do us any harm, and I went out, leaving the door open, and walked back to the boat. I should have taken another look.

  From now on it’s got to be good, I thought. I stepped down off the float into the rental boat and sat down on the seat. Taking out my knife, I slashed a small incision on the side of one of the fingers on my left hand. When the blood started, I picked up one of the oars and smeared it rather sparingly up near the round, heavy end just below the hand grip. It would be dry by the time I was ready to abandon the boat. Then I let a little of it drip into the water in the bottom, and smeared some on the seat. That took care of it, except the bailing can. Very carefully I put a set of smeared and bloody, completely unrecognizable fingerprints inside it, just where the fingers would normally be as a man grasped it to dip water out of the boat.

  I was
ready to go. Wrapping the cut finger in my handkerchief so it wouldn’t bleed any into his boat, I switched to Shevlin’s, tied the rental boat on behind with the anchor rope, and was under way down the lake. Now it starts again, I thought. This makes three times, and if I had to do it once more my hair would be gray. Only now, if I meet somebody, it’s the end of everything. But the miles ran back behind me, turn after turn, one empty and deserted reach after another while I sweated it out, and I saw no one at all. At four-forty-five I was down to the sandy point where the slough turned off, the one I had marked in my memory this morning. I wheeled and turned into it and in a moment I was out of sight of the lake, cut off and hidden among the trees on either side.

  I had to throttle the big motor down here, for the channel was narrow and twisting, winding its erratic way across the bottom. And two or three times in every mile there would be big trees down in the water. These had to be carefully worked around, sometimes forcing me clear up against the opposite bank. After I had gone about three miles I stopped, pulled the rental boat alongside, and cut the anchor rope up near where it was made fast to the bow. Coiling it up so there would be no free end to float around in the water, I tied it all up in one bunch and dropped it into the slough. The anchor was a concrete block that would weigh about fifteen pounds, and I knew that when they found the abandoned boat with it missing, the inference would be inescapable. Shevlin had used the thing that was handiest, and what was left of Jack Marshall was lying on the bottom somewhere in all these thousands of acres of lake and slough with it tied fast to his body. I dropped the deputy’s badge and the gun and handcuffs into the water along with the anchor and sat for a moment watching the little rings recede where they had disappeared. There, I thought, goes the last trace of twenty-seven years of Marshall.

  I got under way again, pulling the rental boat along with the short section of anchor rope still left fast to the bow. After about another mile I found the place I was looking for. A small stream came out into the slough on the right, its entrance choked with a rank growth of reeds. I stopped and pulled the rental boat alongside and got into it, setting the anchor of Shevlin’s boat in its stern so it wouldn’t get away. The blood I had smeared on the oar and the boat seat had dried solidly now, and I wet the bloody handkerchief I had had about my finger and set about washing it off. The way to do it, I knew, was to wash it just as clean as a man would who was anxious to leave no trace but at the same time was working under tremendous pressure. There would be no indication that it had been planted, but rather that it had been thoroughly searched for and washed off with just a slight smudge overlooked here and there. The gory fingerprints inside the bailing can I left just as they were, for they were completely invisible as the can was lying now. Then I took the small handcuff key out of my pocket and dropped it so it bounced under one of the slats in the wooden grating on the bottom of the boat, invisible unless someone lifted the grating. I wiped the motor all over with the handkerchief to remove fingerprints, rolled the wet cloth into a ball, and threw it far out among the reeds.

  Taking one of the oars, I poled the boat back among the reeds, then pulled Shevlin’s boat in after it until they touched. Lifting the anchor back into his boat, I climbed over into it myself and poled it back out of the growth into the slough. I turned and looked back. It was a good job. The boat was hidden, but it could be found. It looked exactly like the kind of job a man would do at night and in a hurry, not knowing, because of the darkness, that just a little white was visible through the shield of greenery. It’s done, I thought. It’s all done except getting out of here. In a few more hours I’ll be with her. The past ends here, and from now on everything is ours.

  The sun was almost down now and twilight was thickening here in the heavy timber of the bottom. I knew I had to hurry and get up to the head of the slough before it was completely dark, for it would be impossible to negotiate a small, twisting, log-blockaded waterway like this at night. Starting the motor, I got under way, sure it couldn’t be more than another mile or two out to the road.

  The going became worse and worse, and in a few minutes I had to cut the motor and take to the oars, picking my way carefully around down timber and logs. In another ten minutes I could see it was going to be impossible to take the boat much farther and I began looking around for a place to leave it. I wasn’t long in finding it, a dead log projecting out into the water where I could step out and get on dry ground without leaving any tracks in the mud around the water’s edge. I stepped out onto the log and gave the boat a shove, taking no pains to hide it. It made no difference how soon they found it.

  There had been no rain for weeks, and above the water’s edge the ground was hard and dry, with no danger of leaving tracks. It was almost totally dark now and it was slow walking, pushing through the underbrush. Then, almost before I expected it, I ran into the fence. The road was just beyond, and I was out of the bottom. There were no cars in sight, so I stepped out on the road, looking for the bridge. I could see the pale gleam of concrete just below me, and walked that way, squatting down just off the road where I could watch for the headlights of cars and get under the bridge to hide if necessary. I struck a match and looked at my watch. It was seven-forty.

  At five of eight I saw the headlights down the road. The car was coming slowly, and when the lights began to break against the bridge I saw them drop and lift, and drop and lift again. The car pulled to a stop and I walked up the embankment and onto the road.

  She grinned, the gray eyes alight in the soft glow of the instrument panel. “Jack, darling, I’m right on time. Here, I want you to drive.” She slid over in the seat.

  “All right,” I said. I walked around and got in on the other side.

  She curled up in the corner of the seat with her legs doubled back under her, and smiled at me. She was wearing a short gabardine skirt and another of those exotic-looking blouses, this one gathered up some way over her left shoulder with long diagonal folds running down across her breast. There was a bunch of violets pinned to it. “This is wonderful, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Thanks a lot, Dinah.”

  I drove up the road a short distance, found a place to turn around, and headed back, gathering speed. “What’s the news in town?” I asked, wondering if the storm had broken yet.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Jack. I saw Buford for a few minutes at noon, but I haven’t heard anything since. I told him I was leaving at one o’clock.”

  I nodded. That made sense. She couldn’t very well start down to Bayou City at seven o’clock at night. It would look crazy.

  “You haven’t had anything to eat, have you?” she asked.

  “No. But we’d better not stop anywhere within a hundred miles. As Buford says, I’m too easy to see.”

  “Yes.” She said quietly from the corner of the seat “I’ve noticed that about you.”

  I let it pass, pretending I hadn’t caught the inflection of it. It worried me a little, though, and at the same time I was conscious of feeling slightly ridiculous and uncomfortable. And then I remembered last night and the way she had looked up at me as she was getting into the car. I didn’t think I had ever been one of those chumps who was convinced that every girl that came along was making a pass at him, but now I was beginning to feel that way. This made twice she had rolled the ball squarely in front of me, and twice I had refused to pick it up. She didn’t strike me as a girl who had ever had to be that obvious, with her looks and charm, and she must be convinced I was incredibly stupid. That I didn’t mind, but I didn’t want her jumping to the only other conclusion a woman is ever able to see when the bait remains untouched. Absolutely nobody was ever going to know about Doris if I could help it. It would be too dangerous for both of us now.

  I shook it off. Maybe I was mistaken, I thought. And it’s a small thing, anyway. I’m beginning to have the worry habit; that’s the trouble. Here I am, in the clear at last, on my way to Doris, with three thousand dollars in my pocket and a
n entirely new life ahead of us, and I insist on getting into a sweat about this thrill-chasing girl. By the time we get to Bayou City she’ll probably have decided I’m just another Mortimer Snerd and be interested in something else.

  “This is a nice car,” I said, to change the subject and to keep the silence from stretching out.

  “Yes,” she replied absently, as if it didn’t interest her much. “It rides nicely at a hundred and above. Why don’t you let it out?”

  “On this road?” I asked incredulously.

  She grinned. “Why not? It’s heavy.”

  “So’s a granite headstone, but I don’t want one,” I said.

  We came out onto the highway in a few minutes and I turned east onto, it, headed toward Colston and Bayou City. She lit two of those king-sized cigarettes she smoked and handed one to me. Almost unconsciously, the way a man always does when a woman lights a cigarette for him, I looked at the end of it before I put it in my mouth.

  She rested her cheek against the back of the seat, smiling. “You’re not afraid of a little lipstick, are you?”

  I grinned lamely. “No. I didn’t mean it that way. It was just a habit.”