River Girl

by Charles Williams

  The darkness was beginning to fade now and I could see the weed-choked dark water in front of me. I stood up, threw the flashlight out into the water, and waded in. Mud sucked at my feet and I pushed forward and started swimming. It was only a few strokes to the other side, where I climbed out and began beating my way through the brush again. Inside an hour I had lost track of the number if times I had to swim. I made no effort to turn aside when open water blocked my path, for it I didn’t move in a straight line I wouldn’t get out of here. When the sun came up I was able to check my direction, going due south with it on my left. My progress was agonizingly slow and the cut places on my head began to throb. Vines tripped me and I fell, and at times I had to wade for hundreds of yards through water and mud up to my waist. Most of the channels I had to swim were matted with pads, and the long, twining underwater stems wound around my arms and legs and threatened to pull me under. There was no way to know what time it was any more, for my watch was long since drowned and stopped, but the sun was climbing higher. As midday approached it was harder and harder to tell direction, for the sun was almost directly overhead.

  Noon came and went and I was conscious now of beginning to weaken from hunger. I’d eaten nothing since Thursday night, and the back-breaking struggle and the heat were beginning to wear me down. Suddenly I was again in the midst of the piled windrow of down timber where the tornado had left its path through the swamp, and for a while my mind was black with panic. I was lost. I was going in circles and had come back to the place I had fought my way through nearly twelve hours before. Collapsing against the trunk of an uprooted tree, I fought to get hold of myself. It couldn’t be the same one. Tornadoes play leap-frog through a place like this, I told myself desperately, and this is another one. It had to be. I’d been going steadily south for hours. But how did I know I was going south? Part of the time the sun had been invisible down here in the timber, and for the past two hours it had been so nearly overhead it was impossible to tell direction from it.

  And why didn’t I hear any guns? There hadn’t been a sound all morning except that of my own desperate plunging through the swamp. If I’d been going in a straight line for all that time, I should be somewhere near Shevlin’s cabin and the main channel of the lake itself, and there would almost certainly be a camp set up there for the searchers. I listened now, trying to hush the sobbing sound of my breathing, and heard nothing but the infinite silence of the swamp.

  I don’t know where I am, I thought wildly. I’ll never get out of here. And now, suddenly, I was conscious of the way time was flying past. Every minute of it they would be working on her, firing questions at her, trying to wear her down, and if she broke I’d be better off if I did die in here. I sprang to my feet and tried to run, crazily, the panic washing over me. Again I fell, breaking open the cut on my head. I got up, tearing ahead. Then, somehow, I was past the windfall area, and I plunged headlong into the underbrush. Vines caught me and I collapsed, struggling weakly, like a fly in a spider wed, and sank to my knees and fell.

  There was no knowing how long I lay there. Sanity gradually returned, and I began to be conscious of my surroundings and capable of rational thought. Mosquitoes buzzed about my face in clouds, and in the hot, humid stillness among the leaves and vines I was bathed in sweat. Thin shafts of sunlight probed through the dense foliage overhead, and as I watched them I could see they were slanting a little as the sun wheeled over into the west. I’ve got to keep my head, I thought. If I lose it once more I’ll be done. Twenty-four hours have gone by now since they arrested her, and if I don’t find my way out pretty soon she’ll think I’ve run and deserted her and she’ll break. I’ve got to get up and start in a straight line again, going south.

  I started again, moving with the shafts of sunlight slanting across my eyes from right to left. Time ran on, like an endless belt, with no beginning and no end and nothing to mark the hours. I noticed I was beginning to fall sometimes now when nothing had tripped me, and wondered if the two blows on my head had affected me that much. No, I thought dizzily, it’s only fatigue, and the weakness of hunger. Five miles through that mud and water and tangle of underbrush were the equivalent of fifty on solid ground, and there was no way of knowing how many miles I had actually walked. At times it seemed as if I were an insect trying to fight its way through a sodden sponge, pressing inward just so far and then being thrown relentlessly back. The swamp gave way before me, swallowed me up, and then closed behind, all of it looking so much alike there was no way of knowing whether I went ahead or was merely raising and lowering my dead-weary legs in some sort of slow-motion and idiotic dance in an endless dream. I began to think of her nearly all the time, forgetting for long stretches to watch the sun or the direction in which the shafts slanted through the leaves. We lay side by side on the ground in mottled shade, whispering to each other; then she was smiling at me, radiant and lovely in her new clothes, while I caught her arms to look at her. I stopped and shook my head, running a hand across my face and seeing it come away covered with dirt and blood. Stop it, I thought. Stop it! Which way was south?

  And then, strangely, the forest was more open. Immense oaks towered overhead and the brush was thinning out. The ground here was dry and firm underfoot and walking was easier. I caught a glint of sunlit water off to the right, shining through the trees, and tried to run toward it, but I was too weak and fell again. When I got to my feet I staggered on toward it, the view opening up, and then I knew I had reached the lake. A hundred yards of open water stretched out past me, disappearing around a bend up to my right, and full of big weed beds along the other shore. I looked down at my feet and saw the remains of a campfire, but knew it was an old one even before I knelt frenziedly and ran my hands into the ashes. But somebody had been here! I could find them!

  But where were they? Where was the sound of guns? I stared wildly around in the little open glade, so peaceful in the sunlight of late afternoon, and then, suddenly, I began to have the awful feeling that it was somehow familiar. I knew now. The campfire was my own. This was where I had camped on that first trip up here, when I had met her, and there was where the bedroll had lain and I had caught her hand and she had pulled away from me, crying, to run out toward the lake. I was back to where I had started, but now she was in jail and he was dead and I was the one who had killed him. I was conscious of the horrible sensation that I wasn’t just walking in circles in space and time, but that I was actually swinging around the steep black sides of some enormous whirlpool and sliding always toward the center.

  But there is a way out, I thought agonizingly. There’s always a way out. All I had to do was locate the searching parties and she would be freed when word was flashed that I had been found. But where were they? I had thought the lake would be busy with motorboats and the sound of guns being fired at intervals throughout the day and night, and here was only the same dead, lost silence I had been fighting through all day. Had they given up? Would I ever get out of here in time, before she collapsed and told them?

  And then I heard it—not gunfire, but a motor starting. It was up there to the right, around the bend, sudden, staccato, and very near, so similar to the way I had heard his motor start that morning a long time ago that I was conscious again of that feeling of going around and around in some tightening and deadly spiral. Immediately after it I heard another start, and they were coming nearer. I looked up and saw them appearing around the bend, and there were not two boats, but three. The first had two white-hatted men in it, the second was being towed and was empty, and the one in the rear held two.

  I’ve found them, I thought wildly. Shouting and waving my arms, I ran across the small open glade and down to the water’s edge. They had seen me now, and I watched the boats change course a little to swing in toward the bank. I had made it, and in a little while word would be going out that I had been found alive, and she would be freed. The boats were drawing nearer. I didn’t know either of the men in the front boat, but I saw suddenly that Buf
ord was one of the two in the other one.

  Instead of waving he was swinging around in the seat with something extended in his hands. I saw the glint, then, of sunlight on steel and recognized it as a rifle, the barrel suddenly foreshortening into nothing as he brought it into line. He was directly behind the boat being towed, and even as I was throwing myself down and back in the awful realization that he was going to shoot, I saw that the second boat was carrying Shevlin.

  He shot after I was on the ground and rolling. Mud exploded in my face and then I heard the crack of the rifle almost at the same time because he was so near. Before the sound had even died I was on my feet, knowing somehow that I had to get up and over the bank while he was working the bolt or I would never move from there alive. And then I was in the trees, hurtling zigzag through them while the gun cracked again. They had cut the motors and in another few seconds they would be on the bank themselves and chasing me.

  I didn’t know where I ran, or how far. There was just the pain in my chest and the crying sound from my open mouth as it gulped for air, and the only thing my mind could hold was the picture of that long, canvas-wrapped bundle like an old rolled-up rug lying in the bottom of the second boat. After a while I fell, unable to move, and lay there in the brush trying to still the tortured sound of my breathing enough to listen. There was no sound behind me now.

  Twenty-five

  I don't know how long I lay there on the ground with nothing but the numbness and the terror in my mind. We were whipped now, and this was the end. They already had her, and I was trapped. They had found him; they knew I had killed him and I was a fugitive with no plan of escape and nothing ahead but futile and senseless flight. Flight? I thought. To where? I looked down at my clothes, at the utter ruin that I had deliberately sought, and thought of the way I would look if I did get out of the swamp, Bearded, bloody, mud-caked, I wouldn’t have a chance. And if Buford got to me first, he’d kill me. I knew that now. He didn’t want me arrested.

  Once, though I was not sure, I thought I heard an outboard motor start, far away across the bottom. One of them would go down the lake to take the body in and get to the telephone. The other three would stay here and keep up the search until they began to pile in here with the dogs sometime late tonight. They’d call in the state police cars and swear in a bunch of special deputies to patrol the roads on both sides of the swamp, and everything moving out there would be searched. And I couldn’t stay in here because in another few hours without food or rest I’d be too weak to move.

  And what of her? I thought. What will it be like with her when they bring the news that he’s been found? Or was that how they had found him? Had she broken already and told them? But what difference did it make now how they’d done it? It was done, and we were trapped.

  We would have been in San Francisco now…I caught myself up, almost savagely, knowing I had to keep away from that or I’d lose my mind. The sun was setting now, and I wondered if, where she was, she could see even a little reflection of it along a wall. This was what I had done to her. I was going to give her everything, and now this was what it was. I had to get up, to move, to do something to shut it out of my mind. Jumping to my feet, I started walking, aimlessly at first, and then, as some strange compulsion began to take hold of me, swinging south and then west in a large circle back toward the lake.

  It was growing darker here in the timber and I began to walk faster. The direction I was going at least made a little sense. Since I was on this side of the lake and they would expect me to run east and try to get out to the railroad and catch a freight, it would be better to move west and get across the lake. Suddenly, then, I knew where I was headed. I had about one chance in a thousand of getting there, but I was going toward Dinah’s. There was no use in trying to get home for some more clothes and a car; they’d be watching the house just on the chance I might try it. But maybe to Dinah’s apartment...I wanted to break into a run.

  Just at dusk I came out on the bank of the lake a mile or two below where the boats had been. It was breathtakingly beautiful, like dark glass, with the wall of the trees a black silhouette against the sunset afterglow along the other shore, and as I came up I saw a big, spreading ring where a bass had risen, out among the snags. Often when I had been fishing and left the lake just at dusk like this, full of its immense and lonely quiet, I had wondered what it would be like to know that I would never see it again, and now that I was looking at it for probably the last time I was conscious of nothing except that I did not want to think about it. I walked deliberately out into it, and as the water rose to my waist I started to swim. Halfway across I began to wonder if I would make it, exhausted as I was to the point of collapse and weighted with the shoes and clothes, but somehow I kept going. I fought my way through fifty yards of the entangling pads on the other shore and climbed gasping onto the bank. It was dark now, completely black among the trees.

  I had to go straight ahead, but how? Five or six miles due west I would begin to hit the rising ground and the pines, but all the intervening distance was flat, unvarying bottom country full of sloughs and heavily timbered, with no landmarks and only glimpses of the stars. With my back against the lake shore and facing the direction in which I wanted to go, I studied the sky a moment to line up the few constellations I knew, then plunged into the darkness. I lost track of the number of times I fell and the number of sloughs I waded and swam and finally just wallowed through. I bumped into trees and entangled myself in vines, and each time I plunged to the ground it was more difficult to rise again. A dreamy lassitude would begin to flow over me like warm water and I would want to lie there in the hope that if I slept and then awoke the whole horrible dream would be gone and I would open my eyes to find that we were on the plane to San Francisco and were circling over the bay ready to land in the early dawn. Then the terror would come sweeping back and with it the bitter knowledge that if I did not get out of here before daylight I was finished, and I would force myself to rise and go staggering on. By daybreak they would have the dogs in here and I would no longer be able to hide, and of course I couldn’t get across the highway and into town except very late at night, if I could at all.

  It was a dream at first, and then a nightmare, and at last an eternal and monotonous black hell without fires or light where I was doomed to go staggering forward and forever falling. After a while I began to believe I was losing my mind, because for long periods she would be moving along beside me. Once I turned and called her name aloud. The sudden sound of my voice in the silence of the forest shocked me into consciousness of what I had done, and terror took hold of me again and I thought for a moment I would cry out and run.

  Time had no meaning now. It might have been an hour since I had left the lake and it might have been five. I could have covered four miles, or I could be walking in circles and be almost back there again. But then, suddenly, when I fell again I felt the dry, aromatic slickness of pine needles under my face and threw my hands about wildly, grasping at them. I had come out of the bottom and was beginning to mount the ridge.

  An almost insane urgency took hold of me and I wanted to run. I had come this far, across that black maze of bottom, and suppose now that daylight should catch me before I got to Dinah’s? The difficult part, the almost impossible part, lay behind, but ahead was all the danger. I had to get into town, where everybody knew me, and being seen by anyone would mean disaster. After I got up on the ridge in the fairly open pines I could make better time, and before long I began to see the winking of lights below me and knew I had reached the highway. I turned and plunged downhill.

  What time was it? That was the only thing in my mind now. I still had nearly four miles to go to get into town, and then I had to get around it, skirting the back streets and alleys, and if daybreak caught me I was done for. There were very few cars on the road now and I took a chance on walking along the pavement, rather than out in the trees, to make better time. When I would see a car ahead or behind I would run into the ro
adside bushes and hide until it had gone past. Then I would come back out onto the road, feeling the urgency driving me, and start hurrying again, trotting and then walking and then trotting, my legs numb and without any feeling now that they were even mine. I had been walking for so long I couldn’t stop. I had the insane feeling that if I fell down and went to sleep my legs would keep right on moving because I no longer knew how to turn them off.

  I turned and looked behind me, toward the east, searching for the telltale fading, the beginning of the coral flush I had watched so many times from duck blinds and fishing boats. It was still as dark as ever there, but even the thought of dawn drove me forward desperately. A car topped the slight rise ahead and the sudden, searching lights were almost upon me before I could run and plunge down off the road. I’ve got to get there first; I’ve got to beat the daylight. It ran through my mind in a sort of endless chant I couldn’t turn off any more than I could the walking movement of my legs. A gun, a car, these were the things I had to have. She had a whole roomful of guns and the fastest car in town.

  The old familiar streets were quiet, the street lamps at the corners the only pools of light. I swung left, keeping to the outskirts and slipping along the alley, feeling my skin crawl and prickle with sudden cold at the barking of a dog or the sound of a car somewhere on another street. I wanted to run. I was naked, skinless, a light-tortured organism fleeing toward the dark. It was less than a dozen blocks now. Ten more. Nine. I wanted to stop counting them and couldn’t. At any one of them a car might swing around a corner, its lights flashing.…

  I cut through one more alley and I was on Georgia Street and broke into a run. The windows of her apartment were dark. Suppose she wasn’t there? She must be. She had to be. She was home when I telephoned this afternoon. No, that was yesterday. It wasn’t even yesterday—it was the day before, because now it was almost dawn on Sunday. I ran up the walk and pressed the bell, waiting, listening for the sound of movement or of footsteps and hearing only the pounding of blood in my ears.