A Moment to Prey

by Harry Whittington

  "You're not playing it smart," I said.

  "Paw always told me when I couldn't be smart, be careful."

  I shrugged. That netting would never have covered a three-quarter bed. The silence and the sense of eternal isolation pressed in with the darkness. Animals cried out in the scrub and ran through the dry underbrush.

  "How much further do we have to go?" I asked her. "To get to Marve Pooser's place, I mean?"

  She was staring moodily into the dying fire. She looked around at me.

  "Sometime after daybreak," she said.

  "You don't look happy at being here with me."

  "I didn't ask for it."

  "I've heard about women like you. I just never believed it. Doesn't all this-" I gestured at the darkness, the bluff edge and the river below it, the miles of swamp in which we were completely alone, "doesn't this do anything to you?"

  "It might."

  "Yes?"

  "If I were fool enough to let myself think about it."

  "But you're not."

  She glanced over her shoulder, eyes cold.

  "What would it buy me?"

  "Does it have to buy you something?"

  "I know what I want. This isn't it."

  I shivered. The fire was dying rapidly, the darkness moving in closer. We made no plans for keeping the fire alive. If Sklute had not already marked our camping site, we were not going to lead him to it with a fire that could be seen for miles in the scrub.

  I glanced toward the bedrolls, the blankets turned back.

  "Think I'll hit the sack. Don't forget to put out the cat and lock up."

  She did not look around. "Good night, Jake."

  "Honey," I said. "Don't be old-fashioned."

  She sighed deeply, shrugged, went on staring into the fire.

  I sat down beside the netting, pulled off my boots. I opened it, slid through and lay down in the bedroll, watching the faint fire glinting in her black hair. I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. Everything inside me congealed in the pit of my stomach. I lay there on my back, waiting for her.

  At last she stood up. The fire was almost dead, but the glow cut her silhouette sharply against the blackness of the scrub night. I wiped my hand across my mouth again, feeling my breath hot against it.

  She slid through the netting, pulling it together securely behind her. Every muscle in my body was stretched taut, throbbing with the tension within me. An owl screamed in the darkness. The fire glittered, a long shaft of orange light fitful against the blackness. I felt her lie down in her bedroll, careful not to touch me.

  "Lily."

  I didn't recognize my own voice. I lifted myself on my elbow, looked down at her. The fire was almost gone now, but I saw her clearly. Everything was exaggeratedly clear, the darkness, the shadows, the color of her flesh, the warm fragrance of her.

  Her black eyes were wide. They stared up into mine.

  "For God's sake," I said.

  Her lips were parted, damply separated and glistening in the faint light. But I saw her clearly as if the noon sun were concentrated on the glistening of her lips.

  "Don't do it," she said. It was the first time I had ever heard her voice that soft. She was asking me, she wasn't telling me. The bitter-sweetness surged upward through me.

  I parted my mouth and covered hers, moving it because I was hungry for the taste of her.

  Her black eyes closed. I felt her breath hot against me and my hand closed on her and her heart pumped as wildly as mine against my hand.

  "Oh, no, Jake. No. Don't."

  It was as if the will had gone out of her. It drove me insane. I knocked the covers back somehow. I moved closer to her, dragging her blanket down. The ache in my body was never going to be satisfied until I was pressed hard against her, all of my body against all of hers.

  I brought my face down. That was when I felt the knife point against the base of my throat. It was my own hunting knife and its pressure stopped my breathing for a moment.

  "I told you… don't." Her voice still had that empty urgency in it, but there was no weakness in the hand that held the knife.

  "My God, Lily. I've got to. You must know that."

  "I'll kill you, Jake. You think I won't, but I will."

  Her voice still sounded weak and helpless. But she pressed that knife against my throat. I felt the bite of it. If I grabbed at it, I knew she would thrust it into me. I wasn't deceived. In my mind I saw Charlie Bullock staggering blindly. In that moment I bought it. Lily Sistrunk had set a price on herself, and it was a price that Charlie Bullock couldn't meet. If I wanted a knife in my jugular vein all I had to do was try to press my luck.

  The knife bit again. I moved back, every muscle in me straining forward and I moved back. "My God, Lily, you wanted it. As much as I did."

  "It don't matter."

  I lay back down. I felt exhausted, fatigued. Frustration was a poison in me. Wanting her was a sickness and I was ill with it, feverish, my temples throbbing.

  When I was on my back, she removed the knife. I lay there staring at the star-struck sky through the netting. I heard her moving around, pulling the blankets over her again.

  She did not speak for what seemed hours. When she did, her voice was casual. "I've been out on this river a hundred nights like this."

  "Just like this?" The bitterness was acid between us.

  "Just like this."

  "It must have been hell for somebody."

  She laughed.

  I lay there and the tension would not subside. I knew how terribly I wanted her, and I began to believe her. Nobody got to her. It didn't matter what a woman looked like, it was what she thought about. Lily was equipped by the National Cash Register Company. The sound of her heart was the sound of an adding machine.

  No amount of bitter thinking helped me. I did not move. I knew that knife was waiting, ready. It grew cold, but I did not pull up the covers. The hell with the knife, I wanted the cold. I hoped it would freeze.

  I did not sleep. Sleep is for people with settled nerves. I remained taut, drawn, thinking about Lily's lying there beside me with that knife gripped across her breasts. So close I could move my hand and touch her, but I didn't move and I didn't touch her. It wasn't the knife that stopped me or worried me, and that wasn't what kept me awake. I kept thinking about Lily, whether I wanted to or not, and I kept thinking about her without that knife.

  ***

  As the sun came up, the river still deep in shadows, Lily cut the motor and drifted into a small creek shielded by elders and water lilies, so well hidden I had not even seen it.

  "What's the matter?" I asked.

  "We hide the boat here."

  "All right."

  We poled through the low-hanging bushes for a quarter of a mile. I was glad for this hiding place. Sklute wasn't going to find this boat. I only hoped that we would be able to find it again.

  We broke limbs, covered the boat, and I packed the few supplies we'd brought.

  "Is it far?"

  She'd already started walking through the scrub. She glanced back over her shoulder. "Not far. Are you in such a hurry to die?"

  The bitter joke I made was on me. "What have I got to live for?"

  For a moment longer she let her glance remain on me. She gave me a brief smile.

  After a few moments we reached an old log trail that was almost covered by wire grass, the deep-cut ruts now barely discernible.

  Just this short distance from the river it looked as if it had never rained and water was inaccessible. The trees were dry as if the leaves existed without water, had been created dry and hard and coated with a flat film of dust. The tree branches and the trunks were like iron, the bark scaly and dry. I could not see through the jack oaks that grew close against the winding trail and I could not see over them. They stretched endlessly along the abandoned roadway. I began to feel that maybe they covered every moistureless inch of the scrub. I kept plodding through them, following the trail, Lily silent ahead of
me. I pushed the hard, unyielding branches aside.

  We walked out into the clearing and there was a single-roomed shack sitting back from the overgrown trail. We had come up on the blind side of it. Lily glanced over her shoulder and her mouth twisted into a taunting smile. "There it is," she said. "He's down there in that shack."

  I put my hand on the gun in my jacket pocket. I pushed off the safety catch, telling myself I felt better with my hand on the automatic.

  My heart was slugging against my ribs. There had never been a ninth inning like this. In baseball my job had depended on what I did next, but now my life hung on my decisions in the next few minutes.

  "Go ahead," I whispered.

  She laughed again. "You go. Marve Pooser doesn't like company. He might have a gun fixed on us right now."

  I breathed in deeply and walked out into the clearing. She moved behind me and I was aware of her there.

  There was no window in the side of the shack facing us. It sat up on two foot brick foundations so you could see under the house. A narrow brick chimney rose up the blind side of the house.

  There was no sign of movement about the shack. There was no car or animal in the yard. An outhouse leaned dispiritedly at the far end of the clearing. What must have once been a barn had been blown apart so only the framing stood. The shack was petrified gray pine and the shingles were cypress. There was the silence of a graveyard over the whole scrub.

  I reached the side of the house, walked around it, my fist sweated about the automatic.

  I stepped cautiously around the side of the house. The wooden covering was down over the right window. There was a small sagging stoop out front and five pine slab steps to climb.

  The front door stood open.

  I put my foot on the lower step, worked the gun free from my jacket.

  "Just leave it there, Jake."

  My head jerked up and I saw him sitting inside that door. I recognized that voice. I had not sought him for no reason. This was the man who had robbed McAteer's, called me by name. The loud-mouthed Romeo of the pinball machine. The used-car salesman. The bastard who had robbed me of everything I had.

  He had a rifle trained on my navel. He held the gun negligently across his knees. "Been waiting for you," Marve Pooser said. "What took you so long?"

  He flicked his glance toward Lily at my shoulder.

  "We got here quick as we could," she said.

  He laughed, his voice booming out of that cabin. "Sure you did, Lily. You done the best you could. You done just what I told you. You brought old Jake right straight out here to me."

  THE SCRUB

  We went slowly up the steps to the sagging stoop. There was nothing else to do except keep walking toward the black mouth of that rifle. It looked like the prim-lipped mouth of a sour-faced spinster. It would spit just enough venom to handle the situation, the sharp sting of death.

  Marve was sitting on an old kitchen chair. Behind him the room was in faded shadow, but appeared sparsely furnished.

  The first thing I noticed about Marve Pooser was the strange bracelet he wore on his left hand. I had to look three times, and see it stir slightly before I believed it; it was a coral snake.

  "Like it?" Marve's loud voice struck against us as we stepped onto the stoop. He held up his left arm for a moment, letting the rifle sag to his knees.

  I knew better than to jump him. It looked as if he were daring me to. I couldn't pull my gaze from the deadly snake looped about his wrist. It reared its head, slightly larger than a pencil eraser. "This baby is the harlequin, Jake-boy. But you can call him Harley."

  He laughed and lifted the gun again.

  I went on staring at the snake. I knew they were deadly poisonous, had never ever heard of any antidote for its poison. I remembered what Henry Sistrunk had told me. Marve Pooser had collected these corals, rattlers and water moccasins since boyhood without ill effects to himself.

  Marve's laugh raked me. "Don't worry about Harley, Jake. You won't hardly live long enough to get to know him well. Besides, I know how to cure up a coral snakebite. Any time you get bit, you call ole Marve."

  He lost interest in me then, looking at Lily. "I missed you, sugar. Been lonely out here without you to keep me warm nights."

  I saw the color rise in her cheeks.

  She jerked her head toward me. "He's got a gun, Marve. You better take it before you get reckless."

  Marve laughed again, loudly. I hated the sound, more fiercely than I had ever been able to hate the memory of it. "Come here, baby." He held out his left arm to her and the coral snake stirred again, lazily.

  "He's got a gun, Marve."

  "Oh, hell, baby. Ole Jake won't try to use it. I'd put a hole through him and he knows it. This is a boy wants to live, and that's kind of silly right there on the face of it. What's this boy got to live for?"

  "You're stealing my line," I said.

  "Hell, we'll get along. The three of us. Come here, sweet stuff. I been building up now until I'm loaded for bear."

  Lily's face was flushed, but she shook her head.

  Marve laughed. "All right, sugar. Take the gun away from him. Take it and bring it to me. By the way, walk in back of him. I wouldn't like Jake to get any ideas-no ideas that I don't give him."

  She walked up close behind me, removed the gun from my pocket. She went to Marve then, and he took the gun in his left hand, examined it. "New. Hell, I can smell the hardware store on it. A new gun. You're out of your league, Jake."

  I didn't say anything. I watched him slide his arm around Lily. He closed his hand on her, but she writhed away. "Get rid of that snake."

  "Hell baby. You know I've cut Harley's stinger out. Harley ain't got no bite. Harley's just a pet."

  "I don't like him." She had moved back against his side. Marve laughed and dropped the snake into a wicker basket on an unpainted table at his side. I could see beyond him now into the shack. The fireplace was being used as a cook-fire. Beyond it was an iron four-poster bed with a flat narrow mattress that sagged in the middle on wire springs. There were a couple other chairs and this table. Marve was roughing it.

  Marve pulled Lily down on his knee. He pushed the automatic under his belt and seemed to forget it as though he wore them there habitually. He shoved the rifle on the table.

  "Come on in and set, Jake. Southern hospitality."

  I went into the room trying not to look at him and what he was doing to Lily. I heard her quickened breathing and it tore me up. Here was a girl that went crazy when a man touched her-the only catch being, he had to have the key and Marve Pooser was proving to me he was the man owned the key and all its duplicates.

  "You missed me, sugar?"

  "Yes, Marve. I reckon I'm getting used to missing you. You leave me. You think you can come back when you want to."

  "Sure I can, sweetie. You know why. Because ole Marve Pooser is loaded with what you want." His voice was loud. He was talking to me. He was making sure I heard every word.

  Suddenly I knew why. It still rankled in his soul that Betty had wanted me to win that pinball duel months ago. He had robbed a hundred grand, gotten away with it, run, had a doll like Lily who panted when he moved his hands over her. But that wasn't good enough. In that instant I recognized the deep-seated drive in Marve Pooser. He had to be better than every other man. He very well might have tried to kill me if Betty had walked out of the Crow Bar with me. What a man. Everything in God's world wasn't enough for him.

  "Ain't that right, baby?" Marve's voice pounded at me. I wasn't looking at them. I knew he had his hand inside her clothes and I was sick because she wasn't fighting this guy. She had turned to cream, she was melting. "Say it." His voice rasped. "Say it, sweetie. Ole Marve has got just what you want."

  "Yes." In her voice was that hungry sound I had heard last night, just before I felt the knife at my throat. But there was no knife in her hands. He was in her hands, she was digging her fingers into him.

  I felt the sickness swirling in my s
tomach. All the desire I had felt for her, wanting her so terribly I could not sleep and she fought me off and came running to this joker.

  "Sit down." Marve's voice battered at me through the whirling inside my mind. "I tole you, Jake. Sit down."

  I sat down. The only chair faced them. He wasn't going to let me miss this reunion. This was going to pay me off for Betty. It would pay for all the hatred that had rankled inside him.

  Lily looked at me and tried to pull free of Marve's hands, but he had her now. Her mouth was parted and she was pressing closer against him. His hand moved faster and she suddenly turned and buried her mouth against his throat.

  The faded shirt went first. Marve's hands pulled at the buttons and they slipped through the weakened button holes. He dragged it down her back, the sleeves peeling off her sun-tanned arms. Her breasts were starkly white against the brown of her arms and her stomach.

  She tried to burrow into him. She kept shaking her head, but did not have the will to move away from him. "No, Marve. Please."

  "Hell, baby. You make me sore, you won't get what you want. You want to make me sore?"

  "No, Marve. Oh, no."

  "Then shut up. Then stop fighting me, baby." He raised his head, his eyes feverish but coldly sober.

  He stared at me, laughing at me over the top of her dark hair. He caught the tops of her dungarees and pulled them open. She caught at his hands, trying to get up. He held her tightly, laughing.

  "What's the matter, sugar?"

  She stared at me, did not answer. Her face was flushed, eyes as feverish as his. Her mouth looked swollen.

  "Oh, hell with him, baby. Let him sit there. He's as good as dead. What does he matter?"

  She had subsided slightly, enough so she no longer breathed through her parted mouth.

  "It's not him, Marve."

  "No? Then what is it?"

  "It's you." She tried to pull free, but his hand slipped across the smooth rise of her stomach. She caught her breath audibly.

  He nuzzled her neck. "What about me, baby?"

  "You lied to me, Marve."

  He laughed. "Hell, yes. Why not? No dame can stand to listen to the truth."