Swamp Sister

by Robert Edmond Alter

  That's how he and she started the evening. Later, as the night dragged on, it grew worse. Trouble was he never knew what to do about it. It wasn't until he was fourteen and ran into Lily-Mae Duffy that he forgot about Sally Brown. He superannuated her to a dusty corner along with his other childhood toys.

  Frequently Shad wondered just how many times he'd been in and out of Sutt's Store in his life. Nothing ever seemed to change, not even the customers. He could picture it looking just as it did now clear back to the day it had first been raised, and that had been during the Civil War. The long dusty rows of canned goods with their fading labels, the cracker chests and flour barrels, the always halfunrolled bolts of cloth, the scummy glass breadbox, and in the front right corner the hardware, shotguns, axes, spades, and the enamel ware.

  High up along the south wall was the aging display of heads-a decoration of the birds and beasts of the swamp. Stilled, stiff wings tacked on boards, and the glass eyes of the bears, bucks, and bobcats staring straight ahead at the north wall year after year through a film of dust. The crusty lips and dull teeth showing in the stark open mouths had a dusky unwholesomeness about them, and all of the trophies were dog-eared and moth-riddled. Somehow they always bothered Shad, as though man, in stuffing and hanging them, had made a mockery of death. Shad had seen their descendants in the flesh, and the contrast was too incongruous.

  Man stuffs and hangs what he catches from the swamp, he thought absently. Maybe the swamp ort to stuff and hang what it catches: Ben Smiley, George Tusca, the two men in the Money Plane, Holly- The air in the store was still, hot. Joel Sutt's nightly regulars, some with shot glasses of corn-of-the-hifis in their hands, looked up as Shad entered. They knew he'd been out searching for his brother again, and they waited for him to speak, though it was plain to them that he hadn't found Holly's body.

  Shad grinned, nodded, and called, "Joe-don't stop Sally Brown on my account. She's an old lady friend a mine."

  They laughed, and Shad stepped up to the counter.

  "Joel," he ordered, "see kin you git me some of that what you pass off on crazy folk fer corn. Got me a thirst drier'n an owl's nest."

  Seven long years I courted Sally,

  Way, hay, roll and go!

  Joel Sutt fished a jug from under his counter, found a shot glass, gave the inside a wipe with the tail-corner of his apron, and poured Shad a drink. But he held back the glass, tipping a wink to Dad Plume.

  "Shad," he said, "I wouldn't want fer you to git yourself in a dather overn this-but in case you ain't ben informed, they's a law agin serving minors hard corn. And when I come to thrash back in my rememory, hit 'pears to me you ain't but a tad."

  Shad made out like he was belligerent. "Oh? Well, how in tarnation would you be knowing how old I be? Was you there when my ma breached me?"

  Joel Sutt looked appalled by the suggestion. "No, I'm happy to say for the sake of my stomach, I weren't. But I'll tell you what, I was standing right there when Preacher Sims went and baptized you in the creek. And that were only ten-twelve years ago!"

  Shad pursed his lips, frowning, as though he'd just butted heads with a poser. "Hmm," he grunted. "I see. I do see." Then he brightened up. "Well then, Mr-know-aplenty Sutt, how do you know I weren't already a ten-year-old when I done got baptized?"

  Joel Sutt slapped his forehead with his free hand. "Hi, boys! He's gone and got me on that one. I pure out don't know! He was kicking up enough fuss to be two tenyear-olds when old preacher came to git aholt of him!"

  All of them laughed, and Shad, grinning, used to the horseplay, downed his drink. He dug in his jeans for one of the tens.

  "Shad," Dad Plume spoke in a voice proper to the subject, "I don't reckon you saw airy of Holly?"

  Shad blinked. He hadn't consciously been thinking of Holly, not since he'd discovered the broken cypress with the landing wheel. A stab of contrition ice-picked him and he shook his head, not looking at Plume. "No. Nary a thing."

  Someone else asked, "Where at did you try this time, Shad?"

  Shad stalled, wetting his lips, "Oh – off a Breakneck."

  "Well, but where off'n?"

  "Oh-up Cotton Creek some."

  "Cotton Creek!" It was Jort Camp who shouted, and now he chested his way through the men at the counter to confront Shad. He was a huge, bawling, swaggering man with ten-some years on Shad. Not skilled in anything except singing dirty songs and telling dirty yarns, Jort had become a gator-grabber, catching gators alive and barehanded to sell to tourist centres for display, The man was all nerve, it seemed to Shad, and not much sense. And because of this, men knew him as dangerous.

  "Why, ain't no sense a-tall a-looking up Cotton Creek," Jort said in Shad's face, and his breath, wild as decay, set the younger man back, "Ever'body done ben up that creek onetime another."

  Shad nodded, turning back to the countet "Had me a trap up there I had to git."

  Jort Camp looked interested. "Any luck?"

  "No," Shad said shortly. "Not airy."

  He still had his hand in his jeans and he wished the big man would move away. He didn't especially want to bring the ten-dollar bill into Jort Camp's sight. But Jort stayed right at his elbow, and Joel Sutt was waiting forhis money. Like it meant nothing, Shad pushed the crumpled bill over the counter, saying, "I want me a carton of tailormades out'n that too, Joel."

  Jort Camp leaned forward, following the bill from Shad's hand to Sutt's. "Hayday," he said. "Lookit what Shaddy's done got him."

  Joel Sutt seemed a bit surprised himself when he flattened the bill and saw the denomination. He looked quizzically at Shad.

  "Where at you come by this, Shad?"

  "Fella down river owed me that fer some skins. I finally collected." Shad was offhand.

  "Oh?" Sutt said. "Thought you was selling me all your skins?" His voice hinted at the touch of hurt he felt.

  "No," Shad said stiffly. "Not quite all."

  Sutt fetched a carton of tailor-mades and gave Shad his change. He didn't say anything more. But Jort Camp, watching Shad stow the money in his pocket, asked, "What fella be that, Shaddy? What down-river fella?"

  "Just a fella I knowed. Joel-I'm saying good night now."

  "All right. Good night, Shad."

  Jort Camp followed Shad to the door. "Shaddy, you ain't forgit you'n me is going gator-grabbing?"

  Shad had agreed to help Jort in a weak moment. The big man wasn't much of a hand at swamp tracking, and it was common knowledge that Shad knew more of the swamp than many of the old-timers. Jort had been pestering him for months to help him locate an easy-git-at gator hole. "No, I ain't forgot."

  "Well, me'n Sam is fixing to go at her come Monday."

  "Uh-huh. Well, I'll see if'n I'm free then." He went out on the porch and down the steps quickly, wanting to get away from Jort. He didn't really like the man.

  "Be by fer you nigh sun-up!" Jort called after him.

  Beyond the crooked, picket-missing excuse for a fence the yard was stark sand, spotted with sandspurs; and it went on that way around the east and west corners of the house until the bull-grass picked up again, back where it held the sagging privy captive. There was a jasmine vine entwined over what was left of the porch, but it looked like something old and discarded, like something a previous owner had left behind. And there was the neck of a whisky bottle jutting up from the sand midway between where the gate should have been and the porch. Shad remembered because his pa had thrown it at him. That was the time Shad had first returned from the swamp, having spent three nightmare days and nights looking for Holly.

  The old man had been waiting on the porch, drunk. He had raised his troubled, bleary eyes from the empty bottle in his hand to stare at the boy coming through the fence.

  "Where at's your brother?" he'd shouted.

  The boy had stopped short in the yard, annoyed – hurt even-that the old man hadn't asked first about his trip. Don't give him a damn if'n I near got me cotton-mouth-bit and gator-et, he'd thought savagely. No. Just Hol
ly. All the time Holly.

  "I didn't cut acrost him," he'd answered sullenly.

  The old man had stood silent for a moment staring, sinking the words through the corn. Then-"Nor yet see airy of him?" he'd shouted.

  "No."

  "Well, why the hell you done come back? Why ain't you still out there a-looking? You done forgit he be your own flesh and blood?"

  Shad hadn't moved. He'd learned from bitter childhood experience never to cut across on the old man when he was drinking.

  "You done forgit I'm yourn?" Shad had retorted.

  And then the old man had thrown the bottle.

  "Well," his pa had muttered after a cold moment of embarrassed silence, "pick that up when you come. Don't want nobody to go cut a foot on hit."

  "I'll be eternally damned if'n I will!" Shad had shouted "Pick hit up yourself, you want it so bad."

  But the old man hadn't and Shad wouldn't; so it stayed there and became a mute reminder of the love that never could have been lost because it never had been.

  The house's line had a crippled down-at-the-corner look, low, rambling and one-storied, cracked and grey-boarded from lack of paint, and the shingled room looked like the cuts on a long dead and well-decayed gator's back. The old man was limp in his rocker on the porch.

  Shad passed through the fence opening and walked across the yard, glancing at the black neck of the bottle.

  The old man raised his grizzled head, and it was an effort. It was almost painful to watch him bring his rheumy eyes into focus. He scraped the phlegm in his throat to a new and higher position.

  "You seen airy of your brother?" he asked. It was a question of habit and sounded automatic.

  "No." Shad stared at the shadowy shape of the old man, frowning. "Where at did you git it this time?" he asked finally.

  The old man decided to circumvent that. He played sly.

  "Git what, Shad?" he asked innocently, and his head wavered on its spindly neck. "My cough?" He coughed hopefully. "I dunno. I think mebbe-"

  "Stop beating your-fool-self about the bush. Where did you git the money fer the corn?"

  Times had changed since the day the old man had thrown the whisky bottle at him, had changed the night he tried it again, with a loaded coffee pot, and Shad had hit him hard in the face, knocked him down and out for five minutes. The old man cowered in on himself, whining. "You ain't a-goan like hit, Shad. You just ain't a-goan to, I kin tell. You-"

  Shad covered his smile in the darkness and pretended an impatience that he'd long since given up. "You goan come at it sometime tonight?" he demanded. "Or do I got me to listen to 'I ain't goan to' fer the next hour? What did you go and sell this time"

  "I couldn't help it, boy. I was just a-sitting here a-rocking and a-waiting fer you to come home and a-tending my own nevermind, and a-rocking-"

  "You done said that."

  "-and, Shad-Shad, a thirst done come up at me like I'd ben down on my knees a-licking out a tobacco furrow, agoing at me and-"

  "And so you went and sold the house to some passing beggar fer a dollar."

  The old man became frantic at the suggestion. "No, I didn't, Shad! On my knees to God, I didn't! It was just that book of yourn I seen in on your bed. That one the Culver woman gived you, is all."

  "Loant me," Shad amended.

  "Well, anyhow, I gived it to Jaff Paulson because he tolt me his boy was learning to read, and he-and he gived me a dollar fer hit."

  Shad had to chuckle. "You old fool. You know what that book were? T'were called Ulysses. Hit's a sex book, and Jaff's boy only ten."

  "Well-" the old man mumbled in soggy confusion, "well-won't hurt him none, will it?" Abruptly he giggled a low sniggering sound. "Never went to hurt you and me, now did it, Shad?"

  Shad went up the steps smiling. "Oh? When did you ever read it? I didn't know you could read, 'cepting fer whisky stickers."

  The old man wagged a hand against the dark in protest.

  Shad left him and went into the house.

  He found a match, scraped his thumb over the head and applied the flame to the lampwick. The expanding saffron glow rammed the corners and angles of the rough room back into brown shadow. There wasn't much to the shanty: a table, two benches, fireplace, two beds, a hutch that was a dismal clutter of pots, pans, cans, and cold garbage. A ragged screen over the open window allowed a steady stream of mosquitoes to make for the oil lamp.

  And there was a smell, one that was vaguely familiar. Shad stood still, reaching for the scent with his nose, and finally recognizing it. He shook his head in wondering admiration. That old devil, he said. But he wasn't totally amused. He went back to the rickety screen door.

  "Pa." The hunched silhouette trembled, like a man being startled from a doze.

  "You done had that girl in here again," Shad accused him. "That Estee."

  Sitting there in the dark in his crabbed posture, he reminded Shad of a black beetle caught in a webby corner, not knowing quite where to run for safety.

  "Well-well," the old man began. "Well, Shad-" and then the whine came into his voice again, defensive yet with a spark of righteousness, "-got to have me some pleasure from life, ain't I?"

  "Not in my bed you ain't."

  "I didn't never use your bed!" the old man protested indignantly. "Hit's a lie. Got me my own bed."

  "Then why's mine all a-rumpled?"

  The old man hesitated as if looking desperately for a last avenue of escape; finding none, he broke down.

  "I couldn't help it, Shad. I pure-out couldn't help it. That Estee got her a stubborn streak wide as her black butt. When she come here, we done had us a few belts of corn, and then she plumb jumped in your bed. Oh, I told her to git! I sez to her, 'Estee, you black bitch,' I sez. 'You git quick outn there. That bed belongs to my boy Shad, and he don't hold truck with nigras.' I never seen me such a fool woman. Couldn't reason with her. Nossir! In your bed ner not a-tall."

  Shad said nothing for a while. He thought about the Negro prostitute, Estee. She knew he didn't like her, and he knew that in her helpless little excuse for a brain she was striking back at him by sleeping with his pa in his bed. And what could the old man do about it? If she walked out on him, he'd have nothing. He looked down at the old man, feeling a sort of hopeless compassion, thinking, he's so god-awful weak he'd sell me out fer a whore and a jug of corn; and he'd cry about it and hate hisself while he was doing it-but he'd have it to do.

  Then he thought about the money he'd found, and immediately it was like he'd lighted a lamp inside him, the way the warm glow of joy swelled his body. Got me to git outn here, he thought. Cain't stick it no longer. Got to ramble on to better things. He didn't really care, only asked out of curiosity. "What else of mine you sell so's to give that girl a dollar?"

  The old man started along his whining trail again. Though his conscience secretly bothered him, he couldn't stand the deep holes Shad had dug in his self-esteem. And now he was hurriedly bringing wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of excuses to fill them up.

  Shad, ironically amused, leaned on the door frame and looked out at the night, letting the old man take his own evasive time to reach the truth; he'd given Estee Shad's Saturday-night shirt, the blue silk one with the yellow buttons.

  That's nice, Shad thought. That shore God is nice. The girl sleeps in my bed, and now she'll be twitching her butt around in my best shirt.

  Suddenly he knew he couldn't stand the shanty or the old man another minute. He went out through the screen door and down the steps, saying, "I'm leaving, Pa. I'm going to be my own man."

  The old man moved in his rocker, trying to come to an upright position. "What?" he called. "What's that you say? Leaving? Leaving here?"

  "That's right." And it had to be fast. He was feeling sad and friendless, and it struck Shad as a funny sort of way for a man with eighty thousand dollars to feel.

  The old man waited a bit, his mind wildly rooting down among the dead leaves of his active past for some of his old ferocity. Finding
some, he started bellowing.

  "You as good to go! Well, git on! Don't let me hamper you – just a poor, sick old man. Go on, walk out! Leave me cold! I don't care. I done took care a me afore you come, and I kin do hit after you gone. Walk right on out on your pa! Don't stop to worry none about him-poor sick old man. Just git. You done walked out on your brother-might as well to walk out on your pa."

  For a moment Shad thought he'd blow up-grab the old man, shake him. But he didn't, couldn't.

  "I didn't never walk out on my brother," he said quietly. "He's dead. Cain't you understand that, Pa? He's dead. I ben looking fer his body, that's all."

  "Hit's a pure-out lie!" the old man cried. "You be Cain'ing your own brother! He's alive-I know he be. I seen him! I done tolt you and tolt you I seen him!"

  "You done seen him down the neck of a bottle. Him and pink snakes and fist-size spiders and I don't know whatall trash. You got visitations of the brain from foundering yourfool-self in corn."

  "Tain't so! Tain't so! I seen him a-standing one night on the porch, a-looking at me. And I seen him agin one night when I was a-rocking here. Down the road he come likn he always come, and he stopped by the fence to look at me; and when I called, 'Holly, ain't you goan come in?' he turned off and walked back into the swamp. I seen him in the flesh, I tell you! I seen him, and he's a-waiting out there fer you to come git him!"

  "And I tell you he ain't alive. Cain't no man live alone in that swamp four years."

  The old man shook his head from side to side in dogmatic self-pity. "That's all right, that's all right. Go on, s'git. Leave us both. I kin take care of myself, I reckon- somehow. Go on. Don't think none of us." He gave Shad a sly, covert look; then he shut up and sank himself deep in martyred misery; his silence and posture suggesting that all his life he'd done his best by his family and the world, and that now when he was old and sick the world and his unfeeling son turned against him.