by Gil Brewer
“Evis?”
“Yes. Isn’t she here?”
Luz turned and looked back at the house, chewing, and then at me.
“Evis ain’t here.”
He turned abruptly and started shuffling back toward the house, gouts of dust spurting against the sides of his bare feet.
“Luz!”
He paused, looked back at me. I went up beside him. This seemed to trouble him and he increased his pace, as if he wanted to get to the house in a hurry.
“You sure she isn’t here?”
“Said she ain’t.”
A quavering voice rose from the front of the house, lifting like brittle fingers.
“Luz? Luz Helling—where in hell did you get to?”
Luz stopped chewing and bared his teeth at the house.
That had been Grandma Helling’s voice.
The clearing had been enlarged since I’d last seen it, and several shacks of various sizes crowded against the intruding jungle. The yard was littered with rusting and broken farm implements; several Burma fishing poles leaved against the side of the main house. Fish nets were strung in webs across a row of sawhorses just up the riverbank. Down by the pier I noticed an air boat, two skiffs, and a rowboat. With daylight, I could see the beginnings of the swamp now, where the river fanned out. A buzzard, the first of the day, wheeled high and slow in tight circles.
Then I saw Berk Kaylor leaning against the rear corner of the house. Showing just beyond the corner was the rear of a fender-dented Mercury convertible that had once been cream-colored. The top was missing.
Kaylor watched us as we moved toward the house.
“Berk,” Luz said, hitching at his jeans. “Look what come drifting in.”
Kaylor said nothing.
Luz and I paused for a moment in the yard. Kaylor didn’t move. He wore khaki shirt and trousers, the cuffs jammed into worn old Army combat boots. His thick hair was combed slick and back from his forehead, his face burned dark from the sun. He leaned there, hands in pockets, waiting.
“Ain’t you going to say nothing to him?” Luz said.
“I don’t reckon so,” Kaylor said.
“You said you had plenty to say to him,” Luz said.
Kaylor didn’t speak.
“All that damned hollering you done was down a barrel, that right?” Luz said, spitting a string of amber into the cool dust.
Kaylor spat, kept looking at the two of us.
“Sullivan!”
I turned toward the porch at the front of the house. A quickly moving dark-haired girl peered at me across the two-by-four railing, then ran off the porch and over across the yard toward us. Her eyes were on me, as black as her hair, and she was smiling.
It was Rona.
She had changed. She had filled out in what are called the “right places,” and there was something new about the way she moved and spoke. She wore tight blue jeans and a white shirt tucked securely into the slim belted waist. Her moccasins kicked up the dust at she ran up.
“Sullivan! What are you doing here?”
She stopped and stood in front of me, legs slightly apart, hands on hips, head cocked to one side. Her breasts moved full and quick beneath the taut white shirt, and Rona Helling was truly something to see.
“Well?” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“Hello, Rona.”
Luz spat.
“I’m looking for your sister Evis.”
Luz said something I didn’t get, and moved off toward the house. I glanced over at Kaylor. He hadn’t moved from the corner of the house. He was staring at the ground in front of his feet.
“Sullivan?” Rona said quickly, softly. She kept smiling at me, standing in the same position, but speaking very quietly, so Kaylor couldn’t hear what she said.
“See the edge of the field, over yonder? Past the far side of the house, by that shed?”
She didn’t turn, or look away. I glanced over beyond the front porch, then nodded.
“You go over there and wait for me. Don’t go in the house, Sullivan. Just do as I say.”
“All right.”
I was plenty worried about Hugo DeGreef showing. I wanted to get out of sight, and I couldn’t figure Rona at all. It was almost as if everything had stopped to wait for me, as if a stage were set.
“Sullivan,” she whispered. “Oh, Sullivan, I’m glad you came back.”
I started to reply, but she turned quickly and moved on around the rear of the house, her body gracefully effortless under the tight, worn denim.
When I looked toward the corner of the house, Berk Kaylor was gone.
Chapter 9
LUZ HELLING was inside the house. I heard his voice and the low, disparaging tones of a woman speaking. Not Rona, who had vanished into the backyard. And not the grandmother. I listened intently. It wasn’t Evis.
The sun came down hot now. I had this trapped feeling, and it wouldn’t go away. Any minute, DeGreef might show.
I had to get inside the house. Rona had acted damned queer, warning me away. What had she wanted? Was Evis in there?
Crossing the yard, I stepped onto the porch.
Everything was still. I moved up to the door, a warped screening with flies knocking against it. I yanked the door back and the spring screamed in the silence. I stepped into the gloom, blinking.
“Who asked you in here?” Luz said.
“Nobody. How are you folks?”
Gradually they began to take form in the shadows. Flat beams of sunlight slanted through small, partially covered windows. The room was backed by a large cement fireplace. The floors were planked, covered with a colorful smear of red rug. A large black iron cookstove stood against the right wall, where the kitchen showed beyond flowered drapes. There was a dry, dusty, ancient odor in the room.
The grandmother sat in an old rocker beside the fireplace, hands clasped, her withered face peering like a bird’s. Luz stood at the table, both hands spread flat on it, staring at me from under his brows, his back humped. Across the room, her shoulders against the bedroom door where Evis and I had first discovered our love, was Evis’s mother Neliah. Her hands were clasped, too, across the faded yellow front of her dress, her black hair pulled back and tied in a bun.
“We didn’t ask you,” she said. “But since you’re here.”
“Have you seen Evis?” I said.
Each of them was fighting me, rebelling against me. They looked at each other. The grandmother began to move her head from side to side, her bright eyes on me.
“He comes to find us in times of jeopardy,” the grandmother said. “The trials of man are upon him. I reckon he will wander far in the fields.” She coughed briskly, and her tone had been that of a mourning dove.
“I’m looking for Evis.”
“Ah,” the grandmother said.
“She ain’t here,” Luz said. “I reckon I done told you that over and over.” He let his head sag over his hands on the table.
I unbottoned my shirt collar and cuffs, sweating.
“Cursed,” the grandmother said.
I walked across the room to where Neliah stood against the door.
“You seen her?”
“She’s your wife, son. You’re the one to answer your own question, I reckon.” Only her lips moved, snapping like a puppet’s across her teeth.
“Mrs. Helling,” I said to Neliah, “I don’t like you to misunderstand me—but I want to look in the bedroom.”
“No.”
“I’m asking you,” I said. “It’s not much. I just want to look, that’s all.”
“I’d take it kindly if you would leave my home,” Neliah said. She wrung her hands and tipped her head at me. Her face was like a relief map of the Mississippi river valley. Her eyes were sad. There was great depth to her eyes, revealing that she was perhaps quite human.
“You are a stranger,” the grandmother said: “You took away my son’s firstborn, and now I reckon she has forsaken you.” I looked at her. She wa
s shaking, sitting there, nodding her head, reaching out with one hand. “Leave this house in peace.”
“For God’s sake,” I said. “I just want to know if you’ve seen Evis. If she’s been here. If she is here. I didn’t come to witness a play.”
“Do you see her?” Neliah said.
“No. But I want a look in that bedroom.”
I reached across and slowly pried Neliah loose from the bedroom door. Luz came cross the room and stood beside me. “Take your hands off my woman.”
“I’m going to look in there.”
“Try it.”
I pushed Neliah aside, opened the door, stepped in. Luz came behind me, breathing down my neck. There was nothing in there. Absolutely nothing. The room was bare—not even a stick of furniture. The windows were boarded. The floor was thick with untouched dust. I came out and closed the door. Neliah was quietly sobbing.
“God damn it,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Luz gritted his teeth loudly and went over to the table. There was another bedroom besides this one. I went over there and pushed aside a bright print curtain. A double bed and a cot, one chair—and nobody. I let the curtain fall, looked around the rest of the house, then stepped over by the front door again.
“Where does Rona sleep?”
“I reckon you done enough, ain’t you?” Luz said, by the table.
“Where does she sleep? She’s got to sleep somewhere.”
“Don’t tell him!” the grandmother snapped.
I went into the kitchen, disgusted. There was a ladder. I went up the ladder into the loft where there was a bed, and I knew this was where Rona slept. The windows were curtained with white lace and the sun shone brightly through across a clean white bedspread and soft blue rug. There was a small desk, one chair, a bookcase, and a standing closet covered with a neat curtain of chintz. The room smelled fresh, and very faintly of perfume. There were two extremely colorful abstract oil paintings on the wall over the head of the bed, and for some reason they did not look strange here. There was a small radio beside the bed.
I went back down the ladder and over to the front door again.
“I’m sorry. I had to know.”
They all watched me. I turned and went out onto the porch and started walking over toward where Rona had told me to meet her.
There was more anger inside me now. Why in all hell did people have to act like that? What reason was there for it? Did they really know where she was? Had they hidden her someplace?
I tried to disregard the anger, but it wouldn’t go away. She was around here someplace, and God damn them, they knew where. I also knew nobody could even beat the word out of them. They’d die that way, saying, “I reckon,” and “Leave us be,” rather than expose their crackpot, crazy thoughts.
• • •
By the riverbank, I turned along the stream, on past the pier and along the trimmed edging of mangroves. Evis was here, all right. There’d be no other reason for them acting the way they had. But where?
I went on across the field, past some stacked wood, beyond the unused and crumpled chicken coop. There was still no sign of Kaylor. It was like walking through the middle of a vacuum.
Maybe Evis told them something that kept them from telling me anything. Luz acted damned queer, like he was beat down. There’d been no friendliness—at the same time, there had been no real animosity.
I crossed between two large patches of palmetto and stepped into the sparse shelter of a stand of slash pine. Turning to look back at the house, I saw no sign of movement. The chickens were gathered high on the riverbank, the hound dozed snuffling by the worn front porch.
Could DeGreef have been here and gone? “Sullivan.”
Rona stood about seventy yards deeper into the woods, beside a tall old cedar. I took one more look at the house, then went over to her.
She watched me approach, watching with a look I couldn’t define. Her figure gave the impression of lushness, yet she was slim—and very striking.
“Sullivan,” she said as I came up to her. “It’s so wonderful to see you.”
“What did you want to tell me?”
She glanced toward the house, then took my hand. Her hand was soft, small, warm, firm. I suddenly knew she was on my side and that she knew things.
“Come along, Sullivan.”
She drew me with her, walking rapidly, until we were beside an encroaching growth of mangrove, dense, dark and green, the roots snarling over the ground like heavy arching bands of iron.
I couldn’t make her out.
She stood there looking at me with a peculiar wild light in her eyes. It was something I suddenly recalled from the time I’d been here with Evis. Rona had seemed different then, but her eyes were the same. There was a vast difference between the two sisters. There was a patient kindness in Rona.
“You haven’t been happy, have you, Sullivan?”
“Look, Rona. Have you seen her?”
She watched me closely, as if looking for something.
“Rona, I’m trying to find her. Has she been here—can you tell me anything?”
“You know what she’s like now, don’t you?”
I didn’t speak.
“Sullivan, when you were here last, I was a little girl. Remember?”
“Not so little. Listen, Rona—”
She stepped close to me, laid one hand on my arm. “You listen, Sullivan.” Her voice was pitched low and there was a husky quality in it that was disturbing. As close as she was, there was a strong impression of energy and need. Her eyes were deep black, her thick black hair framed her face, falling across her shoulders. The hair was trimmed in short bangs in front, the eyes very bold. I could see the firm roundings of her breasts where the white blouse gaped, and she wore nothing under the blouse. “I’m not little now, Sullivan—not any more.”
“I see.”
She watched me in that close way. I felt greasy, dirt-caked, badly in need of a shave. I felt as if I’d been pursuing this thing for days. A sick sensation that this whole thing was being staged and set for me grew stronger.
“Did you hear what I said, Sullivan?”
“Yes.” Her voice was tense. She moved and deliberately laid her knee against mine, pressing it firmly against my leg. I drew away. “Rona, for—”
“I’m going to tell you something, Sullivan. If you laugh at me, I’ll hit you.”
I waited.
“I’m in love with you.”
She was serious. She meant it with every bit of her and we stood there watching each other, and it was a strange morning. There was a tightness and a silence about everything through which I moved without direction.
“I want to leave here, too,” she said. “I’ve been working at a women’s dress shop in Hagar’s Point. But not any more—”
“Rona.”
“What I’m getting at,” she said softly, “is, my wanting to leave here isn’t the same as Evis’s. I want you to understand that. But I don’t reckon you do understand, do you?”
I couldn’t fight my way out of the circles. I was revolving in the middle of them.
“I knew you’d come back, Sullivan—I knew it.”
Sweat began to form under my shirt. The Helling sisters were more than just impetuous. They were unique. I turned and tried to see the house through the shielding jungle.
“I went down to Miami, to school,” Rona said. “Luz did that for me, you see? He’s not really so bad. It was a junior college. I’ve changed a lot—I mean, I like the swamp. I know the swamp. Much better than Evis does. I can go out there and live, Sullivan. But just the same, I want to leave.”
“Why are you telling me this?” he said.
She stirred, her body swinging closer, her breasts very full under the thin white blouse. It was crazy as hell, but I had a feeling of tenderness toward her.
“The swamp will take care of her, Sullivan.”
“What?”
“The swamp is good,” she said. “Not evil. But
the swamp is alive, too—it thinks. Don’t you laugh. It really does. The swamp will take care of her, because the swamp doesn’t like evil people.”
Before I knew what I was doing, I had grasped her shoulders, holding her. The soft firmness of her arms and shoulders thrust against my palms. Her body swung in against me, brushed me.
“What are you trying to say, Rona!”
I wanted to pull her against me. It was a fierce and very sudden impulse. She turned her face up, watching me. Her lips parted slightly, her eyes were very dark now.
“I love you, Sullivan, I’ve been in love with you ever since I saw you. Only I couldn’t do anything about it. I was too young—only I’m not any more.” She spoke very rapidly, almost breathlessly. “I’ve waited—ever since you left—waited for you to come back. I knew you would. I knew you’d find out what she was—that she’s bad, Sullivan, that she never loved you. I had to think about her being with you—sleeping with you, loving you, kissing you. Doing all the things I want to do with you.”
I began to shake her. It was as if she’d gone into some kind of trance.
“Stop it, Rona.”
“No. I can’t stop. You think I’m fooling—that I don’t mean it. That it’s something else. That I don’t know what I’m saying.”
I let go of her arms.
“Do you know what I mean?” she said. “Do you know what it means to wait and wait and wait, knowing the time will come?”
When I spoke, my voice was strained, hoarse. “If you know where Evis is, will you please tell me?”
“The hell with Evis, Sullivan! You’ve got to know how I feel.” She moved abruptly in close to me, reached up, took hold of her blouse and shredded it open, baring her large, firm breasts.
“Look at me, Sullivan!”
I couldn’t do anything else. She was wild with it; it was like a storm inside her, you could see the bursting emotion. A gold-chained locket snuggled warmly between her breasts.
She held her blouse open and stepped in against me. I held her then and nothing mattered. She murmured steadily and we kissed, her mouth warm and soft and open, her breasts mashed against my chest, her body cleaving to mine. Her fingers clenched into my back. We strained to each other. It was a white drench of desire. She sobbed deep down, the sobs ripped out of her like jagged tears.