by Gil Brewer
• • •
For a time he kept the boat pointed straight out, cutting around hammocks, but always aiming into the swamp. The early afternoon sun burning everything. The country had taken on a heat haze now. It was dazzling. It hadn’t been this hot before, and I knew some of it was how I felt—trapped and with time running out.
He watched me steadily as if he were waiting for something.
We came close to the area where I’d seen the air-boat trail. He turned the motor off and the boat drifted. It was very quiet, but far off in the swamp you could hear the sound of birds, blending and rising into the sunlight.
When he spoke, it was as if the sound of his voice was scraped off the edge of thick meat, and his eyes were full of accusation.
“Going to tell me about it?”
“Tell you what?”
“Look,” he said. “You’re caught, Sullivan. You stole and you murdered. You’re a wanted man. That’s bad. My job is to take you in. Only, in a way, I’m stepping outside the law—not doing that right off. I’m working it my way. I know this country a little. Live here now, and I used to spend vacations down here. I like fishing in the Glades. They needed a good man down here, and now they got one. Me. I run for sheriff, and I won. It’s going to stay that way.” He paused, then said, “I don’t like your kind at all, Sullivan.”
“You told me that.”
It was quiet for a time. We drifted.
“We’re together now,” he said. “Choke that down. I’m doing my job—and I never failed at a job yet. I’m going to find your wife and that money. Then I don’t give a damn. It’s obvious you haven’t got it. She must have it.”
I kept silent. If we did find her, there was no telling what might happen. I had to see her alone.
Then suddenly I knew why he had turned the kicker off on this very spot. It was because he knew. He knew about the air boat. If I’d been able to find out these things, so had he. I began to hate him a little more.
Rona would never find us. There was nothing she’d be able to do now. Well, that’s how I’d wanted it.
DeGreef started the kicker, turned the boat along the smooth water, following the trail of the air boat.
Chapter 14
SHERIFF DEGREEF was a man of his word. I could tell that much. He’d go down shooting, and I was the target he’d picked. He was playing some sweet little game all his own, and he had me in a pocket.
It was just great.
Whenever I so much as moved my arm, he’d flash a look at me, flat lips stretched across his teeth.
He sat hunched over the motor, driving the boat ahead as if it had become a part of him that hurt, but that he was determined to ignore.
We came through some incredible country. There was a lot of open water, but he didn’t turn the boat a hair from the direct eastern course. It was as if somebody had whispered in his ear.
I tried to keep my back to him, but every now and then I’d look around, see if maybe he was worked up enough to plug me in the back. He’d be sitting there as if he were stuffed and mounted, grimly hanging onto the steering rod of that motor.
For a long time we went in silence. I kept thinking how Evis had probably come through this same water not too long before. It got down into me. It began to raise hell.
DeGreef shouted above the motor. “How you feel, Sullivan?”
The hell with him. I wondered what kind of crazy enjoyment he was getting out of this?
What did it matter? He had me, didn’t he?
• • •
We came past a gator, riled from sun-stretched quietude. He slid along through the water, leaving a wake like that of a small boat, and he looked nothing at all like a log, the way they’re supposed to. I watched him move slowly off toward a low, mangrove-covered stretch of island. Then I spotted two more alligators—and realized none of them were gators when one lifted his long dripping ragged snout and clapped at the air. They were crocodiles.
“Sullivan?”
I turned and looked at DeGreef.
“Sullivan, why did you kill Ray Jefferies?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Don’t try to kid me, Sullivan. I know you haven’t got the money—but you’re guilty as hell.”
He fell silent again. I kept figuring how I could get rid of him. There was no way. Tip the boat over and where was I? Jump him—what then? He knew what was going on all down the line. He wanted that money—a complete haul.
“Thinking, Sullivan?”
“The hell with you!”
The country along here was a network of low islands, lying in the calm, sluggish water. As far as the eye could see, were hammocks, grass and water. Occasional trees loomed against the sky, barren-looking above the dense green of mangroves. Some of the islands were quite large. Caribbean pines grotesquely shoved among the mangroves. Some of the islands were jagged tangles of palms.
It was hot. I was soaked with sweat. My face burned and I knew DeGreef was even worse off. He hadn’t bothered to take off his jacket. What was it that drove him? He was fanatic about his job, but it was as if there were something else there; a kind of sadistic pleasure in the whole thing.
“What about the other guy, Sullivan? You kill him, too? Did you kill your wife, maybe—and are you trying to figure a way to kill me?”
He was beginning to get under my skin.
“Worried about tonight, Sullivan? Think I don’t know what I’m doing? Relax, you aren’t going any place I don’t go. Look around and enjoy yourself. Say—you know there’s lots of deer and bear in here? Just saw a bear back a ways. Saw a panther, too. There’s wildcats, too. I saw a hell of a big cat last fall, down in the Cape Sable area. Shot him. Through the head, Sullivan.”
He laughed mirthlessly. He was feeling a need to talk. I knew he’d drop me if I made a wrong move.
“Still got the trail,” he called. “They traveled straight east. Bound to spot ‘em. I met this Kaylor—he’s a hot baby. Your wife’s old boyfriend—right?”
It was becoming grayer in the east. The sky was pale and bright in the west, but on ahead night was sneaking along. It hadn’t seemed we’d been out this long.
The backs of my hands were burned raw from the sun. My neck was a swath of bright and scalding pain. It didn’t help knowing DeGreef was even worse off with his pink-white skin. I knew he was in agony.
• • •
Dusk closed down. The heat hung on. The pain from the burn lingered and increased. For a time now, DeGreef had been idling the motor. I had no idea as to our position, and if I had known it would mean nothing. I kept thinking dizzily how I could turn and leap at him—maybe knock him overboard.
What good would it do? There wasn’t enough gas to take us back where we’d been, even if I could find the way.
DeGreef slowed the motor to a slow ticking.
“Trail’s gone,” he said matter-of-factly.
“What?”
“You heard me. I said the trail’s quit. I don’t know where the hell that air boat went.”
He searched the country, frowning. He was a mass of sweat now, his face burned to a red expanse of fiery flesh. His shirt stuck to him beneath the darkly sweat-stained jacket.
“Just plain vanished.” He wiped water from his forehead with a cupped forefinger, snapped it at the floor of the boat. “Now what, eh, Sullivan?”
I said nothing, watching him.
He reached down by his feet and picked up the canteen, took a long drink, capped it. He glanced up, tossed me the canteen. I drank some of the hot, flat water tasting of metal and canvas and fish. It was almost empty. It suddenly seemed as if DeGreef had planned the whole thing this way.
The boat drifted through a mash of weeds and rotten grass above deep water. I could feel the depths beneath me. The early sounds of evening were grinding, discordant and disturbing. I began to receive my first real impression of the far swamps now. Mosquitoes found us, roiled in buzzing swarms and fighting mobs along the water’s surfa
ce.
“Smoke,” DeGreef said quietly. “I can smell smoke.”
“You’re smelling your upper lip.”
“Blow your damned nose,” he said. “I tell you, something’s burning around here.” He faced this way and the other, moving quickly.
More and more I saw what I was up against with Hugo DeGreef. If he’d been tired, that short swig of hot water had revived him. He seemed to burst with energy now, like a hound hot after a bitch.
“By Jesus!” he said. “Somebody’s cooking!”
I couldn’t smell anything.
“It could be Indians,” he said. “Once in a while you run across a Seminole. But I don’t think it’s an Indian.”
The motor ticked idly. We pursued a western course, slanting off among the islands on broad channels.
I smelled the smoke.
I couldn’t tell where it came from. It hung in the air, an odor that was part of the air itself.
It was rapidly darkening, yet still light enough to see smoke. I told DeGreef I couldn’t spot any.
“That’s why I don’t think it’s Indians,” he said. “That’s a lot of malarky about Indians not making any smoke when they build a fire. Why should they bother about a thing like that? Who in hell cares whether a fire smokes?”
“Somebody who doesn’t want to be seen.”
“Sullivan,” he said with ladled sarcasm. “You’re getting smarter all the time. Pity it’ll never do you any good. Whoever that is, he’s making coffee!”
The odor of coffee was rich on the air for a moment. Then it was gone, the swamp-water odors again pervading everything.
“Damn them,” DeGreef said softly. “I’ll find ‘em!”
He turned the boat and we slanted off against the slow wind that breathed warmly across the Glades. Darkness was coming down like a blanket now, the water mirroring shadows of the islands, black against the smooth, pale surface.
I remembered Rona with a heavy desperation. Had she started back out into the swamp to find me? If she had, did she know the country well enough so she wouldn’t get lost?
DeGreef cramped the boat again. And I pictured his mind, larded with wanting to turn me in, getting the money, clearing everything up his way. But what was his way?
The coffee odor became strong again.
The western sky was a deep purple now, shot with long crimson lashes of flame, and straight on our bow a large island hunched like a ship’s shadow with towering masts.
A voice called out, rising against the night sounds.
DeGreef immediately shut off the motor. We sat there, drifting quietly, listening.
“Who’s there?” someone called, not too loudly now. The sound of the voice echoed across the water. “Who’s there?”
DeGreef grunted. “Got you now,” he said. His voice was harsh, but he spoke in a near whisper. “Come on, Sullivan—paddle with your hands. And I mean paddle!”
He was breathing heavily, working the boat along. We moved slowly toward the island, about two hundred yards dead ahead.
“Sullivan,” he said, “you hear what I said!”
I just sat there—waiting.
That had been Evis calling.
Chapter 15
DEGREEF struck me hard across the back of the neck. “Paddle!”
I lashed back at him. The boat rocked and for a moment I hung over dark water. He stood there glaring at me, his teeth white against the shadow of his face.
“Damn you!” he said softly. “Make it fast and quiet. When I tell you to do something—do it!”
I turned, kneeling, and looked at him again. I was ready to jump him then; everything rushed up inside me and I suddenly didn’t care what happened. All I knew was that had been Evis and I had to get to her. If she got away now, I knew I’d kill him.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said. He hauled his gun from the holster under his left arm and waved it at me. “We’re here now. That’s your wife in there—right?”
I knelt across the seat, watching him, listening to the harsh sound of our breathing.
“I’d as soon shoot you right here,” DeGreef said. “I don’t like you. Any part of you. So paddle!”
He would. I knew that.
I turned slowly in the seat and began paddling.
“That’s better.”
We both strained. The boat crept toward the island. I thought of what lay beneath the surface of the water, lurking to strike at the movement of hands.
There was no sound from the island. We moved across the water, gaining speed. I found myself overcome with vicious hate now, wanting to see her. It had built in my mind until the blood began to pound in my ears.
“What the hell’s that?” DeGreef said.
Stretching from the island out over the swamp, was a small network of piers and docks, small buildings. Everything was in terrible condition. Black lacings of boards had caved into the water. The one long pier looped up and down like a miniature roller coaster, into and out of the water.
Something large broke water nearby, then dove again, slithering in a slant dive, and I heard the lingering whip of a heavy tail.
We paddled on in silence.
Again I thought of attempting to capsize the boat and swim ashore. But that thing in the water …
“Okay,” DeGreef whispered. “We’ll tie up at the pier.”
We brought the boat in and tied it to a rotting piling against the side of the pier. The ancient boards went directly into the water on the channel side of the boat. The pier led to the island.
DeGreef pushed me roughly out of the boat onto the rotted planking, with the gun rammed into my back.
“Walk careful,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you.”
Someone ran across crackling brush, then feet pounded on sand.
“Faster,” DeGreef said.
We moved along the pier. Planks had fallen into the water and with every step the entire structure weaved and cracked. There were large spaces of nothing over the water and we had to walk the side beams which were little more than four-by-fours, nailed with bent, rusted spikes to the old pilings.
Then I saw her.
She stood against the dark undergrowth.
“Who is it?” she called. Then her tone changed, became hesitant—almost meek. “Berk?”
DeGreef was at my side, his eyes on the island. I struck the gun down, hitting his arm, and it fired. He was already off balance, trying to say something. I hit him again, hard, balancing and leaning into it. He spun with a yell from the pier. I turned and ran as he struck the water.
“Evis!”
Her legs flashed along the narrow stretch of beach. She turned into the undergrowth along what must have been a path.
I was straight out of my head with the effort to reach her. I wanted to get my hands on her—I couldn’t wait!
“Evis!”
I leaped from the edge of the pier into ankle-deep water. Muck sucked at my feet as I staggered toward the beach.
“Sullivan!” DeGreef called from out there. “Don’t be a fool!”
I ran along the soft beach. Fiddler crabs rustled in crackling waves ahead of me, fanning thickly. There was a moment of crazed shrieking and a wild thumping of unseen wings among the trees. Then the island was still.
Reaching the spot where she’d entered the woods, I ran in after her. I paused, listening, heard her feet pounding along the ground up ahead.
Then the sound ceased. Nothing.
There was a path, suffused light from the sky spreading through trees and vines. Mangroves had been bent back out of the way, but one lashed free and caught me across the chest. I fell, got up and ran again.
“Evis?”
No answer.
The path curved toward the island’s center. The smell of smoke was stronger now. Then I burst into a small clearing.
She was leaning over the fire, beating at it with a long stick. Sparks showered, and I recalled that day she’d burned her books and magazines. I heard her lo
w cries as she swung the stick, trying to put out the fire. Then she saw me.
“Evis—damn you!”
She gave a little cry, flung the stick and turned, running full tilt. She could run like hell, I knew that. I took out after her. At the far end of the clearing there was a wall tent, staked lopsidedly against the trees.
She ran for the tent.
I dove for her as she made the tent’s entrance. She whirled, dodging away, looked down at me and for one brief instant I saw her frightened eyes, the hair swinging across her face. She looked wild and half crazed. She turned, running low down and hard along the side of the tent, and I got up and went after her.
“Don’t, Lee—don’t you touch me!”
I caught her this time, one hand snarled in a shred of dirty white dress that felt like silk, and I swung her around. We were both breathing hard, gasping. I threw her with everything I had and the dress peeled in a long tear from my hand. She sprawled backwards and slammed against the side of the tent between taut guy ropes. A stake popped out of the earth, releasing a shower of dirt. Her hands sought for the ropes stretched from the springy canvas as she landed and the canvas whipped her erect. She missed the ropes, came toward me in a running stagger.
I caught her by the shoulders.
I began shaking her. I couldn’t stop. It was as if I wanted to crush her in my hands. Her head wobbled around on her shoulders loosely and her eyes were wide and scared. Her long thick hair fell around my fists.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Kill me—go ahead!”
“Shut your mouth.” She knew how I felt. “Jesus,” I said. “I’d like to kill you.”
I couldn’t stop shaking her. She took it, then began cursing me. She kicked and clawed.
“You’re hurting me, Lee. Stop!”
I hurled her at the tent again. She landed and this time clung to the guy ropes, lying back against the side of the tent, legs spraddled, hair falling down one side of her face. Moonlight and firelight played across her body, over the torn, dirt-splotched white dress, the full thrusting breasts, the swath of naked thigh showing where the dress was ripped to the waist. She lay back against the tent, watching me, breathing that way. She was barefooted. She was home.