The Brat

by Gil Brewer

  “DeGreef,” DeGreef said. “You stupid fool.”

  “That so?” Kaylor said. “Okay, Mr. Greefus.”

  Evis laughed. She seemed to get a big kick out of that.

  “You look right good to me,” Kaylor said, turning to Evis. “Right good, honey. We got to make time, now. You all ready?”

  “I look a mess,” Evis said, smoothing her hand over the long tear in her dress. “Where we going now, Berk?”

  “Tell you later.” He stepped away from her, moving in long strides, and walked over to Sheriff DeGreef.

  “Turn around, Greefus,” Kaylor said. “An’ take that gun out of your belt and toss it back between your legs.”

  DeGreef didn’t move. Kaylor hauled back and rammed the rifle into DeGreef’s stomach, very hard. DeGreef doubled over violently and nearly fell. The air burst from between his lips. He staggered, looked at Kaylor, turned around and threw the revolver between his legs. Kaylor picked it up, jammed it into his own belt.

  I looked over at Evis and realized then that she had never changed. She’d always been the same. Only I had never seen what she really was—and I’d been wrong. All the little doubts of remembering returned now; all the little things that had pointed to what she was came back to remind me that I’d been wrong all the time I’d been married to her.

  “Air boat’s out by the pier,” Kaylor said to her. “We’ll pull that other boat out a ways, then let her go. No sense leaving it here—right?”

  “Yes, Berk.”

  “Well, go on out there. I’ll take care of Greefus.”

  “How do you mean, Berk?”

  “Hell, woman—you know how I mean. What you keep asking damned fool questions for?”

  “You mean, shoot him?”

  Kaylor looked at DeGreef. “Yes, I reckon that’s what I mean. I don’t hold so much against old Sullivan, here. He did me a good turn, you might say. Carried you off where you could bring something good back to me. Used to be I’d get full of black hate over thinking about Sullivan sleeping with you, like he was. But, hell, a woman like you are—she’s got to be slept with. Ain’t that right?”

  “You devil,” Evis said.

  Kaylor looked at me. Then he looked at DeGreef. The sheriff moved back a few spaces and his face was pasty white. Kaylor grinned broadly and walked up to the man.

  “Would you of done it to her, you had the chance?” he said. “Would you of, Greefus?”

  DeGreef opened his mouth, but he couldn’t speak.

  “Guess you would of,” he said. “No man could turn that down, could they?”

  DeGreef stared at him.

  Kaylor brought the gun up in the crook of his arm, the barrel flashing in a bright arc. It smashed against DeGreef’s jaw. The sheriff staggered backward and fell against the cabbage palm stump.

  “Let’s go, then,” Kaylor said. He turned and started walking toward the edge of the clearing.

  The fire had died some and the wind had died with it. Moonlight sifted brightly into the clearing along with the firelight now. The clouds were gone, the storm had passed somewhere else.

  Evis paused, turned and looked at me.

  “Good-by, Lee,” she said. “I honest am sorry about everything. I wasn’t lying to you about that. I am sorry —but you can’t understand, can you? About how a person can be sorry, but still want to do what he wants to do?”

  There was nothing to say.

  “I am, though—I’m sorry for hurting you. I know I hurt you. But you see, Berk’s my man, Lee. He always was. I married you so I could get what I wanted. It took a long time, and I liked it all right, Lee. You were always good to me.”

  “For God’s sake, go away, then!”

  “Evis, honey,” Kaylor called. “You get the lead out—right now!”

  They vanished down the path out of the clearing. Suddenly DeGreef rose from where he’d fallen against the stump and stumbled over to me.

  “We’ve got to stop them.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll stop them.”

  I looked at him, at his eyes. I didn’t like what I saw. He was wild back there behind those eyes.

  “You going to just stand there and let him do that?” He grabbed my arm. “Sullivan. Don’t you understand? You’ve got to help me do something, or you’ll be it—just like he said.”

  “I’m going to do something. But don’t be a fool. He wants you to take out after him, don’t you see that? He’ll never leave you alive on this island. He wants me to take the rap, DeGreef….”

  He cursed and ran past me, pounding down the path.

  I took out after him. He wasn’t using his head worth a damn. He was running fast, and as I started along the path I heard the loud sputtering and the roar as the air boat started.

  DeGreef yelled something out there on the beach.

  I came off the path through the undergrowth to the beach. The air boat was out at the end of the pier, where our boat had been tied. Kaylor had the motorboat slung from the stern of the air boat.

  “DeGreef!” I shouted. “Get down!”

  Sheriff DeGreef was running out along the pier. Moonlight silvered the scene and I saw Kaylor walking back along the pier toward shore and even above the roar of the motor, I heard Evis’s scream.

  Kaylor had known DeGreef would come after him.

  “Get down,” I called again. It was hopeless.

  Kaylor leveled the rifle and fired carefully. The spang of the gun echoed sharply and the sheriff spun around on the pier, nearly fell off. He crashed on the loose planks and lay still.

  Kaylor took two fast steps toward the fallen man, then abruptly hesitated, turned and ran fast and light back along the pier, leaped into the air boat. I could see the fine blur of the propellor and then he gunned it, and you couldn’t see anything. Just Evis and Kaylor and the flat air boat skimming faster and faster out across the moonlit waters. A red glow of sparks showed in the engine, almost like a taillight, as they roared away. Then I saw a bright spotlight switch on at the front of the air boat. It swung in a sweeping bright glow, then steadied on the distant grass country.

  DeGreef hadn’t moved, lying sacklike across the pier, probably bleeding the last of his life into the water, if he wasn’t already dead.

  “DeGreef?” I called.

  He didn’t answer.

  I ran on out along the loose-boarded pier, feeling a wild futility and helplessness now. DeGreef was on one knee as I came up, crumpled on the pier. He moaned.

  “Where’d he get you?”

  “The arm—left arm. The son-of-a-bitch. He got the bone—it’s busted. Why didn’t he finish me?”

  “Take it easy, maybe he thought you were dead.”

  “Take it easy, you say?” He shoved himself to his knees and I saw his face, dragged down with pain. He gripped his arm just beneath a darkly spreading stain on his shirt.

  “They’re coming back,” he said. “Look!”

  The air boat swooped out of the swamp toward us. Then I looked off toward the east. I could still plainly see Kaylor and Evis in their air boat.

  “It’s not them,” I said. “That’s why he didn’t check to make sure you were dead. It’s somebody else coming.”

  DeGreef hunched forward, staring.

  “Whoever it is scared him off.”

  The engine of the air boat cut off, and the boat planed toward the pier across the shallows. It swept in close to the pier, bumped the side.

  “Sullivan—hurry up, Sullivan. If we hurry, we can catch them.”

  It was Rona Helling.

  I caught the rope she tossed me, and at the same time, she leaped up onto the pier.

  “Look,” DeGreef said. “They’re coming back, for damned sure. They must have seen her.”

  The air boat with Kaylor and Evis was turning sharply, sliding across the channel waters. In another moment it was aimed directly back toward us, the powerful spotlight sweeping back and forth along the island’s shore.

  Chapter 19

 
IT’S NOT HER he cares about,” I said to DeGreef. “It’s you, man. He saw you on your feet. He wants you dead.”

  DeGreef moaned painfully, then sat down on the pier, nursing his arm. He began to swear. He went on and on, like a machine, cursing in a steady, rhythmic manner that was larded with some of the foulest epithets known to man.

  “Sullivan?” Rona said.

  I was watching the approach of the air boat. I was all shot full of adrenalin, half out of my head with it now. If they came back, it was good-by. The air boat planed and swung, biting the channel water, sending out cuttings of spray like a bobsled. Then Rona put her arms around me and her body crushed against me.

  “Kiss me, Sullivan,” she said. “Quick! One good kiss, like you mean it—even if you don’t mean it. You can afford that.”

  She was still wearing that smooth fawn skirt and the white blouse and I felt her thighs open a little and she pushed against me so hard we damned near fell off the pier. Her breasts mashed against my chest, her fingers biting into my back, and our mouths came together. I got my hands snarled in her hair, trying to pull her off me, and then for one big moment I didn’t want her any place but right where she was. I let go of her hair and grabbed her, with the airboat roaring closer, DeGreef still cursing.

  I thrust her away. She stood there a moment, with all that black hair falling around her shoulders. Then she turned and leaped into the air boat, picked up something and flung it at me.

  “Catch!”

  It was a shotgun. A pump gun. It felt good.

  DeGreef said, “I’ve got to do something about this arm,” in a kind of awed voice.

  Kaylor’s air boat took a broad circle and came down at us along the island, about a hundred yards out. You could see the exhaust, and the moonlight flashed on the metal sides of the boat.

  “Shoot for the prop,” Rona said.

  “I can’t go back empty-handed,” DeGreef said loudly. “I’ve got to stop them! Sullivan, did you hear me? I’ve got to. If I make a bust of this, I’m out—they’ll run me out. I finally made it down here, try and understand that. I made a bust of every job I ever had—for Christ’s sake, Sullivan. They’ve got to know that I—”

  I pumped a shell into the shotgun.

  Kaylor fired at the pier.

  “Lie flat out,” I said, stretching out on the planks. “He doesn’t give a damn about who he hits now.”

  A slug struck the water lightly just in front of the pier where we were and ricocheted into the air with a vicious whine.

  I let them have three shells. With the first explosion of the shotgun, the air boat stood on its side, slid for a moment, then shot straight out away from the island.

  Rona came onto the pier.

  “Berk knows what that shotgun can do,” she said. “He knows you’ll try for the prop. They’ll run for it now. We can follow them, Sullivan. If we lose sight of them, we’ll never find them. Kaylor knows this swamp like nobody.”

  I looked at DeGreef.

  He looked up at me, sitting there, holding his arm like it was a broken two-by-four. Then he looked down at his arm with the blood cozing between his fingers.

  “Christ,” he said. “Go ahead. Leave me here. What does it matter? I fouled up again, that’s all. That’s the story of my life.”

  “Rona, you stay with him—fix his arm.”

  She shook her head. “We can’t do that. You couldn’t run the air boat.”

  “Show me.’

  “I can’t show you now. You’d never be able to follow them. We’ve got to hurry. Look where they are already.”

  You could still see them out there. But they were headed straight and flat out and wide open now. The spotlight was already turned off. You could see the reddish and very small glow, and that was all, aside from flashes of moonlight on the hull.

  “Got to take care of his arm,” I said.

  “The hell with my arm. It’s all right,” DeGreef said. “Must’ve missed an artery. Bleeding’s slowing down. It’s busted, but I’ll make out. Maybe I can run for game warden, maybe they’ll let me stand guard on the night shift over to the pump house. Jesus Christ, what a mess I made of it.”

  “Quit knocking yourself. You tried too hard, that’s all. You wanted too much.”

  Rona jumped down into the air boat and stood looking at me. Her face was pale. I handed her the shotgun, then stepped over by DeGreef.

  “Sullivan,” he said. “If you don’t get them, you’re a dead pigeon. I’m not fooling. You’ll go down for murder and every other damned thing in the books.”

  “I’ll get word to somebody that you’re here.”

  He didn’t speak.

  “Sullivan,” Rona said. “Come on.”

  I jumped off the pier into the front pit of the air boat. She was up on the seat. The motor started before I’d let loose the line and all I could think was that the propellor would catch on the pier and it would be fine.

  I whipped the rope loose.

  “Hadn’t you better let me handle it?” I shouted.

  She laughed like crazy, watching me, and we started off. It was slow, then faster, and in a moment we were leaving the island behind. I looked back there and I could see the jumble of collapsed buildings and the pier very plainly in the moonlight. DeGreef was still sitting there thinking about next year’s election and how he would run his campaign, eating his heart out, and I thought he waved to us, but it was probably only my imagination. I realized I was looking back at him through the smoking blur of the prop and I thought just once how it would be to slip and get your head caught in there … bits of flying pop-skull … Then I looked at Rona again, hanging onto the side of the hull, hunkered down, and we really went.

  I crouched and worked my way past the flat bar under the long steering bar, where Rona had her feet resting. I held to her seat, standing beside her. The boat was maybe ten or twelve feet long, with a metal hull, and the sides creaked when she turned the steering rod. The airplane engine roared like a fiend. I looked over the side, then grabbed the seat and hung on. We bumped and lurched and slid and flew. Every now and then she would jerk the steering bar a little and the boat kind of leaped sidewards and settled with a slam, then took off again.

  I kept trying to see Kaylor’s air boat, but for a while I couldn’t see anything. There would be a looming black shape of an island directly in our path and we’d cut so close you could feel the breeze from the mangroves.

  Rona gave a little cry and jammed her foot hard on the cross-rod of the steering piece We slewed in toward a hammock and I didn’t think we’d straighten. I watched the black fold of the hammock lean toward us and the motor gunned savagely. We caught like the sharp edge of a plank dragged through water, and roared in close along the side of the hammock in the midst of loud echoing.

  I looked back at the motor mount. The motor seemed to shimmy violently on the mounts over the stern. The rudder twisted flat back again, and the boat swirled in a crazy arc.

  “Be clear for a while now,” Rona shouted.

  I looked up ahead where she pointed to a beautiful moon-shot plain. Grass stood tall between large silvered patches of water. The grass looked as if it were covered with snow. The sky looked almost blue up there, high clouds, with the stars so bright and low that some of the clouds appeared to be above the stars.

  “Damn Berk!” she said.

  “What?”

  “He knows this country. He’s got fishing shacks all over the place. No telling where he’ll go.”

  “We’ve got to catch them. You just catch them and let me worry about the rest of it.”

  “Sit down.”

  She pointed to an extra seat that was for passengers. I decided to stay where I was. Her skirt was up to her thighs, her bare legs curving pale in the moonlight. Her thick hair streamed back from her head, and there was an eagerness in her face and expression that was good to see. I laid my palm on her thigh. She smiled and leaned quickly toward me. I kissed her, then left my hand where it was,
looking off across the bright night for Kaylor’s air boat.

  I saw it, far up ahead.

  It was mighty small, with light glancing off the metal hull, glaring occasionally in the prop blur. At the same instant, Rona turned on the spotlight. The beam swept around ahead of us and the silver on the grass and water changed color. The spot glared momentarily on Kaylor’s boat, then went off and returned to hold steady.

  Kaylor’s boat swerved immediately. It shot down a cross-channel behind grass that was easily eight feet tall.

  “Hang on!” Rona called.

  She turned straight into the grass.

  I ducked. For an instant we brushed in a rush of crackling and buffeting, then shot out of a bright channel of silver water again.

  Long strands of grass clung to the boat, then fell off. She turned off the spotlight.

  “Watch the grass,” she said. “It can cut you bad.”

  “Fine time to tell me.”

  There was no sign of the other boat.

  “We lost them.”

  She shook her head. “I know Berk’s tricks.”

  We rounded out of the channel we were in, came close in along a wall of grass that stood perfectly straight, like a fence. Suddenly we were past that and on a broad, open plain again. The other air boat was about three hundred yards ahead of us now. We had gained in a big leap, and I began to know that without Rona I’d never stand a chance of catching them.

  I felt her hand close over mine. I realized I was still gripping her thigh. She moved her hand over mine, then very slowly slid her hand under mine and pulled my hand away from her leg.

  “Can’t stand that,” she said. “Not now, Sullivan.”

  I looked at her and she smiled.

  “Keep that up,” she said, “I reckon I’d have to stop right here.”

  Her skirt fluttered briskly back from her waist and she reached over and gave my head a push, so I was looking straight ahead.

  I remembered what Evis had said about the locket Rona carried around her neck. I glanced over quickly and saw the pale flash of the golden chain where her blouse flared open.