Swamp Sister Read online

  The door inched further into the room and Dorry Mears peeked in at him, coquettishly. "It's just me, Shad. Just Dorry," she said. Cat's purr again.

  "Nice of you to knock," he said. "I might ben gitting ready fer bed, and me in my shorts."

  She came further into the room showing almost all of her, leaned against the door, arching herself as she'd done earlier for him. "I thought of that," she said softly, and then laughed, low.

  "Bet you did. That why you here?" He didn't see any reason to play around. He wanted her, God yes, and at another time he might have gone along with the game just to assure himself of final victory. But today he was a new man – a rich man, and he didn't have to mess with anyone.

  Dorry pretended to be shocked. "Why, Shadrack Hark! I'm purely convinced you got you an evil mind." She gave a toss of her hair. "Hit was too hot fer sleeping," she said, not looking at him, speaking in staccato. "So I took me a little stroll. No harm in that, is they?"

  Shad shook his head. "And ended up way down here," he suggested. "Coincidence, I guess."

  She blinked at him. "Well," she said defensively, "I like it down here. I often come thisaway at night-when I cain't sleep."

  "Uh-huh," Shad said.

  She hitched her right leg around in a half-circle, tracing a faint dust path on the floor with her toes.

  "I seen your light on and guessed you was still up. Thought we might talk. I couldn't sleep-" Her voice went off into the open night at her back and got lost there.

  Even at that distance, even in the poor light, it was easy to see that she wasn't wearing anything under her dress. That did something to him, something extra. He approved of a dress that looked like that one did. Nothing for shoulders, and not too much to cover those things she was so eternal proud of. And all the rest of it tight. Her ma made Dorry's dresses, but Dorry always remade them – took them in in places, in all the right places.

  "Why don't you fetch the rest of you on in?"

  Dorry looked at him and smiled. She closed the door.

  "They's a hook right handy to hit," he said.

  She looked down at the hook but didn't touch it. She looked at him again, an over-the-shoulder look. And that got him started.

  "Why should I lock myself in a room with a boy I hardly know?"

  "Hardly know? I had me the idea we was old friends- from the way you were slamming your hip into me tonight."

  Her eyes were bright like broken chips of glass in the lamplight. "If you goan talk dirty, I'm going to leave! I don't like that kind of talk at all."

  And that was the funny thing about her, he reflected. She really didn't. And yet the things that girl had been known to do for pleasure-or was it pleasure?

  "Dorry," he said seriously, "why you come here tonight?"

  "I done told you. I couldn't sleep and-"

  "All right, all right. I'm sorry I brung hit up."

  He walked over to her. She watched him come, but not straight on, which made the look something more than just a look. Shad leaned his left arm against the door, barring her in. He tilted her chin up.

  "Dorry, you'n me is goan become good friends."

  She said nothing. Her mouth was open, partially. Her eyes were closed. When he kissed her, her mouth was like burning liquid.

  He reached behind her as they clung together, body and mouth, and fumbled for the hook on the door.

  He awakened once in the time of night that is vast, endless, and everything is dead. No man's time. Not belonging to the intricate mechanism of clocks that control worldly minutes. Universe night. Then he remembered the Money Plane and Dorry, and he smiled and rolled over in the dark, reaching for her.

  She wasn't there.

  Shad sat up, looking. Dorry was sitting in the square shaft of moonlight from the open window, sitting on the edge of the bunk, spreading his ten-dollar bills neatly on her bare leg. The shirt! The damn bills must have fallen out of his shirt.

  Her head moved, her hair shimmering silver in the moonlight. She was looking at him, but he couldn't see her face. He was suddenly aware of the weir spilling, a feathery profound drone.

  "Where at you git the money, Shad?" Her voice was low, husky, urgent.

  He snapped his fingers. "Fetch it back. That's my nevermind."

  But she didn't. She clumped it in a small fist and held it to her bare breast. "Pa says you must a sold a heap of skins to afford twenty dollars outright."

  "Mebbe I did."

  "Mebbe-but ever'body else ben saying how porely the trapping is."

  "Mebbe they don't know where to look at."

  "Mebbe they ain't looking fer the right thing."

  Shad stalled for a moment, then said, "What you mean by that?"

  "Shad," she whispered, "you find that old Money Plane? Did you, Shad?"

  "You hush up! Hear? Give me that money." He snatched it from her hand. In that split second he was ready to belt her one, hard. "I don't know about no Money Plane. Ain't nobody kin find that old wreck."

  She came for him, hip-sliding across the bunk. He decided not to belt her one. Instead he cupped her left breast in his hand. Red fire! That threw a man all out of whack.

  "Shad," she breathed, "they's the most pure-out beautiful dress I seen down to Torkville the other day with my ma. Shad, you'd like me in it. Ain't homemade. I'd wear it just fer you. I could git it mebbe fer ten dollars. Shad?"

  He grumbled a little in his throat, and finally shoved her one of the bills. "But you keep shet about this here money, you hear? This is fer you'n me. I God shore don't want ever' Tom, Dick an' Harry pestering me after it. Dorry, you hear me?"

  She looked up from the money in her hand and kissed him wetly. "Shad-it ain's pelt-sold money, is it? It was the Money Plane, wasn't it?"

  "I ain't got a God-made word to say about that money."

  "But it was, wasn't it, Shad? Shad?"

  8

  He was alone in the morning. It didn't surprise him. He grunted and got up, found his pants and counted his money. He wouldn't put it past Dorry to – but no, he had fifty-some dollars left.

  He fetched a bucket of water and gave himself a stand up bath on the porch, then dressed, lighted a cigarette, and left the shanty.

  He followed the path to the road and started east. He'd rustle up a meal first, then do some shopping. He'd have to see Iris Culver, and that was going to be like cutting a wounded bear off from the bush. He could expect trouble from that quarter.

  He came upon silly Edgar Toll, sitting in the dirt smack in the middle of the road before his ma's shanty. A hulking youth with a face like a pan of greasy dough, ornamented with big angry purple pimples and long shiny hairs that grew out of his nose almost touching his lip. Mouth always swinging open, sometimes drooling, witless and with little to say for himself, he'd stand around in nooks and corners like a guilty secret and try to lick his nostrils, cow-like.

  Folks were used to Edgar, used to seeing him hulking about in a sort of bewildered waiting. But Shad could never cotton to the moron. He felt an instant loathing, as though he were about to be dumped into a putrid swamp whenever he approached the fool.

  But it was more than just a moronic ailment with Edgar. Something was twisted inside -his right and wrong guidepost. He was forever hunting up helpless little creatures, anything, bugs to non-pit vipers, to torture them. Today it was a frog.

  The moron had the frog, back flat on the road, holding it with one hand. He was disembowelling it with a sharp stick.

  "Sweet Lord!" Shad cried. Then he cuffed Edgar hard alongside the ear, spinning him into the dirt. "You goddam idjut! I ort to God rip your stupid guts out!"

  He looked at the frog, scrabbling helplessly in its own mire, and winced. Not because a living thing had been despoiled, but because this living thing had been helpless, and because the despoiling had been done by a human being. He couldn't understand that.

  Something had to be done. The thing was in agony. But what? "Oh Lord." he said. He raised his boot and brought it dow
n with a slam. Edgar came to his feet awkwardly, dripping dirt and tears. He was clutching the sharp stick, inexpertly, like a woman with a dagger.

  "You – you damn – you damn Sh-sh-shad!" he cried. "I'll kill'n you!" He came at Shad in a shuffling duckfooted run.

  Shad stepped aside adroitly and left-jabbed the moron hard in the mouth. Edgar went down like a bag of nails, sprawling out in the dirt. He beat at the road with his hands, opened his red mouth like a fire bucket and bawled, "Ma! Mama!"

  Mrs. Toll clumped out onto the porch glaring fiercely right and left. A slovenly old creature, a widow woman who grubbed a living for herself and her idiot son out of the wood somehow. No one was certain just how. She hitched at her ragbag skirt, drape-hanging it on her shapeless frame, and started screaming at Shad.

  "I seen you! I seen you! You dirty swamp critter. You hitted my pore boy! You hitted my baby, you-" She went insane with her insults.

  And Shad, hating the scene, hating the old lady and her idiot son, and the frog the idiot had made him stamp to death, shouted back.

  "Shet up! You stupid old cow! Why don't you lock that goddam fool son of yourn up. Why don't you -"

  Old Mrs. Toll caught up a wood-chopping axe and came down from the porch at a wobble-legged run.

  "I'll fix yer! I'll chop yer! Beat my pore baby! I'll -"

  Shad Hark was no fool. He turned and made tracks, his ears ringing with Mrs. Toll's cackle, "Lookit him! Lookit him, Edgee! Lookit him go! The big brave swampman arunning from an old woman! Hi! There he goes, the dirty, cowardly, spineless, gator-lovin' pig!"

  Shad high-tailed down to the next shanty – Rival Taylor's – and came to a panting halt. "Goddam idjuts!" he gasped. "Ort a lock 'em both up." Then his mind slipped back to reactivate the scene, and he started laughing and couldn't help it. "What a God handsome sight I must have made coming fox-fast down the road with the crazy old witch axe-swinging after me!"

  He shook his head and looked up. Mrs. Taylor came out on her porch carrying a pan of water.

  "Shad," she called. "What's ben going on up the road there? Somebody run over Edgar agin?"

  Shad grinned. "I run him over with my fist, Mrs. Taylor. And old Mrs. Toll took after me with a hatchet."

  Mrs. Taylor pursed her lips and tsked disagreeably.

  "You shouldn't ort a done a thing like that, Shad. Pore Edgar."

  She swished the pan of greasy water outward like a fisherman casting a net. The water plopped on the ground, fanned into a silver shield and fell again.

  "Well, now that you're here, you want a cup of morning coffee?"

  Shad smiled, nodding. Mrs. Taylor was offering him the coffee so she could get the full story of why he'd hit pore Edgar; he knew that swamp women had to get their entertainment from some source. At least gossip wasn't a cardinal sin.

  He followed her into the house, saying, "Got me a fiftycent piece here that I'd purely like to see go fer a breakfast. Grits is fine, if they're handy."

  Mrs. Taylor looked at him, the empty pan still in her hand. "Why ain't you et to home, Shad?"

  "Ain't living to home, is why. I cleared out last night."

  Mrs. Taylor said tsk again, shook her head and said, "My!" Then -"Well, sit, Shad, while I redd up the table."

  She was getting more than she'd bargained for and she tried to be offhand about it, as if someone had brought her a gift she'd been expecting and didn't much care about. "Want to tell me about hit, son?"

  Shad ducked his smile. "No'm. I'll tell you about Edgar, though."

  He ate and she had a cup of coffee with him. And then when he brought out his pack of tailor-mades he didn't know what else to do but offer her one. The way Mr. Culver always did to Iris Culver.

  Mrs. Taylor cried. "Shad! Me take a devil stick? Don't you come trotting in any of your hanky-panky tricks on me. What would Rival say?" Then she laughed and flapped her apron. "And me a fat old woman!"

  Shad grinned. "Go on," he said. "I was thinking if mebbe you were to tell me what night Rival stays out with the hounds, I'd just come sneak-footing by this way-"

  "Whaah!" Mrs. Taylor let out a shout of laughter and put her pudgy hands up to her apple cheeks. "Shad Hark, you are the one! Now you just stop that air teasing. And me old enough to be your ma!"

  Shad liked her. He sort of wished she was his ma. She was real, she was a part of the Purpose. Not artificial, useless like Iris Culver – at least useless for practical living. And Dorry? Would she be like Mrs. Taylor someday? He kind of doubted it. Mrs. Taylor would have been a pioneer wife-had there been anything left to pioneer. He looked at her, seeing her unconsciously as the embodiment of oldfashioned home life.

  "Why'd you say poor Edgar?" he asked suddenly, sensing that she had answers to things he couldn't understand. "You know he tortures frogs and mice and things."

  Mrs. Taylor looked serious. "You cain't really say hit's his fault, Shad. I know cutting up frogs ain't a nice thing to do, but Edgar got a lot of good in him."

  "Must have," Shad agreed. "He don't never let none of it out."

  "You hush and listen to me. I knowed that pore boy since he was borned. And when he was a little fella he warn't mean. He warn't smart, but not mean. Wasn't till after you other lil' boys come at him all the time he started to change. A-throwing sticks and rocks at him, a-chasing him home and calling him idjut all the time -"

  "Not me. I never done those things to him when we was little."

  "I know you never, Shad. You always hung away from him, likn you were feered of him. But them othern did. I remember one day-pore lil' fella couldn't ben but eight- they tied cans to his lil' tail and chased him home to his ma. Like a dog, Shad.

  "So you see? One day he found out he could catch him little crawly things, things that couldn't fight back, and he started taking some of his hate out on'em. Hate got to come out someways, Shad. It shore God do."

  Shad stared at the table, thinking about hate. Then he grunted and stood up. "Mebbe," he said, not wholly convinced. "But I just think he's dangerous as a walleyed bull." From his jeans he dug some of the dollar bills Joel Sutt had given him for change.

  "You put that money away, Shad Hark. I ain't setting up no coffee shop here, you know," Mrs. Taylor said crossly.

  "What give you the idea hit's fer you?" Shad wanted to know.

  He put five of the dollars down on the table, letting them stack crisscross one on the other. "Here. Give 'em to that old fool Toll woman. You don't have to tell her I give 'em to you."

  Mrs. Taylor looked at the money. Her eyes turned damp when she smiled, and he thought it was funny the way you could catch some people that way.

  "Why, Shad," she said. "You got a soft spot in you wide as a boat-bottom."

  "Go on," he snapped. "You gitting foolish along with your other ailments. Bet in another year Rival won't be able to tell the difference 'tween you'n Edgar – if'n Edgar goes to not wearing his pants."

  Mrs. Taylor let out another holler of laughter, and her voice followed Shad out the door and onto the porch. "Shad, don't you go to showing all that money of yourn to those girls you always chasing after. They'll take it off you in one night. You hear me, Shad?"

  He felt pretty good when he went into the yard.

  9

  In the great square frame house with the high-peaked roof, in the house that was incongruous to the ratty peppering of shanties and the vivid wilderness, like a little girl's new doll standing alone in the weeded backyard of an abandoned property, Iris Culver moved distractedly across her living room. She passed the long wall of books-her books-Larry read trash – and went to the front window. Her highheels left the rug and the house-stillness seemed to shudder and recoil from the hollow sound of the heels tapping the wooden floor. The soft purr of the air conditioner followed her. It was a faulty old relic that Larry had picked up somewhere on sale.

  Outside the air was sun-warmed, flower-scented. It was the day which last night had presaged – early summer, cool in the shadows, glass-clear. Th
e cabbage palms stood tall and separate. The sky, ragged on the horizon, showed itself detached and whole, going on around.

  She turned from the window in an abrupt, deliberate pivot, a movement that would have looked awkward, afflicted, from any other but a woman of her kind. Nerves. She went to a fiddletop table-one made by a local swamp billy and Larry had purchased it for five dollars. Iris hated it. From a jade box she took a cigarette. She stood for a moment looking back at the window, through the screened porch, across the saw-grass lawn and road to the lake, seeing the swamp beyond. She tapped the cigarette on her thumb. Where was Shad?

  The three-word sentence stood in her mind like a wall, or like the swamp water out there that was just as much a barrier between them. She hated it, hated the tupelo and titi and gator-thunder; hated the sticky heat and mosquitoes, the free wandering hens and pigs, the dirty abysmally ignorant children and the distorted speech of their elders. Hated Shad; herself for needing him.

  She crossed the big living room again, passed through a swinging door, pausing to hold it in her hand. Shad had made it for them. Shad had come to the house a year ago to make the swinging door. Larry had hired him because he was young and smart and because his work was cheap. Later she'd laughed at that, later, when Larry was out in his barn typing-and Shad was in her bed.

  The view from the kitchen window was partially blocked by a hillside meadow. She opened the door and looked out. From the back porch she could see the meadow ending in a line of trees against the sky. The barn-Larry's Ivory Tower – was midway in the line of trees, like a white ship drifting to its moorings.

  He was still up there, she thought. He wouldn't be bothering her for a while. Perhaps this was her lucky day. She might not have to hear his latest deathless chapter until night. The latest trials and good-natured adventures of Tab and Reb, those one hundred per cent red-blooded allAmerican boy rovers.

  She slammed the door and click-clacked back through the kitchen, returned to the living room and went to the tall gilt mirror over a maple table holding a vase and flowers. The flowers were wilted.