A Moment to Prey (7 page)

    "You know where he was from, Carney?"

    "No. He never did say. But he ain't from Brooklyn, by God."

    "Never mentioned his home?"

    Carney frowned, then shook his head. "No. Oh, wait a minute. One night he got plastered, like he was the night of the pinball duel. He got kind of mean when he got drunk like that, and louder than ever, talked too much. I remember one thing he said."

    "Yeah?"

    "Maybe it wasn't anything. It don't mean anything to me because I never heard of the place. He got to bragging that he was the only Pooser around Eureka Crossing that ever learned to read and write."

    

    

    That was late spring. Eureka Crossing was hard to find on any map. I decided that Marve Pooser would be easier to locate through his old job. I started hitting all the used-car places. I finally located where he had worked, but the only address he had given was a local rooming house.

    Here the old girl told me that he had moved and left no address. He had never told her where he came from because she hadn't cared enough to ask. He was always coming in late, hated for her to clean up his room. She didn't know where he had gone, but she was glad he had.

    I bought the most detailed map of the Southeastern states I could find. I went into the first bar I found, ordered a drink and spread the map on the booth table in front of me. I traced my finger across each state, longitude, latitude. Somewhere in there was the home of a guy named Marve Pooser, a guy who had given me the shaft and lay on his back somewhere with one-third of a hundred grand.

    I don't know how long he had been standing there. When I looked up, there was Nat Sklute, hat in his hand and an odd expression on his face.

    "Hello, Mr. Richards."

    "Why don't you get off my back?" I folded the map and pushed it aside.

    "This is just friendly. A friendly call. Happened to be in here and saw you."

    "You're a putrid liar, too."

    "Just wondered what you been doing lately, Mr. Richards. Wondered if you'd given any more thought to our little chat. About that man's voice. It ring any bells yet?"

    "No. I'm sorry."

    Nat Sklute twisted his hat around in his fingers. "I get a funny idea about you, Mr. Richards."

    "Well, forget it. I'm pretty, but my price is too high."

    He nodded, still without smiling. "Yes. That's what I've been thinking about. Your price is too high, isn't it, Mr. Richards?"

    "I don't know what you're talking about. But before you explain, let me tell you, I don't want to know."

    The little bastard sounded sad. "You know all right. You really believe you're the victim in this thing, don't you?"

    I stared up at him. "Who else got hurt?"

    "A man gets angry, Mr. Richards, he makes a lot of mistakes. He gets to thinking about how he can be
paid
for the way he's been hurt. Is that right, Mr. Richards?"

    "You're reading my mind. Think what you want to."

    I got up and walked out. He was reading my mind. Let him read what I was thinking about Marve Pooser. He had disappeared, maybe he was gone where I would never find him. But he had a cut of that hundred grand, and the way I saw it, he had robbed me. He was the boy I was going to find.

    

    

    Consciousness returned slowly. All memory of Marve Pooser and the stolen money and Nat Sklute faded when the pain started again.

    I wasn't a human being at all, I was a glob of jelly quivering on the ground, a mass of pain.

    The long narrow face appeared above me, the slavering mouth, the frantic eyes.

    "Now, Paw? Now?" The voice quivered.

    "Now, son."

    The voice belonged to the bald old man. Through the haze I saw the narrow face quiver, tongue dart around his mouth to stop the drooling. His teeth chattered with the excitement in his face. It was his turn now.

    He kicked me in the face.

    The world was bouncing and then my mind cleared so I realized I was being carried sack-like by half a dozen men. The rest of them walked beside us, honorary pallbearers. I heard the swirl and suck of the river. I knew that river by now-narrow, deep, snake- and 'gator-infested-it flowed a hundred miles north into the St. Johns and then east to the Atlantic. Here I come, I thought. They hurled me out and I landed flatly, with a splash. Before I could even sink I was being hurled along by the swift-moving current.

    

    

    The river country was empty and quiet in the afternoon. There was a sense of oppressive silence as the river cut through the flat green swamp. The river was a network of branches, old river beds long log-jammed and hyacinth-choked, each of these branches as wide as the river itself. But all of them were blind streams lying stagnant and silent, green and purple with hyacinths. The current was swift and kept me in the middle of the narrow bed, pushing me along faster than I could ever swim.

    The banks hung close. It seemed if I had had the strength I could have reached out and caught the overhanging limbs or fought my way ashore. But for a long time I could do nothing but float along like a cork on the water. The shore might as well have been out of sight.

    I did not see any houses, only an occasional abandoned shack, or a log trail almost overgrown and forgotten.

    I had the strange sense of being weightless in the water. I don't know if I had expected to drown at once. I knew I was too near dead to fight the river. But I did not drown. I only kept moving downstream whether I wanted to or not. I waited, spun along in the current, for whatever would happen.

    I caught at a tree growing out over the water. I snagged it, the bark rough, but my hands slipped and the current thrust me past it and it was gone. My body ached and I was very tired, too tired to swim or to walk if I could have made it ashore against the pull of the river.

    The water was cold and got colder the longer I was in it. I could not swim because of the pain. My blood did not circulate as it would have if I had not been too beaten to kick my legs. When I was forced to stroke with my arms it was as if I tore my stomach tendons to shreds.

    My clothes were heavy and they dragged me down, but when my head was under until the pressure made my eyes feel as if they would explode and my lungs burst, I thrust upward and gasped for air.

    The current pushed me along and when I came up I saw this jam of peeled logs ahead. The water swirled white where it struck the logs and was forced out around them in white stewing circles.

    I fought against this outward pull and finally I was carried in close to the logs. I pulled myself over the first one and it sank slightly and seemed to buckle. Suddenly the water caught it and jerked it free. For a long time I was spun around as the log bobbled past the log jam.

    It was better now. I could breathe and hold my head above water. I hung on to the log, supporting my head and my shoulders on it.

    I told myself I would not drown now. The log rolled along in the silent river. Sometimes the banks were steep and in other places the swampy places were so low that the river spread out over the cypress stumps and around the deadened trees. The sun disappeared and it was suddenly dusk along the river. The silence deepened and the sickness and chill in my stomach spread to my arms and I could no longer hold on to the log.

    No matter what I told my brain, my fingers slipped and I could feel the log rolling and spinning away from me. The current caught it suddenly and it was gone. I could not even see it around me. I rolled over on my back and breathed through my mouth, trying to rest. I stared at the darkening sky, and the helplessness spread like the chill. When I heard music, at first I thought I was delirious and about to pass out again.

    The music had a twangy country sound and it was loud around me. I turned over, treading water, feeling the pain sharp and hot through me.

    In the darkness I saw the lights of the fishing shack and the shafts of light in the strung nets and along the narrow dock.

    For a moment I was afraid the current would sweep me out wide around the curve. I fought at it, kicking my legs and thrashing my arms. Perhaps they would have heard me if the jukebox had not been so loud.

    The water bumped me against a cypress upright under the dock. I hung on until I caught my breath, then pushed away from it, grabbing at the next one nearer shore. I pulled myself along until my feet struck the muddy bottom. I tried to stand, but my legs would not support me and I sprawled out on my face. The darkness settled down swiftly over me like a falling tent and blotted out even the sound of the jukebox.

    

    

    I was dry and I was not shivering any more. I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was the light suspended on a cord from the bare rafters. I turned my head, seeing the brown wood walls, framing exposed, the faded calendars. Then I saw her.

    I stared at her for a long time.

    "Hello," I said.

    She had been looking at me as though I were no more than the blanket turned down on the narrow cot. She did not smile.

    "I thought you were dead," she said.

    "You mean I'm not? Saw you, thought I was in heaven."

    "Weak man, weak jokes."

    "Wait until I'm better."

    "That's what I'm waiting for. Then maybe you'll have sense enough to get out of this country. I told you. You're not much. Next time they'll kill you."

    I tried to move in the bed. Pain was like hot prongs.

    "Maybe they have yet. Did you pull me out of the river?"

    "Yes. I heard you out there. I thought somebody was trying to steal a boat."

    I looked at her, the dark hair, the black eyes, the cheap dress, the briar-streaked legs. What went through me this time was not the searing of pain. I felt my breath quicken.

    She stood up. "If you're going to live, I'll go to bed."

    I lifted myself on my elbows. "Wait a minute."

    She paused in the door, looking back at me, her eyes hostile. "All right, what do you want?"

    "Thanks."

    She shrugged. "For what? I'm just glad it wasn't somebody stealing a boat. We lose a lot of boats."

    She turned off the lights and walked out. In the darkness it was as if I could still see her. I lay there with my eyes wide and when I became accustomed to the dark I could see the nail holes in the corrugated roof. The jukebox did not stop for what seemed a very long time. Sometimes through the music, and other times above it, I could hear the laughter. I heard cars turning into the parking lot behind the shack, and later other cars started and moved away. I listened to them until I could not hear them any more on the white road that led to the highway.

    I could not sleep. Men were shouting out there in the restaurant and in the scrub-country silence the sounds were right in the room with me. Women would yell suddenly, giggling and screaming. Once I heard something overturned and a woman screamed. But then the laughter covered it, and the jukebox wailed. But it was not the noise or the laughter of women or shouting men that kept me awake. The feeling I had was something I could not explain. For the first time in weeks I was not thinking about Marve Pooser and hating him. What I was thinking about was Lily.

    I was still awake when she walked into my room the next morning. It had quieted down about four, but then before daybreak they started going out in the boats. I listened to the motors catch and then roar and then die away as they went around the curve.

    Lily carried a basin of water. She put it on the chair beside the bed. "You want to wash your face?" she asked.

    "Don't you people ever sleep around here?"

    "You'd get used to the noise if you stayed around here long enough." She did not look at me. I noticed she had brushed her hair. It glowed with a dark sheen in the sunlight. The dress was clean. She was still bare-footed, but there was no mud between her toes yet.

    She noticed me looking at her. "You're getting better. It's time for you to get out of here."

    She moved away from me and that was when I noticed there was a faint delicate fragrance about her. I didn't know what it was, I noticed its absence when she walked away. It made me empty and I wanted her close to me.

    "My pillow," I said. "Would you straighten it, Lily?"

    Her black eyes were not deceived. Her sullen mouth did not change its expression. She came back to the bed, and that faint fragrance warmed me and I wanted to reach out and pull her down against me. It was more than wanting to do it. It was like a need. But when I looked at the chilled expression on her high-planed cheeks, I remembered the way she'd cut Charlie with that steel rod. I was damned if I was going to be another fish-camp Romeo on the make for the first woman to come near him.

    I breathed in deeply staring at the soft curls at the nape of her neck, wanting to touch them.

    She straightened the pillow, stepped back. She glanced at me, as if faintly astonished that I had not grabbed for her.

    She should have looked at my fists, knotted under the bed covers.

    "Is that all you want?" she asked.

    I just looked at her. I did not answer. The faintest smile touched at her eyes and she turned away. "I'll bring you some breakfast."

    I stared at the ceiling some more and listened to the flies against the screens. I tried to think about Marve Pooser and that money, but all I could think about was the faint fragrance of her that was never bought in any store and that made you drunk when she got too close to you. Poor Charlie Bullock. All of a sudden I understood him one hell of a lot better.