One
It was three in the afternoon and hot. Tar was
boiling out of the black-top paving around the square
and heat waves shimmered above the sidewalks. I
drove on through town and down the street to the
jail with the Negro boy. He was about nineteen and
looked scared to death.
“I ain’t done nothing, Cap’n,” he kept saying.
“O.K.,” I said. “Relax. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
My head still ached from last night and his talking
got on my nerves.
I turned him over to Cassieres at the jail. “Stick
him in the county tank. Did Buford call you?”
“No,” he said. “What’s he booked for?”
“Assault,” I said. “Attempted assault. I don’t know.
He took after another boy with a knife. Buford said
pick him up.”
I drove the car around to the garage and left it and
went back to the square. The courthouse was stifling
and smelled of sweeping compound and old dust and
cuspidors. Buford wasn’t in the office.
“He’s out for coffee,” Lorraine said. “Though how
anybody could drink coffee in this weather…”
She looked at me and smiled. We both knew he
was in the back room of Billy Barone’s drinking gin
River Girl — 2
rickeys. She had worked in the sheriffs office about
six years.
I shed the gun and tossed it into a filing cabinet.
“I’m going home,” I said.
“Oh, I almost forgot. Louise was in. She said to tell
you she picked up the car.”
“O.K.,” I said. “Thanks.” I’d have to walk. Louise
was probably playing bridge somewhere.
I went out and my head started to throb again with
the glare. Cars went by, hissing on the soft tar as if it
were raining. I started to walk across the square to
get a Coke before I went home, and then
remembered Buford had asked me to stop by and see
Abbie Bell.
Abbie’s hotel was out on Railroad Street, toward
the planing mill and the freight depot. It was a rundown
section, not over a half-dozen blocks from the
square but tough and full of cheap beer joints. I
could hear the shriek of the planer and the slap of
dropped planks across the afternoon stillness and
smell the heat.
It was different a long time ago, I thought. I
walked this way to school before the old one burned
down, and there were some good houses along here
then. I was center on the fifth-grade football team
and in love with a girl named Doris or Dorothy. At
night I used to lie awake and rescue her from
burning buildings and capsized boats and bullies big
enough to be in the seventh grade.
A Negro girl was sweeping the lobby. I went down
a dim hall and knocked. Abbie herself opened the
door and looked out, then stood back for me to come
in. There were two electric fans going and the blinds
were pulled to keep out the sun.
“Hello, Jack,” she said. She must have been around
thirty-five, quite short, with very sharp brown eyes
and closely cropped black hair in tight curls close to
her head. She always wore ridiculously high heels to
make herself look taller, and now she had on a blue
dressing gown of some sort of filmy stuff.
River Girl — 3
“God, this heat. How about something cold to
drink?”
“Thanks,” I said. I sat down under one of the fans.
“Tom Collins?”
I nodded. She called out the door to the Negro girl.
While we were waiting for the drinks she went into
her bedroom and came out with a white envelope in
her hand. The girl brought the drinks in and left
them on a tray in front of the sofa. Abbie sat down
and we lit cigarettes.
“Know any new toasts?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “It’s too hot to think. Here’s how.”
She put the envelope down on the table. “I don’t
know what the hell I get for this,” she said.
I shrugged. “Ask Buford. I just work here.”
She looked at me levelly. “You sure you want me to
ask Buford?”
“He sent me,” I said. I could bluff too. Buford
didn’t get all of it, but I didn’t think she’d take it up
with him. He didn’t want to see her, anyway.
Elections were tough enough without having to carry
Abbie Bell on the ticket.
She spread her hands. “Oh, what the hell, you pay
it anywhere. You always pay somebody. But I get
tired of having my car tagged for overparking
uptown.”
‘Take it up with the marshal’s office,” I said.
“We’ve got a police force.”
“Don’t I know it? I have to support ‘em. And you
people too. My God. And when I get a drunk in here
that wants to tear the joint down, I have to bounce
the bastard myself. It’s enough to make you cry.”
I took another sip of the drink. It was too sweet,
but it was cold.
“Cheer up,” I said. “Suppose you worked here.”
“Well, I’ve worked in better places than this,” she
said, and grinned. Somehow she looked like an
impish kid when she did that. I liked her. And still
I’m chiseling her out of twenty-five dollars every two
River Girl — 4
weeks, I thought, and wondered if the headache was
getting worse.
“You never do any business here, do you? Except
this.”
“No,” I said. “What the hell, you think I’m crazy?”
“Cut it out, Jack. My girls are clean. You can take
my word for it.”
“Yeah, I know. And they’ll give you your money
back if a parachute doesn’t open, too.”
“Well, it’s a good thing all married men aren’t as
cautious as you are. I’d go broke.”
I shook the ice in the glass. “Buford asked me to
give you a message, Abbie. He says for Christ’s sake
don’t let any more kids in here.”
She took a deep drag on the cigarette and exhaled
smoke into the blast from the fan. “Is he still crying
about that?”
“Look,” I said. “He’s been sweating blood for a
week, and so has the so-called police force. That kid
was Buddy Demaree, and Buford’s really had the
heat put on him.”
“I know, I know. I’ve heard enough about it. Look,
Jack, I try to keep those lousy high-school punks out
of here, but Jesus, I can’t watch the door every
minute. I don’t want ‘em in here any more than
Buford does. I’d rather have a skin rash. They smell
of a cork and they’re drunk, like that dumb bunny.
And they never have a crying dollar on ‘em—all they
want to do is to feel up all the girls and then go out
chasing their lousy jail bait.”
“Well, try to keep ‘em out. Buford may not be able
to smooth it over the next time one of ‘em gets
plastered down here and wrecks his old man’s car.
And that preacher is getting worse all the time.”
She looked at me. “Yeah, how about that guy? I’m
paying you people to do business here—why don’t
you keep him off my neck? God, I never know but
what he may come in here some night with an ax like
Carry Nation and chop the joint up. Can’t you muzzle
him before he closes the whole town up?”
River Girl — 5
“Maybe Buford’ll think of something.” I stood up
and started for the door. “I’ll see you, Abbie.”
She waved the drink. ‘Tell Buford the girls are
working for him.”
I walked across town in the heat, thinking of the
lake and of trees hanging over water very quiet and
dim back out of the sun. It had been months since I’d
been fishing. The car was parked in front of the
house, and as I went past I noticed the white
sidewalls were black again. I grinned sourly,
thinking of Louise and curbs.
She wasn’t in the living room. I went down the
hall. A cold shower, I thought, and a bottle of beer
out of the icebox, and maybe this headache will go
away.
“Is that you, Jack?”
I looked in the bedroom. “You’d be in sad shape if
it was somebody else, wouldn’t you?” I said, smiling.
She was lying on the bed in nothing but a pair of
pants and a brassiere, reading the latest copy of
Life. The electric fan was running on top of the
dresser. Louise was very pretty, a taffy blonde with
wide, green eyes and a stubborn round chin. She
took a great deal of pride in her clear, pale skin, and
didn’t go in for suntan because she always blistered.
“You’re home early, aren’t you? I called the office
to ask you to bring in some steak, and Lorraine said
you’d already left.”
“I had an errand.”
She reached out a slim arm for a cigarette and
looked at me questioningly. “You did? Where?”
“Abbie Bell’s.”
She flipped the lighter and took a deep puff,
letting the magazine slide to the floor and looking at
me quietly through the smoke.
“Well, that’s nice. How were the girls?”
I sat down and started taking off my shoes,
thinking of the shower. “All right, I guess. I didn’t
see them.”
River Girl — 6
“Well, then, how was Abbie?”
“Cut it out, Louise. You know what I was there
for.”
“Men are always on the defensive, aren’t they?
Really, dear, I’m not accusing you of anything. I was
just asking about them. After all, I don’t get much
news. The husbands of most of my friends never go
to whore houses.”
“At least not on business,” I said.
“You’ve got a dirty mind.”
“O.K.,” I said.
“I don’t see why you have to go there in broad
daylight. Suppose somebody saw you?”
“Nobody did.”
“Well, it seems to me Buford could send somebody
else.”
“You know why I don’t ask him to send somebody
else.”
“Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it?”
“It’s being done,” I said, feeling too rotten to
argue.
“Maybe she’d raise your cut if you went down
there and worked as a bouncer or something after
hours.”
“Maybe so. You want me to ask her?”
“And your father was a judge.”
“You tried to buy anything with that lately?” I
asked.
“Maybe I should go down and help Abbie out on
Saturday nights.”
“Oh, cut it out,” I said.
She slapped the bed with an arm. “Oh, why do we
always get in these arguments?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I wish we didn’t.”
She was silent for a moment. I went on undressing
for the shower and started into the bathroom in my
shorts when she said, “Cathy and Mildred are going
River Girl — 7
down to the beach for a week. They asked me to go
with them.”
“How can you?” I asked.
“After all, it’s only for a week.”
“I don’t know where we’d get the money.”
“Well, it certainly wouldn’t take any fortune.”
“With those two? You know how they throw it
around.”
“They do get a little fun out of life, if that’s what
you mean.”
“And you don’t?”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
Here we go again, I thought, off on the same old
rat race. We were strapped with payments on a new
Oldsmobile we didn’t need just because Cathy
bought a Cadillac. In January we had to go to the
Sugar Bowl because Mildred was going. Cathy’s got
a new Persian lamb. Mildred’s getting a Capehart for
Christmas. They could afford it. Cathy’s husband was
Jim Buchanan, who was vice-president and a
stockholder in the bank, and Mildred was married to
Al Wayne, who was in the real-estate business.
“Sometimes I get a little fed up with those two,” I
said.
“Yes. I guess you do seem to prefer Abbie Bell.”
“Oh, for God’s sake—”
“If you’d like, we could ask her over for bridge.
After all, we’re practically in business with her. She
could bring over one of the girls for a fourth.”
“You could ask Mildred,” I said. “Al Wayne owns
the hotel and that whole block.”
“I doubt if many people know it. And he doesn’t
have to go down there in broad daylight to collect
the rent.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll quit going down there and
to all other places. We’ll live on my salary.”
“Your salary!”
“Well, there you are.”
River Girl — 8
“You could have had Buford’s job if you’d run
against him last time.”
I sat down in a chair and lit a cigarette, forgetting
about the shower. “I couldn’t beat Buford, and you
know it. He’s been sheriff for twelve years. And I
haven’t got his personality. Nobody in the county
could beat him.”
“You were in the war.”
“Who wasn’t?”
“Buford,” she said impatiently.
“He was over draft age. I’m telling you, if I’d run
against him I would just have been beaten and then
I’d be out of a job completely. I thought about it
plenty, but it can’t be done. He’s just one of those
people. Even people who know he’s crooked like
him.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be too sure he’s going to be there
forever,” she said.
“How’s that?”
“You know what I mean. Or who I mean. That new
minister, the Reverend Soames or whatever his
name is. I tried to get you to go to church with us
yesterday. You’d have heard plenty.”
“Well, before you crow too much, remember that if
they get Buford over a barrel I’ll be right there with
him.”
“Yes. And isn’t that something nice to think about?
And for the crumby few dollars you get out of it.
Think of what he’s made.”
“My God, Louise, do you want me to take it, or
don’t you? I can leave it alone.”
“So you’d like to blame it on me, would you? Well,
I like that!”
“I’m not trying to blame it on anybody. But, for
Christ’s sake, if I’m going to take it the way Buford
does, let’s take it and shut up about it.”
“You can do whatever you want to,” she said
coldly. She reached out and smashed the cigarette
with a vicious stab at the ash tray, long slim legs
River Girl — 9
sprawling as she lost her balance on her elbow. “I’m
going to the beach. I’ll cash a check.”
“Don’t make it over seventy-five,” I said. “That’s all
we’ve got in the bank.”
“That’s fine. That’s just fine. I’ll stay at the YWCA.”
I got up and took the envelope out of my clothes.
“Here,” I said, tossing it. “There’s a hundred and
twenty-five in there.” It landed on the bed next to
her naked midriff. Well, it’s gone full circle, I
thought. That’s where it came from—a girl on a bed.
“What about Buford?” she asked.
“I’ll stall him. I’ve done it before. He knows he’ll
get it.”
“You won’t mind batching for a week, will you?”
“No.” Suddenly I was fed up with everything—the
quarreling, the heat, money, the job, all of it. I
wanted to go fishing worse than I’d ever wanted
anything. “I think I’ll go to the lake.”
“I may not have to spend all of it, Jack. I’ll take it
along, just in case.” She had the money out of the
envelope and was looking at it. She hadn’t heard me.
I went out in the hall to the telephone. After trying
the office and Billy Barone’s, I finally located Buford
at the Elks Club. He sounded as if he had a pleasant
glow.
“This is Marshall,” I said. “I just wanted tell you
I’m going fishing. I guess you can struggle along
without me for three or four days.” The way I felt, I
didn’t care whether he liked it or not.
Nothing ever flustered Buford. “Fine, Jack. It’s all
right, son. You need a little vacation. Bring me back
a channel cat.”
River Girl — 10
Two
I began to feel better the minute I turned off the
highway onto the old logging road. It wound up
through the pine and then dropped off toward the
lake bottom country to the east, very rough and full
of chuckholes and not used for anything any more.
The highway crossed the south end of the lake some
five miles further down, where there was a general
store and restaurant and a place that rented boats,
but I always went in here, as it was less used and
saved that five miles by boat if I wanted to go very
far up the lake. It was about fifteen miles from here
clear in to the upper end of it, up in the swamps, but
I’d never been that far. It was rough country, with
unnumbered miles of sloughs winding all over the
bottom, and you could get lost in it if you didn’t
know your way.
It was still two or three hours before sunset when I
eased the Ford pickup and boat trailer down the last
quarter mile of the old road and stopped under the
big oaks at the end of a slough. The minute I cut the
motor, absolute silence closed in on me and I felt at
peace with everything.
It took only a few minutes to launch the boat, load
it, and clamp on the motor, and then I was under
way. The slough was about a quarter mile long, and
River Girl — 11
when I rounded the turn I was in the main channel of
the lake itself, winding off toward the north and
northeast. It was about two hundred yards wide with
dead snags and cypress clumps here and there and
dense timber hanging out over the east bank. There
were occasional weed beds and I knew the bass
would be feeding in them around sunset, but I had
four whole days and wanted to go on up toward the
head of the lake, farther than I’d ever been before.
Two or three miles up I met another boat coming
down, with two men in it. They waved and held up a
string of bass, then they were gone behind and I was
alone again. At times the channel was so narrow the
trees almost met overhead, and it was cool in the
shade with the breeze blowing in my face. At other
places it widened out into long flats full of dead
snags and stagnant, dark water, not muddy but
discolored from rotting swamp vegetation, with the
lowering sun slanting brassy and hot across it. Now
and then a grindle would roll just under the surface,
making a big, spreading ring on the water, and two
or three times I saw big gars swimming by very close
to the top. Innumerable arms and sloughs wound off
on both sides into the timber, but I knew the main
channel here and stuck to it. In another half hour,
however, I was beyond the country I was familiar
with and was going only on a sense of direction and
sticking always to what looked like the larger
channel.
It was late when I rounded a long turn and saw
just the place where I wanted to camp. The lake was
about a hundred yards wide here, with an open bank
under a towering wall of oaks on the right, and dead
snags and big patches of pads along the left. The sun
was gone now and the water lay still and flat like a
dark mirror except for a boiling rise where a bass
smashed at something near one of the snags. I cut
the motor and started drifting in, and silence seemed
to pour out of all the vast solitude and came rolling
over me like a wave. I worked fast in the daylight
there was left, stringing the trot line between two of
the old snags and baiting it with the liver I had
River Girl — 12
brought, then went ashore and built a fire to cook
supper. After I had eaten I washed the dishes and
sat down on the bedroll in the darkness, smoking
and looking at the fire. The big bullfrogs had opened
up their chorus and I could hear the whipporwills’
lonely crying up in the swamp, reminding me of the
nights I had camped on the lake when I was a boy.
The Judge and I had fished a lot in those days. My
mother was dead, and there had been just the two of
us for a long time. He taught me to use the fly rod,
how to drop a cork bug forty feet away beside a
sunken log and to set the hook when the surface
heaved, exploding with the strike, and how to
release a bass after it was whipped. He never kept
them. Tomorrow, I thought, I might catch one the
old boy had in the net and then released to fight
some other day, and then I knew it wasn’t likely.
He’d died six years ago, while I was overseas. It
would have to be a very old bass to have fought the
Judge.
I took off my shoes and clothes and lay down on
the blankets, but it was a long time before I got to
sleep. I kept thinking of the fights with Louise and
the endless bickering over money. Nothing had
seemed to have any point to it after I came back
from the Army, I had just seemed to drift aimlessly,
taking the path of least resistance. I was twentythree
when I came back, and for a while I’d thought
of going back to school under the GI plan, for I had
finished two years at the state university before the
war, but that had gradually fizzled out when I
started going with Louise. Then Buford offered me a
job as deputy as a favor to some people who had
been friends of the Judge, and before long Louise
and I were married. We had gone into debt for the
house, and then there was a new car, a Chevrolet,
and before that was two years old we bought the
Olds. It wasn’t too hard, after a while, to start taking
money from the same places Buford was taking his.
Maybe it’s just as well the Judge isn’t here any
more, I thought. He never cared that much for
money.
River Girl — 13
It was a beautiful morning, very still and cloudless,
with patches of light mist hanging over the lake in
the early dawn. I got up and picked up a towel and
ran down to the boat. Stepping into it, I pulled out
into the channel with the oars, took off the shorts,
and dived in. The water felt warm, but it was clean,
and I swam down until I felt the bottom under my
hands and then came shooting up, bursting clear of
the surface like a seal playing. Beyond the wall of
the oaks along the bank I could see the sky in the
east growing coral now, and across the vast and
breathless hush of early morning I heard the
explosive smash as a bass hit something among the
pads along the other shore.
I pulled hurriedly back to camp and got the fly rod
and some bugs and came back, letting the boat drift
silently among the snags. Tying on a cork bug with a
dished-in face, I began working out line with false
casts and dropped it thirty feet away in a pocket at
the edge of the pads. It lay cocked up jauntily on the
surface with its white hair wings erect, perfectly still
like some big green-and-white insect trying to make
up its mind what to do next. I twitched the line and
the face dipped down and gurgled with a bubbling
sound and little rings spread outward from it toward
the pads. I twitched it again, quite gently, then the
water bulged upward and swallowed it. I raised the
rod tip and felt the weight that meant the hook was
in, then he came out of the water glinting green and
bronze in the early light and shaking his head to
throw the hook. Bugs aren’t so easy to sling as big
plugs, however, for there isn’t the leverage, and
when he went down he still had it. He didn’t like it a
bit, and made a run for the pads, but I managed to
get him turned in time, and began taking in line as
he came nearer. He jumped twice more, tiring
himself, and in a little while I had him close up to the
boat. I was reaching for the net when he saw me and
was off again, making the reel sing. The next time he
came in he was about done for and lay weakly on his
side as I slipped the net under him, I lifted, and he
flapped in the net in the bottom of the boat, a beauty
River Girl — 14
that would go three pounds. Slipping the hook out, I
lifted him over the side into the water. He lay
quietly, then flipped his tail and swam out.
I missed a few strikes, and then quit feeding.
Going over to the trot line, I ran along it, pulling
hand over hand along the line. There were three
catfish on it, one small one that would be just the
right size for breakfast, and two others of two or
three pounds each. I was wondering if I would be
able to keep them alive until I went home, when I
heard an outboard motor suddenly break the silence
of the lake. It surprised me, for I hadn’t thought
there was anyone else up here. I looked up and saw
it coming around the bend, three or four hundred
yards distant. It was coming fast, and as it
approached I saw it was a big skiff probably sixteen
feet, with only one man in it, and that he apparently
had no intention of stopping to swap fish stories. As
he came abreast I waved. He looked at me once,
lifted a hand in a gesture that was almost curt, and
went past. Then his motor sputtered and died. I had
started to row back to camp when it quit on him, and
I watched the boat drift along on its momentum for a
little way and then come to rest. He was looking at
the motor. I turned and started over. “Trouble?” I
called out.
I could see him shake his head. “Just out of gas.”
As I came up alongside I saw the motor was a big
Johnson with a lot of power. He was filling the tank
from one of those Army surplus jeep cans, and I
looked at him, wondering if he might be anyone I
knew. He glanced up briefly and went on pouring
gasoline. I didn’t know him, but for just a fraction of
a second I had that feeling there was something
familiar about his face; then it was gone. Maybe I
just ran into him on the street sometime in town, I
thought.
He didn’t look as if he lived in town, though, or
even went there very often. His face was deeply
tanned, almost black from the sun, and the dark and
graying hair was long above the ears and growing
down his neck into the collar of the sweaty blue
River Girl — 15
shirt. It was the lean, bony face of a man somewhere
in his forties, with haze-gray eyes faintly bloodshot,
as if he had not slept, and full of an infinite sad
tiredness like those of a man who has been looking
for too long at something he doesn’t like. The face
was tired, too, and intelligent, but completely
expressionless, and it was frosted along the jaws and
chin with a beard stubble that was grayer than his
hair. He wore a floppy straw hat and faded overalls
rolled halfway to his knees, and I could see he was
barefoot. His shoes, however, were up in the bow of
the boat out of the inch or so of water sloshing
around in the bottom. Lives up here, I thought.
Probably makes a little whisky and traps some
during the winter. His hands were shaking badly and
he was spilling some of the gasoline.
“How’s fishing?” I asked.
“All right.” He screwed the cap back on the
gasoline can and set it up forward by his shoes. Then
I noticed the tow sack in the bottom, under the seat,
and wondered if it didn’t have whisky jars in it until I
saw the dorsal fin of a catfish sticking through.
“Taking them down to the highway?” I asked. I
knew the restaurant at the foot of the lake
specialized in fried catfish and that they bought the
fish from the swamp rats who lived up here in the
sloughs.
He nodded.
“Here,” I said, glad to find somebody who could
use the ones I had. “Take these along. I’ve got more
than I can eat and they won’t stay alive until I go
home.”
He glanced up briefly and shook his head. “Don’t
need ‘em.” Then, as an afterthought, “Got all he’ll
take. Thanks.”
I shrugged. “O.K.”
He was ready to go and was about to crank the
motor when he paused. “Pretty far up the lake, ain’t
you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Why?”
River Girl — 16
“Nothing. It’s easy to get lost up here, though.”
The motor caught and he was gone.
I kept thinking about him as I cleaned the catfish
for breakfast. His face was familiar somehow. I
thought, but I knew I’d never seen him before
around here. And there was something else I
couldn’t get out of my mind. He looked like a swamp
rat and dressed like one, but the speech didn’t ring
true. He used the right words but he said them
differently, the way they would sound if you were
reading dialect out of a book.
I wondered how far up he lived, then suddenly
remembered the odd way I had first noticed the
sound of the boat. He must have just started it when
I heard it, which meant he hadn’t come from much
farther away than around the next bend, possibly
half a mile.
River Girl — 17
Three
I probably would never have gone up to the cabin if
it hadn’t been for the accident.
It was one of those stupid things that seem to
happen only when you’re fishing alone. It was about
midmorning and I was casting a white streamer fly
for crappies near an old windfall at the edge of the
lake along the other shore when I must have let my
backcast drop too far and touch the water. At any
rate, when I came forward with the rod I felt the line
slap my back and then the sting of the hook.
I untangled the line from around my neck and tried
to reach the fly. It was between my shoulder blades,
and I could just touch it with my fingertips. Thinking
it had only nicked me, I tried to shake it loose by
jiggling the leader, but it stuck. I cursed myself for a
clumsy fool, getting tangled up in a fly line like
somebody who’d never had a rod in his hand before.
After trying to dislodge it by poking at it with a small
stick, I began to realize I was solidly hooked. It
didn’t hurt much, but any movement of my arms
irritated it, because the shirt would move and shift
the hook.
I cut the leader with a knife so I wouldn’t have the
fly line dangling from me, and sat there while I
smoked a cigarette and thought about it. I hated the
River Girl — 18
idea of starting back down the lake looking for
somebody to get it out for me. On a weekday like this
I’d probably have to go the full twenty miles to the
highway before I met anyone. Then I thought of the
man who had gone by early in the morning, but I
knew that even if he went down and straight back
he’d be another three or four hours at least, and
might not be back until night. Suddenly I
remembered again the way I had first heard his
boat, as if he had started it up just around the bend.
Maybe his cabin was nearby and there might be
somebody there.
I went back to camp with the hook digging
painfully into my back with every stroke of the oars,
and got out the small pair of diagonal pliers I carry
in the tackle box. Then clamping on the motor, I
started up the lake.
At first glance the long reach of the lake above the
bend seemed to be empty and deserted, a
continuation of the miles below it. There was the
same wall of oaks, the weed beds and gaunt dead
trees, and the water flat and brassy in the sun. A big
slough led off into the timber on the right and I was
almost past it before I saw the small boat landing
just inside the entrance.
I wheeled about and turned in, cutting the motor
and drifting up alongside the landing, which
consisted of two big floating logs with boards nailed
across them. There was a live box made of rabbitwire
netting alongside the float, and I could see a
few catfish swimming around in it.
I tied the boat to the logs and went up the trail
through the timber. There was a long clearing, with
bunch grass and weeds, dead and brown now in the
late summer, with a dust-powdered trail going back
to the frame shack at the other end. The house was
small, not over two rooms at most, with a sagging
porch in front, and covered with old oak shakes the
color of tarnished silver. It sat up off the ground on
round blocks, and under it I could see the big blackand-
tan hound lying in the dust. He rose and stalked
dejectedly out as I approached, but there was no
River Girl — 19
other sign of life. Grasshoppers buzzed in the warm
morning sun, and there was a peaceful, almost
drowsy stillness about the place that made you think
of a painting or some half-forgotten fragment of a
dream.
I stopped in front and called out. “Hello. Hello in
the house.”
There was no answer and no sound of steps inside.
I could see a feather of blue-gray smoke curling from
the stovepipe and drifting straight up in the
motionless air, and knew someone must be around
nearby if there was still a fire in the cookstove. I
tried again. “Hello in the house.”
The old hound looked at me sadly and gave a
listless wag of his tail, but the silence remained
unbroken. I could feel the hook pulling at my back
and began to wonder impatiently if I would have to
go down the lake after all. Damn, I thought. Turning,
I walked around the side of the house on the bare,
hard-packed ground. Someone had tried to grow
flowers in a little bed along the wall, but everything
was dead and withered now except the lone
morning-glory winding along some white string
stretched up past the window. The ground at the
base of the vine was damp, as if it had been watered
last night.
There was nothing behind the house except a privy
with its door hanging crazily open on a broken
hinge. There was no barn, for there were no animals
except the dog, and not even a well. They must get
water from the lake, I thought. A black walnut tree
shaded the corner of the house, and on beyond the
privy there was just the dead bunch grass stretching
out toward the wall of timber closing it all in. I heard
a squirrel chatter across the stillness, and inside the
kitchen the fire crackled once inside the stove.
I was just turning to go back around in front when
I saw a sudden flash of color in the edge of the
timber and a girl stepped out into the clearing. What
I had seen was a blue bathing cap, and now she
came on toward me along the trail in the wet bathing
River Girl — 20
suit, seeing me standing there but not changing the
unhurried gait. It was a beautiful walk, and I
watched her, trying not to stare, conscious of the
crazy thought that she could be modeling a bathing
suit instead of walking across a backwoods clearing.
It wasn’t one of those two-piece Bikini things, or
even the fancy and highly colored ones usually worn
around beaches, and even though it was very small
and tight and clung to her like nylon with a static
charge, there was still somehow a suggestion of
modesty rather than display about it, probably
because it was of the kind professional swimmers
wear, smooth and black, and cut down for utility
rather than advertising. You had an idea, watching
her, that she was a good swimmer.
“Hello,” I said.
“Good morning.” She stopped, with water still
dripping from the suit into the powdery dust at the
edge of the trail. She was a little over average
height, with square shoulders, and quite slender,
with long, smooth legs, not deeply tanned, and the
suit pulled tightly across her breasts. Her eyes were
deep blue and faintly questioning, and there was
something incredibly quiet and still about the face.
There was no way of knowing what color her hair
was under the bathing cap. She might be any age, I
thought, from twenty to twenty-eight.
I knew I had been staring and tried to smile to
cover it up. It was awkward, because she somehow
gave the impression she didn’t care whether I stared
or not, and didn’t care a great deal, as a matter of
fact, whether I was even there.
“I was just looking for a little help,” I said.
“Yes? If there’s anything I can do ...” She let it trail
off, still looking at me quietly, and I was conscious of
that same puzzling impression I had had about the
man. The speech didn’t fit, somehow. It wasn’t what
you would expect to hear up here in the swamps.
I turned around so she could see the fly sticking in
my back, feeling like a fool because it was such a
River Girl — 21
stupid thing to have happen. “I can’t quite reach it,”
I said.
She stepped closer and examined it, touching the
shank of the fly gently with her fingers. “I can’t tell
because of the shirt,” she said, “but I think the barb
is caught.”
“I think so,” I said. “It’s not hard to do, though.
The thing to do is push it on through, cut off the
barb, and then back it out. I brought some pliers.”
I think I can do it,” she answered. “Will you wait a
minute until I change clothes?”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “Go ahead. I’ll wait out here.”
I turned back around and she unfastened the chin
strap of the cap and peeled it off, running her fingers
through her hair and shaking it out. It was straight
and dark brown, almost black, falling in beautiful
disarray across the side of her face, and I stared at it
with almost the same sense of shock or outrage you
might have at seeing a beautiful painting defaced,
for it had been badly mangled by some clumsy
attempt at cutting it. Whoever had cut it must have
used a lawn mower, I thought. She shook the cap to
get the water off it and went in the kitchen door,
straight-backed and unhurried. The door swung shut
and then I heard the front one close.
I lit a cigarette and squatted on my heels in the
shade of the walnut tree, listening to the ratcheting
buzz of the grasshoppers and thinking of the way she
had looked and of that strange stillness about her
face. It wasn’t the blank emptiness of stupidity or
the quietness of inner serenity—there was something
about it that made you think of the dangerous and
unnatural surface calm of a city under martial law.
In a few minutes the door opened and she came
out with the wet suit, which she threw across a
clothesline. She had on a shapeless old cotton dress
too big for her and hadn’t bothered to put on any
make-up or comb her hair, and she was barefoot like
any backwoods slattern. She couldn’t have made
herself look any worse if she’d tried, I thought, and
got the impression somehow that she had tried.
River Girl — 22
“You can come in now,” she said.
I followed her through the small kitchen into the
front room. The floor was bare except for a small rag
rug, rough pine planks worn white with scrubbing,
and there was a small mud fireplace neatly swept.
There were a couple of rawhide-bottomed chairs,
and an old iron bedstead standing in the corner by
the fireplace, and across on the right between the
window and the front door there was a dresser with
a milky and discolored mirror. The air was hot and
still inside the room, and I could hear the ticking of
the tin alarm clock on the mantel above the
fireplace. There was a photograph of her next to the
clock, apparently taken not too long ago, but at least
it was before her hair had been butchered up like
that.
“Do you have a razor blade or a pair of scissors?” I
asked.
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