the rifle almost at the same time because he was so
near. Before the sound had even died I was on my
feet, knowing somehow that I had to get up and over
the bank while he was working the bolt or I would
never move from there alive. And then I was in the
trees, hurtling zigzag through them while the gun
cracked again. They had cut the motors and in
another few seconds they would be on the bank
themselves and chasing me.
I didn’t know where I ran, or how far. There was
just the pain in my chest and the crying sound from
my open mouth as it gulped for air, and the only
thing my mind could hold was the picture of that
long, canvas-wrapped bundle like an old rolled-up
rug lying in the bottom of the second boat. After a
while I fell, unable to move, and lay there in the
brush trying to still the tortured sound of my
breathing enough to listen. There was no sound
behind me now.
River Girl — 223
Twenty-five
I don't know how long I lay there on the ground with
nothing but the numbness and the terror in my mind.
We were whipped now, and this was the end. They
already had her, and I was trapped. They had found
him; they knew I had killed him and I was a fugitive
with no plan of escape and nothing ahead but futile
and senseless flight. Flight? I thought. To where? I
looked down at my clothes, at the utter ruin that I
would look if I did get out of the swamp, Bearded,
bloody, mud-caked, I wouldn’t have a chance. And if
Buford got to me first, he’d kill me. I knew that now.
He didn’t want me arrested.
Once, though I was not sure, I thought I heard an
outboard motor start, far away across the bottom.
One of them would go down the lake to take the
body in and get to the telephone. The other three
would stay here and keep up the search until they
began to pile in here with the dogs sometime late
tonight. They’d call in the state police cars and
swear in a bunch of special deputies to patrol the
roads on both sides of the swamp, and everything
moving out there would be searched. And I couldn’t
stay in here because in another few hours without
food or rest I’d be too weak to move.
River Girl — 224
And what of her? I thought. What will it be like
with her when they bring the news that he’s been
found? Or was that how they had found him? Had
she broken already and told them? But what
difference did it make now how they’d done it? It
was done, and we were trapped.
We would have been in San Francisco now…I
caught myself up, almost savagely, knowing I had to
keep away from that or I’d lose my mind. The sun
was setting now, and I wondered if, where she was,
she could see even a little reflection of it along a
wall. This was what I had done to her. I was going to
give her everything, and now this was what it was. I
had to get up, to move, to do something to shut it out
of my mind. Jumping to my feet, I started walking,
aimlessly at first, and then, as some strange
compulsion began to take hold of me, swinging south
and then west in a large circle back toward the lake.
It was growing darker here in the timber and I
began to walk faster. The direction I was going at
least made a little sense. Since I was on this side of
the lake and they would expect me to run east and
try to get out to the railroad and catch a freight, it
would be better to move west and get across the
lake. Suddenly, then, I knew where I was headed. I
had about one chance in a thousand of getting there,
but I was going toward Dinah’s. There was no use in
trying to get home for some more clothes and a car;
they’d be watching the house just on the chance I
might try it. But maybe to Dinah’s apartment...I
wanted to break into a run.
Just at dusk I came out on the bank of the lake a
mile or two below where the boats had been. It was
breathtakingly beautiful, like dark glass, with the
wall of the trees a black silhouette against the
sunset afterglow along the other shore, and as I
came up I saw a big, spreading ring where a bass
had risen, out among the snags. Often when I had
been fishing and left the lake just at dusk like this,
full of its immense and lonely quiet, I had wondered
what it would be like to know that I would never see
it again, and now that I was looking at it for probably
River Girl — 225
the last time I was conscious of nothing except that I
did not want to think about it. I walked deliberately
out into it, and as the water rose to my waist I
started to swim. Halfway across I began to wonder if
I would make it, exhausted as I was to the point of
collapse and weighted with the shoes and clothes,
but somehow I kept going. I fought my way through
fifty yards of the entangling pads on the other shore
and climbed gasping onto the bank. It was dark now,
completely black among the trees.
I had to go straight ahead, but how? Five or six
miles due west I would begin to hit the rising ground
and the pines, but all the intervening distance was
flat, unvarying bottom country full of sloughs and
heavily timbered, with no landmarks and only
glimpses of the stars. With my back against the lake
shore and facing the direction in which I wanted to
go, I studied the sky a moment to line up the few
constellations I knew, then plunged into the
darkness. I lost track of the number of times I fell
and the number of sloughs I waded and swam and
finally just wallowed through. I bumped into trees
and entangled myself in vines, and each time I
plunged to the ground it was more difficult to rise
again. A dreamy lassitude would begin to flow over
me like warm water and I would want to lie there in
the hope that if I slept and then awoke the whole
horrible dream would be gone and I would open my
eyes to find that we were on the plane to San
Francisco and were circling over the bay ready to
land in the early dawn. Then the terror would come
sweeping back and with it the bitter knowledge that
if I did not get out of here before daylight I was
finished, and I would force myself to rise and go
staggering on. By daybreak they would have the
dogs in here and I would no longer be able to hide,
and of course I couldn’t get across the highway and
into town except very late at night, if I could at all.
It was a dream at first, and then a nightmare, and
at last an eternal and monotonous black hell without
fires or light where I was doomed to go staggering
forward and forever falling. After a while I began to
River Girl — 226
believe I was losing my mind, because for long
periods she would be moving along beside me. Once
I turned and called her name aloud. The sudden
sound of my voice in the silence of the forest
shocked me into consciousness of what I had done,
and terror took hold of me again and I thought for a
moment I would cry out and run.
Time had no meaning now. It might have been an
hour since I had left the lake and it might have been
five. I could have covered four miles, or I could be
walking in circles and be almost back there again.
But then, suddenly, when I fell again I felt the dry,
aromatic slickness of pine needles under my face
and threw my hands about wildly, grasping at them.
I had come out of the bottom and was beginning to
mount the ridge.
An almost insane urgency took hold of me and I
wanted to run. I had come this far, across that black
maze of bottom, and suppose now that daylight
should catch me before I got to Dinah’s? The difficult
part, the almost impossible part, lay behind, but
ahead was all the danger. I had to get into town,
where everybody knew me, and being seen by
anyone would mean disaster. After I got up on the
ridge in the fairly open pines I could make better
time, and before long I began to see the winking of
lights below me and knew I had reached the
highway. I turned and plunged downhill.
What time was it? That was the only thing in my
mind now. I still had nearly four miles to go to get
into town, and then I had to get around it, skirting
the back streets and alleys, and if daybreak caught
me I was done for. There were very few cars on the
road now and I took a chance on walking along the
pavement, rather than out in the trees, to make
better time. When I would see a car ahead or behind
I would run into the roadside bushes and hide until it
had gone past. Then I would come back out onto the
road, feeling the urgency driving me, and start
hurrying again, trotting and then walking and then
trotting, my legs numb and without any feeling now
that they were even mine. I had been walking for so
River Girl — 227
long I couldn’t stop. I had the insane feeling that if I
fell down and went to sleep my legs would keep right
on moving because I no longer knew how to turn
them off.
I turned and looked behind me, toward the east,
searching for the telltale fading, the beginning of the
coral flush I had watched so many times from duck
blinds and fishing boats. It was still as dark as ever
there, but even the thought of dawn drove me
forward desperately. A car topped the slight rise
ahead and the sudden, searching lights were almost
upon me before I could run and plunge down off the
road. I’ve got to get there first; I’ve got to beat the
daylight. It ran through my mind in a sort of endless
chant I couldn’t turn off any more than I could the
walking movement of my legs. A gun, a car, these
were the things I had to have. She had a whole
roomful of guns and the fastest car in town.
The old familiar streets were quiet, the street
lamps at the corners the only pools of light. I swung
left, keeping to the outskirts and slipping along the
alley, feeling my skin crawl and prickle with sudden
cold at the barking of a dog or the sound of a car
somewhere on another street. I wanted to run. I was
naked, skinless, a light-tortured organism fleeing
toward the dark. It was less than a dozen blocks
now. Ten more. Nine. I wanted to stop counting
them and couldn’t. At any one of them a car might
swing around a corner, its lights flashing.…
I cut through one more alley and I was on Georgia
Street and broke into a run. The windows of her
apartment were dark. Suppose she wasn’t there?
She must be. She had to be. She was home when I
telephoned this afternoon. No, that was yesterday. It
wasn’t even yesterday—it was the day before,
because now it was almost dawn on Sunday. I ran up
the walk and pressed the bell, waiting, listening for
the sound of movement or of footsteps and hearing
only the pounding of blood in my ears.
I pushed the bell again, and then I heard it.
Someone was coming quietly down the stairs. The
door opened a crack, there was a sharp gasp, and
River Girl — 228
then she was throwing it back and reaching out for
me. She led me hurriedly up the dark stairway, still
holding me by the arm. There was light in the
hallway, coming from the open bedroom door, and
now she turned and stared at me, seeing the sodden
ruin of my clothing and the blood across my face.
“Jack!” she whispered frantically. “Jack! What
have they done to you?”
She had on her nightgown and robe and the
coppery hair was tousled from the pillow, but I could
see she hadn’t been asleep. “Thank God you’ve
come. I’ve been praying…I’ve been praying all night!
Ever since I heard. But you’ve been hurt!”
“No,” I said. “It’s nothing. I fell.” I swayed and
almost fell now, and leaned against the wall. The
whole apartment seemed to be swinging in that big
whirlpool which had caught me and I wanted to hold
onto something.
Then she had hold of me again, towing me down
the hall. We were in the bathroom and she was
tugging at my coat and then unlacing the mud-caked
shoes. “Well leave them right here,” she was saying.
“Right here where he’ll see them and know. I want
him to know, damn him.” What was she talking
about? I wanted to ask her what time it was, but she
was busy at the shirt and I was too numb for
thought. Then I could hear the shower blasting and
she was shoving me into it. I was naked, and it had
never occurred to me, and probably not to her, that
there was anything odd about her undressing me
and pushing me into the streaming water.
“Hot,” she said. “As hot as you can stand it, and
then cold.” The water beat down and I could feel the
dirt and caked blood and sweat going away and my
nerves unwinding, and then I was conscious that she
had disappeared. She was back in a minute, holding
a glass in her hand. “Drink this,” she said. She
turned her head as I stepped from under the water. I
took the glass and drained it in three large swallows.
It burned going down and exploded into warmth and
life in my empty stomach.
River Girl — 229
I had turned off the water and was rubbing myself
with a towel. She returned in a minute and handed
me a pair of shorts around the partition of the
shower stall. “When you get them on, come outside
and we’ll get the other things.”
I slipped them on and went out and looked at my
face in the mirror as at somebody I’d never seen
before. It was haggard and sunken-cheeked, black
with beard, and the cut place on my head was ugly,
inflamed and still encrusted with clotted blood. I
went into the bedroom and she was taking clothes
out of a suitcase on the bed. “They’re his,” she said.
“He keeps this bag here for trips to the city.”
Then she was gone again. I couldn’t keep up with
her. I heard something rattling in the kitchen and
then she came back for me once more, while I was
putting on the shoes. She had me by the arm and
was seating me at the table. While I was eating the
piece of cold steak and drinking the milk she pulled
up a chair and sat down, not across from me but just
around the corner of the table at my left. She had
her hand on my wrist and was talking, very fast.
Her voice was quiet, but still full of that
tremendous urgency which seemed to have hold of
her now as well as of me. “I’ve done nothing but
think about it since I heard the news, about nine
o’clock. Just think about it, and pray you’d come,
that you could get here. And now you have!”
“Wait,” I interrupted. What was she talking about?
And through all the numbness I was conscious there
was something I had to know. “How did they find
him? How did they know?”
“Find him? Oh. All I heard was what was on the
radio. Something about an outboard motor they
couldn’t find. He was supposed to be repairing it for
the man down there at the store, and it wasn’t there.
So they got to thinking about some oil that was on
the lake.”
I guess it doesn’t matter now, I thought. There
wasn’t any way I could have known the motor wasn’t
his. It just wasn’t meant to be. That had ruined it,
River Girl — 230
that and not seeing the picture of her sitting there in
front of my face, but what good was there in
torturing myself with it now?
Dinah was still going on, her eyes shining,
touching me with her fingers. The white, gleaming
kitchen and this lovely copper-haired figurine of a
girl with her unstoppable torrent of speech were all
mixed up now in the endless movement of the
whirlpool. What was she talking about?
“I even went down and had the car serviced and
filled with gasoline. We won’t have to stop at all for
over two hundred miles. My clothes are packed and
I’ve got over two thousand dollars in cash in my bag,
and I took the money out of your wet suit, too. We’ll
leave your old wet clothes right there where he’ll see
them, and the muddy shoes, and he’ll know. Don’t
you see, Jack? He can’t say anything, or tell anybody.
He’ll know you’re gone and that I’ve gone with you
and he can’t do anything about it and he’ll have to
cover up for us, because he’s afraid to have you
arrested. He was going to try to kill you in that
swamp if you came back. And I would have killed
him, if he had. And now you’re here and we can go,
and he’s still down there looking for you.”
I began to get it, even through the numbness in my
mind.
“Everybody is looking for you. They’ve called in
the state police and all the roads around the lake are
blocked, but we can get through the other way,
going north. You’ll be in the back, in the luggage
compartment, anyway. I took out the spare tire and
put in a bunch of blankets to make a bed. It’s big. I
measured it. I got in it myself, thinking: When I’m
standing up, the top of my head is just under Jack’s
chin. It’s plenty large enough for you. I even put in a
pillow.”
I had stopped eating. I stared at her. She had
everything figured out, and for the first time I began
to realize what a mind there was behind that lovely
and reckless face.
River Girl — 231
“Nobody will ever know except Buford, and he
won’t talk. He can’t. The rest of them will think you
died in the swamp. We’ll go on to southern
California, with you traveling all the way in the
luggage compartment and staying at night in tourist
cabins. I’ll cut your hair short, a crew cut, so the curl
doesn’t show. And you’ll grow a mustache. They’ll
never find us. Think how it’ll be, Jack! Just the two of
us. I’ve been crazy all night, praying to God to let
you get here.”
It would work. It would work perfectly. I could see
it would. I could get in there in the back of the car
and be out of the state before dark tonight. Buford’s
hands would be tied and he wouldn’t even report it;
there’d be no description of the car, or anything. I
knew she was a little wrong about one thing, about
their thinking I had died in the swamp, for the dogs
would tell them I’d got out of it. But even then they’d
never know where I’d gone; the trail would end at
the highway, for the dogs couldn’t follow me through
all that oily smell and gasoline. I would just
disappear into the air. Nobody had seen me get here
to this place, and nobody would see me leave. It was
perfect, all of it, and this girl was tremendous, this
flame-haired toy with the brain of Machiavelli. I sat
there looking at it for a whole minute, at the beauty
of it, thinking that two hours ago I was whipped,
without a chance in the world, and now escape was
right here in my hand. All I had to do was get in the
car with this girl and go.
Not with this girl, or any other girl, to anywhere, I
thought. I knew what had brought me up out of that
lake bottom, and it wasn’t this.
She had both hands on my arm again, still looking
at my face and talking. “It’ll take me only a minute to
dress, Jack. You wait here, while I change.” I looked
at her.
“I’m not going, Dinah.”
“What?” She was staring, open-mouthed. It didn’t
make any difference. She couldn’t stop me. Nothing
River Girl — 232
could, anymore. “I’m not going with you. I want your
car, and a gun. I’m going after Doris Shelvin.”
River Girl — 233
Twenty-six
Jack! Please! For the love of God, listen to me!” She
had me by the arm, pulling at my sleeve. I had run
into the living room and was in front of the gun case,
snatching up an automatic.
“Where’s the ammunition for this?” I asked. Then I
saw it, and jerked out the clip to load it. “What time
is it?”
“They’ll kill you!” she cried out, paying no
attention to my question. I shoved the gun in my
pocket and grabbed her wrist to look at the watch. It
was ten minutes to four. I had a little over an hour
until daylight. But I still had to get the car keys from
her. Would she give them to me? I thought wildly. I
didn’t want to have to take them away from her, but
I would if I had to.
“Give me the keys, Dinah!” I said. “I’ve got to have
that car.”
She was around in front of me now, grabbing at
my shirt. “Listen, Jack! Please listen to me. Oh, God,
isn’t there any way I can make you understand?
Haven’t you heard what I’ve been telling you? I can
take you away, where they’ll never find you. I want
you, Jack! I want you to go with me. I’ll take care of
you. I’ll hide you.”
“Dinah! The keys.” I caught her arms.
River Girl — 234
“I’ll watch out for you. We’ll go anywhere you say!
What do you want with her? What kind of woman is
she for you? Don’t you know that she confessed
tonight, after they got her back to Harrisville?”
Suddenly she let go my shirt and became deadly
calm.
“We’re too wild to use our heads. We’ve got to stop
it. I don’t think you understand, and I want you to be
perfectly quiet while I tell you. I love you. And I can
take you out of here. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And if you try to take her out of that jail in
Harrisville they’ll kill you. And even if you got her
out, you know what would happen, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said again. Somehow, in all the mad
urgency of it, there was enough sense left in me to
know that she was right.
“They’ll have every road blocked. They’ve got
radio cars all around that lake, and they’d be
swinging out and onto every road in this end of the
state in a matter of minutes. You’d be trapped. Now,
will you listen to me?”
We were both silent for a minute, staring at each
other. Somehow I was as calm as she was now and I
understood everything she had said, and I knew that
none of it made any difference at all. “Where are the
keys, Dinah?”
She dropped her head and turned away from me.
“They’re in my purse. In the bedroom.” She walked
over and sat down in a big armchair, not looking at
me any more or saying anything.
I ran out and across the hall to the bedroom and
found the purse on a dresser. I took out the keys and
the roll of wet bills that had been in my suit.
Catching a glimpse of my face again in the mirror, I
suddenly remembered I should have shaven, but
there wasn’t time for it now. I pawed hurriedly
through Buford’s bag, however, and found the razor
and some shaving soap, and stuck them in my
pocket. One of his big hats was lying on a chest, and
River Girl — 235
I snatched it up and put it on. It would hide the ugly
cut.
I came back across the hall and she hadn’t moved.
“I’m sorry about the car, Dinah,” I said.
“Yes. Isn’t it too bad about the car?” She turned
away and put her head down on her arms.
I went down the stairs and backed the Lincoln out
of the garage.
* * *
Time was a burning fuse. It was twenty-eight miles
to Harrisville and I made it in twenty-five minutes by
the clock on the dash. There were no patrol cars on
the road, and I knew they were all back there
covering the roads on both sides of the lake. Raines
and all his deputies would be down there. In the
wilderness of the irresistible compulsion that had
hold of me now there was some part of my mind still
calm and thinking about it. There shouldn’t be
anybody there except the jailer himself.
I stopped the car right in front of the entrance and
got out. It was still dark, and the glaring pool of light
from a street lamp was shiny against the leaves of
the trees along the street. In one of the windows of
the jail a Negro was singing, an insane dirge with
something about the Lawd over and over.
I went up and knocked on the door. It opened a
little and I shoved my way in. He was alone in the
office, a lank, sandy-haired man of about forty-five
with a lean, sour face, and tough eyes with a little
yellow in them like a goat’s. He was wearing wide
police-type suspenders to hold up his seersucker
pants, but had taken off his shirt on account of the
heat.
“I want Mrs. Shevlin,” I said. “Open it up.” I
prodded toward the steel-barred door in the back of
the office.
He looked at me, and I could see he knew who I
was. “Go to hell,” he said.
River Girl — 236
I saw the ring of keys on his desk, next to the
detective magazine he had been reading, “Open it
up,” I said. “What cell is she in?”
“You can go to hell,” he said again. He had been
sidling a little toward the desk, and suddenly he
lunged for the open drawer. I hit him over the eye
with the flat of the gun barrel and he doubled up on
the desk. Yanking him erect, I shook him, and then
threw him back against the wall. “Get smart,” I said.
I tossed the keys to him and he opened the door.
He was taking too much time. I shoved him in the
back and he snapped out of it. Some of the prisoners
had waked up by this time and they began to yell,
thinking it was a lynching. We came to her cell and
she had been sitting on the side of the bunk. She
looked up and saw me. “Jack!” she screamed, and
while he was fumbling with the lock I saw her slide
to the floor. I wanted to hit him again, but by that
time he had it open.
“You won’t get away with this, Marshall,” he said. I
pushed him and he slammed into the wall and lay on
the floor, moaning a little.
I knelt down beside her, wanting to gather her up
and kiss her until she came around, but feeling time
running past us like a millrace. I turned her over
very gently. She still had on the white suit she had
bought, but it was wrinkled and soiled, and didn’t
look cool any more. Her face was waxen white and
the lashes were dark and very long, almost unreal
against her cheek. I wondered if I had strength left
to pick her up.
Somehow I got her up and went out and slammed
the door shut. Turning the key in it, I hurried along
the cell block and back out through the office. There
was still no one in the street. As we went under the
glaring light I looked down at her. Her head was
tilted back, the face very still and white, with the
long dark hair swinging free. I couldn’t help it. I bent
my head and kissed her on the throat.
I started to slide her into the seat, and then
suddenly thought of something. What was it Dinah
River Girl — 237
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