“Yes. Do you want me to cut the shirt away?”
I nodded. “That’d be best. Then we can see what
we’re doing.”
She got a small pair of manicure scissors out of the
dresser and slit the shirt around the hook. I
unbuttoned it and slid it off, and turned my back to
the mirror to look over my shoulder. I was deeply
tanned from the waist up and wore no undershirt.
The streamer fly was a vivid slash of white and silver
tinsel against the sun-blackened hide, and as well as
I could tell, the barb was deeply embedded. I caught
a glimpse of my face in the mirror and for the first
time remembered I hadn’t shaved since yesterday,
and wondered what kind of thug I must look like to
her, big, with the flat, sun-darkened face rasping
with black stubble.
I motioned with a hand and passed her the
diagonal pliers. “Pinch the muscle and skin up with
your fingers and run it on through as if you were
baiting a hook,” I instructed.
“It’ll hurt,” she said quietly.
“Some,” I said.
River Girl — 23
I turned my back toward her and felt the slight,
trembling pressure of her fingers, pinching the skin.
There was a fiery bite of pain, and when I looked in
the mirror again the barb was through in the open
and a thin trickle of blood ran down my back. She
snipped off the barb and backed it out.
“Just a moment,” she said. She pulled open one of
the dresser drawers and brought out a bottle of
iodine and a Band-aid and applied them to the
punctures.
“You should have been a doctor,” I said. “Thanks a
lot.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I am six feet one, and the top of her head came up
just a little past my chin as she stood there when she
had finished. She’d be taller in high heels, I thought.
Barefoot! Why? And why, in God’s name, did she
ever let somebody hack her hair up like that?
I reached for the cigarettes in my shirt hanging
over the back of a chair. “Do you smoke?”
“Yes. Thank you.” She took one and I broke a
match on my thumbnail and lit it and then mine.
The blue eyes were devoid of any expression as
she looked at me through the cigarette smoke. “You
can put your shirt on,” she said.
You couldn’t get behind her voice any more than
you could behind the eyes. The way she said it, it
might have been only a reminder that I had
forgotten to put it on, or it might have been a flat
command. I thought about it, remembering that she
had wanted to change out of the bathing suit into
that hopeless sack of a dress before she would take
the hook out for me. She turned and looked out the
door as I slipped it on and tucked it inside the
trousers.
The room was perfectly quiet except for the same
monotonous ticking of the cheap clock and the
faintly drowsy hum of summer insects out across the
sun-baked clearing, but there was nothing peaceful
about it. Somehow, the whole mood of the place
River Girl — 24
seemed to come from her, as if the air itself were
charged with that same tension you could sense
behind the contained, set stillness of her face.
“My name’s Jack Marshall,” I said.
She turned back from the doorway and stood just
inside it, leaning slightly against the frame, looked at
my face for just an instant with an odd, intense
glance as if she were trying to remember something,
and then resumed the expressionless blankness. “I’m
Mrs. Shevlin.”
“Have you lived up here long?”
“About a year.”
“I guess you swim a lot?”
“Every day. Except in winter.”
“You must like swimming,” I went on, in spite of
the fact that it sounded more like a police
investigation than it did a conversation.
“Yes. I like it. Fortunately.”
“Fortunately?”
“Yes. There isn’t much else to do.”
“I guess you’re pretty good at it. I’m not much
myself. I just dog-paddle.”
Oh?” It was polite and nothing more. Why does she
want me to get out of here? I thought. You can hear
the loneliness screaming there inside her.
There was no way I could keep from staring at her
hair. We faced each other across six feet of hot,
explosive silence in the room and I could not look
away. It wasn’t any of my business and I had no
business here at all now that the hook was out, but it
was like one of those terrible compulsions in a
dream where you can’t stop whatever it is you’re
doing.
“Who did that?” I asked.
“Did what?” She knew, though, what I meant.
“Gut your hair that way,” I said, still with that
feeling of being unable to stop myself.
“Are you a barber?” she asked coldly.
River Girl — 25
“No. But I could do a better job than that.”
“I wouldn’t dream of troubling you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it isn’t any of my
business. I just couldn’t help it.”
She shoved a hand through the dark confusion of
the hair and turned abruptly away from me. “It’s all
right,” she said. “I—I guess I’m just nervous.” She
walked over in front of the fireplace and threw the
cigarette in it, remaining there with her back to me.
“I guess I’d better run along,” I said tentatively.
There was no answer except the ticking of the clock
as my words hung and died in the stillness of the
room. I turned toward the door.
“Thanks again for taking the hook out.” She said
nothing at all and didn’t even turn around. I went on
out, across the clearing in the hot sun, and down the
trail to the boat.
It wasn’t until I was all the way back to camp that I
suddenly remembered the pliers. I had left them
there.
River Girl — 26
Four
I should have broken camp and got out of there, but
I didn’t. Fishing had lost its magic and I was only
going through the motions, but still I stayed. I kept
seeing that disturbing picture of her coming across
the clearing in the wet bathing suit with that deadly
stillness in her face. Who was she? And what were
they doing here?
I awoke once during the night, and for an instant I
could have sworn I heard the rhythmic beat of
someone’s swimming past out in the channel, and
then I knew I must have been mistaken. I lay on my
back looking up at the stars, and then for some
insane reason I couldn’t understand I suddenly saw
that forlorn and pathetic morning-glory vine before
me in the darkness, its base freshly watered, and the
girl walking up that long trail from the lake carrying
bucket after bucket of water to pour on it to keep it
from dying like the rest of the pitiful flower bed. I’m
going nuts, I thought.
It was the second night before I would admit it to
myself. I was waiting for him to go back down the
lake. Why? I thought. I never did a thing like that
before.
Friday morning I awoke at dawn, determined to
pack and leave. I’ll get out of here before he goes
River Girl — 27
down the lake again, I thought, and never come this
far up again. I was still lying there twenty minutes
later when I heard the sudden cough and sputter of
his big motor up the lake. The boat came on around
the long bend and then it was going past the camp,
and when I looked up I saw him sitting with his big
floppy hat in the stern of it, turning his head to stare
at me. Neither of us waved. I lay there listening to
the sound of the motor going farther away, getting
fainter and fainter in the distance, and even after it
was miles down the lake I kept imagining I could
hear it. I should have gone, I thought.
I fought it until ten o’clock before I knew for
certain I’d never leave here until I saw her again. I
tied the boat up at the landing and went up the trail
and along the dusty path through the grass. She
wasn’t swimming this time. As I came near the house
sprawled dejectedly in the hot morning sun I could
hear her inside, making some repetitious, scraping
sound that rasped across the drowsy quiet of the
clearing.
“Hello,” I called out, as I had before. There was no
answer but that same sound, that whusk, whusk,
whusk from the front room. The old hound came
around the corner and looked at me with listless
indifference and then went back to the shade of the
walnut tree. I stepped up on the porch and looked in
the door. She was down on her hands and knees in
the center of the floor of the front room with a
bucket of soapy water and a stiff brush, scrubbing
the floor with such an absolute fury of concentration
she hadn’t even heard me. She had on the same old
sloppy dress and was barefoot again, and the wealth
of lovely, dark, and mutilated hair swung untended
and forgotten down the side of her face. There
seemed to be something of fanaticism or driving
anger in the way she swung the brush, as if she were
determined to wear out the floor or herself.
I stepped back softly so as not to frighten her and
called out again from the edge of the porch. The
whusk, whusk ceased. “Come in,” she said. I stepped
up to the door. She had half straightened and was
River Girl — 28
upright on her knees, and now she brushed the hair
back out of her face with the back of a hand.
“Hello,” I said, smiling. She’s beautiful, I thought.
Even like that she’s beautiful. I had a strange and
almost overpowering impulse to walk into the room
and pick her up bodily, out of that mess of soapsuds.
Cut it out, I thought. Cut it out.
“Hello,” she said, nodding slightly. She made no
effort to stand. There was no surprise in her face,
and I wondered if she had been expecting me. Then
on second thought, I realized there wasn’t anything
else in it either—no hostility, welcome, friendliness,
anger, or anything.
“I forgot my pliers the other day,” I said as the
silence stretched out.
“They’re there in my dresser drawer.” She
gestured with a hand.
“Thanks.” I stepped inside to the dresser and
started to pull open the nearest drawer, the one on
the left.
“No,” she said hurriedly, gesturing. “The other
one.” But I had already pulled it out before I could
stop. As I shoved it back I couldn’t help seeing what
was in it—some khaki shirts, two or three bottles of
whisky, and the cold, slablike bulk of a Colt .45.
Well, practically everybody up here in the
backwoods has a gun, I thought. I gave no sign I had
seen it as I opened the other drawer and got out the
pliers.
“Would you like a cigarette?” I asked.
She was still on her knees with one hand on the
bucket. She shook her head. “No. Thank you.”
I lit one for myself and threw the match out the
door. She made no move to ask me to sit down or to
get up herself. It was awkward, and I knew I should
go.
“How is your morning-glory vine?” I asked.
Realizing how stupid it sounded, after I had said it, I
went on lamely, “I got to thinking about it the other
River Girl — 29
night. You carry water up from the lake for it, don’t
you?”
She looked at me oddly. “You noticed it?”
“Yes,” I said. “The other day. It had been watered.”
She stared down at the floor. “I water it at night.
But I guess it will die, like the rest of them. Maybe
the soil isn’t right. I don’t know.”
Suddenly I didn’t want to talk about the vine any
more. It was strange, but I had a queer feeling it was
more than just a flower to her, that it was a personal
tragedy of some kind and not for me to blunder into.
“How does it happen you’re not swimming today?”
I asked, to change the subject.
“I was busy. And sometimes I swim at night.”
I looked at her, somewhat startled. “You do? In
this swamp? Isn’t it dangerous? I mean—well, can
you see where you’re going?”
“You can see all right out in the middle of the
lake.”
“Where do you swim?” I asked. Suddenly I
remembered that odd sensation the other night
when for a moment I had been sure I had heard
someone going by out in the channel.
“Up the lake, mostly. Sometimes down this other
side, all the way around.” She gestured off toward
the right, in the direction of the slough. “This is an
island.”
Devil’s Island, I thought, for no reason at all.
Maybe it was the way she said it. “It is? You mean
the slough connects with the lake on both ends?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever swim down the lake?” I asked.
She looked up at me. “Yes. Sometimes.”
“I think I heard you one night.”
“The day you were up here?”
I nodded.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I swam by your camp that
night. I could see the remains of your fire.”
River Girl — 30
“Do you think you’ll go swimming tonight?” I
asked.
I was standing there by the dresser, still holding
the pliers in my hand, and I could feel that strange,
tight stillness there had been in the room before, as
if the air itself were charged with some meaning that
never showed itself on the surface.
“I don’t know.” She was staring straight ahead, not
looking toward me. The hand on the bucket was
white-knuckled, as if she were clenching it. “Yes,”
she went on, softly almost as if talking to herself.
“Yes. I might.”
That was all there was to it. In a minute she
returned to her scrubbing and I went on back to the
camp.
* * *
It was late. I lay on the bedroll near the still faintly
glowing remains of the campfire and looked up at
the night sky through the openings in the trees. I
had been there a long time, sleepless, waiting, and
had watched the constellations swing as the hours
dragged by, and had strained my ears toward all the
night sounds of the swamp. I heard the deep bass
garo-o-om, garo-o-om of the bullfrogs out at the edge
of the lake and the whippoorwills calling far away in
the night and once in a while a faint whisper in the
leaves overhead as a small breeze stirred. I rolled
over on my side and held my watch out toward the
embers of the fire. It was almost midnight.
There hadn’t been any use trying to make myself
break camp and go on home that afternoon. I knew I
didn’t have any business here, waiting for a man’s
wife to come up this way just in the hope of seeing
her again, but there didn’t seem to be anything I
could do about it. I knew it was a foolish and very
dangerous thing to do, but I had to see her. Why did
her husband let her go swimming around late at
night alone in an immense swamp full of old snags
and weeds and water moccasins? Did he know it? Or
didn’t he care? Who was he, anyway, and why did his
River Girl — 31
face look familiar? Who was she, in fact? She was
just as foreign to the swamp as he was. And why had
there been that clear and unmistakable but still
unnamed tension in the air both times I had been up
there? I went around and around with the same old
questions, hour after hour, getting no nearer to an
answer than I had ever been.
Suddenly I raised myself on an elbow and listened.
Was that the sound I had heard, or imagined I had
heard, the other night? It came again, a quiet ripple
on the water and a rhythmic swishing that could
have been an arm swinging forward and sliding into
the water, I sat up. I was sure I heard it now, coming
from up the lake, between here and the bend.
I got up and walked down to the boat. The surface
of the lake was dark and still and powdered with
stars, and I could see nothing except the black loom
of the tree wall along the other shore. I stood still
and then heard her quite plainly. Turning in the
direction from which the sound came, I studied the
darkness intently, and in a moment I could see the
reflected stars heave drunkenly and drown in the
broken surface. She was almost abreast of where I
was.
“Hello,” I said quietly. I took out a cigarette and lit
it, knowing she would see the flame of the match.
After the light went out I was totally blind for a
moment and couldn’t tell whether she was going on
by or not.
Then, suddenly, I heard a splash right in front of
me and there she was not ten feet beyond the boat,
her head and shoulders out of the water as she stood
up.
“Hello,” I said again.
“Mr. Marshall?” she asked. “You’re up late.”
“Yes. I was hoping you might come by.
“Why?” I couldn’t see her face at all, just the white
blur of it under the bathing cap.
River Girl — 32
“I just wanted to talk to you. Why don’t you come
ashore and have a cup of coffee with me? I’ve got
some made.”
She didn’t answer for a moment. “Well,” she said
hesitantly at last, “all right.”
She waded ashore and we went up to the fare. I
handed her a towel and she dried her arms and legs
while I pushed the coffee bucket up against the
embers. I threw a couple of small sticks on the fire,
and when they caught and flared up the flames
highlighted her face and the lines of her figure.
“Don’t you want to take off the cap?” I asked. She
shook her head. “It’s all right.” I was squatting
down, poking at the fire, and I looked up at her.
“Please do.”
She stopped rubbing with the towel and looked at
me with that odd stillness in her face. “Why?”
“Because your hair is beautiful.” I could feel the
silence tightening up around us again and knew I
shouldn’t have said it. But hell, I thought, a girl isn’t
that touchy unless she’s afraid. And it isn’t me she’s
afraid of—it’s herself.
“Beautiful!” she said bitterly.
“It is.”
She said nothing.
I took the other towel and spread it on the bedroll.
“Sit down here,” I said. “The coffee will be hot in a
minute.”
“But my suit will get your blankets wet.”
“No. Not with the towel. Please do. It’s more
comfortable.”
She sat down with her legs doubled under her and
I handed her a cigarette. The coffee began to sizzle
around the sides of the bucket, making a comforting
sound in the night. I poured two cups and handed
her one. “Do you like cream and sugar in it? I have
some canned milk.”
“No. Black, please.”
River Girl — 33
I sat down across from her, on the ground. “What’s
your name besides Mrs. Shevlin?”
“Doris.”
“You know,” I said, “you shouldn’t swim in that
swamp at night. It’s dangerous.”
“It’s all right. I know all the water and it’s safe
enough. I’m a good swimmer.”
“Doesn’t your husband ever swim with you?”
“No. He doesn’t care for it.”
“I can’t understand his letting you do it,” I said,
and again I was conscious of walking on ground
where I didn’t belong. “I mean,” I went on hurriedly,
“I realize it’s not my business, but doesn’t he worry
about you?”
“No—” she said, cutting it off as if she had started
to say more and then had changed her mind.
“Do you go to town very often?” I asked.
“No. I’ve never been to town since we came up
here.”
“Not in a whole year?” I asked in amazement.
“Doesn’t your husband take you at all?”
“He doesn’t go either. He goes down to the store
at the foot of the lake twice a week, and that’s all.”
“What days does he go?” I asked, and after the
words were out I knew why I had asked, and
wondered if she did. She probably had noticed that
I’d waited three whole days to go back after the
pliers.
She knew, all right. She looked at me with that
intense stillness and made no reply. It occurred to
me then that I knew anyway, for he had gone first on
Tuesday and this was Friday.
“No certain days,” she said, and then I knew she
had realized the same thing and that she wasn’t
telling the truth. “Just whenever they ask him to
bring some fish.”
I began to understand a little about her then—a
little, and, as I found out later, I hadn’t even begun.
Loneliness was driving her mad. She wanted to talk
River Girl — 34
to me or to somebody, but she was afraid to. She
didn’t know, if she started something like that,
whether it would get out of control. But, as I say, I
didn’t know half of it then.
“Look,” I said, “I come up here fishing quite often.
Would you like me to bring you some magazines? I’d
be glad to do it.”
She shook her head and smiled a little. It was the
first time I had ever seen her smile, and it made her
look even younger and prettier. I felt again that
powerful desire I had this afternoon to pick her up in
my arms. “No,” she said. “Thank you. But he brings
me things to read from the store. It was nice of you
to offer, though.”
‘It wasn’t as nice as you think it was,” I said,
leaning forward a little. “It was partly because I
wanted an excuse to come and see you again.”
“You know you can’t do that, don’t you?” she asked
quietly.
“No,” I said.
“You can’t. Is it because I stopped here? Did that
give you the idea—”
“Nothing gave me any idea. I wanted to see you
again.”
She stared at the ground. “Don’t say that!”
“Why not?”
“I’ll have to leave if you’re going to talk like that.”
“All right. I won’t say it. But there’s no way you
can stop me from thinking it.”
“You can’t. I shouldn’t have come here. It’s crazy.”
“Of course it’s crazy,” I said. “Does that change
it?”
She put down the coffee cup, still looking at the
ground, and made that same desperate gesture, that
utterly hopeless quick movement of the hand across
the side of her head and down her neck, that she had
made the other day—only now it wasn’t through her
hair, because she still had on the rubber cap.
“Don’t come back,” she said, staring.
River Girl — 35
“Why not?”
“You can’t.”
“You don’t want me to?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Are you enjoying this?” she asked. Her face was
white and she had forgotten to smoke the cigarette.
It burned slowly up toward her fingers, the long gray
ash precariously clinging.
I wanted to reach out and put my hands on her
arms, to take hold of her, but her eyes held me away.
I could see the battle going on behind them.
“You came down here to tell me to stay away,
didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“But I hadn’t said anything then. Before you came
tonight.”
“Do you think I’m blind?” she said harshly. “Don’t
you think I could see, there at the house?”
“Yes,” I said. “And you weren’t the only one who
could see. There were two of us there.”
“Stop it!” she lashed at me.
I threw the cigarette in the fire. “Tell me,” I said I
quietly. “Where is he?”
“He’s at the house.”
“He knows you’re here, doesn’t he?”
“No.”
“How could he help knowing it?”
The face was as white and still as smoke. “Because
he’s drunk. He’s passed out.”
“You can’t go back—”
“Why not? I’m used to it.”
I leaned forward and took her wrist in my hand
and lifted the cigarette from her fingers. “You’re
going to burn yourself,” I said, and threw it in the
fire. She pulled back on the arm and I could feel my
fingers shaking as they tightened. She hit me with
the other hand, across the mouth, and stood up with
River Girl — 36
her face held together only by an effort of will, and I
could hear the dry sound of the crying in her throat.
“Listen,” I said. “Doris—” She jerked away from me
and ran through the darkness toward the edge of the
lake. Before I could get there I heard the splash as
she went in, and when I got down to the edge of the
water she was gone. I could hear her swimming
away in the darkness.
River Girl — 37
Five
There was no use trying to sleep. I built up the fire
enough to see by, packed everything and stowed it in
the boat, and went out and picked up the trot line. It
must have been around two o’clock when I started
down the lake on the oars. After about five miles I
could see light in the east, and when the darkness
over the water had begun to wash out to the thin
gray of early dawn I cranked the outboard. She’s
back at the house, I thought, lying there beside a
passed-out drunk, looking up at the oak shakes and
waiting for another day to start.
I was back home by eight o’clock. Parking the old
Ford and the boat trailer in the back yard, I went in
through the back door, taking a long time to find the
right key. Louise wouldn’t be back until the middle
of next week. I noticed she had left the light on in
the kitchen, and when I went into the bedroom her
nightgown and robe were dangling from the back of
a chair and the bed was unmade. I undressed and
went into the bath. There were some pants and a
pair of nylons hanging on the curtain rod in the
shower. I grabbed them off and threw them in on the
bed. After a hot shower and a shave, I dressed and
went out in the kitchen, remembering I hadn’t had
any breakfast. There were some unwashed dishes in
River Girl — 38
the sink, and I couldn’t find any orange juice in the
refrigerator. The hell with it, I thought. I’ll eat in
town. I got a bottle of whisky out of the cupboard
and poured myself a big stiff drink for a bracer
because I hadn’t had any sleep.
I sat down at the kitchen table as I drank it, trying
to put her out of my mind. I’ve got to stay away from
there, I thought. Somehow I’ve got to do it…There’s
no way out of a thing like that. Without any way that
I could stop it, my mind was thinking, this is
Saturday. There’s Sunday, and Monday, and Monday
night…I won’t go back, I thought. And then I could
see the white, unhappy face and hear the dry sound
of her crying.
I went out and backed the Olds out of the garage.
Forty-five-fifty a month from now until the time we
need a Cadillac, I thought. It was already hot in the
square and the town was beginning to fill up with
people coming in for Saturday. I parked and started
into the courthouse and met Buford coming out.
“Hello, Jack,” he said, smiling. “Catch any fish?”
“A few bass,” I said. “No catfish, though,” I went
or lying, because I had promised to bring him one
and hadn’t.
“How about a cup of coffee?”
“Fine,” I said. “I haven’t had any breakfast yet.”
“Come on. Let’s go over to Barone’s.” Buford was
a handsome man somewhere in his forties, but he
looked younger than that. He was big, about my size,
with coal-black hair graying at the temples and very
assured gray eyes and a quiet, poised demeanor that
made women crazy about him. He was a college
graduate and smart, but he always wore a big white
hat with the brim turned sharply up at the sides like
any ham politician, and he would lift it clear of his
head in a courtly gesture to every woman of voting
age that he met, even when he was driving a car.
Men liked him just as well, and people who must
have known he was crooked would vote for him.
We crossed the square, dodging cars, and went
down the street to the big neon sign that said,
River Girl — 39
“Barone’s.” It was full of chrome and big mirrors and
the clattering sound of dishes, with a counter and a
row of booths upholstered in imitation leather. In the
back, next to the swinging doors going out into the
kitchen, a heavy oak door bore a sign reading,
“Members.” It was supposed to be a club, and I
guess in a way it was, but the membership was
limited to anyone who could prove he had the price
of a drink.
We went on in, and it was quieter here and the
lights were less garish. The room had a small bar
along one side and some more booths, with a stand
at the back holding a half-dozen slot machines. Up
front there was a juke box. There was no one in the
place except the bartender and a large blonde in a
tight black dress talking to him. It was the owner
herself, Billy Barone.
She turned and smiled. “Good morning, Sheriff.
Hello, Jack.” Her hair was waved, and looked as if it
had been carved out of lemonwood and buffed down
with wax.
We sat down in the last booth and she came over.
“What will you officers of the law have this
morning?” she asked, still smiling, and giving Buford
a long, lazy glance.
“Black coffee for me,” Buford said. “With a shot of
Bacardi rum on the side.”
“You’ve been a bad boy, Sheriff,” she teased. “And
how about you, Jack?”
“Breakfast,” I said. “Ham and eggs and some
coffee.”
“It wouldn’t be safe to take all that on an empty
stomach,” Buford said. “You’d better have
something.”
“All right,” I said. “Bourbon.”
The bartender brought the drinks over, and in a
minute a girl came in with Buford’s coffee. He
pushed two nickels across the table toward her.
“How about putting those in the juke box?”
River Girl — 40
I knew he detested juke boxes and their canned
noise, aside from the money they brought him—he
owned a part interest in the outfit that controlled
them and the slot machines and pinballs. It wasn’t
hillbilly music he wanted; it was privacy.
“Here’s how,” he said. We drank. The juke box
hissed, then commenced its blaring.
He took out a cigar and lit it, then removed it from
his mouth and looked at it in the manner of a man
who loves good cigars. He’s an odd one, I thought, a
queer mixture, and not somebody I’d want to tangle
with unless I had to. That nineteenth-century
courtliness fronted for a lot of toughness you could
see sometimes looking out at you from behind the
noncommittal eyes.
When he talked business he never wasted words.
“The grand jury convenes next week,” he said
quietly.
“And—” I said. It had met before.
“We’ve got trouble. There’s talk. And too many
people that a month or so ago would have been
asking me for something just happen to be looking in
store windows now when they meet me on the
street. Most of it is Soames. He’s got his teeth into
that business about the Demaree kid, and he knows
where the kid got drunk. The word is going around
now that he’s going to blast the lid off everything
Sunday, and everybody’s going. He’s been doing a
lot of looking around. Normally, it wouldn’t amount
to much, but just before the grand jury it’s
dangerous as hell. Soames, unfortunately, isn’t just
another crackpot, and he’s no windbag. People are
beginning to listen to him, people who don’t usually
pay much attention to rabble-rousers and crusaders
with ants in their pants.”
“All right,” I said. “What do we do?” I knew what I
wanted to do. I wanted to get out of the whole
stinking mess and get a job washing cars or digging
ditches, but that’s the bad part of that kind of
business—it’s not easy to get loose, especially when
the heat starts.
River Girl — 41
“We do just what anybody else does with gasoline
on his clothes—we don’t light any cigarettes. I want
you to tell Abbie Bell and that woman out on Cypress
Street to keep the lid clamped on those places,
because if we have any more trouble down there I’m
going to run them out of town before we all get
caught in the wringer. And slip the word to all the
rest of them. Sometime today drive out to Moss Inn
and tell Carpenter he’d better start looking his
customers over a little more carefully before he lets
them go back where the games are. There’s no
telling who Soames is getting his information from,
but he’s getting it straight. However, it’s the cat
houses he’s got his guns leveled on right now, and
particularly Abbie Bell’s. But the whole thing’s
dynamite, at least until after the grand jury
adjourns.”
“O.K.,” I said. “I’ll tell ‘em.” It didn’t show much on
his face, but I knew he was worried.
As it turned out, I didn’t get a chance to tell
anybody anything. Trouble started almost before we
got back to the office. The telephone was ringing as
we walked in the door. Lorraine picked it up.
“Yes? Yes. He’s here now. He just came in. Hold on
a minute.” She handed it to Buford.
“Yes, speaking,” he said. He listened for a moment.
“All right. Just keep your shirt on. Yes, Marshall. Of
course I’ll send Marshall. He’ll be there before you
can stop screaming.” He hung up.
“You can get your coffee if you want, Lorraine, I’ll
stick around.” She looked at him, grabbed her purse,
and left, knowing it was an order.
When she was out the door he turned to me. “It’s
that Bell woman. Yelling her head off. Some big
sawmill hand’s gone berserk and is trying to kill one
of the girls. She wants you. For God’s sake, try to get
it quieted down without anybody getting hurt.”
I knew what he meant, and didn’t even get the gun
out of the filing cabinet where I’d left it Monday. I
don’t like guns anyway; I had enough of them during
River Girl — 42
the war. I was out the door before he’d finished
talking.
I took my own car because there wasn’t time to go
to the county garage after one. Traffic was snarled in
the square, as it always is on Saturdays, and I had to
creep through it, cursing. When I got clear of that I
shot down the next six blocks giving it the gun all
the way. All we needed now was for somebody to be
killed in one of those places and the county would
blow up right in our faces. I slid to a stop in front of
the chili joint and ran across the street to the hotel.
The street was quiet except for the wailing of a juke
box in one of the beer joints, and fortunately there
wasn’t any crowd gathering. I could hear a noise as
of someone hammering in the back of the building.
Abbie let me in the door and then slammed it shut,
fast. She had the filmy blue robe clutched around
her with one hand and was waving an empty gin
bottle in the other. The tight curls seemed to strain
outward from her head as if she carried an electrical
charge.
“Stop the crazy fool!” she was yelling. “He’ll kill
somebody!”
“All right, relax,” I said. “Where is he?”
“Upstairs. At the end of the hall. My God, stop
him!” I went up the stairs on the run, still hearing
the pounding. The hallway had no windows at the
ends and was dimly lighted with one small, unshaded
bulb, and all the doors were closed. I could see him
down at the end and ran toward him. He was a big
devil, naked except for a pair of shorts and one sock,
and he was swinging a small table by one leg like a
footstool, hammering on the door with it. He had one
of the upper panels already knocked in and was
working on the other. Inside the room I could hear a
girl’s voice, high-pitched and on the edge of hysteria,
not crying or pleading but dredging up obscenity I’d
never heard before in twenty-seven years.
“I’ll get you, you lousy little slut,” he yelled,
smashing the table into the door again and
splintering the other panel.
River Girl — 43
“All right, knock it off, Mac,” I said. “You’ve had
your fun.”
He paused, with the table pulled back for another
swing, and looked around at me. I was still ten feet
away, moving toward him. In those things you can
never let them see any hesitation or you’re a dead
duck, but I didn’t feel too sure about it. He was as
big as I was, or larger, and crazy with rage, and he
appeared to be only around twenty, an age when you
haven’t found out yet that you can be hurt. “Drop it,”
I said roughly. He stood poised to swing. “You a
law?”
“Yes,” I said. “Give me that.” I reached for the
table. I don’t know whether it was because he could
see I was alone and didn’t have a gun or whether he
was so wild with rage he didn’t care, but at any rate
I saw his face go wild again and he swung. I tried to
get inside it, but the table caught my arm and
shoulder and I fell over against the opposite door. I
could hear somebody scream down at the other end
of the hall, and realized Abbie had followed me up
the stairs.
“I’ll show her! I’ll show the chippy!” he yelled,
swinging the table at me again. I was down on my
knees with my left arm numb, and I lunged at his
legs, hitting him low and taking him off balance. He
came down, and the two of us and the table rolled in
a pile on the floor. I could hear the table give up the
ghost as one of us rolled over it and the legs started
caving in. He landed a big fist on the side of my head
and made it ring. I slid clear of the tangle and got to
my feet before he did, and as he tried to scramble up
he was wide open for a second. I got my feet set and
swung, catching him under the jaw, and his feet slid
out from under him. He bounced up, too insane with
fury to realize he was leaving himself open in exactly
the same way he had the first time, and I hit him
again. We went through the whole, identical
procedure two more times before he finally quit and
lay there on the door.
“I’ll kill her! I’ll get her!” he was saying over and
over and beginning to cry.
River Girl — 44
I was winded and my left arm felt as if a car had
run over it. I had to lean against the wall to steady
myself while I fought for breath. He sat up, still
crying, and I kicked the wrecked table out of his
reach. “Sit right where you are,” I said. He had his
chin down on his chest and the big shoulders shook
with the silent retching of his sobs. I felt sorry for
him even if he had tried to brain me with the table,
and wondered what the girl had done to him.
“Where are this guy’s clothes?” I called out, and
looked behind me. Abbie was coming back up the
stairs again. Apparently she’d run down when he
floored me with the table.
“Get his clothes,” I said.
She was still waving the gin bottle as if she had
forgotten she had it. “Jesus, I don’t know where his
lousy clothes are,” she began, when suddenly one of
the doors opened.
It looked like a sequence out of a movie comedy.
The door flew open apparently of its own volition and
a pair of blue serge trousers sailed out to land in the
middle of the hall. A shirt followed it, then two shoes
at once, and a tie. Just for an instant, the white,
staring face of a girl appeared around the frame and
then ducked back inside and the door slammed. She
hadn’t said a word. That’s odd, I was conscious of
thinking; he’s trying to beat up this girl, but his
clothes are in another girl’s room. He must not have
been with this one at all.
I picked up the clothes and tossed them to the boy.
Now that I had time to get a good look at him, I saw
he was a big blond kid who needed a haircut and
that there wasn’t anything vicious about his face.
“Put these on,” I said. “You going to behave
yourself?”
“All right,” he mumbled. “Ain’t no use fightin’
laws.”
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