They were slender feet, quite small and beautifully
formed, but rough and calloused on the soles from
going barefoot, and they were dusty from the trail.
Very carefully, with my fingers I brushed all the dust
from them, as if they were very old pieces of
fabulously valuable and very fragile jewelry I had
found gathering cobwebs in an attic. Then I turned
them slightly inward, pressing the soles together up
near the toes, and held them, thinking how small and
breakable they looked, like the delicate feet of a
china doll, in the big, dark hands. I looked up and
River Girl — 69
she was watching me with a misty softness in her
eyes.
“Why are you doing that, Jack?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said.
I looked up again and she was crying, quite silently
and without any movement of her face.
* * *
Time came back for us without any warning. It was
the sound of a motor.
We sat up. “Jack—” she said.
It was an outboard, a big one, and coming nearer.
He must have had it throttled down for it to get that
near before we heard it.
“Where is your boat?” she asked in an urgent
whisper. “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s hidden. I’ll get
off here after dark. But I’ve got to see you again.
Tonight. I’ll be down there where I was camped.
You’ve got to come.”
“I—I don’t know,” she said. Her eyes were scared.
“But I’ve got to go.” We both stood up.
I kissed her. “It’s all right. There’s no hurry.” We
heard the motor quit and knew he was drifting up to
the landing. “But you have to come. Promise me you
will.”
“I will if I can. There’s no way to know.” I had my
face down against her cheek, holding her very
tightly, not wanting to let her go. I knew what she
meant. She would come if he got drunk and passed
out. Isn’t that wonderful? I thought. “I—I ought to
go, Jack.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I began.
“Oh—oh, God!” She pushed away from me and I
could see the terror in her eyes. Then I remembered
it too. It was that vine, in its box—sitting right there
on the dresser in the front room. It would be the first
thing he saw when he walked in the door.
She broke away from me, turning, and ran. I could
see the color of the old dress flashing through the
River Girl — 70
trees along the trail. I ran after her until I was near
the wall of timber along the edge of the clearing and
then stopped, knowing I could go no further. I could
feel my heart pounding as I saw her, still running,
coming up directly behind the house so he couldn’t
see her from in front. He had come out of the trees
by the boat landing, carrying a big paper bag in his
arm. I saw her go in the back door while he was still
a hundred yards away, and felt so weak in the knees
I could hardly stand and wanted to sit down there
and rest.
So this is the way it is, I thought. I walked through
the trees to the upper end of the island, where the
slough came back into the lake. It was nearly half a
mile, through heavy timber, and I knew he wouldn’t
find me up here, but hiding like that gave me an
uneasy feeling.
As soon as it was dark I eased back down the
slough to where the boat was. I didn’t dare go down
past his boat landing, so I took the boat clear
around, back up the slough and down the far side of
the lake on the other side, pulling it very carefully
with the oars and taking care not to bump the
oarlocks.
I didn’t like it. But what am I going to do? I
thought. To say I won’t come back up here any more
to see her is silly. I know I will. There isn’t anything
that could keep me from coming back, not the dirty
feeling or the uneasiness, or even being actually
scared. By the time I get back to town I’ll be
counting the hours until I see her again.
River Girl — 71
Nine
With my back against the trunk of a big oak, I sat
waiting in the darkness where I had camped before.
A few mosquitoes buzzed, for there was no breeze,
and night lay hot and sticky across the swamp. I
smoked endless cigarettes, and once I remembered
—and immediately forgot—that I hadn’t eaten
anything for twenty-four hours. I hadn’t brought
anything except an extra pack of cigarettes.
Would she come? For the twentieth time I struck a
match to look at my watch. It was eleven-fifteen. It’s
about the time she came before, I thought. She’ll
come. I just haven’t given her time. She has to. I got
up and walked down to the water’s edge and
listened. There was nothing, no sound.
I began to imagine things. He had found the plant
there. She hadn’t had time too hide it. He had
beaten her. Maybe he had killed her. Who knew
what he would do? I could see her against the wall in
yellow lamplight, being held and struck, the
helplessness and terror in her face, and for an
instant it was so real I wondered if I were going to
be sick. If she doesn’t come before long, I thought,
I’m going up there. I won’t go back without knowing.
I’ll go up there. And what? I thought. Walk into a
man’s house and demand to know if his wife is all
River Girl — 72
right, tell him I have to see her? I threw down the
cigarette and ground savagely at the red coal with
my heel. I heard her then. I wanted to run out into
the water and meet her, but I stood there on the
shelving bank and waited. She came up out of the
water, wading, and I could see the pale gleam of her
face and arms.
“Jack?” she whispered.
“Here,” I said. I picked her up in my arms, wet
bathing suit and all, and carried her up the bank.
“I’ll get your clothes all wet.”
“Hush,” I said. “Hush.” I kissed her, not putting
her down.
“We have to talk, Jack,” she whispered urgently.
“Yes,” I said. “In just a minute.”
I put her down, standing still holding her. “We’ve
got to talk,” she said.
“I know. I know what you mean. But not right now.
I can’t let you go or think of anything right now. I’ve
been crazy, sitting here, imagining things. He was
beating you.”
“You’re hurting me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Jack. I don’t mind.”
“It was terrible,” I said. I unfastened the chin strap
of the cap and pulled it from her head, loosing the
darker-than-night disordered riot of her hair.
Everything began to go then, rushing outward in the
night, and after a long time the swamp came back
and became again the dark, familiar trees, the
ground, and stars.
“We can’t do this, Jack,” she said after a while.
“This afternoon, when I was running—”
“I know. But what can we do?”
“You felt it too, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But maybe not as much. When I had to go up
there and hide.”
River Girl — 73
“It will always be that same way—that same
feeling.”
“Yes. I know. We’ve got to go away.”
She told me a little about him that night, about
how they happened to be married and how it was
before they came to the swamp.
“It was during the war, Jack. I was living in a little
town with my father. He’s a minister and we’d
always lived in a succession of little towns like that,
and during the war they were heartbreaking in a
way, they were so lonely. You were probably
overseas and don’t know what they were like with all
the young men gone. Even the ones who were Four-
F went away to work in shipyards and things like
that. I was working in the office of a lumberyard and
he came to work there. That was the first time I saw
him. He was about thirty-five, I guess, and I was only
twenty, but I was attracted to him in some way,
partly because of the loneliness, I guess, and the fact
that I knew he was lonely too. He didn’t look nearly
so old then and was rather good-looking. I used to
wonder why a man that age and as well educated as
he was would be doing common labor around the
lumberyard, and I guess I built up quite a mystery
about him. Girls do that, you know. After a while we
began to go to movies and things like that.
“It was about a week before we were going to be
married that it happened. We were sitting in the
drugstore drinking a Coke one night after the movies
when a man came in, a man I’d never seen around
town before and who looked like a sawmill hand or
laborer, in overalls, and all of a sudden I noticed how
Roger—he had another name then—how Roger was
looking at him. And when the man happened to face
in our direction Roger turned his head suddenly,
pretending to look for something in his coat. That
night we left town on the bus. He didn’t explain
anything; he just said he was going and that I didn’t
have to, he wouldn’t expect it of me. But I went. I
was in love with him then. We were married in
another town.
River Girl — 74
“It was that way for years. I knew after the first
time that he was running from something, and it
wasn’t just that man, because another time it was a
different one he saw. It was an awful way to live,
worse than the way my father had always moved
around from church to church, but I didn’t mind too
much. It was only after we moved up here that he
began to go to pieces like that and drink. Before that
he was always good to me. But now that thing has
been preying on his mind so long he’s changed and
isn’t like he used to be at all. The way he looks
sometimes—almost as if he thinks people are hiding
out there in the trees trying to catch up with him.…”
* * *
I went back to town in the early morning, leaving the
boat and trailer hidden in the underbrush near the
end of the slough because there was no question any
more about not going back. Louise hadn’t come
home, but there was a letter from her. They were
going to stay another week, she said, and couldn’t I
send her a hundred dollars? I poured a big drink and
sat looking at the letter in the kitchen while it grew
light outside and the heat began.
My pay check was in the office and I endorsed it
and sent it to her. The drink had made me
lightheaded because I hadn’t eaten anything for so
long, and I was conscious of the wild thought that if I
could keep on sending her enough money maybe
she’d never come back. In sickness and in health, I
thought, looking out the post-office door at the sun
blasting into the street.
Buford said nothing about the money he knew I
owed him, the pay-off from Abbie Bell. “I turned that
kid loose,” he said. “I told him to get out of town,
and if he ever came back we’d throw away the key.”
“O.K.,” I said. I couldn’t get my mind on anything.
With the grand jury coming up we were walking
through spilled gasoline with cigarettes in our hands
and I couldn’t even think about it. All I could see was
an empty flat ocean of time to be crossed before I
River Girl — 75
would see her again. And what do you suppose she
goes through, I thought, out there with that crazy
bastard and never knowing what he knows or what
he’ll do? We’ve got to get away. But how? And using
what for money? And if I run now there’ll be an
investigation for certain. It would look like guilt; why
else would a man run off and leave his wife and
home? And if they brought an indictment she’d just
be moving around over the country with another
fugitive. From what little she’d told me I could see
what it had done to him, and I didn’t want any of it.
Thursday I had to go with one of the other
deputies to take a prisoner to the state penitentiary,
and we didn’t get back until late Friday afternoon. I
was jumpy and on edge, and drove like a madman.
When I got back in town I found out from Buford
that the grand-jury session had been moved back to
Monday. After nightfall I slipped out of town and
headed for the lake. There was still no moon, but by
now I could run the channel in the dark.
There was nothing to do but pray she would come.
She did. At eleven or a little after she came
swimming down the channel and waded out of the
water where I stood waiting for her.
“I almost died, Jack. I thought something had
happened when you didn’t come. We can’t go on like
this.”
“I know,” I said.
“Can’t we go away tonight?” she whispered. “Now.
Just take me away somewhere.”
“In a bathing suit?” I said. “With no money? We
can’t.”
“We could go back in your boat and get my
clothes, what few things I have.”
I held her tightly, wanting to tell her yes but
knowing we had to wait. “I know,” I said. “But it
won’t be more than a few days more. I’ve got it all
figured out. I can sell my boat and trailer and all the
fishing and camping gear. I think I can get two
hundred for it. And the old Ford will take us. We’ll
go to Nevada; that’s far enough away. I can work at
River Girl — 76
something, and we can get divorces and be
married.”
“All right,” she said slowly. “But please make it
soon.”
Suddenly, I felt her shiver as if she had a chill.
“What is it, baby? Are you cold?”
“No,” she said. “I guess I was just trying to shake
off a feeling I keep having, a sort of premonition that
we haven’t got much time. It’s like one of those
dreams you have—you know, when you’re trying to
catch a train and can’t get out of the waiting room
because somebody has locked the door. You see the
train pulling out and you keep on tugging at the
door. ...”
“Don’t do that, honey. It’s going to be all right.”
“Yes. I know. Only—”
“Only what?”
“I keep remembering something that happened a
long time ago. I thought of it just then, when I had
that chill.”
“What is it?”
It was one of the strangest things I had ever
known in my life. I began to know what she meant
almost before she told me. She’d hardly said a word
before it was all right there before me.
“It’s a silly thing,” she said. “But it’s so plain, even
after all these years. I can hear the school bell, and
see the street corner in the early morning with the
sun shining, and that big woolly-looking dog going
by with the newspaper in his mouth—”
“Wait!” I said, wondering. “What dog? Say that
again!”
“You made me late for school,” she went on slowly,
almost as if to herself. “It was the first time in my
life I’d ever been late. But you were carrying my
books, and you stopped to chase the dog to get the
paper away from him”
“No!” I said. “Let me think. Doris… Doris… And
your father was a minister, you said. I know now!”
River Girl — 77
“Doris Carroll,” she said. “Didn’t you know who I
was, Jack? But then, with a different name… And it
must have been more than fifteen years ago. I knew
you though, as soon as you told me your name.”
“We were in the fifth grade,” I said. “You were the
first woman I ever loved. I remember you moved
away the next year and I was heartbroken.”
“For a week, anyway?”
“For almost a month,” I said.
We talked about it for a long time that night, and
after a while I guess I forgot what it was that had
brought it to her mind in the first place. I don’t think
she did, though. The last thing she said when we had
to go was, “Please, Jack. Get us out of here. And
don’t let it be too long.”
I knew what she meant. Don’t make us late again.
* * *
We raided all the places. The delegation, headed by
Soames, came into the sheriff’s office Saturday
afternoon and Buford heard them out with that
grave, deferential courtesy of his. “Gentlemen, this
office is at the service of the citizens of this county.
That is what it is here for. Get the warrants, Jack.”
He asked Soames to come along. The Moss Inn
was first on the list, and when we got out there all
the dice tables were gone out of the back room and
the slot machines had disappeared. The next two
places were the same. It was dark by the time we got
to Abbie Bell’s, and when we went in all the girls
except two were gone. One of them was
embroidering a doily and the other was sitting in a
big chair in the front room reading Better Homes
and Gardens. Abbie was wearing steel-rimmed
glasses and working on a set of books.
“Can you tell me what this is all about, Mr.
Buford?” she asked coldly. “Don’t I have enough
trouble trying to make a living out of this rooming
house, with the government and all the XYZ’s and
ABC’s making me fill out forms and tell them what I
River Girl — 78
did with every nickel I ever made, without you trying
to drive away what few roomers I do have?” She
followed us upstairs and we looked in all the rooms,
finding no one. The beds were neatly made and the
rooms clean, and in one of them a canary in a little
wire cage was singing cheerfully. Abbie kept up her
outraged scolding, but once when the two of us were
alone in the rear she looked at me with the deadpan
innocence of a child and said quietly out of the
corner of her mouth, “Jesus, I hope the laundry don’t
come back while you guys are here.”
I watched Soames to see what he thought of it, and
wondered if he could be taken in by a trick as old as
this. He said nothing at all during the raids, and
afterward he thanked Buford with a courtesy that
equaled Buford’s own, but once I saw in his eyes the
look of a man who has just drawn the other ace. It
made me wonder.
I awoke before dawn Sunday and lay there
thinking about it, unable to go back to sleep. I could
get her out of there. I couldn’t leave for a few more
days, or maybe a week, until we saw which way the
grand jury was going to jump and whether Soames
had anything else up his sleeve, but I could take her
away to wait for me somewhere. It wouldn’t be safe
to bring her into town, but I could take her down to
Colston and get her a room there. Anything to get
her out of that swamp and away from him before
something happened or we got caught.
I made a pot of coffee and then drove out, picked
up the boat and trailer at the end of the slough, and
brought them in. I didn’t want to sell the stuff in
town if I could help it, because that in itself might
look suspicious, as if I felt the heat and were getting
ready to run, but there was a man over a New
Bosque, the station agent there, who had been trying
to buy my motor for a long time, and I thought he
might take it. I loaded up everything, fishing tackle
and all, and went over there with it. I was going to
give up fishing, I said, if I could get the right kind of
price for the stuff; there were too many arguments
with my wife about it. He laughed and said he knew
River Girl — 79
how it was, he was married too; and we began. I
knew I was going to take a beating on it that way,
and I did; it was worth four hundred, even
secondhand, and I finally got two-twenty-five. The
worst part of it was giving up the Hardy rod the
Judge had given me on my nineteenth birthday, but
after taking it out of the case and looking at it once I
handed it over and left.
I cashed his check the first thing Monday and
waited. The grand jury convened that morning, and
we sat through the long day wondering what would
happen, but nothing did. It was quiet.
To get up the lake to where she was I’d have to go
clear down to the south end and rent a boat and
motor, now that I’d sold my own, but that was all
right. I had it all figured out.
Tuesday morning I didn’t say anything to anybody.
I just went. And that was the day that everything fell
in.
River Girl — 80
Ten
I was at the store on the end of the lake by daybreak
and rented a skiff and a big outboard. After buying a
bucket of shiners from the man who ran the place, I
rented one of his cane-pole fishing outfits and said I
thought I’d go up the lake a way and see if I couldn’t
catch a few white perch. He’d never seen me before,
and merely grunted something and looked at me
with the casual and almost contemptuous
indifference with which fishing-camp proprietors
regard all fishermen. By the time it was light enough
to see, I was on my way. I wanted to try to get nearly
halfway up before I had to duck in somewhere and
wait for Shevlin to go by. He would be coming down
with his catfish, headed for the store, and with all
the turns in the channel he might be right on me
before I saw him. I should be able to gauge it within
a half hour, for I knew about what time he left.
But something went wrong. Either he had left
earlier than usual or had tried to cut it too fine, tried
to get too far up before I turned off into a slough and
waited. Suddenly, I came around a bend in the
channel and saw him up ahead, less than half a mile
away. I looked wildly around, but there wasn’t
anyplace I could hide. He would have seen me by
this time, anyway.
River Girl — 81
The lake was a little less than a quarter mile wide
here, with acres of big weed beds off to the left. I cut
the motor and swung hard left into one of the
openings through the pads, getting as far out of the
main channel as possible, and when I had come to
the end of it I dropped the square concrete block of
an anchor and grabbed up the cane pole. Not even
bothering to bait the hook with one of the shiners, I
swung it out, and sat there staring intently at the
cork float like all the fishermen in the world.
He came on past, looked toward me only once,
very briefly, answered my wave with a curt gesture
of his hand, and then was gone. It’s all right, I
thought. Even if he saw me duck over here like that,
he won’t know me. This is a different boat. Mine was
painted green, while this one, like all the rental
boats down there, was a dirty white with a number
on the bow.
I sat there waiting, listening for the sound of his
motor to die out down the lake. When it was gone
completely I pulled in the anchor and started up
again. All the rest of the way I kept a sharp eye out
for other boats, praying I wouldn’t meet any
fishermen, for I didn’t want anyone to see us as I
was bringing her out. There were none. Now that he
was gone, I had the whole swamp to myself.
I must have been more than halfway up when I
met him, for it still wasn’t ten o’clock when I turned
in at the entrance of the slough by his boat landing.
Not bothering to hide the boat now, for I didn’t want
to waste the time, I tied up at the landing and went
up the trail, feeling that same suffocating excitement
I always felt when I was coming nearer to her, and
now there was added to it the knowledge that we
would have to hurry. We had to be back down the
lake before he started home.
She wasn’t in the house. I walked right in and
looked quickly around, and then out the back. She’s
swimming, I thought. But no, her suit was on the
line. “Doris!” I called out. There was no sound.
Beginning already to feel that cold, greasy sensation
of fear in my belly that I always had whenever I
River Girl — 82
thought of the two of them up here alone and of
what he might do if he knew, I turned and ran along
the trail toward the timber. Maybe—she was out
there toward the lake. And then I saw her. She had
just come out of the timber and was carrying
something shiny in her hand.
She saw me and started running. “Jack! Jack!” she
cried out, and then I saw what it was she had. It was
the gun, that Colt .45 held out in front of her away
from her body as if it were a dead snake, her
fingertips grasping it by the end of the grip so it
tilted slanting toward the ground. As we met, there
in the open, sun-drenched clearing, she stooped and
placed it carefully on the ground beside the trail,
lowering it very gently as if it might explode, and
then straightened, looking at me with eyes wild with
relief and ecstasy and half crying and trying to smile
at the same time. “Oh, Jack!” she said, her voice
muffled against my shirt. “What are you carrying
that gun for?” I asked. “What is it?”
“I was looking for another place to hide it. Are we
going away today, Jack? Now? Isn’t that what you
came for?” She looked up at me pleadingly.
“Yes. Right now. I’m going to take you out of here
as soon as you can get ready.”
“Oh, thank God!”
“But tell me about that gun.”
“I’ve had it hidden out in the woods. For days now.
One night he was drunk and I was out of the house,
and when I came back way after midnight he was
passed out, and the gun, which had been in that
drawer ever since we came up here, was lying on the
table just beyond where his hand was. I didn’t know
what he had intended to do with it. But I was so
scared I took it and ran out in the woods and hid it.
Then, yesterday, he was out there a long time and I
began to have the horrible thought that he had
managed to find it and was just letting me go on
thinking he hadn’t. So I thought about it all night
and decided to throw it in the lake. And then this
morning after he was gone I changed my mind and
River Girl — 83
thought maybe I was just being silly, and that I’d
hide it somewhere else.”
Holding her and feeling the shaking of her body, I
knew she wasn’t telling me all of it. She was afraid
of him and had been bringing it back to hide it in the
house where she could get it if she had to. I thought
of the way she had been carrying it and felt a little
sick, knowing just how much good it would have
been to her if she’d had to use it. She wouldn’t even
know how to shoot it.
I picked it up and we walked back to the house. I
put it on the dresser, thinking we would take it with
us and drop it in the lake, and then I turned and
looked at her standing there with her face flushed
and her eyes shining with the thought of leaving and
wanted to take hold of her again and knew there
wasn’t time. There was never any stopping when we
started that, and we could both feel the minutes
slipping past, hurried and driven by the remorseless
ticking of the clock.
“No,” she said. “I want to go, Jack. We’ve got to
go.”
“I know,” I said. “Where are your other clothes,
and your shoes and stockings?”
She went to the dresser and opened the bottom
drawer. They were all wrapped in newspapers, the
white, high-heeled shoes, the one pair of nylons, and
the under-things. The little summer dress had been
ironed and then folded inside a newspaper clipped
together around the edges with pins. She carried
them over and put them on the bed.
She looked down. “I’ll have to wash my feet before
I can put on the stockings.”
“Wait.” I went out in the kitchen and brought a
basin of water from the bucket and found a bar of
soap. She sat down in one of the rawhide chairs and
washed her feet. I watched her, smoking a cigarette
and listening to the hot dead silence of the room
being chopped off in sections by the clock. I’ll buy
her stockings, I thought, and bathrooms with tile
floors, and clothes, and…We’ll be gone from here
River Girl — 84
and she can live like other women and somehow I’ll
make her happy.
“I’ll wait out in the kitchen,” I said when she had
dried her feet and was ready to put on the stockings.
I went out and sat down by the table, throwing away
the cigarette and lighting another. She didn’t bother
to close the door and I could hear her changing
clothes, the soft rustle of cloth and as she pulled off
the old dress and put on the new one and the sound
of the shoe heels against the floor.
“I’ve sold my boat and outfit,” I said. “The one I’m
in is a rental boat from the foot of the lake. I have to
take it back, but this is the way we’ll do it. I’ll turn
off down there at the slough where I used to launch
mine, and leave you there. We’ll wait there until he
goes by, going up the lake, then I’ll go on down and
take the boat back and pick up my car. Then I’ll
come back by the old logging road and get you. That
way nobody’ll see us. Then I’ll take you down to
Colston and get you a room. You can wait there until
I can get away and then we’ll leave for Nevada.”
“All right, Jack,” she said quietly. “I’m about ready.
You can come out now.”
She had gone over to the dresser and was combing
her hair at the mirror. I stood behind her, looking at
her reflection in the glass. The dress was a blue one
with short sleeves and trimmed with white at the
collar, and I thought it was almost the color of her
eyes.
“I just want to look at you,” I said, and turned her
part way around, holding her there at arm’s length.
My back was toward the door and she was facing it,
looking up at me with her eyes shining. Suddenly I
saw them change and could feel my back go cold as I
saw the terror in them. I heard her little in-drawn
gasp, as if ice water had hit her from behind, and at
the same instant I heard the heavy shoe rasp against
the flooring of the porch. His eyes were crazy. He
stood framed in the doorway, not moving or saying
anything, just looking beyond me as if he saw only
River Girl — 85
her and didn’t even care that I was standing there,
and I’ll never live long enough to forget his eyes.
“Get back!” I yelled. “Stand back!” He didn’t even
hear me. Suddenly he made a lunge for the gun, still
lying on top of the dresser. I beat him to it with my
right hand and threw up the left to shove him back.
He slid back against the wall and then I heard her
run from behind me, going toward the other side of
the room, and the scream that had been trying to
fight its way out of her throat came free at last,
going up higher and higher in a thin knife-edged
column of sound slicing into the silence. He came off
the wall and started for her and she stopped and
turned to face him, helpless, with her legs against
the bed. I felt the gun kick in my hand and he
stopped then as if he had seen me for the first time,
and put his hand up to his chest, still looking at me,
and started to fall. The scream cut off as if the noise
of the gun had chopped it in two, the way they blow
an oil well fire with nitro, and then she began to
sway.
I looked at him lying on his face with the little
searching trickle of blood running out from under his
shoulder and curling indecisively across the
incredibly clean silvered white planks of the floor
she had scrubbed so long and then I put the gun
down on the dresser and went out the front door into
the yard and was sick.
River Girl — 86
Eleven
There was just the humming of insects in the drowsy
heat and the old hound watching me sadly with his
red-rimmed eyes as I clung to the post at the corner
of the porch. The noise and the violence had washed
back like a receding wave and left me stranded here
in the sundrenched peace of the clearing while I
fought down the sickness and tried to get hold of
myself enough to go back inside the room. I had to
snap out of it; she was going to be bad enough
without both of us going to pieces. If she waked up
lying there like that and looking at what she would
see not three feet in front of her eyes ... It wouldn’t
be pretty.
I straightened up and retched again and spat,
trying to get the taste out of my mouth, and walked
back into the room on unsteady legs, looking across
and beyond him to where she was lying. She had
almost fallen onto the bed, but her legs had bumped
it as they doubled under her and pushed her out and
away so she had crumpled to her knees and then slid
down, and now she lay partly on one side with an
arm under her face like a child asleep. I knelt down
beside her with my back to him but still feeling him
there behind me as if I were looking at him out of
the back of my head. The blue dress had slid up as
River Girl — 87
she fell past the bed and the long legs were bare
above the stocking tops, smooth and ever so faintly
tanned, even fair now against the sand-colored
stockings and the dress, and I looked at them, but
not in that way, not even conscious of the loveliness
of them, only busy at shutting him out of my mind.
Her eyes were still closed as I rolled her on her
back, and I noticed, in the fury of concentration of
trying to see only her and not him there behind me,
how long and dark the lashes were against the waxcandle
paleness of her face. I smoothed the dress
down very gently and picked her up.
The sickness rolled over again in my stomach as I
had to step across him to go toward the door, and
then I was in the open with her. I put her down on
the porch in the shade, and as I was easing her
shoulders back against the floor she stirred. Her
eyes opened.
For an instant she stared at me blankly, not
remembering. “Jack,” she whispered. “What
happened?” Then, as I had known it would, it hit her.
I could see it come pushing up into her eyes and she
cried out, grabbing my arm. “Where is he? Jack,
where is he?”
I knelt with my arm still around her shoulders and
held her with her face against my chest while the
crying shook her body. This is what I’ve done to her,
I thought; I was going to make her happy and this is
the way I’ve done it. I could feel the helplessness
and time going by and the trap closing around us,
and all I could do was kneel there in agony of
numbness with only that one little corner of my mind
still working, telling me over and over that I had
ruined her. When the shaking subsided I took a
handkerchief from my pocket and wiped away the
tear stains as well as I could.
“It’ll be all right,” I said. “Don’t cry, Doris. It’ll be
all right.”
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