I could see her fighting to get hold of herself.
“We’ve got to go,” she whispered frantically. “We’ve
got to get out of here! Oh, Jack!” She started to
River Girl — 88
break up again and I shook her a little, holding her
very tightly until she stopped.
“I’m sorry,” she said weakly. “I’ll be all right in a
minute so we can go.”
“No,” I said, not wanting to do it but knowing I had
to. “We can’t go now.”
She stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. “We can’t
go? But Jack, we’ve—we’ve got to.”
“It won’t do any good to run now,” I said. My mind
was working enough to see that.
“But it’s the only thing we can do.”
“No,” I said. “You saw what it did to him; being
hunted, I mean. We can’t do it. We wouldn’t have a
chance of getting out of the country, in the first
place, and if we did we’d just be running the rest of
our lives or until they caught us.”
“But what are we going to do?” she cried out
piteously. “What can we do now. Isn’t he—?” I could
see in her eyes the question she couldn’t ask.
“He’s dead,” I said bluntly, trying to get it on the
line so we could look at it and know where we had to
start.
“But you couldn’t help it, Jack! You couldn’t!
Wouldn’t they see you had to do it, that you were
trying to protect me?”
I shook my head, not wanting to do it, but knowing
there wasn’t room enough for even one of us in that
fool’s paradise. I hadn’t done it because I had to. I’d
done it because I’d lost my head, gone completely
wild when I saw him start for her.
No jury on earth
would ever believe I’d had to shoot an unarmed man
twenty pounds lighter and fifteen years older than I
was just to keep him from hurting her or to defend
myself. I could have stopped him with one hand. And
if by any stretch of the imagination they could ever
manage to swallow that, there was still the fact that
I was in his house, where I had no business, and that
she was his wife. I gave it up and tried to close my
mind on it. There wasn’t any way out in that
direction.
River Girl — 89
I fought at the numbness in my mind like a drunk
trying to sober up enough to think. The trails ran
outward from here in all directions, crossed and
crisscrossed and tangled, and if we took any of the
wrong ones we were finished. We couldn’t run
without being fugitives the rest of our lives. I
couldn’t go back to town and report it, because no
matter how you tried to dress it up as something
else, it was going to come out as murder. But wait!
Suppose, I thought, grabbing at everything, suppose
I had been fishing out there and had heard her
screaming and had come to help and found him
beating her. I’d tried to stop him and he’d got the
gun out and in the fight over it I’d killed him. I was a
deputy sheriff and I’d be within the law in butting
into something like that. Would it work? Maybe, I
thought. And then I thought of her on the stand and
the district attorney tearing her to pieces the way I’d
seen them do it. A woman as beautiful as she was,
and her husband killed by another man under
peculiar circumstances? He’d start to tie it up into a
triangle killing before he’d finished looking at her
legs. Had she ever seen me before? Was she sure
she hadn’t? Wasn’t it rather odd that a man who
hadn’t been fishing for months should suddenly go
four times in two weeks and to the same place every
time, even neglecting his job to run off up there? I
was beginning to think a little more clearly now, and
in my mind I could see the succession of witnesses
and the facts. And wasn’t it a little odd, also, that I
had sold all my fishing gear to the station agent at
New Bosque because I’d given up the pastime, and
then two days later I was up the lake again with a
rented outfit, a cane pole and live bait, according to
the testimony of the fishing-camp proprietor, and
this in spite of the testimony of the other witnesses
that I hadn’t used an outfit like that since I was a boy
in grammar school? And consider this other strange
coincidence, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the
fact that somehow this man was always up the lake
fishing on just the days that this woman’s husband
happened to be away at the store. Are you sure now,
Mrs. Shevlin, that you never saw this man before in
River Girl — 90
your life? No, I thought. That isn’t it; we’d just be
walking right into their arms.
I thought I had her quieted down, but now she
started shaking again and pushing back on my chest
with her hand. She got to her feet, swaying
unsteadily, and then ran off the porch before I could
stop her and started across the clearing toward the
boat landing. “Doris!” I called out. “For God’s sake!”
I ran up behind her and caught her arm but she
didn’t even notice I was there. I gave up trying to
stop her then; maybe if we got completely away from
the house she could get hold of herself.
In spite of the high heels, she was walking faster
and faster. We left the bright sunlight of the clearing
and then suddenly she jerked away from me and
started running down the path through the trees.
Both the boats were drawn up at the float, one on
each side, and she stopped at the end of the trail and
stared at them wildly. I caught her arm again and
then for the first time she noticed me.
“Let’s go, Jack,” she cried out frantically. “Start
the boat!”
I swung her around and caught hold of both arms.
They were shaking as if she had a chill. The touch
of lipstick she had put on her mouth, hardly
noticeable a while ago when I had held her in exactly
this way to look at her, was now a violent slash of
carmine across the dead pallor of her face, and her
eyes were staring with shock. I wanted to take her in
my arms and just hold her until it wore off, but there
wasn’t time for that any more. I shook her almost
roughly, and then when she screamed I let go of her
arm with the right hand and slapped her, hard. It
was like kicking a puppy.
The scream cut off and she put a hand up to her
mouth, backing away from me. “Doris!” I said.
“Listen! You’ve got to listen to me. Are you all right
now?” Then I thought of that old football question.
“Listen, what day is this?”
She stared at me as if I’d gone crazy. Maybe I
have, I thought.
River Girl — 91
“Doris, do you know what day this is?” I asked
again. She moved the hand from her mouth around
to her cheek where I’d slapped her, still looking at
me. She was beautiful and she was hurt, and more
than anything in the world I wanted to reach out for
her and just pick her up and take her away from
here, but I had to keep my head. It was losing it that
got us into this mess in the first place.
I took out a cigarette and lit it and handed it to
her. She accepted it mechanically. I led her over and
made her sit down with her back against a stump
while I squatted in front of her, taking her chin in
the palm of my hand so she’d have to look at me.
“It’s Tuesday,” she said suddenly. I had already
forgotten about it.
All right, now,” I said. “I think now you know why I
asked that, and why I slapped you. We’re in a jam,
and if we run without using our heads we’re going to
be in a worse one. I’m trying to think, and I want you
to help me. Can you answer some questions for me?”
The wild stare of the shock had gone out of her
eyes now. She was rational, but I hated to look at the
misery in them.
“Yes,” she said dully. “But what difference does it
make now, Jack? Everything is ruined.”
“No,” I said, almost roughly. “It’s not. Just keep
thinking that it’s not, and after a while you’ll see it.
It wasn’t your fault; there was no way on earth you
could have prevented it. If anyone is to blame, I am,
for losing my head and getting panicky when I saw
he was after you, and even that was an accident.
Neither of us wanted to do it.” I stopped for a
moment, and then went on, talking faster. “And in
the end it won’t make any difference. He’s better off
now than he was living the way he did. Nothing
matters now except us. Nothing matters with me
except you, because I love you, and I want to find a
way out of this so we can always be together. Now,
will you listen and try to help me?”
She had forgotten the cigarette and let it roll from
her fingers. I picked it up and took a puff on it,
River Girl — 92
fighting to steady my nerves and to think. “Yes,” she
said quietly.
“I’ll try, Jack.”
“All right. Good. Now, tell me, and I want you to
think hard. Do you have any idea at all what he was
running from?”
She stared at me, puzzled, then shook her head.
“No. He never did talk about it.”
“And you never did ask him?”
“Only once. And after the way he looked, I never
did again.”
“But you think it was the police? I mean, that was
always your impression, wasn’t it?”
She nodded.
“Why did you think so? Try to remember.”
She looked at me helplessly. “I don’t know, Jack. I
—I guess it was just because I couldn’t think of
anything else a man would run from. There couldn’t
be many other things, could there?”
“Yes,” I said. “Probably dozens of them. A woman.
Some man who was after him. The draft, during the
war. A scandal of some kind. Blackmail. But the
chances are that it was the police. Didn’t you tell me
once that when you had to run like that, it was
usually after he’d seen someone you thought he was
afraid would recognize him, and that it wasn’t the
same man each time?”
“Yes. That’s right. It happened at least three times.
I mean, that many times that I saw the man myself.
And it was always a different one.”
“Do you remember anything about these men?
How did they look, and so on? I mean, was there
anything special about them?”
“No-o. Except that they didn’t seem to be
policemen themselves. The first one looked as if he
might be a sawmill hand or something like that.
Another time it was a better-dressed man standing in
a line at the post office. And—oh, I don’t know, Jack.
They looked just like anybody else.”
River Girl — 93
I tried to add it up. There wasn’t much to go on.
These people he kept trying to dodge didn’t make
much sense except that the chances were they were
ex-cons. An ex-convict can be anybody, and you
won’t know it or notice him unless, of course, you
happened to be one yourself and were there with
him and knew him. But why the running? Of course,
a man who’s served time and is trying to forget it
isn’t anxious to run into any of his old friends who
might expose him to the community, but he’s not
that afraid of them, at least not to the extent of
throwing up his job every time and dragging his wife
all over the country. If that was all it was, he’d have
probably told her anyway. An escaped convict? A
good chance, I thought. And there was still that
impression I’d had that I had seen him somewhere
before.
I sat still, thinking. My mind was perfectly clear
now and I could see all the angles. It’ll have to do, I
thought. There’s a good chance that he’s wanted for
something pretty bad, in which case we’re in luck.
And if he’s not on the lam from something, at least
we’re not any worse off than we are now. The thing
to do is go back to town and find out. And then, if he
is, come back here after him. Killed, resisting arrest.
No, I thought. It won’t work; not that way. It would
be tomorrow before I could get back, and by that
time he’d have been dead too long. It’d never fool
anybody. But I began to see it then, the other way,
the perfect setup I’d been looking for. It was a longshot
bet, and it all depended on what he was wanted
for and how badly, but if it worked we were out of
the woods forever.
“What is it, Jack?” she asked, staring at my face.
“What are we going to do?”
“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “I think I know the way
now. There isn’t anything you can do, so you just
wait here for me, and when I get through we can go.
I’m going back to the house.”
“Back there?” she asked with horror. “I have to,” I
said. I leaned forward and kissed her, holding her
River Girl — 94
face tightly between my hands. “I’ll be back before
long.”
Without waiting for her to say anything. I got up
and went back along the trail toward the cabin. As I
neared it I saw the old hound lying under the porch,
and suddenly I realized I had forgotten about him
altogether, or had never thought of him at all. What
were we going to do with him? We couldn’t just
leave him here to starve on this island. Oh, hell, I
thought, he can swim. He’ll get off.
I stepped up on the porch, dreading it. It had
looked good when I’d thought of it back there at the
boat landing, but it wasn’t going to be easy to do.
River Girl — 95
Twelve
Putting it off wasn’t going to help any. I stood in the
center of the room looking down at the man I’d have
to live with now for the rest of my life, then I started
searching for the things I needed. There was an
extra bedsheet in a little locker out in the kitchen,
but that wasn’t heavy enough. I had to have
something thicker than that so he wouldn’t drip
blood all over me and onto the trail while I was
carrying him down to the lake. In a minute I found it,
an old canvas hunting coat in one of the dresser
drawers.
Feeling the nausea well up and turn over in my
stomach, I reached down and touched him, rolling
him over onto his back. The eyes were open, staring
up at me, and I would have lost it then if there’d
been anything left inside me. Sweating, fumbling, in
a near panic, I slipped the canvas coat over his arms,
backward, then rolled him again, away from the pool
of blood, and pulled the coat together around his
back and buttoned it. It was big, like all hunting
coats, and there was slack enough to make it reach
around that way.
I stood up, thinking. It was nearer to the lake if I
went straight out beyond the side of the house, on
that path she used when she went swimming, rather
River Girl — 96
than going clear down to the boat landing. And, too,
if I took him out that way and went down and
brought the boat around to him, it would keep her
from having to see him and possibly becoming
hysterical again. Stooping, I put my hands under his
waist and lifted. He was limp and awkward to
handle, but not as heavy as I had thought he would
be. Maybe the fright and the urgency gave me extra
strength. Anyway, I managed to get him across my
shoulder without too much trouble. Stepping
carefully around the blood so I wouldn’t get my
shoes in it, I went out through the kitchen and
across the clearing. The trail through the timber was
dim, and cooler than the sunlight, and for an instant
I remembered that other day when we were out here
and how we had come running back when we heard
his boat. Suddenly, that reminded me of the fact that
we hadn’t heard the boat at all this time, and I knew
he had cut the motor far down the lake and used the
oars. He had known I was up there, or had thought I
was. What was it she had said—“After so much of
that running maybe you start to crack up and
suspect everybody”? There couldn’t have been much
reason for his thinking I was up here, unless he had
recognized me down the lake, but he had, and now
he was dead. It wasn’t a pretty thing to think about—
the way you had to live when you were on the run
like that. And now, unless this idea of mine was
good, we were the ones who would be running.
I put him down at the edge of the trees along the
lake and walked away a few steps so I wouldn’t have
to see him and stopped to get my breath. While I was
doing that I suddenly remembered something else I
had forgotten. I had to have something heavy to
weight him with. In this warm water he’d come to
the top in a few days. That’s too much forgetting, I
thought uneasily. I’ve got to stop that. Once you
start something like this, you can’t overlook
anything.
I tried to think of something I could use. It had to
be some object that wouldn’t be missed if anybody
searched the place, as of course they would. There
River Girl — 97
was his big outboard motor, but that would be
missed right away. And I couldn’t use part of the
kitchen stove for the same reason. Well, Christ, I
thought, the thing to do is go back there and look—
not stand here worrying about it like an old woman.
There was nothing under the house, no rocks or
bricks. In the kitchen I found a flatiron, but only one,
and it was too light. I stood there looking around,
cursing the delay and feeling my nerves beginning to
jump again. There had to be something. In
desperation, I bent down and looked under the bed.
And there it was. I hauled it out, another outboard
motor, a small one he probably used for trolling. It
was a two-and-a-half horse, and would weigh about
thirty pounds, which was heavy enough. When I
picked it up I heard a little gasoline splash around in
the tank. I started to drain it out on the ground
outside and then decided it wasn’t worth the trouble,
and started looking around for some wire. I looked at
my watch. It was a little after eleven.
It had to be wire. Cord or rope would rot after a
while. I finally found some tied up in the walnut tree,
and went back out to the lake carrying the outboard,
hurrying now to get it over with. I put the motor
down beside him and went back across the clearing
to the other end, to the boat landing. She hadn’t
moved.
“Are you all right now, Doris?” I asked gently.
She looked up. “Yes, I’m all right. Can we go
now?”
“Not for a little while longer. You know what I’m
doing, don’t you?”
She shuddered. “Yes. I think so.”
“Can you handle a boat?” I asked.
I could see the horror begin to come back into her
face. “You want me to—to—”
“No,” I said. “Not with me. I just want you to take
the other boat up there to the bend and keep a
lookout. There’s not much chance anybody will come
along, but we still can’t risk it.”
River Girl — 98
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I can do that much. I’m
sorry, Jack.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “You’re doing fine.”
I helped her into the rental boat and gave it a
shove. Then I got in his, undamped the motor and
lifted it out onto the float, and followed her out of
the slough, using the oars. When I got out into the
lake I thought of something and looked under the
seat for the tow sack he carried the fish in. They
were still in it. So he hadn’t gone on to the store. I
didn’t think he’d had time, even with that big motor,
to get clear down to the store and back since the
time I’d met him. I didn’t like it, because the man
who bought the fish down there would remember it,
remember he hadn’t shown up when he was
supposed to. Well, I thought, there’s nothing I can do
about it now.
I rowed up the lake shore to where I had left him,
then waited until she reached the bend and got in
position. When she got there I took a good look up
the lake, in the other direction, to be sure it was
clear. There was no bend up there and I could see
for a mile or more, the lake deserted and glaring in
the sun. I backed in to the bank and got out. Pulling
the stern up a little so it would rest on the beach, I
picked him up again and laid him across the big seat,
on his side with his legs doubled up, then brought
the motor over and started fastening it to him with
the wire. It was hot and breathlessly still now and
the surface of the lake was like a sheet-metal roof
blazing in the sun. The shaking and revulsion began
to take hold of me again at having to touch him and
move him around like that, but I kept on until I had
done a thorough job of it.
It was harder to shove the boat off now, with him
across the stern, but I worked it loose, still standing
on the ground and holding it, and moved it around
with my hands until it was parallel and I could get in
without having to climb over him. Sitting on the
middle seat, I splashed water with an oar until I had
obliterated the mark the boat had left on the beach,
took one more look down the lake to where she was
River Girl — 99
and up the lake to see that both directions were
clear, and started pulling out into the channel. When
I got out toward the middle I turned around and
sounded with the anchor rope. It was about twelve
feet deep. Stepping back to the stern, I took hold of
the coat and rolled him off. There was a splash and
the boat rocked, and then he was gone. A string of
bubbles came to the surface, and then at last one big
one that made a bulge in the water like a bass
feeding. My knees gave way on me and I had to sit
down.
She saw me head back to the landing and started
rowing in herself. I tied up at the float and dumped
the catfish out of the wet tow sack into the water.
They were still alive. After looking the seat over
carefully to be sure there was no blood on it, I put
the motor back on the stern. She came alongside in a
few minutes and I made the boat fast and helped her
out.
“I’ve just got one more thing to do,” I said. “It
won’t take more than about twenty minutes.”
She came very close to me there on the float and
looked up. “I’m sorry I went to pieces on you,” she
said quietly. “But I’m all right now, Jack. Hold me for
just a minute before you go back and I won’t cause
you any more trouble.”
When I reached out for her and tipped her face
back I could see that a little of the color had come
back into it and that the dead, washed-out agony was
leaving her eyes. “Jack,” she whispered, pleading,
“it’ll be all right with us now, won’t it? Tell me it
will.”
I knew what she meant. It wasn’t the police she
was thinking of. I kissed her, holding her very
tightly, then ran a hand along her cheek and through
the straight, dark hair. “Yes,” I said. “It’ll be all
right. It’ll be just like it was before.”
“For always, Jack?”
“For always,” I said.
There were two water buckets in the kitchen. I
found a big dishrag and a scrubbing brush and set to
River Girl — 100
work, spilling some water on the floor where he had
lain, mopping it up with the rag and wringing it out
into the bucket. When I had used up all the water I
went down to the lake shore for more, throwing the
dirty water out into the lake. Then I used soap and
the stiff scrubbing brush over a wide area and
carefully mopped up all the soapsuds, wiped the
floor as dry as I could get it with the cloth, dumped
the soapy water in the lake, washed out the buckets,
filled one of them with water, and brought them
back to the kitchen.
I stood there in the front room for a minute,
looking around. The floor would be dry in a few
hours and everything else was in order. I saw her
purse lying on the dresser where she had left it, and
picked it up. Then I gathered up the gun, wrapped
the wet cloth around it, and stuck both in a pocket so
I could throw them in the lake. It was as I was just
starting out the door that I again felt that disturbing
and uneasy awareness of having forgotten something
absolutely damning. It was picking up the gun that
reminded me of it. The gun was an automatic, and
somewhere in this room was the ejected cartridge
case, which I had completely forgotten. I stopped,
feeling the hair prickle along the back of my neck. I
was too slipshod about things like that.
It wasn’t anywhere. I looked all over the floor,
under the dresser, under the bed, and on top of it,
and I couldn’t find it. It had to be here, and it wasn’t.
You couldn’t lose anything as large as a .45 case in
this bare room I told myself. It’s impossible. I stood
still by the dresser, sweating, afraid again, hearing
the ticking of the clock beat its way up out of the
silence and the dead, empty air and the heat.
Frantically I jerked the gun out of my pocket and
unwrapped it, and pulled the slide back until I could
see the cartridge in the chamber. It was unfired, as I
had known it would be, for the gun hadn’t jammed.
The empty case had come flying out, as it was
supposed to, and now it was gone. Had one of the
dresser drawers been open, I wondered? Maybe it
had flown in here. I yanked them open, one by one,
River Girl — 101
and pawed through them. It wasn’t there. Hold onto
yourself, I thought. Don’t start coming apart like an
old maid with the vapors. You’ve already lost your
head once in this room and killed a man, and if you
lose it again you may kill yourself. There’s a good
explanation for it if you’ll just cool off and look for it.
Nobody’s been here, so it’s still here. It has to be.
He was there, I thought, coming off the wall and
going toward the bed, and I was right here in front
of this dresser. The gun would have been along a
line like this, with the slide over on this side…
Christ, I thought, the door! Shoving the gun and the
cloth back in my pocket, I hurried outside. It was
lying near a clump of grass, glinting in the sun. I
took a deep breath. When I came back to the boat
she said nothing, but I could see the question and
the pleading entreaty in her eyes. “Yes,” I said. “We
can go now. It’s all finished.”
She gave a little cry and caught my arm. I helped
her in and shoved off. When we were well out in the
lake I tied the gun up securely in the cloth, which
would still show bloodstains in a laboratory, and
dropped them over the side.
This was the part now that scared me. There were
fifteen miles of lake between here and the slough
where I would leave her, and at any turn of the
channel we might come across a party of fishermen
in a boat. There wasn’t much chance of it, for it was
a weekday, and there had been none when I came
up, but I still didn’t like the risk. It would be
dangerous to have anybody see me taking her out.
But there wasn’t any other way to do it. I had to take
the boat back, and if I kept it up here to run her
down the lake after dark I wouldn’t get back with it
until midnight or later, which would cause
dangerous talk later when the story broke. So there
was nothing for us to do except go ahead and pray
we wouldn’t meet anybody.
Our luck held. I ran the whole fifteen miles with
the motor wide open and my heart in my mouth as
we came around every turn in the channel, and we
didn’t meet a single boat. As I swung into the
River Girl — 102
entrance to the slough where I used to launch my
own boat, I breathed freely for the first time and
lighted a cigarette, conscious of the way my hand
had stiffened around the tiller. It was only then that I
realized that neither of us had said a word since we
left the landing. At the end of the slough I cut the
motor and drifted up to the bank. I looked at my
watch. It was five minutes of two. That was good
time, I thought.
I helped her out. “It’ll take me a little over an hour
to take the boat back to the foot of the lake and get
my car and get back here,” I said. “You can sit down
here, or if you want to you can start walking out
toward the highway on that logging road and meet
me. You won’t meet anybody on it because it’s never
used any more. Can you walk in those shoes?”
She nodded eagerly. “Yes. I’d rather walk. I’d go
crazy sitting here. I can’t get lost, can I?”
“No,” I said. “There’s only one road and it doesn’t
branch off anywhere. But if you get to the highway
before I get back, don’t go out on it. Wait for me in
the timber.”
I refilled the fuel tank of the motor again from the
can in the bow, and dumped most of the shiners in
the lake to make it look as if I’d done a lot of fishing.
They were dead because I’d forgotten to change the
water on them. Of course, I didn’t have any fish to
show for my day, but fishing-camp proprietors never
expected you to catch anything anyway.
I shoved off and started the motor, and as I went
down the slough I swung around once and looked
back. She had turned and was walking along the ruts
of the old logging road, very straight and lovely and
alone, and suddenly I knew, more than I ever had
before, how much I loved her, and that if anything
ever happened to her, everything would end for me.
I’d driven the Olds down this morning instead of
the old Ford, and after I returned the boat I blasted
it back up the highway to where the logging road
turned off. It was slow work there, however, because
of high centers, and I’d gone barely a quarter mile
River Girl — 103
before I met her. After she’d climbed in and I turned
around I passed her the cigarettes and asked her to
light me one. As she handed it over, she said, “You
haven’t told me yet what we’re going to do, Jack.”
“I’m not sure about all of it yet myself,” I said,
swinging out of the ruts to get past a high spot in the
road. “A lot of it depends on what I find out in town.
But right now I’m going to take you down to Colston,
where you can get on a bus without being seen by
anybody around here and where we won’t be seen
together.”
“But what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to meet you in Bayou City. Day after
tomorrow, or that night.”
On the way down to Colston I stopped at a small
town and bought a cheap suitcase and three or four
Sunday papers to stuff in it so it wouldn’t feel empty.
“You’ll need that to check into a hotel,” I said. “They
probably wouldn’t give you a room without it.”
As I started to get back in the car I suddenly
noticed her hair. I mean, I noticed it in the way that
someone else would, the way I had when I had first
seen it. I had grown accustomed to the way it was
chopped up, and to me it was beautiful and I always
wanted to get my hands into it and it made my
breath catch in my throat to look at her, but
everybody else who saw it was going to notice it and
remember the girl who’d had her hair cut with a dull
butcher knife.
She saw me looking at it and for an instant the
tension went out of her face and her eyes were
tender. “You’re still fascinated with my hair-do,
aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I wasn’t thinking of my reaction
to it. The idea, for the next thousand miles or so, is
to blend into the herd, or at least as much as a girl
with your looks can do it, and you might as well be
leading a couple of pandas on a leash.”
She looked at herself in the rear-view mirror. “Can
you run back in the drugstore and get me a package
of bobby pins?”
River Girl — 104
She worked on it while I drove. It was long enough
to roll into a knot on the back of her neck, and when
she got through none of the ragged ends showed.
“How do you like it now?” she asked, turning to lean
toward me.
“Fine,” I said. “Now you’re just another beautiful
girl. Women will look at your clothes and men’ll look
at your legs. You’re safe enough.”
“Do you like it better this way? I could wear it like
this.”
“No,” I said. “I liked it better the other way.
Somehow, it was easier to imagine being lost in it
and never finding my way out.”
She looked over at me with her eyes soft and
reached out to pat my hand on the steering wheel.
“Warn me when you’re going to do that while I’m
driving,” I said. “You’ll get us both killed.”
When we got to Colston I pulled off into a quiet
side street under the big trees and stopped. Taking
out the wallet, I handed her a hundred and fifty of
the money.
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