A Moment to Prey (17 page)

    I even laughed as I ran along the faint ruts of the logging trail. In the distance I saw the tops of the magnolia trees, the giant cottonwoods of the Pooser front yard.

    I came out of the scrub and started across the clearing. That's when I heard the scream.

    It was Lily.

    That was the first thing I thought.

    I stopped for a moment, paralyzed by the content of horror in that scream.

    And then I started running forward.

    Her scream had come from the Pooser house.

    She screamed again as I came into the yard. I sprang up on the sagging porch, knocked the old door off its hinges as I went through.

    She was standing across that front room. Sure, there by the fireplace. There was a suitcase opened before her, but she wasn't looking at it any more.

    She had her right wrist caught and skinned tight in her left hand. As I ran into the room, she was sucking at her wrist, and then she spat and screamed again before she saw me. And when she saw me she screamed again and she did not stop screaming.

    I stared at that suitcase and that was when I saw the coral snake, at least two feet long, pencil thin and deadly writhing out of it. Sure. Marve's booby trap, set up for me.

    Only Lily had beaten me to it.

    The snake slithered out of the suitcase, undisturbed by Lily's screams, moved slowly to the floor and started wriggling across it, moving toward the bricks where it would burrow, taking all the time in the world.

    

    

    "He's killed me," Lily said. The blood seeped from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were stark with her fear, but her voice was level.

    "No, Lily."

    I had not taken my eyes from the coral snake slithering from the suitcase toward the loose stones of the hearth. It did not move fast when we spoke and I looked at it and I hated it the way I hated Marve Pooser with everything in me because Marve had made a sucker out of me again. This time nothing had saved me but Lily's trying to get that money for herself. I leveled the gun at the snake but my hand was trembling so hard that I was afraid to fire. If I fired and missed, I would lose that snake. It was the same as losing Marve Pooser. I could not do it, I could not stand to lose it. I wanted to kill that snake. I wanted to spend the rest of my life killing it.

    For a moment I hoped that snake would make it into the loose bricks and start burrowing. I wanted him to get away for the moment. Insanely, I stood there thinking what I would do if that snake burrowed into the loose stones. I would pull them out until I found him, and then I would kill him a little bit and when he crawled deeper, I would dig him out, and finally his instinct would tell him that though he slithered and ran into the very guts of the earth I would dig him out and keep killing him little by little. He'd have one instinct left-fear. He would be hopeless and helpless with it, burrowing, digging through the stones and rotten wood and knowing that he was going to keep dying.

    He was almost at the hearth when I smashed my boot down on his head. His body flailed upward, snapping like a whip against my boot. When I lifted my boot, its head was crushed, but it twisted and slithered, whipping its body and still moving toward those loose stones.

    I let it go a moment and then I smashed my foot on it again and then I stomped it and it was like a gaudy red, yellow and black necklace spilled on the floor. I kept stamping at it, beating it under my foot until it did not move any more.

    "Waiting for me, weren't you?" I raged at it while I crushed it, hardly seeing it, hardly knowing what I was saying. I was anger and hatred and frustration. It had to come out of me.

    I turned and stared at the suitcase where Lily had thrown it open. I glanced at her. Why had she stopped to open it? Why hadn't she pulled it from beneath those loose boards and run?

    My mouth twisted bitterly. I had the answers. It was easy. Lily knew Marve Pooser. She had run through the scrub hoping that money was where he said it was, but she had done just what I would have done, what Marve had counted on my doing, she had opened that suitcase to check because she didn't trust Marve and didn't want to run with an empty suitcase.

    It wasn't empty. There were a few stones in it, and some newspapers, to give it weight and the heft of money in fabulous amounts. Maybe Marve had laughed to himself flunking I would grab up the suitcase and run. What a laugh he must have had as he set this snake inside that suitcase, knowing that sooner or later I would have to open that suitcase, and, when I did, the coiled coral snake would be waiting for me.

    "Oh, damn him," I said aloud. It was a futile thing to say, but they were the only words I had. I had leaned over him, ready to rip him with that knife. He had suckered me again. Had he known I wouldn't cut him? I wasn't like Marve Pooser… not yet. Or I hadn't been then, back in the shack.

    "He's killed me," Lily said again. It was an empty sound, with all the heartbreak in the world in it.

    "No, Lily. I'm going to get you out of this. I've killed that snake, and now I'll save you. Somehow I'll save you."

    I put my arm about her and pulled her across the room to the western window where there was light. The marks of the snake's immovable fangs at the front of its upper jaw were small. It was like an insect bite.

    I took out the knife that I'd threatened to emasculate

    Marve with. Holding her arm vised in mine, I raked the knife point back and forth until the two fang marks were gone and there was a deep gash on her wrist and the blood began to pump from it. I dropped the knife then and pressed her arm against my mouth, sucking on the open place as hard as I could.

    She sat silently there in the window, leaning against the sill. She had not cried out, or even winced as I slit the flesh between those fang marks.

    I felt her right hand touch my hair.

    "Thanks, Jake."

    "You're going to be all right."

    "No. I'm dead, Jake."

    "Stop talking like that."

    "You don't have to do this, Jake."

    "Sure I don't."

    "You got sense, Jake? You got any sense at all?"

    "Sure. I'm the smartest bastard that ever lived. It's just that it's too late, and I don't know the right things."

    "You're smart, Jake?"

    I was wrapping my handkerchief about her arm above her elbow. I knotted it tightly so the veins showed blue on her inner arm. Her arm looked swollen below the handkerchief. "Sure. I told you."

    "Then you know why I was here."

    "Yes."

    "I tried to get that money, ahead of you."

    "All right." I sucked at her wrist again.

    "It was such a fine plan, Jake. Marve was such a liar. You'd come here and I would hide with the suitcase. You'd think Marve had lied to you again. You'd go back to the shack… and I'd get away." Her voice had not risen once, she spoke levelly. "You're a fool to waste your time like this. There's no way to stop that poison, Jake. No way at all. You're wasting your time-and you're such a fool."

    "It just bit you. I'll get that poison out."

    Her hand touched my hair again. "Oh, you're such a nice guy, Jake. How'd you ever get mixed up in such an awful mess?"

    "It was easy."

    "You ought to be glad the snake got me."

    "Why?"

    "What I did to you. You ought to be glad."

    "Well, I'm not."

    "You're a fool. Such a fool."

    She pressed her hand against my hair again.

    

    

    "I was hiding out there in the scrub," Lily said, speaking slowly, tiredly, as if she were so tired she could hardly speak at all. "I saw Marve come back dragging the man he had killed. I saw you argue. When you dragged Marve back into the shack, I walked up close where I could hear what you were saying in there." Her laugh was as tired as her voice. "I heard Marve. He acted scared. He fooled you. Well… he fooled me too. I fell for it, just the way you did. Just the way he knew that you would." She shook her head. "Marve's a country boy. They call him an ignorant cracker. I've heard them call him that, but he's smart. It's a mean cruel kind of smartness. But Marve never was afraid of nobody, because he always knew if he couldn't beat 'em, he'd get back at them somehow, because he could think better than they could."

    "He's just a bastard, and he thinks like a bastard."

    She lifted her face to mine. "Look where we are, Jake. Both of us. Look at us. We tried to take Marve. Oh, God, look at us."

    "Don't say that."

    "I don't like to say it. I wish I didn't have to. But I'm so much smarter than you are right now, Jake. I guess my mind is clearer than it has ever been in all my life. I see everything. Clear. The way it really is. Not the way I want it to be. But you don't. You don't see yet what's going to happen to you because of Marve."

    "No."

    "Poor Jake."

    "Don't say that."

    "Don't you see it yet, Jake? He sent you running over here, sweating, thinking what you were going to do with all that money. He was laughing at you, Jake. You had a knife at his vitals. You could have killed him and he was laughing at you, because he knew you weren't going to kill him. You were going to come running over here and this coral snake was going to get you. And it would have, Jake. There's just one reason it didn't. Because I was even a bigger fool than you. I should have known. I've known Marve all my life. I know what he is, what he does. I should have known. But I ran over here ahead of you. I pulled out the suitcase, couldn't wait to open it. I threw back the top and reached in. The snake got me. Easy. It came up like a jack-in-the-box."

    "You're going to be all right, Lily."

    "No. It's no good, Jake. It ain't no good at all. You can't get that money from Marve. And I ain't going to be all right. That's all that matters now, Jake. You just got to see it. dear. Like I do."

    I wiped my hand across my face. "He's not going to get away with it. I won't let him." I grabbed her and pulled her close. "You're not going to get away from me, Lily. Not any more."

    "Don't, Jake. You act like a little boy. You won't believe what is the truth."

    "You don't know, Lily. Because you don't trust me."

    For the first time since I had known her, she smiled and there was no guile in it, no deceit.

    "I know. I trust you. I do. You want to feel better, Jake? Will it make you feel better if I say it? I seen you when you walked up to our shack and stood there in the sun a-looking at me. Before you even asked about Marve, I was looking at you. And inside I knowed. You was what I been all my life a-looking for, Jake. I knowed it, right then. Right from the first."

    I worked over her arm. My laugh was more bitter than the taste of her blood.

    "Sure. You acted like it. You showed it, just fine."

    "No. I didn't. I never meant to."

    "Oh, God. Why not?"

    "I wish you could see it, Jake, all clear like I do. Clear and plain-because it don't matter no more, that's why I see it. I couldn't never let you know what I felt about you. No… God no. I had love. I knew what love was. I had Marve Pooser. Always. I knew what that did to me. I wanted something else-something you couldn't give me. I wanted out of here-away from Marve. And away from the scrub and everything I ever was. I never would have told you, Jake. Only now it don't matter."

    "Now you're being a fool. We can get you out of here. I can get you to that boat. I can get you downriver to a doctor."

    She smiled faintly. "That sounds so nice, Jake. You sound so nice."

    "I'll do it. Come on. Can you walk at all?"

    "Poor Jake. You just won't give up, will you? It's no good. With a coral snake it's different than with a rattler. The poison travels quicker or something-it's more deadly."

    "Stop talking like that. Let's get out of here."

    "Jake. You know how far it is downriver to a doctor?"

    "All I know is we're wasting time. Let's get out of here." I stared at her and the word burst from my mouth. "Marve."

    Her head jerked up. "What about him?"

    "He's been catching these snakes all his life. He caught this one. He bragged he knew an antidote."

    Her voice was low. "There ain't none."

    "There's got to be. If there is, Marve will know it. I'll get him. I'll bring him over here."

    She sat a moment, staring through the window into the yard. At last she turned, looking at me. Her dark eyes moved, her gaze went over me, and there was something odd in them that I didn't even try to understand.

    "Yes, Jake. You go get him. You bring him over here."

    I looked at her, at the blood dripping from her arm every time her heart beat. I lifted her arm, told her to hold it up.

    "You gonna be all right?"

    "Sure. I'm fine, Jake. You go get Marve."

    I placed the rifle against the wall beside her. I went to the door, looked back once. It was getting dark in the room. By the time I reached the edge of the clearing, I was running.

    

    

    I didn't know it was so far along the log trail to Marve's shack. It seemed forever and the darkness settled so quickly. I began to be afraid that in the dark I would miss the shack and would waste away Lily's life running through the eternal stretch of jack oaks. I was aware of nothing except putting my feet in front of me, pounding along the trail, feeling the jack oak limbs reach for me, snag me and scratch me as I ran through them. They hung closely over the road. I breathed through my mouth, staring ahead of me for some sign of the shack. I had never seen the darkness settle so quickly.