A Moment to Prey (18 page)

    I ran into the clearing before I realized I was at the shack.

    I was up the steps and crossing the stoop before I realized what a fool thing I had done. Marve was in there, but if he were free I was as good as dead.

    The door was closed as I had left it. By now I knew external signs meant nothing where Marve Pooser was concerned. He used the most innocent-looking bait in the traps he set.

    I stopped, standing outside the door. My breath burned in my throat and I leaned against the wall a moment. I pushed the safety off the automatic, kicked open the door.

    Marve was where I had left him on the floor.

    I leaned against the door jamb, staring at him. I breathed deeply.

    Marve laughed. "What's the matter, Jake-boy? Did you find the suitcase?"

    I was panting so hard I could not answer. I moved to the table, lighted a kerosene lantern. I stood beside the table while the lantern sputtered and then filled the room with yellow light.

    Marve was bleeding on the floor from his wrists, but he had not stopped working with the wire. He did not stop working with it now while he lay there laughing at me.

    "Did my pet get you good, Jake? Is that what you come back here to tell me? Come a-running, didn't you, Jake boy? You willing to trade your life now for that money. Huh? Is that it? You want ole Marve to fix that snakebite? Sure. Only Marve has got a price. I'm going to keep my money. All my money."

    "You can keep it." I could barely speak yet.

    "Now you're smart. Now you're almost as smart as this ole cracker
boy!'
He writhed. "You better cut these wires and let's get at that snakebite, Jake-boy. We keep fooling around, it might be too late." His laugh mocked me. "I'd hate that, Jake. Oh, I'd hate that."

    I knelt beside him, worked with the wires.

    I swallowed hard, trying to keep my voice level. "I'm trying to figure like you, Marve. I figure the minute you get an arm free you're going to start."

    "Stay fluid, Jake, that's all."

    "So I'm warning you. Before I free this arm, I got something to tell you. I didn't get snakebit, Marve."

    Marve stared at me. The agony in my eyes kept him from saying anything.

    "Lily," I said. "Not me. Lily."

    "You're lying."

    "I wish to God-"

    "You got to be lying." He was working at the wires again so they got slick with his blood.

    "I'm not lying, Marve. She was outside. She heard you lying to me about that suitcase. She fell for it, too. She wanted that money. It would buy her-what?" My bitter laugh choked in my throat. "It would buy her freedom from this place, escape from what you made of her."

    "She liked it. She liked what I done to her."

    "We got no time to argue that. She opened your suitcase that you set up for me. The snake bit her."

    "Where is she?"

    I loosed the wire. "She's over there. Waiting for us."

    He did not even stop to massage his bleeding wrists. He unwound the other wire while I cut his ankles free.

    "You know how to save her, Marve. You better get ready."

    "Let's go." He stood up.

    I held the gun on him.

    His mouth twisted. "What now?"

    "We're playing this straight, Marve. She's over there. She may be dying. You're going to her-"

    "I said it. Let's go."

    "This is just to warn you. I ain't thinking about that money right now. I'll shoot you now, Marve. I been with you until I'm just about what you are."

    He met my gaze. "All right. We play it your way. What you want?"

    "Light that other lantern."

    He lighted it, moving swiftly with that cat-like grace that needed the whole scrub country to move around in.

    "All right. You walk ahead of me, Marve. There's no safety on this gun. The minute you try anything, I'm pressing the trigger."

    "So all right."

    "I'm just telling you."

    We moved out of the cabin, Marve striding ahead of me, lantern swinging at his side, shafts of light leaping.

    He moved across the clearing.

    "Not that way, Marve."

    He glanced over his shoulder, lantern light showing his snarl. "Shortcut. Nobody would use that winding road if he knows the country."

    "Okay. Just the first trick."

    He did not answer, plunged forward, swinging his lantern. I trotted behind him, staying far enough so that I could stop, close enough so that he could not dart into the darkness one way, hurling his lantern the other.

    My legs trembled and the muscles ached. After a while there was no reality except the lantern swinging ahead of me and the pound of our feet in the lifeless sand.

    Palmettos caught at the lantern, almost pulled it from my hand.

    The night was clear and the stars were already appearing above the gray tops of the jack oaks. I smelled the dry smell of the scrub, and the smell of Lily's blood that lingered in my nostrils, and stronger than anything was the smell of death. Lily and the thought of death. I ran faster, coming nearer to Marve so that he glanced over his shoulder, troubled.

    Soon there were no sounds in the night except our heavy breathing. I was gasping for breath and I saw Marve's shoulders heave as he ran.

    It was a hot, breathless night and I thought about Lily. In my mind I could see her sitting in the old house, waiting to die with the rifle propped beside her where I had left it. She waited to die because she felt that she could not live with the poison in her and she did not believe that anything could save her. She did not believe that I could save her, and I thought bitterly that she was right. I could not save her. I could only run through the scrub and bring Marve to her, and Marve had never done anything for her but hurt her. She was alone and dying and I ran for Marve. Maybe I should have brought her with me. No. It is not good to move with poison in you. If you move the heart beats faster and the poison moves faster, and death moves faster. "Hurry," I gasped at Marve.

    He did not answer. The lantern swung, bounced along at his side. His shoulders heaved and I could hear his breathing and my breathing and I felt the limbs striking against me, and the trees were eternal and though we ran, it was like running in a nightmare. Nothing changed. The trees stretched unchanging in the flat dead land.

    I began to be afraid that Marve had tricked me, that he ran into the scrub to lose me, and he did not care if Lily lived or died. I lifted the gun, thinking if we did not reach the clearing soon I would kill him. I was going to kill him without speaking his name, or giving him a reason. When I pulled the trigger and he died, he would know the reason. It would not need a name.

    

    

    We came out into the clearing and crossed the yard under the cavernous darkness of the huge old trees. The light fell against the rotting walls of the house.

    We went across the porch and into the foyer and through it to the living room.

    The light pitched in there ahead of us. It lighted the gray walls, the fieldstone fireplace, the still-open suitcase on the broken floor, the welt of red and black and yellow that had been the coral snake. Across the room against the wall beneath the window, Lily sat. She had the rifle across her legs.

    Her head was back and the lantern light shown in her hair. It hurt to look at her and think the poison was in her and that she might die. She would die unless Marve Pooser knew how to save her.

    I forgot about Marve and strode across toward her. I was almost to her when I remembered that I had turned my back on Marve.

    I heeled around to face him.

    I didn't have to worry about Marve. He was staring at Lily. God knew what he was seeing. The same things I saw.

    The light in her face, the fever in her eyes, the glinting in her hair, and maybe a lot of things I never saw-all the things he had done to her, the cruel and hurting things. She lay there now with the fever showing in her black eyes.

    "Lily. Oh my God, Lily."

    He walked stiff-legged toward her.

    "You killed me," she said. Her voice had fever in it, but no more life than when she had talked to me.

    "No, Lily. God no. I never wanted to hurt you, Lily. Never wanted to."

    "You always hurt me."

    "Yes. God forgive me, Lily. I always hurt you. I never wanted to."

    "You know how to cure her?" My voice shook. It beat against him. "You know what to do, you get to doing it."

    He knelt on one knee. He looked around at me for a moment and I saw the tears glint in his eyes, and the hatred.

    He turned back.

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

    "Sure. I'm going to be all right. You killed me, Marve."

    "No, Lily. Listen to me. I love you, Lily. I ain't no good. God knows I never said different. But I loved you. I always loved you. You was my woman, Lily. You was a beautiful girl, a beautiful cracker girl. You were like me. You were my kind. I loved you."

    "Damn you." My voice broke across his. "Do something."

    Lily held up her arm, and the blood glistening in the lamplight moved slowly from the cut in her wrist.

    "It bit me there, Marve. My wrist. Your smart little snake. He knew just where to bite me. Did you tell him where to bite me, Marve?"

    "Oh God, Lily. Don't hate me?"

    "I do hate you. I guess now I hate you more than I ever loved you in all my life."

    "No, Lily."

    I grabbed his shoulder, shook him. "You said you knew. You said you could save her."

    Marve shook his head and tears ran down his face. "I needed so much, Lily. That there's why I put you off. That there's why I left here and left you here. I needed money. And I got the money, Lily. Money that would have saved my mother's life. She was sick in her body and that's what ruined her mind. I know that, Lily. If'n there had been money, she wouldn't a-been the crazy Pooser woman for people to laugh at."

    "Yes, Marve," said the empty voice.

    "But I got it now, Lily. I got money. I can have everything I wanted. And I will have it. And I'm taking you with me, Lily. God help me, I'm taking you with me."

    "No, Marve."

    "Lily. For God's sake, don't talk that way. We got to get you out of here. I'll get you to a doctor. I'll buy you doctors. They'll save you Lily."

    I caught his shoulder and hurled him backward so he sprawled out on the floor.

    "Doctor." The word had to work its way through my throat. "Doctor? What are you talking about? You got to save her. You know how."

    "Doctor," Marve whispered. "We got to get her to a doctor."

    I stared at him, my eyes widening and the sickness spreading within me.

    Lily's empty voice cut between us. "Tell him, Marve. Why don't you tell him?"

    "Tell me?" I moaned as though she'd hit me. "Tell me what?"

    "Poor Jake. There is no cure for this poison. Marve knows it. Marve's known it all along."

    He got to his knees slowly, watching her.

    "Marve, is that true? Don't you know anything to do?"

    Lily's voice was gentle. "You did everything there was to do, Jake."

    I put out my arm to steady myself against the wall.

    "Why'd you let me go for him, Lily? Oh God, I could have been getting you to a doctor."

    She rolled her head back and forth. "He's going to tell me where the money is." She lifted the rifle, fixing it on a level with Marve's chest.

    He stared at her, at first flunking she was joking. The rifle didn't waver.

    He said, "Stop it, Lily."

    "No." Her voice was deadly. "I'm going to die, Marve. Because you killed me. But I'm not going to die for no reason."

    "We can get you to a doctor."

    "You can't get me to any doctor. We ain't going anywhere, Marve, you and me. We're going to stay here until you tell me where the money is."

    "Lily. God knows I killed two men-"

    "Yes. And me."

    "I can't turn that money over to Jake Richards. I just can't do it, Lily. You. I'll give it to you. I swear I will, if you'll let me take you to a doctor."

    "We're not going. Not until you tell me." She glanced up at me. "You haven't died yet, Jake. You don't need to know."

    "Lily, we got to get you to a doctor."

    "You're wasting the time, Jake. You go out in the yard, with that lantern so we can see you're staying out there, and then Marve will tell me where the money is."

    "Will you let us take you to a doctor after that, Lily?"

    She stared up at me, her eyes dry. Finally she nodded tiredly.

    "I'll be outside, Lily."

    I walked out of there, carrying the lantern. I went across the porch, walked out to the first tree. I leaned against it, staring at that window. It was silent in there for a long time. I moved away from the tree at last, looked into through the window. I saw Lily, but Marve was not there.

    "Lily. Where is he?"

    "It's all right, Jake. In a little while."

    I went back to the tree. In the silence I heard an owl screech, then I heard Lily's voice in the room.

    The sound of that rifle was the loudest thing I ever heard in my life. It was the end of the world. I fell against the tree, shaking.

    My first thought was that Marve had grabbed the rifle away from Lily and was shooting at me.

    Then I heard Marve cry out.

    I ran across the yard, the lantern banging against my leg.