A Moment to Prey (4 page)

    

    

    She sat on a stool and watched me eat. She crossed her knees and leaned her elbow against the pineboard counter.

    Behind her the counter was lined with candies, chewing gum, peanuts and pocket combs. When I pulled the fish fillet apart with my knife and fork, she watched. When I put it in my mouth, fork still in my left hand, her gaze followed my hand from the plate upward. She came over and refilled my tin cup with coffee, went back to the stool.

    I heard the fat man cursing as he clomped along the pier in his boots. He pulled open the screen door and entered the dining room. He did not look toward me.

    "Lily. That old man of yours ain't worth a goddamn."

    She laughed, but it never touched her black eyes. "So? What else is new, Mr. Bullock?"

    By now he had seen her knees. A quick flash of anger showed in her eyes. She tried to pull down the dress. He threw back his head and laughed.

    "Lily. You're the best-looking goddamn woman from one end of this river to the other."

    "One thing, you'd know about that all right, Mr. Bullock."

    "Your old lady must have sneaked around some, Lily, about nineteen or twenty years ago. I can't believe you're anything out of Henry Sistrunk."

    Lily swiped at the pineboard counter. She did not answer.

    He had bumped over a chair and now leaned against the bar beside her. He caught her knee in his fist and squeezed it until she bit her lip to keep from screaming. She slid off the stool and moved away from him.

    "Come here, Lily. God almighty, you don't have to run like a scared cat every time you see me. You ask anybody, Lily. Old Charlie Bullock is a man can do you some good in this country. Lily, why you think I come out here to fish?"

    "I reckon I know by now."

    "Sure you do. But you stay away from me like I got some kinda disease. Hell, Lily, I'm clean."

    Her jaw had tightened, her mouth was straight. She glanced toward me once, and stepped back against the wall. Her hand touched a steel fishing rod. She lifted it, slid her hand along it until she held its cork stock.

    Bullock threw back his head and laughed.

    "Put that thing down, Lily. Let's you and me have a drink. Come on, Lily. Have a drink. Old Henry's out there with Judge Truman trying to get that damn motor to run. Baby, I got better things to do. I got you on my mind, Lily. I got you on my mind so bad I can't think about nothing else. Sure I'm fifty, Lily. But that ain't the way you make me feel. I think about you out here on this river, rubbing up against some buck that don't even know what you are. Hell, Lily, it makes me sick to my stomach, thinking about some young buck getting to you-"

    He walked forward. Lily lifted the rod. "Nobody gets to me, Mr. Bullock."

    "Oh, stop that crap, Lily. A river girl like you, a hot little backwoods gal. God, I know about you gals. You start burning up the haystacks by the time you're eight or ten. Hell, Lily, you tell me what you want and I'll give it to you."

    "You ain't got what I want."

    "Don't say that, Lily. Don't you know I mean it? You got me crazy for you. Hell, half the time I don't know whether I just left this fish camp or whether I'm on my way back out here. I got to have you, Lily. You name what you want. You tell me. New dresses? A new Ford?" He stepped closer. "How'd you like that, Lily, a brand new Ford all your own? You could burn up the roads, Lily. All the way from here to Ocala. I'll give you a new Ford. That's what I'll give you. Only don't fight no more. Put down that damn pole. You know I got to have you, Lily. You know I got to."

    He stepped closer, sweat oozing along his face and ringing the armpits of his expensive jacket. His clothes gleamed and he breathed hard through his mouth.

    He put up his left arm to ward off the fishing pole and reached for the front of her dress. He caught it, and the fabric ripped.

    The sound of the tearing dress was loud in the room. Flies banged against the screen. Out at the end of the dock they got the motor started and then it died again. Bullock kept muttering, "God, Lily. Oh, my God, Lily, you're beautiful. You're so damned beautiful."

    "Let me go."

    Her voice was sharp and hard and cold.

    He was staring at her. He did not even hear her. "God, Lily. God, your breasts."

    She twisted, writhed free and sprang past him. Her dress was ripped all the way down the front. He caught at her as she spun past him, but she put her hand against his face and shoved.

    He staggered against the stools and upset them all along the counter. He toppled on his back and rolled there for a minute like a fat bug. He was laughing, yelling. He pulled himself up and lunged at her.

    She brought that pole down across the side of his face.

    I felt the base of my spine turn to buttermilk. All along I'd known she was going to use that thing, but I didn't know what it would be like until she did.

    She laid his face open. For a full second he went on laughing and yelling and pawing for her. Blood spurted from his face and temple all over the front of the counter. He caught at his face with one hand and the blood surged between his fingers and ran down the back all over his expensive jacket. He began to rock back and forth on his knees when the pain finally hit him.

    He cried out just once. I had heard that kind of cry once, long ago, aboard a carrier. A bomb struck and the ship flew out in atoms and splinters and pieces of hell, and the ones that were killed died quietly, and the ones that were badly wounded blacked out. But the ones who were mutilated cried out from their guts because they weren't hurt badly enough to die, and they were too ripped up to live. That's the way they cried out, just once, before they crumpled with arms over their heads as Bullock did now.

    Henry Sistrunk and Judge Truman came cat-running along the narrow dock. The door screeched and slammed behind them. For a moment they looked at Bullock, then at the rod in Lily's hand. Truman glanced toward me, then back at Bullock. "You poor bastard," he said. He went to the telephone. Sistrunk never moved his gaze from Lily.

    Henry's face wrinkled and his mouth trembled. His hands shook and when he knotted his fists, his arms quivered.

    "My God, Lily. My God, Lily." He said it over and over, staring at her and at the rod in her hand.

    She went on standing there, the front of her dress torn open, her face white and set. Her mouth was parted and she was panting. She did not speak.

    Sistrunk's voice was a sick whisper. He spoke against the sound of Judge Truman talking urgently to an Ocala doctor on the telephone. I sat with a bite of fish on my fork, but I didn't eat it. Bottle flies nuzzled the door screen and the river slapped against the boats along the dock.

    "God, Lily. You know what you done? You know jest what you done to me, Lily? Did you stop and think what you done to me? God knows I reckon there ain't a more important man in this here state than Mr. Charlie Bullock. What you want, girl? What in God's name you want? You know what he can do to me, Lily? My God, I might as well close up. All my life out here on this river and it ain't no good. Five minutes and you fix it so it ain't no good."

    She stared at her father. There was everything in the world in her face, and nothing. She dropped the rod and turned, walking out of the restaurant.

    Sistrunk stared after her for a long time. Then he walked rigidly to where Bullock was crouched with his arms over his head.

    Sistrunk knelt beside him. "Let me help you up, Mister Charlie. It's going to be all right. The judge is gettin' a doctor out here. It's going to be all right. I feel real sure it's going to be all right."

    Bullock straightened slightly, swung out, backhanding Sistrunk across the head. Sistrunk lost his balance and fell backward.

    The judge came back from the telephone. He stood looking down at Bullock. "You didn't have to do that, Charlie," he said. "Doing that didn't help a goddamn thing."

    

    

    I finished my lunch and left a dollar beside the plate. Then I walked out into the yard and saw her scrubbing at the skillet on the back porch. She had put on another old dress and she was scrubbing with a scouring pad. Her black hair lay about her face, hiding it. She was using some of her anger on that skillet, trying to destroy it or herself.

    I walked to the edge of the porch. She looked up and pushed her hair back from her face.

    "The dinner was fine," I said. "Thank you."

    "Just throw money."

    I looked up at her. "You really love it around here, don't you?"

    "Why not? Haven't you heard? It's God's country. The Indians gave it back to Him."

    "If I hated a place as much as you do, I'd clear out."

    Those black eyes struck against mine. "That's fine. Why don't you?"

    I had to say it, I should have played it light and hard the way she was doing. But she could shove her anger back, I couldn't. "I came here for something. When I get it, I'll leave."

    She shook her hair back from her face again. Her eyes narrowed. Her face tilted, her gaze stretched across the endless miles of the scrub.

    "I think you might as well get out. I don't think much of you, mister."

    I shrugged. "You won't ever take me with one of those fish poles."

    "No." She dampened that sullen mouth. "That's what I mean. It takes a man to try for it. I'll give old Charlie Bullock that."

    "I'll take what I want."

    "No. You just sat there. There's a word for what you are."

    I laughed at her. "That's what's eating you, isn't it? I didn't jump up and take a poke at your pot-bellied Romeo."

    "You could have stopped him. He'd have stopped if you'd just walked over there."

    "He'd have stopped if you'd just rolled back on your heels, too."

    Her jaw tilted. I saw a muscle work in the side of her face. Her black eyes glittered. "Why don't you get out of here? I thought you were somebody."

    "Sure. I might have thought you were somebody, too, if you'd told me where Marve Pooser is. But you're just like all these other crackers, baby. Just like 'em. Being good looking, that don't make you any different. It just makes you think you're different."

    She stared at me, replacing the skillet on the shelf because she could not go on holding it. She trembled all over and her eyes hated me, more than she had ever hated Charlie Bullock.

    

    

    I drifted along the road, going up-river. Cars passed me and the dust clouded over me and settled on the cabbage palmettos and the flat leaves of the water oaks.

    I passed some houses but they were all closed and silent. Hounds ran out barking at me but when I spoke to them they cringed, tightening tail between their legs and streaking under the porches. I called out, but there was no answer and my voice trailed off across the flat scrub country. I could have understood it if it had been Saturday. Everybody would have been in town. But this was the middle of the week, fields unplowed, stills unstoked.

    I went along the narrow road beside the river, watching for a mail box or any sign of a house back off the road. It was about three in the afternoon, the sun slanting hot across the trees when I saw a farmhouse. Cars were parked in the road and in the yard.

    It was quiet and breathlessly still. At first I thought it was a funeral, but there was no sign of a hearse. Nor was there any feeling of mourning about the place.

    I passed the cars and walked through the gate into the yard. At first there were no women in sight but then I saw their faces behind the screened windows and in the doorways.

    There were these backwoods men all over the yard. They leaned against car fenders, squatted in the shade, or sprawled on the porch. They were not talking.

    I went to the steps. I felt the way they were watching me, their eyes sun-faded and cracker-mean.

    An old man sat in the only rocking chair on the porch. His head was bald and spotted and his mouth leaked tobacco juice into his gray-streaked beard. He chewed steadily and watched me walk across the yard. I stood beside a crepe-myrtle bush and looked up at the old man's blue eyes.

    "Do you know Marve Pooser?"

    The old man chewed for some minutes and stared at me all that time. Sweat formed in my hair and trickled down my face.

    "What you want with Marve, mister?"

    It was the first time anybody admitted I had asked that question. All I got was another question, but I felt like it was a break.

    "I've got to see him. I've been looking for him."

    "Yes. Last three days."

    "That's right. It's very important that I see him."

    "Must be." The old man punched two fingers hard against his mouth and spat across the porch. "Been bothering folks up and down the river, far away as Fort McCoy."

    "I didn't mean to bother anybody. I'm just looking for Marve."

    "What you don't understand, mister, is that we'uns out here don't like folks coming in here pestering us. You been pestering us'uns till we just lost our patience."

    I breathed in sharply. "That's too damn bad. It's too damn bad when people can't even answer a question."

    "Why should we answer your questions, mister? We don't know you. We never asked you to come out here."

    "All I want to know is if you know where Marve Pooser is."

    "If we'un planned to tell you, we'd of told you right off, now wouldn't we? If Marve Pooser wanted to see you, why I reckon he'd come to see you. You wouldn't have to go around like this, frettin' folks."