The Brat (11 page)

T
HE
COTTONMOUTH writhed about in the water. A deep silence closed down. I checked the carbine. There were no more shells. I’d acted like a damned fool.

I was only a short distance into the swamplands, yet it had me on edge. A threatening place. I knew I could easily get lost within spitting distance of civilization. I couldn’t let it bother me.

With the kicker going, I turned back. It was then I realized I’d lost the knife Rona had left with me.

I had to take it easy—relax.

I couldn’t throw off the tense excitement.

Out of the channel into bright daylight, I took bearings and headed around the blunt-tipped isle of jungle growth, deciding to nose across the thick saw grass.

It was early noon. I kept the motor idled and watched carefully, bearing east.

I refused to think about that snake, or the fact that I’d traveled in a circle without once knowing. I turned my thoughts back to Evis, and the hate came into me stronger than ever.

I was running on hate. Maybe that was wrong. But the tank was full of hate and I was freewheeling.

• • •

A half-hour later I saw the trail—a broad trail, wider than the beam of a canoe. Fresh urgency came into me. It could have been an air boat. Slicing through the tall grass, it led straight off across an endless plain. There was no end in sight. It went on and on.

I started along the trail of the air boat, then slowed the kicker, shut it off. When I checked the gas tank, it showed close to empty.

I sat there sweating and cursing, staring out across the misting distance where Evis and Kaylor must have traveled not long before. What chance did I have of finding them, stopping them?

Winding up the kicker, I turned back in the direction of Hagar’s Point. It took me through jungled territory again, winding channels.

From some distance I heard a speeding car.

It was a minor shock, out here, far from automobiles and highways. Yet, until you were deep into the swamp, there was the chance you could be very near a road without sensing it.

Patiently working the boat toward where the sound had been, I wondered if it were Hagar’s Point. Then, coming abruptly out of a channel, I nearly rammed an old wooded pier, clustered around with boats and skiffs, set against a steep black bank with pine stairs leading to the level of ground above.

I shut off the kicker, tied up, and walked carefully to the top of the steps.

I was certain that the police were out after me, now. They could have already converged down here, away from the main highways, but I couldn’t be sure of.

I wondered what Sheriff DeGreef was doing? I knew I was taking a chance, landing anywhere. And I realized I was thinking like a criminal: I’m as smart as they are. The bastards will have to catch me, if they find me. They’ll have a fight on their hands.

And the hate was for them, too.

It was a small landing. A sign above the pier read
Tom’s Landing—Bait & Beer
. A gas pump was here apparently for the use of fishermen. It stood under an oak grayly against the forest line. A general store hulked near an intersection of dirt roads. Several houses leaned squarely in the sun, and a bare-boarded bar advertised beer and wine.

Every wasted minute gave Evis and Kaylor a real start toward hiding in the swamps. It had me plenty worried.

Two fishermen, seated on a felled cabbage palm off the road, spoke together in low tones. I moved on down the road past a ramshackle house to the gas pump under the shading water oak. A grizzled, brown-faced old man with dirty gray hair sat on an upturned wooden box reading a newspaper. He wore overalls and heavy box shoes. He looked up as I came along. By his feet, a gleaming new leather battery radio softly played pop music. It sounded strange amidst the dirt of the back country.

“Like to buy some gas for my kicker. The boat’s down by the pier.”

His eyes were sharp as he wiped his nose with the back of a rough, meaty hand.

“How much you need?”

“Ten gallons. I’ll need a can, too.”

“Don’t know if I got a can.”

“Could you check and see?”

He grunted, stood up, and I eyed the newspaper in his hand. He started to put it down. I wanted badly to read it, see what was happening concerning me. He rolled it up, glanced at me again, jammed it into a deep pocket and went inside an old shed. I heard him rattling around in there. He returned carrying a battered, rusty ten-gallon can.

“What kind of motor you got?”

I told him, listening to the radio now, hoping for a news broadcast. They never came when you wanted them.

The old man headed for the pump.

I waited, looking around Tom’s Landing, as it roasted under the noonday sun. The houses appeared unlived in, vines fingering their sides….

“… pause for station identification. In a moment we’ll bring you the latest news release on the St. Petersburg robbery. You folks down there in …”

It was right then that I became aware of the white sedan. I nearly ran.

I’d been staring at it for maybe five or ten seconds, but it hadn’t registered—perhaps because the whole car was clothed in a thick film of dirt. It was parked beside one of the old houses, half in the shade. It was DeGreef’s car, without a doubt, but there was no sign of the sheriff.

I had to get out of here as fast as possible. I hurried over to the man with the gas. He’d just left the oil rack and was pumping gas into the can now.

I tried to listen to the radio. They were working on a new soap detergent that smelled like strawberries. They sang a song about strawberries and breakfast dishes to the tune of
I’ll Be Down To Get You In a Taxi, Honey
. The man kept watching me, pumping the gas. Finally he had the can filled, and capped it.

“There you go.”

It cost me everything I had. My hands trembled as I picked up the can, trying to take it slow. There was no damned handle.

“You got a guide?” the man said, rattling the change.

“No. No guide.”

I started walking away.

“Be glad to fix you up with a guide.”

“Thanks. I’ll be all right.”

“Shouldn’t go traipsing around in there without you have no guide.” He started after me. I looked back. He spat, shuffling rapidly. “How’d you ever find this place without no guide?”

“Just—fishing.”

I kept going. He stopped, scratched his head, spat again, hauled out his newspaper and started back toward his oak tree. The paper was probably a week old anyway.

I kept an eye out for DeGreef, but he was nowhere in sight. Maybe over in the bar.

I walked quickly toward the boat, carrying the gas can in both hands, the pungent smell thick around me. It was heavy as hell and I wanted to run.

I came down the pier, reached the boat, set the can down and looked at Hugo DeGreef, standing in the stern.

“Hello, Sullivan.”

• • •

I turned, with no place to go. Then I looked at him again. He just stood there with that self-satisfied expression on his red face. He was still wearing the dark gray suit, but he looked a little tired. His tie was loose. He stepped forward in the rocking boat, picked up the can of gas on the pier. He grunted a little, but he picked it up lightly and placed it in the stern, then sat down by the kicker and looked at me. His hair gleamed like bright sand.

“Get in the boat,” he said.

There was absolutely nothing I could do and he knew it.

“Saw you when I was down the road, about a half-mile,” he said. “You were out there about six hundred yards, coming along a channel. Didn’t know it, did you?”

I wiped sweat off my face.

“Been waiting. Come on, get in.”

“What do you mean?”

“Get in the boat. We’re going out there together.”

I didn’t move.

“That’s right,” he said. “We’ll look around in there together—just the two of us, Sullivan.”

I thought again of trying to run and then remembered the gun he carried, and the way his eyes looked. He was mad clear through, holding it down, trapped inside him.

He spoke almost gently. “Get in the boat.”

I climbed off the pier into the boat and sat down in the next seat from the bow, watching him. The bastard had to make only one wrong move. He nodded, took the cap off the gas tank, uncapped the can and looked around for a way to pour out the gas.

He checked under the stern seat with an exasperated expression, then grinned and came up with an aluminum funnel. He had an eye on me all the time he filled the tank. Then he sat down, holding the steering rod of the motor.

“No point you trying something like you did at the hotel, Sullivan. Let’s put it this way. I’m a good shot. I didn’t try to hit you before.” He showed me his teeth. “That’s all under the bridge. Now I
will
try. I won’t kill you—I’ll just put one in your knee.”

It would be great out there with him.

“You see?” he said. “I’ve got you. It always happens this way. Now I’m going to get her—wherever she is. This thing’s a mess, but I’m catching up with it now. Why don’t you tell me where she’s supposed to meet you?”

I was silent.

He shrugged, turned and got the kicker started and told me to loose the line from the pier. After that, he headed the boat away from Tom’s Landing, directly across the same swamp area I’d come from.

• • •

For a time he kept the boat pointed straight out, cutting around hammocks, but always aiming into the swamp. The early afternoon sun burning everything. The country had taken on a heat haze now. It was dazzling. It hadn’t been this hot before, and I knew some of it was how I felt—trapped and with time running out.

He watched me steadily as if he were waiting for something.

We came close to the area where I’d seen the air-boat trail. He turned the motor off and the boat drifted. It was very quiet, but far off in the swamp you could hear the sound of birds, blending and rising into the sunlight.

When he spoke, it was as if the sound of his voice was scraped off the edge of thick meat, and his eyes were full of accusation.

“Going to tell me about it?”

“Tell you what?”

“Look,” he said. “You’re caught, Sullivan. You stole and you murdered. You’re a wanted man. That’s bad. My job is to take you in. Only, in a way, I’m stepping outside the law—not doing that right off. I’m working it my way. I know this country a little. Live here now, and I used to spend vacations down here. I like fishing in the Glades. They needed a good man down here, and now they got one. Me. I run for sheriff, and I won. It’s going to stay that way.” He paused, then said, “I don’t like your kind at all, Sullivan.”

“You told me that.”

It was quiet for a time. We drifted.

“We’re together now,” he said. “Choke that down. I’m doing my job—and I never failed at a job yet. I’m going to find your wife and that money. Then I don’t give a damn. It’s obvious you haven’t got it. She must have it.”

I kept silent. If we did find her, there was no telling what might happen. I had to see her alone.

Then suddenly I knew why he had turned the kicker off on this very spot. It was because he knew. He knew about the air boat. If I’d been able to find out these things, so had he. I began to hate him a little more.

Rona would never find us. There was nothing she’d be able to do now. Well, that’s how I’d wanted it.

DeGreef started the kicker, turned the boat along the smooth water, following the trail of the air boat.

S
HERIFF
D
E
G
REEF
was a man of his word. I could tell that much. He’d go down shooting, and I was the target he’d picked. He was playing some sweet little game all his own, and he had me in a pocket.

It was just great.

Whenever I so much as moved my arm, he’d flash a look at me, flat lips stretched across his teeth.

He sat hunched over the motor, driving the boat ahead as if it had become a part of him that hurt, but that he was determined to ignore.

We came through some incredible country. There was a lot of open water, but he didn’t turn the boat a hair from the direct eastern course. It was as if somebody had whispered in his ear.

I tried to keep my back to him, but every now and then I’d look around, see if maybe he was worked up enough to plug me in the back. He’d be sitting there as if he were stuffed and mounted, grimly hanging onto the steering rod of that motor.

For a long time we went in silence. I kept thinking how Evis had probably come through this same water not too long before. It got down into me. It began to raise hell.

DeGreef shouted above the motor. “How you feel, Sullivan?”

The hell with him. I wondered what kind of crazy enjoyment he was getting out of this?

What did it matter? He had me, didn’t he?

• • •

We came past a gator, riled from sun-stretched quietude. He slid along through the water, leaving a wake like that of a small boat, and he looked nothing at all like a log, the way they’re supposed to. I watched him move slowly off toward a low, mangrove-covered stretch of island. Then I spotted two more alligators—and realized none of them were gators when one lifted his long dripping ragged snout and clapped at the air. They were crocodiles.

“Sullivan?”

I turned and looked at DeGreef.

“Sullivan, why did you kill Ray Jefferies?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Don’t try to kid me, Sullivan. I know you haven’t got the money—but you’re guilty as hell.”

He fell silent again. I kept figuring how I could get rid of him. There was no way. Tip the boat over and where was I? Jump him—what then? He knew what was going on all down the line. He wanted that money—a complete haul.

“Thinking, Sullivan?”

“The hell with you!”

The country along here was a network of low islands, lying in the calm, sluggish water. As far as the eye could see, were hammocks, grass and water. Occasional trees loomed against the sky, barren-looking above the dense green of mangroves. Some of the islands were quite large. Caribbean pines grotesquely shoved among the mangroves. Some of the islands were jagged tangles of palms.

It was hot. I was soaked with sweat. My face burned and I knew DeGreef was even worse off. He hadn’t bothered to take off his jacket. What was it that drove him? He was fanatic about his job, but it was as if there were something else there; a kind of sadistic pleasure in the whole thing.

“What about the other guy, Sullivan? You kill him, too? Did you kill your wife, maybe—and are you trying to figure a way to kill me?”

He was beginning to get under my skin.

“Worried about tonight, Sullivan? Think I don’t know what I’m doing? Relax, you aren’t going any place I don’t go. Look around and enjoy yourself. Say—you know there’s lots of deer and bear in here? Just saw a bear back a ways. Saw a panther, too. There’s wildcats, too. I saw a hell of a big cat last fall, down in the Cape Sable area. Shot him. Through the head, Sullivan.”

He laughed mirthlessly. He was feeling a need to talk. I knew he’d drop me if I made a wrong move.

“Still got the trail,” he called. “They traveled straight east. Bound to spot ‘em. I met this Kaylor—he’s a hot baby. Your wife’s old boyfriend—right?”

It was becoming grayer in the east. The sky was pale and bright in the west, but on ahead night was sneaking along. It hadn’t seemed we’d been out this long.

The backs of my hands were burned raw from the sun. My neck was a swath of bright and scalding pain. It didn’t help knowing DeGreef was even worse off with his pink-white skin. I knew he was in agony.

• • •

Dusk closed down. The heat hung on. The pain from the burn lingered and increased. For a time now, DeGreef had been idling the motor. I had no idea as to our position, and if I had known it would mean nothing. I kept thinking dizzily how I could turn and leap at him—maybe knock him overboard.

What good would it do? There wasn’t enough gas to take us back where we’d been, even if I could find the way.

DeGreef slowed the motor to a slow ticking.

“Trail’s gone,” he said matter-of-factly.

“What?”

“You heard me. I said the trail’s quit. I don’t know where the hell that air boat went.”

He searched the country, frowning. He was a mass of sweat now, his face burned to a red expanse of fiery flesh. His shirt stuck to him beneath the darkly sweat-stained jacket.

“Just plain vanished.” He wiped water from his forehead with a cupped forefinger, snapped it at the floor of the boat. “Now what, eh, Sullivan?”

I said nothing, watching him.

He reached down by his feet and picked up the canteen, took a long drink, capped it. He glanced up, tossed me the canteen. I drank some of the hot, flat water tasting of metal and canvas and fish. It was almost empty. It suddenly seemed as if DeGreef had planned the whole thing this way.

The boat drifted through a mash of weeds and rotten grass above deep water. I could feel the depths beneath me. The early sounds of evening were grinding, discordant and disturbing. I began to receive my first real impression of the far swamps now. Mosquitoes found us, roiled in buzzing swarms and fighting mobs along the water’s surface.

“Smoke,” DeGreef said quietly. “I can smell smoke.”

“You’re smelling your upper lip.”

“Blow your damned nose,” he said. “I tell you, something’s burning around here.” He faced this way and the other, moving quickly.

More and more I saw what I was up against with Hugo DeGreef. If he’d been tired, that short swig of hot water had revived him. He seemed to burst with energy now, like a hound hot after a bitch.

“By Jesus!” he said. “Somebody’s cooking!”

I couldn’t smell anything.

“It could be Indians,” he said. “Once in a while you run across a Seminole. But I don’t think it’s an Indian.”

The motor ticked idly. We pursued a western course, slanting off among the islands on broad channels.

I smelled the smoke.

I couldn’t tell where it came from. It hung in the air, an odor that was part of the air itself.

It was rapidly darkening, yet still light enough to see smoke. I told DeGreef I couldn’t spot any.

“That’s why I don’t think it’s Indians,” he said. “That’s a lot of malarky about Indians not making any smoke when they build a fire. Why should they bother about a thing like that? Who in hell cares whether a fire smokes?”

“Somebody who doesn’t want to be seen.”

“Sullivan,” he said with ladled sarcasm. “You’re getting smarter all the time. Pity it’ll never do you any good. Whoever that is, he’s making coffee!”

The odor of coffee was rich on the air for a moment. Then it was gone, the swamp-water odors again pervading everything.

“Damn them,” DeGreef said softly. “I’ll find ‘em!”

He turned the boat and we slanted off against the slow wind that breathed warmly across the Glades. Darkness was coming down like a blanket now, the water mirroring shadows of the islands, black against the smooth, pale surface.

I remembered Rona with a heavy desperation. Had she started back out into the swamp to find me? If she had, did she know the country well enough so she wouldn’t get lost?

DeGreef cramped the boat again. And I pictured his mind, larded with wanting to turn me in, getting the money, clearing everything up his way. But what
was
his way?

The coffee odor became strong again.

The western sky was a deep purple now, shot with long crimson lashes of flame, and straight on our bow a large island hunched like a ship’s shadow with towering masts.

A voice called out, rising against the night sounds.

DeGreef immediately shut off the motor. We sat there, drifting quietly, listening.

“Who’s there?” someone called, not too loudly now. The sound of the voice echoed across the water. “Who’s there?”

DeGreef grunted. “Got you now,” he said. His voice was harsh, but he spoke in a near whisper. “Come on, Sullivan—paddle with your hands. And I mean
paddle!”

He was breathing heavily, working the boat along. We moved slowly toward the island, about two hundred yards dead ahead.

“Sullivan,” he said, “you hear what I said!”

I just sat there—waiting.

That had been Evis calling.