His feet were submerged. Water had sloshed up through the floorboard and was flooding over the crumpled sill where the door had been. He thought the car was sinking, and the terror that swept through him cleared away some of the haze. He turned his head — his neck muscles felt sprained — and made out the girl lying sprawled on the seat. He couldn’t leave her there, and though he thought he was moving as fast as he could, it seemed like a slow-motion nightmare; he got his arms around Arden and pulled her with him out of the car, stepping into knee-deep water bottomed with mud. The girl was a dead weight. Dan lost his footing and splashed down with her. Her face went under, and he turned over on his back to support her so her head was above water. She didn’t struggle or sputter, but she was breathing. The taste of blood was in Dan’s mouth. The darkness was closing in again, but he felt a slow current flowing around his body. It came to him that the current, as weak as it might be, must be flowing south to the Gulf, however far away that was. He knew for sure that if he passed out, both of them would drown. The bounty hunters. Where were they? Somewhere close, that was for sure. He couldn’t hesitate any longer. Dan began pushing himself and Arden through the muddy water, giving them up to the current’s southward drift.
17
Corridors and Walls
“THEY WENT OFF!” Pelvis had yelled. “Smack off the bridge!”
Flint had fought the Eldorado to a stop fifty yards past the wooden bridge. Steam was hissing around the hood, the radiator ready to blow. Mama was barking her head off, Clint was whipping in a frenzy, and Pelvis was yelling in Flint’s ear.
“Shut up! Just shut your mouth!” Flint shouted. He put the car in reverse and started backing to the bridge. The structure, except for the broken railing the station wagon had torn through, was festooned with orange reflectors. They were still twenty yards from the bridge when the engine shuddered and died, and Flint had to guide the car off into the weeds on the right side of the road. “Get out!” he told Pelvis, and then he popped open the glove compartment, removed his set of handcuffs and their key, and put them into his suit jacket’s inside pocket. He got out, Clint’s arm still flailing around outside his shirt, then he shrugged into his jacket and unlocked the trunk.
“He never even slowed down, did he?” Pelvis was jabbering. “Never slowed down, went right off that bridge like he had wings!”
“Take one of these.” Flint had pushed aside a pair of jumper cables and a toolbox and brought out two red cylinders that were each about twelve inches long.
Pelvis recoiled. “What is that? Dynamite?”
Flint closed the trunk, set one of the cylinders on the hood, and yanked a string attached to the end of the cylinder in his hand. There was a sputter of sparks as the friction fuse ignited, and then the cylinder grew a bright red glow that pushed back the night in a fifteen-foot radius and made Pelvis squint. “Safety flare,” Flint said. “Don’t look at the flame. Take the other one and pull the fuse.”
Pelvis did, holding Mama in the crook of his arm. His flare cooked up a bright green illumination.
“Let’s see what we’ve got.” Flint strode toward the snapped railing, and Pelvis followed behind.
The bridge was only two feet above water. There was the station wagon, mired to the tops of its wheels and glistening with mud. Flint could see the driver’s seat. Lambert wasn’t in it. Flint reached into his shirt with his left hand, slid the derringer from its holster, and then switched the gun to his right hand and the flare to his left. He lifted the flare higher, searching for movement. The bridge spanned a channel that was maybe ten or twelve feet wide, with thickets of sharp-tipped palmettos and other thorny swamp growth protruding from the water on either side. He saw no dry land out there; neither did he see Lambert or the woman with the bruised face. Leaning over, he shone the flare under the bridge, but Lambert wasn’t there either. “Damn it to hell,” he said as he eased off the bridge into the morass. He started slogging toward the car, the flare sizzling over his head, and then he stopped and looked back when Pelvis didn’t join him. “Are you waitin’ for a written invitation?”
“Well … no sir, but … my shoes. I mean, they’re real blue suede. I paid over a hundred dollars for ’em.”
“Tough. Get in here and back me up!”
Pelvis hesitated, his face folded in a frown. He looked down at his shoes and sighed, and then he got a good grip on Mama and stepped into the swamp. He flinched as he felt the mud close over his hound dogs.
His derringer ready, Flint shone the flare into the car. Water was still filling up the floorboard. He saw something floating in there: Lambert’s baseball cap. In the backseat was a suitcase, and the red glare revealed a purse on the passenger side. He said, “Clint! Take!” and pushed the derringer into his brother’s hand. Then he leaned in, retrieved the purse and opened it, finding a wallet and a Texas driver’s license made out to Arden Halliday with a Fort Worth address. The picture showed the face of a young woman with wavy blond hair. Her face might have been valuable on the freak-show circuit: the left side was pretty enough, but the right side was covered with a dark deformity that must’ve been a terrible birthmark. In the wallet were no credit cards, but it held a little over a hundred dollars and some change.
“I swear, that’s some trick!” Pelvis said, staring at Clint’s hand with the derringer in it. “Can he shoot that thing?”
“If I tell him to.” Flint slid the license and the money into his jacket, then he returned the wallet to the purse and the purse to the car.
“He can understand you?”
“I’ve trained him with code words, same as trainin’ a dog. Clint! Release!” Flint took the derringer as Clint’s fingers loosened. He scanned the swamp while he moved the light around, making the shadows shift.
“Bet you wish he could talk sometimes.”
“He’d say he’s as sick of me as I am of him. Get your mind back on your business. Lambert couldn’t be far away, and he’s got the woman with him.”
“You think we ought to —”
“Hush!” Flint snapped. “Just listen!”
Pelvis, as much as he loved to hear the voice of his idol coming from his own throat, forced himself to be quiet. Mama began to growl, but Flint gave Pelvis a hellfire-and-damnation look and Pelvis gently scratched under her chin to silence her. They Listened. They could hear the swamp speaking: a drone of insects pulsing like weeping guitars; something calling in the distance with a voice like a handsaw; little muffled grunts, trills, and chitters drifting in the oppressive heat.
And then, at last, a splash.
Flint whispered, “There he is.” He moved past the car and stopped again, the water up to his knees. He offered the flare toward the darkness, shards of crimson light glinting off the channel’s ripply surface. He could feel a slight current around his legs. Lambert was tired and probably hurt, and he was taking the path of least resistance.
“Hey, Lambert!” Flint shouted. It could’ve been his imagination, but the swamp seemed to go quiet. “Listen up!” He paused, his ears straining, but Lambert had stopped moving. “It’s over! All you’re doin’ is diggin’ yourself a deeper hole! Hear me?” There was no answer, but Flint hadn’t expected one yet. “Don’t make us come in there after you!”
Dan was crouched down in the water forty yards ahead of the two bounty hunters’ flares. He was supporting Arden’s head against his shoulder. She hadn’t fully come to, but she must have been waking up because her body had involuntarily spasmed and her right hand, balled into a fist, had jerked up and then splashed down again. Dan didn’t recall striking his face on the steering wheel, but his nose felt mashed and blood was trickling from both nostrils. Probably broken, he’d decided; it was all right, he’d survived worse punches. Pain drummed between his temples and his vision was clouded, and he’d almost blacked out a couple of minutes before but he thought he was past it now. He had backed up as far as he could against the right side of the channel, where gnarly vegetation grew out of the muck
. Something with thorns was stabbing into his shoulder. He waited, breathing hard as he watched the two figures in their overlapping circles of red and green light.
“Show yourself, Lambert!” the one named Murtaugh called. “You don’t want to hurt the woman, now, do you?”
He thought of leaving her, but her head might slip under and she’d drown before they reached her. He thought of surrendering, but it had occurred to him that at his back was a wilderness where a man could disappear. It was in his mind like a fixed star to head south with the current and keep heading south, and sooner or later he would have to reach the Gulf.
Murtaugh said, “Might as well give it up! You’re not goin’ anywhere!”
The cold arrogance in the man’s voice sealed Dan’s decision. He was damned if he’d give up to those two money-hungry bastards. He began pushing himself and Arden away from them, the bottom’s soft mud sucking at his legs. Arden gave a soft moan, and then water must have gotten in her mouth because her body twitched again and her arms flailed, causing another splash, and then she started coughing and retching.
Murtaugh sloshed two strides forward and threw the flare toward the noise. Dan watched the red light spin up in a high arc, illuminating twisted branches bearded with Spanish moss, and the flare began coming down. There was no hiding from the light; as it bloomed the water red around him, Dan stood up and with the strength of desperation heaved Arden’s body over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He heard the Elvis impersonator yell, “I see him!” Dan was struggling through the mire when the flare hit the surface behind him. It kept burning for four seconds more before the chemical fire winked out. He managed only a few steps before his knees gave way and he fell again, dowsing them both, and Arden came up choking and spitting.
In her mind she’d been sixteen again, when she’d lived on the youth ranch. She’d been riding full-out on one of Jupiter’s horses, and suddenly the animal had stepped into a gopher hole and staggered and she’d gone flying over his head, the treacherous earth coming up at her as fast as a slap from God. But water, not Texas dust, was in her eyes and mouth now; she didn’t know where she was, though the pain in her head and body told her she’d just been thrown from horseback. A flickering green light floated in the darkness. She heard a man’s voice whisper, “Easy, easy! I’ve got you!” and an arm hooked under her chin. She was being pulled through water. There was no strength in her to resist. She reached up to grasp hold of the arm, and she realized there was something gripped in her right fist and it was vitally important not to let go of it. Then she remembered what it was, and as that came clear, so did the memory of a black-and-yellow sign that said DANGEROUS BRIDGE, IOMPH.
Flint took the flare from Pelvis and holstered his derringer. “He won’t get far. Come on.” He slogged after their quarry, his shoes weighted with mud.
“Mr. Murtaugh … we’re not followin’ him in there, are we?”
Flint turned his face, his eyes deep-socketed and his skin a sepulchral shade. “Yes, Eisley, we are. We’re gonna rag his tail all night if we have to. That’s the job. You wanted an audition, now, by God, you’re gonna get it.”
“Yes sir, but … it’s a swamp, Mr. Murtaugh. I mean … you saw those ’gators today, and that big whopper of a snake lyin’ in the road. What’re we gonna do when the light burns out?”
“It’ll last half an hour. I give Lambert twenty minutes at most.” He’d considered rushing Lambert, but decided it was safer to wear him down. Anyway, nobody was going to do much rushing in this mud. “I don’t think he’s got a gun, but he must be carryin’ some kind of weapon. A knife, maybe. If we crowd him too close, he might get crazy and hurt the girl.”
Pelvis’s sweat-shiny face was a study of Tupelo torment. “I don’t want to get anybody hurt. Maybe we ought to go find the law and let ’em take it from here.”
“Eisley,” Flint said gravely, “no bounty hunter worth a shit goes cryin’ to the police for help. They hate us, and we don’t need them. We let Lambert get away from us, there goes the fifteen thousand dollars and the girl’s life, too, most likely. Now, come on.” He started off again, and again stopped when Pelvis didn’t follow. Flint nodded. “Well,” he said, “I figured it. I knew you were nothin’ but a windbag. You thought it’d be easy, didn’t you?”
“I … didn’t know I was gonna have to wade through a swamp full of ’gators and snakes! I’ve got Mama to look out for.”
Flint’s fuse had been sparking; now, like the flare’s, it ignited his charge. “God damn it!” he shouted, and he sloshed back to stand face-to-jowls with Pelvis. “You got us in this mess! It was you who couldn’t keep your mutt quiet back in the park! It was you who lost the Mace! It’s been you who’s messed up my rhythm — my life — ever since Smoates hung you around my neck! You’re an insult to me, you understand? I’m a professional, I’m not a freak or a clown like you are! I don’t give up and quit! Hear me?” His voice ended on a rising, stabbing note.
Pelvis didn’t answer. His face was downcast. A drop of sweat fell from his chin into the quagmire that was already leaching the blue dye from his mail-order shoes. In his arms, Mama’s bulbous eyes stared fixedly at Flint, a low growl rippling in her throat.
Flint’s anger turned incandescent. He reached out, grabbed Mama by the scruff of her neck, and jerked her away from Pelvis. Mama’s growling had increased, but her ferocity was a bluff; she began yelping as Flint reared his arm back to throw her as hard and far as he could.
Pelvis seized Flint’s wrist. “Please, Mr. Murtaugh!” he begged. “Please don’t hurt her!”
Flint was a heartbeat away from flinging Mama farther into the swamp, but he looked into Pelvis’s eyes and saw a terror there beyond any he’d ever glimpsed. Something about Eisley’s face had shattered. It was like watching an Elvis mask crumble and seeing behind it the face of a frightened, simpleminded child.
“She don’t mean no harm.” The voice was even different now; some of the Memphis huskiness had fallen away. “She’s all I got. Please don’t.”
Flint hesitated, his arm still flung back. Then, just that quickly, his anger began to dissolve and he realized what a mean, petty thing he’d been on the verge of doing. He thrust the shivering dog at Pelvis and backed away, a muscle working in his jaw. Pelvis enfolded Mama in his arms. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” he said, speaking to the dog. “He won’t hurt you, it’s all right.”
Flint turned away and began following the channel. He felt sick to his stomach, disgusted at himself and at Eisley, too. There was no doubt about it now, the man was making him crack up. Then he heard splashing behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder and saw Eisley following. It would’ve been better, Flint thought, if Eisley had gone back to the car and waited. It would’ve been better for Eisley to leave this ugly, miserable work to somebody who was more suited to it.
Clint’s hand rose up and the little fingers stroked at the stubble of beard on his brother’s usually clean-scraped chin. Flint swatted Clint’s hand away, but it came willfully up again to feel the hairs. He pinned the hand down against his chest with his right arm, and Clint fought him. It was a silent and internal war, sinewy muscles straining, and Flint felt Clint’s head jerk as if trying to tear itself and the malformed lump of tissue and ligaments it was attached to finally and completely free. Flint staggered forward, his mouth a tight line and his eyes set on the darkness yet to be traveled through. A feeling of panic rose up, like Clint’s clammy hand, and seized his throat. He would never find the clean white mansion of his birth. Never. He could pore through magazines of splendid estates and drive through the immaculate streets of wealthy enclaves in town after town, but he would never find his home. Never. He was lost, a gentleman of breeding cast out on the dirty current, fated to slog through the mud with the Pelvis Eisleys of this world breathing buttermilk breath on the back of his neck.
It seemed to Flint now, in the spell of this panic, that he’d always been searching for a way out of one swamp or
another: the dismal, humiliating grind of the freak shows, his overwhelming gambling debts, this soul-killing job, and the freak-obsessed lunatic who jerked his strings. His life had been a series of swamps populated with the dregs of the earth. Grinning illiterates had taunted him, hard-eyed prostitutes had shrieked and fled when they’d discovered his secret, children had been reduced to fearful tears and later, probably, he’d crept into their nightmares. For a few dirty dollars he’d used the brass knuckles on some of Smoates’s loan customers, and he couldn’t say that from time to time it hadn’t been a pleasure using that festering rage inside him to pummel promptness into unfortunate flesh. He had kicked men when they were down. He had broken ribs and noses and grinned inside at the sound of begging. What was one more swamp to be slogged through, with all that mud already stuck to his shoes?
He had taken a wrong turn somewhere. He had taken many wrong turns. Wasn’t there some way out of this filth, back toward the road that led him to the clean white mansion? Dear God of deformities and wretchedness, wasn’t there some escape?
He knew the answer, and it made him afraid.
The cards have been dealt. Play or fold, your choice. It’s late in the game, very very late, and it seems you’re running out of chips.
Play or fold. Your choice.
Flint stopped. He felt the blood burning his face. His mouth opened and out swelled a shout that was bitter anger and pain, wounded pride and feverish determination all bound up and twisted together. At first it was a mangled, inhuman sound that scared Pelvis into believing a wild animal was about to leap at them, and then words exploded out of it: “Lambert! I’ll follow you till you drop! Understand? Until you drop!”
Gone South Page 24
