I din’t like goin’ in there, so help me, I din’t. But I was more scared of Mr. Herm than of all that death in there.
The mud was up to my waist but I kept swinging one leg in front the other, pushing forward till the hanging stuff was all around me, till the swamp had closed in like a blanket. Once in a while the water slithered when a moccasin went past near me. An’ once I almost stumbled out of the mud into a bog-patch of quicksand.
I moved all night—I dont know why I dint get tired.
I was up on a little island in the middle of the black-water when the dawn come up. The white mist was rising and the way the island pushed out I could see everything for a hundred yards each way. It’s almost pretty hi the swamp in the morning like that. The way the little wigglers skitter across the watertop. The pools are so clear you can see clean through to the bottom. And it was quiet. So quiet that when the swamp-critters was makin’ a huge fussin’, all chirp and bellow and mouthin’ at once, I knew someone was comin’.
I couldn’t move. I was too tired of it all.
I saw Mr. Herm way before he saw me.
He was comin’ through, poling a flatbottom like he wanted nothing else but to get me. A shotgun, twelve-gauge, I’d guess, was stickin’ on up and he was swipin’ them stringers that was hangin’, getting them outten his way. I knew, sudden, that man was happy as he could be. He din’t care none about Miss Lottie—he just wanted at me. Out here, with no one else around, he could beat me till I dropped stone dead.
He spotted me sittin’ on the bank, with my knees hugged to my chest—it was pretty chilly, early then. In the mist, he looked like he was walking on air or clouds. He was workin’ that pole like he couldn’t get to me fast enough.
“Bennett!” he yelled. “Bennett, you scum! I’m gonna kill you for what you done!” He went on like that for the longest time, his bellowin’ echoing through the swamp and all the while glidin’ straight toward me.
I looked around for something to swat with. But there wasn’t nothing on that muddy island. Not even a good rock. Then when he got real close, till he was so big I could hardly see around Mm, he grabbed the shotgun and jumped on out of that flatbottom. He came down hard on the mud and started running toward me.
I backed up but there weren’t nowhere to go. I just waited.
He took about two steps and that’s all. He just started sinking in and looking all around surprised. He yanked and strained and wanted to come after me—I was only about fifteen feet away up the bank—but he couldn’t make it.
His ankles went under. “Quicksand!” He screamed at me, his eyeballs bulgin’ so big and white. “Quicksand, Bennett, quicksand!”
He kept yellin’ like I should do something. I walked over slow, just as the mud sucked in around the twin poles of his legs, draggin’ him deeper. He reached out with the gun barrel, holdin’ it by the stock. “Grab it, Bennett!”
I started to but I was afraid he’d pull the trigger on me.
“For God’s sake, Bennett, grab it!”
I got scared and started backing away. And when his thighs disappeared and then his big dough stomach, he started hollering and screaming. He layed out flat like he was goin’ to swim out of it and when he seen he couldn’t, he fired on me.
The blast brought down a tree limb over my head. He tried to fire the other barrel but the mud was already suckin’ his hands in. And with all that squishin’ and suckin’ I felt funny-like. ’Cause every inch of Mr. Herm that went in, was an inch that couldn’t hurt me no more.
It was him what made me bad and do what I did with Miss Lottie. I don’t know why he hated me so. Maybe ’cause his factory was doin’ poor and he dint like bein’ married and he had to take it out on someone. I never talked back to him. Not once. Even now, while he was bein’ swallowed up—I never said nothing.
The shotgun and his shoulders went under about the same time, real smooth. Only his head was stickin’ out now and I watched real close. I didn’t want to miss none of that. And it was only then that I found the words.
I walked up to the edge of the darker mud. “How can I help you, Mr. Herm? You always told me true that white trash don’t eat, don’t sleep or breathe—and don’t exist at all. And if I don’t exist, Mr. Herm—” I laughed kinda “—how’m I goin’ to pull you out?”
He started to say something, but his mouth filled up with mud.
Then his head went under, went down with a sucking, pulling noise, and the bubbles came up real slow for a little bit, till the mud closed over his hair with little ripples and movements, and the top was all smooth and quiet.
I could of helped him, I guess. But I was scared and after I wasn’t scared no more, I din’t care. He hated me, Mr. Herm did, and bein’ as hate can run both ways, I guess some of it rubbed off on me. Maybe if he wasn’t always tellin’ me I din’t exist when I knew I did…
Anyway, it’s too late now.
Sittin’ with my knees pulled up like before and thinkin’ of Miss Lottie instead, I knew it’s bad what we did an’ Mam’ll be mad with me, but it felt good just the same.
In a little while, I’m goin’ back—after I’ve thought a little bit more. I hope they’ll believe me; I won’t lie none. If Poppa Jango will allow, I’ll work the Deepwater same as always. No—not the same as always. Things has changed now, I guess. Won’t no one say I don’t exist. No one—’specially not Miss Lottie.
THICKER THAN BLOOD
“Blood may be thicker than water…. but there ain’t no getting away from it: money’s thicker than blood.”
—Old Times Square Saying
“No, no, no and no, Roger, we are not going to give you the twelve thousand dollars! We put you in business when you married Felice—because you married Felice—and we thought it was a bad investment then; you’ve only borne out our contention. I speak for Harold and Madge and Ralpk, as well as myself in this. No money. Not a cent.”
Roger Singer stared moodily at his right shirt cuff. It was frayed. Only slightly, but it somehow seemed indicative: he was going downhill. He looked up at the florid man who had spoken.
“But, Uncle Bob, you’ve got to understand. I’m in debt twelve thousand dollars.”
The florid man nodded in annoyance. He sucked on the imported Cuban cigar between his lips, rolled it to the opposite corner of his mouth. “I know, I know, Roger. You’ve been saying that all evening…it seems to be the only thing you can say. And you’ve got to understand, too. You’re not getting the money from us. Just because we’re Felice’s brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, don’t think you can lean on us because of your own mismanagement.”
His deep-set black eyes flashed, and he removed the cigar, adding with vehemence, “And stop calling me Uncle Bob!”
Roger Singer ran a shaking hand through the short hairs at the back of his neck, feeling the loose hair from the barber shop; he had gotten the haircut specially; rented the evening jacket specially; invited the family to dinner specially. All for nothing.
He knew it was hopeless, all hopeless now. They would force him into bankruptcy; force, too, his working for someone else, probably the family. He would lose the linoleum shop, lose his independence, lose his integrity working for those filthy rich, filthy fat relatives of his—who hated him.
He stared across momentarily at Uncle Bob, sitting there with legs spread far apart because his belly got in the way. Uncle Bob looking fat and florid and surly because he’d had to refuse that wastrel Roger again.
Roger saw the gleam of pleasure in Uncle Bob’s eyes; they’d been waiting for this, waiting for him to get so far in debt he’d have to come begging, so they could refuse him.
“You—won’t—reconsid…”
Bob’s fat, oily hand came down on the kitchen table with a thump. “No! I will not! Now let’s get out of this kitchen, and back to the family. Thank God Penny is more like her mother…not like you. It’s the only reason I came tonight. To see Felice and the child.”
He rose heavily, str
aining against the fat, and waddled toward the living room of the apartment.
Roger watched him go for a moment, thinking, You can spare the money, you bastard! You just won’t, that’s all!
In the living room Harold and scrawny Madge and Ralph were coaxing Penny to do her imitation of Lily Tomlin. Roger stared at his step-daughter from the doorway of the kitchen, and knew he couldn’t go in there immediately.
“I’ll be right in,” he said. “Just getting a glass of water.” He backed into the kitchen. He turned off the lights.
He stood in the darkness and let his hand glide over the angry sharpness of his jawline. It was all so futile, just when it could have been so right.
He flipped back through his memories of the past six years as he might have flipped a series of animation cards, letting sequence after sequence pop into sight before descending into blackness.
He had married Felice for her money. He had no compunctions about admitting it to himself; but he had been justified. There was no other way to get the money for the shop. And it wasn’t selfishness entirely; Felice’s first husband had been dead two years, and she had needed someone to lean on badly. Penny, too, had needed an object of male affection. It was so true; the way she called him “Daddy” and hung on him. Roger’s face quirked slightly at the nauseating thought of the nine-year-old girl hanging on him, literally begging for affection. So it had been a fifty-fifty bargain, and Felice had not come off badly at all.
In fact, it had been he who had come off badly. Those dollar-clutching relatives, with their millions. They had made his road as difficult as possible. They just hadn’t liked him. Right from the first.
Now they had their revenge.
He would lose the linoleum shop, and they would put him to work in some menial office job at the mill, or in the brokerage, or perhaps even in the shipping office of one of their many small businesses.
Perhaps he had handled the shop’s affairs a bit poorly. It had only been through over-optimism about the shop’s potential. Overbuying. Overstock. And then an extra-long slack season called Recession. Upper Amsterdam was dotted with linoleum shops; he should have realized it took a long, long time to build up prestige in a neighborhood. But he hadn’t, and now he was in trouble.
Would they help him…their Felice’s husband…when he needed it so desperately? They would not!
He let the last memory flick out of sight, and sighed wearily, sinking back against the wall. He had even tried to get Felice to cash in Penny’s bonds, but she had looked at him as though he were crazy. Penny. She was wealthier than him! Thoughts of the little girl annoyed him; he put her instantly from his mind.
He shoved back through the swinging door and joined the family in the living room.
“Oh, Daddy!” Penny smiled as he came into sight, running to him. “Let’s show Uncle Bob and Aunt Madge how I can swing from the door ledge. Lift me, Daddy!”
Roger felt an unreasoning fury rise up in him.
“Not now, Penny.”
“Pleeease, Daddy?”
“I said not now, Penny. Later.”
She sulked then, the way she always did, and he felt like slapping her, the way he had yesterday when she had washed his pipe, saying it was smelly. But he could see the annoyed expressions of the relatives. No need to get them any more rankled than they were. He lifted her, let her fingertips hook onto the ledge over the door to the dining room. Penny hung there an instant, then let go with a sharp squeal.
She fell to the carpet, and instantly the relatives were on their feet. Their darling niece, Roger thought sourly.
“She’s all right,” he said quickly.
Penny got up, shamefacedly, and brushed off her skirt. “I couldn’t hold on as good as I usually do.” She grinned.
The relatives grinned back.
Roger felt the depression of finality welling up in him.
The evening went badly.
Roger lay awake in his bed, thinking. Across from him Felice lay heavily on her back, the sharp, short wheeze that annoyed him so helping to keep him alert now; he wanted to be alert now.
There seemed no way out. The jobbers would take back the merchandise, and the shop owner would break the lease somehow. Shortly thereafter he would be back in servitude. To work under someone again, as he had six years before, seemed the most abhorrent of fates after being his own boss.
Then, as he lay there, from some unknown well of desperate resource…because he was desperate…something that Uncle Bob (no, not again, never again Uncle Bob; just Bob, that was all) had said when Penny got up from the floor, registered. Registered differently than the first time he had heard it.
We just wouldn’t know what to do if anything happened to our little Penny.
The first time, he had thought wryly that it would be delightful if something happened to the affection-hungry little brat. But now…
Now there was more to it, and a plan formed. Slowly, but with increasing clarity, till he sat up and thought about it coldly. Finally, he got out of bed and went to find his pipe. To think some more. Would it work? Could it work? Why not?
He examined it from every angle, playing devil’s advocate with the idea, posing every possible catastrophic fuck-up imaginable. But he was able to continue a way around each one; till it became obvious the plan was foolproof.
Revenge and a solution and everything all knitted together so beautifully he felt like clapping his hands in joy. But he stilled the happiness within him and looked at it again, exhaustively, from every fantastically improbable viewpoint of failure. There would be difficulties, but not nearly as many as he had first supposed. By doing it as simply and directly as possible, it would work.
He drew deeply on the pipe, sitting on the sofa, his feet up on the coffee table, staring at the redness of his heels in the bedroom slippers.
It would work. Dammit, it would work!
The next day he closed the shop at lunchtime and drove the pickup truck down, onto 23rd Street, stopping at a likely pawn shop.
He bought the old office model Underwood typewriter for fifteen dollars, carrying it quickly to the truck, and leaving before the owner could remember who he was, or what direction he had taken.
Back in the shop he typed the note on a piece of plain paper napkin, taken from a Nedick’s orange juice stand in midtown Manhattan. He wore gloves.
The note was short and direct.
Then he waited three weeks, stalling off the bin collectors, telling them he was getting a loan from the bank.
Then the night arrived.
He waited silently, feigning sleep, till three-thirty when the night was at its most silent. Then he dressed quickly and quietly, making certain Felice in the other bed did not waken. Then he took the rope and the gag and the many strips of adhesive tape he had secreted beneath his winter sweaters in the bureau, and crept silently into Penny’s room.
He had the ten strips of adhesive over her eyes, and the gag in her mouth, taped down, before her struggles grew violent. It was unnecessary to become brutal about it; just a light tap behind the ear, and she went limp.
He tied her securely, hands behind her back, and carried her down the service stairs to the street, making certain he had not been seen. It was perfect; not a soul in sight, and as moonless a night as one could wish, so the insomniacs in their nocturnal wanderings could not be sure of anything they saw.
The car was directly in front of the building. He had made certain of that. The drive out to Jersey was smooth and fast with traffic in the Holland Tunnel almost nonexistent. Penny lay silently under a blanket in the trunk.
He had scouted the area carefully, and found the abandoned farmhouse outside Red Bank, New Jersey with little difficulty. The weather-beaten, almost-collapsed tool shed was set back from the house, in a little hollow: cut off from sight from the road.
He put the flashlight on the shelf and shone it on the post he had driven into the ground the week before. He tested it again to make certain it was sol
id. It wouldn’t budge an inch, no matter how hard he struggled, and he tied Penny to it tightly, making certain the adhesive was still over her eyes. She came to, just as he was burning the gloves. She struggled and coughed, and tried to scream, but it did no good. She was secured. For two days, if all went well.
For an instant he had qualms about her starving, left alone for two days. He thought back and tried to remember if he had heard of two-day starvation. Nothing came to mind, and he dismissed the thoughts, making certain the gloves burned to ash…
He gathered the remains on a piece of newspaper and folded it together to be disposed of along the road back to New York.
He looked at his step-daughter for a moment longer, then edged the door open with his foot. As he did so, he looked down, and smiled at his cleverness in wearing a new pair of tennis shoes. Shoes that could be bought in any one of a hundred stores in Manhattan, but shoes he had bought two years before—and had never gotten to wear. They would go, too, as soon as he was in the car and driving back.
He didn’t bother to say goodbye to Penny.
No sense letting her know it was her “Dear, Darling Daddy” who had kidnapped her.
He edged the door closed securely, and went back to the car. The night was still moonless. Ideal for a late drive home.
It had all been easier than he’d thought.
He had made a point of sleeping late the next morning, waiting till Felice’s sharp, repetitive screams had brought him leaping from the bed. He had rushed into the small bedroom, seen Felice screaming over and over again, crying, moaning, beating at the pillow.
He had given close attention to the note, just like any terrified father, and read it over to himself, reveling in its simple wording as keynote of the entire scheme:
DELIVER 200 THOUSAND DOLLARS TO ME IN SMALL UNMARKED BILLS AT THE DOWNTOWN ENTRANCE OF THE 79TH ST IRT SUBWAY BY NOON TOMORROW OR YOU WILL NEVER SEE YOUR LITTLE GIRL ALIVE AGAIN. DO NOT CONTACT THE COPS OR SHE WILL DIE. WE WILL KNOW IF YOU CONTACT THEM.
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