Dead Man

by Joe Gores

  Yes, that was the way it would have gone. Another minute would have gone by, then Dain would have dragged himself partway up out of the brown water. Would have lain there, gasping, facedown, across Minus. One arm hanging uselessly from the bullet that had entered his back and must somehow have exited high enough up in his chest to have missed heart and lung. But still he would have coughed raspingly, startling the snakebird. When he had, fresh red wetness would have spread from the wound.

  So he would have taken Minus’s shirt to use as a sling to immobilize the arm, also perhaps as packing to make the wound bleed less. Then he would have righted the pirogue with his one good arm, gotten in, poled away. One-armed.

  Jesus, it wasn’t over yet. Inverness knew he would not sleep tonight, no matter how many men Maxton had with him.

  The Chinese water lilies produced vivid purple flowers that nodded above pads lying flat on the surface like green plates. On one plate was a small green frog. The frog tensed at an uneven sucking sound and a harsh, rasping exhalation, leaped for his life as a muck-covered push pole was driven down into the lily pads from above. The pole found bottom. Beyond it, the side of the pirogue slid by.

  So did an hour. Now Dain poled through a hyacinth-choked neck of bayou that looked like solid earth—what the Cajuns call prairie tremblant. Here in the open, merciless sun beat down on his unprotected head. He poled one-armed, his useless arm tied to his side with a sling made of Minus’s bright yellow shirt. More of the shirt, ripped from the tail, had been stuffed right through the bullet wound from front to back. This crude bandage was soaked with new blood. Sweat stood on his unshaven, sun-reddened face, his eyes glittered feverishly.

  He had done all that as soon as he had found Minus, knowing his infected wound would soon make him even more feverish, then had used a trick from his two years of convalescence after the first try on his life: narrowing the focus of his mind to a single thing.

  Then it had meant taking this step, resisting the pain of that flexing movement, using them to block out the pain and guilt of his family’s death brought about by his own stupidity. Now it was a single laser of thought: follow the bayou. He might lose why he was following it in the fog of fever; but he was hoping he could hang on to the action: follow the bayou.

  He forgot about the bonds, and he had to block out the knowledge that he was now half an invalid, more a liability than an asset to Vangie. He had one overwhelming concern: get to her, warn her they were coming. He had to beat them there. He still had to try and make her safe while preparing for his own final confrontation with Inverness.

  If he didn’t die on the way.

  Beyond the prairie tremblant was a small lake dotted with stands of cypress. Water hyacinth broken free from the main body drifted in clumps and patches on the otherwise clear water. In the middle of this sudden dazzlingly open expanse, the pirogue was a toy canoe, Dain a toy soldier leaning motionless on his push pole. The toy figure slid down the pole to the bottom of the small tippy craft, almost capsizing it.

  Little waves moved out in concentric rings from the pirogue, became mere ripples, ceased. Under the noonday sun the surface of the lake was glassy and still. A shoal of fingerling shad came up to just below the surface, camouflaging their presence from below with the pirogue’s shadow.

  Dain stirred, edged his head painfully over the gunwale of the pirogue so he could look down into the water with dazed eyes. He could see minnows swimming there. The water looked cool, inviting. The minnows looked like they were having fun.

  But he couldn’t give a fuck about them, whether they lived or died. He had to follow the bayou.

  His hand went down, burst the surface of the water to scoop some up, dash it over his head. Another, then another. His wound gave him an almost overwhelming thirst, and he knew he was dehydrating. But to drink unfiltered swamp water was to invite dysentery and disaster. No matter how weak, how disoriented, he had to keep going—by nightfall he would be totally irrational. Already his periods of lucidity were getting shorter.

  Follow the bayou.

  He splashed more water. Rested. Below him, the little shad returned. Dain grunted getting upright again. The pirogue tipped, almost sending him into the water. Concentric circles of waves became ripples and died, but they had sent a message out to a warmouth bass. It came up from below in a rush, shot right out of the water beside the pirogue as it struck one of the shad, dropped back in with its typical triple tail-splash as it swallowed its victim, dashed after another.

  Dain’s pole descended into the water. The pole found bottom. Dain grunted, the clouds scudding across his mind again even as the pirogue slid forward. On the far side the little lake narrowed back into twisting bayou again. At its mouth was a fallen tree with two dozen turtles sunning themselves on one of the limbs that rose out of the water.

  Follow the bayou. Why? Don’t know. Do it.

  As Dain’s pirogue approached, one of the turtles, then another, then the rest in bunches scrambled and slid and splashed off their perches back into the illusory safety of the water.

  When he had passed, still following the bayou, they returned. They had hid from him but his passage had meant nothing to them.

  * * *

  Her flatboat was pulled up in front of the cabin, Vangie was on the bank, checking setlines for fish. Papa had chosen his site well. His fishing camp was on what had once been a peninsula sticking out into vast flat marshlands stretching to the edge of Fausse Point Lake. A mile back from the tip, the bayou once had cut a narrower, separate channel to the marsh, thus forming an island. On one side was the marsh, on the other the narrow bayou which meandered through thick woodland to empty into the marsh.

  The camp gave a good view over the open marshland. The rest of the island, behind the raised, cleared area where he had placed his cabin, was deep woods. It was a peaceful scene, but inside Vangie was churning. All she could do was hide here. She could not go to the police: she had stolen $2 million. She had to count on the fact that although Maxton was a ruthless and powerful man who wanted to watch her die, he was from the city. Eventually, even he would give up.

  Dain was out of the picture once and for all, thank God, the blood money for giving them to Maxton heavy in his pocket. With him gone, she could survive here until things quieted down. Then she could slip away, with the bonds…

  She had arrived trembling with terror, but it was her second day here, and she had finally stopped leaping at every crackle in the brush. She could check her setlines. The very familiarity of the place and the work helped calm her.

  Stay alive. It was what she wanted now. Try to forget about Maxton. This place was hard to find even if you were a Cajun. But she couldn’t forget the bonds, and she knew Maxton wouldn’t either. She had fled empty-handed, and Papa never left any guns here at the shack. Which meant that if Maxton ever did find her, it would be three armed men against her bare hands.

  But he couldn’t find her. And the police had no reason to be looking for her. They would have accepted Jimmy’s death as a suicide, her parents’ deaths as random—they knew nothing of the bonds.

  Her parents. She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. She wanted to smash things, throw things, grieve—but she couldn’t. How could you grieve when your parents were dead because of you?

  Some animal sense made her suddenly raise her head to look up the bayou. She stood up abruptly. Far, far up the narrow waterway, just coming into sight around the last turn, was a pirogue. Even at this distance she could see that the man was poling one-armed and had the other arm in a gaudy yellow sling.

  Vangie drew in her breath. Dain! Here! He had set up Zimmer for the kill; she didn’t see how he could have, but maybe he’d had some hand in getting her parents killed, also. And now he was here to set her up for them. The Judas goat. Maxton and the other killers would not be far behind.

  Goddam him! Weapon or no weapon, she’d see about that.

  She started walking rapidly back toward the cabin.

  Da
in poled his erratic way toward the distant camp. The wetness soaking through his bandage was no longer red, but pus-yellow. It took all of his willpower to stay focused on that cabin. Follow the bayou. He had made it! He was here!

  Where? Why?

  No. Hang on. Just a few more shoves with the pole…

  The prow of the pirogue sliced into muddy earth, stopped. He poled three more times before realizing he was grounded. He let go of the pole and fell sideways out of the pirogue into the muck and shallow water with a loud splash.

  It felt wonderful there. Cool and soothing. Mud bath. Mummy would be mad, his Sunday clothes…

  Don’t lose it. He was here. He got to his knees. Crawled ashore, dragged himself erect. Stood swaying on the muddy bank, getting his first look at the fishing camp.

  The two rooms formed a stubby ell of unpainted, hand-split cypress boards around a framework of young cypress trees. Stilts held the floor off the ground, even though the cabin stood on a ridge that was itself above flood stage. The roof was peaked, shingled by two tiers of overlapped cypress boards. A two-section stovepipe stuck out of the wall beside it at a crazy angle. The foot-square glassless windows at either end of the cabin were netted against mosquitoes, their exterior wooden shutters laid back against the walls.

  The handmade door also stood open, almost invitingly. Very invitingly, in fact. Even as he thought it, the cabin began to distort, to stretch and contract as if made of rubber or Silly Putty. Dain kept his eyes fixed on it as he moved; by the time he had reached the bottom of the three mile-high steps it was yawing mildly as if at sea in the middle of a storm. There was nobody in sight. Who was he expecting?

  “He…” He lost it, tried again. “Hello?”

  There was no response. Dain went up the steps with agonizing slowness. He paused on the stoop, swaying with the rhythm of his own ragged breathing.

  But he had remembered why he was here.

  “Vangie?”

  He called her name and she came around the door frame from inside the cabin, yelling formlessly, high on rage, already swinging a heavy wooden paddle. It caught him in the stomach, doubling him over, driving out all his breath. She swung again, this time against his useless shoulder, knocking him off the side of the porch like a sack of flour.

  White-hot pain shot from his shoulder through his entire body. Even his teeth, his toes hurt. He landed on the grass with a thud that drove his wind out and consciousness away, thinking he was saying aloud, Christ, Doc, that hurts! I don’t know how many more times I can take you cutting me…

  She stood looking down at him, face flushed as much from emotion as from exertion.

  “Goddam you, you got my parents killed! You got Jimmy killed! Now you come here…”

  He was staring up at her, his eyes open, obviously conscious, but with a strange passivity.

  “I know why you came here! To lead Maxton to me, you fucking Judas!”

  Still no response. It was as if he were defenseless, defeated by her mere words. But she knew he was hearing her, was conscious, was seeing her. A new fear struck her.

  “You fucker!” she screamed. “Don’t you dare fucking die on me before I can kill you!”

  Then she threw the paddle aside and leaped down off the porch after him.

  One of the two rooms was for living, the other for storage of gear. Rough wooden shelves nailed to the walls held canned goods. At one end of the room was a hand pump over a half fifty-gallon oil drum, cut longways with a blowtorch and braced with sawhorses to serve as a sink. Also a potbelly iron stove and a wooden table with four chairs. In the other end were two bunks with sheets, blankets, pillows.

  Vangie backed in through the open doorway, dragging the unconscious and filthy Dain, who outweighed her a hundred pounds, by his armpits. She dumped him on the floor beside one of the bunks. Grunting and heaving, she got first his torso up on the bunk, then swung his legs up, leaving him lying twisted and half on his side.

  From the table she got a huge glittering Bowie knife, tested the blade on the ball of her thumb as she crossed the narrow room to the recumbent man. Razor-sharp.

  In the sixteen years of her life spent in the swamp before she had fled to the bright lights and the big cities, she had killed hundreds of animals, thousands of fish. Gutted them, skun them, filleted them. She was no stranger to death. It didn’t bother her to kill. So easy here. What difference it was a man, not an animal? One slash across the throat, like bleeding a hung deer… Or a single thrust up through the solar plexus under the sternum to the heart…

  Dain was already almost dead. A falling-out with the others? Something in the swamp that had gotten him? To know what had happened, she would have to get a look at the wound.

  And whatever had happened, Dain alive was an asset. If they were coming after her, maybe he could be a hostage.

  Dead, he was just something to bury.

  She knelt beside him, slashed the sling, then tore his shirtdown. She stared at the wound with the scrap of yellow pus-caked cloth stuffed through it. She bent over it, sniffed, jerked erect.

  “Jesus,” she said aloud, “is that ripe!”

  The swamp had not done this to him. It was surely a bullet wound, heavy caliber to have ripped through with such power. Steel-jacketed because a hollow-point or lead-nose bullet would have taken his whole shoulder off. If for some reason Maxton wanted to kill him as much as she did, he might be useful to delay them until she could get away.

  She left him there unconscious, his wound uncovered, went back into the kitchen area, pumped a pail of water, set it on top of the stove, and lit the already laid fire. Without a backward glance, she went out through the open doorway. He was going to die anyway. If something came in and got him while she was gone, it would save her a lot of trouble.

  Then she thought, I might do it myself when I come back.

  But not right this minute. She recovered the paddle she had whacked him with, went down to his pirogue, shoved out into the bayou. She paddled easily and expertly back upstream, in the direction from which he had come.

  Fifteen minutes later she swung the pirogue in toward a dead buffalo fish she had remembered was on the bank. As the prow drove into the mud three feet from the dead carp, a swarm of big green-bellied flies rose up, buzzing angrily. The side of the fish was moving in a slow steady seethe, almost as if it were still alive. Vangie crouched beside it, big Bowie knife in hand.

  It was dusk when she returned to the cabin. Dain was breathing noisily. She thumped a tin can down on the table. Pumped up the kerosene lamp. A match flared, the mantles flamed, then steadied to pour out white light. She lowered the glass shield of the lantern, left it on the table.

  On the stove, the water was boiling ferociously. She wrapped her Bowie knife in a towel and dropped them both into the boiling water, dropped in two more towels as well, took the bucket off the stove. Only then did she turn to look at Dain for the first time since returning from her foray.

  His eyes were open, glittering in the lantern light, but his voice was rational.

  “What am I doing here?” he asked.

  “Dying,” said Vangie.

  27

  Dain was declaiming, waving his good arm around as he did.

  “’By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death.’”

  Vangie pumped up the lantern some more, brought it over to set it on a chair near the cot on which she had dumped him.

  “That’s Shakespeare,” said Dain.

  “Terrific.”

  He lapsed into silence as she made her preparations. First she brought a tarp from the storeroom, managed by rolling him first one way and then the other, to get it under him and over the bunk. When she went to work with the knife there would be a lot of blood, water and pus to contend with.

  Next she got out the first-aid kit Papa had always made sure was in the camp. Sterile gauze and adhesive tape and, thank God, an unopened bottle of iodine. She’d need plenty of that.

  She l
ugged, over the bucket of cooling boiled water, set it on the floor, fished out the towel with the Bowie knife in it, holding it gingerly in the steaming towel, tossing it from hand to hand so she wouldn’t scald her fingers.

  “You’re going to die sane,” she said. “You’re going to feel it coming.” Her eyes narrowed, her face got mean, she burst out, “You son of a bitch!”

  She pulled up the second of the two chairs, sat facing him. She opened the hot towel, took out the Bowie knife, poised it above the infected wound.

  “Grab onto something besides me or I’ll kill you before I want to.”

  Her arm jerked. Pus squirted. Dain gave a single yell and was silent. She worked with the blade, wiping sweat from her face with her sleeve from time to time, rinsing out the wound with the boiled water and sterile towels when she was finished.

  “Fun time,” she said to the silent Dain.

  And poured about half the bottle of iodine into the opened wound. He screamed again, then was silent again. She felt his pulse; it was racing. Better than not going. She had no way to check his blood pressure, wouldn’t have known what was good and what was bad even if she’d had the proper instrument.

  Finally, it was time for the coffee can full of seething maggots from the dead carp. She sat down on the edge of the bunk and very carefully began packing the fat squirming white creatures into Dain’s infected wound. When she had used enough, she wrapped it with gauze and used adhesive tape to bandage it.

  Miles away in the swamp, two flatboats were pulled up on the edge of a broad, lakelike waterway. In a small clearing were the hunters’ two tents, their flaps closed. On a little natural raft of vegetation just below the low bank, a bullfrog carrunked away, swelling its throat to drive a ball of air back and forth over its vocal cords and create its thrumming sound.