Still, when he could find time while visiting his parents, Raff came to Nokobee alone, to putter around the lakeside strip before it was developed. He walked back and forth along the already existing trail that led from Dead Owl Cove through to the marsh around the outflow creek. Inch by inch he studied the spaces marked out with the surveyors' red-tipped stakes. He took photographs of the vegetation, wrote notes, and collected snippets of vegetation for identification. By the time the chain saws and bulldozers arrived he would have a detailed biodiversity map of the original lakeshore habitat. It would be entered in the University of South Alabama archives, in the city of Mobile, for study by future generations of naturalists. If he could not have this part of Nokobee preserved, at least he would have it remembered.
In late afternoon, as the shadows of the pines lengthened and the tangled lakeside vegetation grew dark, Raff walked from the trailhead back to his car. As he came close he was surprised to see three men waiting there for him. He recognized the Reverend Wayne LeBow, and his assistant Bo Rainey. Ohhh, boy, he thought. They were accompanied by a younger man, in his late teens, fashionably stubble-cheeked and wearing dark glasses and a broad-brimmed hat. LeBow was in his business clothes, but this time tieless. Rainey and the cowboy wore chinos and white, short-sleeved shirts pulled outside over their belts. The three stood between him and his car, looking at him without speaking.
Raff was alarmed at the sight of them, then slid close to panic. He thought of turning back and simply losing himself in the woods. But that will look foolish, he thought. Who knows? Maybe they're here to declare peace, or raise some legitimate issue. Or just argue some more. But why three? Who's the kid with the cowboy hat?
As he came up to them, he said to LeBow, "Hello, it's Reverend LeBow, isn't it? Can I help you?"
"We need to have a talk with you," LeBow replied.
Raff didn't like the abruptness in the other man's voice. "I'd like to," he said, "but I'm late for an appointment. We can get together later, if you'd like. Just give me a call." He started to pass on around them.
"No, we want to talk to you right now," LeBow said.
"Look, I can't do that right now. By all means we can get together soon, at some future time convenient to you, Reverend. I'll take you to lunch. I owe you a beer anyhow."
"No, right now," LeBow replied.
Rainey casually pulled back the loose fold in his shirt, giving Raff a glimpse of a snub-nosed pistol stuck in his waistband.
Jesus Christ, Raff thought, I've got to play along with this, buy time, work out their grievance. "Okay, go ahead, if it's that urgent."
"We want to show you something first," LeBow said with a jerk of his head in the direction of the trailhead.
Show me what? Raff thought. They're going to threaten me, try to force me to do something about the plans for Nokobee. I wish I'd made that report to the police.
Bunched together, they all walked silently to the trailhead, then on to the westside trail, LeBow and Raff leading, with Rainey and Cowboy Hat close behind. LeBow showed no sign of slowing down.
"Where are we going? What do you want to show me?" Raff asked.
"You'll see," LeBow said.
"Okay, where are we going?" Raff repeated.
"To the river," LeBow answered.
Oh, my God, it's worse, Raff thought. They're not even afraid to let me know what they want. They're going to kill me and throw me in the river. Make me just disappear. They're crazy.
Raff's mind was flooded with possible escape plans. He had to act now. Rainey and probably Cowboy Hat too have guns, he decided, but LeBow's unarmed. Got to find some way to break away and get into cover before they can pull the guns and shoot. That's the only possible way. Do it fast, do it before we get much further.
Raff, with his intimate knowledge of Nokobee, immediately pictured where an escape might be possible. They were still close to the lake, in shaded woodland. As they approached the outflow creek there would come into view off the west side of the trail a dome--a dense hardwood copse growing around a vernal pool. Behind it, on the other side, as Raff pictured it, there was a small clearing, and behind that lay dense but navigable mixed hardwood-pine forest. If he could just dodge behind the dome and make it on into thick woods without getting shot, he had a chance.
When they reached the right place on the trail, Raff stopped abruptly and said, "Listen, I've got to take a leak real bad. It'll just take a second." He kept his voice as level as possible, trying to pretend he was unaware of his predicament.
LeBow, playing the humanitarian to a condemned man, said, "Okay, but just take a few steps and don't try anything. Sunky," he said to Cowboy Hat, "you stay right behind him, and if he tries to run, shoot him."
At that Raff walked off the trail, one careful stiff-legged step at a time, pulling close to the dome. Sunky walked behind him in near-lockstep. Raff kept moving until he was in low undergrowth of the dome perimeter and about twenty feet off the trail. In his mind, he plotted each step of his coming sprint around the dome.
Sunky pushed him in the back roughly. "That's far enough," he said.
Raff stood still for a moment, with his back to Sunky, and then moved his arms as though unzipping his pants. After a few seconds, he turned his upper body partly around to glance at Sunky, who was only arm's length away, and saw that the young man had not yet pulled his gun. On the trail, Rainey was talking softly to LeBow and he also still had his gun under his shirt.
Raff started to turn all the way around and began to speak.
"Stop, Sunky, there's a snake--"
At that instant, having turned enough to gain purchase, he pushed Sunky as hard as he could. The young gunman fell backward, landing hard on the ground, yelling, his arms flung out, his hat sailing off to the side. As Sunky hit the ground, Raff was already at the edge of the dome and sprinting around it. Rainey's response was immediate. Within five seconds he had his gun out and up and started firing. Raff had just passed out of sight before the first shot. Rainey tried to calculate Raff's progress through the vegetation and fired several more shots through the densely shaded foliage. It works only rarely, hunting for deer running through forest cover, and this time also the tactic failed.
Raff continued on his way across the little clearing and into the brush ahead. He disappeared just as his pursuers rounded the dome. Rainey and Sunky, who was now recovered and in pursuit, held their fire for a clear shot, didn't get it, and, with LeBow following, plunged in after him.
At this point Raff had less than a fifty-yard lead. Only the thick leafy vegetation saved him from being gunned down in the first minute or two. He knew he could lengthen the distance, however, because he was familiar with the wild terrain of Nokobee and they were not. He knew the location of openings in the undergrowth in this part of the tract and paths around the tangled ruins of fallen trees. By the time he broke out of the hardwood undergrowth and into the more open spaces of the pine savanna, he was nearly a hundred yards ahead, widening the gap and still on a nearly straight course. When his pursuers broke out into the open themselves, they could catch only glimpses of him.
Soon afterward Raff noticed that the men were beginning to fan out while shouting back and forth to one another. At first he thought they had lost him and were trying to locate him. Then he realized the awful truth. The trio knew where he was, at least approximately. They, not he, had the upper hand. LeBow and his men were almost certainly experienced hunters. They were not yelling just to communicate. They were quartering the terrain, while driving their prey forward in a confined space of their choosing. They were forcing him toward the riverbank as if they were hunting down a wild pig. If he continued on a straight course to the bank, they would then converge toward each other, closing the net.
Raff, running hard, desperately sought a way to break out of the trap. He thought about reaching the river first and diving in, but he was a poor swimmer and if he didn't drown, his head would be an easy target for pistol fire from the bank.
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br /> Then a plan came to him. From the voices of his pursuers, Raff knew that LeBow was on his left. He was fairly sure LeBow was unarmed, and the minister was older than the others and hadn't looked in very good shape to Raff. If Raff cut diagonally to the left and sprinted even just a little bit faster, he might beat LeBow to the Chicobee and then cut to the left along the riverbank ahead of the whole lot of them. If he didn't make it in time, he might still fight his way past LeBow and continue down the river before the others arrived on the scene.
He angled left and within three minutes, zigzagging through the last of the savanna and into the second-growth cypress of the floodplain, arrived, sooner than he had guessed, at the riverbank. He had made his decision just in time. LeBow was almost there himself, only thirty yards away and coming on hard. Raff passed in front, and the pastor fell in closely behind him, shouting to the others to come his way.
Raff was now hemmed in by the river to his right and unfamiliar mud flats to his left. He thought of turning back into the floodplain forest and trying to lose the pursuers there, but he knew they would track him and start hemming him in again. He would also risk being blocked by one of the many sloughs running parallel to the river. If that happened he would end up within easy pistol fire, and it would be over.
Raff's one hope lay in staying next to the riverbank. If only he could find some other people, there or out on the water, LeBow and his fellow assassins might turn back for fear their chase would be witnessed. But this reprieve was only a slim possibility. This stretch of riverbank, far from the nearest road or landing, was one of the least visited on all the Chicobee.
What was the first house along this stretch of the Chicobee, other than a fisherman's shack? All he could think of was Frogman, the ogre of Chicobee. His house was perhaps three miles away. If Raff could run fast enough that far, he had a chance to survive. It might be small. Frogman was ferociously paranoid, and maybe clinically insane. But now Raff put all such thoughts out of his mind--and ran.
Somewhere along the way he realized that he had heard nothing from the three pursuers since the chase along the riverbank began. Had they given up? Fallen too far behind to catch him? They had to run the same obstacle course. Maybe he could stop just a moment to catch his breath. So he paused, partly concealed behind a cypress stump. And quickly realized that was a mistake. Two pistol shots--close!--rang out, and Raff stumbled onward.
The run was far from straight; it was a zigzagging steeplechase. Raff frequently had to slosh through backwater sloughs or work around them, struggling to pull his feet free from the gluelike mud. He was forced to crawl over cypress buttresses and fallen logs; he no longer had the strength to vault these obstacles and increase his lead.
But at last he made it to Frogman's house. Thinking that to pause even a moment meant a bullet in the back, he simply rushed up the path from the rustic landing and through the front door. Frogman must have heard Raff's approach and was standing in the entrance to the back room. He was about the same as Raff remembered him, except that now his beard was long and grizzled. He wore denim cotton pants cut off at the knee, and a soiled white T-shirt emblazoned with the five interlacing rings of the Olympic games and the faded words ATLANTA 1996. Now he waited for Raff, stock-still.
"Please," gasped Raff, "can you help me? Some men are right behind me, chasing me, and they have guns and they're going to kill me."
Frogman studied him with calm detachment. He pointed to a closet to one side of the short hallway. Through the open closet door Raff could see it was half filled with tools, rags, and fishing gear.
"Git in there, close the door, and keep quiet."
In less than two minutes, Rainey and Sunky walked through the door, breathing hard, and Rainey said to Frogman, "We're police officers. We're chasing a fugitive that just ran in here. Our chief'll be along in just a minute."
Frogman made no reply.
They all stood there quietly, and three minutes later Wayne LeBow entered, soaked in sweat and gasping for breath.
"Chief," Rainey said to the minister, "I just explained to the gentleman here that we are police in pursuit of a fugitive."
"That's right," LeBow wheezed without missing a beat. "State police. The man we're after robbed a filling station and shot the attendant. He ran this way. You seen him? Can you help us?"
"You got credentials?" Frogman asked.
"Left them in the car upriver. We were in a big hurry. Can you help us?" LeBow saw Rainey nodding to him. They knew Raff was in the house.
"Sure can," Frogman said. He walked back to the hallway and picked a pump-action shotgun off a rack there. Then he turned in the direction of the closet and said in a loud voice, "Come on out here, you little pissant."
Raff didn't respond, and Frogman commanded, this time bellowing, "Come on out now, or I'll put a load of shot through that door you're hiding behind."
Raff emerged, his hands raised partly in surrender. He was terrified, and only half conscious from exhaustion. He was in shock and so tired he could scarcely grasp the scene before him.
Frogman was facing him, the pump-action shotgun leveled at his chest. LeBow and the two others stood close behind him. Rainey and Sunky had pushed their revolvers back under their belts and smoothed their shirts. Their clothes, like Raff's, were mud-splattered and torn in places.
Frogman turned his head slightly and said, "One of you git on down and see if anybody's on the river, and call up and let us know."
Rainey looked at Sunky and hooked his thumb in the direction of the river. The younger man, now hatless, headed out the door.
A minute later, Sunky called up, "All's clear."
At that, Frogman turned his shotgun and shot Bo Rainey in the chest. The gunman's body jackknifed and he landed backward, with his legs straight and his arms flung outward. The explosion deafened Raff. Rainey's body bucked once on the floor as a mist of blood and bone fragments settled around him.
Wayne LeBow started to turn away, but Frogman pumped the gun and fired again, hitting him in midbody on the left side, spinning him around. A ruptured loop of intestine, torn free, landed in a splash of blood at his side. LeBow fell on his face.
Sunky started running up the trail to the house at the first shot, with his pistol pulled out. "Hey! Hey! Hey! What's happenin'? What's happenin'?"
These were the last words of his life. He flew through the front door and instantly flew out again, backward, as a load of double-ought shot caught him full in the chest. His pistol was thrown into the air and clattered to the floor of the little porch.
Raff was frozen in place, his hands still partly raised in surrender. Was he next? Frogman turned and looked at him.
"Sons of bitches, come in here carrying guns and lying to me. Wantin' to kill me, take my land, and trash it and all."
He paused to look over the carnage he had wrought, and said, "I'm not going to kill you, boy, but if I ever see you again, I'll kill you. You think I don't remember you from when you came a long time ago? And if you ever say anything to anybody about what just happened here, and I mean anybody, I'm gonna hunt you down and kill you and kill your family too. You understand me?"
Raff could think of nothing to say. So he just murmured, "Yessir, Yes, sir!"
His hands were trembling. Sweat soaked his shirt and dripped off the tip of his nose. He was desperately thirsty. He noticed that Frogman had begun to calmly pick his front teeth with a fingernail. Time for Raff to leave. Now. But he felt such a relief flooding through him, and such gratitude, that he had to say more. He had to do more. Perversely, he wanted to be some sort of a friend to this savage man who had saved his life.
He glanced briefly down at the bodies of Rainey and LeBow, blown open, ribs exposed, blood pooling from torn arteries and veins, the ripped intestine from LeBow trailing out like a grotesque appendage. He said tremulously, "What are you going to do if somebody comes looking for these guys?"
"Nobody's goin' to come looking 'round here," Frogman said quietly. "
It weren't in their mind to come here, was it, so nobody but you and me knows. But even if they got friends who do know, they ain't gonna tell, 'cause they'll git taken in for bein' part of the whole thing." He walked back and remounted the shotgun.
"But the bodies could turn up if you just put them in the river."
"Oh, these boys are goin' in the river, all right, but there ain't goin' to be any bodies to find. I'm gonna cut them in little pieces and feed them to Old Ben. He's a thousand pounds if he's an ounce, and he'll handle most of it, bones and all, no trouble at all. The guts and what's left over of the meat'll make a fine meal for the big catfish down there on the riverbottom. The only thing anybody's going to pick up downriver is gator shit.
"Now git the hell out of here and jes' remember what I told you. I can kill you as quick as I did these shitheads, now or anytime and anywhere, and I will truly never lose a minute's sleep over it."
Raff immediately turned, picked his way around the remains of Wayne, Bo, and Sunky, aware of the odor of fresh blood, coming up at him like wet rusted iron, and of newly voided feces--the smell of a slaughterhouse. Tottering down to the river's edge, he knew he could get a shotgun blast in the back at any moment. But he thought at least his life would end suddenly and without lingering pain. It didn't matter, just didn't matter anymore. He was too tired and dulled by shock to care. For the first time, though, some feeling returned to his body.
At the edge of the Chicobee River, Raff turned and plodded back the way he had run just minutes before. His mind, beginning to revive, churned into an insane mix of fear, relief, and horrific images of the three butchered men. And he couldn't escape the image of Old Ben feeding the way alligators do, lying there in shallow water, head up, gulping down chunks of meat and bone thrown to him piece by piece from the bank by Frogman.
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