Swamp Sister

by Robert Edmond Alter

  "Sweet Lord," Shad said. It always seemed to end like this, he thought-them shouting at each other. He couldn't reason with the old man; but he couldn't really blame him for the way he felt. Holly had been his first-born.

  "Look here," he said quietly, "I didn't mean I was leaving the Landing. Just meant I couldn't stick it here no more. Goan find me a shanty and be my own man. I'll still be looking fer Holly's body. You understand me, Pa?" The old man didn't stir. His head was down.

  Shad frowned and tugged one of the bills from his jeans, placed it in the old man's hand. "Here," he said embarrassed. "Don't go to spend it all on corn and that bitch hear? Git you some food fer the shanty."

  The old man's fingers worked on the bill, criniding it, recognizing and liking its tactile quality. He unfolded the bill and held it close to his watery eyes. "What-what be it, Shad?"

  "See if it don't go fer a ten dollar."

  The old man's heart skipped a beat, flagged, choking him, then continued its laboured rhythm. "A ten dollar?" he echoed incredulously. "Shad," he whispered, "that Culver woman went and gived you more money?"

  Shad hesitated, then nodded. "Yes. But you keep your big mouth shut on it, hear? Don't want it to git around and have no shotgun-toting husband chasing me."

  The old man's hand closed on the bill and he hugged the fist to his withered chest. He rocked slowly, staring out at the yard where the moon sparkled on the bottle that was in the sand.

  "See you," Shad said.

  The old man said nothing. He rocked.

  4

  At an angle from the bend in the road was a darkly shadowed sand road that led through hummock and scrub oak and past the east edge of an orange grove down to another shanty. Shad shuffled along through the sand, his thoughts in tune with the shadows and the melancholy stillness of the road.

  A low human sound made a ripple in the surface silence, and the night magic broke for him. He stopped and looked off into the dark thicket. It throbbed toward him again like an echo that comes slowly, hollow and mild; but he caught it. It was a husky, sensual giggle. Then he heard a forcible whisper, implying false anger.

  "You want to hurt me?"

  Shad frowned, testing the girl-voice in his memory. It just might be Dorry Mears. And instantly a swath of absurd jealousy cut through him, not because Dorry had ever meant anything to him, but because she was young and pretty and full of tease. He listened.

  "-You're the meanest-" And another giggle.

  It was Dorry Mears. Shad's lips pulled back from his teeth, slowly. He grinned maliciously and stooping, felt around on the edge of the road until his hand fumbled over a fist-sized rock. He straightened up and pegged the rock into the black shadows.

  The immediacy of the silence that followed was something for him to laugh over. He waited, head down, right ear dog-cocked, and picked up Dorry Mears' frantic whisper, "- one's out there! Git up! _Git up, you fool!_ Someone's a-watching us!"

  A moment later Shad heard a cautious stirring in the thicket and knew that the boy, or man, was coming to investigate. He waited, deciding on his story.

  It was Tom Fort who came through the thicket and stepped into the sand road-stepping, Shad noticed, like it was rotten-egg paved and him barefoot. Shad didn't mind Tom. He was Tom's big, and had proved it many times when they were schoolboys years ago. He knew Tom wouldn't go for him, not even if he'd been mean enough to slip into the bush and kick Tom in the rump.

  Tom was startled. He stepped back quickly when he saw Shad standing in the road. "Oh," he said, as though he'd had no idea he didn't have the woods to himself. "That you-Shad?"

  "Shore be. Who's that? Tom?"

  "Yes. How-do, Shad."

  Shad nodded innocently. "Just on my way down to see Bell Mears, is all. How come you out in the bush thataway, Tom?"

  "What? Oh well, yes-yes, I just stepped off the road a piece there, Shad, fer-you know."

  Shad had a time keeping his face blank. "You know?" he repeated stupidly. "No, I don't. What?"

  Tom flapped his hands impatiently at his sides and hurried closer to Shad, lowering his voice. "You know," he insisted. "_To pee_."

  "Oh!" Shad said right out. "Well, why you got to whisper it fer?"

  Tom gave a nervous tug on Shad's sleeve. "No, no, nairy a thing. Listen, Shad, you just now lob something out in the bush?"

  "I shore God did. Lobbed me a great big rock. As I was coming down the road here, a fat old rattler cut acrost on me and took off'n the bush."

  An involuntary gasp reached them, and then the rattle and rustle of the thicket. "You heered that?" Shad whispered.

  "Must-must be that rattler you chased," Tom offered weakly.

  Shad nodded and started looking around at the ground.

  "Reckon it be. Let's you and me pelt him with some more rocks."

  "No, no!" Tom's voice was nearly a wail. "I ain't got me the time to fool with no old rattler.

  "Well, all right, Tom, See you."

  It had been a mean trick. He knew it, but he couldn't help chuckling over it.

  The Mears place was an old grey shebang with oleanders and dogwood in the big yard. Mrs. Mears kept a row of porch plants along the leaning porchrail-sultana, geranium, aspidistra, all of them in old rusty coffee cans; and Shad always found the colourful display pleasing. At the same time it made him conscious of a sad yearning for the mother he'd never known.

  Shad cut across the yard and started up the steps. But he stopped when he saw Dorry Mears' younger sister, Margy, sitting on the porch bench, her long dark head framed in the brilliant window of lamplight. He nodded.

  "How-do, Margy. Your pa to home?"

  The girl seemed to be studying him. "Reckon. What you want with him?"

  Shad smiled. "Be dog if'n I see where that's any of your nevermind."

  "If'n you come to borry his money, it's my nevermind."

  "I never heered of Bell a-giving his money away afore."

  "No-" the girl conceded thoughtfully. "But there's them that think because he got him some property hereabouts, he's as good to have him some spare dollars."

  "Well, you kin stop thrashing your mind to a frazzle, because I'm here to buy, and I got me my own dollars." Then, remembering, he asked, "Where at's your sis?"

  Margy sniffed, significant of nothing, and said, "Inside. Reckon some fool man's ben chasing her agin."

  "How's that?"

  "Because she come a-tearing by me just a minute ago like a hant had her by the skirt." Margy leaned forward, her long dark hair running over her left shoulder like spilled ink. "Mebbe 'twas you," she suggested.

  "Mebbe." He was noncommittal. "But I usually find that when I start fer 'em, they come at me just as quick."

  "Oh my! Ain't we biggity and fat-pleased with ourselves? Well, Mr. Shadrack Hark, you don't see me a-running at you, do you?"

  Shad grinned. "No. And you ain't heered me calling fer you either."

  "Well, just don't you bother! Because you'd keep right on a-calling tifi you were blue and silly in the face!"

  "Well," he said, starting for the door again, "we just might try hit sometime er other, just to be certain. Sometime say in about five-six year when you be nearly growed."

  "I ben seventeen last Tuesday, Shad Hark! I'll kindly thank you to know!" she called angrily after him.

  Shad knocked on the door, ignoring her. Seventeen- didn't seem possible. Last time he'd noticed her she'd been all leg and flat. He'd like to have another look at her now in the light.

  It was sticky warm inside the Mears' house though their screens were all intact and hardly any mosquitoes to speak of. Shad said, "How-do, Bell," to Bell Mears and "Howdo," again to Mrs. Mears. Both of them were sitting at the table, Bell with the Bible open and his glasses in his hand, Mrs. Mears across from him with her needle-and-stitch. Over by the cold-ash fireplace Dorry Mears was sitting, doing nothing but tuffing up her hair. Shad said, "How-do, Dorry."

  The girl was lighter than her sister and two years older. She d
idn't seem to have it in her to look at a man or boy straight on, but had to do it sort of under-and-around; a provocative type of look that always did something exciting to Shad. Now, after the hair fluffing and the circuitous look, she slowly arched her back, pushing her breasts out a little further. "How-do, Shad," she said, and her voice was pure cat-purr.

  Ain't she a something? he thought. Just as pretty and tasty as a new candy box. Red fire! He really had been missing something around the Mears' place. And to think of that no-account Tom Fort with a sweet girl like that. Well, I am damned!

  Mrs. Mears' head didn't move at all, but her eyes swung up over the rims of her glasses and she said, "Kindly sit you down, Shad. Warmish tonight, ain't it!"

  Shad sat and smiled at Bell Mears. It was just as well to keep his eyes off Dorry, else she'd have him looking like a tongue-tied fool inside of five minutes.

  "Shad," Bell said. "I reckon you'll have some corn?"

  "Reckon so, thankee."

  "Dorry, you fetch me my jug outn the cooler."

  The girl stood up and moved across the room without sound. Shad's eyes had to follow her. Panther-walk, he thought. She came to the table bearing the fat-bodied jug, absently tapping its side with a slim finger, making a hollow tung of sound. When she came next to Shad she brushed his shoulder. Oh dear my, he thought warmly. There's something tells me a time is a-coming when I'm goan be as busy as a cat.

  "Thank you kindly, Dorry," Shad said and raised his glass to Bell. The initial drink over, Shad swung around to business. "I done left home," he announced abruptly.

  They looked at him, each in his way-Dorry doing something with her tongue and her lips, and Mrs. Mears said, "Goan be your own man now, Shad?"

  Shad got his eyes off Dorry's scarlet mouth. "Yes'm. But when hit comes to making my own found, I ben my own man since afore I kin remember."

  Bell chuckled. "It was that er starving, eh Shad?"

  "That's God's truth. So, anyhow, I want to rent me that old houseboat of yourn down to the pond."

  Bell nodded sagely, adjusting his features to his businesstalk look. "You'd be wanting hit indefinitely, Shad?"

  "That's a good word fer it."

  Bell tilted back in his chair eyeing the ceiling, his righthand fingers drumming softly on the table edge. "I reckon I'd have to ask fer thirty-five a month on her," he ventured at last, still not looking at Shad.

  Shad nodded. "I reckon I kin take a joke well's the next fella. Now what do you want fer her?"

  Bell pulled his eyes down to Shad's. He looked serious.

  "I ain't jokin you."

  "Must be," Shad insisted. "I ast you about that old wreck that's a-laying in the slough mud-didn't mean to try and buy your house er one of your daughters."

  Bell smiled and reached for the jug. "Let's have another here. Whatall you think of thirty?"

  "Same's I thought of thirty-five. How's fifteen strike you?"

  So they had some more corn and some more talk, and before long they arrived at twenty dollars. When Shad left the house he paused to speak to Margy on the porch.

  "I wouldn't worry none about nobody trying to beat money outn your pa."

  "You worry about your money, Shad Hark, and I'll worry about my pa's," the girl snapped.

  Just what I'm aiming to do, Shad thought as he went down the steps into the yard.

  5

  Joel Sutt was a sit-around man. Walk into his store any time and you'd likely catch him sitting around anywhere. Just where didn't much matter to Sutt because he was rump-sprung and the saggy flesh of his rear seemed to adjust itself to the contours of anything that had an edge to it. Folks like to remember the time Jort Camp came into the store and found Sutt sitting in a corner on a stack of M. Ward catalogues, just sitting there staring at his dead pipe. "Like a mechanical man with a stripped gear," is what Jort had said.

  But he wasn't lazy. No. The truth was he was rather obese, and obesity is enough to steer any man away from activity. And if he was sometimes prone to a certain statue look (especially about the eyes), it was because he was a thinking man.

  He'd lived his entire life on the fringe of the swamp, made his living off its green edge; and he'd been satisfied. "Let the fools rush in," was a maxim of his. And the natural conclusion to this aphorism (in his mind) was that he was a wise man who kept his feet where they belonged. Oh, long ago, when he was a boy he'd wondered as other swamp boys had-well now, just what is in that blame old place? But he'd never gone to look. It took a certain amount of courage (addleheadedness, Sutt called it) to track the swamp, and he was a man who needed those wise feet of his on security. So he'd grown up on the fringe and had inherited the store from old Rice Sutt, who had inherited it from old Hunk Sutt-the Confederate veteran who had built the little money-maker in the first place. So he grew up with his feet (and the sprung rump) on the security of cracker boxes, flour barrels, enamel ware, bolts of cretonne, and shotgun shells, and never once had to call a Fire Sale or any kind of sale, and made money-not a lot, but enough to afford Jort Camp's observant comment about the mechanical man with the stripped gear.

  And so he married a placid-faced girl from down-river and never had to worry about relatives mooching off him because her mother had run off with a punchboard drummer and her father had been killed in a fight with the revenue agents. And he called the blank look she held for him in her eyes Love, because he wasn't the man to admit (even to himself) that he'd married a stupid girl. And he called the quiet attention she offered whenever he spoke Adoring Respect, because he never did realize that every word he spoke entered one ear, wandered willy-nilly through the empty chamber without finding any sort of barricade, and meandered out the other, leaving less markings than a snail leaves on uneven sand. And so they'd bred (an act that didn't require intelligence, or even focal attention) two boys, and one had died early and the other was now hanging about the Landing, growing fat on the thought that he would someday inherit all the wonderful boxes and barrels and benches to break down his own rump on.

  Then Mr. Ferris had come out of the north and had told about the Money Plane. Like most of the men in that region Sutt had done his share of night-tossing in his damp bed, thinking of the payroll money. But that was all he did about it. The rest could at least go out and look, but Sutt could only dream.

  "I cain't go tom-fooling off into the swamp," he'd sometimes say into the long restless night, apropos of nothing. "Got me my store to tend."

  And the placid-faced woman that lay at his side would know then that he was coming to a climax of frustration, and would understand instinctively that he was going to do the next best thing to assuage that frustration. She was like a test dog, in that respect, in which a certain reaction pattern had been instilled. Minutes later the placid-faced woman would stare up past the hump of his shoulder at the dark rafters and think of the pie she would bake the following morning. You take a cinnamon stick and you-.

  But Mr. Ferris, the man with the penetrating eyes, had looked at Sutt and had listened to him, and finally had said, "Someday, someone around here is going to find that plane. When they do they're going to find that they've discovered more than just money. They're going to find themselves in a soul-shattering battle with their conscience. And, Mr. Sutt, eighty thousand dollars is a mean opponent for anyone's conscience. I have a feeling that the man who finds that money will not be overly garrulous about it-" (Excuse me, Mr. Ferris. I didn't quite catch that word of yourn). "I say the man who finds the money will want to keep it to himself. He won't talk about it. But-Mr. Sutt: but you are in an ideal position to discover that hypothetical man's secret-if and when he does find it." (How's that, Mr. Ferris?) "Men come to you to trade and buy. Someday one of them will be coming with a ten-dollar bill, and it will be bearing one of these numbers-"

  Sutt couldn't wait for the last of his nightly regulars to clear out. And towards the end he was nearly rude to old Dad Plume. He couldn't help it. Shad's ten-dollar bill was burning a hole in his pocket.

/>   Finally, after Dad Plume had quit the store in a huff, Sutt locked up, pulled his blinds, put out the light, and made a beeline to the rear room he called his home. There in his old worm-eaten rolltop he rooted and cursed through an aged litter of receipts, invoices, and lading bills until he found what he was looking for: thirty-two type-numbered pages, bearing the serial numbers of eight thousand ten-dollar bills.

  The numbers were numerical, so the job was really quite simple. He placed Shad's bill alongside one of the sheets and started down the list.

  L54427135B. That was the number on Shad's bill, and that was also one of the eight thousand numbers Mr. Ferris had given him. Sutt sat back in his chair and reached for his pipe, his eyes bright with speculation and the thought of remuneration. "By juckies," he mumbled. "I be bitched!"

  After a while Sutt went out into the front of the store and dialed the long-distance operator on his phone.

  6

  Leaving the main road, Shad passed along a shadowbarred path and approached what at first sight seemed to be a small landlocked lake. Black turf sloped down on either edge, and black snaky tree-roots gleamed in the moon below the black-glass surface of the water. Out in the centre of the pool the moon had thrown a great smear of silver, and it rocked there gently like mercury in a cup. A soothing murmur, endless and smothery, came from the silver shoulder of a small weir at the foot of the pond. On the east bank, snug inshore, sat the squat dark houseboat.

  Shad found the short gangplank between bank and boat and stepped onto it, grinning. He was remembering the night he brought Elly Towne out here and they'd tried to break into the houseboat. Elly had been too scared of snakes to lie in the bull grass in the woods, and Shad had suggested Bell Mears' old floating shanty. But it hadn't worked out. The houseboat had been locked drum-tight. Finally they'd settled down on the aft porch, amid a litter of old papers, cans and whatnot.