"You didn't go forgit we-all was goan gator-grabbing together, did you, Shad?" Jort called. "We missed you at the shanty, so we come on out here on our lone. Pure luck running into you thisaway'
So that's how it was going to be, Shad thought. They were going to play cat and mouse with the Money Plane. But still it didn't make sense. They had known he was long gone from the shanty, and in order to get out here before him they must have left the night before. Why?
He glanced at the Springfield on the floorboards but decided against it. Sam was too jumpy a man to startle, and a 12-gauge could scatter an awful lot of space. The safest course would be to play along-seeing that Jort wanted it that way-and wait for a better break. He tucked a smile in his face.
"Jort," he said, "I'm God ashamed of myself. I pureout forgot about us going gator-grabbing. I left the Landing night afore last to come out here'
Jort's big skiff came alongside Shad's with a thuuump, and Sam reached a scrawny hand for Shad's gunwale. But Jort seemed right at home.
"What was your big rush, Shad?" he wondered, folding his huge hands over the butt of the stobpole and resting his chin on them. "Looking fer more skins?"
Shad nodded as though none of it meant a damn to him. "That – and looking fer Holly's body as usual."
"Oh yeah," Jort said quietly. "Pore old Holly." He looked up and around at the green roof crowding over head. "Right easy place fer a man to lost hisself in," he observed. "I got to go nearly halves with Sam on my gators just to git him to come out here with me."
Sam, hearing his name, started.
Shad stared at him. "Something wrong, Sam?"
The little man flinched again. His head didn't come quite around as he said, "Huh! No – no they ain't nothing a-tall wrong."
Jort was offhand. "Sam don't cotton to this air swamp much. Git him out a the woods and he feels like a Georgia hick in a cee-ment city."
"Why you bring him?"
Jort's smile was wry. "Tell you, Shad. I'm some like Sam here, and not a bit like you. I don't take to being out here alone myself."
Shad nodded. "Hit's not so bad," he said. "If you know where you're going."
"Yeah." Jort said, looking at him. "That's what counts. Knowing where you're going."
Sam was restless. He wiped his hands along the sides of his pants, pulled at his upper lip, and hunched first one way on the thwart and then another. He swabbed the front of his buckteeth with his tongue; didn't look at anyone when he suddenly spoke.
"Well, we just goan set us here all the blame day?"
Jort looked at him, his eyes narrowing. "No," he said thoughtfully, "we're just waiting fer Shad to show us the way."
That was getting closer to the brass tacks, Shad thought. Too God close.
"What size gator you got in mind, Jort?" Shad asked innocently.
Jort stared at him fixedly for a moment longer, then started smiling. He was enjoying this. This was what he'd been saving for nearly fifteen years. He could feel the payoff of the premonition coming and he sensed that he would get more pleasure out of it than from the ultimate discovery of the Money Plane.
"Oh well, I'll tell you. Shad. I need me a big daddy. That's where the money is. But I don't want no old devil that's goan tear up the hull shop like a bear with a hurted paw. You know what I mean, Shad?"
"Yeah," Shad said.
He stared at the water reflectively, not thinking of Jort's gator. The thing he didn't want to do was to get too far removed from the vicinity of the Money Plane.
He looked up, looked across the slough to the palm bog, where all the known and the nameless little creeks meandered into Breakneck. He thought the one he had his eye on was the Money Plane creek. If he could only get closer he could be sure – could find his blaze mark. There was a patch of cypress breathers at the mouth of the creek that looked like a natural fish weir, and he thought he recognized the landmark. But there was nothing trickier than a landmark in a swamp.
He nodded at Jort. "You ready to ramble now?" he asked. "I know of one old daddy up Lost Yank way that's near ten foot. He's a loner and easy got at."
"He ain't likely rambunctious, be he Shad?" Jort wanted to know. "I ain't fixing to git myself gator-et, thank you kindily."
"Naw, he's wore-out. No vinegar left."
Jort grinned. "I don't look forward none to the day we peter out like that, eh Shad?"
Sam trembled suddenly, the tremor running through his entire body as though he were strung together by wire and under the automatic control of a master hand.
Shad looked at him. "What's wrong, Sam?" he asked. "Cold?"
Sam's head jerked as though Shad had struck him, and his voice leaped out fast and high like a wood duck taking off in startled flight. "No, I ain't cold. How in hell could I be cold out here?" He wiped at his face with the back of his wrist.
"Take hit easy, Sam," Jort said softly, and because of a certain quality in the big man's voice, Shad looked at him sharply.
Jort's great moon face swung back to Shad, frowning and smiling at the same time, and he tilted his head slightly, directed at Sam's back. That meaningful look of bewildered amusement was asking wordlessly if Shad didn't agree that Sam was a caution.
Shad said nothing, but he didn't like it. There was a snag in the line somewhere, he thought. They've done something and Jort's afeered Sam'll kick over the bait can. He planted his stobpole deep, ready to shove off. But Jort said, "Why'nt you leave your skiff here, Shad? We kin all fit snug-like in mine."
Shad shook his head, not looking around. "Uh-uh. I like to keep hit handy." He shoved down on the pole, hard, sending the skiff abruptly into the slough.
Looking around a moment later he saw they were following close in his wake; Sam sitting forward with the 12gauge, chewing his lower lip with his overbite, averting his eyes quickly when he saw Shad looking; Jort standing massive and sure in the rear, stobbing with one hand, the other tucked carelessly in his hip pocket.
Shad sent an underbrow look at the tangle of cypress knees that suggested a weir, and then turned the bow of his skiff into Lost Yank Creek.
"I tell you them Cajuns is crawly eaters. They eat snails, and snails is crawlies," Jort Camp claimed.
"Naw they ain't neither. A snail ain't a crawly," Sam said peevishly.
"Well, hit myself if they ain't! Shad, ain't a snail a God shore crawly?"
They were sitting in a canebrake that fronted Lost Yank Creek; only the creek had thinned out to a guzzle that a good spit with a little breeze behind it could span. They had stobbed up Lost Yank for two-three miles and had beached their skiffs in the early afternoon. Shad had picked up his knife and lunch and was starting for the Springfield when Jort had made the first move to show that the cat-andmouse game was drawing to a fast close. He'd stepped hastily through the ankle-high water from his skiff to Shad's, beating him to the starboard gunwale by a fraction of a second.
"No need in us overloading ourselves, Shaddy," he'd said, and his grin had been affable enough but it hadn't reached his hard little eyes. "I ain't fixing to shoot me no gator, you know. Got to take 'em alive, else they ain't worth mud."
Shad had hesitated, watching Jort's eyes, wondering if this was really the moment both he and Jort had been waiting for. Then he'd glanced over his shoulder. And there was Sam standing on the bank by the bow of Jort's skiff, holding the 12-gauge in both hands, his trigger finger inside the guard, but not quite pointing the barrel at Shad. So Shad had scratched at the corner of his mouth and nodded. "All right. Suits me."
And he'd sloshed up to Sam and pushed on by him without a glance.
He'd led them to the gator's cave – a hole in the creek bank under a sycamore bole – but the old bull wasn't at home. Then they'd crept a little farther into the marsh to a shallow cypress pool where, Shad claimed, the gator liked to take the afternoon sun. But he wasn't there either, and so they'd crossed over the stream to hide and wait for him in the canebrake. And then Jort and Sam had started arguing about bugs.
"Ain't a snail a God shore crawly, Shad?"
"Well, I don't know." Shad gave it a little thought. "You cain't say they really crawl like bugs do, because they ain't got no legs -kind a squish and slide like a snake."
Jort pointed a commanding finger at Shad. "Well, but you say a snake crawls, don't you? You don't say a snake comes a-squishing, do you? Bet your butt you don't! Snails is pure-out crawlies, and anybody goes to eat 'em is a goddam crawly eater, like I said."
Sam said he didn't know about people being crawly eaters, but he knew too damn well that the crawlies were "people eating" him. He slapped at his face and missed a gnat, and then gave the back of his neck a slap.
Jort was pulling the makings from his pocket, and he grinned and said, "Perk up, Sam. Nothing's ever so bad hit cain't git a little bit worser." His eyes slid to Shad. "Take Shad here," he offered. "Bet when he first found all that money he reckoned he had him the hull world by the tail." Jort came to a dramatic pause like an act with perfect timing.
He shook a thin window of golden Durham flakes in a creased wheat-straw paper, leaving a slight depression in the middle, brought his thumbs up, rolling the inner edge in and over the tobacco as forefingers flapped the outer edge over and down. He ran his tongue along this edge, crimped one end and tamped the other with a matchead. He put the cigarette in his mouth and thumbnailed the match aflame.
Shad didn't move.
"Bet hit seemed just thataway, huh Shad?" Jort prompted.
Shad thought about the knife in the back of his belt. He'd have to get Jort first. The 12-gauge was bad, but Jort was worse. He looked around, his expression flat, sizing up their positions. Jort was hunkered down a yard from his right; Sam was squatting six feet away, half-facing him. He'd have to make a full-armed sweep at Jort's chest with the knife, and piledive Sam at the same time. "You talk like a man with no sense, Jort," he said.
Jort stared back at him, the smile still lingering on his fat face. "Shad," he said evenly, "you lying hard as you kin go. You think fer a minute we don't khow what you and Dorry Mears was up to?"
Sam flinched. His eyes went all twittery, blinking rapidly at Jort, at Shad, down at the shotgun in his lap.
"Ain't no sense you a-mean-eyeing Sam thataway, Shad. Every'body knows about you'n Dorry." Jort folded his hands behind his neck and gave his back a stretch.
"And," he added casually, "they ain't no sense that I kin see in you gitting yourself busted up like kindling over hit. I reckon they's enough fer three."
Shad looked at him, tensing his arms. "How's that?"
Sam's quick eyes caught the nearly imperceptible tightening in Shad's limbs and it was the last straw for his nervous system. He went straight up in one movement like a jackin-box, stepped back a pace or two and swung the gun barrel around. He stared at Shad, a little bit of his pink tongue slipping slowly under his overbite.
"That Sam," Jort said and chuckled. "He's hell fer spooky, ain't he?" He studied his trembling friend for ten seconds, as though he had nothing better to do. "Look at him a-standing there, Shad. Straight enough to be used fer a post, huh? Bet you could drive him like one too, and him that skinny. Only he's got him that air scatter-gun and he knows a thing er two about firing hit off. You folly me there, Shad?"
Shad pulled a grin into his cheeks. "Better not take that kind a bluff into a poker game, Jort. You'll kindly lose your money. If Sam kills me – ain't nobody goan find that old Money Plane."
Jort seemed to be appalled at the idea. "_Kill you_, Shad? My, my, what kind a fellas you take us fer? Ain't nobody said nothing about _killing_ folks. But, Shad, you ever seen a fella try to run away with his legs all blown to Billy-be-damned by a scatter-gun?"
Suddenly Sam's skinny frame tightened into listening attention, then his head whipped around and he ducked behind the maiden cane.
"Something coming," he whispered.
Shad got his eyes off Jort and looked across the creek. The palmettos beyond the cypresses were rustling, and just before they burst apart the three men heard gator-grunting. The old bull waddled out of the palm bog and down to the sandy bank of his private pooi.
He was all gator, ten foot of him, and the armour on his back was so dense he looked like a many-horned monster from a primordial age. He lumbered along with the peculiarly embarrassed gait of a gator out of water and fetched up alongside a long dead log that sloped from the bank into the centre of the pool. He raised his snout and the two excretory ducts under his throat discharged the God-awful musky fluid from his glands. Instantly the air all around the pool became tainted with a strong, sickening odour.
Shad looked at Jort "You still game?" he asked.
Jort blinked at him. "Huh?"
Sam cocked his head in alarm. "Hey, hey," he whispered rapidly. "We ain't got us no time fer gators now."
Jort glanced around at him as though annoyed by the distraction, then looked at Shad. "I don't reckon we'll be needing that air gator-money now," he said.
Shad nodded as though he'd found confirmation of his suspicions.
"I didn't reckon you'd go to tangle with him after you once seen him. Big, horny-looking old feller, ain't he?"
Jort's eyebrows puckered down at the bridge of his beefy nose. He blinked at Shad's profile. "What you mean?" he snapped.
Shad turned a sardonic grin. "I always heered what a slam-bang gator-grabber you was; but I notice you never bring back but little five-six-seven foot fellas."
Jort wet his lips. He studied Shad's eyes for a moment "You saying I'm skeered of that big bastard?"
I've hooked him! He'd rather spook me with a show of muscle than find the Money Plane.
Aloud he said, "I don't see you busting your hide to go at him."
When Jort smiled thinly his face looked dangerous. "Yeah, you sly fox, and you know why I ain't going at him. Why do I need him when I got eighty-thousand goddam dollars waiting fer me?"
"What eighty-thousand dollars?" Shad asked.
Jort's face pushed in at him.
"Shad – you honest to God think I cain't make you tell me where that money is hid?"
If I've guessed him wrong, Shad thought grimly, he's goan pull me inside out like a coon goes at a gunny sack with corn at the bottom.
His left hand scraped together a damp clump of sand. It was the best he could think of. Maybe he could get it in Jort's eyes before Jort made contact with those gatorgrabbing hands of his.
"I told you once," he said, "that if you ever decide to come at me – you best bring help."
Everything inside of him slipped into strained suspension. He watched Jort's eyes.
Jort stared at him, a flat, contemplative look. Then he grunted, started smiling, and pushed back on his haunches. He continued to watch Shad from his new position as he began unbuttoning his shirt.
I was right. He cain't help himself from showing off.
Sam couldn't believe his eyes. He pick-picked at Jort's sleeve. "Jort – Jorty, what you fixing to do?"
Jort smiled at Shad, almost fondly.
"Sam, you just tag along with the scatter-gun. Shad here's got hit in his brainbox I cain't grab me nothing but pint-size lizards." He flipped a huge hand at a coil of rope nearby in the weed.
"You fetch the rope, Shad."
Jort raised on his knees and looked over the cane. Across the way the gator had crawled out on the fallen log and sprawled himself on it for a siesta, his little stumpy legs hanging down on either side, his forepaws just touching the placid surface of the pool.
"I'll lead the way with the slipknot," Jort told Shad. "And you folly behind with the fag end. If I miss his snout, then I'll have to go at him bare hand. You coil the rope in and stand by, see?" Shad nodded.
Jort grinned and jerked a thumb toward Sam.
"I know you ain't planning no tricks while I'm busy gator-grabbing, because I know you ain't gone and forgot that chuckler about the feller trying to run with his legs blown all backtail-to."
Shad nodded, smiling. "I
ain't forgitting."
"Let's go then."
They crossed up-creek and came slipping silently down through the palm bog to the pool. Jort was in the lead, carrying the business end of the rope. Shad tailed him with the rest of the line coiled in his right hand. Sam was some yards behind with the 12-gauge.
Jort stopped just where the palmettos screened the pool and straightened up, bringing his hands akimbo. Standing just behind him, Shad had to marvel at his massive bare back. It looked as big and hard and formidable as a moonshiner's still. The son-o-bitch was purely put together with horseshoe nails and the ends cinched over, he thought.
Jort and Shad eased through the palmettos, Jort passing the fronds to Shad so they wouldn't whip back; and then they went tippy-toe down the shore to the uprooted bole of the dead log. Jort looked around at Shad and raised an eyebrow. Shad nodded, meaning Go ahead – he's asleep.
Jort whispered, "Deep?" And Shad shook his head.
"Under three feet," he lied. Out in the center, he knew, the pool shelved to a good six. And it wasn't the first lie he'd told Jort. The gator was old but he wasn't worn out. Shad had seen him fight a young burly bull about a month before. What little was left of the young gator was now stinking up a bog about a quarter of a mile down-slough.
Jort took in breath, shook out the slipknot and started wading cautiously into the pool. Shad shifted after him.
A man can move only so far in water without making a noise a sleeping gator will hear, and Jort was doing pretty good at it. So Shad let his end of the rope drop-_spoop!_- The gator snorfled, elevated his head and started to swing it around. Jort wasn't waiting for more. He lunged forward -foot-falling into a hidden sinkhole – toppled sideways against the log – said, "SON-O-BITCH!" and reared up and forward again.
The gator tried to do two things at once – tried to get his great body turned around on the log to see what was coming and tried to get his jaws open. His hindquarters slid off the far side of the log with a splash; his paws were scrabbling furiously against the wood. It was a mighty awkward way for a gator to enter the water.
Swamp Sister Page 14
