Harry shook his head.
“Me neither. Here,” she took a small plastic bag from her shirt pocket, broke off a piece of dried spicy meat, handed it to Harry, and took another piece herself.
“Thanks,” Harry said as they both chewed, watching for signs of the fugitive in the foliage as the swamp grew darker with the late afternoon sun. The boat moved along deeper into the Wilderness, its wake shining, the landing now far out of sight behind them. The Wilderness had, even in the sunniest time of the day, shadows that hid the lurking places of the muskrats and the other wild creatures. In the evening, the camouflage was even worse, making this a difficult time for a manhunt, a time when the swamp had thrown up its best defenses to hide its inhabitants.
Harry swatted at the fog of gnats swarming in front of his eyes.
“You leave them flies alone and pretty soon they’ll leave you alone too. It’s your hand making them so excited. They’re just like any persons who get bothered. They fight back,” she said, watching him from the stern with amusement.
She ran the engine slow on purpose so that if the fugitive was ahead of them, he would not be warned of their approach.
“All along, you never thought Walker John was guilty,” Harry said. “How’d you know that?”
“Seemed to me that he was carrying an awful lot of crime for a man who just wanted to race his motorboat,” she said.
“Will it make a difference to people around here now that he has been cleared?” asked Harry.
“Difference?” she asked in return.
“Between the two parts of River Sunday, the whites and the people of color,” said Harry.
“Maybe,” she said. “The whites might change some and the blacks too. Mostly though they will come up with excuses about how this is an exception and nothing will really change. Blame comes pretty easy to some.”
“Walker must be angry at being unjustly accused all these years,” said Harry.
“I’d be damn mad if I was him,” she said.
The boat moved along. Harry caught glimpses of the other searchers as boats appeared between islands of mud and marsh grass. Sometimes the only way they knew the others were there was by the quick flush of swamp birds or ducks or by a distant movement of reeds.
They went further into the maze of islands. Contrary to what the woman had said, they were followed by a squadron of bugs. She too was waving her baseball cap at the denizens, as she stood near the stern, her other hand firmly on the aluminum bar that extended the tiller of the outboard.
As they came around a particularly large island, several black ducks, rafting in shallow water near the shoreline, were flapping their wings.
“We scared them,” said Harry.
“No,” she said, “they were already upset. Look.”
He saw what she was pointing to. Near the ducks and sticking out of the water was a powerful Johnson outboard engine and part of the stern of the sheriff’s fiberglass fisherman hull. A few feet in front of the engine almost covered by the swamp water was the sunken top edge of the plastic spray shield on the boat’s control panel, glimmering in fronds of drifting seaweed from the outgoing tide. The front of the boat was totally underwater.
“He couldn’t even sink her right,” she whispered with scorn as she quickly cut off her motor and drifted up to the wreck. “He forgot to lift his engine and the boat settled with the propeller shaft in the mud. Held the rest of the boat at an angle out of the water. I knew he was a fool.”
She poled her boat silently around the wreck and moved it towards the shoreline. This was a large island that had trees in the distance and a great number of small bushes about six to ten feet high and close together forming excellent cover. When the bow of her boat touched the mud beach, Harry jumped ashore with the rope painter and tied it to a large driftwood log.
“We better tell the others,” said Harry.
“No,” she said, “You get them in here and that would just spook him more. We’ll see first if he’s still on the island or has moved on.”
“OK. Let’s look around,” Harry answered softly. “Be careful. He’s got that big revolver.”
She shook her head. “We don’t got to worry. He’s stupid, but he still knows if he shoots everyone will hear.”
“I don’t know. He’s running, doing things in a hurry, remember. I doubt he’ll think of that,” said Harry. He stooped down behind the top of a hedge of honeysuckle and brush as she came up to stand beside him. The smell of the flowers brought an image of Annie to his mind.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said, a canvas satchel over her shoulder.
“I know I’m right,” he said.
She bent forward and looked at the ground. “I found something,” she whispered.
“What?”
“He’s been here. I see some tracks he wiped out. See there?”
Harry looked. “All I can see is mud.”
“Well, no matter. I seen it. I’ll show you the way he’s gone.”
They moved slowly, not more than a few yards at a time, as she kept checking on all sides and at the ground for more traces.
“We’re getting near,” she whispered after they had gone forward more than a hundred yards into the brush. They could hear outboards in the distance where other searchers were working. The sky was darkening now and in the blacker half of the sky, Harry could see some early stars.
Ahead, about a hundred yards through more brush and a marshy cattail area, was a ridge of pine trees silhouetted against the orange and red sundown. Suddenly three birds flew straight up.
She looked at him. Harry knew what she was thinking. Something scared those birds. It couldn’t be the other search parties because they were too far away. She signaled for Harry to go around to the left while she went to the right. He hesitated, fearing for her safety. Then he smiled as she retrieved two parts of a short double barreled shotgun from her satchel and snapped them quietly together. She took two cartridges from her pocket and put them into the barrels and closed up the breech.
“You going or not?” she whispered.
Harry nodded, admiring his companion, and started up the side of the island, keeping low. She went off to his left, out of his sight. The going was very slow with the briars and branches from the swamp shrubs tearing at his shirt and pants.
“Hold it.” A hand came at him from his right, grabbed at his belt, and flipped him to his side. He was on his back in the mud, looking up at a sheriff he had never seen before, a crazed man, his gray uniform spattered with mud.
Harry felt the wetness of the mud leaking into the skin of his back. He saw the glint of a knife in the sheriff‘s right hand.
“You can’t get away, Sheriff,” Harry said as calmly as he could muster.
The fat folds of the fugitive’s neck heaved as the man stared at him. “You going to write all about this, ain’t you?” he said, his voice unsteady.
Harry recovered his bravado, began acting the reporter. He knew reporters sometimes have control over a criminal when they can appeal to the lawbreaker’s ego, when they can promise to write the story the way the person wants it told.
“I’ll tell your story,” said Harry, keeping his voice from showing the fear he felt.
The eyes of the fugitive looked from side to side. “I figure I kill you, and the others can’t find me, then by morning I’ll be so far in the swamp no one will find me.”
“You’re going to copy Walker John?” said Harry.
“Worked for him. It’ll work for me,” the sheriff’s voice squeaked from fear.
“If you kill me, who will write your story?” asked Harry.
“I ain’t going to jail. No way I’m going in there and face them men I sent up. Nossir.”
Harry tried again. “You just have to explain things.”
“No other way,” he said, his voice weak.
“What do you mean?” asked Harry, realizing he was running out of time.
“If you’re dead, no one will know
where I am.” The sheriff moved his knife upward above Harry’s chest.
Then, Harry saw, from the edge of his eye, a steel barrel protruding from the reeds behind the sheriff and gently prodding his neck.
The fugitive hesitated, stopped the downward movement of his knife and started to turn his head.
“I never liked you and I’d like to kill you right now with this shotgun,” the ranger’s wife said quietly as she jabbed the prisoner. Harry could feel the big man’s grip on his begin to loosen. She jabbed the sheriff again. He slowly lowered the knife, dropped it into the mud and moved back from Harry.
“Kneel down,” she ordered. “Mister Harry, you tie him up in his shirt.”
The prisoner got down, his knees in the muck.
“I’d kill you as quick as I see you and don’t you think nothing,” she said. “I watch a lot of westerns.”
Harry quickly peeled the wet shirt from the fat man, pulled his arms behind him and tied them with the shirt arms.
“Now let’s you and I get him back to River Sunday, Mister Harry,” she said as she prodded her prisoner to stand up, the tip of her shotgun tight against the folds of fat white skin on his bare upper back.
Two hours later, when Harry finally got back to the newspaper office, he found Annie waiting for him.
“We got him,” he said to her.
“They called me,” she said, tears coming down her face as she rushed to him and they hugged each other tightly.
“I was worried about you,” she said in a broken voice.
“I’m getting better at walking in the mud,” he said, between kissing her.
Later, he went to his desk and typed a summary of the capture for the paper. Annie looked over his notes.
“You’re pretty brave for a reporter,” she said with a grin.
“That ranger’s wife is going to get a medal from me if I have to make it myself, Harry said.
Annie went back to her desk and picked up a piece of paper.
She said, “You remember when you asked me to check out Walker’s name in Boston?”
Harry asked, “What happened?”
“Our hunch was right. Walker and Stella did have a son.”
Harry laughed out loud. “So old Stella got her way.”
“Her son never had to grow up in River Sunday,” nodded Annie.
“I’ll bet the Pastor had a hand in this, and the mother too,” said Harry.
Annie went on, “A friend of mine traced him through a Baptist church record in Boston. That got me the name of the foster parents, and from that I found out he got a scholarship to MIT. He works as a mechanical engineer.”
“What should we do about that bit of news?” he said.
“I went to see Stella as soon as I found out,” she answered with a smile.
“She must have been surprised.”
“She was in great spirits,” said Annie. “She’d just heard about Walker. When I told her about her son, she began crying. I was worried but then she said that she was so happy. She had given him up, didn’t know where he was.”
“Did she call him?” Harry asked.
Annie nodded and said,” She was all tears when she talked to him, you can imagine.”
“Can he come to River Sunday?” asked Harry.
“He’ll be here tomorrow morning,” she said.
Annie took his hand. “Spotswood is also coming to River Sunday. He’s sending down a crew to cover tomorrow’s races and to interview Walker.”
Harry said, “I knew he’d eventually come here. The story was too good for him to stay away.”
“Only now he’ll get the true story,” she said. “Just like you wanted.”
He looked at her and said, “What about the regatta issue for tomorrow?”
“I’ll get these changes in. They’re waiting for me. They’ll have it ready to hand out in the morning, right on time.”
“Write a good headline.” Then he put down the papers and looked at her, his feelings welling up inside him. He spoke softly, “I know something else, even more of a priority.” He reached up and touched the side of her face. She bent forward and kissed him.
Chapter 24
Saturday, August 7, ten am
The issue of the Nanticoke Times was out. The headline was “Walker Walks.” And below it, in smaller print, “Sheriff Good Accused of Murder.”
Harry smiled with satisfaction as he spotted copies of the paper being scanned by everyone along the street. He moved through the throngs of race fans on his way to the town pier and the judge’s stand.
The morning was bright and hot as Harry finally stood with the others on the dock. Mel’s music truck, this time equipped with a Dixieland Band complete with musicians in striped costumes, was playing the lively “Sailing down the Chesapeake,” and a quartet of men were singing the stanzas as loud as they could.
Come on Nancy, put your best dress on.
Come on, Nancy, ‘fore the steamboats gone.
Everything is lovely on the Chesapeake Bay,
All aboard for Baltimore, and if we’re late they’ll all be sore!
Above them on a platform covered with red white and blue paper decorations were the judges sitting in front of their computer screens and microphones, speaking in turn to the public address system. Going from dock to the platform and back again were the race committee members. The Cannon Club, a group of descendants of Confederate veterans were preparing to fire the restored Civil War Napoleon cannon that would be used to start the races.
Harry looked at Walker who was sitting back in his wheelchair on the viewing stand, his legs stretched out. He sat, like a Lincoln statue, his thin legs out in front in the new pants that she had bought for him, the bones leaking through the pants, so devoid of flesh. The eyes of the old man would tear and then dry, then tear again as though he were fighting back the emotions and trying to remain above them, as he must have done so many times out in the swamp, incurring hope in order to survive all those years. Beside him also seated were his sister and Pastor Allingham, resplendent in his black suit. Standing further back was the barber, Jack Bob, who nodded to Harry.
Then the cruise ship started into the harbor bringing in spectators from Baltimore to watch the races. Harry recalled how the old man had talked about the cruise ship that ran aground near his camp.
“Was this the boat, Walker?” he leaned over and asked. Then again, “Was this the passenger boat that you saw from the swamp?”
Walker looked up, “When I seen that boat offshore it was as though my life was there in front of me and all I had to do was to wade out to the ship and climb aboard and my life would start again. I would have my freedom again. Watching it and all the happiness and fear that was in those eyes of the passengers, that was what I saw then. Now I see the boat with the eyes of a free man and I figure I could go aboard and feel that I am a part of the living.”
Harry’s former New York boss, Spotswood, arrived with camera men. He was a small dwarf of a man, mustached, well dressed and powerful in manner. In his right hand was a copy of the Nanticoke Times.
“Nice scoop, Harry,” he said as he shook hands. He immediately set about taking pictures and interviewing Walker and the others. With him present, what had been a small town with a national boat race and sports broadcasters became a small town with a celebrity editor in town to do a feature story. It was the confrontation of the sports reporters who had had the town to themselves all week and this newcomer that amused Harry as he watched, taking mental notes of Spotswood’s forceful and assured style as he forced his way, making the other writers stand back. The New Yorker arranged Charleston, Billy Elliott and Walker all in the same area of the viewing stand. He put his cameras on them and began to ask questions.
“What’s this General Store?” he asked Billy.
“A shrine,” Billy said. “I’ll make sure you get photos.” He held up his own copy of the Nanticoke Times. “After I give them to Harry for his paper,” he said with a smile.
<
br /> His old boss stepped close to Harry. “You did a good job on this, Harry. You let me know and I’ll start telling the powers that be that they made a hell of a big mistake letting you go. We’ll find a place for you, don’t you worry.”
Harry nodded, but he didn’t feel anything. New York didn’t mean what it had meant to him before. He looked over at Walker.
From the race committee came a loud announcement, “Before we start the next race we have a special treat for all of you spectators. You’re going to see a boat which never raced but which we all know about.”
The echo of the speaker’s voice ceased and the crowd began to quiet. Above, a blimp, bobbing in the air currents, circled as the pilot was radioed a change, that something new was being added to the drama.
Boat engines were turned off. Harry heard a distant sound of singing. Pastor Allingham whispered, almost smiling as he did so, that the chanting was Reverend Blue’s church choir trying to scare away the preacher’s devils.
The waves from the last furious race boat heat had smoothed down and the sunlight twinkled off the water as though it were any other day in the River Sunday harbor. Farther out the small boats anchored around the slave monument were still, the people on board them clustered on the side toward the spectator dock.
A boat of some kind, still out of Harry’s sight, was now coming out.
“Folks,” said the race chairman, his voice pinging in the microphone, “if you’ll just keep your seats. I believe we have happening here today one of those great moments in sports, something we’ll all be glad we witnessed.”
Walker had struggled to his feet. The Pastor held him on one side while his sister stood on the other. To the right of the officials was a section of the town pier designated the “hot pit,” a place in the jargon of the drivers where they could load and unload their boats from trailers, where many engine tests could be made. Here, the crane from the dredge barge, the same one that had lifted Black Duck from the marsh, was situated to lift and place the racers into the water.
Behind the crane, though, and out of immediate vision, Harry heard the powerful diesel engine moving toward him and the others. He recognized that engine and as he looked to the source of the sound, the bow of the construction barge came into sight.
Powerboat Racer (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 3) Page 30
