Hot Springs (Earl Swagger)

by Stephen Hunter

  “I’m going to turn the lanterns down, fellows,” said Brick. “It’ll be safer that way.”

  “How long, skipper?”

  “Can’t be more than four hours. There’s enough breeze and I’ll go three sheets. I know these waters like the back of my hand. I’ll have you where you want to be by twenty-two bells. That’s ten o’clock for you landlubbers.”

  “We’re all landlubbers here,” said Herman Kreutzer, holding his BAR loosely.

  “You will be careful with that?” requested Brick.

  “Sure. But if a State Police cruiser tries to board us, you’ll be glad I’ve got it.”

  “This is an antique, old man. We can’t have it shot up.”

  “Then sail good, skip.”

  The skipper ducked back upstairs and in just a few minutes the boat began to edge forward in the darkness as its sails caught and harnessed the wind. It was like a train, in that it seemed to take forever to get going, but then, suddenly, had amassed enormous smooth speed, and flashed across the water.

  Owney looked out the porthole. He could see a few lights, but wherever they were, the shore was mostly dark. There was no sound except for the snapping of the sail in the wind and the rush of the water being pushed aside by the boat’s knifelike prow.

  “We’re okay on time?” asked Owney.

  Johnny made a show of squinting at his watch, and then a bigger show of making abstract calculations in his head, and finally came up with an answer.

  “Absolutely okay.”

  “Because the longer we hang around, the greater the chance of someone spotting me.”

  “I know it.”

  “And you’ve made the calls, it’s all set up, these are reliable people.”

  “Very reliable. This is the soft way out. It worked before, it’ll work again. Think of the last time as a rehearsal. This is the performance. Everything’s set. The critics will love it. You’ll be a hit on Broadway.”

  “I don’t care about hits on Broadway. I care about hits in Las Vegas.”

  “It will happen.”

  “The fuck. Who the fuck he think he is! Braque! I bought that goddamn painting from a legit dealer. How’s I supposed to know it was hot?”

  “Owney, Owney, Owney,” crooned Johnny. “You’re home free. You’ll have your freedom, your vengeance and your wealth. No man in America is better off than you.”

  The boat skimmed across the smooth water, and Owney settled down and watched as the lights of Hot Springs passed on the right and then got smaller and dimmer until they died away altogether.

  Finally, a far shore grew near, nearer still until it seemed they were out of lake. They were, in fact. They had reached the northernmost point of Lake Hamilton. They were at the mouth of the Ouachita River.

  Owney heard the captain giving commands. He cut sail and dropped anchor. It took his well-trained crew only a few minutes to rig for running by motor. Quickly they set up the Johnson outboard on the fantail, and ginned it up. It sounded like a sewing machine. Brick took the helm and guided them into the narrow mouth of the river.

  But Brick knew what he was doing. It was said he’d run rum for Joe Kennedy in the old days, making a fortune before moving south and joining the horsey set. He was an adventurer too, and had skippered a PT boat in the war. He got a Jap destroyer, it was said, but maybe it was only a landing craft or a cargo scow. But he knew his art: he took the boat up the narrow strait of the Ouachita River, between darkened shores so close they could almost be touched, past the little river town of Buckville. Hot Springs was far behind, and then, up near Mountain Pine, the river shifted direction, widened, and headed west into the vast Ouachita wilderness. The boat gulled along against the current, and the men finally came on deck. Around them was only darkness and the sense of the forest so close and engulfing it almost had them. But they pressed on to the west, passing into Montgomery County. They were headed west toward escape.

  In the vast quiet darkness, Owney began to relax at last. He was going to make it, he finally believed.

  59

  Where was he? She couldn’t put it out of her mind. He was in trouble. They had gotten him. He had survived so much, but he had not survived this last thing with the gangsters.

  She called long distance to a newspaper in Hot Springs. Were there any incidents, any killings, anything involving a man named Earl Swagger.

  The man said, “Lady, ain’t you heard? We had a big prison break down here. The whole town’s going crazy looking for Owney Maddox. You ought to call the cops, maybe they’d know.”

  Eventually she got to a lieutenant of detectives who chewed her out for interrupting them in their important work of capturing this escaped criminal, but he finally told her the last anybody had ever seen of that disagreeable individual, Earl Swagger, he was on his way out of the county and if she loved her husband, she’d make it clear to him he was never to return.

  That was a night before.

  Where had Earl gone?

  She tried to settle herself down, but she just sat there, feeling nauseated and frightened in the darkness. There was nobody to help her. That was Earl’s duty. Was he involved in the manhunt for this Owney, a gangster? He had told her he was off, he was out of that business, he’d been fired and he was coming home and that’s all there was to it. He was coming home to work in the sawmill.

  But she thought he was involved in the matter of Owney. The gangsters had finally caught up with him in some way. She thought of him off in the woods, the gangsters having executed him and dumped him in a grave that would go forever unmarked. Such a cruel end for a hero! It would be so unfair.

  In her abdomen, her child moved. She felt it kick ever so gently, and that too was strange. Something about the child frightened her, although the doctor kept saying that everything was fine. But it wasn’t fine; small signals of danger—her fainting spells, for example—kept arriving as if the child, somehow, were sending her messages, warning her that he needed help already, that there would be difficulties.

  She went to the desk, and got out the map of Arkansas. She looked at the highways. Clearly, it was no more than a few hours—maybe four or five at most—from Hot Springs to Camp Chaffee. There was no reason for Earl to be missing.

  She couldn’t stay put. She rose, nervous, not knowing what to do. It was near dark.

  She went next door to Mary Blanton’s and knocked.

  Mary answered, a cigarette in her hand, and immediately read the distress on Junie’s face.

  “Junie, what on earth? Honey, you look awful. Is that critter kicking up a storm?”

  “It’s Earl. He was supposed to be back from Hot Springs last night and I haven’t heard a thing.”

  “He’s probably parked in a bar, honey. You give a man a day off and sure as hell, that’s where he’ll end up. My Phil’d waste his life among the Scotch bottles if I let him.”

  “No, Mary, it can’t be that. He swore to me he was off the stuff forever. He swore.”

  “Honey, they all say that. Believe me, they do.”

  “I’m so afraid. I called the police and the newspapers, but they just told me he left late yesterday afternoon.”

  “Do you want to come in and wait here, honey? You’re welcome. I’m just reading the new Cosmopolitan.”

  “I’d like to look for him.”

  “Oh, Junie, that’s not wise. The baby’s due in two weeks. You never know about these things. You shouldn’t be off on some wild-goose chase. And what if Earl calls?”

  “But I’ll go crazy if I just sit around. I just want to drive down to Waldron and then over to Hot Springs. That’d be the way he’d come, I know. We’ll run into him and that’ll be that. But I just can’t sit there anymore.”

  “You can’t drive alone.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, let me get my hat, honey. Looks like the gals are going on a little trip. Wouldn’t mind stopping for a beer.”

  “I’m not supposed to drink, they say.”

&n
bsp; “Well, honey, there’s nothing to stop me from drinking, now, is there?”

  “No ma’am,” said Junie, already feeling better.

  “You just watch real good. You have a Coke, and you watch me drink a beer.” She winked good-naturedly.

  Mary got her hat and the two went out to Mary’s car, a 1938 DeSoto that could have used some bodywork. Mary started the old vehicle, and they backed out of the driveway and headed through the maze of gravel roads in the vets village.

  “Do you think we’ll ever get out?” Mary asked.

  “They say they’re building more houses. If you had a good war record you can get a loan. But it’ll still be a wait.”

  “All that time when Phil was in the Pacific, I kept thinking how wonderful it was going to be. Now he’s back and”—she laughed bitterly, her signature reaction to the complexities of the world—“it’s not wonderful at all. In fact, it plain stinks.”

  “It’ll work out” was all Junie could think to say.

  “Honey, you are such an incorrigible optimist! Oh, well, at least we won the war, we have the atom bomb, our men are back in one piece and we have a roof over our heads, even if it’s made of tin and smells like the inside of an airplane!”

  They laughed. Mary could always get a laugh out of Junie. Junie was so duty-haunted, so straight-ahead, so committed to the ideal, that Mary was a refreshment to her, because Mary saw through everything, considered every man who ever lived a promise-breaking, drunken, raping lout, and in her day had riveted more Liberator fuselages than any man in the Consolidated plant.

  The camp vanished behind them as they hit Route 71 and followed that road’s generally southward course as it plunged down the western spine of Arkansas.

  There was little enough to see in the daylight and even less in the twilight. Traffic was light.

  “You know, we could miss Earl’s car. It would be easy to do.”

  “I know. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

  “If it makes you feel better, you should do it. You get few enough chances in this lifetime to feel better.”

  Small towns fled by: Rye Hill, Big Rock, Witcherville, little dots on a map that turned out to be a gas station and a few outbuildings of indistinct size and meaning. It grew darker.

  “Why don’t we stop and get that beer,” said Junie.

  “Hmmm, now I’m not so sure. These boys out here, they may think we’re fast city gals out larking about. See, all men think that all women secretly desire them and want to be conquered and treated like slaves. I don’t know where they get that idea, but I do know the further you get from city lights, the stronger that idea becomes, although it’s certainly very strong in the city too. And the fact that you’re carrying thirty extra pounds of baby’ll just get ’em to thinking you want a last adventure before you’re a mama forever.”

  Junie laughed. Mary had such a bold way of putting things, which is why some of the other wives in the village didn’t like her, but exactly why Junie liked her so much.

  She looked at the map.

  “Up ahead is a city called Peverville. It’s a little larger. Maybe we’ll find a nice, decent place where nobody’ll whistle or make catcalls.”

  “Oh, if they don’t do it out loud, they’ll do it in their heads, which is the same thing, only quieter.”

  The land here was quiet and dark; it was all forest, and the gentle but insistent up and down of the road suggested they were going through mountains. Occasionally a car passed headed in the other direction, but it was never Earl’s old Ford.

  “I hope he’s all right,” Junie said.

  “Honey, if all the Japanese in the world couldn’t kill Earl Swagger, what makes you think some likkered-up cornpone-licking crackers from Hot Springs could?”

  “I know. But Earl says it’s not always who’s the best. When the guns come out, it’s so much luck too. Maybe his luck finally ran out.”

  “Earl is too ornery. Luck wouldn’t dare let him down, he’d grab it by the throat and fix that Marine Corps stare on it, and it would give up the ghost!”

  Again, in spite of herself, Junie had to laugh.

  “Mary, you are such a character!”

  “Yes ma’am,” said Mary.

  An approaching car looked to be Earl’s, and both women bent forward, peering at it for identification. But as it sped by, a much older man turned out to be the driver.

  “Thought we had us something for just a while,” said Mary.

  “You know, Mary,” said Junie, “I think maybe we better head on back.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Suddenly I don’t feel so good.”

  “Is that critter kicking up a storm?”

  “No, it’s just that I seem to be cramping or something.”

  “Oh, gosh, does it hurt?”

  Junie didn’t answer, and Mary saw from the pallor that had stolen over her features that it did.

  “Do you want to go to the hospital?”

  “No, but if I could just—”

  She hesitated.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I made a mess. I don’t know.”

  Mary pulled off, reached up and flicked on the compartment light.

  “Oh, God,” she said, for Junie was soaked.

  Suddenly Junie curled in pain.

  “My water just broke,” she said. “I am so sorry about the car.”

  “Forget the car, honey. The car don’t mean a thing. You are going to have that damn baby right now. We have to find you a hospital.”

  “Earl!” screamed Junie as the first contraction hit, “oh, Earl, where are you?”

  60

  The boat was behind them. They had left it at the River Bluff Float Camp, where the river grew too rough to be navigated. Now they traveled through the darkness in a 1934 V-8 Ford station wagon, primer dull, which had come from the Grumleys’ store of bootlegging vehicles. It had a rebuilt straight-8 Packard 424 engine, super-strong shocks, a rebuilt suspension and could do 150 flat-out if need be. Revenooers had called it the Black Bitch for years.

  Forest was everywhere, and the narrow, winding road suggested that civilization was far, far behind.

  Owney kept looking at his watch.

  “Are we going to make it?”

  “We’ll make it fine,” said Johnny. “I set it up, remember.”

  Now there was just this last, long pull through the mountains, along a ribbon of moonlit macadam; and then a final rough plunge down old logging roads, the exact sequence to which Johnny swore he had committed to memory.

  “Suppose something goes wrong? Suppose we have a flat tire or have to evade a roadblock, and we fall behind schedule.”

  “If we’re not there, he comes back next day, same time, no problem. It’s flexible. I accounted for that. But we have clear road and we ought to keep going. The sooner we’re out of here, me boy, the sooner you’re enjoying the pleasures of them dusky Mex women.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Owney. “I hate being nervous. I want to fucking do something.”

  “This is the hard part, old man,” said Johnny.

  “Say, Owney,” said Herman Kreutzer from the back seat, “whatever happened to your English accent? It seems to have escaped too.”

  The gunman erupted in laughter. This annoyed Owney, but until he had reestablished himself, he was subject to such predations. His misery increased.

  “Uh-oh,” said Johnny.

  “Oh, shit,” said Herman.

  Owney felt the sudden infusion of red light as, just behind them, a police or sheriff’s car had just turned on its lights and siren.

  “Fuck, he’s got us,” said a gunman.

  “We’re going to have to pop this boy,” said Johnny.

  “No,” said Owney. “I’ll handle it. You guys, you been laughing at me like I’m nobody. I’ll show you Mr. Fucking New York rackets.”

  “Oh, he’s a tough one,” said Vince the Hat.

  “Let the boy operate,” said Johnny.
r />   Johnny guided the car to the shoulder and eased to a halt: Owney got out, raised his hands high.

  The policeman—no, a sheriff’s deputy, or possibly the sheriff himself, for the black-and-white’s door read SHERIFF and under that MONTGOMERY COUNTY, ARK.—climbed out of the car, but kept his distance. He was not distinctly visible behind the haze of lights.

  “I’m unarmed,” called Owney.

  He spread his coat open to show that he had no pistol. Then he started to walk forward.

  “Y’all just hold it up there,” said the sheriff.

  “Ah, of course. Meant no harm, sir,” said Owney in his best stage British.

  “Who are you? Mite late to be pleasure-cruising through the mountains in a big ol’ station wagon.”

  “We were enjoying the sporting possibilities of Hot Springs,” said Owney. “Our money having run rather abruptly dry, we decided to head straight toward Fayetteville. We may have taken a wrong turn. Glad you’re here, Sheriff. If you’d just—”

  He took another step forward.

  “You hold it,” said the sheriff. “And tell all them boys to stay in that car. I am armed, and I am a good shot, and I’d hate there to be any trouble, because if there is, one or t’other of you and your boys is going to Fayetteville in a pine box.”

  “Yes sir. No need for violence. We’ll show proper ID and you may verify our identities via your radio. I appreciate that people are jumpy tonight, what with that fellow escaping prison in Hot Springs. We’ve been stopped twice at roadblocks already.”

  He kept advancing.

  “You hold it there, pardner,” said the sheriff, putting his hand to a big gun in his holster, and at the same time looking quickly to the car to make certain nobody had stepped out and all the windows had remained rolled up.

  “Sheriff, uh—?”

  “Turner, sir.”

  “Sheriff Turner, I appreciate your nervousness given the drama of the evening. But I wish to assure you I am harmless. Here, go ahead, search me. You’ll see.”

  Owney assumed the position against the fender of the police vehicle; the fellow gave him a quick pat-down and came to the conclusion he was unarmed.

  But Owney also saw that he was a professional, and shrewd. He hadn’t approached the Ford but stayed back by his own vehicle. No one in the car could get a shot at him, not without opening the doors and leaning out, and he was probably very good with his gun. If they all jumped out of the car, they might get him, but not before he’d gotten two or three of them. And he could then dip back into the woods, pop their tires and make it to a phone to call in reinforcements quick. Sly dog.