At last they came into an irregular open bay. Skippy flew directly over a dense shore line of mangrove and dipped the port wing. They couldn’t believe there was an opening there. They were almost on it before they saw it. The water was deep and sleek and green. The channel was narrow. At places the leaves touched overhead and they were in mottled shadow, ducking under limbs.
Doyle thought of the child who had been brought here long ago, sitting in her pink dress in the bow of the skiff, full of a child’s love for secrets and sense of adventure. If this was the right place.
The channel writhed and abruptly opened onto an almost circular bay a hundred yards across. Geer throttled down abruptly. The aircraft had climbed high again.
“There’s the boat,” Buddy said softly, an unnecessary comment. They had all seen it, the gleam of aluminum and the red motor in the shade where it had been drawn up, empty, directly across the bay from the single entrance. With the small motor barely turning over, the dinghy moved very slowly.
“Old shack over there,” John Geer murmured. “See it under the trees. Little to the right of the boat.”
“I see it,” Buddy said. “Cleared off a long time ago but it’s grown up. Good high ground. Cabbage palm.”
Doyle felt dangerously exposed. Above the muted burbling of the small outboard he heard the sliding click as Geer worked a shell into the chamber of the target pistol.
“Where the hell is he?” Geer whispered. “I don’t like this.”
“Move it up a little closer,” Buddy ordered.
They could see the small shack more distinctly. The warped door had fallen out of the frame and there was a sagging shutter on the single window.
“She used to tell how he’d take her to a stone castle full of jewels and she was a princess,” Buddy said.
“Look to the left of the boat,” Doyle said. “About fifteen feet from it.” The figure was in shadows. It was face down over the mangrove roots, and utterly still. There were sun dollars on the faded back of the blue work shirt. The back of the white head was out of water.
Geer whispered, “If he killed old Lucas like that, we better figure on coming in here with more than just one little…”
The three shots were authoritative, heavy-throated, evenly spaced. They had a flat sound in the stillness, and were harsh in that special way that can happen only when you are in line with the muzzle. Merged with the middle shot, Doyle heard the once-heard-never-forgotten sound of a slug smashing into flesh and bone. He plunged over the side of the dinghy into two feet of shallow water, turned and grasped the dinghy as the slow-turning motor threatened to move it away. Buddy had plunged out of the dinghy too, but stayed on his feet. And, with ponderous strength, ran diagonally toward the shore, angling away from the cabin, head down and knees high. There was a shiny red-black stain on the back of Buddy’s right shoulder, spreading as he ran. There was another shot but Buddy kept running. He dived headlong into the mangroves about sixty feet from the shack, and about a hundred feet from the dinghy.
Doyle had turned the dinghy so that it was between him and the shack. He pushed it until he was near the stern, and then pulled down on the near gunwale so as to tip the far side up to give him cover as he reached and turned the motor off. With the dinghy tilted he could see John Geer crumpled in the bottom of it. He could see his face. The slug had entered just above the left eyebrow, hammering a black, round, lethal hole delicately rimmed with a froth of blood.
The aircraft sound grew loud, and the amphib came down so low that Doyle thought for a moment the man was going to attempt a landing in the tiny bay. But it lifted and cleared the trees at the end, and droned away until the sound of it was lost. The bay was still. He heard a sleepy sound of birds, a heat-whine of insects, a crashing in the thick brush where Buddy had disappeared.
“John?” Buddy’s call was loud in the stillness.
“He’s dead,” Doyle called back.
After a long silence Buddy called, with pain and hoarse anger in his voice, “What are you trying to do, Donnie? You crazy bastard! You can’t kill everybody in the world! Where’s Betty?”
There was no answer. “Are you hurt, Alex?”
“No.”
“I think I got it bad. I think he smashed hell out of my right shoulder. I’m beginning to feel kind of funny. There’s a lot of blood. Where do you think he is?”
“Near the shack. But I’m not sure.”
“Maybe he’s working his way toward me. I’ve hunted with him. He can move without a sound. Where’s John?”
“In the dinghy.”
“Where’s his gun?”
“Maybe it’s under him. I’ll see if I can find it.”
“Don’t get careless. Don’t give him a chance at you.”
It was difficult to shift the body. He saw the muzzle under Geer’s left thigh. He tilted the dinghy further and worked the gun out. He opened his mouth to call to Buddy that he had it, and then changed his mind. He waited a few minutes longer. Then he called, “Buddy.”
“Yes?” The reply was alarmingly weak.
“I can’t find it. I guess he dropped it over the side when he was hit.”
“Then you… better… try to get out of here. I… can’t…. Things are fading.”
He checked the gun. The safety was off.
“Doyle!” It was Capp’s voice, coming from the vicinity of the shack.
“What do you want, Mister Deputy, sir?”
“I want that little boat, Doyle. You shove it into shore nice, and I’ll leave you healthy. I have to come get it and you’ll be dead as the rest of ’em.”
The final phrase made Doyle’s heart sink. Up until that moment there had been frail hope. Now there was no room within him for anything but an anger so great that for a moment it blurred his vision.
“You haven’t got a damn thing to lose by letting me have it too, Donnie. What guarantee have I got?”
“You took too much time, Doyle. You lost a chance. I’m coming after it.”
He knew what the dinghy meant to Capp. With it he could get to the mainland. With his knowledge of the sloughs and swamps, he had a chance to get away. He heard a slow sloshing sound and knew that Donnie was wading out toward him. He could visualize him, the pale watchful eyes, the revolver ready. And he wouldn’t want to take a chance on holing the dinghy.
Doyle weighed his chances. They were not good. He knew that he could put at least one hole in Capp, but one little twenty-two slug was not going to prevent Capp firing at least once, and from a range that would make a miss unlikely. And the impact of that slug would make the chance of a second hole in Donnie Capp very unlikely.
His only possible chance, he knew, would be to make Capp lose some of his animal caution. And so, as rapidly as he could without exposing himself in any way, Doyle began to scuttle backward in the deepening water, pulling the dinghy with one hand, holding the target pistol in his right.
Capp gave a grunt of surprise and anger, and, as Doyle continued to pull, he heard the thrashing, splashing sound of Capp running through the shallow water to overtake the boat before Doyle could reach the entrance to the bay.
It was difficult to guess by the sounds when Capp would be at the optimum distance. There would be no time to aim. And if he made his move at a moment when Capp’s gun hand was swung forward in the effort of running through the water, one snap shot could end it.
When it seemed that Capp was almost near enough to touch the boat, Doyle got his feet under him, thrust the dinghy violently to one side and came to his feet in water almost to his waist, and saw Capp fifteen feet away plunging toward him. He had no conscious awareness of aiming. He did not hear the snapping of the shots. He merely kept the muzzle centered on Capp’s chest and kept pulling the trigger. Donnie Capp blundered to a stop with a look of wild and vacant surprise on his seamed and sallow face. It was that inimitable look, the look a man uses but once in a lifetime. The look of the ultimate surprise.
Still off balance Capp th
rust the heavy revolver forward and fired once. He got his balance and lowered the revolver slowly and fired again, down into the water beside his leg. As Doyle fired, he saw the small black spots appearing by magic in the faded khaki shirt. The gaudy deputy shield clinked and whined away.
Capp sat down in the water slowly, as though with deliberate caution. He stared at Doyle and then, suddenly, the look of surprise faded. And he was staring beyond the unknown stars. He toppled over onto his side, straightened out, made a slow half roll onto his face and sank, very slowly, to the bottom. The pale hat floated, right side up.
Doyle looked down at the gun in his hand. He lowered it. He trudged woodenly to the dinghy, dropped the gun in beside John Geer’s body, and towed the dinghy ashore and beached it beside Capp’s boat. And then he walked along the shore line in the water to the place where Buddy had dived into cover.
Buddy lay on his back, his face wet and gray, his lips blue. Doyle ripped the bloody shirt from the wound. It was blood from shoulder to waist. He took off his own shirt and, ripping long strips and fashioning two pads, he tightly bound the small entrance wound and the great torn hole in the rear. He made the binding tighter by using John Geer’s belt. He felt the huge man’s pulse. It felt frail and uncertain. There was nothing more he could do for him. He did not dare move him.
He went back to where the boats were. He took Lucas’s ankles and dragged him back out of the water. He had seen the crabs hurry away when he pulled the old man out, so he left him face down in the heavy grass.
He turned then, slowly, and took a deep breath and let it out and walked up toward the shack, looking to left and right for the body of the girl.
She lay face down in heavy undergrowth to the left of the shack. He saw the white of her skirt and went over to her. The skirt was rumpled and dirty, and hiked above the brown knees. One foot was bare, a sandal on the other one. She lay, toeing in, one arm under her body. There was a large area behind and above her right ear where the heavy-textured hair was matted with dark dried blood. A red ant crawled across the small of her brown back, where the yellow blouse had hiked up out of the waist of the skirt.
He looked bitterly down at her and knew it was only the greatness of his need that made him think he saw a faint movement, as though she breathed. Suddenly and breathlessly, he dropped to his knees and laid his ear against the back of the yellow blouse. And heard then the slow and vital cadence of her heart, the deep and healthy thudding of the life in her. When he straightened up he was smiling like a fool, and the tears were running down his face.
He rolled her tenderly and carefully onto her back, and smoothed out her skirt and brushed her hair back from her forehead. He tore the pocket out of his trousers and rinsed it in salt water and used that to gently cleanse the grime and bits of twigs from her face. He kissed her unconscious lips.
After what seemed a very long time he heard the aircraft again, moving back and forth, pointing out the channels to someone else. Finally it was close. He could look up and catch glimpses of it through the leaves. It went away then and he heard the sound of motors and the voices of many men. He walked down and watched them come across the bay toward him.
chapter ELEVEN
DOYLE, on the first day of May, walked out of the Davis General Hospital with Betty Larkin. He had driven her over to see Buddy. Buddy had been in a wheel chair on the sun porch, his smashed shoulder in a curious and complicated cast. And he had been restless and in a vile mood, convinced that everything at the yard was going to hell.
They walked across to the parking lot. Betty wore a beige dress with aqua buttons on the pockets. She wore a scarf over her head to hide the place where her hair had been shaved away so that the wound made by Donnie’s club could be stitched.
She was subdued, thoughtful.
After he had turned onto the road to Ramona, she said, “So you’re all packed.”
“Just about. Not much to pack.”
“And you’ve got your reservation.”
“Tomorrow at ten out of Tampa. I’ll have to get a darn early start to unload this heap before I have to be at the airport.”
“I could drive up with you, Alex. You could make the title over to me and I could sell it and send you the money.”
“I wouldn’t want to ask you to go to all that trouble.”
“After what you did for us? Good Lord, Alex! And you won’t even let us give you a dime of the money.”
“What’s the word on that, anyway?”
“Oh, you know those fruit jars where the rubber had rotted and water had got in, and the money was just a mass of glop? The lawyer says it will go to Washington where experts work on it, and he thinks we may get an almost hundred per cent recovery. We have no idea how much there is in those jars. And he says that the tax people are prepared to be reasonable. We may be able to keep quite a lot.”
“I hope so.”
“It would be nice to be out of hock on all the improvements we made. Poor John Geer. He said so many times that when we finally paid off the bank, he was going to get drunk.”
“Are you still sore at me for lying to you in the beginning about why I came down?”
“No. I was sort of irritated. But I understand. If you remember, my friend, there were flaws in your performance. And I noticed them, too.”
“So you did. Smart gal.”
“It’s nice to see you relaxed, Alex. You were so strained and nervous-acting.”
“Because I was back here, mostly. I didn’t want to come back. I felt this place had a hex on me.”
“Boy leaves in disgrace. Man comes back and becomes big hero. Gets in all the papers. Becomes public figure.”
“All right. I enjoy it, damn it. I enjoy walking down Bay Street and getting the big glad hand from end to end of it.”
“You won’t take any of the money?”
“How many times are you going to ask? No! Thanks.”
She turned sideways in the seat. “I want to tell you something. When I went to the bank and looked at all that money there on that table, something happened to me. Maybe I lost a hex. I’d thought of Daddy as something larger than life. I never saw him in perspective, the way you are supposed to see your parents after you grow up. He kept on being a big, cold, watchful eye looking down at me from up in the clouds somewhere. Making me feel clumsy and guilty and ashamed. And then I saw the money. And I thought of him sneaking away in the skiff and squirreling that money away in fruit jars in the ground, scared to death somebody would follow him or catch him at it. Something sort of went click. He wasn’t big and cold and frightening any more. He was just a scared, greedy, twisted little man. The only thing that really mattered in that shriveled little soul was the money. Not Jenna. She was a pretty toy. And the hex faded. I feel sorry for him. I’m trying to understand him, Alex. He had so very little to start with. And it hurt him. But why should it hurt him? You had almost as little. You’ve done well. And you aren’t all… withered up inside the way he was.”
“Maybe I am, in some other way.”
“Nonsense!”
“I mean it. I avoid emotions. I avoid emotional responsibilities, Betty. They scare me. That’s part of why I had to be forced, or I would never have come back.” She did not answer.
“Drop you at home?” he asked.
“Please. And if you don’t mind, I’ll jeep over later for a swim and get the spare key back, and see you haven’t left anything around, such as a toothbrush.”
She came out and swam, and she seemed particularly gay, joyous in a rather high-keyed way. After they had changed and were having a sunset drink on the porch, she went out to the jeep and came back with a package for him. He opened it, with protests.
“It’s from Mom and Buddy and me, but I picked it out. It’s the dangdest one I ever saw. It tells time, I think, if you can find the right hands to look at. But see all these little levers and things? With this you can do anything. But you better read the instructions.”
“It’s ver
y handsome, and I thank you. Please thank your mother and Buddy for me.” He put it on.
“What will you do with this old one?”
“Throw it away, I guess.”
She put it in the pocket of her skirt. “I think I’ll keep it. I’m a sentimental type. I’ll put it with that old diary where you’re featured so strongly. Mind?”
“If you want it. I don’t know why you should want it. All it does is tell time, and it doesn’t do that very well.”
“Which I had noticed and which I remembered.” She put her glass on the railing. “Want me to drive up with you tomorrow?”
“I’ll manage, thanks.”
“So walk me out to the jeep and say good-by, Alex.”
They walked around the cottage to the blue jeep waiting in patience in the heavy dusk.
“You will come back, won’t you? Sometime?”
He looked at her standing there. And the need to say things was strong inside him, trying to break free. I will come back, to see you. Because I don’t think I can go very long from here on without seeing you once in a while.
But he heard himself say, too casually, “I suppose I’ll be back to look at the town. I don’t know when, Betty.”
“Oh, Alex!” she said in a choked voice, and he looked quickly at her and saw that there was just enough light to make the tear tracks on her cheeks gleam. She held her arms out toward him shyly, tentatively.
He took her in his arms strongly, with a sound in his throat like a sob, and then he could say the words. Something how he felt when he thought her dead. How he would come back often, and only to be with her for a little while.
And then he kissed her. He felt again the resistance, her fright, the dead stiffness of mouth. And just as he was about to release her in despair, her taut body began to relax, and there was a stir and a change in the texture of her mouth. She reached to put her arm awkwardly around his neck. She kissed him back meagerly, and then more firmly, and then suddenly with a great strong overwhelming joy. She pushed away from him and stared at him with her eyes wide and streaming, her lips tremulous.
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