River Girl (9 page)

“Back there?” she asked with horror. “I have to,” I said. I leaned forward and kissed her, holding her face tightly between my hands. “I’ll be back before long.”

Without waiting for her to say anything. I got up and went back along the trail toward the cabin. As I neared it I saw the old hound lying under the porch, and suddenly I realized I had forgotten about him altogether, or had never thought of him at all. What were we going to do with him? We couldn’t just leave him here to starve on this island. Oh, hell, I thought, he can swim. He’ll get off.

I stepped up on the porch, dreading it. It had looked good when I’d thought of it back there at the boat landing, but it wasn’t going to be easy to do.

Putting it off wasn’t going to help any. I stood in the center of the room looking down at the man I’d have to live with now for the rest of my life, then I started searching for the things I needed. There was an extra bedsheet in a little locker out in the kitchen, but that wasn’t heavy enough. I had to have something thicker than that so he wouldn’t drip blood all over me and onto the trail while I was carrying him down to the lake. In a minute I found it, an old canvas hunting coat in one of the dresser drawers.

Feeling the nausea well up and turn over in my stomach, I reached down and touched him, rolling him over onto his back. The eyes were open, staring up at me, and I would have lost it then if there’d been anything left inside me. Sweating, fumbling, in a near panic, I slipped the canvas coat over his arms, backward, then rolled him again, away from the pool of blood, and pulled the coat together around his back and buttoned it. It was big, like all hunting coats, and there was slack enough to make it reach around that way.

I stood up, thinking. It was nearer to the lake if I went straight out beyond the side of the house, on that path she used when she went swimming, rather than going clear down to the boat landing. And, too, if I took him out that way and went down and brought the boat around to him, it would keep her from having to see him and possibly becoming hysterical again. Stooping, I put my hands under his waist and lifted. He was limp and awkward to handle, but not as heavy as I had thought he would be. Maybe the fright and the urgency gave me extra strength. Anyway, I managed to get him across my shoulder without too much trouble. Stepping carefully around the blood so I wouldn’t get my shoes in it, I went out through the kitchen and across the clearing. The trail through the timber was dim, and cooler than the sunlight, and for an instant I remembered that other day when we were out here and how we had come running back when we heard his boat. Suddenly, that reminded me of the fact that we hadn’t heard the boat at all this time, and I knew he had cut the motor far down the lake and used the oars. He had known I was up there, or had thought I was. What was it she had said—“After so much of that running maybe you start to crack up and suspect everybody”? There couldn’t have been much reason for his thinking I was up here, unless he had recognized me down the lake, but he had, and now he was dead. It wasn’t a pretty thing to think about—the way you had to live when you were on the run like that. And now, unless this idea of mine was good, we were the ones who would be running.

I put him down at the edge of the trees along the lake and walked away a few steps so I wouldn’t have to see him and stopped to get my breath. While I was doing that I suddenly remembered something else I had forgotten. I had to have something heavy to weight him with. In this warm water he’d come to the top in a few days. That’s too much forgetting, I thought uneasily. I’ve got to stop that. Once you start something like this, you can’t overlook anything.

I tried to think of something I could use. It had to be some object that wouldn’t be missed if anybody searched the place, as of course they would. There was his big outboard motor, but that would be missed right away. And I couldn’t use part of the kitchen stove for the same reason. Well, Christ, I thought, the thing to do is go back there and look—not stand here worrying about it like an old woman.

There was nothing under the house, no rocks or bricks. In the kitchen I found a flatiron, but only one, and it was too light. I stood there looking around, cursing the delay and feeling my nerves beginning to jump again. There had to be something. In desperation, I bent down and looked under the bed. And there it was. I hauled it out, another outboard motor, a small one he probably used for trolling. It was a two-and-a-half horse, and would weigh about thirty pounds, which was heavy enough. When I picked it up I heard a little gasoline splash around in the tank. I started to drain it out on the ground outside and then decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, and started looking around for some wire. I looked at my watch. It was a little after eleven.

It had to be wire. Cord or rope would rot after a while. I finally found some tied up in the walnut tree, and went back out to the lake carrying the outboard, hurrying now to get it over with. I put the motor down beside him and went back across the clearing to the other end, to the boat landing. She hadn’t moved.

“Are you all right now, Doris?” I asked gently.

She looked up. “Yes, I’m all right. Can we go now?”

“Not for a little while longer. You know what I’m doing, don’t you?”

She shuddered. “Yes. I think so.”

“Can you handle a boat?” I asked.

I could see the horror begin to come back into her face. “You want me to—to—”

“No,” I said. “Not with me. I just want you to take the other boat up there to the bend and keep a lookout. There’s not much chance anybody will come along, but we still can’t risk it.”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I can do that much. I’m sorry, Jack.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “You’re doing fine.”

I helped her into the rental boat and gave it a shove. Then I got in his, undamped the motor and lifted it out onto the float, and followed her out of the slough, using the oars. When I got out into the lake I thought of something and looked under the seat for the tow sack he carried the fish in. They were still in it. So he hadn’t gone on to the store. I didn’t think he’d had time, even with that big motor, to get clear down to the store and back since the time I’d met him. I didn’t like it, because the man who bought the fish down there would remember it, remember he hadn’t shown up when he was supposed to. Well, I thought, there’s nothing I can do about it now.

I rowed up the lake shore to where I had left him, then waited until she reached the bend and got in position. When she got there I took a good look up the lake, in the other direction, to be sure it was clear. There was no bend up there and I could see for a mile or more, the lake deserted and glaring in the sun. I backed in to the bank and got out. Pulling the stern up a little so it would rest on the beach, I picked him up again and laid him across the big seat, on his side with his legs doubled up, then brought the motor over and started fastening it to him with the wire. It was hot and breathlessly still now and the surface of the lake was like a sheet-metal roof blazing in the sun. The shaking and revulsion began to take hold of me again at having to touch him and move him around like that, but I kept on until I had done a thorough job of it.

It was harder to shove the boat off now, with him across the stern, but I worked it loose, still standing on the ground and holding it, and moved it around with my hands until it was parallel and I could get in without having to climb over him. Sitting on the middle seat, I splashed water with an oar until I had obliterated the mark the boat had left on the beach, took one more look down the lake to where she was and up the lake to see that both directions were clear, and started pulling out into the channel. When I got out toward the middle I turned around and sounded with the anchor rope. It was about twelve feet deep. Stepping back to the stern, I took hold of the coat and rolled him off. There was a splash and the boat rocked, and then he was gone. A string of bubbles came to the surface, and then at last one big one that made a bulge in the water like a bass feeding. My knees gave way on me and I had to sit down.

She saw me head back to the landing and started rowing in herself. I tied up at the float and dumped the catfish out of the wet tow sack into the water. They were still alive. After looking the seat over carefully to be sure there was no blood on it, I put the motor back on the stern. She came alongside in a few minutes and I made the boat fast and helped her out.

“I’ve just got one more thing to do,” I said. “It won’t take more than about twenty minutes.”

She came very close to me there on the float and looked up. “I’m sorry I went to pieces on you,” she said quietly. “But I’m all right now, Jack. Hold me for just a minute before you go back and I won’t cause you any more trouble.”

When I reached out for her and tipped her face back I could see that a little of the color had come back into it and that the dead, washed-out agony was leaving her eyes. “Jack,” she whispered, pleading, “it’ll be all right with us now, won’t it? Tell me it will.”

I knew what she meant. It wasn’t the police she was thinking of. I kissed her, holding her very tightly, then ran a hand along her cheek and through the straight, dark hair. “Yes,” I said. “It’ll be all right. It’ll be just like it was before.”

“For always, Jack?”

“For always,” I said.

There were two water buckets in the kitchen. I found a big dishrag and a scrubbing brush and set to work, spilling some water on the floor where he had lain, mopping it up with the rag and wringing it out into the bucket. When I had used up all the water I went down to the lake shore for more, throwing the dirty water out into the lake. Then I used soap and the stiff scrubbing brush over a wide area and carefully mopped up all the soapsuds, wiped the floor as dry as I could get it with the cloth, dumped the soapy water in the lake, washed out the buckets, filled one of them with water, and brought them back to the kitchen.

I stood there in the front room for a minute, looking around. The floor would be dry in a few hours and everything else was in order. I saw her purse lying on the dresser where she had left it, and picked it up. Then I gathered up the gun, wrapped the wet cloth around it, and stuck both in a pocket so I could throw them in the lake. It was as I was just starting out the door that I again felt that disturbing and uneasy awareness of having forgotten something absolutely damning. It was picking up the gun that reminded me of it. The gun was an automatic, and somewhere in this room was the ejected cartridge case, which I had completely forgotten. I stopped, feeling the hair prickle along the back of my neck. I was too slipshod about things like that.

It wasn’t anywhere. I looked all over the floor, under the dresser, under the bed, and on top of it, and I couldn’t find it. It had to be here, and it wasn’t. You couldn’t lose anything as large as a .45 case in this bare room I told myself. It’s impossible. I stood still by the dresser, sweating, afraid again, hearing the ticking of the clock beat its way up out of the silence and the dead, empty air and the heat. Frantically I jerked the gun out of my pocket and unwrapped it, and pulled the slide back until I could see the cartridge in the chamber. It was unfired, as I had known it would be, for the gun hadn’t jammed. The empty case had come flying out, as it was supposed to, and now it was gone. Had one of the dresser drawers been open, I wondered? Maybe it had flown in here. I yanked them open, one by one, and pawed through them. It wasn’t there. Hold onto yourself, I thought. Don’t start coming apart like an old maid with the vapors. You’ve already lost your head once in this room and killed a man, and if you lose it again you may kill yourself. There’s a good explanation for it if you’ll just cool off and look for it. Nobody’s been here, so it’s still here. It has to be.

He was there, I thought, coming off the wall and going toward the bed, and I was right here in front of this dresser. The gun would have been along a line like this, with the slide over on this side… Christ, I thought, the door! Shoving the gun and the cloth back in my pocket, I hurried outside. It was lying near a clump of grass, glinting in the sun. I took a deep breath. When I came back to the boat she said nothing, but I could see the question and the pleading entreaty in her eyes. “Yes,” I said. “We can go now. It’s all finished.”

She gave a little cry and caught my arm. I helped her in and shoved off. When we were well out in the lake I tied the gun up securely in the cloth, which would still show bloodstains in a laboratory, and dropped them over the side.

This was the part now that scared me. There were fifteen miles of lake between here and the slough where I would leave her, and at any turn of the channel we might come across a party of fishermen in a boat. There wasn’t much chance of it, for it was a weekday, and there had been none when I came up, but I still didn’t like the risk. It would be dangerous to have anybody see me taking her out. But there wasn’t any other way to do it. I had to take the boat back, and if I kept it up here to run her down the lake after dark I wouldn’t get back with it until midnight or later, which would cause dangerous talk later when the story broke. So there was nothing for us to do except go ahead and pray we wouldn’t meet anybody.

Our luck held. I ran the whole fifteen miles with the motor wide open and my heart in my mouth as we came around every turn in the channel, and we didn’t meet a single boat. As I swung into the entrance to the slough where I used to launch my own boat, I breathed freely for the first time and lighted a cigarette, conscious of the way my hand had stiffened around the tiller. It was only then that I realized that neither of us had said a word since we left the landing. At the end of the slough I cut the motor and drifted up to the bank. I looked at my watch. It was five minutes of two. That was good time, I thought.

I helped her out. “It’ll take me a little over an hour to take the boat back to the foot of the lake and get my car and get back here,” I said. “You can sit down here, or if you want to you can start walking out toward the highway on that logging road and meet me. You won’t meet anybody on it because it’s never used any more. Can you walk in those shoes?”

She nodded eagerly. “Yes. I’d rather walk. I’d go crazy sitting here. I can’t get lost, can I?”

“No,” I said. “There’s only one road and it doesn’t branch off anywhere. But if you get to the highway before I get back, don’t go out on it. Wait for me in the timber.”

I refilled the fuel tank of the motor again from the can in the bow, and dumped most of the shiners in the lake to make it look as if I’d done a lot of fishing. They were dead because I’d forgotten to change the water on them. Of course, I didn’t have any fish to show for my day, but fishing-camp proprietors never expected you to catch anything anyway.