She hadn't looked at him. 'Someone's cow give birth to a two-headed calf?' she inquired with cold politeness.
He came over and stooped to peck her forehead.
'No, no,' he chuckled. 'You remember Ferris' airplane? The one these people call the Money Plane? They say Shad Hark has found it. I got that from Joel Sutt himself. They're all a-whisper with the story in the village.'
Outwardly she hadn't shown any emotion. Inwardly a certain excitement had begun to snowball.
'Whisper? Why are they whispering about it?'
'Because they say the Hark boy hasn't admitted it. But he's been passing out ten-dollar bills like a New Yorker on a spree. 'Course it may not be true – you know how these swamp vifiages thrive on gossip. Still, it's rather interesting, don't you think? Might even be a story there, somewhere.'
'Yes,' she said absently. 'Tab and Reb, the latter-day rover boys find the Money Plane.'
He'd blinked at her, pausing in a reflective turn before the window. 'Eh? Oh, why no; I was thinking more of an adult paperback. You know, using the gimmick-'
But she wasn't listening. She seldom did. It was a trick she'd learned to save her sanity. Practice made perfect. She would stare at somethmg as though considering his words, nod at practically the correct time, say
She sank easily under a deeper surface of thought, remembering all the long afternoons and short nights when they'd been together in her shadowy room, and she'd prompted him with, 'Shad, when you're out there looking for your brother – you look for that airplane too, don't you?'
'Shore. Ever' man and boy that goes into that old slough keeps one eye and half a mind on the Money Plane. But ain't nobody going to find her. Know why?'
'Why?'
'Because she ain't nowhere where a-body
'But you'll keep looking, won't you, Shad? You'll keep it in your mind (if we may call it that) when you're out there. Eighty thousand dollars, Shad. We could go away with that money. Just you and I.'
She didn't need or love Shad as a person. Shad was only a simple boy, unworldly. She controlled him. She could work him around, work the money from him and leave. Perhaps it wasn't pretty, but it was escape-.
She came back to the sullen afternoon, back to the big lonely living room. She was standing at the window, looking across the lake. She waited for Shad.
He hadn't consciously noticed he was being followed that morning. It hadn't meant anything special to him when Sam Parks fell into his wake after he left Mrs. Taylor's. He didn't like Sam, so he'd pretended to ignore him. Sam had tailed him down to the store.
Joel Sutt had acted standoffish when he took Shad's order for sheets, food, and miscellaneous whatnot. So had the two or three others hanging around in there. They'd watched Shad, not speaking to him nor to each other; and when he looked at them, they shifted their gaze and tried to look like men killing time with nothing on their minds. With them it was a convincing trick.
Shad hadn't cared. His head was full of plans, full of Dorry and the money. He nodded to them, said, 'Thanks, Joel,' and walked out. He couldn't remember Joel saying anything.
Hert Reade, a fifteen-year-old, had moseyed along after him all the way back to the shantyboat. It was only when he reached the gangplank that he realized Hert was hanging around near the pond.
'Y'all want something, Hert?' he called.
But the boy shook his head, not looking at him, pawing at the bank-ooze with his bare toes. 'Naw. Just fooling around some.'
For a while Shad fussed with the idea of hiding his remaining thirty-some dollars somewhere in the shanty, but let the scheme go when he recalled the way Jort Camp had eyed his money the night before. Then, too, there was always the worry of Sam Parks tooling around in the bush. Sam could sift himself through a keyhole like a skinny beam of sunlight, and would too, if he thought there was anything worth picking up on the other side of the door.
So he'd keep his money in his pocket, and there wasn't nobody at the Landing and a damn bit further than that who could take it away from him – Except maybe Jort Camp, the gator-grabber. It bothered him somewhat that there was a man he knew he couldn't whip. Not that Jort had ever tried, but the gator-grabber had whipped every man and boy that ever came his way so far. My turn just ain't come yet, he thought. Then he said, 'Well, if he's coming at me, he best come like the wrath of God, because I'll cold go to scratch like hell on feet.'
Hert was gone when Shad left the shanty in the early afternoon. But Mel Warren, a nondescript trapper, was there piddling around in the bush, carrying a fishing pole.
If he's going fishing he's mighty God slow a-gitting at it, Shad thought. And if he's already ben – he's had mighty poor luck.
He struck up the path, giving Warren a wave. 'Catching anything out there in the bush, Mel?' he called. He thought that was a pretty good one. But Warren didn't laugh. He reacted like Hert had, with embarrassed bewilderment.
'No. Just lost something. Hit don't matter much.'
Up on the road Shad saw Jort Camp slowly coming his way. That wasn't so good. He didn't hanker to have anyone see him going to Iris Culver's house. Least of all bigmouth Camp. When he reached the creek bridge he slid down the soft embankment hurriedly and slipped into the blue shadows under the bridge. He waited three or four minutes for the sound of Jort's boots to clump overhead, but nothing happened. He frowned and waited.
The creek was slow, warm, sluggish; knee-deep in most places but rump-high awful sudden if a man wasn't careful where he stepped. A combination elderberry and similar thicket went north with the water. Shad eased from under the bridge and dodged into the bush. By the time he reached the Culver grove he was fairly cat-claw- scratched, but he didn't mind.
He circled around the grove, coming close to the white barn that nestled ship-snug in the trees. Close enough to hear the faint tac-tac-tac of Culver's typewriter clacking away somewhere up in the reconverted loft. He nodded and swung around in the other direction. With the house between himself and the barn he hurried across the lawn and up onto the side porch. 'Iris?' he whispered.
She let him in through the dining-room entrance, and she was all over him before he could even get the screen door closed properly. She was a little crazy; he'd known that for some time. She was something like that English lady in one of that Hemingway fella's books she'd loaned him. Shad didn't have a name for it, but he could recognize a danger when he saw it. The trouble was he should have seen it a long time ago. It wasn't going to be easy to tell her. She wasn't going to like it. He disengaged his mouth, saying huskily, 'Whoa! Let's git us a breath in here.'
She was looking at him from five inches away, her mouth open and the wet pink of her tongue showing. It reminded him of Dorry Mears.
He got all of him untangled at once and stepped clear, avoiding her eyes, a little frightened by the look in them. He removed his hat, as she had taught him to do, and placed it on the table; then wiped the sweat and some of the lipstick from his face. Funny the way sweat never bothered her. Yeah. And a sudden hollow sensation vacuumpacked his stomach.
'I got to talk to you,' he began.
She nodded urgently, coming at him again. 'I know – in the bedroom. We'll lock the door. Larry'll think I'm napping.'
'Couldn't we just talk here?'
She had his hand, looked at him peculiarly. 'Are you insane? Do you want Larry to come in and find us here? Come on!_' She led him. He went helplessly.
The cool-air unit was growling quietly in a corner of the shadowy room. The windows were closed, the curtains drawn. The bed was made. Iris locked the door. Shad watched her like a broken-wing turnstone watching a shore-prowling puma.
'You were so long coming, I thought something had happened to you.'
'I went and got me in a bind of gators. Had to spend me a night in the skiff.'
