Swamp Sister

imagery, having little or nothing to do with love.

He felt as if he'd been picked up by the heels and dipped headfirst into sewer slime and then cast limply on a mudbank like a carp just off the hook. And he stared at her with an awe of awakening, as though seeing her for the first time and seeing in her the definite end of something he had never really thought about.

He had always considered her rather frigid because of her lack of response. But he hadn't let it bother him because he was a low burner himself, and so had thought them perfectly matched.

He opened his mouth to speak. He had to speak – say something. But it wouldn't come. The words were rammed under gigantic air bubbles and the bubbles were hung up on something inside his chest.

Iris stared at him for a brittle moment, then marched determinedly toward the doorway – so determined that he had to move aside quickly to avoid being knocked down.

'No talent – comma – McCulver!' she sneered in his face.

She crossed the living room by rote, coming by instinct to the bar. Her hands trembled over the martini shaker. Then, abruptly, she set it down without pouring herself a drink. She stared at the bright, gleaming finish on the bar top.

That illiterate savage is going to win after all. He's going to beat all of us. I know it, feel it. Nature is perverse that way.

Then she closed her eyes, tight, and leaned against the bar, the pink flesh of her bare stomach folding softly about its edge.

'Oh, God damn Shad Hark!' she said fervently.

Larry Culver didn't know what to do. He stood in the guest room and gaped at the rug. Then he gaped at the bed – where it had happened. Or had it happened in his wife's room?

Suddenly he had to get out of the house.

He walked mechanically, through doors, down steps, across the yard, and entered his writing studio – the reconverted barn. The upstairs contained his desk and typewriter, his filing cabinet and reference books. One wall was plastered with a colourful array of magazine tearsheets – his printed stories from the pulp magazines.

He looked at the vivid ifiustrations, at the titles, at his name LARRY CULVER on each one of them. They were by way of a touchstone. _The Dark Dive_, _The Dark Tower_, _The Dark Voyage_ – Funny, he'd never consciously noticed the redundancy of the adjective before. But it was an apt word for an adventure yarn.

He went to his desk and sat down. Then he opened the bottom drawer and brought out a. 22 target pistol and set it beside his battered old Underwood. He had purchased the pistol five years ago, when a timber rattler came to visit his garden one day. But he could never find the snake again, and so he had never had occasion to fire the weapon. He looked at the gleaming metallic barrel.

He supposed, bleakly, that it was really the only thing left to do. The only kind of work he knew was hack writing. It was that or go hungry. And now his wife had torn it to shreds for him. He didn't see how it was possible to pick up the pieces.

His eye fell on the white sheet of typing paper that was captive in the Underwood's roller. What was it now? he wondered absently. Oh, yes, the scene when Reb comes aboard the yawl and Tab has just said, 'Gosh sake, Reb. Why did you walk off with the marlinspike? I've been looking everywhere for it.'

Yes – now what reply had he figured out for Reb (that good-natured clown) before he'd run out of pipe tobacco and had to go to the house for more? Oh, yeah – yeah. He remembered. But perhaps he'd better put it down before it slipped his mind. He squared himself in his chair facing the typewriter and typed, '_Marlins pike?' Reb cried. 'I thought it was a blunt ice pick!-_'

After that – somehow – he just kept on writing.

19

The night was silver and black when Shad stumbled down the backwater bank and onto the gangplank of the shanty-boat. He was damp from having come downriver on logs, but he didn't mind it. Too beat to mind anything. Besides, the night was warm.

Inside, he found a match, got the lantern going, and then brought a can of beans and a spoon to the table. When he sat down it was as if he'd done something permanent, as though from now on he and the chair were one. His eating was automatic. He didn't think about it or even taste the cold beans. He was filling a void.

The can empty, he stood up and pulled off his clothes. Nothing -no, no goddam thing had ever looked better than his bunk. He climbed in groaning like an old man, drew up the blanket and closed his eyes. Immediately he felt like a submerged rock all wavering with undulating weed. Goan buy myself a God-awful big bed with my money, was the last thought he had.

At first the dream was only bothersome. It was Jort's face, all sweaty and unshaven and pig-eyed and rot- toothed, and the mouth kept asking the same question – You think fer a minute we don't know what you and Dorry Mears was up to? And why did it bother him? What was there about the sentence that didn't make sense? Every time he'd try to get hold of it in words, Jort would say it again – You think fer a minute we don't know what you and Dorry Mears was up to?

So finally he hit at the face, only to discover that it belonged to Tom Fort. And Tom was saying, What you done with my girl? I want her back. You give her back, hear? And then more faces and more mouths saying what had he done with her? And hands pawing at him, shoving him around, not letting him get his fists up where he could hit back. What you done with her? the mouths wanted to know. Where you got her? We want you should tell us where you got that old Money Plane. We want a share of her. You goan tell us? Or we got the stuffing to beat outn you?

And finally himself shouting back at the mouths. You don't give a good damn about Dorry. You all the same. Money, that's all you care about. Money, ever' last one of you. And them clamouring. Yeah, yeah, the Money Plane. Where you got her? Money We want that money. And then Edgar Toll's silly face too, slobbering- tongue wagging, hitting at him with a big stick. Kill un, he yelled. Kill un. And then all of them hitting him, and him not able to fight back, and Margy Mears in there too, saying what she had said to him the last time she had seen him, Take care of yourself, Shad – Shad -.

'Shad – Shad, wake up now, hear?'

Normally he awoke as though it were judgement day, coming right up to startled attention. But today it was a long painful road back, a sort of sticky, misty passage out of warm darkness into vague, unfriendly light. And the path was flickering with half-formed images and nonsensical objects. One of them seemed to be Dorry – Dorry bending over him, saying something – wake up, he guessed.

He smiled hazily and put a hand out for her, pulled her down to his chest. Hello, sugar baby, he thought he said, and he cupped his free hand around her right breast. Funny – she'd lost weight, hadn't she?

Instantly the girl was all action and loud indignant protest, even slapped him.

'Shad Hark! You gone crazy? _Stop that_ what you're doing?'

Shad got all of his eyes open then and looked at Margy. Her obsidian eyes sparked black fire. 'If you weren't down I'd slap you good, and you so free with your hands.' Then, surprisingly, she shut up and looked away.

'That's right,' he said. 'Never hit a man when he's down.'

He looked around at the cabin. It was morning.

'What are you doing here, Margy?'

'Pa sent me down to see did you lock the shantyboat after you.'

That didn't make too much sense to him. He propped up on one elbow and rubbed at his face. 'How's that? What's hit his business?'

'Well, hit's his shantyboat, ain't it?' she demanded. 'If you goan run off with his daughter, least he kin see is his boat still all right.' Then she dropped her indignation. 'Shad – where's Dorry?'

Shad looked at her. For a moment he wasn't sure that he had successfully left the nightmare. 'Home, ain't she? How in hell should I know where is she? What's your fool old man mean, me running off with his daughter?'

Margy put her hands akimbo and looked at him impatiently 'What do you mean what does he mean? Why, ever'body knows you'n Dorry ben gone fer days.'