'Leave hit there, Shad. Please leave hit there. It's wicked money – blood money. It does nothing but evil. Look how many people it's hurt since it come into this swamp. If that gator don't git you, and if you bring it back up, you'll just be bringing up trouble again.'
'You kin call it trouble if you want,' he snapped. 'But I call it eighty-thousand dollars.'
She stared at him for a moment, and then said, 'All right – mebbe you better. You goan need it to buy you a new girl with.'
He was stooping for his knife but he paused.
'What in God's name you talking about now?' he demanded. 'I got you. You're the only girl I want.'
'Well, you ain't goan have me long. Because if you go in that slough – I won't be here when and if you come out again.'
He straightened up and smiled. 'Now, Margy Now, honey -'
She stepped back quickly. 'Don't you come at me, Shad. You ain't gitting around me thataway.'
'All right, honey, all right. You just scared of that old gator gitting me, ain't that all?'
'That and other things. I ain't goan list'em fer you twice. What makes you so blame blind, Shad? Cain't you understand I never did want that money? All I ever wanted was you. And reckon I wanted you right from that first night you come to our place to see Pa, and you all high-hat and cocky on the porch there and the way you went to smile at me and -'
Abruptly she started crying, making a soft, body jerking, offbeat sound of it. 'I just plain love you. And you wanting to throw it all away, and not caring a hoot what becomes of us er -'
He went to her and held her trembling body against his damp one. He didn't say anything, just held her and looked over her head at the pond. No one he'd ever known had loved him, not for just himself. I always ben a loner, he thought I always ben looking in windows and wanting what none of my family never had.
And she would leave him, too. He knew it because she was that way. If I come out a that slough I'll be rich and I'll be alone. He held her out from him and looked at her.
'You want me – just like this? With thirty-some dollars to my jeans?'
Her eyes were all glassy with tears. 'With er without the dollars,' she said. 'Er the jeans too.'
Shad nodded. He felt like a split shopping bag; everything was dropping out. 'All right, honey,' he said. 'Anything you say'
Then she was wrapped around him again, laughing and whispering and crying all at once, and none of it made sense because he couldn't concentrate on it. He couldn't get his eyes off the pond.
I ben through hell's furnace room fer that money. I ben gator-chased and buckshotted and fist-fighted and near drownt – and now I'm just cold putting my back to it and walking off. Just like it didn't matter a-tall.
'Let's go home, Shad.'
He blinked at her. 'Home?- Yeah – home. All right.'
He picked up his pants and pulled them on. Margy started up the bank toward the thicket.
'Let's hurry, Shad,' she called to him. 'Let's go fast and git out a here.'
'Yeah.'
He started up the slope, his head low, watching his feet. He'd go back to his trapping and maybe he'd go in for Spanish moss gathering as a side line; might even try some gator-grabbing now that Jort was out of the business- little ones. And he supposed he would go on looking for Holly's body and probably Sam's too. Yeah, he'd be coming out here again.
He paused near the edge of the thicket and looked around at the pond and the Money Plane, planting the image of the place firmly in his mind. It didn't do any good, he knew, to argue with a woman right when she'd made up her mind. Any fool knew you might as well go beat a dead horse. Yeah, but later-.
'See you,' he murmured.
He smiled at Margy and started after her.
