Gone South (33 page)

A latch slammed back. The door swung open on creaking hinges, and from it thrust the business end of a sawed-off shotgun that pressed hard against Flint’s forehead.

“I’ll open
you
up, you dog-ass lickin’ sonofabitch!” the woman behind the gun snarled, and her finger clicked back the trigger.

Flint didn’t move; it swept through his mind that at this range the shotgun would blast his brains into the trees on the other side of the bayou. By the smoky light from within the shack, Flint saw that the woman was at least six feet tall and built as solidly as a truck. She wore a pair of dirty overalls, a gray and sweat-stained T-shirt, and on her head was a battered dark green football helmet. Behind the helmet’s protective face bar was a forbidding visage with burning, red-rimmed eyes and skin like saddle leather.

“Easy,” Flint managed to say. “Take it easy, all I want to do is ask —”

“I know what you want, you scum-sucker!” she yelled. “You ain’t takin’ me back to that damn shithole! Ain’t gettin’ me in a rubber room again and stickin’ my head full of pins and needles!”

Crazy as a three-legged grasshopper,
he thought. His heart was galloping, and the inside of his mouth would’ve made the Sahara feel tropical. He stared at the woman’s grimy-nailed finger on the trigger in front of his face. “Listen,” he croaked. “I didn’t come to take you anywhere. I just want to —”

“Satan’s got a silver tongue!” she thundered. “Now I’m gonna send you back to hell, where you belong!”

Flint saw her finger twitch on the trigger. His breath froze.

“Ma’am?”
There was the sound of muddy shoes squeaking on the timbers. “Can I talk to you a minute, ma’am?”

The woman’s insane eyes blinked. “Who is that?” she hissed. “Who said that?”

“I did, ma’am.” Pelvis walked into the range of the light, Mama cradled in his arms. “Can I have a word with you, please?”

Flint saw the woman stare past him at Eisley. Her finger was still on the trigger, the barrel pressing a ring into his forehead. He was terrified to move even an inch.

Pelvis offered up the best smile he could find. “Ain’t nobody wants to hurt you, ma’am. Honest we don’t.”

Flint heard the woman draw a long, stunned gasp. Her eyes had widened, her thin-lipped mouth starting to tremble.

“You can put that gun down if you like,” Pelvis said. “Might better, ’fore somebody gets hurt.”

“Oh,”
the woman whispered. “Oh my Jesus!” Flint saw tears shine in her eyes. “They … they told me … you died.”

“Huh?” Pelvis frowned.

“They told her you died!” Flint spoke up, understanding what the madwoman meant. “Tell her you didn’t die, Elvis!”

“Shut your mouth, you Satan’s asshole!” the woman ranted at him. “I’m not talkin’ to you!” Her finger twitched on the trigger again.

“I do wish you’d at least uncock that gun, ma’am,” Pelvis said. “It’d make an awful mess if it was to go off.”

She stared at him, her tongue flicking out to wet her lips. “They told me you died!” Her voice was softer now, and there was something terribly wounded in it. “I was up there in Baton Rouge, when I was livin’ with Billy and that bitch wife he had. They said you died, that you took drugs and slid off the toilet and died right there, wasn’t a thing nobody could do to save you but I prayed for you I cried and I lit the candles in my room and that bitch said I wanted to burn down the house but Billy, Billy he’s been a good brother he said I’m all right I ain’t gonna hurt nobody.”

“Oh.” Pelvis caught her drift. “Oh … ma’am, I ain’t really —”

“Yes you are!” Flint yelped. “Help me out here, Elvis!”

“You dirty sonofabitch, you!” the woman hollered into his face. “You call him
Mr. Presley!”

Flint gritted his teeth, the sweat standing out in bright oily beads on his face. “Mr. Presley, tell this lady how I’m a friend of yours, and how hurtin’ me would be the same as hurtin’ you. Would you tell her that, please?”

“Well … that’d be a lie, wouldn’t it? I mean, you made it loud and clear you think I stand about gut-high to an ant.”

“That was then. This is now. I think you’re the finest man I’ve ever met. Would you please tell her?”

Pelvis scratched Mama’s chin and cocked his head to one side. A few seconds ticked past, during which a bead of sweat trickled down to the end of Flint’s nose and hung there. Then Pelvis said, “Yes’m, Mr. Murtaugh’s a friend of mine.”

The woman removed her shotgun from Flint’s forehead. Flint let his breath rattle out and staggered back a couple of steps. “That’s different, then,” she said, uncocking the gun. “Different, if he’s your friend. My name’s Rona, you remember me?”

“Uh …” Pelvis glanced quickly at Flint, then back to the madwoman. “I … believe I …”

“I seen you in Biloxi.” Her voice trembled with excitement. “That was in —” She paused. “I can’t think when that was, my mind gets funny sometimes. I was sittin’ in the third row. I wrote you a letter. You remember me?”

“Uh …” He saw Flint nod. “Yes’m, I believe so.”

“I sent my name in to that magazine, you know that
Tiger Beat
magazine was havin’ that contest for a date with you? I sent my name in, and my daddy said I was the biggest fool ever lived but I did anyway and I went to church and prayed I was gonna win. My mama went to live in heaven, that’s what I wrote in my letter.” She looked down at her dirty overalls. “Oh, I — I must look a fright!”

“No ma’am,” Pelvis said quietly. “Rona, I mean. You look fine.”

“You sure have got fat,” Rona told him. “They cut your balls off in the army, didn’t they? Then they made you stop singin’ them good songs. They’re the ones fucked up the world. Put up them satellites in outer space so they could read people’s minds. Them monkey-cock suckers! Well, they ain’t gettin’ to me no more!” She tapped her helmet. “Best protect yourself while you can!” She let her hand drop, and she looked dazedly back and forth between Flint and Pelvis. “Am I dreamin’?” she asked.

“Rona?” Flint said. “You mind if I call you Rona?” She just stared blankly at him. “We’re lookin’ for somebody. A man and a woman. Did you see anybody pass by here?”

Rona turned her attention to Pelvis again. “How come they tell such lies about you? That you was takin’ drugs and all? How come they said you died?”

“I … just got tired, I reckon,” Pelvis said. Flint noted that he was standing a little taller, he’d sucked his gut in as much as possible, and he was making his voice sound more like Elvis than ever, with that rockabilly Memphis sneer in it. “I wanted to go hide someplace.”

“Uh-huh, me, too.” She nodded. “I didn’t mean to burn that house down, but the light was so pretty. You know how pretty a light can be when it’s dark all the time? Then they put me in that white car, that white car with the straps, and they took me to that place and stuck pins and needles in my head. But they let me go, and I wanted to hide, too. You want some gumbo? I got some gumbo inside. I made it yesterday.”

“Rona?” Flint persisted. “A man and a woman. Have you seen them?”

“I seen them grave robbers, stealin’ his boat.” She motioned across the channel. “John LeDuc lived there, but he died. Stepped in a cottonmouth nest, that’s what the ranger said. Them grave robbers over there, stealin’ his boat. I hollered at ’em, but they didn’t pay no mind.”

“Uh-huh. What do you get to if you keep followin’ this bayou?”

“Swamp,” she said as if he were the biggest fool who ever lived. “Swamp and more swamp. ’Cept for Saint Nasty.”

“Saint Nasty? What’s that?”

“Where they work on them oil rigs.” Rona’s gaze was fixed on Pelvis. “I’m dreamin’, ain’t I? My mama comes and visits me sometimes, I know I’m dreamin’ awake. That’s what I’m doin’ now, ain’t that right?”

“How far’s Saint Nasty from here?” Flint asked.

“Four, five miles.”

“Is there a road out from there?”

“No road. Just the bayou, goes on to the Gulf.”

“We need a boat,” he said. “How much for yours?”

“What?”

“How much money?” He took the opportunity to slip the derringer into his pocket and withdraw the wet bills he’d taken from the girl’s wallet. “Fifty dollars, will that cover the boat and motor?”

“Ain’t no gas in that motor,” she told him. “That ranger comes ’round and visits me, he brings me gas. His name’s Jack, he’s a nice young fella. Only he didn’t come this week.”

“How about paddles, then? Have you got any?”

“Yeah, I got a paddle.” She narrowed her eyes at Flint. “I don’t like your looks. I don’t care if you are his friend and he’s a dream I’m havin’. You got somethin’ mean in you.”

“Sixty dollars,” Flint said. “Here’s the cash, right here.”

Rona gave a harsh laugh. “You’re crazier’n hell. You better watch out, they’ll be stickin’ pins and needles in your head ’fore long.”

“Sooner than you think, lady.” He shot a scowl at Pelvis. “Mr. Presley, how about openin’ those golden lips and helpin’ me out a little bit?”

Pelvis was still thinking about two words the madwoman had uttered:
Cottonmouth nest.
“We sure do need your boat, Rona,” he said with genuine conviction. “It’d be doin’ us a big favor if you’d sell it to us. You can even keep the motor, we’ll just take the boat and paddle.”

Rona didn’t reply for a moment, but Flint could see her chewing on her lower lip as she thought about the proposal. “Hell,” she said at last, “you two ain’t real anyhow, are you?” She shrugged. “You can buy the boat, I don’t care.”

“Good. Here.” Flint offered sixty dollars to her, and the woman accepted the cash with an age-spotted hand and then sniffed the wet bills. “We’ll need the paddle, too,” he told her, and she laughed again as if this were a grand illusion and walked into her shack, the interior of which Flint could see was plastered with newspaper pages and held a cast-iron stove. Flint told Pelvis to help him get the motor undamped from the boat’s stern, and they were laying it on the platform when Rona returned — without her shotgun — bringing a paddle.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Pelvis said. “We sure do ’predate it.”

“I got a question for you,” Rona said as they were getting into the boat. “Who sent you here? Was it Satan, to make me think I’m losin’ my mind, or God, to give me a thrill?”

Pelvis stared into her leathery face. Behind the football helmet’s protective bar her deep-socketed eyes glinted with what was surely insanity but might also have been — at least for a passing moment — the memory of a teenaged girl in her finest dress, sitting in the third row of a Biloxi auditorium. He worked one of the gaudy fake diamond rings from a finger and pushed it into her palm. “Darlin’,” he said, “you decide.”

Sitting in the stern, Flint untied the rope that secured the boat to the platform and then pushed them off with the paddle. Pelvis took the bow seat, Mama warm and drowsy against his chest. Flint began to stroke steadily toward the center of the channel, where he got them turned southward. He felt the current grasp their hull, and in another moment they were moving at about the pace of a fast walk. When Pelvis looked back at the woman standing in front of her decrepit shack, Flint said acidly, “Made yourself another fan there, didn’t you, Mr. Presley?”

Pelvis stared straight ahead into the darkness. He pulled in a long breath and slowly released it, and he answered with some grit in his voice. “You can pucker up and kiss my butt.”

I
N THE STARFIRE DARK
Dan and Arden drifted past other narrower bayous that branched off from the main channel. They saw no other lights or shacks, and it was clear that their detour off the bridge had left LaPierre miles behind.

When the mosquitoes found them, there was nothing they could do but take the bites. Something bumped hard against the boat before it swam away, and after his heart had descended from his throat, Dan figured it had been an amorous alligator looking for some scaly tush. He got into a pattern of paddling for three or four minutes and then resting, and he and Arden both cupped their hands and bailed out the water that was seeping up through the hull. He said nothing about this to Arden, but he guessed the boat was a rusty nail or two from coming apart.

Most of the pain had cleared from Arden’s head. Her vision had stopped tunneling in and out, but her bones still ached and her fingers found a crusty patch of dried blood in her hair and a lump so sore the lightest pressure on it almost made her sick. Her purse and suitcase were gone, her money, her belongings, her identification, everything lost. Except her life, and the drawstring bag in her right hand. But that was okay, she thought. Maybe it was how things were supposed to be. She was shedding her old skin in preparation for the Bright Girl’s touch. She was casting off the past, and getting ready for the new Arden Halliday to be born.

How she would find the Bright Girl in this wilderness she didn’t exactly know, but she had to believe she was close now, very close. When she’d seen the light in the shack’s window back there, she’d thought for a moment they might have found the Bright Girl, but she didn’t think — or she didn’t want to think — that the Bright Girl would choose to live in a tarpaper hovel. Arden hadn’t considered what kind of dwelling the Bright Girl might occupy, but now she envisioned something like a green mansion hidden amid the cypress trees, where sunlight streamed through the high branches like liquid gold. Or a houseboat anchored in a clear, still pool somewhere up one of these bayous. But not a dirty tarpaper shack. No, that didn’t suit her image of the Bright Girl, and she refused to believe it.

She strained to see through the darkness, thinking — or wishing — that just ahead would be the glow of another lantern and a cluster of squatters’ shacks, somebody to help her find her way. She glanced back at Dan as he slid the paddle into the water again.
The man God provided,
Jupiter had said. She’d never have left the motel with Dan if she hadn’t been clinging to Jupiter’s instincts about him. Jupiter had always been a mystic; he had the sixth sense about horses, he knew their temperaments and their secret names. If he said a docile-looking animal was getting ready to snort and kick, it was wise to move away from the hindquarters. And he knew other things, too; if he smelled rain in the midst of a Texas drought, it was time to get out the buckets. He read the sky and the wind and the pain in Arden’s soul; she had come to realize during her years at the youth ranch that Jupiter Krenshaw was connected to the flowing currents of life in a way she couldn’t fathom. She had trusted and believed him, and now she had to trust and believe he’d been telling her the truth about the Bright Girl, and that he’d seen something in Dan Lambert that no one else could recognize.