The Brat (15 page)

“Sullivan—hurry up, Sullivan. If we hurry, we can catch them.”

It was Rona Helling.

I caught the rope she tossed me, and at the same time, she leaped up onto the pier.

“Look,” DeGreef said. “They’re coming back, for damned sure. They must have seen her.”

The air boat with Kaylor and Evis was turning sharply, sliding across the channel waters. In another moment it was aimed directly back toward us, the powerful spotlight sweeping back and forth along the island’s shore.

I
T’S NOT HER
he cares about,” I said to DeGreef. “It’s you, man. He saw you on your feet. He wants you dead.”

DeGreef moaned painfully, then sat down on the pier, nursing his arm. He began to swear. He went on and on, like a machine, cursing in a steady, rhythmic manner that was larded with some of the foulest epithets known to man.

“Sullivan?” Rona said.

I was watching the approach of the air boat. I was all shot full of adrenalin, half out of my head with it now. If they came back, it was good-by. The air boat planed and swung, biting the channel water, sending out cuttings of spray like a bobsled. Then Rona put her arms around me and her body crushed against me.

“Kiss me, Sullivan,” she said. “Quick! One good kiss, like you mean it—even if you don’t mean it. You can afford that.”

She was still wearing that smooth fawn skirt and the white blouse and I felt her thighs open a little and she pushed against me so hard we damned near fell off the pier. Her breasts mashed against my chest, her fingers biting into my back, and our mouths came together. I got my hands snarled in her hair, trying to pull her off me, and then for one big moment I didn’t want her any place but right where she was. I let go of her hair and grabbed her, with the airboat roaring closer, DeGreef still cursing.

I thrust her away. She stood there a moment, with all that black hair falling around her shoulders. Then she turned and leaped into the air boat, picked up something and flung it at me.

“Catch!”

It was a shotgun. A pump gun. It felt good.

DeGreef said, “I’ve got to do something about this arm,” in a kind of awed voice.

Kaylor’s air boat took a broad circle and came down at us along the island, about a hundred yards out. You could see the exhaust, and the moonlight flashed on the metal sides of the boat.

“Shoot for the prop,” Rona said.

“I can’t go back empty-handed,” DeGreef said loudly. “I’ve got to stop them! Sullivan, did you hear me? I’ve got to. If I make a bust of this, I’m out—they’ll run me out. I finally made it down here, try and understand that. I made a bust of every job I ever had—for Christ’s sake, Sullivan. They’ve got to know that I—”

I pumped a shell into the shotgun.

Kaylor fired at the pier.

“Lie flat out,” I said, stretching out on the planks. “He doesn’t give a damn about who he hits now.”

A slug struck the water lightly just in front of the pier where we were and ricocheted into the air with a vicious whine.

I let them have three shells. With the first explosion of the shotgun, the air boat stood on its side, slid for a moment, then shot straight out away from the island.

Rona came onto the pier.

“Berk knows what that shotgun can do,” she said. “He knows you’ll try for the prop. They’ll run for it now. We can follow them, Sullivan. If we lose sight of them, we’ll never find them. Kaylor knows this swamp like nobody.”

I looked at DeGreef.

He looked up at me, sitting there, holding his arm like it was a broken two-by-four. Then he looked down at his arm with the blood cozing between his fingers.

“Christ,” he said. “Go ahead. Leave me here. What does it matter? I fouled up again, that’s all. That’s the story of my life.”

“Rona, you stay with him—fix his arm.”

She shook her head. “We can’t do that. You couldn’t run the air boat.”

“Show me.’

“I can’t show you now. You’d never be able to follow them. We’ve got to hurry. Look where they are already.”

You could still see them out there. But they were headed straight and flat out and wide open now. The spotlight was already turned off. You could see the reddish and very small glow, and that was all, aside from flashes of moonlight on the hull.

“Got to take care of his arm,” I said.

“The hell with my arm. It’s all right,” DeGreef said. “Must’ve missed an artery. Bleeding’s slowing down. It’s busted, but I’ll make out. Maybe I can run for game warden, maybe they’ll let me stand guard on the night shift over to the pump house. Jesus Christ, what a mess I made of it.”

“Quit knocking yourself. You tried too hard, that’s all. You wanted too much.”

Rona jumped down into the air boat and stood looking at me. Her face was pale. I handed her the shotgun, then stepped over by DeGreef.

“Sullivan,” he said. “If you don’t get them, you’re a dead pigeon. I’m not fooling. You’ll go down for murder and every other damned thing in the books.”

“I’ll get word to somebody that you’re here.”

He didn’t speak.

“Sullivan,” Rona said. “Come on.”

I jumped off the pier into the front pit of the air boat. She was up on the seat. The motor started before I’d let loose the line and all I could think was that the propellor would catch on the pier and it would be fine.

I whipped the rope loose.

“Hadn’t you better let me handle it?” I shouted.

She laughed like crazy, watching me, and we started off. It was slow, then faster, and in a moment we were leaving the island behind. I looked back there and I could see the jumble of collapsed buildings and the pier very plainly in the moonlight. DeGreef was still sitting there thinking about next year’s election and how he would run his campaign, eating his heart out, and I thought he waved to us, but it was probably only my imagination. I realized I was looking back at him through the smoking blur of the prop and I thought just once how it would be to slip and get your head caught in there … bits of flying pop-skull … Then I looked at Rona again, hanging onto the side of the hull, hunkered down, and we really went.

I crouched and worked my way past the flat bar under the long steering bar, where Rona had her feet resting. I held to her seat, standing beside her. The boat was maybe ten or twelve feet long, with a metal hull, and the sides creaked when she turned the steering rod. The airplane engine roared like a fiend. I looked over the side, then grabbed the seat and hung on. We bumped and lurched and slid and flew. Every now and then she would jerk the steering bar a little and the boat kind of leaped sidewards and settled with a slam, then took off again.

I kept trying to see Kaylor’s air boat, but for a while I couldn’t see anything. There would be a looming black shape of an island directly in our path and we’d cut so close you could feel the breeze from the mangroves.

Rona gave a little cry and jammed her foot hard on the cross-rod of the steering piece We slewed in toward a hammock and I didn’t think we’d straighten. I watched the black fold of the hammock lean toward us and the motor gunned savagely. We caught like the sharp edge of a plank dragged through water, and roared in close along the side of the hammock in the midst of loud echoing.

I looked back at the motor mount. The motor seemed to shimmy violently on the mounts over the stern. The rudder twisted flat back again, and the boat swirled in a crazy arc.

“Be clear for a while now,” Rona shouted.

I looked up ahead where she pointed to a beautiful moon-shot plain. Grass stood tall between large silvered patches of water. The grass looked as if it were covered with snow. The sky looked almost blue up there, high clouds, with the stars so bright and low that some of the clouds appeared to be above the stars.

“Damn Berk!” she said.

“What?”

“He knows this country. He’s got fishing shacks all over the place. No telling where he’ll go.”

“We’ve got to catch them. You just catch them and let me worry about the rest of it.”

“Sit down.”

She pointed to an extra seat that was for passengers. I decided to stay where I was. Her skirt was up to her thighs, her bare legs curving pale in the moonlight. Her thick hair streamed back from her head, and there was an eagerness in her face and expression that was good to see. I laid my palm on her thigh. She smiled and leaned quickly toward me. I kissed her, then left my hand where it was, looking off across the bright night for Kaylor’s air boat.

I saw it, far up ahead.

It was mighty small, with light glancing off the metal hull, glaring occasionally in the prop blur. At the same instant, Rona turned on the spotlight. The beam swept around ahead of us and the silver on the grass and water changed color. The spot glared momentarily on Kaylor’s boat, then went off and returned to hold steady.

Kaylor’s boat swerved immediately. It shot down a cross-channel behind grass that was easily eight feet tall.

“Hang on!” Rona called.

She turned straight into the grass.

I ducked. For an instant we brushed in a rush of crackling and buffeting, then shot out of a bright channel of silver water again.

Long strands of grass clung to the boat, then fell off. She turned off the spotlight.

“Watch the grass,” she said. “It can cut you bad.”

“Fine time to tell me.”

There was no sign of the other boat.

“We lost them.”

She shook her head. “I know Berk’s tricks.”

We rounded out of the channel we were in, came close in along a wall of grass that stood perfectly straight, like a fence. Suddenly we were past that and on a broad, open plain again. The other air boat was about three hundred yards ahead of us now. We had gained in a big leap, and I began to know that without Rona I’d never stand a chance of catching them.

I felt her hand close over mine. I realized I was still gripping her thigh. She moved her hand over mine, then very slowly slid her hand under mine and pulled my hand away from her leg.

“Can’t stand that,” she said. “Not now, Sullivan.”

I looked at her and she smiled.

“Keep that up,” she said, “I reckon I’d have to stop right here.”

Her skirt fluttered briskly back from her waist and she reached over and gave my head a push, so I was looking straight ahead.

I remembered what Evis had said about the locket Rona carried around her neck. I glanced over quickly and saw the pale flash of the golden chain where her blouse flared open.

We flashed past a hammock.

“Kaylor said one of DeGreef’s deputies had you in custody,” I told her. “What happened?”

I kept my eyes on Kaylor’s boat. It seemed as if there were more clouds in the sky. It was darker, harder to see without the gleam of moonlight. In my mind’s eye I saw Kaylor and Evis with their money.

“That’s right,” Rona said, leaning closer to me. “Nobody’d believe me when I told them about everything. There’s some insurance detective down, asking questions, too. They wanted to hold me. But the deputy’s an old friend. He let me go. I was supposed to go home—promised him I would. But I took our air boat and started out to find you. All I could think of was you, all alone out here. Then I met some of the posse over by Tom’s Landing. They didn’t know who I was—said you and the sheriff had gone out into the swamp.”

As she talked, she kept trying to gain on the other boat. Kaylor was running for it now, trying hard to lose us. But in speed the boats were evenly matched.

“Posses are all over the place,” she said. “They really believe you’re guilty of everything, Sullivan. They wouldn’t believe a thing I said. It’s like you’re a mad dog, or something, the way they talk.

“I saw Berk over at Lark’s Crossing. He was just starting out into the swamp. I trailed him. It was all I could do. I didn’t know where you went. We crossed a trail ‘way back, but I couldn’t be sure it was yours. Right then I heard shots from some place. Three of them. He heard them, too. I think he knew there was another boat somewhere near him, but it could have been a fisherman. Then he cut a pole and from then on, he never used the motor. He poled till I was nearly dead—'cause I had to pole, too. He dragged his boat a long ways when he saw this island, and it was dark then. I couldn’t pole any more. I kept trying to get closer, then everything happened out on the beach. There was nothing I could do. Soon as he left, I started up and came in.”

“DeGreef’s been kind of nuts,” I said. “What’s the matter with him?”

“Lots of things. He’s new down here. But he ran for sheriff and won in the election. Talked big. Then he tried to change ways of doing things. Folks didn’t take to it. He’s kind of desperate, I reckon—he wants to keep on being sheriff. It’s kind of like some kind of disease with him.”

Suddenly the other boat turned in a broad curve and cut toward the black shape of a distant hammock. Rona quickly touched the rudder, and we planed toward them at an angle, shortening the distance. Kaylor saw his mistake. He immediately straightened course.

“We’ve got ‘em lined up now, I reckon,” Rona said. “But I think he’s going to make a run for the jungles. He’s headed that way. It can be bad in there—we might lose them.”

“We can’t lose them. I’ll try shooting for their prop again.” I glanced at her. “Give it everything you can; get as close as you can.”

We were on a broad expanse of open water. Then with a shock I saw it was hardly water at all. It was nothing more than a soggy field. Speckled patches of earth showed in large dark shadows, riffling the silver sheen of water. We skimmed lightly across.

The country began to change. We shot past a floating island, then another. We neared, then left a hammock behind. I saw red glowing eyes in there on the shore, and a crane stood in the shallows, tall and still

“Sullivan, something I’ve got to tell you.”

“Yeah?”

“In case we don’t get out of this.”

“Don’t talk like that. We’ll get out, all right.”

“You don’t know the swamp.”

“I’m learning damned fast. What is it?”

“I’ve never had a man, Sullivan.” She looked straight at me when she said it. “Reckon it’s crazy—but I waited for you. I knew you’d come back. It’s all up to you now.”

I started to say something, but we zoomed into a surprise of abrupt darkness. Rona turned the spotlight on again. We flashed down narrow channels, along a stretch of dark water. Cypress trees appeared on either side and moss swung close to the boat. She slowed the engine. Up ahead I saw the spotlight settle on Kaylor’s boat. A white, frothing wake foamed behind. He was going too fast, even I could tell that, and Rona stepped our engine up still more.

“The fool,” she said. “He’ll smash it up.”