Bill Pronzini: Scenarios

On impulse I twisted the wheel and took the skiff over toward the islet, cutting back on the throttle as I approached. Wind gusts rustled and bent the carpet of tule grass, but there was no other movement that I could see. Ten yards off the beach, I shut the throttle all the way down to idle; the quick movement of the water carried the skiff the rest of the way in. When the bow scraped up over the soft mud I shut off the engine, pocketed the ignition key and moved aft to tilt the outboard engine out of the water so its propeller blades wouldn't become fouled in the offshore grass. Then I climbed out and dragged half the boat's length onto the beach as a precaution against it backsliding and drifting off without me.

From the upper rim of the beach I could look all across the flat width of the islet-maybe fifty yards in all-and for seventy yards or so of its length, to where the terrain humped up in the middle and a pair of willow trees and several wild blackberry bushes blocked off my view. But I couldn't see anything of the red-haired man, or hear anything of him either; there were no sounds except for the low whistling cry of the wind.

An eerie feeling came over me. It was as if I were alone on the islet, alone on all of Dead Man's Slough, and the red-haired guy had been some sort of hallucination. Or some sort of ghostly manifestation. I thought of the old-timer who had rented me the skiff on Whiskey Island a sort of local historian well versed on Delta lore and legends dating back to the Gold Rush, when steamboats from San Francisco and Sacramento plied these waters with goods and passengers. And I thought of the story he had told me about how the slough got its name.

Back in 1860 an Irish miner named O'Farrell, on his way to San Francisco from the diggings near Sutter's Mill, had disappeared from a side-wheeler at Poker Bend; also missing was a fortune in gold dust and specie he had been carrying with him. Three days later O'Farrell's body was found floating in these waters with his head bashed in and his pockets empty. The murder was never solved. And old-time rivermen swore they had seen the miner's ghost abroad on certain foggy nights, swearing vengeance on the man who had murdered him.

But that wasn't quite all. According to the details of the story, O'Farrell had had red hair-and his ghost was always seen clutching the back of his bloody head with one hand.

Sure, I thought, and nuts to that. Pure coincidence, nothing else. Old-time rivermen were forever seeing ghosts, not only of men but of packets like the Sagamore and the R.K. Page whose steam boilers had exploded during foolish races in the mid-1800s, killing hundreds of passengers and crewmen. But I did not believe in spooks worth a damn. Nor was I prone to hallucinations or flights of imagination, not at my age and not with my temperament. The red-haired guy was real, all right. Maybe hurt and in trouble, too, judging from his wobbly condition and his actions.

So where had he gone? If he was hiding somewhere in the rushes I couldn't tell the location by looking from here, or even where he had gone into them; tule grass is pretty resilient and tends to spring back up even after a man plows through it. He could also have gone to the eastern end, beyond the high ground in the middle. The one thing I was sure of was that he was still on the islet: I could see out into the wide channels on the north and south sides, and if he had gone swimming again he would have been visible.

I pulled up the collar on my pea jacket and headed into the rushes on a zigzag course, calling out as I went, offering help if he needed it. Nobody answered me. And there was no sign of any red hair as I worked my way along. After a time I stopped, and when I scanned upward toward the higher ground I saw that I was within thirty yards of the line of blackberry bushes.

I also saw a man come hurrying up onto the hump from the opposite side, between the two willow trees.

He saw me, too, and halted abruptly, and we stood staring at each other across the windswept terrain. But he wasn't the red-haired guy. He was dark-looking, heavier, and he wore Levi's, a plaid mackinaw and a gray fisherman's hat decorated with bright-colored flies. In one hand, held in a vertical position, was a thick-butted fishing rod.

"Hello up there!" I called to him, but he didn't give me any response. Just stood poised, peering down at me like a wary animal scenting for danger. Which left the first move up to me. I took my hands out of my coat pockets and slow-walked toward him over the marshy earth. He stayed where he was, not moving except to slant the fishing rod across the front of his body, weapon like. When I got past the blackberry bushes I was ten feet from him, on the firmer ground of the hump; I decided that was far enough and stopped there.

We did some more looking at each other. He was about my age, early fifties, with a craggy outdoorsman's face and eyes the color of butterscotch. There was no anxiety in his expression, nor any hostility either; it was just the set, waiting look of a man on his guard.

Past him I could see the rest of the islet-another sixty yards or so of flattish terrain dominated by shrubs and tules, with a mistletoe-festooned pepper tree off to the left and a narrow rock shelf at the far end. Tied up alongside the shelf was what looked to be a fourteen-foot outboard similar to my rented skiff, except that it sported a gleaming green-and-white paint job. There was nothing else to see along there, or in the choppy expanses of water surrounding us.

Pretty soon the craggy guy said, "Who are you?"

"Just another fisherman," I said, which was more relevant and less provocative than telling him I was a private investigator from San Francisco. "Have you been here long?"

"A little while. Why?"

"Alone?"

"That's right. But I heard you shouting to somebody."

"Nobody I know," I said. "A red-haired man I saw drag himself out of the slough a few minutes ago."

He stared at me. "What?"

"Sounds funny, I know, but it's the truth. He was fully dressed and he looked hurt; he disappeared into the tules. I put my boat in and I've been hunting around for him, but no luck so far. You haven't seen him, I take it?"

"No," the craggy guy said. "I haven't seen anybody since I put in after crayfish an hour ago." He paused. "You say this red-haired man was hurt?"

"Seemed that way, yes."

"Bad?"

"Maybe. He looked dazed."

"You think he could have had a boating accident?"

"Could be. But he also seemed scared."

"Scared? Of what?"

"No idea. You heard me shouting, so he must have heard me, too; but he still hasn't shown himself. That might mean he's hiding because he's afraid to be found."

"Might mean something else, too," the craggy guy said. "He could have gone back into the water and swum across to one of the other islands."

"I don't think so. I would have seen him if he'd done that anywhere off this side; and I guess you'd have seen him if he'd done it anywhere off the other side."

"He could also be dead by now if he was hurt as bad as you seem to think."

"That's a possibility," I said. "Or maybe just unconscious. How about helping me look for him so we can find out?"

The craggy guy hesitated. He was still wary, the way a lot of people are of strangers these days-as if he were not quite convinced I was telling him a straight story and thinking that maybe I had designs on his money or his life. But after a time he said, "All right; if there's a man hurt around here, he'll need all the help he can get. Where did you see him come out of the water?"

I turned a little and pointed behind me. "Back there. You can see part of my boat; that's about where it was."

"So if he's still on the island, he's somewhere between here and your boat."

"Seems that way," I said. "Unless he managed to slip over where you were without your seeing him."