Robert Alter - Swamp Sister

Sam was miserable. If he'd had a dollar-just one dollar- he'd be all right. But he didn't. Didn't even have a dime.

"Aw hell," Sam said.

What made it so imperative was he'd stopped by Bell Mears' place in his ramble that night. Not to visit. No one had known of his presence. He'd taken a post (one he'd used numerous times before) by the edge of the spring house, where he could look smack into old Mears' daughters' room.

He'd only caught Margy twice. She hadn't been much to look at then-though he had-but she was hard to catch now she was getting older. She undressed in the dark. Now Dorry-now that was something else again. She always brought a lamp into the room with her, and she never pulled the blind. "That bitch!" he whispered almost hysterically. "That dirty little she-bitch!"

He looked up then and froze, seeing a shadow flitting through the thicket. Who would be coming down that way so late at night? And off the main road too. Nothing to go at but the backwater and Mears' old shantyboat.

Sam forgot about his troubles. He crouched and darted low an fast through the weed, heading for the trail. He might look grotesque when sitting or standing with his nervous agitation, but when he prowled he was as quick and silent as a snake slipping across sand. And now he had him a something to look into. There wasn't anything happened in the woods and Sam didn't know about. A cross fox made itself a new lair and Sam was sitting up in a tree marking the crossback's escape holes. An oldtimer set up a moonshine still so far out, so remote and hidden, that he was prompted to chortle and remark, "By juckies, they ain't nobody on God's hind legs kin find this still, now I tell yer!" and Sam was crouching behind a dead stump taking in the words. The silhouettes of a boy and girl blended into one in the darkness under the titis and Sam was squatting there in the bush, watching, licking his lips. You just never know when somebody's secret might come handy.

It took him fifteen seconds to come within ten feet of where Dorry Mears passed a thicket-break.

Trouble was Sam wasn't a fighter of any sort. Any suggestion of physical violence instantly threw him into a trembling state of hesitant confusion. The fear was so deepseated that even the thought of tangling with a husky girl like Dorry Mears (he guessed she outweighed him by twenty pounds) left him hanging balanced in self-doubt and indecision.

But he knew that for once in his life he was going to have to make a traumatic decision, and make it on the spot.

Take her from behind-but with what?

He wildly looked around in the shadow. Saw a lightwood stick. Snatched it up. Came to a crouch as the girl unwittingly passed him.

One quick tap on the head – stun her. All right, damn you!

But he stalled, looking beyond her. A light was showing in the shantyboat. Someone was in there with a lantern. The stick lowered in his hand. The suggested presence of a third party brought back the timidity he concealed under his ferocious crouch. The moral fibre of Sam's backbone turned to shreds, leaving him a ragbag of a man. The girl passed through the tupelos and down to the bank and gangplank. Sam dropped the stick.

"All right," he whispered. "All right, you bitch. Git after your fun. Whoop it up. But don't you think fer a minute, missy, you goan git off scot-free. Sam here is goan have him a look at who you misbehaving with."

But as he slipped down the shelving bank he forgot his most important woods-prowling rule. He made a soft little noise in his throat, whimpered like a hurt puppy dragging itself for home.

Shad was sitting with his taior-mades and his money, feeling fat and drowsy in a warm mood of euphoria. In his mind he was plotting out his future – not too realistically; but it was fun just the same. He thought about the girls he would buy, and the expensive booze, and the cars and snappy suits, and maybe even a boat, some sort of cabin cruiser, say, but mostly about the girls. Then he heard a thunk of sound on the gangway and the houseboat stirred slightly.

He swept up his bills, shoving them furiously inside his shirt, letting them drop to where the shirt bloused at his belt. Thank God he'd left the windows shuttered. He started to get up, to go to the door, but changed his mind and sat again, reached for a new cigarette.

The door opened tentatively and four pale fingers curved around the edge and stayed there, holding four red beetles at their tips. At first he didn't understand, then he saw the long lamp-gold spifi of hair near the hand and knew it was Dorry Mears. An excitement that was akin to a violent sickness came highballing through his body, tensing him, robbing him of breath. He gripped the table-edge, watching, the tailor-made smouldering in his mouth. He didn't get up-wasn't sure he could; he sat there, thinking-Oh yes. Oh, indeed yes! Now we are goan have us a something here. I knowed it all the time.

The door inched further into the room and Dorry Mears peeked in at him, coquettishly. "It's just me, Shad. Just Dorry," she said. Cat's purr again.

"Nice of you to knock," he said. "I might ben gitting ready fer bed, and me in my shorts."

She came further into the room showing almost all of her, leaned against the door, arching herself as she'd done earlier for him. "I thought of that," she said softly, and then laughed, low.

"Bet you did. That why you here?" He didn't see any reason to play around. He wanted her, God yes, and at another time he might have gone along with the game just to assure himself of final victory. But today he was a new man – a rich man, and he didn't have to mess with anyone.

Dorry pretended to be shocked. "Why, Shadrack Hark! I'm purely convinced you got you an evil mind." She gave a toss of her hair. "Hit was too hot fer sleeping," she said, not looking at him, speaking in staccato. "So I took me a little stroll. No harm in that, is they?"

Shad shook his head. "And ended up way down here," he suggested. "Coincidence, I guess."

She blinked at him. "Well," she said defensively, "I like it down here. I often come thisaway at night-when I cain't sleep."

"Uh-huh," Shad said.

She hitched her right leg around in a half-circle, tracing a faint dust path on the floor with her toes.

"I seen your light on and guessed you was still up. Thought we might talk. I couldn't sleep-" Her voice went off into the open night at her back and got lost there.

Even at that distance, even in the poor light, it was easy to see that she wasn't wearing anything under her dress. That did something to him, something extra. He approved of a dress that looked like that one did. Nothing for shoulders, and not too much to cover those things she was so eternal proud of. And all the rest of it tight. Her ma made Dorry's dresses, but Dorry always remade them – took them in in places, in all the right places.

"Why don't you fetch the rest of you on in?"

Dorry looked at him and smiled. She closed the door.

"They's a hook right handy to hit," he said.

She looked down at the hook but didn't touch it. She looked at him again, an over-the-shoulder look. And that got him started.

"Why should I lock myself in a room with a boy I hardly know?"

"Hardly know? I had me the idea we was old friends- from the way you were slamming your hip into me tonight."

Her eyes were bright like broken chips of glass in the lamplight. "If you goan talk dirty, I'm going to leave! I don't like that kind of talk at all."

And that was the funny thing about her, he reflected. She really didn't. And yet the things that girl had been known to do for pleasure-or was it pleasure?

"Dorry," he said seriously, "why you come here tonight?"

"I done told you. I couldn't sleep and-"

"All right, all right. I'm sorry I brung hit up."