Robert Alter - Swamp Sister

Plain mad, Sam thought.

And that got him to thinking of Dorry, which made him mad all oven again because Jort had put him down here in the slough to watch Shad, while he, Jort, sat up there at the Means' place.

He fussed around and fretted and mumbled. "That Jort's always bossing me about like I didn't have motherwit of my own. And me that has to tell him what Shad's doing and ever'thing. And what do I git outn hit? That's what I'd kindly like to know? Nothing."

Well, things were going to be different. When he got his share of the money he'd be his own man. He wouldn't have anything more to do with Jort, not ever. He was tired of playing slave to the big bully. He was sick to death of the craven feeling that the big man's physical presence evoked in him. He wanted to stand on his own two feet for a change and answer to no man.

That was what he wanted and that was how it was going to be. But right now the air was humid and buggy and there was a colony of night-rambling ants on the prowl and they were pestering him to distraction.

"Gol durn antses!" he hissed furiously.

The door of the shantyboat opened, throwing a big block of white light on the afterdeck, and Shad stepped through it like someone magically coming out of the mouth of a furnace and went to the edge of the porch.

Sam forgot about the ants and the weight of the cross life had given him to bear. He rose to a crouch and became a statue-man, waiting. Maybe now he'd get some action. Maybe this was what he and Jort had been waiting for. But Shad just stood there a while; then he walked on back inside slamming the door behind him.

Sam sank back on his haunches and the ants with a groan. "Tain't fair," he muttered. "Tain't fair a-tall."

It was getting late. It was getting on to bedtime. Shortly now she would have to take off the new dress and get into bed with Margy. And she dreaded it because she just knew that Margy was going to be an endless question box. She was going to want to know about the new dress, about the ten dollars. She wasn't going to settle for the story Dorny had given their parents about saving up her allowance. Margy knew better than that, much better. And she would keep at it and keep at it, there in the hot, muggy dank, and she wouldn't go to sleep until she learned, and that meant she would still be awake when Dorry slipped off to go see Shad, and she would want to know all about that too.

"Bother," she said, but then she looked at her reflection in the tarnished mirror again and saw how pretty she was and how beautiful the dress was and how well it fit, and she was pleased that it wouldn't have to be taken in at all, because, my goodness, a dress just couldn't be any tighter than this one – not and be decent – and she forgot about Margy and her nosy questions.

She pushed her hair all away from the left of her neck, bunching it along the right, and gave herself a side look, making her eyes soft and smoky, opening her overpainted lips and putting her front teeth together so that just the tops and bottoms touched – the way those pin-up girls in magazines did.

A muted knocking vibrated through the wooden walls of the house, and she looked at her own closed door, wondering, and heard the rasp of her pa's chair in the other room and a moment later the squeak of the door opening, and then a murmur of voices minus words and meaning.

Dorry went to the door and put her ear against the panel, The result was unsatisfactory. She still couldn't pick out the words, but the tone of one of the speakers was definitely foreign. She raised her eyebrows and paused to adjust the dangerously low line of the dress about the burst at her breasts, and then opened the door.

Bell Means had just given Mr. Ferris a split-bottomed chair, and as he'd been making his first preparations for bed, he suddenly discovered he was in his stocking feet, and it embarrassed him because he didn't want to give Mn. Ferris the idea that they were poor whites. Now he was blinking around confusedly for his shoes while Mrs. Mears was covering up very nicely, asking Mr. Ferris if he wouldn't have some coffee. And Mr. Ferris was smiling, saying politely, "Thank you. That's very kind of you." And so Margy was on her way to the stove to reheat the coffee, and her expression was blank except for that little suspicious frown she always made when anyone she didn't know well approached her.

But Dorry remembered Mn. Ferris – though she'd only been fourteen at the time – remembered him very well. She had never seen a man like him. He was something that had just stepped out of a magazine – one of those Esquire's they sold in the drugstore in Torkville that her ma would never let her buy, but that she looked at anyhow while her ma was browsing around the notions counter. There couldn't be another man in the world like Mr. Ferris. He was the type of man she dreamed of having for herself.

Mr. Ferris had just looked at Dorry – a quick, penetrating look, too quick for her parents to take offence -and was trying to place her in his memory, but without success. Good Lord – he'd thought they only bred ignorance, apathy and filth in the deep south. That girl was positively a Freudian study. And then, because he was a man who had full control over all the tributaries of his mind, he switched Dorry onto a siding.

"I shan't beat about the bush with you. Mr. Mears. I'm here to discuss one of your neighbours – Shad Hark."

Bell nodded wisely, said, "Thought so."

Mr. Ferris nodded also. "You've heard the rumours about Shad and the Money Plane then?"

"Couldn't help but hear'em, less I was stone deef."

"And I understand Shad gave you two of those bills?"

"Yeah, last night he did. You want I should show'em to you, Mr. Ferris? I got'em still, night in my iron box in t'other room."

Mrs. Mears suspended her knitting needles to look over the rims of her glasses at Mr. Ferris. "You really think that Shad went and found him that Money Plane, Mn. Ferris?"

"It looks that way, yes."

She shook her head, looking down as the needles began hopping one over the other again. "Just don't seem possible. Such a nice boy and all. Always so polite and friendly. Just don't seem like the kind that would find other people's money and not give hit back."

"Well," Mr. Ferris said kindly, "he's young, and eighty thousand dollars is a lot of money. I rather imagine his thinking is temporarily confused."

Dorry was biting her lower lip. It wasn't until this moment that she realized what a wrench Mr. Ferris could throw in the wheel of her brightly spinning future. Mn. Ferris suddenly was no longer the suave, educated, middleaged gentleman of her dreams. He was a cold, methodical brain-machine – invulnerable to any attack.

"Will you put Shad to jail if'n you catch him with that money?" she asked abruptly.

"Dorry!" Mrs. Mears said in a fierce undertone.

But Mr. Ferris smiled. "Not if he's willing to turn it over to me. I'm going to talk to him tonight." He looked at Mrs. Means. "I understand he's living on your husband's houseboat?"

Bell came back with the two tens in his hand and gave them to Mr. Ferris. "If them bills be off'n the Money Plane, do I got to give'em up, Mr. Ferris?"

"Temporarily, I'm afraid. But I'll see to it that you receive a worthwhile remuneration."

Bell said "Oh," and then "Yeah," and looked at his wife to see if she had the hang of the word.

Mn. Ferris brought out his sheaf of papers, spread them on the table and began checking the two bills against the list. Mrs. Means tried to keep her business to herself and her needles, but Bell couldn't. He leaned over the table and asked Mr. Ferris "what that there was?"

"This is a list of the serial numbers of the money that was on the airplane when it disappeared four years ago. I've already found four bills that Shad passed out, and they tallied with this list – Yes, see here? Here's another."