Robert Alter - Swamp Sister

"Look here," he said quietly, "I didn't mean I was leaving the Landing. Just meant I couldn't stick it here no more. Goan find me a shanty and be my own man. I'll still be looking fer Holly's body. You understand me, Pa?" The old man didn't stir. His head was down.

Shad frowned and tugged one of the bills from his jeans, placed it in the old man's hand. "Here," he said embarrassed. "Don't go to spend it all on corn and that bitch hear? Git you some food fer the shanty."

The old man's fingers worked on the bill, criniding it, recognizing and liking its tactile quality. He unfolded the bill and held it close to his watery eyes. "What-what be it, Shad?"

"See if it don't go fer a ten dollar."

The old man's heart skipped a beat, flagged, choking him, then continued its laboured rhythm. "A ten dollar?" he echoed incredulously. "Shad," he whispered, "that Culver woman went and gived you more money?"

Shad hesitated, then nodded. "Yes. But you keep your big mouth shut on it, hear? Don't want it to git around and have no shotgun-toting husband chasing me."

The old man's hand closed on the bill and he hugged the fist to his withered chest. He rocked slowly, staring out at the yard where the moon sparkled on the bottle that was in the sand.

"See you," Shad said.

The old man said nothing. He rocked.

At an angle from the bend in the road was a darkly shadowed sand road that led through hummock and scrub oak and past the east edge of an orange grove down to another shanty. Shad shuffled along through the sand, his thoughts in tune with the shadows and the melancholy stillness of the road.

A low human sound made a ripple in the surface silence, and the night magic broke for him. He stopped and looked off into the dark thicket. It throbbed toward him again like an echo that comes slowly, hollow and mild; but he caught it. It was a husky, sensual giggle. Then he heard a forcible whisper, implying false anger.

"You want to hurt me?"

Shad frowned, testing the girl-voice in his memory. It just might be Dorry Mears. And instantly a swath of absurd jealousy cut through him, not because Dorry had ever meant anything to him, but because she was young and pretty and full of tease. He listened.

"-You're the meanest-" And another giggle.

It was Dorry Mears. Shad's lips pulled back from his teeth, slowly. He grinned maliciously and stooping, felt around on the edge of the road until his hand fumbled over a fist-sized rock. He straightened up and pegged the rock into the black shadows.

The immediacy of the silence that followed was something for him to laugh over. He waited, head down, right ear dog-cocked, and picked up Dorry Mears' frantic whisper, "- one's out there! Git up! _Git up, you fool!_ Someone's a-watching us!"

A moment later Shad heard a cautious stirring in the thicket and knew that the boy, or man, was coming to investigate. He waited, deciding on his story.

It was Tom Fort who came through the thicket and stepped into the sand road-stepping, Shad noticed, like it was rotten-egg paved and him barefoot. Shad didn't mind Tom. He was Tom's big, and had proved it many times when they were schoolboys years ago. He knew Tom wouldn't go for him, not even if he'd been mean enough to slip into the bush and kick Tom in the rump.

Tom was startled. He stepped back quickly when he saw Shad standing in the road. "Oh," he said, as though he'd had no idea he didn't have the woods to himself. "That you-Shad?"

"Shore be. Who's that? Tom?"

"Yes. How-do, Shad."

Shad nodded innocently. "Just on my way down to see Bell Mears, is all. How come you out in the bush thataway, Tom?"

"What? Oh well, yes-yes, I just stepped off the road a piece there, Shad, fer-you know."

Shad had a time keeping his face blank. "You know?" he repeated stupidly. "No, I don't. What?"

Tom flapped his hands impatiently at his sides and hurried closer to Shad, lowering his voice. "You know," he insisted. "_To pee_."

"Oh!" Shad said right out. "Well, why you got to whisper it fer?"

Tom gave a nervous tug on Shad's sleeve. "No, no, nairy a thing. Listen, Shad, you just now lob something out in the bush?"

"I shore God did. Lobbed me a great big rock. As I was coming down the road here, a fat old rattler cut acrost on me and took off'n the bush."

An involuntary gasp reached them, and then the rattle and rustle of the thicket. "You heered that?" Shad whispered.

"Must-must be that rattler you chased," Tom offered weakly.

Shad nodded and started looking around at the ground.

"Reckon it be. Let's you and me pelt him with some more rocks."

"No, no!" Tom's voice was nearly a wail. "I ain't got me the time to fool with no old rattler.

"Well, all right, Tom, See you."

It had been a mean trick. He knew it, but he couldn't help chuckling over it.

The Mears place was an old grey shebang with oleanders and dogwood in the big yard. Mrs. Mears kept a row of porch plants along the leaning porchrail-sultana, geranium, aspidistra, all of them in old rusty coffee cans; and Shad always found the colourful display pleasing. At the same time it made him conscious of a sad yearning for the mother he'd never known.

Shad cut across the yard and started up the steps. But he stopped when he saw Dorry Mears' younger sister, Margy, sitting on the porch bench, her long dark head framed in the brilliant window of lamplight. He nodded.

"How-do, Margy. Your pa to home?"

The girl seemed to be studying him. "Reckon. What you want with him?"

Shad smiled. "Be dog if'n I see where that's any of your nevermind."

"If'n you come to borry his money, it's my nevermind."

"I never heered of Bell a-giving his money away afore."

"No-" the girl conceded thoughtfully. "But there's them that think because he got him some property hereabouts, he's as good to have him some spare dollars."

"Well, you kin stop thrashing your mind to a frazzle, because I'm here to buy, and I got me my own dollars." Then, remembering, he asked, "Where at's your sis?"

Margy sniffed, significant of nothing, and said, "Inside. Reckon some fool man's ben chasing her agin."

"How's that?"

"Because she come a-tearing by me just a minute ago like a hant had her by the skirt." Margy leaned forward, her long dark hair running over her left shoulder like spilled ink. "Mebbe 'twas you," she suggested.

"Mebbe." He was noncommittal. "But I usually find that when I start fer 'em, they come at me just as quick."

"Oh my! Ain't we biggity and fat-pleased with ourselves? Well, Mr. Shadrack Hark, you don't see me a-running at you, do you?"

Shad grinned. "No. And you ain't heered me calling fer you either."

"Well, just don't you bother! Because you'd keep right on a-calling tifi you were blue and silly in the face!"

"Well," he said, starting for the door again, "we just might try hit sometime er other, just to be certain. Sometime say in about five-six year when you be nearly growed."

"I ben seventeen last Tuesday, Shad Hark! I'll kindly thank you to know!" she called angrily after him.

Shad knocked on the door, ignoring her. Seventeen- didn't seem possible. Last time he'd noticed her she'd been all leg and flat. He'd like to have another look at her now in the light.

It was sticky warm inside the Mears' house though their screens were all intact and hardly any mosquitoes to speak of. Shad said, "How-do, Bell," to Bell Mears and "Howdo," again to Mrs. Mears. Both of them were sitting at the table, Bell with the Bible open and his glasses in his hand, Mrs. Mears across from him with her needle-and-stitch. Over by the cold-ash fireplace Dorry Mears was sitting, doing nothing but tuffing up her hair. Shad said, "How-do, Dorry."

The girl was lighter than her sister and two years older. She didn't seem to have it in her to look at a man or boy straight on, but had to do it sort of under-and-around; a provocative type of look that always did something exciting to Shad. Now, after the hair fluffing and the circuitous look, she slowly arched her back, pushing her breasts out a little further. "How-do, Shad," she said, and her voice was pure cat-purr.