Джо Горес - Dead Man

“You son of a bitch!” she shrieked at him.

Dain stared at her quite mad face. There was a calmness and detachment in him that was almost animal, perhaps the contract of death that naturalists have noted between prey and predator, perhaps the detachment that often comes to people who have suffered pain or been tortured for long periods of time.

“I’m starving to death and this thing is itching like hell,” he complained to her.

Vangie didn’t know what to do. She was ready to kill him and he was acting like a character in a TV drama. She covertly slid the knife back in its scabbard, picked up the bucket of crawfish and set it in the half-drum sink and started pumping fresh water into it as if the knife had never been in her hand.

“That’s, ah, not, ah, not surprising,” she told him. “I packed it full of live maggots last night, and repacked it this morning before I went out. Maggots eat only dead, infected flesh, leave the healthy flesh alone.”

Dain paled and sat down rather abruptly at the table. He stared at her, looked down at his shoulder, back up at her. He made a “whew” mouth and blew out a long breath as she carried the water and crawfish over to the stove.

But then stubbornness entered his face. He said in a bleak voice, “We’ve got four men coming in after us.”

Vangie sat down as suddenly, as heavily as he had, as if all her strength had suddenly drained out.

“Us, you bastard?” Then belatedly, she added, “Four? I thought there were only—”

“Actually, only three of them are after you and the bonds. Maxton and his strongarms. The fourth one is after me. But I’m sure he wants his cut of the loot, too.”

“Maxton,” she said scornfully. “You sold Jimmy out to him, you sold me out to him. Did you sell my folks out, too? What did they ever do to you, you fucker? I wanted to save them—”

“Maybe they didn’t want to be saved.”

Vangie burst out, “Goddam you!” and launched herself across the table at him, eyes flashing, fingers clawed to rip his face. He kicked back his chair as his undamaged arm swept her right off the table. The impact knocked her breath out, so she sat on the floor blinking up at him and gasping.

“Hell, they don’t have to come in after us,” said Dain. “We’ll do each other in.”

Vangie’s panting eased. Dain held out a hand to her. After a hesitation, she took it, allowed him to help her to her feet. She crossed to the kitchen area and got busy preparing the crawfish. He spoke suddenly and harshly to her back.

“I don’t give a fuck whether you believe me or not, but I didn’t sell you out, lady. Five years ago, someone blew away my wife and son—”

“Marie and Albie?” she exclaimed before she could stop herself. She got quickly busy lifting the lid to check the steaming crawfish, so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. “I heard a lot about them last night when you were asleep.”

“Nightmares. I have a lot of them ever since... I’ve been trying to find the men killed them. That’s why I do the sort of work I do for the sort of people I do. What’s your excuse?”

She actually started to justify herself to him. “The bonds were going to save me from...” She stopped, added defiantly, “And my folks from working themselves to death...”

Dain said, softly, “Well, maybe we can save each other.”

She shot him a glance but said nothing. Her silence was more palpable than words, an acquiescence she could not yet acknowledge. He spoke to this unspoken acceptance in her.

“Remember down by the river that afternoon I told you I’d stirred someone up by coming to New Orleans to look for you? That was a New Orleans cop named Inverness. He’d braced me the night before, when there was no legitimate way he could have known about me or known I was in town. I figured it had to be connected somehow.”

She said stiffly, “Was it?”

“Yes, but not the way I thought.” He began to prowl the room. His strength was rapidly returning now that the infection was down and the fever gone. “I don’t know if he’s the one tipped Maxton where you were, but he’s one of the men who shotgunned my family. So he has to kill me now.”

“Because you know what he did?”

“Because he knows I’ll kill him if he doesn’t.”

Vangie turned to face him, leaning back against the edge of the steel-drum sink. His implacability was good, she could use it, use him like a missile against her enemies. Maybe. He might even be telling the truth.

“If he’s after you and Maxton is after me, why are they teamed up together?”

“I don’t know how or why, but I know he was blazing trees to lead Maxton here. It only makes sense for him to help Maxton get the bonds and kill you, so Maxton will help him kill me, and so will give him a cut of the bonds.” He paused. “You’d better know it all, Vangie — Inverness killed Minus, too.”

“Oh God,” she said softly, “another one.” Another death on someone’s conscience, whether hers or his he wasn’t sure. She added, “Don’t they think you’re dead?”

“They might — Inverness won’t. He’s a hunter, he’ll be reading sign, he’ll know.”

Vangie got out a couple of thick white plates and some silverware. She avoided his eyes.

“And you, you fucker, you led them right to me.”

“Not me — Minus. He told Inverness where he thought you were, how to get here — thinking Inverness was a straight cop. I did too, until Inverness started leaving a trail for Maxton to follow. I couldn’t lead anyone anywhere, you know that. I’m worthless in this swamp.”

“You got here,” she said.

“Minus said that in a pirogue you just had to follow the bayou. I did. I thought I could save you. Then I just had to get here or die, it was as simple as that.”

“Nothing’s ever that simple,” she said ruefully, as if sorry he had made it and she had saved him.

“Now we have to face them,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken, “or die.”

“We can run.”

He just shook his head. Their eyes locked for a long moment. Then she turned away, took the steaming fragrant bucket of crawfish off the stove.

“Four men,” she said. “By pirogue or flatboat?”

“Far as I know, flatboat. It makes a difference?”

“The storm. Without pirogues, they have to cross the open water — maybe ten miles of it. This wind won’t fall until morning, the waves until afternoon, and even then they can’t hit us in daylight. So we’ve got until tomorrow night.”

“Why not in daylight?”

“They’ll expect guns to be here.”

“Why aren’t there?”

“Swampers wouldn’t steal anything else’d steal guns.”

In the marsh it was very dark, though still only five in the afternoon. The rain was pouring down, the tops of the over-story trees that dominated the rest of the forest were being whipped and tossed by the wind. The two boatloads of hunters were just nosing into shore where the wide waterway they had been following entered the vast open expanse of marshland lake.

They cut the motors, grounded the boats, the four men jumped out to pull them up. Maxton grabbed Inverness’s sleeve.

“Why are we making camp in the middle of the afternoon?”

The big policeman just walked off. Maxton hesitated, then trotted after. They shoved through wet underbrush, broke free. Maxton stopped, appalled at the violence of the open marshland.

The sky was a vicious indigo piled with black clouds. Lightning flashed and flickered constantly. Muddy massive whitecaps piled up out in the open water, sweeping across the surface with relentless precision to finally tip and froth and break into dirty white sweeping crests. The wind howled, rain raised two-inch welts on the surface.