Джо Горес - Dead Man

Would she have wanted that? Did he want that? Last night he had more or less returned to life, in Vangie’s bed and in her body; against that reality, deliberately continuing the motif of the past was something like viewing a snuff film again and again. The pornography of violence.

He realized almost with wonder that if he could walk away from this right now, and never look back, he would. But he couldn’t. Vangie couldn’t. The past was vengeance. The present was survival. The future was...

Vangie said in an almost dreamy voice, “He’ll probably lie up there for three or four days, digesting. Sluggish as an old hog in a wallow.”

Dain returned to the snake, that now looked like just another tree root. The rabbit was gone, a slight bulge in the long curved sinuous body.

“How long would a man live if he was struck by that thing?”

“Depends on the size of the snake and where he gets you. Bigger they are, the more venom they pump. Get hit in a hand or a foot, you’d probably survive — ’specially if there was a doctor only a couple of hours away. But one like this hit you close to the heart, you’d only have a few minutes.”

He nodded thoughtfully, started away up the path. The future was their present now.

“No guns,” said Dain. “One knife that’s worth a damn, that Bowie knife of yours. So we have to—”

“You never quit, do you?” asked Vangie.

“You know how to survive in the bayou, I don’t. When you start picking up signs they’re coming, maybe even when you just feel they’re coming — tell me. I’ll need to know how much time we’ll have. We have to pick the killing grounds, attack them when they think they’re attacking us.”

Vangie said, hesitantly, “How... do you know if you can kill someone or not?”

“I don’t know,” said Dain. “I’ve never done it.”

“But I thought you were...” She stopped. Her face hardened. “They murdered my parents.”

And my wife and son, thought Dain. But suddenly it wasn’t enough. Carry it far enough, you just became them. Better to stick with simple survival, them or you

“Look out!”

Vangie grabbed his arm and jerked him to one side. Head down, watching the trail, he had been just about to walk into a line strung across the road between two trees, eight feet above the ground. At three-foot intervals were loops eighteen inches long, made by gathering and tying off the primary line. Heavy fishhooks had been threaded through the bottom of each loop. Hanging from one of these hooks was a decomposing sparrow hawk.

“Tight line,” explained Vangie. “Left over from fishing.”

“Eight feet up in the air?” demanded Dain.

“You have to remember that during flood stage, the tight line was just about six inches off the water, so the hooks, with bait on them, were about a foot below the surface. Now, of course, with the water back down almost to normal—”

“And the hawk?”

“He didn’t have anyone to grab his arm.”

Dain nodded, a thoughtful look on his face. His body was still full of unexpected jolts and betrayals, sudden weaknesses, but since the fever had broken his mind was clear.

“Let’s get back and start planning our assault,” he said briskly. “We’re going to need those old muskrat traps from the storeroom... and I’m glad you didn’t jettison that gasoline can along with the outboard motor...”

They moved off through now sun-shot woods starting to steam in the muggy heat of morning.

All four of them were sweating with the humidity by the time they had broken camp, striking the tents and packing up all of their gear. Nicky and Trask were starting to lug it all down to the boats, but Inverness stopped them with a wave of his hand.

“Leave all the gear and equipment here, we’ll all go in one boat. It’ll make us less of a target and we’ll move faster.”

Maxton said, with a show of bravado, “Frontal assault, right? Before they can run?”

“And get picked off in the boat, Maxton? Not likely. No frontal assaults, get that through your heads, all of you. We sneak up on ‘em after dark, and if we’re damned lucky—”

“What the fuck, Inverness, first waiting for the goddamned storm to end, and now this! They could be long gone by the time we get there.” Maxton was building up a nice anger at the more cautious hunter. “The girl ran with nothing but the bonds — and you told me yourself that Dain wasn’t armed.”

“You want to take the chance there were no firearms at the shack?” He shook his head. “They’re not going to run from us.”

“What the hell is it with you and Dain, anyway?”

“He wants me dead,” said Inverness. He was suddenly hard as strap steel. He moved in on Maxton, hulked over him. “When I got word he was in New Orleans, I thought he was after me and let you know he was there. Now I’m leading you to the girl so you can get your fucking bonds and your fucking nasty little revenge. In return you’re going to help me get Dain for good. I’ve already killed him twice but he didn’t stay dead, so—”

“You’re scared of him!”

“You’re goddam right I’m scared of him, the same way I’m scared of a cottonmouth coiled under a rock. Five years ago I killed his wife and kid, and he knows it.”

“Why didn’t you just kill him in New Orleans?” asked Maxton. “A mugging. A hit-and-run...”

“Better out here in the swamp where nobody’ll wonder where he’s gone. What are you bitching about? Because of me you’ll get your fucking bonds and the girl.”

“We keep fucking around, she’ll be gone by the time we get there.” He shook his head in disgust. “From what you tell me, you killed Dain again the other night. So I say we—”

“He’s alive and that fishing camp is his goddam rock. He’s going to be coiled and waiting for us. That’s why we go in after dark when he’s cold and sluggish.”

“You’re as fucking crazy as he is,” said Maxton; but he stamped off down to the boat without further argument.

The mist had burned off, the steaming had stopped when the leaves and foliage had dried. On the open cleared knoll, a dozen muskrat and nutria traps were laid out in the bright sunlight. Vangie was on her knees greasing them, making sure the traps didn’t slam shut on her hand as she tested them one by one.

Dain came down off the little verandah of the cabin. Awkwardly, because he had trouble keeping the gunnysacks open, he began stuffing them with the traps she had greased.

“I’ve cut the two-by-fours for the cleats to go up on either side of the door, but you’ll have to nail them up. I can’t do it with only one arm.”

Vangie suddenly stopped working to look up at him, shading her eyes with one hand. “I can’t believe this! We’re actually trying to plan ways to kill four men!”

“No, four men are planning to kill us. We’re trying to survive. There’s a difference.”

“Easy enough for you, with nothing in this world that you care about.”

Dain started to speak, to tell her about his insight that morning: that only simple survival, not revenge, would have a chance of getting them through this. But instead he surprised himself by saying, “I care about you, Vangie. A lot.”

She tried to reply, stopped; she couldn’t handle that one. She didn’t know what it meant, didn’t know what she wanted it to mean, didn’t know if she felt a similar sentiment in return, whatever the hell sentiment it was in the first place. She settled for ignoring it completely.

“You found Inverness easily enough after five years—”

“He found me.”

Surprised, Vangie said, “How?”

“That’s one of the many things I want to ask him when we get together again.”