Harlan Ellison - No Doors, No Windows

My jeans was still unbuttoned and I was bare there.

Mr. Herm got mad in the eyes and looked like he was goin’ to ask me something. I looked at Poppa Jango, buttonin’ up and feelin’ more scared than before, when all a sudden we heard her yell. It came from down the street. I heard her and they heard her too.

“Hermy!” she screamed. “He did it! He did it, Hermy!”

I got that feelin’ in my throat again and watched Mr. Herm. His face turned all kinds of colors and he started comin’ toward me. He was mumblin’ “dirty scum” and “white trash” and Poppa Jango was wavin’ like “go.”

Next thing, I was out the door runnin’ like a hound. I was flyin’ down the street, past where Miss Lottie was standin’ on her porch in a nightcoat and runnin’ straight for the swamp.

Trees was flyin’ past me and back behind me I could hear Mr. Herm yellin’ and swearin’ and comin’ after me.

He din’t even stop to see Miss Lottie. It was me he was wantin’.

“Rotten stinkin’ white trash sonofabitch!” he was yellin’. “I’ll kill you!”

I kept goin’ fast as I could. The dark was closing in so tight over Deepwater you’d of thought the end of the world was comin’. I ran down streets and through an alley and, all the time, Mr. Herm behind me.

Maybe ‘cause he drank too much or ‘cause I’m younger and faster, I got clean away. I ran right out of town. Down the Sidehill Road and into the swamp back of Gurley’s farm. I saw car lights comin’ over the hill and down the road about ten minutes after I ploughed in, so I had to go deeper.

The swamp ain’t no place for a man. Not in the day, and never, never in the night! There’s stuff you can hear: crickets clicking in the reeds, the fish down deep, bubblin’ slow, and the cottonmouths slitherin’ through the brush. And then there’s stuff you can’t hear — stuff you know comes from Hell and don’t belong to man nor God. Like the swamp dust, like the bog-smell and the quicksand and death all around.

I din’t like goin’ in there, so help me, I din’t. But I was more scared of Mr. Herm than of all that death in there.

The mud was up to my waist but I kept swinging one leg in front the other, pushing forward till the hanging stuff was all around me, till the swamp had closed in like a blanket. Once in a while the water slithered when a moccasin went past near me. An’ once I almost stumbled out of the mud into a bog-patch of quicksand.

I moved all night — I don’t know why I din’t get tired.

I was up on a little island in the middle of the blackwater when the dawn come up. The white mist was rising and the way the island pushed out I could see everything for a hundred yards each way. It’s almost pretty in the swamp in the morning like that. The way the little wigglers skitter across the watertop. The pools are so clear you can see clean through to the bottom. And it was quiet. So quiet that when the swamp-critters was makin’ a huge fussin’, all chirp and bellow and mouthin’ at once, I knew someone was comin’.

I couldn’t move. I was too tired of it all.

I saw Mr. Herm way before he saw me.

He was comin’ through, poling a flatbottom like he wanted nothing else but to get me. A shotgun, twelve-gauge, I’d guess, was stickin’ on up and he was swipin’ them stringers that was hangin’, getting them outten his way. I knew, sudden, that man was happy as he could be. He din’t care none about Miss Lottie — he just wanted at me. Out here, with no one else around, he could beat me till I dropped stone dead.

He spotted me sittin’ on the bank, with my knees hugged to my chest — it was pretty chilly, early then. In the mist, he looked like he was walking on air or clouds. He was workin’ that pole like he couldn’t get to me fast enough.

“Bennett!” he yelled. “Bennett, you scum! I’m gonna kill you for what you done!” He went on like that for the longest time, his bellowin’ echoing through the swamp and all the while glidin’ straight toward me.

I looked around for something to swat with. But there wasn’t nothing on that muddy island. Not even a good rock. Then when he got real close, till he was so big I could hardly see around him, he grabbed the shotgun and jumped on out of that flatbottom. He came down hard on the mud and started running toward me.

I backed up but there weren’t nowhere to go. I just waited.

He took about two steps and that’s all. He just started sinking in and looking all around surprised. He yanked and strained and wanted to come after me — I was only about fifteen feet away up the bank — but he couldn’t make it.

His ankles went under. “ Quicksand! ” He screamed at me, his eyeballs bulgin’ so big and white. “Quicksand, Bennett, quicksand!”

He kept yellin’ like I should do something. I walked over slow, just as the mud sucked in around the twin poles of his legs, draggin’ him deeper. He reached out with the gun barrel, holdin’ it by the stock. “Grab it, Bennett!”

I started to but I was afraid he’d pull the trigger on me.

“For God’s sake, Bennett, grab it!”

I got scared and started backing away. And when his thighs disappeared and then his big dough stomach, he started hollering and screaming. He layed out flat like he was goin’ to swim out of it and when he seen he couldn’t, he fired on me.

The blast brought down a tree limb over my head. He tried to fire the other barrel but the mud was already suckin’ his hands in. And with all that squishin’ and suckin’ I felt funny-like. ’Cause every inch of Mr. Herm that went in, was an inch that couldn’t hurt me no more.

It was him what made me bad and do what I did with Miss Lottie. I don’t know why he hated me so. Maybe ‘cause his factory was doin’ poor and he din’t like bein’ married and he had to take it out on someone. I never talked back to him. Not once. Even now, while he was bein’ swallowed up — I never said nothing.

The shotgun and his shoulders went under about the same time, real smooth. Only his head was stickin’ out now and I watched real close. I didn’t want to miss none of that. And it was only then that I found the words.

I walked up to the edge of the darker mud. “How can I help you, Mr. Herm? You always told me true that white trash don’t eat, don’t sleep or breathe — and don’t exist at all. And if I don’t exist, Mr. Herm —” I laughed kinda “— how’m I goin’ to pull you out?”

He started to say something, but his mouth filled up with mud.

Then his head went under, went down with a sucking, puffing noise, and the bubbles came up real slow for a little bit, till the mud closed over his hair with little ripples and movements, and the top was all smooth and quiet.

I could of helped him, I guess. But I was scared and after I wasn’t scared no more, I din’t care. He hated me, Mr. Herm did, and bein’ as hate can run both ways, I guess some of it rubbed off on me. Maybe if he wasn’t always tellin’ me I din’t exist when I knew I did …

Anyway, it’s too late now.

Sittin’ with my knees pulled up like before and thinkin’ of Miss Lottie instead, I knew it’s bad what we did an’ Mam’ll be mad with me, but it felt good just the same.

In a little while, I’m goin’ back — after I’ve thought a little bit more. I hope they’ll believe me; I won’t lie none. If Poppa Jango will allow, I’ll work the Deepwater same as always. No — not the same as always. Things has changed now, I guess. Won’t no one say I don’t exist. No one — ’specially not Miss Lottie.