We poled through the low-hanging bushes for a quarter of a mile. I was glad for this hiding place. Sklute wasn't going to find this boat. I only hoped that we would be able to find it again.
We broke limbs, covered the boat, and I packed the few supplies we'd brought.
"Is it far?"
She'd already started walking through the scrub. She glanced back over her shoulder. "Not far. Are you in such a hurry to die?"
The bitter joke I made was on me. "What have I got to live for?"
For a moment longer she let her glance remain on me. She gave me a brief smile.
After a few moments we reached an old log trail that was almost covered by wire grass, the deep-cut ruts now barely discernible.
Just this short distance from the river it looked as if it had never rained and water was inaccessible. The trees were dry as if the leaves existed without water, had been created dry and hard and coated with a flat film of dust. The tree branches and the trunks were like iron, the bark scaly and dry. I could not see through the jack oaks that grew close against the winding trail and I could not see over them. They stretched endlessly along the abandoned roadway. I began to feel that maybe they covered every moistureless inch of the scrub. I kept plodding through them, following the trail, Lily silent ahead of me. I pushed the hard, unyielding branches aside.
We walked out into the clearing and there was a single-roomed shack sitting back from the overgrown trail. We had come up on the blind side of it. Lily glanced over her shoulder and her mouth twisted into a taunting smile. "There it is," she said. "He's down there in that shack."
I put my hand on the gun in my jacket pocket. I pushed off the safety catch, telling myself I felt better with my hand on the automatic.
My heart was slugging against my ribs. There had never been a ninth inning like this. In baseball my job had depended on what I did next, but now my life hung on my decisions in the next few minutes.
"Go ahead," I whispered.
She laughed again. "You go. Marve Pooser doesn't like company. He might have a gun fixed on us right now."
I breathed in deeply and walked out into the clearing. She moved behind me and I was aware of her there.
There was no window in the side of the shack facing us. It sat up on two foot brick foundations so you could see under the house. A narrow brick chimney rose up the blind side of the house.
There was no sign of movement about the shack. There was no car or animal in the yard. An outhouse leaned dispiritedly at the far end of the clearing. What must have once been a barn had been blown apart so only the framing stood. The shack was petrified gray pine and the shingles were cypress. There was the silence of a graveyard over the whole scrub.
I reached the side of the house, walked around it, my fist sweated about the automatic.
I stepped cautiously around the side of the house. The wooden covering was down over the right window. There was a small sagging stoop out front and five pine slab steps to climb.
The front door stood open.
I put my foot on the lower step, worked the gun free from my jacket.
"Just leave it there, Jake."
My head jerked up and I saw him sitting inside that door. I recognized that voice. I had not sought him for no reason. This was the man who had robbed McAteer's, called me by name. The loud-mouthed Romeo of the pinball machine. The used-car salesman. The bastard who had robbed me of everything I had.
He had a rifle trained on my navel. He held the gun negligently across his knees. "Been waiting for you," Marve Pooser said. "What took you so long?"
He flicked his glance toward Lily at my shoulder.
"We got here quick as we could," she said.
He laughed, his voice booming out of that cabin. "Sure you did, Lily. You done the best you could. You done just what I told you. You brought old Jake right straight out here to me."
THE SCRUB
We went slowly up the steps to the sagging stoop. There was nothing else to do except keep walking toward the black mouth of that rifle. It looked like the prim-lipped mouth of a sour-faced spinster. It would spit just enough venom to handle the situation, the sharp sting of death.
Marve was sitting on an old kitchen chair. Behind him the room was in faded shadow, but appeared sparsely furnished.
The first thing I noticed about Marve Pooser was the strange bracelet he wore on his left hand. I had to look three times, and see it stir slightly before I believed it; it was a coral snake.
"Like it?" Marve's loud voice struck against us as we stepped onto the stoop. He held up his left arm for a moment, letting the rifle sag to his knees.
I knew better than to jump him. It looked as if he were daring me to. I couldn't pull my gaze from the deadly snake looped about his wrist. It reared its head, slightly larger than a pencil eraser. "This baby is the harlequin, Jake-boy. But you can call him Harley."
He laughed and lifted the gun again.
I went on staring at the snake. I knew they were deadly poisonous, had never ever heard of any antidote for its poison. I remembered what Henry Sistrunk had told me. Marve Pooser had collected these corals, rattlers and water moccasins since boyhood without ill effects to himself.
Marve's laugh raked me. "Don't worry about Harley, Jake. You won't hardly live long enough to get to know him well. Besides, I know how to cure up a coral snakebite. Any time you get bit, you call ole Marve."
He lost interest in me then, looking at Lily. "I missed you, sugar. Been lonely out here without you to keep me warm nights."
I saw the color rise in her cheeks.
She jerked her head toward me. "He's got a gun, Marve. You better take it before you get reckless."
Marve laughed again, loudly. I hated the sound, more fiercely than I had ever been able to hate the memory of it. "Come here, baby." He held out his left arm to her and the coral snake stirred again, lazily.
"He's got a gun, Marve."
"Oh, hell, baby. Ole Jake won't try to use it. I'd put a hole through him and he knows it. This is a boy wants to live, and that's kind of silly right there on the face of it. What's this boy got to live for?"
"You're stealing my line," I said.
"Hell, we'll get along. The three of us. Come here, sweet stuff. I been building up now until I'm loaded for bear."
Lily's face was flushed, but she shook her head.
Marve laughed. "All right, sugar. Take the gun away from him. Take it and bring it to me. By the way, walk in back of him. I wouldn't like Jake to get any ideas-no ideas that I don't give him."
She walked up close behind me, removed the gun from my pocket. She went to Marve then, and he took the gun in his left hand, examined it. "New. Hell, I can smell the hardware store on it. A new gun. You're out of your league, Jake."
I didn't say anything. I watched him slide his arm around Lily. He closed his hand on her, but she writhed away. "Get rid of that snake."
"Hell baby. You know I've cut Harley's stinger out. Harley ain't got no bite. Harley's just a pet."
"I don't like him." She had moved back against his side. Marve laughed and dropped the snake into a wicker basket on an unpainted table at his side. I could see beyond him now into the shack. The fireplace was being used as a cook-fire. Beyond it was an iron four-poster bed with a flat narrow mattress that sagged in the middle on wire springs. There were a couple other chairs and this table. Marve was roughing it.
Marve pulled Lily down on his knee. He pushed the automatic under his belt and seemed to forget it as though he wore them there habitually. He shoved the rifle on the table.
"Come on in and set, Jake. Southern hospitality."
I went into the room trying not to look at him and what he was doing to Lily. I heard her quickened breathing and it tore me up. Here was a girl that went crazy when a man touched her-the only catch being, he had to have the key and Marve Pooser was proving to me he was the man owned the key and all its duplicates.
"You missed me, sugar?"
"Yes, Marve. I reckon I'm getting used to missing you. You leave me. You think you can come back when you want to."
"Sure I can, sweetie. You know why. Because ole Marve Pooser is loaded with what you want." His voice was loud. He was talking to me. He was making sure I heard every word.
Suddenly I knew why. It still rankled in his soul that Betty had wanted me to win that pinball duel months ago. He had robbed a hundred grand, gotten away with it, run, had a doll like Lily who panted when he moved his hands over her. But that wasn't good enough. In that instant I recognized the deep-seated drive in Marve Pooser. He had to be better than every other man. He very well might have tried to kill me if Betty had walked out of the Crow Bar with me. What a man. Everything in God's world wasn't enough for him.
"Ain't that right, baby?" Marve's voice pounded at me. I wasn't looking at them. I knew he had his hand inside her clothes and I was sick because she wasn't fighting this guy. She had turned to cream, she was melting. "Say it." His voice rasped. "Say it, sweetie. Ole Marve has got just what you want."
"Yes." In her voice was that hungry sound I had heard last night, just before I felt the knife at my throat. But there was no knife in her hands. He was in her hands, she was digging her fingers into him.
I felt the sickness swirling in my stomach. All the desire I had felt for her, wanting her so terribly I could not sleep and she fought me off and came running to this joker.
"Sit down." Marve's voice battered at me through the whirling inside my mind. "I tole you, Jake. Sit down."
I sat down. The only chair faced them. He wasn't going to let me miss this reunion. This was going to pay me off for Betty. It would pay for all the hatred that had rankled inside him.
Lily looked at me and tried to pull free of Marve's hands, but he had her now. Her mouth was parted and she was pressing closer against him. His hand moved faster and she suddenly turned and buried her mouth against his throat.
The faded shirt went first. Marve's hands pulled at the buttons and they slipped through the weakened button holes. He dragged it down her back, the sleeves peeling off her sun-tanned arms. Her breasts were starkly white against the brown of her arms and her stomach.
She tried to burrow into him. She kept shaking her head, but did not have the will to move away from him. "No, Marve. Please."
"Hell, baby. You make me sore, you won't get what you want. You want to make me sore?"
"No, Marve. Oh, no."
"Then shut up. Then stop fighting me, baby." He raised his head, his eyes feverish but coldly sober.
He stared at me, laughing at me over the top of her dark hair. He caught the tops of her dungarees and pulled them open. She caught at his hands, trying to get up. He held her tightly, laughing.
"What's the matter, sugar?"
She stared at me, did not answer. Her face was flushed, eyes as feverish as his. Her mouth looked swollen.
"Oh, hell with him, baby. Let him sit there. He's as good as dead. What does he matter?"
She had subsided slightly, enough so she no longer breathed through her parted mouth.
"It's not him, Marve."
"No? Then what is it?"
"It's you." She tried to pull free, but his hand slipped across the smooth rise of her stomach. She caught her breath audibly.
He nuzzled her neck. "What about me, baby?"
"You lied to me, Marve."
He laughed. "Hell, yes. Why not? No dame can stand to listen to the truth."
"You lied to me. About why you came back here."
He laughed, pressing his hand down, watching her. "Is that all? Ole Jake been telling you things about me, huh?"
"You stole a fortune, Marve. You never told me you had any money."
The smile died. "It was none of your damned business."
She leaped up, catching at her dungarees, fastening them. "You're not going to use me like this-and lie to me."
"I'd have told you when the time came."
Her voice lashed at him. "When the time came? What time, Marve? When you got tired staying out here? When you got ready to walk off and leave me again?"
"Baby, you know I'm not going to leave you."
He stood up. He caught her shoulders. "I'm warning you, Lily. You're my girl. Mine. I liked wildcats all my life. But don't push me."
"You lied to me."
"I never lied to you. I never said nothing about it."
"No. You just didn't say anything. I don't matter that much to you, do I?"
"Get this, sugar. You matter. You're my girl. But I don't take orders from you. I don't ask you when I can come and go. I don't ask for what I want. You bring it to me and I take it. Any time you don't want it that way, you can get out."
She caught his arms. Again he threw me a smile so smug his mouth clamped shut. "No, Marve. But why did you lie to me? I would have helped you."
"Look, sugar. I got troubles enough, and nobody out here knew anything about it. It's big, baby. Bigger than anything you ever dreamed of in that money-greedy little mind of yours. But it ain't worked out yet."
"What's the matter, Marve?"
"Just a detail, baby. But until it's worked out, I stay in this scrub, and the fewer know about the money I got, the better. I'd of told you. Hell, I know what money means to you. You think I didn't want to brag it to you the minute I got back here? I ached in my belly to brag it. But I knowed. Nobody could know about that money, baby. Not until I was ready to tell 'em. And that's the only reason."