"Lily."
She turned her face. It was swollen. I felt the shock and sickness strike me.
"Jake," she whispered. "Oh, Jake."
"It's all right, baby. It's not far now." I stared at the clouded sky. Please God, let it not be far now.
***
The man at the fish camp took one look at Lily and I did not have to say anything. I ran my boat up past the boats lined along his dock, beached it. I lifted Lily in my arms and ran up the embankment yelling for help. He looked at Lily's face. All he said was, "Before Gawd."
"We got to get her to a hospital," I said.
He looked at me, pitying me. "We'll try, son."
He jerked his head toward a jeep station wagon. He yelled to somebody that he'd be gone a spell and we got in. I sat on the front seat with him and held Lily in my arms.
A mist of rain clouded the windshield. The man's windshield wipers were broken. I could not see the narrow road ahead. He slowed the car and I must have groaned aloud, unaware I did it.
"Doing the best I can, son."
"Yes."
"Won't help us none to end in that ditch."
"No."
"How long ago-how long since it happened?"
"Last night."
He didn't say anything. He stared ahead through the rain-misted windshield.
I prayed with my lips clamped tight. It's nothing new. You can be smart all your life and trouble hits you so hard you can't help yourself any more. Then you pray.
I sat there with my mouth pressed against her hair. Let her live, God. Let her live for the dresses and things I'll buy her. Let her live for the places we can see together. Most of all, God, let her live because I love her and I'm lost without her.
***
The old man swung the jeep into the runway that led to the emergency entrance of the hospital. He was a good old man, a fine old man, the kind who helped you when you were in trouble.
An intern and a nurse wheeled a cart through the swinging doors. I got out carrying Lily. The intern took her from me and laid her down on the cart. Her arms were swollen now like her face. I did not want to look at her.
"Reckon there's nothing more I can do," the old man said.
"No. I thank you. Please let me pay you."
He did not smile. "If'n one of mine was snakebit, I'd hate to think you'd take pay for helping me."
"Thanks. You're a good man."
"No. You come out to my camp. If I can beat you out of a dollar, why I'll do it. Any time. You ask anybody along the river."
He nodded at me again and went back around his car. He got in. He did not wish me good luck.
He had lived on the river a long time.
They had pushed Lily on the cart through the swinging doors and along the corridor to the emergency out-ward. I had thought they would do what they could for her at once. But they had stopped her at a desk and a nurse was waiting for me there with a pad. She wanted Lily's name, age, address, relationship to me.
"My God," I said. "Please. She was bitten last night. Do something for her."
"Why didn't you bring her in then?"
"I brought her as quickly as I could."
The nurse turned and shook her head at the intern. "These river people," she said, her mouth crooking.
I realized what I must look like. I was unshaven, wild-eyed, streaked with mud and my clothes were briar-snagged. It did not matter what they thought of me.
They pushed her into the out-ward and a doctor entered.
I stood there beside the desk for a very long time. I did not know where I was. Everything was vague. My arms ached. All the weariness that had chased me downriver caught up with me suddenly.
I walked all the way to the end of the corridor. I stood staring out of the window. The rain misted against it so that I saw my own reflection and the long length of the corridor behind me. I turned and walked away from it.
I do not know how much time passed. There seemed to be no day at all. The rain slanted in steadily and the sun did not show.
***
Sometime in the afternoon a nurse stopped me.
"Don't you want to eat? There is a lunchroom at the end of the corridor. You could get coffee and a sandwich."
"How is she?"
"I don't know. You better get something to eat."
"Do you think I could see her soon?"
She looked at me, frowned faintly.
"I'll ask the doctor," she said.
***
I stood beside the out-ward cot.
"They gave me something to ease the pain," Lily said. "It's fine now."
"Sure. You're going to be all right."
She took my hand. Her fingers were swollen as were her arms. "No. I told you, Jake. It was too late. They-have told me. You don't have to pretend. It's all right."
"Lily."
I sank to the floor beside her cot. She did not even look like Lily. I buried my face in the pillow.
"Oh God, Lily. What will I do?"
"You'll be fine. Isn't it funny, Jake? All my life I've been so healthy. Never had to see a doctor, not about anything. But all my life I was so mixed up about everything. Then I got snakebit and was so sick that nobody could cure me, and all my thinking was straightened out and I wasn't mixed up any more,"
"Don't talk."
"I want to tell you. Oh, I think it's too bad, people can't know what is right until it is too late. Why didn't you grab me by the hand that first day, Jake, and take me away from here with you? Why did you wait until it was too late?"
"I don't know."
Her swollen hand caressed me. "But I know. I can see it all so clear. You didn't want me then. You were all full of hate, just like I was. We hated different things but we were so full of hate that we could not admit even to ourselves that we belonged together, and would be all right together, and happy together."
"Yes."
"We had to throw it all away. God was good to us. He brought us together. But we had to throw it all away. Because you wanted to hurt Marve and take his money. But I was as bad as you. I wanted his money too. All of it."
"It's all right."
"But then when the snake bit me and I was dying, I saw what I had done. I had had a chance to have something good with you, but I had thrown it away. Then I made Marve tell me where the money was. I was going to tell you. Even if it was clear in my mind that it would hurt you-that having that money would kill you-I was going to tell you. But I couldn't… Jake, I couldn't. I loved you too much."
I pressed my face harder into the pillow.
"You don't understand that, do you, Jake? Maybe you never will. Not until it's too late. Then you'll know that I would have told you if I had not loved you so much."
"Lily. Don't talk any more."
"Jake, I got to tell you. I got to help you if I can. Back in that old Pooser house, Jake, I saw what that money would do to you. You would get like Marve, you would kill to keep it, and you would not mind killing-because your soul would be all bad, the way Marve's was."
"Oh God, Lily."
"Jake. I'm getting tired. I feel like a million ants are stinging me and making my skin all tight. I know, Jake. They can't do anything else for me. That's why I begged them to let me talk to you. I had to beg you, Jake. Don't go on fighting for something that ain't yours and can't ever be yours. You can be happy, Jake. But-not with the money."
"It-it'd be all right, Lily, if I had you."
"Oh, Jake, you got me. All your life you can know I never loved nobody but you… that I died loving you. Oh, God, Jake, how good you been. Jake, you-you gotta go on being good like that."
For a long time I stayed there. At last she opened her eyes, put out her hand, pressed a folded piece of paper into my palm.
"Jake, it's wrong. All wrong. But I can't die knowing you might hate me. I got to know you love me."
I dosed my fist on the paper, did not look at it. Her hand fell away from my hand.
Someone touched my shoulder. I looked up. A nurse stood there. I do not know how long she had been there.
"You better go now, Mr. Richards."
I stood up. I looked at Lily, but it was not Lily on that cot. I shook my head and turned away because I did not want to remember her like that.
"No use for you to stay," the nurse said. "She's unconscious now."
I walked out of the room. The corridor was quiet, smelling cleanly of medicines and disinfectant.
I looked at the folded sheet of paper in my hand. I stood there with the paper and stared at the swinging doors and the rain misting against the glass and it was clear to me, all of it. I saw them finding those bodies in the scrub out there, and I saw them looking for the man who had that hundred thousand dollars, and saw them looking-never stopping- until they found him, in Madrid, in Havana, in Shanghai. I'd never be safe, I'd always be running. And I knew this was what Lily had seen. I knew what she had tried to do for me. And then I did know how much she had loved me, and what was ahead for me when I got that money and ran with it.
I stared down at the paper, knowing the answer was there. Everything I had worked for and here it was in my hands. She had drawn it for me, just as Marve had told it to her. And when I took it, what? What had Lily said? I would be like Marve, and I would kill to keep it, and I would be no better than he-worse.
From the nurse I got an envelope and stamp. I put the folded paper inside the envelope, sealed it, and addressed it to Nat Sklute. I dropped it in the hospital mail chute and watched it flick downward-out of sight, out of reach.
I turned away then and walked down the corridor and pushed open the thick swinging doors. The rain was falling harder now, splashing and bouncing on the drive.
I walked down the driveway feeling the rain against my face, feeling the way it was washing me clean.