Lost Man's River(264)

“You see that, boy? He tried to kill me,” he said dully.

Leaning his shotgun on the driftwood where Tucker himself had perched moments before, he eased himself down, seating himself, and planted his hands upon his knees, his boots not two feet from the body, which was still bloody and shuddering like a felled steer. Then he reached into his coat and took out his revolver, extending it butt first. In my crazed state, I imagined he was inviting me to execute him, and I took the gun and pointed it at his blue eyes. I was gagging and choking, knowing there could be no future, that my life was finished. I think I might have pulled the trigger if he had not smiled. I stared at him, and my arm lowered. Then he pointed at the sea wood, saying, “If she gets too deep into the brush, we just might lose her.” And he mentioned that the families who lived down South Lost Man’s Beach who might come to investigate that shot. We could not lose time hunting her down.

I stood stupidly, unable to take in what he was saying. Patiently he said that Bet Tucker was a witness. I must go after her at once. “We cannot stay here,” he repeated gently, and still I did not move. “You came this far, Rob. You better finish it.”

I gasped, teeth chattering, whole body shivering, I was fighting with all my might not to be sick. I yelled, “You finish it!” He gazed where she had gone. “I would take care of it myself,” he said, “but I’d never catch her. It is up to you.” I started yelling. Shooting these poor young people in cold blood was something terrible and crazy, we would burn in hell!

He was losing patience now, although still calm. He folded his arms upon his chest and said, “Well, Rob, that’s possible. But meanwhile, if she gets away, we are going to hang.”

I would not listen. I couldn’t look at Wally’s body without retching, so how could I run down his poor Bet and point a gun at her and take her life? I wept. “Don’t make me do it, Papa! I can’t do it!”

“Why, sure you can, Son,” he told me then, “and you best jump to it, because you are an accomplice. It’s your life or hers, look at it that way.”

“You told me we were coming here to settle up our claim!”

“That’s what we did,” he said. He stood up then and turned his back to me, looking out toward the Gulf horizon. “Too late for talk,” he said.





I was running. I was screaming the whole way. Whether that scream was heard there on that lonely river or whether it was only in my heart I do not know.

Being so cumbersome, poor Bet had not run far. In that thick tangle, there was no place to run to. I found sand scuffs where she had fallen to her knees and crawled in under a big sea grape. Panting like a doe, she lay big-bellied on her side, wide-eyed in the shock of what had happened. I stopped at a little distance. Seeing me, she whimpered, just a little. “Oh Rob,” she murmured. “We did you no harm.”

I called out, “Please, Bet, please don’t look! I beg of you!” I crept up then and knelt beside her, and she breathed my name again just once, softly, as if trying to imagine such a person.

I never expected death to be so … intimate? That white skin pulsing at her temple, the sun-filled hair and small pink ear, clean and transparent as a seashell in the morning light—so full of life! Her eyes were open and she seemed to pray, her parted lips yearning for salvation like a thirsting creature. She never looked into my eyes nor spoke another word on earth, just stared away toward the bright morning water.

Raging at myself to be merciful and quick, I grasped my wrist to steady my gun hand. Even so, it shook as I raised the revolver. Already steps were coming up behind, crushing the sand, and hearing them, her eyes flew wider and her whole body trembled. Before she could shriek, I placed the muzzle to her ear, forcing my breath into my gut to steel myself and crying aloud as I pulled back on the trigger. I pulled her life clean out of her. My head exploded with red noise. Spattered crimson with her life, I fainted.

For a while after I became aware, I lay there in the morning dance of sea grape leaves reflected on the sand. Light and branches, sky and turquoise water—all was calm, as in a dream of heaven.

I forced open my eyes. I yelled in terror. She was gone. Closing my eyes again, I prayed for sleep, I prayed that nothing had taken place, that the dream of trees and sky and water might not end.

He came and leaned and shook my shoulder. Gently, he said, “Come along, it’s time to go.” He had already hauled the bodies out into the river. Alive and unharmed in the warm womb of its mother, the unborn kicked in blind foreboding beneath the sunny riffles of the current.