The Brat (1958) by Gil Brewer

Author:Gil Brewer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781440542060
Publisher: F+W Media, Inc.
Published: 2012-04-01T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

A NARROW CHANNEL showed ten feet from the far side, The opening was obscured by a clotted wall of elephant vine, choking in a gnarled tangle of mangroves. I thrust the prow of the boat straight at the channel, passed through the vine. The water was crystal for a few feet over sand bottom before the boat once again glided above black depths.

I had one last quick look at DeGreef over there on the opposite bank, watching me disappear. Keeping out of his way would be a problem now. He’d been flayed as much as he could stand.

I took careful note of where I was going, marking the way, and drove on deeper along the channel. It was straight for a time, then slowly began to curve. You could only sense it, not see it. The channel began to narrow. I slowed the kicker, then turned it off and sat there listening.

The sound of a car’s engine reached me from back by Kaylor’s cabin. I started the kicker, turned the boat and headed back to where I’d been. For a moment, not recognizing the passageway through which I’d come, fear tapped me on the shoulder. Then I saw the elephant vine. I turned and drifted sidewards to the screening vine and looked across.

The white sedan was just vanishing in front of a rolling dust cloud along the road away from Kaylor’s cabin.

I nosed the boat through the vine, turned it along the waterway, heading for the river. This stream cut into it below Rona’s home. It was the only way I knew of coming directly to the first reaches of the swamp. I had to go in there and find out about those shots.

Taking the boat close to the far shore, I searched the area I’d figured the shots came from. There was a tall, bearded cypress far in there, and more distant, a stand of withered pine. I turned the boat back toward Kaylor’s.

The two series of trees would line up in the approximate direction of the shots.

I worked the boat along the stream, through one bad stretch of choking water lilies, and finally under a plank bridge. In a few minutes I was on the river.

This was different. You couldn’t see the strong pull of slow current, but it was there, the black depths threatening. Then the river began to shallow and spread, and far down there were the swamp beginnings again.

I pushed past the Hellings’ house. The place was silent.

I’d gone perhaps two hundred yards toward a broad channel, stretching for a look at the cypress with that peculiar beard of Spanish moss, and the stand of pine, when I heard a call.

“Sullivan?”

It was Rona.

For an instant I debated going over there. The memory of her stirred me sharply. Somehow I found myself wanting to believe everything she’d said was true. She was a disturbingly hot little dish, but maybe too disturbing for what I had ahead of me right now.

She stood on the high bank of the river, to the right, under a sun-yellowed willow clump.

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