The Boatman's Daughter by Andy Davidson

Author:Andy Davidson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: MCD x FSG Originals
Published: 2020-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

CARGO

When Miranda saw the dwarf, her heart plummeted. Avery stood naked at the end of Sabbath Dock, hands cupping his genitals. Trembling before Riddle and his deputy and bleeding freely from a cut above his left eye. Stomach and knees pebbled with dirt and blood, as if he had been dragged over rock. Knuckle skin like apple pulp.

Riddle loomed, a cigarette burning between his lips, his thick fingers looped on either side of his buckle. Sky above him flung with stars. Fedora cocked, he smiled wolfishly at Miranda as her boat drew near.

Avery would not look at her.

Miranda sat unmoving at the stern, a tremor of fury working its way out from her center.

The Alumacraft bumped against the dock. The gentle lap of the water against the hull was the loudest sound they heard.

“Hidy, little sister,” Riddle said. He noted the bruise-work on her throat, the cuts on her cheek. “You tangle with a bear?”

“What is this?” Miranda said, standing slowly.

Tenderly, Riddle touched Avery’s shoulder. “John, what is this?”

Avery, through a split lip: “It’s the way it’s gonna be.”

The constable’s smile widened. “Tonight, your boat’s a basket, little sister. And this here is the Baby Moses.”

Avery kept his eyes on the planks of the dock.

Riddle flicked his cigarette into the water. “We’re selling the secret recipe, you might say.”

Miranda eyed the Root and its arrows, strapped inside the gunwale, felt Hiram’s knife in her pocket. The grip of Riddle’s pistol was smeared with John Avery’s blood and a sprig of hair.

Are you fast enough?

To do it now, right now, to hell with the plan?

And if she failed, would she even hear the shot that pitched her back into the murky water, or would failure belong to the fat man, failure to register the arrow that had buried itself in his throat?

His hand already on his pistol above her, the boat rocking beneath her, she made the odds and didn’t like them. So she swallowed thickly and tossed the rope, and Riddle looped it around a pillar.

“Help him down, girl. Don’t worry, he won’t bite. He’s cool as a cucumber now, ain’t you, boy.”

Miranda did not move.

Riddle’s deputy cast an embarrassed look at his long feet.

Avery turned his back to Miranda before letting go of his manhood. She looked away as he descended the ladder. On the third rung, he slipped, feet and legs shaking so. Near the bottom, he stopped and clung there, ugly red welts across his shoulders, as if from a strapping.

Miranda reached for him.

“Don’t touch me,” he said.

Riddle laughed as the dwarf stepped awkwardly into the boat. He collapsed on the center seat, facing the bow. “Like I said, John,” the fat man called down. “Don’t you worry none about that pretty wife and baby. A promise is a promise. Besides, they family, ain’t they, Robert Alvin.”

“You say so,” Robert Alvin said.

“See y’all later.” Riddle slipped the boat’s rope from the dock.

Miranda reached for the starter as the men went walking away.

Right now. How easy.

Arrows in their backs.

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