McCracken sighed, shook his head and said, “Hell-he ain’t gonna talk.”
“Do whatever y’think best. I ain’t no part of it, dough.”
And Carlos went back through the kitchen. No sounds or smells came out. The saloon was quiet out there. After hours.
The lye smell was starting to crowd out the air in the little space; McCracken started to cough. Then he dug in his pants pocket and came back with a key and unlocked the door that led out back, let that door stand open to air out the room a little.
Bucky Boy stood in front of me and said, “You bet’ let me kill ’im, boss, ’fore we dump ’im in the tub. He might thrash aroun’ some, and get that mean ol’ stuff on you and me.”
That’s when I stood, chair and all, and, heaving all my weight into it, butted Bucky Boy in the pit of his stomach, and he went careening backward, head knocking against the conical lamp, sending it swinging, throwing its light wildly around the storeroom, while he went awkwardly back, windmilling his arms like Huey giving a rabble-rousing speech, instinct making him look over his shoulder to see where he was going, and splashing right into the tub of lye, getting it on his bare arms, chest, the side of his face, and more; he had lost balance, he was in the tub, splashing and kicking and screaming like he was being skinned alive, which in a sense he was.
But he didn’t get much if any of it on me, splashing around, because I was busy ramming backward into McCracken, who was clawing for the gun in his shoulder holster, only he didn’t get to it before my chair splintered against him, sending him into a wall of canned goods. The shelves collapsed and the cans rained on him, and he was on his ass down there, under the wood and the scattering of cans, dazed.
I moved through the open door and outside, shaking the remnants of the chair from behind me, free, or as free as a man with his hands bound behind him can be, and ran into the early daylight, moving toward the swamp. McCracken would soon be after me, with his gun, and hazardous as the unknown of that marshy wilderness might be, it was a place where I might find cover, where I might have an even chance.
As soon as I crossed the waist-high grass of the yard and stumbled into the trees, the ground got soft, spongy. Would it go out from under me, and put my chin at ground level? Words like snake and quicksand flashed through my city-boy brain. What was I doing in this grotesque world of sharp, spiky palmettos and canes? This macabre jungle of ferns and vines, some green, others gray, a gloom brightened (I suddenly noticed) by the morning chirping of a thousand birds.
I knew I shouldn’t go too far, or I’d never come out. My only goal, for the moment, was to hide; stay away from the man with the gun who wanted to kill me. If I could find something sharp, to work the ropes around my wrist against, I could quit thinking defensively, and fight back…but right now: hiding. Survival….
The land gave way to water suddenly, a forest of cypress trees standing like impossibly tall men, but they were dead men, as gray as the Spanish moss they were so lavishly draped with; the trees of this ghost forest were no less formidable dead than alive: their out-flaring, swollen trunks separating into twin arms reaching into a sky they blotted out, their root systems above the water, gnarled, skeletal, horrible, beautiful.
One step at a time, I tested the water, to find the land beneath. I saw something sliding along the water’s surface, about ten feet away; I froze. Waited. Then, whether harmless or poisonous, the serpent had passed, and I had this hellish Eden to myself again. Another step, and another, over one ankle, one more, another, to my knees, and then I was up on the roots of the biggest cypress in Louisiana.
I knew the direction I’d come, so I got behind the tree, figuring I could peek around and watch for McCracken, and in the meantime try to work the rope on the bark of the cypress. I had already twisted my fingers around to check the knot; it was hopelessly tight. It might take a while, but eventually the rope would wear through.
As I worked the ropes against the rough bark, I heard the rustle of fronds as he moved through. I had hoped that spongy ground would swallow up my footprints, but even so, maybe he could track me by broken branches and tramped-down foliage. I hadn’t been too careful; I’d just been moving.
I peered around. He was standing at the edge where the marshy land gave way to water and the ghost cypress forest began. He wasn’t twenty feet away.
“Heller!” he called, voice echoing across the water. “Give it up. You gon’ die out here!”
A bird called a mocking cry by way of response.
“Look-I believe ya…you were bluffin’. There ain’t no bullets. Me, I made an honest mistake. I’ll put my gun away, if you call out to me. I swear it on my mama’s grave!”
Not even a bird answered him this time.
“Heller! They done rushed Bucky Boy to the hospital! No harm done. He’s gon’ be jus’ fine. No hard feelin’s. We all took a beatin’ on this one. Come on, boy!”
He wouldn’t step out into that water. He wasn’t sure I was out here. All I had to do was wait him out. I already had a sense, from what Carlos said, and from McCracken himself, that McCracken was acting on his own accord. There’d be no reinforcements. All I had to do was wait him out. Something nudged me, and I turned quickly and the snout of a dull gray alligator, a creature easily eight feet long, was right beside me.
I lost my balance and fell back splatteringly into the water, arms waving. I was on my ass, knees up, and the view through them was the gator looking at me with its beady eyes, considering whether I was worth the trouble.
“Heller!” McCracken called, almost cackling. “Got ya now!”
He came running, and hit a deep spot, which made him lose his footing, sending him splat, face first into the water, and his gun went flying and splashed into the swamp, only a few feet away, gone forever. The fuss was too much for the gator, who slithered away, but I had to make the best of it.
Maybe my hands were bound behind me, but McCracken was unarmed now, and I kicked up water as I ran toward him and as he was just getting back on his feet, I played bull and rammed my head into his belly, sending him back down, throwing water everywhere. But when I went to kick him in the head, he reached up and grabbed my foot and threw me backward, with considerable force, and I slammed into a cypress and got the wind knocked out of me.
I slumped there, gasping for breath, beyond pain, as the dripping McCracken, his battered fighter’s face twisted into a smile as grotesque as the most gnarled, twisted branch in this gruesome landscape, staggered toward me, each footstep splashing. He was reaching into his pocket for something.
His hand came back and he flipped the razor open and its blade caught the sun streaking through the hanging moss.
“Maybe them bullets are inside’a you,” he said. “We gon’ have a look-see….”
I tried to stand, but I couldn’t get my footing on the knobby cypress roots, my hands still roped behind me.
His throat exploded in a blossom of blood as something thunked into the tree trunk, above me. He dropped the razor and it plinked into the water, as he clawed with both hands toward his throat, but blood was billowing out and he staggered a few more steps and fell face down at my feet, turning the swamp water around him a spreading red.
At the edge of the swamp, where the water began, Murphy Roden was standing, expressionless, a heavy revolver in his fist, trailing smoke.
“Nate! You alive, kid?”
“And kicking,” I said, or maybe I just thought it.
Either way, I passed out.
25
The shades were drawn, but morning sun peeked around the edges and threw streaks of sunlight on my face, prying my eyes open.