The pails swung gently behind his shoulder, three feet away. I was becoming hypnotized. I kept seeing them as they had looked when they were open on the ground. I could put out my hand and touch them. Godwin’s Law of Character Erosion states that the attrition of honesty. . . . Never mind that bright and sophomoric bit of wisdom. This is something else. Well, isn’t murder the ultimate dishonesty?
The thing that was so terrible about it was its simplicity. I could go on and go to prison, for nothing. Or I could merely walk out of here with a fortune, and not go to prison at all.
It was twilight. I saw the edge of the clearing and the darkening bulk of the cabin ahead of us.
All right, I thought. But when you start, do it fast and very coldly, and don’t think at all.
Now we were inside the cabin, from which the light was almost gone. I felt very tight, and far away, and was concentrating on details like remembering to limp as I walked. I had picked up my jacket and the paper bag that contained the $3,800. He had already put the three pails in the boat and had come back after the clothes he was going to take. He placed them in a cheap little imitation leather bag he took from under the bed.
“I reckon I can phone Mrs. Nunn to pick up the rest of my stuff,” he said. “Mebbe sell it for me.”
“Yes,” I said.
I picked up the gun-belt from the floor. The loops were filled with cartridges and it was heavy. I held it out to him.
“I reckon I better leave that here,” he said.
“You can take it,” I told him. I’ll turn in the gun, and maybe you can sell it to one of the deputies.”
He had to have it on, but I wished we could stop talking. My voice sounded squeezed and breathless, as if it were coming off the top of my throat.
He buckled on the belt. He looked once around the cabin and went on through the door without saying anything. I was glad; that was past now. The encircling wall of trees was dark. Far overhead in the fading sky a few splashes of orange and pink were left over from the silent explosion of sunset. He looked up at them and then around at the clearing’s thickening dusk.
“I . . .” he said.
Don’t look at him. Don’t listen.
“I liked it here,” he said simply. “It was a nice place.”
I clamped my jaws shut against the cold and terrible up-welling of pressure inside me and turned away. I gestured with my hand. We went down the trail toward the boat.
An old log running out into the water served as a pier. We got in. He handed me the valise, which I put forward with the pails. I shoved the folded paper bag into one of the pockets of my jacket, and dropped the jacket across the valise. He turned the boat outward and gave it a shove with an oar against the log. I sat on the midships seat, facing him. We coasted out of the cove on water that was as flat and black as oil. It was intensely still, and on both sides of the waterway night grew and deepened among the trees, pushing outward to overrun this last outpost of day. I turned a little, looking forward, and slipped the wallet from the pocket of my trousers. I put it in the jacket. He cranked the motor. It began kicking us outward, away from the shore, as he headed for the bend. I removed my hat.
Almost at the same time I cried out, “Wait!” His face was a blur under the big shadow of his hat as he looked at me inquiringly. I reached past his arm and cut the motor. Instantly, the vast silence of the forest rolled back over us, unbroken except for the faint swish of water past the hull and the roaring in my ears. I was cold now, and he was locked out and far away.
I stood up. “I thought . . .” The boat rocked under my weight. I swayed, and lunged astern and outward, grabbing frantically for him as I fell. We went over the side together. The water closed over us. He kicked against me. I lost him. I went upward, and my head broke the surface.
Water swirled behind me, and I heard him gasp. “You . . . You all right, Mr. Ward?”
I turned and found him, and pressed him down into the water. He struggled wildly for a few seconds, and then he jerked with one final convulsion and became still under my hands, settling away from them toward the bottom. I snatched the gun from my trousers and let it drop. A last bubble of air, released from somewhere in his clothing, came upward, brushing against my throat.
It was a problem, an assignment you were handed and told to work out on the spot and under pressure; my mind was ice cold and very clear, shored off from everything as I concentrated on it. The boat was a deeper clot of shadow some ten feet away. I swam over to it, moving clumsily in my clothes and shoes. Catching the gunwale with one hand, I oriented myself with the dark shore-line, and began kicking back the way we had come. In a few minutes, just outside the cove, I could reach bottom with my feet. I waded in, pulling the boat.
Landing it beside the log, I stood alongside it while water ran out of my hair and clothing. Stripping the cuff-links from my shirt, I dropped them in the pocket of my jacket, which was still across his valise. I slipped off the tie and shirt, wrung them out, rolled them together, and tossed them on to the bank. Then I stepped out of the trousers, squeezed as much of the water from them as I could, and stepped out on the ground myself. I put the trousers down with the shirt and tie. I emptied the water out of my shoes, wrung out the socks and put them with the other clothing, and put the shoes back on. Then, going back and forth on the log, I removed the valise, my jacket and hat, and the three pails from the boat, placing them near the pale blur of the shirt which I could see fairly well in the darkness. I went up to the cabin. Just outside the door and a little to one side, where he had dropped them, I felt around for the spinning rod and the big bass on its stringer. I couldn’t find either of them. I oriented myself, and tried some more. That was odd. He’d dropped them both right here. Then I understood. When he came back for the bandage and the crutch, he’d moved them. But where? I had to have that rod.
Well, obviously, he would have taken it inside the cabin. I straightened and was about to go in when I stopped. How in the name of God was I going to find anything in there without a light? My cigarette lighter was down there in my trousers, soaking wet. It would be hours before it would work. Well, he had matches in there somewhere; I just had to find them. I stepped inside and groped my way toward the rear, bumping into a chair. The noise it made as it fell to the floor was startling and all out of proportion in the stillness. I went on until I felt the stove, and then stopped, trying to visualize the exact layout. Nearly all the back wall was covered with shelves, as I remembered, but the matches should be on the end near the stove. I moved, holding my hands before me. I touched the edge of a shelf and began sliding my hands along it. Something fell to the floor and broke. I cursed. I knocked something else over, but it remained on the shelf. I was beginning to be nervous and apprehensive now. It might take an hour to find his box of matches. Then I grunted. I had felt them. It was a large cardboard box, slid partly open. They were the big kitchen ones.
I struck one, and the instant it flared he came flying back at me from a dozen directions at once, from the dirty, syrup-smeared dishes and the unmade bed and from the piles of cheap and pathetic magazines. The poor, lost, futile. . . .
Stop it!
I coldly sealed him out and swung around, searching for the lamp. It was on the big packing box that had the oilcloth on it. I lit it, replaced the chimney, and looked around in the dim yellow light. There was the rod. It was in the corner by the chest of drawers, where the rifle and shotgun stood. The stringer was on the floor beside it. The bass was gone. Well, naturally, he would have thrown it back in the lake so it wouldn’t smell up the place.