And that was the funny thing about her, he reflected. She really didn't. And yet the things that girl had been known to do for pleasure-or was it pleasure?
"Dorry," he said seriously, "why you come here tonight?"
"I done told you. I couldn't sleep and-"
"All right, all right. I'm sorry I brung hit up."
He walked over to her. She watched him come, but not straight on, which made the look something more than just a look. Shad leaned his left arm against the door, barring her in. He tilted her chin up.
"Dorry, you'n me is goan become good friends."
She said nothing. Her mouth was open, partially. Her eyes were closed. When he kissed her, her mouth was like burning liquid.
He reached behind her as they clung together, body and mouth, and fumbled for the hook on the door.
He awakened once in the time of night that is vast, endless, and everything is dead. No man's time. Not belonging to the intricate mechanism of clocks that control worldly minutes. Universe night. Then he remembered the Money Plane and Dorry, and he smiled and rolled over in the dark, reaching for her.
She wasn't there.
Shad sat up, looking. Dorry was sitting in the square shaft of moonlight from the open window, sitting on the edge of the bunk, spreading his ten-dollar bills neatly on her bare leg. The shirt! The damn bills must have fallen out of his shirt.
Her head moved, her hair shimmering silver in the moonlight. She was looking at him, but he couldn't see her face. He was suddenly aware of the weir spilling, a feathery profound drone.
"Where at you git the money, Shad?" Her voice was low, husky, urgent.
He snapped his fingers. "Fetch it back. That's my nevermind."
But she didn't. She clumped it in a small fist and held it to her bare breast. "Pa says you must a sold a heap of skins to afford twenty dollars outright."
"Mebbe I did."
"Mebbe-but ever'body else ben saying how porely the trapping is."
"Mebbe they don't know where to look at."
"Mebbe they ain't looking fer the right thing."
Shad stalled for a moment, then said, "What you mean by that?"
"Shad," she whispered, "you find that old Money Plane? Did you, Shad?"
"You hush up! Hear? Give me that money." He snatched it from her hand. In that split second he was ready to belt her one, hard. "I don't know about no Money Plane. Ain't nobody kin find that old wreck."
She came for him, hip-sliding across the bunk. He decided not to belt her one. Instead he cupped her left breast in his hand. Red fire! That threw a man all out of whack.
"Shad," she breathed, "they's the most pure-out beautiful dress I seen down to Torkville the other day with my ma. Shad, you'd like me in it. Ain't homemade. I'd wear it just fer you. I could git it mebbe fer ten dollars. Shad?"
He grumbled a little in his throat, and finally shoved her one of the bills. "But you keep shet about this here money, you hear? This is fer you'n me. I God shore don't want ever' Tom, Dick an' Harry pestering me after it. Dorry, you hear me?"
She looked up from the money in her hand and kissed him wetly. "Shad-it ain's pelt-sold money, is it? It was the Money Plane, wasn't it?"
"I ain't got a God-made word to say about that money."
"But it was, wasn't it, Shad? Shad?"
8
He was alone in the morning. It didn't surprise him. He grunted and got up, found his pants and counted his money. He wouldn't put it past Dorry to – but no, he had fifty-some dollars left.
He fetched a bucket of water and gave himself a stand up bath on the porch, then dressed, lighted a cigarette, and left the shanty.
He followed the path to the road and started east. He'd rustle up a meal first, then do some shopping. He'd have to see Iris Culver, and that was going to be like cutting a wounded bear off from the bush. He could expect trouble from that quarter.
He came upon silly Edgar Toll, sitting in the dirt smack in the middle of the road before his ma's shanty. A hulking youth with a face like a pan of greasy dough, ornamented with big angry purple pimples and long shiny hairs that grew out of his nose almost touching his lip. Mouth always swinging open, sometimes drooling, witless and with little to say for himself, he'd stand around in nooks and corners like a guilty secret and try to lick his nostrils, cow-like.
Folks were used to Edgar, used to seeing him hulking about in a sort of bewildered waiting. But Shad could never cotton to the moron. He felt an instant loathing, as though he were about to be dumped into a putrid swamp whenever he approached the fool.
But it was more than just a moronic ailment with Edgar. Something was twisted inside -his right and wrong guidepost. He was forever hunting up helpless little creatures, anything, bugs to non-pit vipers, to torture them. Today it was a frog.
The moron had the frog, back flat on the road, holding it with one hand. He was disembowelling it with a sharp stick.
"Sweet Lord!" Shad cried. Then he cuffed Edgar hard alongside the ear, spinning him into the dirt. "You goddam idjut! I ort to God rip your stupid guts out!"
He looked at the frog, scrabbling helplessly in its own mire, and winced. Not because a living thing had been despoiled, but because this living thing had been helpless, and because the despoiling had been done by a human being. He couldn't understand that.
Something had to be done. The thing was in agony. But what? "Oh Lord." he said. He raised his boot and brought it down with a slam. Edgar came to his feet awkwardly, dripping dirt and tears. He was clutching the sharp stick, inexpertly, like a woman with a dagger.
"You – you damn – you damn Sh-sh-shad!" he cried. "I'll kill'n you!" He came at Shad in a shuffling duckfooted run.
Shad stepped aside adroitly and left-jabbed the moron hard in the mouth. Edgar went down like a bag of nails, sprawling out in the dirt. He beat at the road with his hands, opened his red mouth like a fire bucket and bawled, "Ma! Mama!"
Mrs. Toll clumped out onto the porch glaring fiercely right and left. A slovenly old creature, a widow woman who grubbed a living for herself and her idiot son out of the wood somehow. No one was certain just how. She hitched at her ragbag skirt, drape-hanging it on her shapeless frame, and started screaming at Shad.
"I seen you! I seen you! You dirty swamp critter. You hitted my pore boy! You hitted my baby, you-" She went insane with her insults.
And Shad, hating the scene, hating the old lady and her idiot son, and the frog the idiot had made him stamp to death, shouted back.
"Shet up! You stupid old cow! Why don't you lock that goddam fool son of yourn up. Why don't you -"
Old Mrs. Toll caught up a wood-chopping axe and came down from the porch at a wobble-legged run.
"I'll fix yer! I'll chop yer! Beat my pore baby! I'll -"
Shad Hark was no fool. He turned and made tracks, his ears ringing with Mrs. Toll's cackle, "Lookit him! Lookit him, Edgee! Lookit him go! The big brave swampman arunning from an old woman! Hi! There he goes, the dirty, cowardly, spineless, gator-lovin' pig!"
Shad high-tailed down to the next shanty – Rival Taylor's – and came to a panting halt. "Goddam idjuts!" he gasped. "Ort a lock 'em both up." Then his mind slipped back to reactivate the scene, and he started laughing and couldn't help it. "What a God handsome sight I must have made coming fox-fast down the road with the crazy old witch axe-swinging after me!"
He shook his head and looked up. Mrs. Taylor came out on her porch carrying a pan of water.
"Shad," she called. "What's ben going on up the road there? Somebody run over Edgar agin?"
Shad grinned. "I run him over with my fist, Mrs. Taylor. And old Mrs. Toll took after me with a hatchet."
Mrs. Taylor pursed her lips and tsked disagreeably.