Sam's head was bobbing like a marionette. "Yeah, yeah. And then what do us do, Jorty? And then what?"
"Why then we haul-tail out'n the swamp."
Sam felt a shiver tremble through him. He hated the swamp at anytime; but he nodded. "Yeah – and weight her down in a slough."
Jort looked disgusted. "No, we don't do no such fool thing. You think I want the first butt-nosed gaton that comes along to haul her back up again? No, we takes her way out to a sink-hole I know of. Hit's big and hit's just as soft as fresh cow pie with quicksand. And what goes in there don't never come up again."
Sam looked down at the dead girl. He didn't hanker any going out into that old swamp at night, but if it would save him from being neck-tied with hemp, he'd cold go at it like he'd been born there. Already he was feeling better The claw crazy bobcat that was inside his chest was starting to relax a little. Everything would come out clean as long as Jort handled it.
Jort was staring at Sam, and all of a sudden he started to grin.
"You gaddam wood-colted little idjut!" he whispered. And then he began to laugh, and Sam went panicky, hiss ing, "What? What's wrong with you? What you meaning?"
He swung Sam up and around, and Sam felt as helpless as a checker piece being moved to a new position on the board. Jort gave him a flat-of-the-hand prod in the back. "Git to snooping," he ordered.
Sam went off like a deaf mute lost in a fog, his equilibrium running down a hill that wasn't there. He squinted at the darkness as though he didn't recognize his surroundings, but all he was really seeing was that new dress – pale white in the moonlight, pushed up and crumpled. genesis
In the Silurian ending was the swamp.
The sea made it and it was everywhere. The earth buckled, mountains reached up, land as soggy and porous as wet sponges spread out, and the sea drained back to its ocean basin and never returned. The weeds and plants, abandoned in this abrupt manner, cast about desperately for substance, and settled for the next best, the in-between of land and sea, the marsh; and the world was warm and damp and green, and the swamp stretched from Greenland to Antarctica.
One period followed another and each in turn brought something new-the anthropods, the amphibians, and the plants learned how to develop seeds and breed them on the wind, and this reproduction created land food. The Penmian days came in with a slam, with the Appalachians and the Urals, and inland waters receded; ferns, rushes and plants died and covered the earth in huge rotting clumps, swamps drew in on themselves and glaciers crawled across the land, and everywhere the swamps were doomed; but not yet, not for a few million more years.
The Indians came and felt the soggy earth and it trembled, and they were superstitious and gave it a name, and when they went away they left a legend; and the white men followed and found the grave mounds, found the legends and the superstitions, and saw where it was written that the Great Spirit had sent his son down to earth to teach the red men right from wrong. And they said, "Why, look a-here – them Injuns had them a Jesus." But they didn't really believe it, because God made the swamp and He wasn't an Indian, and went away scoffing and spread some superstitions themselves.
And the swamp continued to not and to wait for the end, and everything was as it had been in the beginning.
part two
16
Shad left the lake in the dark brittle hours before dawn and stobbed his way upriver, working close along the high silt banks, and when the sun winked over the far away pines and cypresses it found him approaching the true swamp.
The river narrowed, the banks fell away into a greyish black morass, and the tupelo and scrub oak were replaced by titi and laurels. The cypresses towered up from their swollen boles that sat on wet, spindly legs and fluttered their grey mossbeards. They stood rank-and-file as far as the eye could see, and everywhere cast their green reflection across the face of the mirror-tarnished slough. The poisonous breath of the swamp waited like an invisible barrier – as sharp and commanding as a wet hog pen on a rainy day.
He worked the skiff up an inlet, heading for Breakneck, poling quietly with a touch of caution, like a cross-eyed man trying to find his way in a delicate house of mirrors, uneasy about disturbing the sleeping giant. But it wasn't really sleeping. It was more, he decided, like a mute monster gaping at him, absently wondering why he was foolish enough to deliberately enter its trap.
He entered a long, narrow, dead-stifi lake and drifted for a bit, letting the pole drag. The sad cypresses reached such extraordinary heights, and the jungled vegetation entwined with such fierce and ardent vitality that the sun could only find the swamp floor in white shafts. It lay like great slabs of light among the shadows.
This was Breakneck, and it always reminded Shad of a great deserted cathedral.
Evil he'd heard the swamp called, by those who had been in it and those who had not, and they were right. But it had always struck him that it was a purely beautiful form of evil.
At the north end of the lake was a tongue of land, giving the place its name, and beyond, a network of tributaries formed. The slough nearest the west bank was the one he wanted – the water course that would lead him back to the Money Plane. To save time he shipped the pole, sat on the thwart and used his paddle, and began cutting across the center of the lake.
A swallow-tail kite was tracing aerial patterns in the sky. It held a struggling lizard in its talons and was taking lunch on the wing. When it spotted Shad in the skiff it swooped down in an effortless dive out of pure curiosity and whanged past his head, totally oblivious to danger. Shad ignored the bird, other than to realize he was hungry himself. In the bow of the skiff he had put a blanket and a large tin box containing his knife, a box of kitchen matches, firstaid kit, and three on four cans of food. When he reached the Neck he would land and treat himself to a feed.
There were more of the stumpy bays now, and paintroot and hurrah bushes, and the palmettos were thicker than the head of a new broom. The water shallowed, the bonnets and pickenelweed and never-wet leaves began clustering about the skiff, and he changed back from paddle to pole, stood up and balanced his body against the give of the boat and the heft of the stobpole. He worked his way around the Neck and entered a great secluded palm bog.
The towering battlements of vegetation seemed to roll up and over him like a great fibrous wave, and the mass of branches, leaves, creepers, festoons of moss threatened to squash anything as puny as man. He stobbed patiently through the maze, ducking and weaving as the trailing creepers came slowly at him. After he had his lunch he would pick up the trail he'd blazed and be on his way. He grinned as anticipation jacked up his spirits.
"Money Plane," he whispered, "I'm cold coming at you."
And right then someone called.
"Hi, Shad! You ben looking fer us?"
Shad nearly lost the stobpole. He turned, crouching, the skiff wobbling dangerously underfoot, as everything in him tightened into startled suspension. It was like watching the mainspring of a nightmare coming at him to see Jort Camp and Sam Parks pole Jort's big gator-grabbing skiff out of the greenery.
He was one of those men about whom lesser men like to boast as though by merely exhibiting their knowledge of him they have a claim on him, on his astonishing powers, though in secret reality they are scared to death of him, and probably hate him as well. But he was the type of man whom little, vicariously living men (like Sam) can create legends around. And Sam and his breed have done well by Jort.
You come into the county thinking you'll visit Sutt's Landing to see some real swamp folk, and right off one of Sam's breed will try to impress you with the legend of Jort Camp – You ever heened of Jort Camp where you come from, stranger? Jort Camp? No, I can't say that I have. Is it an army post or a person? Is hit a – well, I should hope to hoppin God hit's the most stupyfyin person you'll ever meet! Oh? Well, who is he? Who is he? Who is he! Why he's the biggest, bestest, toughest, brawlin'est, gator-grabbin, bobcat-beatin, cadaver-maker you ever see! That's who he is! And you say, "Oh," and though you don't really believe that he is the biggest of all these wonders, or necessarily the best, your subconscious automatically forms a picture of Jort Camp and you decide that you definitely don't care to meet such a person.