March 1953
Louisiana, USA
The car worked its way slowly along the unpaved road. Mud, roots, deep ruts, and on either side the dark green of the swamp, which even in the afternoon looked as though it wanted to swallow the light. Ray kept his hands steady on the wheel, neither too tight nor too loose. Anyone who drove nervously out here got stuck.
Hendrix sat beside him, one arm braced against the door.
‘If we go any deeper in, no tow truck’s coming out here.’
Ray nodded.
‘Then we’d better not get stuck.’
The car lurched through a deep hole, caught itself and crawled on. For a while neither of them said anything. There was only the engine, the wet sucking of the tyres and, somewhere outside, birds getting worked up about something that was none of any human being’s business.
‘Mad, really,’ Hendrix said at last. ‘A bastard like that just goes on walking around.’
Ray kept his eyes on the road.
‘Mm.’
‘Drinks, drives, does stupid shit, and when something happens he suddenly had bad luck, was tired, wasn’t himself. Always the same crap.’
Ray did not answer at once. Ahead of them the track bent slightly to the right, where the ground was firmer. He eased the car across.
‘Most of them get away with it for an astonishingly long time,’ he said then.
‘Yeah.’
Hendrix snorted. ‘Too long.’
They fell silent again.
Ray thought of Yvonne.
Not the way other men thought of dead women when they wanted to watch themselves mourning. No great private theatre. No broken heart in pretty pictures. More like a place in the body you did not feel in everyday life until someone pressed right into it. Then suddenly it was there again.
Yvonne at the table. Yvonne in her coat by the door. Yvonne when she looked at him with that expression that held more sense than he had himself. She had never become his wife. Had not wanted to or had not been able to. Perhaps she had simply seen too clearly what he was. Even so, she had been closer to him than any other.
She had been his reason in a world that kept pretending madness was something masculine, something impressive.
Why had he gone into the army?
Why into two wars?
Why was he driving into the swamp now?
He knew he was no hero. Never had been. Other men might use the word because it helped them turn men into stories. Not Ray. Hero sounded like meaning. Like sacrifice. Like a man who knew why he was doing something. Ray usually did not know that. He only knew that silence did not do him any good.
War had kept him occupied. Afterwards there had been too much time. Too much quiet. Too much chance to wander about inside his own head until he got lost in it. Some men drank themselves soft. Some turned religious. Some went looking for fights. Ray had got into the habit of keeping moving.
A stolen car here.
A small shipment there.
A bit of a thrill.
A bit of dirt.
Just enough not to get bored.
Not enough to go seriously under.
His uncle had crossed that line once.
During Prohibition the man had made a fortune. Alcohol, smuggling, anything that brought money. Then he had gambled it away, picked the wrong people to cross and paid for it in the end. Not just him. His whole family with him. Burned in the house. Ray had never forgotten the smell.
That was where the line lay.
Criminal, yes.
But only a little.
No dealings with lunatics.
No debts to men who set whole families on fire.
No fall into something you could never get out of clean again.
The car dipped briefly to the left, then found its footing again.
‘Maybe this time they really might have got him,’ Hendrix said.
‘With luck.’
‘Yeah.’
He spat out of the window. ‘And with bad luck there’d be another dead one in three months.’
Ray said nothing. That was the heart of it. Not the forms. Not judges, not lawyers, not the pretty language people used to turn filth into negligence. The bastard drank, drove and went on living. Other people did not.
They drove on in silence for quite a while. The track grew narrower, the grass taller. Somewhere ahead of them the hunting lodge lay between trees and water, hidden well enough that you only found it if you knew it was there or had business to do.
Only then did the sound come from the boot.
A dull thud.
Then another.
Not wild hammering, more the belated understanding of a man who was only now realising the drive was not heading where he had hoped.
Hendrix turned his head slightly.
‘Well. He’s waking up.’
Another bump from the back.
Ray did not look in the mirror.
‘We’re nearly there.’
A muffled scraping came from the boot. Then silence. Then a kick against the metal, weaker than the first one.
‘Doesn’t seem happy,’ Hendrix said.
‘That surprises me.’
They drove the last few yards slowly. At last the lodge appeared before them, low and dark beneath the trees, with water behind it that looked black-green in the dull light. The ground here was soft, but still firm enough. Ray killed the engine.
At once everything else became clearer.
Insects.
A distant splash.
The quiet ticking of hot metal.
And the man in the boot, who was now kicking at the lock again, as though he had only just realised that shouting might be more help than hoping.
Ray went to the boot, laid the hunting rifle over his arm and opened it.
‘Out, arsehole.’
The man blinked into the light, needed a moment, then crawled out, stumbled, half caught himself and looked around. Lodge. Water. Swamp. Two men. No way back.
‘Listen,’ he began at once. ‘It was an accident. I was drunk, yeah. Shit. It happened. That’s what courts are for. You can’t just…’
‘We can,’ Hendrix said.
The man looked from one to the other.
‘I’ll pay you. What do you want? Money? I’ve got money.’
Ray did not answer.
‘For Christ’s sake, I’m apologising,’ he said hurriedly. ‘What else do you want to hear?’
Ray looked at him calmly.
‘You killed my girl.’
For a moment there was nothing but emptiness in the man’s face, as though he first had to sort out which of his deeds Ray meant.
‘I didn’t know…’
‘No,’ Ray said. ‘That’s the point.’
The man straightened a little, trying to recover some posture.
‘Do you know who I am?’
Ray made a small movement with his hand, as though brushing aside an irritating noise.
‘Don’t talk.’
He raised the rifle a little, not threateningly, more as an indication, and gestured out towards the tall grass where the water lay dark among reeds and roots.
‘Run.’
The man hesitated.
Then he ran.
He stumbled through the grass, caught himself, pushed on again. A few steps too fast, then slower, as though hoping a slow man would be less likely to get shot than a fleeing one. He reached the water, went in, cautiously at first, then more hurriedly, until it was striking against his thighs.
Ray waited a moment.
Then he raised the rifle, took aim and fired.
The shot hit centre mass. The man jerked, took two more uncoordinated steps and pitched forward into the water. A brief splash, then he lay half in the reeds, half in the dark, sluggish arm of the swamp.
Ray lowered the rifle.
They said nothing. Both of them went back to the veranda, sat down and opened their bottles. The wood beneath them creaked softly. In front of them lay the water, still as though nothing had happened.
Only after a while did it stir.
A tremor, barely visible.
Then a dark back.
Then another.
The water shifted heavily, almost lazily. No great tearing. No noise. Only nature doing what it always did.
Hendrix took a drink.
‘Quick.’
Ray nodded.
‘Mm.’
They kept looking out for a while, until everything settled again.
‘Drink tonight?’ Hendrix asked.
Ray kept his eyes on the water.
‘Maybe.’
‘Just one.’
‘Then you don’t know me very well.’
They stayed sitting there until the light dropped further and the swamp looked the way it always did again.