Sion Crossing (37 page)

Latimer watched, at first uncomprehending, then in horror as the negro swept aside the leaves at his feet and proceeded to rub his best lightweight jacket in the red earth.

“What—”

Kingston looked up from his work. “Get some of this dirt on your pants—an’ your face. White face—pale suit like this … they show up too good—go on, man! Better to be a mite dirty than a lot dead—
go on
!”

Latimer set about ruining his trousers. The sweat-sodden material stained easily, as also did his sweaty face if his hands were anything to judge by. It seemed only natural to complete the job by wiping them on the front of his shirt, and he thought insanely
if I ever come out of this I’ll never be able to look at the red fields of Devon again
—

“That’s jus’ fine, Oliver man.” Kingston returned the wreckage of his jacket. “You hit the dirt now, you jus’ like part of it. Let’s go, then.”

Latimer followed him at a steady dog-trot through the trees, his mind still whirling with questions while he divided his attention between keeping up with the negro and casting fearful glances up the slope.

He was committed to trusting the man now—

There wasn’t quite a clear skyline above them; there were too many trees for that; but there were patches of light between them—

It didn’t make sense.
Nothing
made sense—

As he moved, so the trees above him on the slope moved, each one differently relative to its distance from the others in a constantly changing pattern; and since he couldn’t keep a continuous watch anyway …

They had deliberately sent him into Sion Crossing—Kingston and Lucy Cookridge both—knowing what that meant, while making sure he didn’t know …
But why
?

The slope was steeper here, and there were outcrops of grey rock which he had not noticed before—

And then Kingston had come back, obviously at great risk to himself …
Why
?

It didn’t make sense. But then … for Senator Cookridge to set all this up made even less sense: whatever the outcome—even if it was hushed up, and even if he was blamed for his own ill-considered actions—whatever the outcome it was bound to cause serious Anglo-American trouble—
the man Joe was certainly dead
…
and The Man himself
—
who the hell was he
?

Just as he was about to take another useless look up the slope, Kingston dropped behind one of the outcrops, and signalled him down urgently.

Latimer flung himself down on the leaves and wormed his way to the safety of the rock, trying to keep the rifle out of the dirt. The one advantage of having ruined his suit, he decided, was that its preservation was no longer one of his worries: the preservation of himself was all that mattered now.

“I think we got company ahead, up near the path—you jus’ keep low,” murmured Kingston.

The advice was superfluous. From where he cowered close to Kingston, Latimer watched the negro slowly raise his head above the rock, and then just as slowly lower it.

“Yeah … Johnnie Rebs up there,” Kingston turned his attention to the slope below them.

“Have they seen us?” whispered Latimer.

“Uh-huh.” Kingston shook his head. “Guess they found Fat Albert near the church, where I left it for them. With any luck they’ll be expecting us to be heading that way. But our way’s thataway.” He pointed down the slope. He grinned at Latimer. “We hug the dirt, we’ll get down okay.”

Latimer had caught his first glimpse of the river below him. “And after we get across?”

“There’s a track on the top. Miz Lucy’ll be waiting for us.” Then the grin diminished. “Jus’ let’s get over first, hey?”

Latimer watched the negro slither away from him. Apart from a grovelling concern for himself, which was indistinguishable from fear and could easily become terror if things went wrong, he couldn’t analyse his feelings for Kingston adequately. The long black bastard had got him into this, but he was now trying to get him out. And it was hard not to worship the ground he slithered on for that reason.

It was his turn now. And he had come a long way in a short time from being frightened of snakes and poison ivy: there were worse things than both in Sion Crossing, and things which had a hostile interest in him now.

Where Kingston had slithered with a certain serpentine elegance, even when hampered by the possession of the Ingram, he managed the journey down quite without grace, in a series of undignified stages and with discomfort to his backside and damage to his hands.

But it was done at last, past one final weathered outcrop to where the negro lay at the water’s edge, crouched beside the spreading roots of a tree which shaded the river.

River? It hadn’t looked wide enough for that description when he’d observed it from the bridge. But here and now, looking across it from old Sion land to the true promised land of the other side, it looked more like the Mississippi in flood, in Latimer’s imagination. Or … because of its smooth unwelcoming olive-green surface … more like the great grey-green greasy Limpopo, which was the home of crocodiles.

But Kingston was looking past him, with both hands on the Ingram.

“Man …” Kingston listened for a moment “… if they ain’t heard you by now, they ain’t gonna hear you ever.”

Latimer held his breath and listened. But the woods above them were as silent as they had always been.

Then he looked at the water again, and wondered which of them was going first. If the choice was his, he thought, he would not be able to make up his mind. Rather, he would prefer to be neither first nor second, but to stay here until nightfall.

But, on the mature consideration of five seconds, that was equally frightening. In the dark, that water would suck him down and lose him forever.

“What are you waiting for?” he inquired.

The eternal grin. “Man … Oliver, you are a glutton for punishment!”

“What do you mean?”

Kingston gave the slope a last look. “I mean … this is not quite where I wanted to cross. Like … a little way further up, it’s closer to the bridge. But I reckon they’ll be watching the road from there—or maybe Fat Albert, if they can see him.” He bent down, to look up and down the river. “But from here … from here they’ve both got a fair shot—from the bridge
and
the boathouse.” Grin. “This is the beaten zone, where the fields of fire interlock.”

Latimer stared at the negro. There was a world of professional frontier-crossing experience in that statement, even if Joe’s fate had not been at his memory’s call.

But on whose side?

Well—
on his side at the moment, anyway
!

“So what do we do?”

Shrug. “We wait for two-three minutes. If they’ve spotted us from above, we’ll see or hear pretty soon—and then we’ll both go like hell, okay?”

“And if they haven’t?”

“Then I’ll go across first, in my own way. And they won’t see me.” Suddenly Kingston wasn’t smiling. “Then I’ll be in the shallows on the other side, waiting for you. And I can take out the bridge or the boathouse—or I can frighten the hell out of them, an’ spoil their aim—with this little son-ovabitch, Oliver man.” Kingston patted the Ingram. “This is something extra, that’ll make the Johnnie Rebs think twice, is Joe’s weapon.”

Joe
…

Latimer looked at the negro. “Why did you kill him?”

Kingston gave him back the look. “It was jus’ bad luck, Oliver.”

That was an understatement, if ever there was one. And most of all for Joe. “Bad luck?”

The black shoulders moved slightly. “Joe Walker …
he knew me
, Oliver. We—we had some times together, way back … And he was a good man, was Joe. A top man, even … We were lucky back there, is what I think.” The shoulders moved again. “He must have been thinking about something else—like maybe you, Oliver, huh?”

They had both been slow, thought Latimer—he, Oliver St John Latimer, as well as Joe … Walker. Because, in spite of all the differences of race and style, Kingston and Joe were—had been—a matched pair.

“They were going to let me go, Kingston.” He watched the negro. “They weren’t going to kill me.”

“Uh-huh?” Kingston seemed to lose interest. Instead he put the Ingram down carefully and began to feel in the pockets of his jeans. “Is that a fact?”

As Latimer watched, the negro produced a clasp-knife from one pocket, and a fresh handkerchief and a carefully wound-up piece of string from the other. He replaced the handkerchief and grinned at Latimer again. “You ever a Boy Scout, Oliver?”

The edge of scorn in the grin flicked Latimer on the raw. “They’re getting out of this place, you know.”

“Uh-huh?” Kingston unwound the string and methodically cut two equal lengths from it, returning the remaining bit and the knife to his pocket. Latimer saw that the pistol with which he had killed Joe was jammed in his waist-band.

“They’re leaving,” said Latimer.

“That figures.” Kingston nodded as he knotted the pieces of string and attached them to the Ingram, to make a crude sling. “They didn’t reckon you were on your own—they jus’ waitin’ to hear the cavalry trumpets, man.” He hung the Ingram round his neck, grimacing as the string cut into him.

“They were going to shut me up in the boathouse,” said Latimer.

“In the boathouse?” Kingston gave up trying to adjust the sling, and turned back to Latimer. “Man—they were sure as hell going to shut you up, I’ll buy that.” Grin. “That Joe … he was careless back there, no denying that …” He shrugged. “But jus’ don’t you depend on that when you go into the water—okay?”

Latimer stared at him open-mouthed.

Another nod. “He had a few old boys he worked with—he had a lot of contacts … not like that kid on the door, that thought
ah wuz jus’ a dumb nigger lost his way
—” Kingston rolled his eyes and feigned an expression of vacant possession “—man, if I’d known Joe was here I wouldn’t ever have agreed to come back, no matter what, I tell you!”

Before Latimer could think of anything to say to that the negro was no longer looking at him: he was scanning the slope above very carefully, slowly from left to right.

“No … if he’s got any of his old boys posted, that were with him in ’Nam, an’ one or two other hotspots—” Left to right slowly, then back right to left “—then, if they know what happened up at the house by now, we’re livin’ on borrowed time, an’ you had better believe that, Oliver.”

There was no answer to that. Instead Latimer’s eyes were drawn to the expanse of the river behind Kingston. The trees on each side overshadowed its banks, but sunlit water between their shadows looked wider than ever.

“That’s right!” murmured Kingston. “You any good underwater, Oliver?”

Latimer thought of his laboured breast-stroke and noisy uneconomic crawl, and shook his head wordlessly.

“Okay.” Kingston’s voice was suddenly soothing. “No sweat … I guess you’re smart in other ways … but right now we both got to get off old Sion land—okay?”

Latimer tried to judge the distance between the shadows. “I could get halfway, perhaps.”

“That’s fine.” Kingston nodded. “Because I can go all the way, an’ I’ll be in the shallows waiting for you, like I said.” Reassuring nod. “You go halfway, an’ then go like hell—odds are they won’t even be looking.” Reassuring grin. “Me … I’m jus’ careful because you are a very valuable commodity now, Oliver—they still got C.O.D. back in England?”

Cash on Delivery
?

Huge grin. “Okay, Oliver?”

It was still oppressively hot, even in the deep shadow, and Latimer could feel his clothes sticking to his body. It was only deep inside him that it was mid-winter in England, before the postman called to deliver his C.O.D parcel.

Cash on Delivery
!

“Is that … ? Why you did come back for me?”

Kingston drew a deep breath. “Shit, man—change of heart, is one half of it—” Another breath “—an’ goddam’ error of judgement, the other half—” Another breath “—ask me again on the other side, okay?” He turned away from Latimer, slipping into the river as soundlessly and naturally as an otter.

The water was waist-deep at once. Bending down to water-level, Latimer saw for the first time that they were on the apex of a bend in the river, where the flow must have scoured the bottom. And there, altogether dreadfully near, was part of the lower structure of the wooden bridge.

As he turned in the other direction to search for the boathouse, Kingston came round to him again.

“Keep an eye on your back, man—” Another of the rhythmical breaths “—you see something—” The narrow black chest expanded again “—don’t wait, jus’ go, man!”

Latimer took a quick fearful look behind him—trees all unmoving among the rocky outcrops all the way to the broken skyline—and was then pulled back to the river.

Kingston was further away, still in the shadow but almost shoulder deep. And then the shoulders lifted—and he was gone, with only a gentle swirl of green water, and a swiftly vanishing shadow beneath the surface, lost in the greenness.

Latimer thought:
Oh God! I can never do it like that
—
can I
?

And then—
Keep an eye behind you
—because he was alone now, on old Sion land, which was no longer the Promised Land—the Promised Land was on the other side, in the land of the living—

The woods up the slope were as silent as ever, but horribly menacing in their stillness, as though they were only waiting for the avenging Confederates to come roaring out upon those long-dead plundering Iowans—

The rifle was in his hands. He looked down at it, but it only caused him a moment’s doubt, before he came to an Iowan decision: he couldn’t swim with it, and crossing that water was all that mattered.

He turned back to the river. It shouldn’t take Kingston long to—

The open stretch was no longer quite so oily-smooth. As he stared at it, the sunlight winked suddenly on a swirling eddy which rippled the surface two or three yards beyond the shadow of the trees, as though a great fish was turning just beneath it: it must be so shallow there that—

In that instant the eddy broke into waves, and the waves boiled into spray as Kingston burst into the open, threshing wildly
!