The Keepers of the House (8 page)

He dressed and went out on the kitchen porch, where the bowl of hot water was waiting for him, as it was every morning. He shaved in front of a little mirror that hung on the post, wiping the foam from the straight blade off on the railing. Later Ramona would come and pitch the contents of the bowl on the railing, so that it would wash clean, in a way. But even so, years at the same spot had left a greasy darkening on the rail.

On that particular day, he planned to see to his cattle. As usual there was some foot rot that needed attention, though he hated that job, hated the scraping and the foul odor. There were some hide sores too, he wondered briefly if the heel flies were not hatching out early this year. Like screw worms they usually came later in the spring. He’d go have a look now and he’d remember to take the benzol and pine-tar oil with him.

He was thinking like that when he started out. Only somehow he took a different turning and found himself going the way to town. He had remembered Peter Washburn and the new skiff. And the game he was going to play in Honey Island Swamp.

H
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put his blanket in the bow of the skiff, carefully, in the driest part, with his oilskin folded under it. He put his food on top the blanket. He’d have to find something to eat along the way, or he was going to be pretty hungry. He had brought only a slab of boiled bacon, a good-sized hunk of cornbread, and some of the small greenish apples that grew in his orchard. They were extremely tart and they were good for freshening your mouth and cleaning the bacon fat from your teeth. He also had a small canteen of water, and some barley drops that he had found in the kitchen cupboard. He had not seen them before, but he assumed they had been left by some child visiting for the wedding.

He put his shotgun next to him and shoved off. For an hour or so, he rowed with the sluggish current of the little run, slumping easily over the oars, saving his breath for crossing the Providence River. He felt the water tighten against his oars as he approached. He shipped them—idly noticing the muddy water drip from them to the bottom of the skiff—and got out his pole. The run became quite swift here, taking current from the winter-swollen river. It would be easier to pole the skiff through the narrow break in the tangle of bushes and trees.

From the river, you could not see where the run entered, the willows and the water beeches and black gums and the hackberry bushes and the elderberries grew so low and tangled. Approaching from the run, it was easier. The current marked your way. William swung his pole over the side, noticing with satisfaction that he had selected a good light one, smooth to the hand and balanced nicely, even with the crossbar at its tip. All poles had something like that; it kept them from sinking too deep in the mucky bottoms. He pushed the skiff through the swirling muddy water, avoiding the sawyers and the fallen trees and the densest tangles of vines. He went slowly, handling his pole carefully to avoid brushing or knocking into hanging foliage. He did not want a water moccasin tumbling down on his head.

He came out into the river, and the skiff swung sharply in the full current. He was thrown off balance by a tug on the end of the pole as the crossbar dragged. He heaved it out, cursing his carelessness. It had been so long since he crossed here that he’d forgotten the tricks and he’d almost got a dunking because of his slowness.

Using his oars again, he maneuvered himself across the river, searching for the slough that was the entrance to Honey Island Swamp. He’d not been here since he was a boy, and floods had changed the shape of the banks so completely that he no longer recognized them. He remembered once marking the entrance by a solitary cypress tree that grew there, alone in a clump of water oaks. He would have to look for that.

It was much farther downstream than he thought. He had almost given up when he finally saw it. It had died—years ago—but the brown pole of its trunk still jutted out above the oaks. He swung the skiff around, bow to the current, and rowed steadily forward so that the boat remained stationary, while he looked. He spotted the entrance, swung the bow in, and clumsily knocked against a feathery low-hanging branch. A dark shape tumbled athwart his bow and slithered into the water. He cursed silently with relief and, using a single oar for a paddle, maneuvered himself out of the trees into the clear slough.

He disliked snakes, though as a boy he had hunted them, to grab them by the tail and snap them whip-fashion so that their brains spattered out neatly. He sold the skins to his father for a quarter a-piece, until his mother found out and insisted that no bounty be paid for poisonous ones. He’d stopped catching them then. …

He rowed for a bit, then changed to the pole. These sloughs were often very deep—he tested and found no bottom—so he used the pole as a sweep. Back and forth, rocking his way along, steadily.

By midmorning he was well into the swamp. The slough twisted and turned between drowned cypress trees and hummocks of hardwoods and palmetto, rustling in the little breeze. There was no current here, he balanced the skiff against a cypress knee and ate half the bacon and a bit of cornbread. He drank the sun-warmed water and watched the birds: ricebirds, mockingbirds, a pelican or two, egrets, and the big blue herons.

He poled steadily along the oily, muddy water. Ahead, in the distance—if he lifted his eyes—that dull water took on the shine of the sky and looked sparkling clear. Gators which had been sunning themselves on the muddy edge of the bank lumbered down into the water and disappeared. Turtles sunning on floating logs pulled in their heads. On one of the hummocks he passed, he noticed a tall gum with splintered bark. That would be a bear’s work; it must be a honey tree.

By afternoon he got out his compass, because the sky had turned cloudy, and, except for the wandering twisting sloughs, there were no trails, no markings. Once, when he was a boy, he’d been lost in here for two days, caught under a heavy blanket of clouds and fog that confused his directions. He’d had to wait for the sky to clear. The second night, he dozed fitfully and woke staring straight up into a bright star-freckled sky. He was out of the swamp before daylight and he never went in again without a compass. …

He left the slough and made his way through the cypresses. The water was shallower, his pole caught ground and he moved more rapidly. He started to mark his passage—he had the machete ready in his hand to make the first blaze—when he hesitated. If he should find the still, there was no reason to leave a marked path right up to its door. He would use compass alone.

The cypresses were thick and moss-hung. The water among their roots was the opaque impenetrable brown of the swamps. Once as he rested, he picked up a floating stick and scraped the bottom. A string of gas bubbles escaped to the surface.

This water was like that. So much gas formed at the bottom, there was so much plant and animal matter decaying there, that bubbles often rose of their own accord. Sometimes the surface of the water seemed to be boiling with hundreds of tiny exploding bubbles.

Here too, William remembered, ghost fires ran over the water, blue and flickering, dodging in and out of the trees. It must be some of that gas burning.

The cypress swamp became a wide stretch of saw grass and alligator grass and duck potatoes. He crossed it, heading for the scattered high hummocks of oak and water hickory he saw on the other side. He spent the night there, in his skiff drawn up on the clear sand beach of the largest hummock. The mosquitoes were not bad, but still he slept fitfully. He had gotten unused to the swamp sounds. The loud whine of insects, the swooshing of bats and owls. He even jerked upright and grabbed his shotgun when a big gator roared. He listened carefully again—it was half a mile away, in the silence it had seemed closer. Even knowing that, he woke to each succeeding roar all night long. And in the morning, before dawn even, the first sounds he heard were those of the gators. The sharp bang—almost like a shot—of their great jaws snapping together on breakfast.

William opened his barley candies, found them soft and spongy, but ate them anyhow. He drained his canteen and tossed it aside. If he got really thirsty, he could always drink swamp water. It made some people sick, made some throw up, but it had never bothered him particularly. It had a very unpleasant taste, but it was water when you needed it.

Along toward noon of the second day he located the large fresh lake he had first found as a boy. A lake in the middle of the stagnant marsh, surrounded by a fringe of bushes and hardwoods and sandy beaches. It was probably fed by underwater springs, its basin a limestone sink. In this country there were lots like that.

William scooped up a handful of water and tasted; it was cool and fresh. He leaned over the side, washed his face and tried to see the bottom. The surface dazzle of the bright sun blinded him, he looked into water as impenetrable as a mirror. When he was here as a boy he had taken a quick swim in those blind depths, dodging among the snapping turtles. …

There didn’t seem to be any about now. He looked carefully. Had they died off, or were they just hidden under the bright surface of the water? He wouldn’t risk a swim—he was too old and the day too cool.

William sat quite still and watched some short white feathers float by on the surface of the water while little fish nibbled at them futilely from beneath.

The swamp had always made him lethargic and dull. He moved slowly, content to watch the animal life that thrived all around him. … But he’d come looking for something. There was that bet with Calvin Robertson. No, it wasn’t exactly a bet. … Harry Armstrong’s face, now—William chuckled remembering—while he stood juggling that case of chickens and sweating like a horse. … He’d never had much luck in his life, William thought, first his father had gone broke and now his wife was ailing with some female complaint. …

On the far side of the lake a black panther emerged from the tangled green of a hummock and padded lazily down to the water. That was upwind, a good quarter mile away, William noticed, so the animal was not aware of him. He kept perfectly still, barely breathing. You didn’t see too many of those real panthers any more. There had been bounties on them time and again, and people had just about cleaned them out. You never heard their night shrieks any more—except in the swamp.

William watched the lean dark shape pad along the small sand beach. The panther seemed disturbed. It dabbled its forepaws in the water, reaching for something, then gave up and strolled back into its cover.

William shook himself awake, fitted oars into locks and rowed across the silent empty lake, the noise of his strokes sounding enormous and loud.

He approached cautiously—panthers had been known to attack men, especially if they had a litter nearby. The foliage did not move—there wasn’t even a wind in the noonday heat—and he edged right up to the beach. He saw what it was. A small animal carcass lay in the shallow water. William nudged it with his oar and dozens of little water scavengers scurried away. An otter, and skinned. No wonder the panther acted so strangely. The bloody meat attracted him, the scent of man sent him away. …

William flipped the stripped red-grey flesh into deep water. Let the fish clean up. As he did, he smiled to himself. The Robertsons couldn’t have left him a plainer trail. They had gotten careless. And he’d gotten lucky. The carcass had fallen into the shallows, and the panther had pointed it out to him.

He set himself to thinking. For a still you needed high ground and good water and thick overgrowth to disguise whatever smoke came from your boiling fires.

Now where would that be? To the north, the direction he had just come from, there wasn’t enough cover. Those hummocks, all of them, were tiny lumps of shell. Not enough room on them. To the west, there was mostly grass, and cypress stands, hardly any dry ground at all. Going any farther toward the south would bring you too close to the settlements at Cobs Landing and Stilltoe. The Robertsons must have gone east from here. No other way. But to the eastward was still a huge tract of land.

“Little bit more,” he told himself aloud. “It’s got to be luck.”

It was luck and nothing else. He had only gone a few miles when a little breeze picked up, and on that breeze—clear as day—was the smell of mash. It led like a highway for him to follow, the odor getting stronger and stronger as he pushed his way into a thick patch of swamp. He couldn’t see more than fifty feet in front of him, through the maze of cypress trunks and the tangle of buck vines. He didn’t even see the island until he was right on it. One minute there was nothing but cypress and brown swamp water and the scurry and splash of little creatures running from his passing. The next minute he found himself staring at the steep, palmetto-covered slope of a shell hummock.

He held the skiff steady and shouted: “Hey, anybody there!”

The swamp all round him burst into activity. Egrets and herons and starlings and robins rose up screeching and frightened. Even the great noisy black bird that people called the Lord God Bird sailed up from the top of a peaked cypress tree.

“Hey,” he called again. “It’s Will Howland.” He waited and no answer so he repeated: “Will Howland.”

He waited again. He had no wish to be shot for a stranger. “Hey, you Robertsons here?”

He beached the skiff on a small shell stretch that bore the marks of many previous hulls. The smell of mash was overpowering, but he had trouble finding the actual still, it was so cleverly hidden. When he did, he was disappointed: it was not particularly large. The amount of whiskey the Robertsons were selling could not possibly have come from here. But maybe, William thought, they had several small stills scattered around among the hummocks. Smaller the still, sweeter the whiskey, he’d always heard. And too, he chuckled, the loss of one still wouldn’t put them out of business. …

This, now, was a nice clean professional job, nothing like the makeshift things you saw around the pine hills. The copper alone would have cost the Robertsons a pretty penny. … William checked it over admiringly, and could find no fault. The filters were oak barrels filled with charcoal. The whiskey aged properly in oak kegs. There was a neat line of them over there, half of them seemed to be full. William noticed that the coils were cooled by a trickle of water from a small pipe. He followed it to the center of the hummock—a small spring. Clever, William thought, putting the still just a little lower so the water flowed naturally. As he walked back, the shell ground crunching under his feet, he noticed two neatly stacked piles of wood. It had not been cut on this particular hummock. William chuckled to himself. They’d deliberately left this one unmarked, with nothing to call attention to it. They must bring the wood by skiff from a considerable distance. He picked up a piece: pine, and aged nicely. The Robertsons were careful workers.