They heard more shots and the splintering of wood. "He's aiming for the lattice," said Zaddie quietly.

"Mama, I'm bleeding!"

"Yes, but can you still see all right? Out of both eyes."

"Yes, ma'am."

"All right, then," said Elinor, pushing her away with a kiss. "You hold on to Zaddie now, you hear? Don't let go of Zaddie. And Zaddie, you stay down low. Whoever it is is still on the levee, but he's broken every window in the back of the house and he may start to come around to one side or the other. If he does that, I want you and Frances to crawl into the pantry and shut the door, you hear?"

There was another shot, but this time from inside the house.

"Mama!"

"Shhh! That's your daddy, shooting out the window back at Carl. Trouble is, I don't think Daddy could hit anybody if he were standing right in front of him, holding up the barrel."

Elinor stood and moved quickly to the front door. As she put her hand on the k.n.o.b Frances called out in an agony, "Mama, where are you going?"

"Shhh!" said Zaddie, grabbing Frances around the waist to prevent her from going after her mother. "Miss El'nor, you gone take care of things?"

"Zaddie," said Elinor, as she eased herself out the door, "I'm going to try."

The door closed behind Elinor, and Zaddie and 66.Frances were left hugging each other in the midst of debris, darkness, confusion, and fear.

Carl Strickland sat comfortably on the path atop the levee behind Oscar Caskey's house. He had two rifles, a double-barreled shotgun, a crate of .22 ammunition and a box of shotgun sh.e.l.ls. He had been startled by a bluish-white light suffusing the upstairs hallways of the Caskey house, but by that same light he had been able to smash the large staircase window in the back. That light had immediately winked out, and it was a disappointment to Carl that no other had come on. The screams he had heard had satisfied him that he had at least frightened the household, even if he had not been so lucky as to kill anyone. Carl had been expecting the sheriff to drive up, but no one had come. He had not antic.i.p.ated being so much at his leisure in this matter, and had begun wondering, since the inhabitants of the house appeared so pa.s.sive in their defense, whether he ought not move down and around to the side of the house and fire into the windows there. He knew from his wife's distinctive scream which room Queenie was in. For good measure he had fired another shot through the second-floor screened porch and grinned when he heard more gla.s.s break in the interior. That was Queenie's room. He imagined the bullet burying itself in the folds of his wife's ample flesh.

He had seen the burst of fire from another window of the second floor, but the bullet came nowhere near him. That must be Oscar Caskey, Carl thought, and returned the fire with far greater accuracy.

If they're armed too, Carl considered, then maybe it was time to get out of here. He'd have other opportunities.

He fired two more shots at the house, emptying the loaded guns. Then shoving the weapons into a croker sack with the ammunition, he stood up, brushed himself off, and scuttled down the river side 67.of the levee, using the heavy sack as a drag and a balance.

He heard a car in the distance. That is the police, he said ft> himself, and he heaved the sack into the boat in which he had crossed from the opposite bank. He pushed the boat farther into the water until it floated free, then climbed in himself, taking care to keep the craft steady.

Just as he was lifting the paddles, he was startled by a subdued splash upstream, but that might have been anything at all. He peered up into the darkness, but saw nothing. He paddled swiftly across the river, but all his energy couldn't prevent the current from propelling the boat at a sharp downstream angle. The northern sh.o.r.e of the Perdido, which was not banked by a levee, was soft and marshy. Beyond was a vast grove of ancient live oaks, and hidden among these was the automobile he had received from James Caskey in exchange for his younger son.

There was no moon, and the sky was overcast. The Perdido ran silently, smoothly, quickly, and relentlessly in the direction of the whirlpool at the junction a few hundred yards downstream.

Carefully, Carl climbed out of the boat. His foot sank deep into the soft mud of the riverbank, closing over the top of his left shoe. He drew it up with an expression of disgust, and advanced to firmer ground, dragging the boat behind him. The live oaks in this grove were some of the largest trees in all of Alabama, and very likely the oldest. In an area of three or four acres several score of the trees, which retained their leathery leaves all winter, stood as black domes, their lower branches so ma.s.sive that their extremities dragged the ground. Every tree thus formed a closed canopy, and underneath these living umbrellas festooned with Spanish moss, no gra.s.s would grow, no animals took shelter, and even a moonlit night was black. Children who had no fear or scruples about riding their bicycles over Indian 68.burial mounds refused to play here. The trees and the grove were majestic, but unpleasantly so, as if they had been conceived as a monument to someone who had been here long before the Indians, the Spanish, the French, the English, and the Americans, all of whom had laid claim, in succession, to the grove.

Carl intended to hide the boat beneath one of these great canopies, for he could be reasonably confident that it would not be disturbed. He wasn't yet finished with the Caskeys or his wife.

He took out the croker sack and laid it carefully on the ground in a sort of clearing between two of the trees close to the bank of the river. Then he dragged the boat to the nearest of the live oaks, backed through the drooping curtain of branches and into the interior of the shrouded s.p.a.ce. He could see nothing. He cried out softly when a strand of moss suddenly draped itself across his face. He unceremoniously dropped the boat near the vast trunk of the live oak and then, with groping arms outstretched before him, carefully retraced his steps. The wind sighed through the branches, and again a piece of moss fell across his face, as a net might be thrown over a creeping animal. When he reached up to brush it away, his fingers became entangled, and he tore the moss impatiently from its branch.

His exploring hands struck against a drooping branch that he had not seen. Once he emerged from the umbrella, the black night would seem light in comparison to this impenetrability.

He was pushing carefully ahead, hoping not to strike his head or become entangled in the smaller branches, when his step was arrested by a clatter outside the perimeter of the tree. He instantly knew it for the sound of his guns being tossed together. The sound of splitting wood, and another, more prolonged clatter told him that his crate of ammunition had been split open, its contents scattered.

"Hey!" he called, but his voice was neither as loud 69.nor as belligerent as he had intended. He pressed quickly through the curtain of branches, and again stood beneath the open sky.

In the clearing where he had left the croker sack stood a woman, dressed in a white nightdress that gleamed from the river water with which it was soaked. Her back was to Carl as she picked up one of the rifles and effortlessly tossed it into the river. Carl ran forward. The woman, without hurrying, picked up the other two guns and flung them into the water as well. She turned then and faced Carl.

It was Elinor Caskey.

"Queenie said it was you firing from the levee."

He rushed at her, with one hand raised to strike her. With an inconsequential motion of her own arm, she batted him away.

The force of the casual blow knocked him to the ground.

He stared up at her incredulously. He could scarcely make out the features of her face in the darkness, but the clinging nightdress continued to gleam.

"My guns..." Carl began hesitantly.

"I needed the croker sack," Elinor said.

He got quickly to his feet. He circled around her, unsure. Had she really hit him hard enough to knock him to the earth, or had he only lost his balance and fallen? He was behind her. "What for?" he asked.

In her fleeting profile as she turned, he caught a small smile.

"Oh," Elinor returned, "for you, Carl."

He punched her in the belly with all his strength. But it wasn't flesh there, it was something more giving and resilient. Elinor seemed to stand even straighter after the blow; she raised one arm. Something-not a hand-was clamped on Carl's shoulder.

With one sudden, sure application of pressure Carl was driven to the earth. Because it was applied to 70.only one shoulder, one side of Carl's body was instantly compressed. The clavicle gave way first, and then the ribs were jammed together and cracked. His lung was pierced with bone fragments and an artery was severed. The thigh bone was jammed up through the pelvis, the kneecap shattered against the ground. The shin and foot were crushed beneath the force.

Carl cried out, but the cry was strangled as his lung filled with blood.

One side of him remained whole but the other was squeezed into a third of its former s.p.a.ce.

With a similar motion, Elinor brought the appendage that was not a hand down on Carl's other shoulder. She pressed it swiftly toward the earth.

Carl's face gaped up at her. His whole body was mangled, nearly all the bones dislocated, ligaments torn, organs displaced. The backbone remained intact, but it served only to curve him into the shape of a ball. He was half as tall as before. Instinctively he attempted to straighten himself, to stand up, but his body of course could not obey. Only his neck stretched upward a bit and his battered chin lifted into the night air.

Suddenly, Elinor dropped down before him, but the motion was not that of a woman squatting, or falling to her knees. It was the movement of some other sort of creature entirely. Carl heard Elinor's dress tear in a dozen places, as if it no longer fit the body that it encased. Her face was only a foot from his, and in the darkness he could see that her countenance had become wide and flat and round; the eyes bulged, and were huge; her mouth was monstrous, lipless, and it hissed wetly in a grin that had nothing human about it.

Her arms were once more lifted on either side of him. He gasped and winced against the blow that he was certain would kill him. But the blow did not come, only darkness, and the overpowering odor of burlap.

71.She was drawing the croker sack over his body.

Carl prayed for death, but death did not come. Neither did unconsciousness. Though his body below the neck seemed a continuing explosion of pain, his head maintained an unmerciful clarity through it all.

The pain, he considered, could not be worse, not in a thousand deaths, not in a thousand years of h.e.l.l.

But Carl was wrong; the pain did become worse, for he was suddenly jerked up into the air inside the croker sack, and carried along upside down. The sack didn't drag the earth, or strike against Elinor's knees, so she must have been carrying him in one hand, and at arm's length. But what woman-what man- was as strong as that? Carl's brain filled with blood. His broken limbs dropped down around his head inside the croker sack until he was stifled with them. The fragments of his left arm were smothering him. Carl Strickland had been a big man, and now he was being carried along in a sack that wouldn't have properly held his own daughter.

The confusion of broken limbs that pressed against his face didn't smother him quickly enough, for his consciousness lasted long enough for him to realize that he was being carefully carried into the river. Elinor waded slowly into the water. At the top of his head, he perceived the river water permeating the burlap. Then more strongly, pressing the fabric against his ear, he felt the current of the river. Its ever stronger odor invaded the close confines of the sack, and he tasted the mud of the Perdido as water began to fill the bag and pour into his mouth.

It wasn't the torn arteries, the punctured lungs, the ruptured organs, or the shattered bones that killed Queenie's husband. Carl Strickland drowned in Perdido water.

CHAPTER 34.

The Caskey Conscience

On the night that Carl Strickland fired wantonly into Oscar Caskey's house, the sheriff of Perdido was having a drink with friends across the state line in Florida. By the time that Charley Key returned to Perdido and heard about Carl Strickland's rampage, the Caskeys were surveying the damage. Key entered the house, gave a low whistle, looked at Oscar and said, "Mr. Strickland did this? You positive?"

"Yes," replied Oscar grimly.

"Is he still out there?"

"No, he's gone."

"How you know that for sure?"

Zaddie was on the stairs, sweeping gla.s.s and splinters down, step by step. Elinor came out of the kitchen, holding her bandaged daughter in her arms. Frances, pale and distracted, clung tightly to her mother's neck.

"I know it for sure," said Oscar, "because Elinor went out the front and sneaked around to the levee."

73."I saw him take his guns and climb over the levee, and get in a boat," Elinor added with no particular friendliness toward the sheriff. "But he must have been drunk because the boat turned over in the water."

"Miz Caskey, you were foolish to go out there! Look at what he did in here. You might have got yourself shot!" cried Sheriff Key.

"I had a gun," Elinor said coldly. "And the fact was, we didn't see the law crawling all over the house trying to protect us. Oscar was firing at Carl from our window, and I went out to get him from behind."

"Did you shoot?"

"I didn't have to. The river got him. Sheriff," Elinor went on, laying ironic stress upon the t.i.tle, "Oscar and I appreciate your dropping by-and we're glad you waited till most of the excitement was over, earlier we wouldn't have had much of a chance to speak-but could you excuse us now, please? I've got to finish bandaging my little girl."

"We're gone drag that river," said Charley Key importantly. "We're gone take care of Carl Strickland!" *

"Charley," Oscar reminded him, "that's exactly what I asked you to do a few weeks ago, but you couldn't be bothered. You didn't want to do me any favors. Well, right now, Queenie Strickland, still black and blue, is upstairs crying in the bedroom. My little girl here is all cut up with gla.s.s. Our house has every d.a.m.n window in it broken. And Carl Strickland is spinning round and round in the junction. Why don't you just go home and get some sleep?"

Zaddie swept a large pile of splintered wood and shattered gla.s.s between the bal.u.s.ters, and it fell to the hallway below with a musical crash and a cloud of dust.

Frances refused to return to the front room that night. Elinor was about to insist, but Zaddie in- 74.terceded for the child. "Miss El'nor, she still scairt. Let her sleep with me."

"You don't have more than a three-quarter bed, Zaddie!"

"I don't care, Mama!" cried Frances desperately, and was reluctantly allowed to sleep in the room behind the kitchen. It was made clear to her, however, that this indulgence was solely on account of Carl Strickland's attack.

Toward dawn, when the house was quiet again, and the children were asleep, Elinor and Oscar lay awake in their bed. A breeze off the river-smelling of both the water and the red clay of the levee-blew through the windows that had been shattered by Carl Strickland's gunfire.

"Can't sleep, Oscar?"

"No, I cain't."

"Because of the excitement?"

"Yes, partly. I was thinking, Elinor."

"Thinking what?"

"Thinking that what you told old Charley Key was a lie."

"Course it was a lie," returned Elinor quickly. "You think I'm going to waste the truth on that nincomp.o.o.p?"

"What happened out there with you and Carl?"

Elinor didn't immediately reply. She turned over in the bed and put her arm across Oscar's chest.

"What do you think happened, Oscar?"

Oscar lay still a few moments. The dawn dimly lighted the room now.

"I don't know," said Oscar. "What you told Charley Key was a lie-you didn't have a gun. When you came back into the house, your nightgown was dripping river water. Your bare feet had Perdido mud on 'em. I knew you had been in the water, because when you walked back in the house, you brought the smell of that river back here with you. How you're 75.ever gone be able to wear that gown again, I don't know."

Elinor snuggled closer to Oscar's side in the bed. She wound her arm around him and pressed her foot against his feet.

"Carl is dead," she said in a low voice. "I saw him drowned."

"I believe you," said Oscar. He lay staring at the ceiling. His arms were crossed behind his head on the pillow. "I wish," he went on, "that when I was shooting out the window here, that I had blown Carl's head off. That's what I wish. He was firing at this house! He could have hit Frances or you or Queenie or any of us. I would have walloped his head off if I could have gotten close enough. Elinor?"

"What?"

"Did you cause Carl Strickland to die?"

She rubbed her thumb against his neck. "Yes."

"I thought so," said Oscar, in a low sad voice. "How'd you do it? How'd you get close enough to him without him shooting you?"

Elinor drew her leg across Oscar's legs and pressed her foot beneath his ankles. She was wound tightly around him.

"What if I tell you?" she said. "Will you be mad?"

"Lord, no," he said softly. "I just said that 7 would have done it if I could have."

"It was dark," said Elinor. Her head was next to his on the pillow, and she spoke softly in his ear. "He couldn't see me. I swam under the water and overturned his boat as he was going across."

"Did he fight you?"

"No, he didn't even know I had done it," said Elinor.

"Were you trying to kill him?"