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top of a psychology textbook.
I called Louis from the room. He answered cautiously, not recognizing the
number displayed.
 It s me, I said.
 How you doin ?
 Not so good. I think I picked up a tail.
 How many?
 Two. I told him about the scene in the bar.
 They out there now?
 I d guess they are.
 You want me to come up there?
 No, stay with Kittim and Larousse. Anything I should know?
 Our friend Bowen came through this evening, spent some time with Earl Jr. and
then a whole lot longer with Kittim. They must figure they got you where they
want you. It was a trap, man, right from the start.
No, not just a trap. There was more to it than that. Marianne Larousse, Atys,
his mother and sister: what happened to them was real and terrible and
unconnected to anything that had to do with Faulkner or Bowen. It was the real
reason that I was down here, the reason that I had stayed. The rest was
unimportant.
 I ll be in touch, I said, then hung up.
My room was at the front of the inn, facing out onto Greene Street. I took the
mattress from the bed and laid it on the floor, arranging the sheets loosely
on top of it. I undressed, then lay close to the wall beneath the window. The
chain was on the door, there was a chair in front of it, and my gun lay on the
floor beyond my pillow.
She was moving out there, somewhere, a white blur among the trees, illuminated
by bleak moonlight. Behind her, it bedecked the river with glittering stars as
it flowed beneath the overhanging trees.
The White Road is everywhere. It is everything. We are on it, and we are of
it.
Go to sleep. Go to sleep dreaming of shadows moving along the White Road. Go
to sleep watching falling girls crush lilies beneath them as they die. Go to
sleep with Cassie Blythe s torn hand emerging from the darkness.
Go to sleep without knowing if you are among the lost or the found, the living
or the dead.
24
I HAD SET my alarm for 4 A.M. and was still bleary-eyed as I made my way
across the lobby to the back door of the inn. The night clerk looked at me
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curiously, saw that I wasn t carrying my bags, then went back to his books.
If I was being watched, then the two men were divided between the front and
back doors. The back door led to the parking lot, with exits onto both Greene
and Devine, but I doubted if I could drive away without being picked up. I
took a handkerchief from my pocket and unscrewed the light inside the door.
I d already taken the precaution of shattering the outside light with the sole
of my shoe when I had come in the night before. I opened the door a fraction,
waited, then slipped out into the darkness. I used the ranks of parked cars to
hide my progress until I reached Devine, then called a cab from a pay phone
outside a gas station. Five minutes later, I was on my way to the Hertz desk
at Columbia International Airport; from there, I drove back in a loop toward
Congaree.
The Congaree Swamp is still comparatively inaccessible by road. The main
route, along Old Bluff and Caroline Sims, takes visitors to the ranger station
and from there sections of the swamp can be explored on foot using a system of
boardwalks. But to venture deeper into the Congaree requires a boat, so I d
arranged to hire a ten-footer with a small outboard. The old guy who hired
them out was waiting for me at the Highway 601 landing when I arrived, traffic
rumbling across the Bates Bridge overhead. We exchanged cash and he took my
car keys as security, and then I was on the river, the early morning sun
already shining on the brown waters and on the huge cypress and water oak that
overshadowed the banks.
In wet weather, the Congaree swells and floods the swamp, dumping nutrients on
the plain. The result was the enormous trees that lined the river, their boles
monstrous and swollen, their foliage so wide that at times it created a canopy
over the flow, darkening and shading the waters beneath. Hurricane Hugo might
have claimed some of the largest trees as casualties when it tore through the
swamp, but this was still a place to make a man catch his breath at the size
and scale of the great forest through which he was passing.
The Congaree marks the borders of Richland and Calhoun counties, its
meanderings determining the limits of local political power, police
jurisdictions, ordinances, and a hundred other tiny factors that influence the
day-to-day lives of those who live within its reach. I had traveled some
twelve miles along it when I came to a huge fallen cypress that jutted about
halfway into the river. This, the old boatman had told me, marked the end of
the state land and the beginning of the private tract, a section of swamp just
under two miles long. Somewhere in there, probably close to the river, was
Tereus s home. I only hoped that it wouldn t be too hard to find.
I tied up the boat at the cypress then jumped for the bank. The chorus of
crickets nearby grew suddenly silent, then picked up again as I began to move
away. I stayed with the bank, looking for signs of a trail, but could find
nothing. Tereus had kept his presence here as low-key as possible. Even if
trails had once existed before he was jailed, they were long overgrown by now
and he had made no effort to clear them again. I stood at the bank and tried
to find landmarks that would allow me to get my bearings when I made my way
back to the river, then headed into the swamp.
I sniffed the air, hoping to detect wood smoke or cooking, but I could smell
only damp and vegetation. I passed through a forest of sweet gums and water
oaks, and water tupelos thick with dark purple fruit. Lower on the ground
there was pawpaw and alder and great American holly bushes, the earth so thick
with shrubs that all I could see was green and brown, the ground wet and
slippery with decaying leaves and vegetation. At one point I almost walked
into the web of a spiny orb weaver, the spider hanging like a small dark star
in the center of its own galaxy of influence. It wasn t dangerous, but there [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]