“Only if you want to give an answer. We are not going to pry. So you don’t have to make up any answers. Tell us what you feel like telling us, or nothing at all.”
“He… one of them-there were two-he didn’t like it. He wished there was some way to get around it, so it wouldn’t have to happen. But he knew and I knew we were way past any place where there was any chance of turning back. I was scared sick. Not of dying. When you take a chance and lose, that’s the chance you take. What he didn’t like most was being told not to make it easier. I-Ie didn’t think that was right. And that’s what had me so scared, going out the hard way. Being down in the water and no chance to do anything, and holding my breath down in the dark on the bottom as long as I could. I whispered to him, begging him to put me out first. He knows how. I thought he would. He could have done it so Ma… so the other one wouldn’t even have heard. But then they stopped and as he swung me over, that wire hurting me terrible, and let me go, I knew he wasn’t going to.”
She stopped and gave us both a look of savage satisfaction. “I was taking a breath to scream my lungs out but then I knew that if I didn’t make a sound, the other guy would think Terry had hit me on the throat before dumping me, and he’d have to report it, and they might give him a hard time. I sure owed him a hard time, so I didn’t let myself make a squeak and it… I guess it took my mind off everything a little bit, and at least I ended up down there with a big hunk of air in my lungs instead of all screamed out. Funny, it could have made the difference.”
“And probably did,” Meyer said. “And it was why I thought someone was disposing of a dead body, the way you came down without a sound. A good thing Travis got down there quickly.”
“Boy, if they ever find out somebody got me in time!”
I saw her shiver. It was a clue to her being more rattled than she would let herself show us. Her voice was at odds with her pale and dusky elegance. It was a rich, controlled contralto, but she switched back and fort” from the vulgarity of an artificial elegance of expression to a forthright crudeness. I could not tell whether it was spirit or stupidity that made her feel pleased with her own cleverness in giving Terry a hard time as she was, as far as she knew, being murdered.
She raised her eyebrows in surprise and said, “You know, I haven’t even said thanks! Okay, thanks, guys. McGee, I say it took guts to go down there after me, and it was a nice thing to do for anybody. I don’t remember much. Just all black and terrible, and then somebody pulling my hair and touching me, maybe a fish going to eat me. Then being in all that fish smell, and somebody pushing at me, and heaving up that water all over. So here I am. And thanks.”
“You are most welcome,” Meyer said. “And here you are, with a second life to lead. Everything since last night is pure profit. So what are you going to do with your new life?”
“I don’t know! I haven’t had to think of things like that. I’ve always been told what to do, and brother, I better do it. I don’t want to have to think about what I should do.” She bit her lip and looked at each of us in turn, head slightly tilted. “You boys look like you’ve got something going for you. I mean, this boat and all, and you have a lot of cool. It’s not a fishing trip and back to the old lady and the office. If you’ve got something going, maybe there’s some kind of way I could fit into things.”
It was touching in an inverted way. The family had moved away, leaving the housecat to scratch at a new screen door.