swung untended and forgotten down the side of her face. There seemed to be something of fanaticism or driving anger in the way she swung the brush, as if she were determined to wear out the floor or herself.
I stepped back softly so as not to frighten her and called out again from the edge of the porch. The whusk, whusk ceased. “Come in,” she said. I stepped up to the door. She had half straightened and was upright on her knees, and now she brushed the hair back out of her face with the back of a hand.
“Hello,” I said, smiling. She’s beautiful, I thought. Even like that she’s beautiful. I had a strange and almost overpowering impulse to walk into the room and pick her up bodily, out of that mess of soapsuds. Cut it out, I thought. Cut it out.
“Hello,” she said, nodding slightly. She made no effort to stand. There was no surprise in her face, and I wondered if she had been expecting me. Then on second thought, I realized there wasn’t anything else in it either—no hostility, welcome, friendliness, anger, or anything.
“I forgot my pliers the other day,” I said as the silence stretched out.
“They’re there in my dresser drawer.” She gestured with a hand.
“Thanks.” I stepped inside to the dresser and started to pull open the nearest drawer, the one on the left.
“No,” she said hurriedly, gesturing. “The other one.” But I had already pulled it out before I could stop. As I shoved it back I couldn’t help seeing what was in it—some khaki shirts, two or three bottles of whisky, and the cold, slablike bulk of a Colt .45.
Well, practically everybody up here in the backwoods has a gun, I thought. I gave no sign I had seen it as I opened the other drawer and got out the pliers.
“Would you like a cigarette?” I asked.
She was still on her knees with one hand on the bucket. She shook her head. “No. Thank you.”
I lit one for myself and threw the match out the door. She made no move to ask me to sit down or to get up herself. It was awkward, and I knew I should go.
“How is your morning-glory vine?” I asked. Realizing how stupid it sounded, after I had said it, I went on lamely, “I got to thinking about it the other night. You carry water up from the lake for it, don’t you?”
She looked at me oddly. “You noticed it?”
“Yes,” I said. “The other day. It had been watered.”
She stared down at the floor. “I water it at night. But I guess it will die, like the rest of them. Maybe the soil isn’t right. I don’t know.”
Suddenly I didn’t want to talk about the vine any more. It was strange, but I had a queer feeling it was more than just a flower to her, that it was a personal tragedy of some kind and not for me to blunder into.
“How does it happen you’re not swimming today?” I asked, to change the subject.
“I was busy. And sometimes I swim at night.”
I looked at her, somewhat startled. “You do? In this swamp? Isn’t it dangerous? I mean—well, can you see where you’re going?”
“You can see all right out in the middle of the lake.”
“Where do you swim?” I asked. Suddenly I remembered that odd sensation the other night when for a moment I had been sure I had heard someone going by out in the channel.
“Up the lake, mostly. Sometimes down this other side, all the way around.” She gestured off toward the right, in the direction of the slough. “This is an island.”
Devil’s Island, I thought, for no reason at all. Maybe it was the way she said it. “It is? You mean the slough connects with the lake on both ends?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever swim down the lake?” I asked.
She looked up at me. “Yes. Sometimes.”
“I think I heard you one night.”
“The day you were up here?”
I nodded.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I swam by your camp that night. I could see the remains of your fire.”
“Do you think you’ll go swimming tonight?” I asked.
I was standing there by the dresser, still holding the pliers in my hand, and I could feel that strange, tight stillness there had been in the room before, as if the air itself were charged with some meaning that never showed itself on the surface.
“I don’t know.” She was staring straight ahead, not looking toward me. The hand on