interested me.” She stopped, her elbows propped on the table and her chin resting on her hands, looking at me. “You interest me.”
“Why?” I asked. I didn’t see what she was getting at.
“Imagination. You shouldn’t have any, but you do. Imagination, plus the gambler’s instinct. Don’t you see?”
“No,” I said. “All I see is a chump who got in over his head and is trying to wiggle out.”
“Maybe you’re not looking from where I am.” She smiled, and then went on, “But let me tell you what I had in mind. Tonight when you told Buford what you were going to do, you didn’t make any mention of what was going to happen after you abandoned the boat there in the swamp. Have you thought about that? You don’t mind my asking, do you?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all.”
“Good. You realize, of course, don’t you, that you’re going to be afoot and that when you get out to the highway you won’t be able to flag a ride because whoever gives you a lift will remember you. And, naturally, you can’t take your car. Also, even if you walked to the next town, you wouldn’t dare get on a bus there. They might remember you.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know that. It’s not very good, that part of it, but it can’t be helped.”
Actually, I had an idea about it, but I didn’t see any point in telling her. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, but there just wasn’t any reason she had to know. There was a railroad across on the far side of the swamp, and at one place a water tank and siding where freights went in the-hole for passenger trains. I planned to hang around there tomorrow night and get on a southbound freight.
She leaned a little across the table. “Well, there’s where I can help you. You’ll be afoot, so I can pick you up on the highway after dark.”
“Why?” I asked. “I mean, I appreciate it a lot, but it would be risky for you, and there’s no reason you have to get mixed up in it.”
“Yes,” she said eagerly. “Don’t you see I want to do it? Listen, Jack! I can call you Jack, can’t I? It would be so easy. You just tell me where you’ll be, say at nine o’clock, and I’ll come by very slowly. I’ll flip my headlights up and then down a couple of times so you’ll know who it is, and then stop. If there are too many cars in sight, I’ll go on and turn around and come back for you.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“I’ll give you a lift to Bayou City. You can get a bus there without attracting attention. That’ll be far enough away. I’ll tell Buford I just went down there shopping. I do it quite often.”
“He doesn’t know about this, then?”
“No,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t know about it.”
I was thinking. This was a lot better way of getting out of the swamp than the other. I’d get to Bayou City the same night, and I wouldn’t have to go to the hotel looking like a tramp from having ridden all night on a freight, providing I even got on one. It was just what I needed, but I still hesitated a little. Nobody does anything for nothing. What did she want to get mixed up in it for?
“What do you think?” she asked, watching me intently.
“It sounds good.”
“Then it’s a deal?”
“I’m still wondering what you get out of it.”
“Excitement,” she said simply.
“Is that all?”
“I think so. I’m not sure. But isn’t that enough?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not that fond of excitement.”
She studied my face. “You just think you’re not. You don’t realize yet what you’re capable of.”
“Look, Dinah,” I said. “I’m not looking for thrills. All I want to do is get the hell out of here before I get thrown in jail. And I don’t care if I never see any more excitement the rest of my life than a good, fast checker game.”
“All right,” she said. “But where do I meet you?” What the hell, I thought. She just wants to help me for the laughs she gets out of it. Why not? It’d be a way out of that swamp.
“O.K.,” I said. I was trying to get the layout of the roads and the lake straight in my mind to give her a picture of it. “Excuse me a minute. I want to get a pencil.”