his body and the motor over 180 degrees until he was lying on his other side with the outboard upside down and its tank stuck into the soft and sucking mud. It wasn’t until then, until I had started to shove upward toward the air and clean sunlight, that I felt the final horror, the thing I had feared more than all the rest. It brushed against my naked leg, hard and solid and cold, and then when I threshed wildly it was gone somewhere into the darkness. It was a turtle.
I held weakly to the boat, and in a minute I was able to climb in and collapse naked and dripping on the seat, waiting for the wildness to go away.
Eighteen
When I had dried a little in the sun I put my clothes back on, felt for the envelope that contained the money to be sure it was still safe, and sat looking out at the surface of the lake. No more drops of oil came up, and I felt sure I had solved it. As for that already spread out over the water, there was nothing I could do about it. I decided against trying to spread and disperse it by running though it, on the theory that it would do more harm than good. It would look more like an accidental spillage if it were all in one place.
I started the motor and headed back to the boat landing. After tying up at the float, I finished the job I had started before, filling the gasoline tank, and looked at my watch. It was three-fifteen. I went up the trail through the trees and out into the hot sunlight of the clearing. The old hound was nowhere in sight. When I went into the house, nothing had changed at all. It was all exactly as I had left it, except that the spot on the floor that I had scrubbed was dry now. I walked out into the kitchen and looked around there, finding nothing out of place. There wasn’t a chance anyone had been here.
Going back into the front room, I stood there for a moment before the dresser, remembering the day she had taken out the hook for me and how beautiful she had been even in that terrible dress and with the roughly cut hair uncombed. I could almost feel her there with me in the intense, hot stillness, and I wanted suddenly with an almost overpowering longing to see her now. It’s only until tonight, I thought, or early tomorrow morning. I’ll see her then. And then, all at once, I was conscious there was something different about the room. Something that had always been there before was gone now, and I missed it. Then I knew what is was. I no longer heard the ticking of the clock. It had run down and stopped. It doesn’t matter, I thought. I’d better get out of here now, before I start seeing him instead of her. I took a last look around. There was nothing that could do us any harm, and I went out, leaving the door open, and walked back to the boat. I should have taken another look.
From now on it’s got to be good, I thought. I stepped down off the float into the rental boat and sat down on the seat. Taking out my knife, I slashed a small incision on the side of one of the fingers on my left hand. When the blood started, I picked up one of the oars and smeared it rather sparingly up near the round, heavy end just below the hand grip. It would be dry by the time I was ready to abandon the boat. Then I let a little of it drip into the water in the bottom, and smeared some on the seat. That took care of it, except the bailing can. Very carefully I put a set of smeared and bloody, completely unrecognizable fingerprints inside it, just where the fingers would normally be as a man grasped it to dip water out of the boat.
I was ready to go. Wrapping the cut finger in my handkerchief so it wouldn’t bleed any into his boat, I switched to Shevlin’s, tied the rental boat on behind with the anchor rope, and was under way down the lake. Now it starts again, I thought. This makes three times, and if I had to do it once more my hair would be