Read Online A Moment to Prey by Harry Whittington - Free Book Online Page A

at me as though I were no more than the blanket turned down on the narrow cot. She did not smile.
        "I thought you were dead," she said.
        "You mean I'm not? Saw you, thought I was in heaven."
        "Weak man, weak jokes."
        "Wait until I'm better."
        "That's what I'm waiting for. Then maybe you'll have sense enough to get out of this country. I told you. You're not much. Next time they'll kill you."
        I tried to move in the bed. Pain was like hot prongs.
        "Maybe they have yet. Did you pull me out of the river?"
        "Yes. I heard you out there. I thought somebody was trying to steal a boat."
        I looked at her, the dark hair, the black eyes, the cheap dress, the briar-streaked legs. What went through me this time was not the searing of pain. I felt my breath quicken.
        She stood up. "If you're going to live, I'll go to bed."
        I lifted myself on my elbows. "Wait a minute."
        She paused in the door, looking back at me, her eyes hostile. "All right, what do you want?"
        "Thanks."
        She shrugged. "For what? I'm just glad it wasn't somebody stealing a boat. We lose a lot of boats."
        She turned off the lights and walked out. In the darkness it was as if I could still see her. I lay there with my eyes wide and when I became accustomed to the dark I could see the nail holes in the corrugated roof. The jukebox did not stop for what seemed a very long time. Sometimes through the music, and other times above it, I could hear the laughter. I heard cars turning into the parking lot behind the shack, and later other cars started and moved away. I listened to them until I could not hear them any more on the white road that led to the highway.
        I could not sleep. Men were shouting out there in the restaurant and in the scrub-country silence the sounds were right in the room with me. Women would yell suddenly, giggling and screaming. Once I heard something overturned and a woman screamed. But then the laughter covered it, and the jukebox wailed. But it was not the noise or the laughter of women or shouting men that kept me awake. The feeling I had was something I could not explain. For the first time in weeks I was not thinking about Marve Pooser and hating him. What I was thinking about was Lily.
        I was still awake when she walked into my room the next morning. It had quieted down about four, but then before daybreak they started going out in the boats. I listened to the motors catch and then roar and then die away as they went around the curve.
        Lily carried a basin of water. She put it on the chair beside the bed. "You want to wash your face?" she asked.
        "Don't you people ever sleep around here?"
        "You'd get used to the noise if you stayed around here long enough." She did not look at me. I noticed she had brushed her hair. It glowed with a dark sheen in the sunlight. The dress was clean. She was still bare-footed, but there was no mud between her toes yet.
        She noticed me looking at her. "You're getting better. It's time for you to get out of here."
        She moved away from me and that was when I noticed there was a faint delicate fragrance about her. I didn't know what it was, I noticed its absence when she walked away. It made me empty and I wanted her close to me.
        "My pillow," I said. "Would you straighten it, Lily?"
        Her black eyes were not deceived. Her sullen mouth did not change its expression. She came back to the bed, and that faint fragrance warmed me and I wanted to reach out and pull her down against me. It was more than wanting to do it. It was like a need. But when I looked at the chilled expression on her high-planed cheeks, I remembered the way she'd cut Charlie with that steel rod. I was damned if I was going to be another fish-camp Romeo on the make for the first woman to come near him.
        I breathed in deeply staring at the soft curls at the nape