CHAPTER 9

INTO THE SWAMP

The walk home from town the next morning seemed like nothing to Pam, though it was over six miles. She was in high spirits. At last she was doing something about Arminger, rather than sitting idly by while he helped himself to her pigeons one by one.

A chalky sky threatened more rain, but some sun managed to filter through the clouds, and the air smelled new. The soggy fields teemed with birds: flocks of grackles, killdeers with their mournful kill-dee, kill-dee, bobolinks and meadowlarks crooning.

At home Pam grabbed a cold sweet potato and a couple of biscuits from the kitchen to eat later. She carried her belt hatchet and pocketknife as she always did when she went into the woods. Best to be prepared, Papa always said. From a shelf in the shed she pulled down one of the special baskets Papa made for carrying pigeons on his fishing boat. Inside the baskets were little hammocks called corselets. Strapped securely into corselets, the birds couldn’t injure themselves on a rocking boat. Pam placed Odessa gently into a corselet and fastened the basket over her own shoulders.

She planned on sending Odessa with a message so that Mama wouldn’t worry about her when she discovered Pam’s deception, as she surely would. Mama would be riled as a winter storm with Pam for fibbing, but at least she wouldn’t be sick with worry on top of it. Of course, there would be some punishment awaiting Pam when she got home, but Pam wasn’t going to worry about that now.

Judging by the way Pam’s stomach growled, it was along about noon before she and Odessa were paddling toward the swamp. Pam pushed through the slow, brown water against a current that sucked hungrily at greenlichened rocks.

She wasn’t sure exactly where Sanders’ place was. She remembered that it was up one of the small creeks that branched from the cypress swamp Papa called the Little Dismal, as opposed to the Great Dismal, which spanned the North Carolina-Virginia line north of Currituck. Although Pam and Papa had camped in Sanders’ dilapidated cabin on overnight hunting trips, Pam had never paid close attention to how they got there. She usually had her mind on their hunting, or on the sights and sounds of the swamp: turtles sunning on cypress knees, fish snapping at the fly hatch, herons and kingfishers and osprey, even an occasional gator lazing on the muddy bank. The swamp was a world unto itself, a world that Pam respected and loved. But today there was no time for idle observation. She had to concentrate on finding her way to Sanders’ cabin—and quickly—because another storm was gathering. She could feel it in the air and see it in the way the leaves turned their undersides to the wind.

By the time the canoe skimmed into the Little Dismal, the swamp did indeed look dismal, even creepy. Slate-colored clouds had gobbled up the sun, and the water was inky black. In the twisted cypress knees Pam could see the shapes of gnomes and dwarfs and every kind of creature she had read about in Grimms’ fairy tales. The cicadas buzzed, and somewhere in the belly of the forest a wildcat screamed. As Pam paddled deeper into the swamp, a mist began to rise and snake through the trees. Some animal rustled a holly bush onshore. Pam couldn’t shake off the feeling of being watched, though she knew the swamp wasn’t haunted; that was superstitious mumbo jumbo. Still, when the oo-whoo-oo of a dove drifted across the dark water, Pam shivered and paddled harder.

At the mouth of each small creek, she scanned the bank for a familiar landmark. She remembered a huge tree on Sanders’ creek that Papa had always remarked on, though she couldn’t for the life of her recollect what kind of tree it was. I’ll know it when I see it, she kept telling herself.

And she did. It was the largest cypress tree she had ever seen—its trunk was at least seven feet around, and its bulbous knees protruded another fifty. Confident now, Pam paddled up the narrow creek, poling in places that were too shallow for paddling.

She found Sanders’ cabin on the edge of the creek. It was built of pine logs, now grown over with moss and lichens and hugged by maidenhair ferns. It had once sat in a clearing, but the sweet gums and pines had encroached on it. Virginia creeper wound up its walls, and poison ivy tangled with trumpet vines on its roof. Its windows gaped like lifeless eyes.

“Don’t look like nobody’s setting up housekeeping here,” Pam said aloud. Her voice rang through the stillness. She banked the canoe and walked around to the front of the cabin. The door stood slightly ajar. When she tried to push it open, it stuck at first, and when she pushed harder, the door caved in and she crashed onto the cabin floor. Odessa in her basket on Pam’s back squawked in alarm, and something hairy bumped against Pam’s face.

Pam screamed and flailed her arms against her attacker.

Chirr-chirr, she heard behind her. She turned in time to see a mother raccoon with a kit in her mouth scurrying through the gaping doorway.

Pam crawled to her feet and gazed around. The inside of the cabin looked as desolate as the outside. Clearly no one had been living here, at least no one human. From their nest in the fireplace, the remaining raccoon kits squeaked for their mother. Pam knew their mama would return. But their pitiful cries echoed the desperation building in Pam’s own chest.

Here she had expected to find her pigeons, to nail Arminger once and for all. Instead, all she found was an empty cabin and a nest of brokenhearted babies.

She unstrapped Odessa’s basket and eased herself to the floor to think. Arminger wasn’t living here; Arminger wasn’t building here; Pam didn’t think Arminger had even been here. A chill started creeping over her as she realized that Arminger had intentionally deceived everyone in Currituck.

But why?

Because he really is a spy.

The answer suggested itself with perfect logic in Pam’s mind. Her heart hammered as the significance of those words pierced her understanding.

That would mean that Mama was wrong about Arminger’s being a decent person … wrong about there being nothing to spy on in Currituck.

And if Mama could be wrong about that, maybe she could be wrong about other things. Like the reason they weren’t getting letters from Papa.

Pam felt like a spider dangling above a chasm on one thin string. For she knew, if all this was true about Arminger, his presence in Currituck spelled danger—to American soldiers, to Papa, to everything she held dear.

Back outside the cabin, Pam scribbled a note to let Mama know she was safe. She rolled the note up and slipped it into the cylinder-shaped tube fastened on Odessa’s leg. Then she tossed Odessa into the air and watched her float upward into the charcoal sky. The bird circled once, flapped her wings vigorously, and disappeared. At the exact same moment, a wolf howled deep in the swamp. The tree frogs and cicadas rumbled, and a great cavern of loneliness opened inside of Pam. She had the feeling she was the last human being on the face of the earth.

Later, paddling hard through the black swamp, Pam barely felt the rain on her neck, barely felt the cold night-mist rising. Her emotions boiled inside. She felt betrayed and angry and scared, all at once. Arminger had pretended to be a friend to her, and to the whole town, all the while plotting against them. It was more than Pam could handle alone. She would have to tell Mama everything she knew.

It was late when Pam hit Scuppernong Creek. The rain had stopped, the stars had emerged, and a wedge of moon had slinked into the trees. Pam let the current carry her downstream. By then her brain had gone numb. The black trees glided past like figures in a dream. At her own landing Pam somehow found the strength to hoist the canoe onto the bank and stumble up the rise to the house.

A single light burned in the back of the house—Mama’s room. Pain’s heart twisted at the thought of Mama, rocking for hours, pretending to read her Bible but worried to distraction over Pam. Apprehension gnawed at her. How would Mama react to her disobedient daughter’s homecoming?

Pam crept into the dark kitchen. On the stove Mama had saved supper for her: Irish potatoes, field peas, and cabbage. Pam remembered that she hadn’t eaten since the sweet potato in early afternoon, but her stomach turned at the thought of food. A floorboard creaked under her foot.

“Pam? Is that you?” A halo of light appeared at the end of the hall, then Mama’s ashen face in the doorway. Her long brown hair was disheveled and there were dark circles under her eyes.

“Yes, ma’am,” Pam croaked. Her throat was too tight to say more.

Mama set the lamp on the kitchen table. She looked old. “Child, where have you been?” Her voice was shaking.

“Didn’t you get Odessa’s message?” Pam asked. She felt suddenly limp, and she grasped the edge of the table to steady herself. She wanted to fall into Mama’s arms, but she wasn’t sure how she would be received. Was Mama mad or fixing to cry?

“Yes, but that was hours ago. I been worried half to death.” Mama’s voice broke then, and Pam collapsed against her. Mama held her close. Pam breathed in Mama’s smell—soap sweetened with bayberry, wood smoke, sun-dried linen. Mama’s deep voice crooned, “Child, child, what on earth’s got into you? Running off like that, telling tales, playing hooky, shirking your chores.” Mama sounded like her heart was breaking at the extent of Pam’s sins. Then her tone changed, scolding, severe. “Your papa would whip you good for half of what you done today.”

The reprimand cut into Pam like a knife. She’d been trying not to cry; now sobs poured from deep inside. She told Mama everything.

Mama listened in silence, but her lips were set tight. When Pam finished, Mama said quietly, “I don’t want you repeating none of this to anybody, you hear?”

For an awful moment Pam thought Mama didn’t believe her. “It’s true, Mama, all of it. I swear. We got to do something.”

“I’m not doubting you, sugarfoot. But this is serious business, making accusations of spying. It’s clear the man lied. Why, we don’t know. We can’t up and report him as a spy for telling falsehoods. Let me think on it a spell, over the weekend. Come Monday, I’ll figure what to do.

“For now, you got to eat you some supper. Then you can answer for disobeying me and locking your dog up in the barn.”

Pam gasped. She’d been so all-fired set on getting out to Sanders’ place, she’d forgotten to let Bosporus out of the barn. “Mama, I—”

“I ain’t interested in your excuses, Pam. The very idea of letting a wild dog in our barn, with a newborn calf in the stall. He could’ve killed that little calf with no trouble at all. And Mattie, well, he scared her half to death, poor thing. She already had a terrible head cold from being caught out in that storm.” Mama shook her head. “I pray she don’t give it to Iva or those twins.”

“Mama,” Pam said, annoyed with her mother’s straying from the subject, “Mattie’s scared of Bosporus anyway, for no reason.”

“Well, she had reason this afternoon.” Mama’s voice betrayed irritation. “He startled her when she opened the barn door. I heard her hollering, and by the time I run out there, he had her backed up against the barn door, growling. I had to pull him away.”

“So where is Bosporus now?” Pam asked, her mouth dry. She was almost afraid to hear the answer.

“Oh, he lit out into the woods, good thing for him. Luckily he hadn’t touched the calf.”

Pam was indignant. “Bosporus would never hurt Pyrenees. You know how good he is around my pigeons.”

Mama’s tone softened a little. “You do work wonders with your critters, honey, but the dog is wild, and wild animals are unpredictable. You don’t really know what he would do. We can’t sit idle till he seriously hurts someone. Or kills ’em. He’s going to have to go, one way or another—tomorrow.” Her voice was as firm as hard-packed clay.

There was no doubt in Pam’s mind that Mania’s patience with Bosporus had run out. And she knew what Mama’s “one way or another” meant. If Bosporus wasn’t gone tomorrow, Mama would shoot him. Pam felt cold all over as she forced her tongue to move. “I’ll take him off tomorrow, Mama, way back in the swamp where Papa and I used to go deer hunting. There’s all kinds of caves and hollow trees, and plenty of rabbits to chase, and a great big old pond with ducks. He’ll be so happy, he’ll forget all about us.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “He won’t come back. I promise.”

That night Pam slept fitfully. She dreamed she was running through a forest of old, craggy oak trees, being chased by something—what, she didn’t know. She kept thinking she’d be safe if she could get out of the woods to Currituck Sound, only she kept getting lost, and whatever was chasing her was getting closer. Her legs felt like dead weight; she could hardly lift them. Then she heard a shotgun blast, and she turned around, and the Hun from the poster was right behind her, grinning. He was carrying something under his arm, and he held it up for her to see. It was a pigeon, a dead pigeon. It was Caspian.

Pam woke up shaking.

After the nightmare, she couldn’t go back to sleep for a long time. She lay in bed, staring at the map of Europe on her wall, wondering where Papa was now, if he was even alive. She must have drifted off finally, for the next thing she knew the rooster was crowing and a pearl-gray light sifted through the window.

Pam was out of the house before Mama was up. It was a beautiful Saturday morning, the sky a pale blue and every bird in creation singing. The air had a nip in it, as fall mornings in Currituck do. A breeze from the creek carried the tart smell of ripe grapes. How could the world wake up so bright and cheery when Pam felt so dead inside? Her last day with Bos and he didn’t even suspect. He was waiting for her as usual by the pigeon loft, his tail whipping happily back and forth.

Somehow Pam wasn’t surprised when she discovered another pigeon missing, this time a young, untrained hen named Toulouse. She figured Arminger would keep up his pilfering until every one of her birds was gone. And she was powerless to stop him, completely powerless.

If I’d sold them, she thought bitterly, at least we’d have the money. The way it turned out, he got her birds and she got nothing.

After breakfast, Pam set out in the canoe with Bosporus in the bow and Odessa in her basket strapped to Pam’s back. Best to be prepared, Papa always said. She pulled upstream for miles, until the creek wound into gentle curves through a vast forest of long-leaf pines and towering hardwoods.

“This is it,” Pam said, rowing to the grassy bank. Bosporus was out of the boat before Pam could get it moored. Barking, he bounded into a copse of sparkleberry bushes and flushed out a covey of quail, then leaped halfway up a chestnut tree after a squirrel. Pam trudged after him, watching his antics with amusement but also with a heavy heart. She wondered if he would hate her for abandoning him, or if he would simply feel bewildered and betrayed. He’ll get used to it, she told herself firmly.

The place Pam had in mind to leave Bosporus was a thickly wooded hummock on the edge of the Little Dismal, several hours’ hike from here. Pam had brought food in a knapsack, some apples and buttermilk biscuits for her and Bos and some grain for Odessa. That, with a couple of bass from the pond, some sparkleberries and papaws, and she and Bos would feast like Christmas dinner. Pam would be home in time for supper, and she would leave some fish for Bos.

The woods chattered with squirrels—gray squirrels and silvery-black fox squirrels—and the blue jays and cardinals were jewels against the dark green of the pines. Bosporus ran here and there and yonder, Pam steering him slowly in the general direction she wanted to go. Once, a doe frisked out of the brush, eyeballed Pam, then bounded across the clearing and, with a flash of white tail, disappeared into a pine thicket.

The morning danced by more quickly than Pam wanted, and soon the piney hummock loomed in front of her like a bad dream. On the pond, cinnamon-brown and studded with lily pads, a pair of pintail ducks glided and dived.

Pam found a deep pool among the weeds where the bass bit like there was no tomorrow. She caught five two-pounders quickly, then built a fire and roasted them on a flat rock. After eating, she and Bosporus lazed in the shade and dozed. Pam woke up with Bos’ head on her belly, and she ached inside with the pain of leaving him behind.

They took a walk around the pond. Pam wanted to show Bosporus the caves on the side of the hummock. She figured he could make a nice den out of one for the winter. He plunged into several, sniffing feverishly, and emerged with his tongue hanging out, looking pleased.

Pam dreaded the moment of betrayal she knew was fast approaching. When Bos cocked his ears and whipped off after a rabbit into a wild-grape thicket, Pam sprinted in the other direction. She half splashed, half swam through the pond to throw Bosporus off her scent. When she hit the opposite bank, she took off running. The pigeon basket bounced on her back, and Odessa quarreled at being jostled.

Pam ran wildly, in no certain direction, angry tears streaming down her face, hating everyone in general and Arminger and Mama in particular. She crashed through briars and leaped over rotting logs, paying no heed to the blood trickling down her scratched legs. When she tripped over a protruding root, she fell hard and bashed her knee on a stone. Odessa set up a racket, but there was no way she could be injured strapped snugly in her corselet. Pam sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath, her knee smarting and her head pounding, wishing she was someone else—Nina, Louisa White, even Alice—someone who had no dogs to betray and whose father was safe at home. A hawk screamed overhead, and a woodpecker hammered from high in a hickory tree. Pam felt weary to her bones.

After a long time she rose and tried to figure out where she was. She reckoned she had traveled southwest from the pond about four miles. She was definitely in a stretch of forest she didn’t recognize. If she pushed hard due east, in a couple of hours she should reach the creek. Then she could follow the creek up to where the canoe was moored.

So she started east—what she reckoned to be east—through a thick beech grove peppered with pines and holly and carpeted with running cedar. The day had turned hot for October. There was not a whisper of a breeze. She tried not to think, only to walk, to keep moving steadily east. It wasn’t long before hunger was gnawing at her belly, so she climbed a chinquapin tree and shook down a bunch of its small, brown nuts.

That was when she noticed the gash of a newly cut road twisting through the forest.

Which was peculiar enough in itself. Loggers had never shown much interest in cutting the swamp timberland around Currituck, not when there were virgin stands of more easily accessible hardwoods stretching for acres and acres to the west.

And why on earth would anyone else trouble themselves to carve a road through this wilderness?

Pam slid down the tree to investigate.

What she found only heightened her curiosity. The road was deeply rutted with tire tracks. Fresh tire tracks.

Burning with interest, Pam followed the road as it wound northeast, deeper into the forest. Soon the trees—laurel and live oak, cedar and gangly pine—hugged so close no sunlight could penetrate their canopies. Only the ribbon of bare earth Pam followed was splashed by the late afternoon sun.

At last the road opened into a clearing, where wooden buildings were set in neat rows like Mama’s kitchen garden. The buildings hadn’t been there long. The odor of fresh-cut pine hung in the air … along with another smell, much more familiar to Pam.

Pigeons.