Gwen, in Green

“Are you with them?” she asked, not moving her head, staring at him.

“Huh?”

“Are you with the people who are killing the marsh?”

“Oh, yeah. Listen, honey.” He tried to sit up and couldn’t make it. “Listen, I’m hurting. Will you call someone?”

“I’ll help,” she said, stepping down into the gut, where she sank to her knees in soft, black mud. The water was only inches deep.

“Who are you?” she asked, looking at him closely and noting the cuts, the blood, the trailing, twisted arm, and his weakness.

“Does that matter?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I’m Flores, site supervisor.”

“That’s wonderful,” she said. “In a way, then, you’re responsible. You direct all of it, tell them what to kill?”

He looked at her, beginning to hurt like hell. The salt water was getting to his cuts. The original shock was wearing off and his body was raising hell. “Kill?” He tried to move, and gasped in pain. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re the boss?”

“Yeah, listen, I’m beginning to hurt. Will you please go get some of my men?”

“No,” she said. “I’m going to watch you die.”

He felt cold. There was something about her which scared the hell out of him. He, Jack Flores, was scared of a woman. When he moved, the pain hit him and he went black. When he opened his eyes she was squatting beside him. He figured her as a real nut. She looked it. Her eyes weren’t even blinking. They just stared at him. “All right,” he said, “tell me what it’s all about, huh?”

“I want you to know why you’re dying,” she said. “I want you to listen, to try to feel. Can you feel it?”

“Huh?” He was listening, all right, and what he heard was good news. He heard a marsh buggy’s engine and it was coming closer.

“You should hear it,” she said. “The screams. They’re dying. Can’t you hear it?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, humoring her, waiting as the marsh buggy’s engine got louder, definitely coming closer. But she heard it, too. She stood and looked out over the tall grass. Then she straddled him and pushed his face down into the water. He tried to yell. His face was pushed into the soft mud and he could feel her knees in his back. With her hands she was pushing his face down. He fought, but he was weak. His body bucked and she rode it, hearing the motor coming closer and feeling his muscles spasm. His good arm came up and tried to grasp her legs, but it slid off the muddy fabric of her slacks. She pushed, teeth together, eyes wide, lip pulled back, arms straining. He held his breath, not believing it. He went limp, thinking she’d let him go. His face was pushed into the mud. Water covered his ears. She didn’t release him. She pushed harder and he felt the cool, black mud all around his face. He gathered all his strength and bucked and fought, trying to dislodge her. His lungs spasmed. Mud clogged the passages of his nose and filled his mouth and throat. He gagged and then felt the blackness come slowly.

She stood up, waving. The marsh buggy came and stopped. Two men jumped out. “I was standing on the hill,” she said, “and I saw him drive into the gut. He was thrown clear. I tried to do something, but he landed in the mud. When I got here he was—” She sobbed.

Jack Flores was in a sitting position. His face was covered with streaks of mud. She had tried to scrape it away, leaving white areas showing through. She’d cleared the mud from his mouth. “I—I tried mouth-­to-­mouth resuscitation,” she said. They could see the mud on her face; they admired her for trying.

The two men loaded Flores onto the marsh buggy. They didn’t even notice when she left, looked up to find her gone. The local weekly quoted the two men as saying that an unidentified woman had tried to save the life of the site supervisor. The coroner’s verdict was death by suffocation. The mud clogging Jack Flores’s nose and throat was too thick to allow water to enter his lungs and drown him.

She washed the black mud away in the clear waters of the pond. It dissipated and drifted to the bottom, to settle lightly on the thick, pulpy plants. She removed her clothes, washed them in the water, and took them inside, washed them again in the machine, dried them, put them back on. She looked fresh. By a coincidence of inspired timing, she heard a whistle down by the pond. She smiled, walked out onto the balcony over the pond. “Up here,” she called.

17

What do you do when you think your wife is beginning to crack up? Well, you laugh at yourself and say you’re imagining things.

Of course, it was not like Gwen. “I’m glad,” she said.

They were discussing the death of Jack Flores. At least George was discussing it. “Boy, what a way to go,” he said. “The paper says he must have been alive when he was thrown from the marsh buggy into the mud.”

“I’m glad he’s dead,” Gwen said flatly. It was so unlike her that he could not, at first, credit his ears. “I wish they’d kill all of them,” she added with a little smile.