Free A Moment to Prey by Harry Whittington Page A

clenching without seeing them. I -didn't take my eyes from hers.
        "Go back to bed," she said.
        I stepped closer. "You're all I can think about."
        I reached for her. She let me touch her left arm. She twisted slightly and backhanded me across the face with her doubled fist.
        She lurched free. She did not run. She leaned in the door, watching me.
        "I'm no whore, mister."
        "Nobody said you were."
        "You don't have to say it. You act it. You walk in here. You see a fish camp. You see me. You see Charlie Bullock. Right away you get to thinking, the same dumb things they all think."
        "Maybe not."
        "You got nothing I want, mister. Get that straight. Keep your hands off me."
        I stood there looking at her. I saw those black eyes, waiting for anything I was going to do. I saw Charlie Bullock lurching toward her and I saw that pole coming down across his head. I could smell that faint warm fragrance of her, stronger now, and I ached across the bridge of my nose. I wanted her more than I'd ever wanted anybody. All of a sudden I knew I'd never really wanted anyone before. But I saw something else. Here was a girl who wanted something. You didn't take anything from Lily Sistrunk. You gave her what she wanted, and I didn't even know what it was.
        It was an impasse. For a moment we stood there, watching each other, tense and rigid. I was assailed by the smell of her, but in her eyes I saw what I was: another guy on the make at her father's fishing camp.
        At last her gaze shifted. She did not laugh at me, but that was what her look meant. She walked out. I did not see her again that afternoon. A girl brought fish and grits about seven that night. I pushed the food around on the plate, still unable to eat.
        About ten it began to get loud out there in the restaurant. I could almost smell the beer fumes in the room where I was. The cars began rolling into the yard and the screen door banged every two or three minutes.
        I paced the room, wishing from the bottom of my loins that I could get out of there. I knew better. I wasn't going to leave this swamp until I found Marve Pooser. Right now I wasn't even any match for Lily. I stretched out across the bed and told myself to go to sleep.
        
***
        
        She was standing in the doorway. It must have been after midnight. I had dozed and when I opened my eyes, she was standing in the doorway, watching me.
        "You still here?" she said. "I thought you were gone."
        "Sure you did."
        "You've had a day and a night to think. How long does it take you to get smart?"
        "Just because everybody around here is scared of your boy Marve Pooser, that don't mean I am."
        "Big brave boy."
        I sat up on the bed. "What do you want, Lily? Why are you here? Are you one of these frigid babes that gets a kick out of getting a guy excited and then fighting him off?"
        Her mouth twisted. "You conceited jerks. That's what you men are." Her head tilted and with her sullen mouth still pulled she listened a moment to the drunken yells mixed with the juke music from the restaurant. "Why should any woman want any of you?"
        "I don't know. But they do."
        "Sure. The stupid ones that think security means a wash-tub full of baby diapers and dirty shirts. Sure. They squeal and moan and pretend some man is just driving them wild. You ought to know what they really think. You ought to know what they really want."
        "You didn't have to live long to get real bitter, did you?"
        "Maybe it's the way I lived, mister. I was in the room when my ma died. We had had the doctor out to see her once, but he told Pa he couldn't come back unless Pa would pay him some of what he owed him. I saw Pa's face. Sure, he wanted to pay him, but he didn't even have two dollars. Not even two dollars. So Ma laid in her room and she died. She wouldn't let Pa send