A Moment to Prey by Harry Whittington

against my throat. I felt the bite of it. If I grabbed at it, I knew she would thrust it into me. I wasn't deceived. In my mind I saw Charlie Bullock staggering blindly. In that moment I bought it. Lily Sistrunk had set a price on herself, and it was a price that Charlie Bullock couldn't meet. If I wanted a knife in my jugular vein all I had to do was try to press my luck.
        The knife bit again. I moved back, every muscle in me straining forward and I moved back. "My God, Lily, you wanted it. As much as I did."
        "It don't matter."
        I lay back down. I felt exhausted, fatigued. Frustration was a poison in me. Wanting her was a sickness and I was ill with it, feverish, my temples throbbing.
        When I was on my back, she removed the knife. I lay there staring at the star-struck sky through the netting. I heard her moving around, pulling the blankets over her again.
        She did not speak for what seemed hours. When she did, her voice was casual. "I've been out on this river a hundred nights like this."
        "Just like this?" The bitterness was acid between us.
        "Just like this."
        "It must have been hell for somebody."
        She laughed.
        I lay there and the tension would not subside. I knew how terribly I wanted her, and I began to believe her. Nobody got to her. It didn't matter what a woman looked like, it was what she thought about. Lily was equipped by the National Cash Register Company. The sound of her heart was the sound of an adding machine.
        No amount of bitter thinking helped me. I did not move. I knew that knife was waiting, ready. It grew cold, but I did not pull up the covers. The hell with the knife, I wanted the cold. I hoped it would freeze.
        I did not sleep. Sleep is for people with settled nerves. I remained taut, drawn, thinking about Lily's lying there beside me with that knife gripped across her breasts. So close I could move my hand and touch her, but I didn't move and I didn't touch her. It wasn't the knife that stopped me or worried me, and that wasn't what kept me awake. I kept thinking about Lily, whether I wanted to or not, and I kept thinking about her without that knife.
        
***
        
        As the sun came up, the river still deep in shadows, Lily cut the motor and drifted into a small creek shielded by elders and water lilies, so well hidden I had not even seen it.
        "What's the matter?" I asked.
        "We hide the boat here."
        "All right."
        We poled through the low-hanging bushes for a quarter of a mile. I was glad for this hiding place. Sklute wasn't going to find this boat. I only hoped that we would be able to find it again.
        We broke limbs, covered the boat, and I packed the few supplies we'd brought.
        "Is it far?"
        She'd already started walking through the scrub. She glanced back over her shoulder. "Not far. Are you in such a hurry to die?"
        The bitter joke I made was on me. "What have I got to live for?"
        For a moment longer she let her glance remain on me. She gave me a brief smile.
        After a few moments we reached an old log trail that was almost covered by wire grass, the deep-cut ruts now barely discernible.
        Just this short distance from the river it looked as if it had never rained and water was inaccessible. The trees were dry as if the leaves existed without water, had been created dry and hard and coated with a flat film of dust. The tree branches and the trunks were like iron, the bark scaly and dry. I could not see through the jack oaks that grew close against the winding trail and I could not see over them. They stretched endlessly along the abandoned roadway. I began to feel that maybe they covered every moistureless inch of the scrub. I kept plodding through them, following the trail, Lily silent ahead of me. I pushed the hard, unyielding branches aside.
        We walked out into the clearing and there was a