Riverside 9

Alex and Slade had been together in a New Orleans jail. Now they were together on a bank of the mighty Mississippi many miles north of New Orleans.

All that time together made both sick of the other. Getting out of jail was getting away from the other, as much as it was getting free. After about a week, Alex wondered how Slade was doing, and vice versa.

They didn’t want to work together. They didn’t want to do crime together. Neither was a laborer. Neither was a criminal. A swamp rat is known to do work– spot work. A river snake is taken to be an embodiment of evil. There is an inevitability to their partnership difficult to pin down.

Alex didn’t hunt Slade down, and they didn’t cross paths. Finally Alex started drifting north, and he didn’t know why. If he and Slade would meet, they were meant to meet, and if not, not.

Because he didn’t have much money and was not talkative or social, he left very little trail. He traveled in broad daylight, and though seen by many people, he drew little attention. He’d sleep in a field or a small woods, not a hotel, so he didn’t sign hotel registers. He didn’t eat in restaurants, but out of garbage cans and dumpsters. Naturally he did that when no one was looking.

Alex knew he hadn’t left Slade behind in New Orleans. Not that he’d wanted to leave Slade behind. He would have been happy to have link up with the snake, casually. Out of jail, they were both out of cash– out of luck? After the time they’d been apart, both had been able to sort out the coolness of the other. Sort it out from the stifling, repressive, unhealthy air of the jail house. It hadn’t been chatter.

Alex didn’t want to be shadowed by Slade, that’s all. But this was paranoia. Except Slade being a river snake, there was no evidence of Slade doing shifty stuff such as shadowing people, even jailhouse comrades.

Slade was a shady character– he’d spent time in the jailhouse, which was a land of shadows. It was hell on earth, and occupied by shades.

What Alex wanted was a dawdle, fully exposed, in sunshine. No shadow. On a river bank, where mud oozed of the river had been deposited, spindrift, without a whiff of cool jazz, ooze jazz. Of course, there are idiots out there who believe you can dawdle in jail. That’s stir crazy, not dawdling.