Burial Ground (5 page)

“Did you find the other stuff with the arrowheads, then?” Willie asked.

“Arrowheads mostly alone,” the old man said. He looked over at David and me. “You hunt arrowheads?”

We both nodded. “Whenever we can find them,” David told him.

“Look, Absalom,” Willie broke in. “I’ll pay you to show me where that other stuff came from.”

Absalom shook his head sadly. “Mr. Willie, I wants to help you, but I just plain have trouble remembering. Now them arrowheads …”

Willie got up from the chair. “At least tell me if the stuff came from our land.”

“Well, I think they comes from your land. But you know how it is, Mr. Willie. That river change everything. Back there in the woods there ain’t no fences. I probably couldn’t find the place again nohow.”

Willie shrugged. “Fair enough. By the way, were you here when my father came up to see Mr. Wascom the other day?”

Absalom looked away quickly. “Bad thing, ’bout Mr. Joe,” he said. “I didn’t see nothin’, though. Wasn’t here.”

There was no mistaking his fear.

Willie started down the steps, fanning himself with his baseball cap. “Okay, Absalom. We won’t bother you anymore.”

“Ain’t no bother, suh.”

I waited for David to step down ahead of me and then turned to the old man.

“Were there bones with these Indian things, by any chance?”

His eyes met mine and then fell away quickly.

“Can’t say I wants to fool with no bones,” he said in a low voice.

I understood then and nodded in agreement. We were out of the driveway and back on the tartop before Willie spoke.

“See what I mean? He knows exactly where those things come from. And I’ll bet he saw Dad stop at Wascom’s place.” He slowed as he passed the plantation house, then muttered under his breath. There was no car in the drive, and I had a feeling he’d meant to call on Carter Wascom, with us for witnesses.

Then his foot hit the brake and the Bronco slowed. We were passing his land now and he was looking through the fence at a blue pickup that hadn’t been in the field when we passed the first time.

“That’s strange,” he muttered and turned into the field through the open gate. “I wonder who’s back there.”

We bumped along through the grass and jerked to a stop behind the truck. Willie’s door flew open and David and I got out behind him. The June sun hit me like a blast from a furnace.

Willie reached under the seat and withdrew a long-barreled revolver, which he stuck down into his belt.

“Can’t be too careful,” he said. “But it’s probably just somebody picking dewberries.”

Even as his door shut two men emerged from the trees on the far side of the pasture, a black Labrador gamboling through the grass beside them.

“It’s Carter Wascom,” he said.

We followed as he walked toward the pair. As we got closer, I saw that one man was tall, with gray hair and a slight limp, while the other was on the chunky side and balding. The tall man wore jeans and an open-necked blue shirt and carried a short-barreled carbine in one hand, while the other man was dressed in khakis.

“Something the matter, Mr. Wascom?” Willie asked.

Carter Wascom offered Willie a hand and Willie introduced each of us. Wascom’s hand felt soft as silk, and when he spoke his lips barely moved. “It was terrible about your father. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I found him, you know.”

Willie nodded.

“He came up here to see you, didn’t he?” Willie asked.

“Why, yes. We were talking about another little piece of land your father wanted and I wasn’t sure I wanted to sell.” He chuckled.

“What was the outcome?”

“I told him I’d think about it. Then he went down the road to see old Absalom. An hour later I saw his car go by and then I heard the crash.”

“Your truck?” Willie asked.

Carter Wascom jerked his head toward his companion. “It’s Levi’s. I was taking him back to the bayou.” He lifted his rifle. “That’s why I have this. A .22 magnum makes a good argument with snakes.”

The short man stuck out his hand then.

“I’m Levi Goodeau.” He had a round, good-natured face, a contrast to the ascetic, almost suffering countenance of his companion. “I hope we weren’t trespassing. I’d hate to run up against that Smith.” He nodded at the revolver in Willie’s belt.

“No problem,” Willie said. “Only person has to worry about this is the one that killed my father.”

“Killed?” Wascom asked. “You don’t think it was accidental?”

“No.”

“Dear me. Well, don’t do anything rash. You don’t want to end up as Levi’s guest.”

And I remembered where I’d heard Goodeau’s name.

“You’re the warden at Angola,” I said.

Levi Goodeau shrugged. “That’s me. I took a few hours off to come down and see Carter. We’re cousins, you know.”

Carter Wascom nodded. “I was going to show him what’s flowing in the bayou. I was trying to prove I’m not the only one that’s affected.”

“What are you talking about?” Willie asked.

“Come on back. I’ll show you,” Wascom said and we followed him out of the pasture and into the woods, the dog bounding along beside us.

The sun’s glare abated, but the humidity was high, so that rivers of sweat were streaming down my arms and I felt my shirt sticking to my back. The ground smelled of decayed vegetation and my feet sank into the soft leaves. Out of habit, I kept my eyes down, looking for snakes.

We were on a finger ridge, an ancient plateau of finely ground clay that jutted out into the floodplain of a small bayou which, in its turn, joined the Mississippi River a mile or so to the west. When we threaded our way through the last red oaks and stood on the edge of the bluff, Carter Wascom pointed at the area below.

“Can’t see it from here, but down there’s the bayou. You game to go look?”

“Why not?” Willie asked and we followed down the bank, grabbing at vines and tree roots as we went. The bottom, twenty feet below the bluff, was sand, deposited from endless cycles of flooding. Wascom was already at the water’s edge, pointing, and when I came even with him I saw what he was talking about. There was a sudsy-looking residue on top of the water, floating gently toward the river.

“This bayou goes right past that damn nuclear plant,” he accused. “You can’t tell me they aren’t dumping something into it.”

I stared down at the suds. Wherever it was coming from, it was a stain on what would otherwise have been a primeval setting.

“It couldn’t have come from some other place, say another house, or maybe a dump?” I asked.

Carter Wascom withered me with his stare.

“My wife died, sir, and it wasn’t from
some other place
or
house
or
dump
. She was a beautiful woman and she died a cruel, agonizing death. Cancer of the liver. It spread.” He took a deep breath and went on: “For several years, before the disease was diagnosed, there was this scum on the surface of the bayou. Only none of us knew what it was then. It was the first year that abomination they call a nuclear plant was in operation. After I raised enough hell with them, the stuff stopped for a while. Now…” He pointed down like an Old Testament prophet. “It’s started again.” He turned on Willie. “That’s what I told your father, that anything he bought now was ruined anyway, I didn’t want to take his money that way.”

I saw Willie shoot a questioning look at Levi Goodeau. The warden put a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “Well, Carter, I think you’re right to have some samples taken. Maybe that’ll get to the bottom once and for all.”

Wascom gave his kinsman a skeptical look. “Like it did before? They ruined the samples at the lab. Those people got to them, had them say the samples were
innocuous, if you can believe that
. Levi, you’re too decent a man for your job. How can you run a farm full of cutthroats when you can’t even see how deeply the corruption has reached into every part of this state?”

“Oh, Carter, it’s not that bad,” Goodeau said. “Come on. Let’s get back and have some lemonade.”

I thought Wascom was going to argue, but suddenly the fight seemed to have gone out of him. His shoulders slumped and I saw confusion in his face.

“Lemonade,” he said. “Yes, I suppose we ought to. I…” He looked from one of us to the other. “I’m sorry if I involved you in my private problems. I just think…” He raised his hands in supplication. “This has to be everybody’s problem. Doesn’t it?”

“Of course, Carter.” Goodeau helped his cousin to the base of the bluff and waited patiently while the tall man scrambled to the top. When Wascom was halfway up, the warden turned to us and shrugged apologetically.

He needn’t have, though. I’d seen the suds, and wherever they were from, they’d ruined the bayou.

F
OUR

It was early afternoon when we got back to the office. There were three message slips from Bertha Bomberg on my desk. The first one said
Urgent
, the second said
Extremely urgent
, and the third said
Call before two!!!
It was now one-fifty-six. With a sigh, I dialed her number at the Corps of Engineers and hoped that she’d still be out to lunch and the call would switch over to one of her less obnoxious office mates.

But when I heard the line click on the second ring I knew there would be no further reprieves.

“Bomberg, Planning.”

“Hi, Bertha, this is Alan.” I tried to put some cheer in my voice. “Looks like we’ve been missing each other.”

“Have you been avoiding me, Alan?”

“Not at all. I tried you Friday and I was out all this morning.”

“I was sick Friday. I went home early. I’m
still
sick. I shouldn’t even be in the office at all.”

“I’m sorry.” I tried to sound as if I really was.

“Thank you. Alan, I have some questions about the report you did for us on the Plaquemine Revetment.”

“The one we did three years ago.”

“Is that a criticism?”

“Not at all.”

“Good. Because I
am
the government.”

A bad sign, I thought: She usually saved that part for last and now she was sticking it in at the beginning.

“Is there a problem with the report, Bertha?”

“If there wasn’t, would I be calling?”

I made an indecipherable sound.

I heard papers rustling on her desk.

“Now,” she said. “I have a lot of corrections, and I’m going to send them all to you, with the marked draft copy, but there was one, I guess I should say, glaring problem.”

I entertained a vision of having to send a crew back into the field and taking a ten-thousand-dollar loss.

“A problem?” I swallowed.

“Yes. I’m surprised you didn’t find it yourself. You
do
read over these things, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Well, then, why didn’t anybody catch the problem of the levee?”

“The levee?” A cold shudder ran through me. Had one of our maps put it in the wrong place?

“The levee,” she repeated. “You didn’t look under it.”

“Under it? Fifty tons of dirt?”

“Your history section clearly states that the levee wasn’t built until the 1920s. That was thirty years after Darling Plantation was divided up after a sheriff’s sale.”

“So?”

Her voice took on an air of impatience as she instructed her wayward child:

“So there may be cultural resources under the present levee. Did you look for them?”

Silence as I visualized the levee, a thirty-foot-tall pile of dirt.

“How do you look under a levee?” I said.

“That’s not the point,” she shot back.

“I don’t understand.”

“Evidently. And that’s why we may have to have a meeting.”

“A meeting?”

“To address this kind of inadequacy. You’ll get the report by FedEx tomorrow. I expect to hear from you as soon as you’ve read the comments.” There was an audible sigh. “Alan, I can promise you, when the next contracts are bid, this issue will come up.”

“So what do you want us to do?”

“You’ll have my comments in writing. I see no purpose in talking on the phone about it. That only leads to misunderstandings.”

“Goodbye, Bertha.”

“Goodbye.” The line went dead and I replaced the receiver.

David appeared in the doorway. “So what was all that about?”

“Looking under levees,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “The same-old, same-old.”

I got up from my desk and made two fists. “Someday that goddamn woman …”

“Now you know why they had the flood of ’27,” he said. I didn’t think Bombast was that old, but I wasn’t going to dispute it.

Understand: I am not against women. I find them wonderful and intriguing creatures, and once I even married one. But there are times when it seems that I, a poor male, am beset by the worst the other sex has to offer. First P. E. Courtney, offering to take away my business, and now Bombast, the corps battle-ax, feeding her neuroses.