The Elephant Mountains (10 page)

“That helicopter is broke,” the insurance agent said. “I don't care what those pilots say about trying to fix it. It's not gonna happen. But it's gonna be tough getting out of here in a johnboat. There's some mean currents and snags out there.”

A man wearing knee-high snake-proof boots was approaching. He carried a pole with a gig on the end. He wore a pistol at his hip. Stephen guessed this was Mr. Parker.

Mr. Parker, like all of them, was dirty and tired-looking. He stopped before them and looked them over, digging the gig from time to time into the soft earth. Then he lifted one of the charred snakes, a big rattler, and tossed it into the water.

He introduced himself and shook both their hands. When Stephen said his name, the man looked at him closely.

“You live in New Orleans?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Stephen said.

“Over near Audubon Park?”

“Yes, sir,” Stephen said.

“Your mother is Anna Hudgins?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I know her. She's been to dinner right here. She works with my brother.”

He went on to explain that his brother designed Mardi Gras costumes. His wife was one of Stephen's mother's friends. Mrs. Parker was in Baton Rouge.

Stephen told him how he had gone to spend the summer with his father.

“Where's your father?” Mr. Parker asked.

“Dead,” Stephen said.

He gave a detailed account of his father's death.

“You killed them with that combat shotgun?” the insurance agent asked.

“No, sir,” Stephen said. “Like I said, I was coming back from hunting ducks. It was a Browning.”

Then Mr. Parker asked him about his mother.

“She's in New Orleans or maybe Baton Rouge,” Stephen said. He explained how she had hired security people to take care of the house and its furnishings.

“Yes, I expect there's been plenty of looting in New Orleans,” Mr. Parker said. “Most folks have pretty well given up on that city. Don't you worry about your mother. She'd hire the best.”

Then he asked Angela a few questions. She told him how Stephen had rescued her from the flooded town.

“You folks are mighty clean,” he said.

Stephen wondered what he was going to say. Angela looked at him.

“Why's that?” Parker asked. “You must have been wandering around these swamps and flooded fields for days.”

So he told them about the barge. The moment he said the word
barge
, Mr. Parker interrupted him.

“Fred and Holly are still alive?” Mr. Parker said.

“Yes, sir, they are,” Angela said.

“Well, I'm glad you didn't kill them just to get a hot shower,” Mr. Parker said.

He laughed at his own joke along with the others.

“I'll like a hot shower,” one of the women said. “I want to get to a hotel someplace. A bath would be better than a shower. A long bath.”

Stephen wondered exactly how far a person had to go to find that hotel and that bathtub. He expected it would be a long way.

“Stephen, you and Angela come on up to the house,” Mr. Parker said. “I'll show you where you'll be sleeping.”

“I'll sleep on the boat,” Stephen said.

Angela decided she would sleep in the house. He watched her walk off with Mr. Parker.

He went back to the boat and retrieved the Saiga and the radio.

“Worried about snakes?” the insurance agent asked.

“That's right,” Stephen said.

“That radio work?” the banker asked.

“Most of the time,” Stephen said.

He went up to the house and found that Angela would be sleeping on the screened porch that ran the length of the back of the house. It had begun to grow dark. They were cooking something in an enormous iron pot over a gas grill. It turned out to be a venison chili that Mr. Parker had made. There was corn and beans and squash from his garden.

The pilots and their crew chief appeared. They announced they thought they had repaired the helicopter. They would be able to fly out in the morning. The refugees were elated.

“We could go to Natchez,” the banker's wife said.

“I don't care where we go just as long as it's dry,” the insurance agent said.

Stephen cranked the generator and turned on the radio. He found a station out of Baton Rouge. The announcer advised that relief was on the way just as long as another hurricane did not appear.

“What about that station you keep trying?” Angela said.

Stephen wished she had kept quiet about that. He wondered how he would feel if the station came in loud and clear and the Swamp Hog started making those wild statements. He spun the dial and set it on a place where he was sure he would find nothing but static.

“No, that's not the place I mean,” Angela said.

She pushed him away and set the dial on the station. To his relief there was just static. Not a single word came out of the speaker.

“I wonder if you dreamed that station,” she said.

“You and my father would have gotten along fine,” he said. “That's what he told me.”

They all ate and watched the sun set over the flooded fields. Mr. Parker hoped the water would go down, and he would be able to plant in a month or so. But he doubted that was going to happen. He expected there would be more hurricanes and more floods and more levee breaks, and pretty soon things would be back to when the Indians inhabited the land and the river spread out over its banks at least once or twice a year, doing whatever it wanted to do.

When it was completely dark, Steven took up the Saiga and the radio and started down to the boat. Mr. Parker offered to go with him. He carried the flamethrower. He wore a gas-powered headlamp.

“Nothing like going out and frying a few snakes after a good dinner,” he said.

He followed Mr. Parker down to the water. Halfway down the hill they began to encounter snakes. Mr. Parker left the harmless water snakes alone. He was looking for cottonmouths, rattlers, and copperheads. He held up his hand. Stephen saw a cottonmouth coiled up directly in their path, displaying the white lining of its mouth. Mr. Parker trained the flamethrower on it. He pulled the trigger and the flame leaped out at the snake with a
whoosh
, illuminating the night, and Stephen smelled a gasoline stink. He imagined he could hear the snake sizzling like a sausage on a grill. Mr. Parker played his light over the charred remains.

“The way it's gotten so hot all the time, pretty soon I'll be killing cobras and pythons,” he said. “They were starting to have a serious problem in Florida. Now that Florida's gone, I expect they'll eventually move up this way.”

He incinerated a few more cottonmouths and a big rattler on the way to the airboat. Stephen climbed on board.

“Worried about your boat?” Mr. Parker said.

“It's been on my mind,” Stephen said.

“Well, I don't blame you. But those folks'll fly out on that helicopter in the morning.”

“That suits me just fine.”

“You know, I wouldn't be ashamed to have my sons grow up like you.”

Stephen did not know what to say. He supposed the sons were in Baton Rouge with Mr. Parker's wife.

“I'm not grown up,” he said.

“Oh, I think you've gone as far as it's possible to go,”

Mr. Parker said.

Stephen wondered what he meant.

Mr. Parker played his light over the grass. It illuminated a couple of small gators, their eyes shining red in the light. There were plenty of snakes.

“Do you think my mother is all right?” Stephen asked.

“She'd hire good people,” Mr. Parker said. “If I had a couple of them here, I'd sleep like a baby.”

Stephen wondered if Mr. Parker knew about his mother's young men and, if he did, what he thought about it.

“Do you see my mother often?” Stephen asked.

“Now and then,” Mr. Parker said. “Courtland would bring her out here for dinner. We had dinner in New Orleans a couple of times.”

Mr. Parker adjusted the harness on the flamethrower tank and settled it more comfortably on his shoulders.

“Josephine still works for your mother?” he asked.

“I guess,” Stephen said.

“She is one good-looking woman. I wonder if she's gone back to Lake Charles or is sticking it out with your mother. I expect Lakes Charles is underwater too.”

“I don't know.”

“No way you could know. Well, I guess I'll take a stroll around the property.”

He settled the tank on his shoulders one last time and walked off along the bank. From time to time a stream of flame shot out.

Stephen set up the mosquito netting and then climbed under it, along with the Saiga and the radio. He gave the generator another good cranking and tried to find the mystery station. To his surprise the Swamp Hog's voice came out of the speakers, riding the air over the flooded land.

“
Hello, all of you in Memphis
,” the voice was saying. “
You're on high ground. Stay there. Fish are swimming in New Orleans and Charleston. The land is shrinking,
the temperature is rising. Beware of low ground. Hello, there in…
”

Then the voice disappeared in a hiss and crackle of static.

“What about Baton Rouge?” Stephen asked. “What about my mother?”

He tried adjusting the dial, but the only reply was more static.

“
Hello, hel…,
” the voice said.

But then it was gone. He felt like tossing the radio into the water.

“Who are you?” he asked.

His only reply was static.

He turned off the radio and wrapped his arms around the Saiga and tried to sleep. Periodically he heard the
whoosh
of the flamethrower. He could not sleep. He tried to clear his mind of the voice on the radio.

Hello, Hello, Hello.

The voice went on and on in his head.

Finally he slept. But it seemed to him that he had barely closed his eyes when he was awakened by the
whoosh
of the flamethrower. Mr. Parker had made a circuit of the island and was approaching. The flame leaped out, like the breath of some fairy-tale dragon. Mr. Parker played the light over the airboat. Stephen gave up on sleep and sat up under the netting, awaiting his arrival.

The last blast from the flamethrower incinerated something just off the bow of the airboat. Stephen felt the heat of it. He took a deep breath as his lungs searched for oxygen the flame had consumed. Mr. Parker was laughing, a deep rich laugh.

“Boy, are you awake?” he shouted.

Stephen did not reply.

A stream of fire shot out again, this time over the water, followed by the same laughter.

“Wake up, Stephen, wake up!” he shouted.

As Mr. Parker played the light over the airboat, Stephen shielded his eyes against the glare with one hand.

“You be careful with that thing,” Stephen shouted.

“It's a lullaby for you,” Mr. Parker said.

This time he was close enough he did not have to shout. But he came no closer and turned and walked back up the hill to the house, the flame now and then leaping out from the machine.

EIGHT

S
tephen woke at first light. A banded water snake was draped across the bow of the boat, but it dropped off into the water with a solid splash when he moved. The sun was rising on the other side of the mound, while his side was still in shadow. He heard the sound of the helicopter's engine starting.

As he started to pack up the mosquito netting, he stood and waited for the helicopter to rise above the pecans. Finally it did and flew directly over him. He waved to it. One of the pilots waved back. Then suddenly it tilted downward and flew directly into the water only a few yards away. There was no fire, no explosion, just the
thump
of the body of the chopper against the water. The water it threw up rained down on him. The wreckage floated for a few minutes and then slowly sank out of sight, leaving just a piece of the tail rotor above the water. Just then the sun rose over the trees on the top of the mound and illuminated the wreckage, the light glinting off the metal blades.

Then it occurred to him that Angela might have decided to go with them. He scrambled out of the boat and had started up the hill when he saw Mr. Parker and Angela running down it.

When they reached him, he threw his arms around her. He told her he thought she might have been on the helicopter. And he wondered if his concern was a sign of love. He supposed it could be. But a girl as old as she was would be unobtainable for him. He wondered how many people you had to kill before you could no longer love. Was it a different number for different people?

“Those poor people,” she said, looking out toward the wreck. “They thought they were going to sleep in a hotel tonight.” Then she turned back to him. “We started out together. We're going to stay together until we get to Baton Rouge.”

Mr. Parker stood at the edge of the water, weeping.

“God, they're all gone,” Mr. Parker said.

Stephen noticed something floating in the water that looked like a piece of a body, but he said nothing.

“I cooked breakfast for them,” Mr. Parker said. “How can they be dead?”

Angela put her arms around Mr. Parker, and Stephen joined her.

Mr. Parker was making Stephen feel old. Stephen recalled running his hands over his father's body. They were dead; they were not alive. It was as simple as that. He wondered if he had now grown older than his mother and Josephine. What had they seen in New Orleans? Those security men, although young, were probably the oldest people he was likely to meet. They, and men like them, had traveled the furthest from life.

His father had obviously been one of them, but now it was too late to learn any of his hard-earned wisdom.

Angela began to cry too, but she was comforting Mr. Parker, telling him they did not suffer, that it was quick. Stephen found he could not weep for them. His mind was filled with the sound of those cries of the wounded man the night his father was killed. He had definitely decided the cries had not come from his father.