The Elephant Mountains (12 page)

Or, he thought, was this fatalistic view part of what his father had warned him about? Was he going to be condemned the rest his life to see things painted in only one shade?

She described going back to the charred remains of the house after spending the night in the canebrake. The johnboat was gone.

It could be the same with his mother. He imagined riding in the bow of the airboat and Angela turning it onto their street. On either side would be the charred remains of big houses, burned down to the water that surrounded them.

In a metal storage shed at one end of the barge, Holly found fishing gear, a gas camping stove and a little fuel. Under camouflage material for a duck blind, a case of bottled water. The people who burned the house had probably been in too much of a hurry to search carefully or decided that what they found in the shed was not worth stealing.

She set off back up the creek, intending to go through the swamp to Mr. Parker's house. That had taken her much longer than she had thought, especially after the water started to rise. She had had to struggle with strong currents in places. She had wandered about the swamp for several days until, almost out of water, she had paddled out into the flooded field.

She asked Stephen if he would use the airboat to search for Fred. He said he would, not having the least idea where they should start. There was nothing to be gained by going back to the barge. But she seemed relieved he was willing to try.

“We have a plan,” she said.

She continued to repeat the words under her breath, like a sort of prayer.

Stephen decided to suggest they look for Fred in the direction of Baton Rouge. It was logical he might have headed that way in the johnboat. He did not want her to start wondering why Fred never returned to look for her. He would have expected her to know better, she being a grown-up, but her good judgment had been twisted by the violent events she had endured. He was glad that had not happened to him. He thought he still saw things clearly.

As they continued to drink, Holly and Mr. Parker began to tell stories about Fred. He had dropped out of high school to be a commercial fisherman. Some universities had been interested in him as a football player.

“He always said he'd rather fish than play football,” Holly said.

“If he'd played, he'd have been a good one,” Mr. Parker said.

“Those coaches would come to his mamma's house. All they got out of it was a good meal,” Holly said.

Stephen wanted to wave his arms and implore them to stop.

Can't they see he's dead?
he thought.

And he wondered if Angela was thinking the same thing. She had clung to the hope the smoke was from some other source. He wished his father was here. He would make them stop and then explain in kind but direct language that Fred had been killed. One man with a deer rifle against people with automatic weapons. The outcome was obvious. Stephen recalled that his father, experienced in combat, had stood no chance at all.

“He's out there someplace,” Mr. Parker said. “Catching big catfish and probably having a fine time.”

Stephen felt uncomfortable. He looked at Angela, who appeared to have found something interesting on the floor between her feet.

“If they killed him, I'd have found him,” Holly said.

Stephen wondered if the sort of fire that had occurred could consume a human being completely. Fred's killers would not have bothered to bury him or even to toss his body off the barge and into the creek. It now was clear to him that both Mr. Parker and Holly were being foolish in some sort of grievous way that was going to entangle them all in a futile search for Fred.

“He's out there,” Mr. Parker said.

“There's miles and miles of flooded timber and fields,” Stephen said. “It won't be easy.”

“We'll start with the barge,” Mr. Parker said. “He could have gone back there by now, looking for Holly.”

Stephen agreed to use the airboat the next day to go take a look at the barge. He tried to let himself be seduced by their optimism. He imagined rounding the bend in the creek and there would be Fred standing on the deck of the burned-out barge. Perhaps he had pitched a tent on the barge or built a lean-to.

He went off to bed, leaving Mr. Parker and Holly to talk about Fred, and Angela to listen. As he drifted off to sleep, he caught snatches of their conversation. Angela was worried about returning to the barge. Holly and Mr. Parker were trying to reassure her.

Stephen wondered if this was Angela's way of dissuading them from making the foolish search for Fred. He lay stretched out on the mattress someone had dragged onto the porch from one of the bedrooms and tried to imagine what finding Fred at the barge would be like.

First they would smell coffee. Then they would see Fred standing there, a coffee cup in his hand. Charred remains of the house would be scattered about on the deck of the barge. Fred's face would be black with soot from the fire.

“Let me tell you about this big catfish,” he would begin.

And then he would tell a story about being towed up the Mississippi to Natchez by an enormous catfish as big as a whale.

Stephen thought he heard a train whistle off in the distance. But that could not be so because the tracks were underwater. He closed his eyes and imagined Fred hopping a freight.

Holly laughed at something and the others joined in, drawing him out of the dream.

As he finally drifted off to sleep, he remembered he had done nothing about disabling the distributor. At least he had carried all the provisions, including the extra gasoline, up to the house.

“All the way to Covington,” Holly was saying.

He could make no sense of that as he dropped into sleep.

TEN

A
fter breakfast they all started down to the airboat. They carried gas, water, food and plenty of ammunition. As they reached the shoulder of the hill and the view of the flooded fields below presented itself, Stephen saw the airboat was gone. In its place was a wooden skiff. In the skiff was one paddle, but no outboard was attached. The skiff was partially filled with water. Someone had made a bailer out of a half-gallon milk jug by cutting off the bottom.

“Had to paddle and bail at the same time,” Mr. Parker said.

Stephen pointed out to the others he did not believe the thief or thieves would get far. There was only a little gas in the tank. He scanned the flooded fields with the glasses, but there was no sign of the airboat.

Mr. Parker offered Stephen the use of one of his johnboats. He and Holly would stay and guard the house. They would have to postpone their trip to the barge until Stephen returned.

“You think you can handle that thief?” Mr. Parker asked Stephen.

“Yes, sir, I do,” Stephen said.

“It sure looks like it was one person,” Mr. Parker said. “If there'd been two, they'd have made another paddle out of a board. There's plenty of lumber floating around. Don't you take chances with him. Kill him. Get your boat back.”

“Yes, sir, I will,” Stephen said.

He realized that Mr. Parker was right. He should take no chances with the thief.

“Do what your daddy would've done,” Angela said.

“He would've disabled the motor and that airboat would still be sitting right here,” Stephen said.

They all laughed.

“But he won't get far,” Stephen said. “There wasn't much gas in the tank.”

Now the task of carrying the heavy cans up the hill was worth it. His father would have been proud of that.

Once they had loaded the johnboat, they set out across the flooded field. Angela ran the motor, and Stephen sat in the bow with the field glasses and the Saiga.

He spotted a few alligators with the glasses, but there was no sign of the airboat. He had Angela run the boat slowly along the edge of the swamp, thinking that the thief might have run the boat up into the cypresses.

“We're lucky he didn't come up to the house and kill us all while we slept,” Stephen said.

Angela sat in the stern with the motor, a grim look on her face.

Not having a watch had bothered him from the first night, but he had deferred to Mr. Parker and the rest of the adults.

“No use getting a good night's sleep if you wake up dead,” Stephen continued.

“I know you'd have liked to set a watch,” she said.

He wanted to tell her they wouldn't be out here right now if they had, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

Then he noticed a broken sapling. The break looked fresh to him. They had done that too as they maneuvered the airboat in tight places in a swamp. He asked her to take the boat into the trees.

She eased it through the trees, now and then banging the hull against a cypress knee or a tree. They heard the airboat engine. He had her cut the motor.

The big engine started and sputtered and went silent. He would not have thought that the thief had run out of gas quite so soon. Then the engine started, and they heard the thief maneuvering the boat through the trees. He would have heard the sound of their motor too. Stephen scanned the trees ahead with the field glasses.

Gradually the trees thinned, and they came out into an open space and moving water. The johnboat shuddered a little as the current caught them up and bore them downstream, the channel running straight through the cypresses. Up ahead, several hundred yards away, he saw the airboat. The engine was running rough, the boat turned sideways in the current. It was going to be easy to catch up with it. A single figure was in the boat.

The airboat made a sudden turn to the left and disappeared into the trees. When they reached the spot, he saw it had encountered an even swifter current. He realized the turn had not been a voluntary one. He turned to warn Angela, but it was too late. The current seized the johnboat and jerked it to one side.

Ahead he saw a chute, the water hissing as it slid between the trees, and at the bottom was a smooth, glasslike standing wave. The wave had caught the airboat and was holding it. As the boat tilted at one angle and then another, the thief tried to maintain a precarious balance.

It was the bartender.

He was yelling something at them. As the wave pitched the airboat up at an angle, he toppled into the water. The airboat shot out of the wave and downstream. Stephen expected to see him emerge, but he did not.

When they hit the wave, the johnboat shuddered and stopped. The propeller whined as it turned in air instead of water. Then it gained purchase again. He looked up at the wave, higher than his head. As the boat climbed the face of the wave, he saw, up in the clear sky, the contrails of some sort of aircraft, flying so high he could not make out the shape of it.

The boat, now half full of water, tilted to one side. He began to bail frantically, using his hat and holding the Saiga with the other hand. Ahead, on the right side of the flow, the airboat was being carried into the trees. It made a crack when it hit them and turned on its side. Then there was a tearing sound as the metal was ripped apart.

He looked back at the wave but saw no sign of Byron Williams in the river below. The motor died. Angela was frantically pulling on the starter rope. The motor started, and she straightened up the boat so it was no longer borne sideways by the current. As he continued to bail, she gradually regained control.

They swung around a bend. He motioned for her to try to steer the boat to the calmer water on the inside of the bend. But the current was too strong. The boat turned sideways again. They both saw the snag coming, a cypress treetop, but it was too late to avoid it. The boat hit it with a thud, the force throwing them both into the bottom of the boat. They were caught fast.

When he picked himself up, he saw a big boat approaching. The olive drab boat looked like a floating rectangular box. Two black men dressed in blue and white uniforms stood in the cockpit. He had seen those uniforms on a tv show about the rodeo held at the state prison every spring. The men were prisoners from Angola.

Their boat did not seem to be affected by the swift current. The pilot slid it up to them, and the other man helped first Angela and then him into the boat. Angela had lost her rifle, but Stephen had the Saiga securely slung across his body. The dry bag containing water, ammo, food and the radio had fallen out of the boat when they encountered the wave. With any luck they should be able to find it, unless it had gotten hung up in underbrush upstream from them.

As the johnboat turned on its side and filled with water, there was that now-familiar sound of metal tearing.

Then the pilot turned the boat, and they went downstream with the current. Stephen realized the boat was a pump jet. The current was no problem for it at all. As the current gradually diminished, the pilot pulled back on the throttle and ran the boat into an eddy. Stephen unslung the Saiga and held it casually at his side. He saw no weapons in the boat.

The dry bag had ended up in the same eddy. The pilot maneuvered the boat so that Angela could retrieve the bag. Then he saw the body of Byron Williams floating facedown. The prisoners paid no attention to him. Neither did Angela. He thought about telling them the dead man had stolen their airboat, but he did not think it would be worth the trouble. Stephen was glad that the water had done the killing and not him.

“What are you children doing out here?” the pilot asked.

Stephen guessed the pilot was in his forties. The other man was much younger. They were Richard and Drexel.

“Trying to get to Baton Rouge,” Stephen said.

He was going to be careful not to mention his mother's house in New Orleans or her hiring of security men. That had caused problems with Byron Williams. He did not want the prisoners to start looking on him as someone who could be a ransom opportunity.

“This water's rising, and pretty soon there'll be catfish swimming in the mayor's office,” Drexel said. “We think we're north of interstate twelve and west of fifty-five.”