The Elephant Mountains (16 page)

“Get that machine gun,” Stephen said.

They all glanced in the direction of Captain Sullivan's body. Drexel ran across the deck. As he stooped to pick up the machine gun, automatic weapon fire came from the water below. The rounds hit above their heads, making sharp pings against the metal structure of the boat. Drexel had flattened himself out against the deck.

“Stay put,” Stephen said.

He crawled across the deck until he was beside Drexel. Then he looked over the edge and saw the outline of three johnboats. An outboard motor started and then another. Then there was a flash and a
whoosh
, followed by an explosion that made the whole boat shudder. Someone had fired a rocket launcher at the boat. There was another explosion, and a fire began to burn below them.

“Must've hit a fuel tank,” Richard said. “Let's get off this boat.”

Another round from the rocket launcher hit the pilot house. Stephen wondered if that was what the shooter was aiming at or if he had fired high. Then another motor started, and he heard the boat moving away from the towboat.

Drexel tugged at Stephen's shotgun.

“Kill those motherfuckers!” he screamed.

Stephen held onto the shotgun and pushed Drexel away.

“They're leaving,” Stephen said. “Let 'em go.”

Stephen did not want to press the people in the johnboats into a fight those left alive on the towboat might lose.

The bridge boat was on the other side of the towboat. They ran across the deck and found it still moored. As they slipped over the side, Chandra began to untie the lines. Richard started the engines.

They moved away from the towboat.

“Get us out of the light!” Stephen shouted. “Out of the light!”

Flames were shooting out of the superstructure of the towboat, as Richard took the boat out of the light and into the darkness.

Chandra was sobbing.

“They're all dead,” she said. “All dead. Because of me.”

“Hush up,” Drexel was saying. “Hush up.”

Now Richard was retracing the path they had taken to the towboat, running slowly by the edge of the timber in the darkness.

Angela had gone over to sit next to Chandra. Drexel was beside Richard in the cockpit. Angela talked with Chandra a long time, then hugged her and returned to Stephen. Chandra went to stand beside Drexel, who put his arm around her.

“She wasn't standing her watch,” she said. “Drexel came up on deck and they went down to her cabin. That's how those people took us by surprise.”

But someone, either Captain Sullivan or Mary Jane, was awake or had been awakened. Captain Sullivan was preparing to use the machine gun when someone killed her. Perhaps Mary Jane was on her way to the deck to feed the gun for Captain Sullivan.

They crossed the sunken levee and descended into a swamp where it was hard to maneuver the bridge boat in the darkness. They all agreed it was not prudent to show lights. Finally they found a open space and moored the boat.

Once the watches were set, they lay down to sleep. The mosquitoes were especially bad, and they were running out of repellent.

“I was gonna fix fried chicken today,” Chandra said. “And now these mosquitoes are eating me up.”

“I'm trying not to think about any fried chicken,” Richard said as he slapped at a mosquito.

Drexel turned to Stephen.

“I saw you put the hurt on that man in the hall. You're a mean man with that shotgun.”

Stephen recalled for the first time that the man had a bulge in his cheek. Tobacco, gum, an infection. He would never know. He hoped that image would quickly fade and be lost, and in his dreams there would only be an indistinct, featureless figure in the hall: a big white man dressed in cutoff blue jeans.

“You're the man,” Drexel continued.

“Let it be,” Angela said.

“He's too young to be killing folks,” Chandra said.

“But not for loving,” Richard said.

They all laughed.

Stephen pretended to be embarrassed, but actually he was glad that the conversation had turned away from the dead man.

As Stephen stood in the cockpit on the first watch, he thought of Chandra's fried chicken. They had almost nothing in the way of provisions now. They were especially low on water, the big water cooler only half full. Five people would go through that in a hurry on a hot day. He had two full canteens in the dry bag. No one had thought to prepare the bridge boat for an escape.

They were going to have to find some high ground, a National Guard outpost, someplace where they would be safe.

In the morning Stephen woke to see Chandra standing her watch.

“I'm right here,” she said. “I'm awake.”

Then the others woke.

They decided to move to the northeast. When they came out of the swamp, Richard steered the boat through the field as Drexel pointed out snags. At the edge of the field, they found passage into a creek. Richard steered the boat into an eddy, and they all discussed the best way to proceed.

“I thought we'd decided to go northeast,” Stephen said.

Drexel was for going down the creek to the river. Richard argued against that. He believed they were too low on fuel to risk dealing with the river.

“We'll need to go upstream,” Richard said. “But this diesel won't last long if we have to run the engines hard. Look what happened to that towboat. Probably two towboats. I don't expect that Mr. Sullivan is ever coming back.”

The creek did not present that sort of problem since there was little current in it. Stephen and Angela and Chandra agreed with Richard.

“We get lucky and this creek'll take us to high ground,” Richard said.

They started up the creek, at this point close to the river at least a hundred yards wide. And it held that length as they slowly made their way through a labyrinth of snags and an occasional fallen tree.

It was close to dark when they saw a pine-covered ridge. A bat twisted overhead. The creek narrowed. Then far across an immense flooded field Stephen saw a collection of army trucks parked on an asphalt road where it disappeared into the flooded field. Soldiers were standing around. Coils of barbed wire were strung between the water and the road. When he looked at the road through the field glasses, he counted perhaps a dozen soldiers. They had heard the sound of the boat's engines and were looking toward them. They were all in uniform. A certain order to their position made him believe this was the army and not some collection of deserters.

Drexel stood up on the bow and waved his hands and whooped. Stephen doubted that they could hear him over the sound of the engines. From the cockpit Richard was also waving at the soldiers. He turned the boat out of the creek and into the flooded field.

“We're gonna get that pardon,” Drexel shouted.

“I believe you will,” Chandra said.

Stephen wondered just exactly what Chandra had pictured for the future. Marriage to Drexel? Children? He wondered if Drexel would go back to robbing banks.

“You children remember to tell them soldiers how we took care of you,” Richard said.

They were halfway across the field.

“You watching the water?” Richard yelled to Drexel.

“I'm watching,” Drexel said.

Stephen swept his glasses over the army position. The soldiers who had been standing about behind the wire had disappeared.

Then Drexel, who was standing up and waving, suddenly sailed backward and landed on the metal deck. A moment later they all heard the sound of the shot, an elongated sound held in by the high ground on three sides. Richard turned his head to see what had happened to Drexel. As he did he pitched backward to join him, the sound of the rifle shot arriving a moment later.

“Oh, God!” Angela was screaming. “Oh, God!”

“Lord! Lord!” Chandra screamed.

She threw herself on Drexel and pulled him close to her as if she were trying to will life back into him.

The boat veered off to the left and Stephen, keeping his head below the edge of the cockpit, grabbed the wheel and turned the boat back toward the creek. Now all the soldiers were shooting at them. The rounds pinged against the metal hull. A few red tracers sailed by, glowing in the darkness.

Stephen took the boat back to the creek. By this time they were out of sight of the army position and no longer presented a target. He brought the boat into an eddy next to the bank and cut back the engines.

“Why did they do that?” Angela asked.

“They're scared,” Stephen said. “They saw those prison uniforms and were afraid to take chances.”

Chandra was still lying on top of Drexel.

“Go talk to her,” he said.

She went over to Chandra and bent over her. She appeared to be whispering something to her.

“Is she all right?” he asked.

She turned and looked toward him, her face indistinct in the darkness.

“She's dead,” she said.

Chandra had caught a bullet in the head as they were retreating across the field to the creek.

Together they slid the bodies of the prisoners and Chandra into the water.

How can this be?
he thought.
They were alive one moment and dead the next. Their desire for pardons and love now a cruel joke.

Angela prayed to Jesus to be on the lookout for the souls of the prisoners, that they were good men who had been punished enough on earth for their crimes.

Stephen said “Amen” with her at the end of the prayer.

“She sure could cook fried chicken,” Stephen said.

“She could,” Angela said.

“Richard and Drexel were good men,” he said.

“I'd never have thought I'd think that about a murderer and a bank robber,” Angela said.

It was dark now. For a moment or two they could see the solid shape of the bodies, but these soon blended with the general darkness of the creek and were gone.

He hoped they would not come upon them in the morning, caught up on some snag. He wished them free and unimpeded passage to the Gulf, untouched by catfish or turtles. Their bones would lie on fine white sand, undisturbed in the clear, sunlit coastal waters. He imagined shafts of golden sunlight falling on them. Like something out of a dream.

“Like a cathedral,” he said.

“What?” she asked.

So he told her of his vision.

“I like that,” she said. “That's nice. I think Jesus will forgive them.”

“He should,” he said.

He wished that could be the fate of all the floating dead. Forgiven. Their bones lying in perfect symmetry in the clear water.

“What should we do?” Angela asked.

“We'll go back to the river,” Stephen said.

“I thought we didn't have enough fuel.”

“Not for going upstream. But we can go down. I think we have a good chance of getting to Mr. Parker's. Then we we can come back up this way with him and Holly in his johnboat.”

So they moored the boat to the riverbank trees and went to sleep, dividing the night into the usual watches. Even if they sent up a helicopter in the morning, it was going to be hard to see the boat under the tree cover.

Stephen took the first watch and sat in the cockpit with the Saiga. Angela curled up on the metal deck.

As he scanned the upstream darkness, he thought of the burial of the prisoners and Chandra. Angela had cried and prayed. But he had felt nothing. His only regret was that they could not provide them a proper burial. No trip to the Gulf for them. His hopes for that were just a dream. Now they were part of the floating dead, destined to be eaten by catfish and turtles. What they didn't eat would sink to the bottom of the creek to become part of that rich black mud.

He felt what he thought was love for Angela. And perhaps if he concentrated hard enough on that, he would be saved. Not love for Jesus. He believed in none of that, despite Angela's words and her hopes for the souls of the dead.

“Saved for what,” he said out loud.

His words sounded empty in the darkness, and he was afraid.

FIFTEEN

T
he river stretched a mile wide, maybe more, to a tree-covered shoreline. Beyond the half-submerged trees, perhaps half a mile away, was the levee, which he imagined was broken in many places on both the east and west banks. Where the creek entered the much stronger current of the river, there were some standing waves that might have swamped a johnboat, but for the bridge boat they were no problem.

His plan was to select a levee break on the east side of the river and hope it would lead them into the big field that held the Indian mound. All they could do was guess, but at least they were heading in the right direction. They would just have to be careful not to go too far downriver.

They clung close to the east bank to avoid the strong midriver currents. They saw no boats, only debris: houses, furniture, farm buildings, dead animals. He decided not to take the first break they came upon, while Angela was for taking it.

“We're going to end up in the Gulf,” she said.

“Just remember how long it took to get through those swamps and flooded fields,” he said. “We've got to conserve fuel.”

But he realized she was right about overshooting. So he turned the boat into the next levee break. It was a wild ride through the flooded timber and then the break itself, with a big standing wave that would also have swamped the johnboat. Now they were down to a single barrel of diesel and whatever was left in the boat's fuel tank.

They spent the day working their way through a swamp and then into a big field that turned out not to be the right one. They spent the night in the field. The next day they had a hard time making their way through another swamp because of underbrush blocking the way to the south.

But late that afternoon they finally made it out of the swamp and into a field. They came around a timber-covered point, and there ahead was the mound and the house and trees rising out of the water.