The Map of Moments (8 page)

“Where am I?”

He hated the question. Thoughts of that little gray stone bottle and its cork stopper rose in his mind. The whiskey couldn't have helped, but it wouldn't do this. It had to be a hallucination. Even if he'd blacked out and woken up after dark, even if the rain had come in while he'd been out of it, drugged by whatever Ray
(that crazy fuck!)
had given him, what about the marsh? He'd never seen a marsh in the park, and there was no way these trees had been through Katrina. No way.

And just when he thought he might scream, he heard a rustling, something more than the noise of the driving rain, and he turned. Something moved, there in the storm and the dark.

A man.

Like Alice following the rabbit, he pursued that silhouette. Lost and confused in the storm, heart rising into the back of his throat, panic clenching his fists, he gave chase. Thoughts of attack filled him. He'd tackle the guy and demand answers. But he raced amongst trees, shoes sinking into muddy earth that sucked at his feet, and he began to slow.

The man was not running.

By the time Max emerged at the edge of the marsh, the shadow had stopped. The water was high, thanks to the storm, and surrounded the bases of the trees nearest the marsh. The marsh had begun to spread.

The man crouched in several inches of water, hiding himself behind the high grass. Even in the dark and the storm, his clothes seemed anachronistic. Other than a half glance backward, revealing a long, thin mustache, he kept his back to Max, seemingly unaware that he was being followed. The man's attention had been caught by movement out across the marsh, and Max peered through the rain, trying to make out what unfolded there.

He moved north along the edge of the marsh, skirting a tree, trying to get a better view without giving himself away. A pale figure stood fifty yards away, and Max had to step into the water and part the high grass before he began to make sense of what he saw. Three canoes were drawn up onto the far bank, and seven or eight people stood beneath
the trees, some hiding beneath hanging cypress branches, all of them hard to see in the dark and the storm. Their clothes were rough, their hair long and slicked by the rain.

Only when the pale figure—shirtless, hair in braids— lifted something toward the thunder clouds did Max realize that they were Indians. For a moment he felt a queer dislocation, and then he told himself this must be some strange tribal thing conducted by a local group.

But moments ago, it had been a cooling fall afternoon, and now it was night and the storm had risen from nowhere. His mind tried to rationalize, but there were simply too many things to explain.

Lightning flashed across the sky and he saw the granite features of the Indian who stood in the marsh, and got a clearer look at the bundle he held up toward the storm.

It squirmed in his hands.

Thunder boomed across the sky. When its roar had diminished, another sound could be heard over the constant patter of rain. A baby had begun to cry—a frightened, angry bleating that grew into a wail.

Max held his breath. Off to his right, the guy with the mustache rose slightly, leaning forward. But Max only glanced at him for an instant before returning his focus to the shirtless Indian standing in the marsh. From the squirming bundle he held aloft, the baby's arms emerged, fists beating the air. A terrible suspicion grabbed Max; perhaps this wasn't any kind of baptism or blessing at all. The woman on the opposite edge of the marsh watched, but wasn't as impassive as he'd first thought. Her shoulders shook with quiet sobs. The rain swallowed her tears.

The Indian holding the baby began to chant in his own language, and immediately the others joined in. Their voices came together not in harmony, but in a unified, prayerlike rhythm.

Something flitted through the dark above the marsh. Trees rustled and branches shook, and then birds took off from the crooks where they'd been hiding from the storm and began to circle like vultures above the Indian and the wailing infant. The chanting grew louder. The mother shouted and stepped into the flooding marsh, but one of her tribesmen grabbed hold of her arm and would not let go.

The chanting ceased.

“No,” Max said, for he could feel something awful coming.

The man in the marsh lowered the baby ever so gently, resting the swaddled infant atop the water's surface. And then he let go. Blanket already soaked through with rain, the baby sank in an instant, the water closing over it. The crying ceased abruptly, leaving only the shush of the rain.

Max stared, trapped in a moment of disbelief.

In the distance, deep in the belly of the storm, thunder rumbled.

The hidden man leapt up and forward, wading into the marsh. Max moved at almost precisely the same moment. In unison they cried out, Max in English and the other man in French, as they slogged through the water.

The Indians on the opposite edge of the marsh looked up, all of them staring at the Frenchman. None of them seemed even to notice Max. The baby's mother and the man who had drowned her child did not look up at all, staring at
the dark surface of the water where the baby had gone under moments before.

“Save him! You can still save him!” Max shouted, waist deep in the water now.

The night birds screamed. He looked up just as the first of them dove into the water, wings folded back against its sides. Three others darted into the marsh. Max faltered, staring in wonder, as others skirted the top of the water, whipping through tall grass and then rising again, wings beating the air.

Something broke the surface, wings shedding droplets of water. Then more, until four birds emerged, heads dipped low, talons thrust out below them as they lifted the baby from the water by its sodden blanket.

The shirtless man smiled, tilted his head back, and let the rain fall on his face. He raised his arms in silent thanks.

The birds carried the baby aloft. Max could hear it coughing, spitting up water, as they began to descend with their burden again, lowering the child into its mother's outstretched arms. The moment she took hold of the baby, the birds flapped away, vanishing over the treetops. The child began to cry again in great hitching sobs.

Max wiped rain from his eyes and stared. He took a step back. What he'd just seen simply wasn't possible. Out of the corner of his eye he saw movement, and he glanced over at the Frenchman, whose mouth hung open in astonishment that mirrored Max's own.

The Frenchman lifted his hands, palms up. It took Max a moment to realize why: the rain had begun to taper off. As the shirtless Indian called out to the thunderclouds, a dim
growl came from the sky, and that was all that remained of the storm. The clouds had thinned. Even as Max gazed upward, he saw clear spots open above. Starlight glittered through those rents in the storm.

The rain drizzled to a stop.

One by one, the Indians returned to their canoes. As they did so, each touched the squalling infant on the crown of its head. The man who had nearly drowned the child helped its mother into the last canoe. They began to paddle away. Several of them glanced at the Frenchman, aware of his presence but unwilling to acknowledge him. The Frenchman raised a hand and made a noise, as though he wanted to call out to them, to ask what it was he had just witnessed, but he stopped himself.

Perhaps he wasn't sure if he wanted the answer.

None of them looked at Max.

He waded after them. On his third step, the depth of the marsh changed so abruptly that he stumbled forward, catching himself just before he would have submerged completely. Water enveloped him to just below his shoulders.

Cursing, he searched with his feet and found a shallower spot, pulling himself out so that he was only waist deep again. Even as he did, a wave of nausea came over him. He swayed on his feet, blinking, and his throat felt suddenly parched.

He squinted against the light.

To the west, through the trees, he could see the light of the setting sun. For a second, he smelled lilacs.

“What the hell is this?”

He stood in the middle of the narrow river that surrounded Scout Island. A dozen feet away, the water flowed
under the little bridge he'd crossed. The bike he'd taken from beside Cooper's Bar stood propped against the stonework.

Max raised his hands to his hair and found it dry.

There had been no rain. No marsh. No Indians, no baby, no Frenchman, no birds. Shaking, afraid his mind had slipped a gear, he forced his eyes closed, open, closed, and open again. The world around him now was solid, but it had felt solid enough before, too. A hundred thoughts filled his head, stories of alien abduction and of fairy mounds, but he discarded them all. Those were just stories.

Blinking, he studied the branches of the old cypress and oak trees around him. The hurricane had damaged them enough that even if some of them were the same trees, he wouldn't have been able to tell.

The same trees? What did that even mean?
He'd hallucinated, that was all. Drugs were the only answer. Crazy Ray had given him something in that little stone bottle, and he'd been drunk or stupid enough to swallow it.

Furious with himself, still hazy with alcohol but at least lucid, he slogged to the riverbank and climbed out.
Bullshit,
he thought.
Hallucinations. Can't be anything else.
But Max had always been a child of logic, and as strange as it had been, he'd never heard of hallucinations like the ones he'd just had; a single, richly detailed scene peopled with characters. A single moment.

The Map of Moments,
Ray had called it.

He patted his pockets. His pants were soaked through and the shoes he'd worn to the funeral were ruined. Somewhere he'd lost his jacket. He touched the bulge of his wallet, but money would dry out. Then he felt the outline of his
cell phone and his gut turned to stone. Taking the phone out, he tried to turn it on. A strange, unpleasant clicking noise came from inside the plastic, and then nothing. He tried it several more times.

“Fuck!”

A bird fluttered from a nearby tree and took off across the darkening sky, roused by Max's curse.

He cocked his arm to throw the phone into the water, then paused. Maybe if he swapped out the battery, he could get the phone dried out and working again. He slid it back into his pocket, thinking about what he would do when he found Ray. The man had a lot to make up for, and a lot of explaining to do.

Max located the map in his front right pocket. He stood at the foot of the bridge and unfolded it carefully, not wanting to tear the wet paper, mostly just trying to figure out the quickest way back to the French Quarter. He figured the ink would have run badly and become illegible, but it was worse than that: the First Moment had vanished altogether.

But a Second Moment had appeared. He was certain this new blocked area had not been on the map before, but now, as though drawn in invisible ink and made to appear by New Orleans’ still-dirty waters, here it was.

For several seconds Max stared at this new marking, but the last of the day's light was fading, and he could not understand
the words. Or perhaps he didn't want to. With the setting of the sun, the November night had become cool, and he was soaked from the waist down.

Max shivered as he folded the map, glancing nervously at the bridge and across the narrow river at Scout Island beyond, picturing in his mind the almost primordial landscape he'd hallucinated. The wildness of the land in a bygone age. Watching the trees for birds, he slid the map into his back pocket, telling himself he didn't care if the dampness ruined it, even though he didn't believe that would happen. Not until it had served its purpose.

He retrieved the bike and walked it to the path before climbing on. His stomach ached and for a moment he feared another hallucination, or whatever that had been. Another drug-induced vision. Then his stomach grumbled, and he remembered that he'd eaten almost nothing all day.

Uncomfortable, pants stiff and heavy with water, leather shoes tightening on his feet, he pedaled out of City Park, all concerns for his own safety forgotten. Except that, in the back of his mind, he kept a rough image of the location of that Second Moment, and he made sure to go nowhere near.

Max abandoned the bike three blocks from the hotel. His thighs were painfully chafed and he tried his best not to walk like John Wayne. The exercise had burned off enough alcohol that he was practically sober by now, and starving. Questions crowded his mind but he forced them away. It had been a day for impossibilities, but he couldn't think
about them until he had a hot shower, a hot meal, and dry clothes.

Walking through the lobby, he tried to pretend there was nothing at all strange about his appearance. He'd kicked a lot of dried mud from his shoes, but they were still filthy, as were the cuffs of his pants. His shirt was untucked, but that couldn't hide the fact that his pants were still wet. He probably stank of muck and whiskey. But he kept his gaze straight ahead, unwilling to acknowledge the stares he knew he must be receiving from the handful of staff and guests in the hotel.