Sketcher (10 page)

“Squash... Broadway. That's enough, boys,” Backhoe called out from the dark.

Squash shouted back: “It's self-defence, I heard!”

“No, that's enough, c'mon, let's go!”

Two feet behind him, Broadway was ready to blaze. His voice was lower, but just as menacin'.

“That's funny, Squash... huntin' accident's what I heard.”

Moms still had her hands in the air, with her palms holdin' up the sky. Tony put his five fingers out, as if they could block bullets. His other hand was clutchin' the walkie-talkie. He was swearin' and beggin' at the same time. Doug turned his flashlight towards the hunters. In the shaky beam, the rain was slantin' into Broadway's face and drippin' off his peach fuzz. My bones started rattlin'. His grin turned into a grimace one second before he and his brother squeezed those
triggers... hard. I was screamin' when the nozzles flashed. Stupid words with no meanin' come out when you're terrified. Moms brought her hands down at the sounds, maybe to shield her face, but those bullets, they went high. Just before the bullets, there had been a loud crack with a squeak in it, like a heavy door breakin', and even in the darkness we could see that somethin' crazy was takin' place. All of a sudden, the ol' footbridge broke under their feet. You could hear the wood split and hit liquid. Then came the sound of their bodies droppin' hard against it. They rolled off the broken bridge and lay there, sputterin' and lookin' 'round, frightened as hell, in the creek that was now swollen because of the rain. They picked themselves up quickly and stood waist-deep. They blamed each other, then found their guns and waded in towards the bank, more determined to do damage. But the creek, it bubbled up and the banks where the bridge used to sit just crumbled in and shoved them down into the water again. Things got real muddy, so they put up their guns and tried to hold on to each other in the muck and the downpour.

“Orville, Herbert, stop yer strugglin'. That's a sinkhole!”

Backhoe was on his belly with a big branch stretchin' out towards his sons and shoutin' above the thunder. He looked up at Moms but he wouldn't call for help. Tony and Doug were halfway to helpin' them and halfway holdin' back. Then, while they were tryin' to grab hold of the branch, we all heard it. At first I thought it was thunder, but it was a groan comin' up from the ground itself. The earth moved and the creek was a big ol' cauldron comin' to a boil. That spot where the bridge had fallen in opened up some more, like paper does when a candle burns under it. The shakin' got worse. I held on tight, and everybody on the ground rocked this way and that. Broadway and Squash started cryin' out for help, but the sudden sinkhole got angry and boiled up some more. It swallowed up the footbridge. It swirled round and round and when Squash's hand was just an inch from the branch,
the boys both disappeared under the bubbles and the darkness and the noise, sucked down into the earth along with everything else. My eyes and mouth were wide open when the shakin' stopped. The surface of the creek settled down. Crickets complained and water gently sprinkled the earth, as if the atmosphere had been innocent the whole time. The slender creek now had a big lagoon where the bridge used to be. From up in the tree, it was a great python that had swallowed somethin' it could never digest. Moms, Doug and Tony stood huggin' on one side of the sinkhole; Backhoe Benet knelt in the mud on the other side. He was halfway into the creek grabbin' at water and mud and whimperin'. Then, in the silence, a light flashed right above my head. It wasn't lightning. It was Frico Beaumont, perched on a branch above me, quiet as a shadow, a cigarette lighter below his chin, the fire flickerin' in the rain on his glasses, a soaked sketch pad resting on one knee. “Shhh,” he said. And a blue pencil was in his left hand when those boys fell into hell.

Ten

Two human beings died that night.

That's what my mother said I should never forget. As if I could. We were all there when the squad car came, washing the trees in an antiseptic kind of blue. After the fire truck arrived and the place burned red, the coroner's vehicle, a sleepy stainless-steel panel van, rolled in. There was no ambulance.

The coroner's driver refused to come down the slope for fear of more sinkholes. So they squabbled a bit with the firemen about bringin' the bodies up to the surface of the sinkhole that was now full, and when they did, the squad car's fluorescent lamp cut through the dream light of the moon. It streamed across the wet ground and came to rest on that water gateway into the earth. I felt sick.

Moms took a quick breath and stepped back and called us away from the sight. She just hugged all of us and rocked back and forth and kept whisperin', “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” for some reason. Even with all the water, Broadway and Squash were covered in heavy grey mud, and you couldn't tell them apart. They tried revivin' them – and when they couldn't, Tracey Benet just knelt right there in the mud, goin' hopelessly back and forth, holdin' this one's face and then that one's head. He slapped their cheeks softly and said words that I couldn't hear from where I was, like he was tryin' to say, “OK boys, joke's over, you can wake up now.”

Now, when they finally covered them up and carried them to the van, a second squad car came and a lady who looked familiar, she came hurryin' down the slope and passed the coroner's van and came up to Tracey, who was talkin' to the police. Tracey turned around and just stared at that lady for
an eternity of seconds – and that was when I heard Moms say: “Pauline”. It was Mrs Benet.

After a couple of screams and otherwise silent, sad gestures, Tracey hugged her and she punched him, and he hugged her again and then he took her up the slope to the van. I heard the back doors creak open, and the coroner guy who stuck his head inside must've been tired or annoyed that he had to undo the sheets that he had wrapped around them, cos he took a while doing it – and Pauline, prob'ly watching him unwind the cloth while those cop lights went blue-blue-blue, she just fell to the forest floor in her decent clothes and screamed and held her belly for a long, long time. And when it was done, the policemen, they questioned Moms, but she told them we weren't being chased. I don't think the policemen believed her, cos they took Tracey away to question him some more about what he was callin' a huntin' accident. They prob'ly wanted answers about a gun they found in Broadway's hand and how so many shells were found on the train tracks.

The second squad car waited until Moms had taken Pauline and given her some herbal tea from her best china in the glass display case. Pauline refused to come inside. She sat on the front porch of our house, and when she spoke between sips of camomile and playful growls from Calvin's kids, she sounded like Moms just a little bit. She had jet-black hair cropped close at the sides, and the top was frizzy and went up in the air like a pop star's. She put down the teacup ever so often and took out a mirror to fix her make-up, even though the place was only half lit. She pulled down her cheeks to straighten out the bags under her eyes, then pulled back her cheeks towards her ears as if she was tryin' to iron out wrinkles that I couldn't see.

Pa Campbell, who was out there with his rifle from the first shots that were fired, he went back into his house and took off his bandana and put on a hat, just so he could walk up to Pauline and take it off and say he was sorry for her loss.
Pauline looked at him with his hat in his hand and gave him the kind of smile that showed she appreciated every word he said. And when they ran out of words after discussin' the earthquake again and searchin' for answers, they all suddenly looked like three little kids who had played too long and now needed to go find their parents. Then one of the policemen, a baldin' guy, saw that the porch had become uncomfortable, so he said it was time to go, and when we all trailed behind Pauline and Pa Campbell and Ma Campbell and Moms, we saw that they had put black-and-yellow tape across the creek right around the sinkhole with “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS” repeated on it, as if we needed to be told more than once.

Then one Fire Department first-aid guy, he said that with all that happened we should prob'ly all get checked out at the hospital. Well, I wanted to ride on the fire engine, but Moms said this was no time for fun and games, so instead they tossed me into the back of the squad car with Pauline and Frico. I didn't know what to say to her, so I kept my mouth shut. Tony and Doug went with Moms and Pa Campbell, and that whole ride into the city after 10.30 in the night was bizarre.

First of all I'd never been in a police car before. We rode along in pitch black with only the dull beams of the squad car hurryin' a few feet in front of us. Then, when the first overpass went slidin' by and we burst out into the light, I could feel the heat comin' on, like we were rollin' into an oven. The broken lines in the middle of the road slid under the car and made me think of those black-and-white keys on a piano playin' the same notes – the same sorrowful notes, over and over again, like the saddest thing in the world was happenin'. And it prob'ly was.

Look, I never reckoned Frico would go over the edge like that. I wanted him to stop dilly-dallyin' and do stuff, but I wasn't plannin' on
that
. I watched him in the cop car rearview mirror, and apart from his eyes lookin' like he was really
tired, it didn't seem like the whole thing bothered him one bit. Every time we passed a street light, those diamond-shaped shadows from the cage that separates police from prisoner in the squad car just kept sliding across his face. Even in the back of a police car, with his face in a shadow mask every few feet, that boy still looked innocent. But so did those Benet boys when they pulled them out of the earth. I closed my eyes to block out the image, but instead I trapped the whole thing in my head. Frico. Squash. Broadway.

I remember the crickets chirpin' slowly after we got back that night, like they were listenin' how many quarters Doug was countin' out into a can. He did it so slowly, prob'ly tryin' to make sense of what happened or feelin' guilty that he and Tony started the whole thing. Or maybe he just wanted to see how much money he had to help Moms pay back Ma Campbell for helpin' out with the hospital. He was like that. He said money was the only magic he believed in. Cool. But you wish he'd just make noise and get the countin' over and done with and stop the damn torture.

Speakin' of torture, I hope Calvin died in a hurry. Yes, Calvin died. Backhoe and his boys blasted our dog two times in the rampage. The second bullet, a full-metal-jacket, was to his head at close range against the foot of a tree where Calvin had curled up after taking one in the hindquarters. So, like Moms said, I made sure to recognize the tragedy of the human beings first.

Now, let me just say that Calvin was like a regular guy as well. He didn't give no trouble except for goin' under people's houses and likin' the Benets' girl dog. You could hang laundry on the line and that dog would walk away just out of respect, especially if it was white sheets. If he stayed near the sheets, it was just to guard them from those houseflies that make a hobby out of leaving nasty little specks on your best things. Calvin would watch a fly out of one sleepy eye and then – clop! – he'd take that speck-maker down and chew on him a
bit before droppin' him on the ground in a mangled mess. In the evenings, Calvin would jump and hug you with muddy feet just because you came home to the godforsaken swamp – and he still thought the world of you even when you failed a test or whatever. It's horrible how the Benets died. And Calvin, he didn't deserve to get shot and killed like that either. I'm just glad he made little replicas of himself before he left.

But back to Broadway and Squash. I thought about them for days and days. I told myself that in another life away from this swamp with its muggy nights and jungle laws, we could have all been friends. Our parents would all be super-rich and we'd share our bologna lunches and those little Hostess cakes with the cream fillin' in the middle that get advertised on the back of Archie comics. We'd go to one of those private schools where kids wore a blazer with a nice crest on it and everythin'. And they would've bathed regularly and combed their hair and known their grammar, and they wouldn't have minded being called by their right names.

Anyway, we didn't go to the funeral, but Moms, she got a programme from the church service, and on the front of it, they called them Herbert and Orville. Maan, after that I wanted to talk to somebody about everythin', but I had slim pickin's this time. Moms had warned off Pa Campbell about the gossipin'. Tony was goin' on and on with his nerd voice and explainin' how “sinkholes are natural occurrences in the wetlands – or maybe all that experimental frackin' that Backhoe started in the swamp a while back had caused the limestone to get weak”. Doug would just keep on countin' his money, and Moms, well, I was beginnin' to wonder what her hands in the air meant when she stood in front of those boys and their guns. Seems like she brought her hands and the bridge down at the same time, if I remember correctly. Or was it all Fricozoid's doin'? Or maybe she hit down the bridge and he conjured up the hole under it. Damn. Now, if those two were really workin' together, I was goin' to have a hard
time gettin' anything done. Maybe Frico was takin' instructions from her or the other way around. In any case, I was up a creek, so to speak, but I'd work it all out and keep goin', even with all the confusion.

Pa Campbell stood on his porch for four nights after the funeral, staring out towards the Gulf as if waiting for somethin'. It was September again, and the breezes were already shakin' paprika onto the trees. So he complained that he was cold all the time and he put on that woven Native cloth I told you about and started walkin' back and forth on the porch, shakin' and hummin'. He'd lean against the railin' for a long time, till I started thinkin' he was sleeping upright. Ma Campbell always came to take him back inside. Truth is, that old bastard was waitin' to talk to me, but under the circumstances that wouldn't happen for a while.

Now, usually on Turkey Day every year Moms would say we had a lot to be thankful for. But that year – Nineteen Eighty-five, man – she was right. That year she also said we couldn't have dinner and leave other members of our family unfed, even if they didn't deserve to eat. She had gotten a big ol' Butterball turkey from the owner of the restaurant where she worked and she carved off a piece and put some “real purdy gravy” with potatoes and some squash stuffed with shrimp in that gravy dish with the pink flowers on the side. She was experimenting with that tamarind sauce, but we didn't like it. Then when she was wrappin' the whole thing in foil to keep it warm, I heard Pa Campbell's truck startin' up, and he was honkin' the horn and makin' a hoopla. Momma told Tony and Frico and Doug and me to load up and go with Pa Campbell to visit Pops and bring him some Thanksgiving Dinner. That was a bit of a surprise – but the bigger shock was when Pa drove up to St Mary's Hospital in Slidell. Seems that Pops had taken a bad beatin' from God knows who, but I suspect Benet had somethin' to do with it. Pa Campbell always said
that man Benet had questionable connections in the city, and they'd do him a favour every now and then. One of Pops' hands was fractured, and his whole body was all swollen up like a tree trunk. They had to be keeping him hooked up to a hospital bed for observation on Thanksgivin' night.

“Took a tumble over some appliances, boys.”

“Yeah, some ninja stoves and radios, we copy dat.” Tony was hilarious, but that was not good timin' for sarcasm or makin' any kind of remark. Guess he was upset and wanted Pops to know that we knew he was in some kind of deal with Benet, but as usual Doug told him to shut it. Pops obviously didn't even know that his wife and kids had been almost gunned down after he bolted out of the swamp that night. He only heard that the Benet boys died in an accident and he mentioned it to Pa Campbell. Pa had nothin' to say about it, even though they did talk for a while and made up good after all those years. Twice Frico started sketchin' Pops's fractured arm – and twice he erased it. It's like he knew better than to mess with a boomerang spell, especially if it was Valerie Beaumont's work.

We were way outside visiting hours, so a sweet nurse in a tight uniform, I remember, she came by, smiled and threw us all out so nicely. Pa and Pops, they shook with left hands as we got up to go. On the way out, I let everybody walk ahead of me. Then I turned back when they weren't lookin' and went back to Pops' bed. He was surprised when I took a whiskey flask bottle from my back pocket with cinnamon, nutmeg, some paper with Moms' name and some of her hair in it. He didn't know I knew about this stuff.

“I want my moms' picture back,” I told him.

And I was surprised when he pulled it out from a knapsack beside the bed and handed it to me. I rolled the photo and tucked it into the bottle and gave the whole thing back to him.

“Now put your name in there and go toss it into the Gulf of Mexico for godssake... I want my pops back too.”

You could see that he wanted to hug me and everything, but he had only one hand workin'. Plus, like I said before, that would just have been too weird.

When we got back into the swamp it was late, cos Pa Campbell took a hell of a long time in the restroom at the hospital. I studied Moms' face to see if she was in the mood to answer any questions, but you can't read a woman that easily. I figured it might not be the best time to ask her about the archangel, so I decided on something intelligent-sounding like it could be for school or something. I asked her who Marie Laveau was, even though I knew already. She told me that Marie Laveau was a mixed-race voodoo priestess who was born free in Louisiana, and she'd been dead for over two hundred years.