The Rift (104 page)

Even in the predawn darkness Miz LaGrande looked frail, not quite recovered from the dysentery. But she was dressed finely in a linen summer dress, with her hair done and a straw sun hat pinned in place, even though there was no sun. She carried a little clutch bag, and she was crossing the Larousse back lawn with precise steps of her sandaled feet.

Omar’s special deputies, the heavily armed locals he’d summoned to his aid, stepped back to permit the old woman to pass.

“What are you doing here at this hour?” Omar asked. “You’ve been ill— you should be in bed.”

Mrs. Ashenden walked to the back door, looked up at Omar. “May we speak, Sheriff Paxton?” he said.

“I’m very busy, Mrs. Ashenden. We have a bad situation here.”

Her lips pursed. “So I gather. That is the situation we need to discuss.”

Omar’s head whirled. He drew back from the door. “I hope we can make this brief,” he said.

Mrs. Ashenden entered, and Sorrel Ellen, damn him, turned around and followed her. “This is not a safe place for either of you to be,” Omar said. “We’ve got a bunch of coldblooded killers in the library, and—”

Mrs. Ashenden carried with her the scent of talc and rose water. “I have had a visit, Sheriff,” she said crisply. “From a refugee who had been at the A.M.E. camp.”

Omar stood in astonished silence.
Think!
he told himself.

“The gentlemen described some of the activities inflicted on the people in the camp,” Mrs. Ashenden said. “The shootings, the riots. The— the activities that provoked this violent response.”

Sorrel blinked for a surprised moment at Mrs. Ashenden, then reached for his notebook.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Omar said. His voice seemed to be coming from another place, from far away. “I haven’t been to that camp in days. You know that. You know I’ve been at Clarendon.”

She looked up at him, eyes glittering in the moonlight. “That’s possible,” she said. “But in any case I fear that the situation has gone beyond our ability to cope with it. We shall need to open negotiations with those people in the library, and also summon aid from the emergency authorities, perhaps the national government. They can send in soldiers, FBI men, trained negotiators.”

Keep the fence up,
Omar thought.
Keep it up till dawn, at least. Then get over the Bayou on Merle’s boat and get out of here.

“They are murderers, ma’am,” Omar said. “They killed my deputies. They killed Merle out on the lawn not two hours ago. I am not negotiating with them.”

Mrs. Ashenden gave a precise little nod. “That is precisely why
you
should
not
negotiate,” she said. “That is why I want someone else to talk with those people in the library.”

“You know it will be a black eye for Spottswood Parish if we have to call in help. I think my department is capable of dealing with this once the sun comes up and we can get a better look at the situation.”

“Excuse me,” Sorrel said, his pen poised on his notebook. “Could I have some clarification regarding these shootings and riots that Mrs. Ashenden mentioned?”

Omar felt sweat breaking out on his throat, on his forehead. “You know two people got killed when we fenced the camp,” he said. “You know there was a riot when Dr. Patel and the Red Cross came to inspect the place. If anything else happened down there, Jedthus didn’t tell me about it.”

“Sheriff Paxton,” Mrs. Ashenden said, “you’ve lost control of the situation. Will you call for assistance, or will you not?”

Omar drew himself up, and hitched his gun belt higher on his hips. “Mrs. Ashenden,” he said. “You have no official standing in this parish. You can’t give me orders. Now, why don’t you go home and go to bed? You’ve been ill and should get your rest.”

“I will speak to members of the parish council,” she said.

“We have just had a major earthquake. I imagine they’re very busy.”

“I will use the nice satellite phones the Emergency Management people gave us.”

Omar looked down at her. Exasperation and headache beat each other to a standstill in his skull.

“Just let me alone to deal with this situation, Mrs. Ashenden,” he said. He reached out and took her arm. “I would appreciate it if you would leave and let me get on with my business.”

Mrs. Ashenden seemed a little taken aback as Omar took her through the kitchen to the back door— perhaps none of her inferiors had ever laid hands on her this way. Omar dropped her arm, then held the screen door open for her to pass out of the house.

“Just a moment, Sheriff,” Mrs. Ashenden said. “I have something here for you.” She reached into her little clutch bag.

“Watch out for those killers, now,” Omar said. “I don’t want you to get shot.” For a brief, hopeful moment he considered shooting the old lady himself— why not finish off as many of the people he hated as he could before vanishing over the bayou?— then concluded it wouldn’t be wise. Not in front of the press. Not in front of the boys, who might well understand eradicating a bunch of niggers, but maybe not an old white lady.

But the press, now, he thought. Why not send Sorrel Ellen off to the library like he wanted? Not as a negotiator but as a hostage? Hell, they’d probably cut his head off.

Now that was a happy thought.

Omar reached out, took Mrs. Ashenden’s elbow again. “Ma’am?” he said.

“Just a minute, Sheriff. It’s a thing I brought for you specially.” Her little bag didn’t have much room for anything, but she seemed to be taking her time finding it.

A silver teaspoon? Omar wondered. Some porcelain knick-knack?

“Ah,” she said brightly. “Here we go.”

It was a gun, Omar saw in surprise. It was small and silver and had two barrels, both of which were very large.

And when it went off, it made a very large noise.

*

Dawn rose over the water, turned the wavelets pale. The bass boat picked up speed, headed downriver as if those aboard knew where they were going.

But they didn’t. They were lost.

Bubba, the former bowman, thought they were in the Mississippi. Certainly the body of water in which they traveled was grand enough to be the great river. But the river had changed its course, he thought, and he wasn’t sure where the Mississippi was in relation to anything else.

They should have seen Vicksburg by now. They had been making fairly good time, at least for a small boat. Bayous were usually still, slack water, but there had actually been a perceptible current in the bayou as they’d set out, rainwater pouring off the land with two or three knots of force. The current alone should have carried them to the Mississippi by morning.

But there was a lot of low-lying back country in Louisiana, with many bayous and horseshoe lakes and chutes that had once been part of the Mississippi system. Bubba was inclined to think that the Mississippi had swallowed these old channels again, at least temporarily, and that they’d traveled along these during the night. They may have bypassed Vicksburg entirely.

In that case, however, they should have crossed an interstate highway and a line of railroad tracks. They hadn’t seen any such thing.

Though, if the highway and the railroad had been washed out over enough of its length, they might have passed through the gap at night without noticing.

Manon and Bubba debated this possibility as Manon headed downstream. The only map that either of them possessed was an AAA road atlas that one of the refugees had in his car, and the road map was singularly lacking in navigational data for inland waterways. Jason lay inert in his seat, turned to the port side, his body swaying slightly left and right as Manon turned to avoid debris. Since the river had broadened to its current magnitude the once-brisk current had grown sluggish, almost undetectable. The river was wide and gray and still, full of rubbish and timber. Sometimes whole rafts of trees moved downstream with their tangled roots uppermost, like floating islands overgrown by strange, bare, alien vegetation.

The water was so wide and still that it seemed almost a lake. It reminded Jason of something, but he couldn’t remember what.

Jason had drowsed through the night, half-conscious of the movement of the water, the trees shivering in aftershocks, the slow grind of pain in his back. By morning he had stiffened to the point where he could barely move. His face hurt. His throat was swollen from his near-strangulation of two days ago, and he could only relieve the sharp pain in his trachea by tilting his head to the left. He could breathe only in short little pants, like a winded dog. He suspected he now bore a strong resemblance to the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

But Arlette was alive. There were cuts on her face, but she was otherwise unharmed. She sat on the foredeck opposite him, her legs dangling into the cockpit. In her hands she cradled her grandfather’s watch, something she’d seen dangling across the chest of the red-haired deputy when he’d threatened her. Just seeing the watch had so overwhelmed her that she hadn’t been able to say a word in answer to the deputy’s questions.

Jason rested one hand on her bare knee. She smiled at him, that close-lipped Mona Lisa smile. When he looked at her, his pain faded beneath a warm surge of pleasure.

“I think we passed it,” Bubba said. “I think Vicksburg is way the hell behind us.”

He had replaced Manon at the controls of the boat. He had the AAA map of Louisiana propped in his lap, for all the world as if he was taking a car out for a Sunday outing.

He was a small, wizened man with skin parched and wrinkled as a raisin. He had a little mustache and knobby knuckles and narrow, peglike tobacco-stained teeth.

“What’s the next town, then?” Manon asked.

“Natchez. Thirty, forty mile, I guess.” His face broke into a grin. “Big ol’ gambling boat down there. I won two hundred dollar there, one time.”

“And if we turn around and head back to Vicksburg?” Manon asked.

“Same distance, maybe a little less. Best we go with the current, I reckon.”

Jason couldn’t work up much interest in the matter one way or another. He was just glad to be out of Spottswood Parish, glad to be on the river again. The river had become his home, his fate, the thing that nourished him. The longer he and Arlette stayed on the boat, the farther they could get from the forces that would separate them. If only it weren’t for Nick— if only he knew that Nick was safe— he would happily follow the river forever.

But now the river was strange, limpid and stagnant and steel-gray in the morning sun. It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t think what.

The boat swayed as Bubba steered clear of a raft of lumber. Gulls perched in the twisted roots.

And then Jason remembered where he’d seen a river like this before. “Oh, no,” he said.

Manon looked at him in concern. “What is it, honey?”

Jason straightened, clenched his teeth against the pain. “We’re in a, a reservoir,” he said. “The river’s all dammed up with crap. With—” He gasped in air, pointed at the raft of floating trees. “With that,” he said. The pain in his throat was intense and he tilted his lead to the left. “Nick and I ran into something like this upstream,” he said. “We don’t want to get caught in that dam, and we don’t want to be around when it breaks. You’re going to see rapids like you’ve never imagined, with timber instead of rocks.”

Bubba frowned. “Twelve year on the river,” he said, “I never heard of nothing like that. Not on a river big as this one.”

“You’ve never been in an earthquake this big before, either,” Jason said.

“I don’t know,” Bubba said, and scratched his chin. “There ain’t much current, that’s for sure.”

Jason looked up at Arlette. “Can you get my scope?” he said. “Look ahead and see if you can find anything ahead.”

Arlette put Gros-Papa’s watch in her pocket, then took the battered red Astroscan from one of the boat’s compartments and set it on the foredeck. Bubba throttled the outboard down, the boat settling onto its bow wave until the bass boat was barely making headway. Arlette put her eye to the scope. “It’s upside-down,” she said.

“Just look at the horizon,” Jason said. “Tell me what you see.”

Arlette adjusted the scope the wrong way, overcorrected, then finally found the horizon. “The river bends around to the left, I can’t see much,” she said. “But what I can see is white. Like fog or something.”

“Mist,” Jason croaked. He gulped a shallow breath. “That’s from water going over the falls.”

Arlette nudged the scope, panning along the horizon. Then she gave a start. “There’s a boat!” she cried. “A
big boat right ahead of us!”

Bubba grinned, showing his yellow peg teeth. “Now that’s the best news I heard in three weeks.”

He pushed the throttle forward. Jason winced at a jolt of pain and turned again to hang over the port side of the cockpit. The bow planed upward, and Arlette put the cap on the telescope to keep spray from spattering the lens, then returned the Astroscan to the nearest of the boat’s coolers. Delight danced in her eyes.

“It’s over!” she cried. “It’s over!”

Jason didn’t know whether he was pleased by this prospect or not.

Debris clattered on the hull, then was left bouncing in the wake. Rafts of logs were overtaken and left astern. Bubba leaned out over the starboard side, frowned at what he saw ahead.

“That’s not a boat,” he said. “That’s a barge.” He reached a hand to the throttle to lower his speed, then hesitated. “Hey, they’s people on board!” he said. “They must have lost their tow in that quake last night.”

Jason straightened again, biting back the pain, and peered over the bows. A slab-walled barge was clearly visible downstream, broadside to the current. He could barely make out two people on board, both waving frantically.

“Well,” Bubba said. “At least they can tell us where the hell we are.”

He throttled down as the bass boat neared the barge. It was loaded with what looked like huge steel bottles, and mooring hawsers trailed fore and aft.

As the noise of the outboard lessened and the bow dropped into the water, Jason heard a rumbling sound ahead and looked to see the horizon ahead filled with white mist.

“Look!” Jason said, pointing, and he hissed with pain at his own abrupt gesture. “Mist from the falls!” he panted. “There’s a dam ahead! We’ve got to get those people off the barge before it goes over the dam!”