The Rift (52 page)

Nick felt a lump in his throat. Nick put an arm around the boy, hugged him for a moment. Jason accepted the touch, but otherwise did not respond. “I’ll call first and tell him about your mom,” Nick offered, “if you don’t want to do it.”

Jason shook his head. “That’s my job, I guess,” he said. He sighed. “I’ll probably just get his answering machine, anyway.”

Nick dropped his arm, looked into Jason’s eyes. “When he plays that machine,” he said, “And finds out you’re alive, he’ll be the happiest man in the world. Believe me.”

There was a sudden glare of light as
Beluthahatchie’s
lights came on. Not just the navigation lights, but floodlights as well, the superstructure clearly illuminated. The captain was making certain that his stranded vessel was visible to any other traffic on the river.

Jason blinked in the strong light, started to say something, then fell silent. Swallows flitted over the water just beyond
Beluthahatchie’s
pool of light. Then Jason tried again.

“When you were talking to your daughter,” he said, “you said somebody— I don’t remember the name— the person didn’t make it.” He looked at Nick. “Was that your wife?”

Nick shook his head. “Viondi,” he said. “My best friend. He was . . .” His voice trailed away, and he tried again. “A cop shot him. Thought he was a looter, I guess, but all he was carrying was his own stuff from the car.” He touched the bandaged wound on his arm. “Man tried to shoot me, too, but I ran.“

“I’m sorry,” Jason said.

“Me too.”

“I was kind of mad at you,” Jason said, “because you had a family, and I didn’t. But I guess you’ve lost somebody, too.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why you didn’t want to go near the police the other day.”

Nick’s nerves hummed to a memory of the terror that seized him then, had clamped down on his mind and made him steer the bass boat away from shore.

“That’s right,” he said. “I was scared they’d shoot me then and there.”

Darkness swallowed the far bank. Jason’s shadowed expression was hard to read. “We’ve been rescued,” he said. “So tell me—
why do I feel so awful
?”

“Till now we were just trying to survive,” Nick said. “Now we have time to feel.” Strange, he thought, to think of emotion as a luxury.

“Almost makes me want to go back on the river,” Jason said. “As long as I was on the river, I didn’t have to think about things. The river was, like, our fate. It wouldn’t let us go, but it kept us safe.”

“We made it, Jason,” Nick said. “There’s no reason to feel bad about that.”

Jason seemed unconvinced. “I guess,” he said.

He gazed out onto the river. “I keep thinking I could have saved my mother,” he said. “If I’d known about that trolling motor, maybe I could have taken the boat through the flood and pulled her out of the house. If only I’d known a little more about how things worked.”

“That’s not your fault, Jase. It wasn’t even your boat. You can’t be blamed for not knowing that motor was hidden under the deck.”

“I suppose,” he said reluctantly.

“We’re not to blame for being alive. It’s not our fault. And the people who didn’t make it, it’s not their fault, either. They’d be with us if they could.”

Jason looked out at the dark river. “I know,” he said.

Well,
Nick thought,
either this has made an impression or it hasn’t. No sense in beating a dead horse, no less a live one.

“Hey,” he said. “Cook’s frying up a feast for us. I stay on this boat much longer, I’m going to gain fifteen pounds.”

Jason gave him a wry look. “You’re telling me it’s time to eat, right?”

“Only if you’re hungry. You want to stay out here and think for a while, that’s fine.”

Jason hesitated for a moment, then threw his leg over the gunwale and dropped to the deck. “Might as well have dinner,” he said.

Nick had underestimated dinner on the
Beluthahatchie.
In addition to all the fried food, there was potato salad, red beans and rice, corn bread, and icebox pie for dessert. Nick couldn’t understand why all the crew didn’t look like blimps.

Nick and Jason told Captain Joe what they knew of the river north of their location. He was impressed that they’d survived the poison gas at Helena— he’d been worried that it was still there, clouds of the stuff hovering over the river like fog. The captain told them what he and his crew had heard on radio broadcasts. “Ain’t no harbors on this river no more,” he said. “All wrecked or closed. When I got the boss man on the radio, he told me to get this boat into the Ohio as soon as I can get her afloat. Nearest berth’s in Cincinnati.”

“There are rapids between here and Cairo,” Jason said. “I went down them.”

“Waterfalls, too,” Joe said, to Jason’s surprise. “But they ain’t so bad as they were. Old Man River, he gon’ wear down them rough spots. By the time we get afloat again, I figure them chutes are gonna be safe enough for
Beluthahatchie.
Maybe I’ll have to moor the tow somewhere where I can pick it up later— boss man says I can do that— but we’ll make Cincinnati okay, I guess.” He looked at his watch and gave a shout of joy. “It’s eight o’clock! Time for
Dr. Who
.”

They watched in surprise as Captain Joe jumped up from the table and headed aft. Nick looked at the other crew.

“Might as well join the captain,” one of them said. “He likes company when he watches TV.”

They followed Captain Joe into a little crew lounge aft of the dining room, where they found the captain digging through a cabinet filled with a large collection of videotapes. “You like
Dr. Who
?”
he asked.

“Never seen it,” Nick said.

“Well, podnah, you got yourself a treat in store. I watch
Dr. Who
every night at eight, unless I got business or a watch to stand.”

Nick didn’t make much sense of the video— it seemed to be a middle episode of a series— but he enjoyed Captain Joe’s narration, a continuous discourse on the various actors who had played the Doctor over the years, the changes in the theme music, and footnotes on the various minor characters. He talked more than he watched the television, but Nick figured that Joe had seen the episode a hundred times anyway.

As the closing credits ran, Jason rose from his chair. “Thanks for the show,” he said.

“I hope you liked it.”

“I was wondering,” Jason said, “can I ask you for a favor?”

“I reckon you can
ask.”
The captain grinned.

“I wonder if I could use your radio.” Jason hesitated. “I thought about someone I could call.”

“I can do that,” Captain Joe said.

Nick decided not to go with Jason, to give the boy some privacy. He waited in the lounge, staring at the empty eye of the television. Jason returned after ten minutes or so, just stood in the doorway while his eyes brooded over the little lounge.

“Everything go okay?” Nick asked.

“I got the answering machine,” Jason said.

“You said that you might.” Nick gestured at the TV set, the recorder. “You want to watch a movie or something?”

Jason shook his head. “I’m going to take a shower, if I can.”

The boy left. Nick let his head loll back on his chair, raised a hand to touch Arlette’s necklace in his breast pocket. One day soon he would give it to her. He knew that now.

It was just possible, he supposed, that now he would actually manage to relax.

*

“Charlie?” It was his neighbor, Bill Clemmons, the father of the girl who’d talked to him yesterday— or was it the day before? Or the day before that?

“Yeah, Bill?” Charlie, sweating in the driver’s seat of the BMW, gave his neighbor a smile. “What can I do for you?”

“You doin’ okay, Charlie?” His neighbor seemed concerned. Looked at the empty wine bottles in the car.

“I’m fine, Bill. Thanks for asking.”

Bill had a smear of white on his nose, zinc oxide against the sun. “I didn’t know if you’d heard,” he said, “they’ve got a refugee center down at Cameron Brown Park. They’re pitching tents and distributing food.”

Charlie kept the smile plastered to his face.
Never let them see you down,
that was his motto.

“Thanks for telling me,” he said. “Did the radio mention when they’re going to get the phones fixed?”

Bill shook his head. “They’re workin’ on it. The phone companies are bringing in lots of workers from out of state. But transportation is so busted up that priority is being given to food and shelter.”

“Well,” Charlie said. “I guess there are plenty of homeless people.”

“You think you might head on down there?”

Charlie shook his head. He could not see himself at a refugee camp, living in tents, holding out his begging bowl for rice as if he were a starving African farmer. This was not a place for the Lord of the Jungle.

All he needed was a place that would cash a
check.

“I’m doing fine, Bill,” Charlie said.

“You sure, Charlie?”

Charlie winked at him. “You bet.”

“Well,” Bill said, “I guess you know best.”

*

“Pastor Frankland?” said Farley Stipes. “We have a little problem— I caught a boy trying to steal some food.”

After the discouraging hour with Father Robitaille, a difficulty like this was just what Frankland needed. He felt his heart lighten. “What did you do?”

Farley was one of the Christian Gun Club kids, sixteen and red-haired and very proud of his white armband. “It was Elmore— Janey Wilcox’s boy. He’s not even ten years old, and he was trying to get a candy bar from that stack of stuff we brought back from the Piggly Wiggly, all that junk food we ain’t sorted through yet. So I ain’t done nothing other than told him to wait for you. Doris Meachum is watching him.”

“Does Janey know?”

“Oh yeah. She’s really sorry, pastor. She wants to talk to you.”

“I’ll speak to her right away,”
Frankland said. “Why don’t you see if you can’t find Sister Sheryl? And then we want to round up all the kids— all of ’em, I think, to hear our message.”

This was the kind of pastoral problem that Frankland liked: simple, straightforward, with a moral to be absorbed by all.

So he talked to Janey Wilcox and explained the situation. Janey was anxious and eager to please and full of apology. When Sheryl arrived, Frankland briefed her, and then the two of them rounded up all the children they could find.

While the boy Elmore apprehensively stood by, Frankland wished the children a hearty heaven-o, and he explained to the children— and to the couple dozen of adults who had turned up to watch— that things were different now. Some of you children, Frankland said, thought that maybe it was all right to take a cookie or a candy bar when you wanted it. And maybe in normal times it
was
okay, but these weren’t normal times. There was an emergency, and there were a lot of people who needed to be fed, and only a limited supply of food. They had gathered all the food they could find to assure that all of God’s people were fed. So it wasn’t just anybody’s food anymore, this was God’s food. And people shouldn’t steal from God.

And Frankland turned to Elmore Wilcox, whose eyes were beginning to fill with tears. And Frankland told the boy that he was sorry, but he was going to have to punish him for stealing God’s food. And that Elmore shouldn’t think that this was because Frankland hated him, or that anyone hated him. Everyone here loved Elmore, God and Frankland included. But everyone here had to see that people shouldn’t steal God’s food.

Now, Frankland went on as Elmore trembled, he was not going to punish Elmore himself, because he was a strong man and didn’t want to cause injury. So his wife Sheryl would give Elmore his punishment.

They bent Elmore over a chair and Sheryl gave him twenty whacks with a belt. And then Frankland and Sheryl hugged the wailing child and assured him of God’s love, and gave him back to his mother. Frankland went in search of Hilkiah, because this would furnish a reason to put an armed guard on the food supply.

“Well,” he said, “I think it’s time to raise that slab.”

“I’ll get the winch, pastor.”

Frankland glanced over the encampment that surrounded the church. It was still clearly a work in progress. “I think we need to reorganize,” he said. “Put the married women with children in the church— that’s the safest place. Have the food supply nearby. Separate areas for the men and the women without children.”

Because otherwise, Frankland thought, the teenagers were going to pair up and start sneaking off for reasons of which the Family Values Campaign would not approve. Probably the adults, too. Best just to keep the sexes apart.

While Hilkiah brought up a triangle, a block, and Frankland’s pickup with the winch, Frankland found Sheryl and talked over the camp’s rearrangement.

“Teddy bear,” Sheryl said, “we can move the tents around all we like, but what we really need is
food.”

“Maybe I’ll get the boys out to that Wal-Mart tomorrow.”

“We’ve got enough food for maybe six weeks as it is. If we can get catfish from the growers, that’ll stretch our time. But at twenty-five hundred calories per day for each adult, and five thousand if they’re doing any kind of hard work, we’re going to be stretching it to get through the end of June. And if your people keep bringing in more refugees, then the situation will get worse.”

“I can’t leave refugees out there to die, sweetie pie.”

“I know that.”

“I can talk to the farmers. If they can plow under some of their cotton and plant foodstuffs ...”

“They won’t be ready in time, teddy bear,” Sheryl said. “The soy is
already
in the ground and it won’t ripen till fall.”

Frankland frowned, hitched up his pants. “It’s not their bellies that are important,” he said. “It’s their souls.”

“Well,” Sheryl conceded, “that’s true. But if mammas can’t feed their babies, that’s gonna make ’em crazy.”

Frankland considered it. “Cut back on the number of calories. If people are just lying around camp, they won’t need as much. Just give the full ration to the scavenging and rescue parties.”

“That might work for a
while,
but—”

“A while might be all we need, with the Lord’s help. The Tribulation will last seven years, but there’s no guarantee that any of us will survive it. If we can just give them all a good
start
.”