The Rift (67 page)

TWENTY-FIVE

It was now light, and we had an opportunity of beholding, in full extent, all the horrors of our situation. During the first four shocks, tremendous and uninterrupted explosions, resembling a discharge of artillery, was heard from the opposite shore; at that time I imported them to the falling of the river banks. This fifth shock explained the real cause. Whenever the veins of the earthquake ran, there was a volcanic discharge of combustible matter to a great height, as incessant rumbling was heard below, and the bed of the river was excessively agitated, whilst the water assumed a turbid and boiling appearance
—
near our boat a spout of confined air, breaking its way through the waters, burst forth and with a loud report discharged mud, sticks, &c, from the river’s bed, at least thirty feet above the surface. These spoutings were frequent, and in many places appeared to rise to the very Heavens.
—
Large trees, which had lain for ages at the bottom of the river, were shot up in thousands of instances, some with their roots uppermost and their tops planted; others were hurled into the air; many again were only loosened, and floated upon the surface. Never was a scene more replete with terrific threatenings of death; with the most lively sense of this awful crisis, we contemplated in mute astonishment a scene which completely beggars all description and of which the most glowing imagination is inadequate to form a picture. Here the earth, river, &c. torn with furious convulsions, opened in huge trenches, whose deep jaws were instantaneously closed; there through a thousand vents sulphureous streams gushed from its very bowels, leaving vast and almost unfathomable caverns. Every where nature itself seemed tottering on the verge of dissolution. Encompassed with the most alarming dangers, the manly presence of mind and heroic fortitude of the men were all that saved them. It was a struggle for existence itself, and the mede to be purchased was our lives.

Narrative of Mr. Pierce, December 25, 1811

“Oh it’s just lovely,” Wilona said. “Miz LaGrande has moved beds in, and she’s divided the big rooms into wards. She’s so gracious to everybody, even the ones who are in pain and shouting for help.” She shook her head. “Those poor people. Broken bones, most of them. Some bad burns. But Dr. Patel is wonderful! I don’t think he’s slept in days.”

She looked down at her drink. “I’m getting used to Co-Cola warm, you know that?”

Warm because there was no ice. Electricity had still not been restored to Hardee, even though most of Shelburne City had power.

Some things never changed.

Wilona sat on the couch in the old double shotgun with her feet tucked under her. Omar sat with a warm beer in his easy chair, gazing with heavy-lidded eyes at the dead television set.

“We lost a little colored girl this morning,” Wilona said. “No older than six. Her mama crashed the car into a power pole during the quake. I held the little girl’s hand till she passed, and her mama held the other.” A look of melancholy crossed her face. “Gone where the woodbine twineth,” she sighed.

Omar said nothing.

“Mrs. Ashenden was so kind to the little girl’s mama afterward. Sat her down in the kitchen and talked to her for half an hour.”

“Did Miz LaGrande give her any macaroons?” he said. “Serve her off the good china?”

Wilona looked cross. “You are so tacky sometimes.”

“
Everybody’s
been working hard,” Omar said. “The old lady shouldn’t get any special credit. I’ve been dealing with criminals and drug addicts. I’d like to see Miz LaGrande do
that
.”

“I think you’re being too negative,” said Wilona.

“Miz LaGrande’s had her foot on my neck from the day I was born.”

Omar turned his head at the sound of a car pulling up in front of their house. David let himself in through the screen door, took off his gun belt, and put it on the sofa as he kissed his mother.

“We were expecting you earlier,” Wilona said.

“I was with Micah Knox and his buddies.” David sat on the couch next to Wilona. “We had a few beers and chewed the fat for a while. He’s an interesting guy.”

“Be careful around him,” Omar said.

David looked at Omar in surprise. “He agrees with
you,
Dad. That’s why he’s here.”

“Just be careful. That’s all I ask.”

“But he’s so polite,” Wilona said. “So polite he’s almost Southern. He and his friends helped fix up our house.”

“David,” Omar said, and looked at his son. “He’s not one of
us.
Okay?”

David hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Okay, Dad,” he said.

Omar turned to stare at the dead television again. “Maybe I’ll just go to bed,” he said.

*

The big military copters flew into Shelburne City in mid-morning. Judge Moseley had directed them to the fields adjacent to the big house at Clarendon— an easy landmark for the chopper pilots— and the parish had trucks available to receive the government’s bounty. Surplus cheese, rice, butter, and flour were unloaded, along with powdered milk, dried oatmeal, baby formula, rolls of plastic sheeting, two crated generators, water purification gear, and some moth-eaten old military tents that smelled as if they’d lain in a government warehouse since the Korean War. Big plastic bladders of gasoline and diesel fuel were rolled off the helicopters, and a man from the Emergency Management Agency— he looked like the worst case of overwork Omar had ever seen, eyes red, beard scruffy, skin flaking from sunburn— handed out a case of Iridium cellphones so that parish officials could stay in touch with each other and the world.

Then all the government people got back on their helicopters and roared away. They said they had work elsewhere, they would bring another shipment of food in a few days, and the parish should call if they needed help, but they left so quickly that Omar figured they didn’t want to spend any more time in Spottswood Parish than necessary.

To hell with them, Omar decided.

He got some of the food on the trucks, along with most of his force of deputies and the specials, and rolled them onto the Hess-Meier cotton field opposite the A.M.E. camp. He had instructed the guards there not to permit anyone to cross the road until the food was ready to be distributed. Then he let the people cross, no more than twenty at a time, to get their names on a list and draw rations. He had the parents and children cross the road first. Once they crossed into the cotton field, no one was allowed to return to the camp.

Once they were all away from the camp, Omar gave the signal. And his deputies, including Knox and his Crusaders, swarmed into the camp to search for firearms and contraband.

When the refugees saw what was going on, there was an outcry, and they surged toward the road in a swarm— but there were deputies in their path, with shotguns, and Omar shouting on a bullhorn, telling the refugees that the search was for weapons and drugs, that nobody was going to be arrested or get into trouble, but that the camp had to be made safe.

He pulled it off, just barely. There were some young men who stood on the far edge of the bar ditch and glared, their bodies trembling with the urge to violence, faces and bodies frozen in fury while others swarmed behind them, shouting taunts and abuse.

Many of the refugees, he noticed, didn’t seem concerned by the search at all. They were a lot more interested in the food.

Everything in the camp was searched, even the cars— Omar had brought a locksmith to get into locked vehicles and trunks. Almost fifty firearms were found, along with bags of reefer, rock cocaine, a little baggie of brown heroin, and a whole sack of paraphernalia, ranging from a marijuana bong in the form of Godzilla to a very well-used syringe.

With any luck, some video cameras would disappear as well. In his briefing, Omar had mentioned that this would not be an occurrence that he would view as a tragedy.

“Sheriff! Sheriff, what’s this?” One of his special deputies bounded eagerly across the road, holding out a small screw-top bottle half-filled with white lumps. “Is it crack cocaine or what?”

Omar opened the screw top, held it below his nose, took a careful sniff. He screwed the top on and handed it back.

“Moth balls,” he said.

The deputy was crestfallen. “I thought I’d found a big stash of something.”

“Better luck next time.”

Omar turned to the refugees and raised his bullhorn. “When the emergency is over,” Omar told them, “you can apply to the sheriff’s department for a return of your property. Please be ready to furnish a description.”

Steel wool,
he imagined on a form,
small blowtorch, crack pipe made from old Dr. Pepper bottle.

Some of these boys, he figured, were natural sorry to the point where they’d probably apply to get their drugs back.

After the search had been made, and the guns and other gear toted out of the camp and put in the trunks of the deputies’ cars, Omar and his deputies stepped back and let the refugees swarm back to the A.M.E. camp in one great mass.

The Reverend Dr. Morris, Omar saw, had left the group and was approaching. Without, Omar saw, his usual scowling escort.

“There are still some things we need, Sheriff,” Morris said.

Omar nodded. “Can you give me a list?”

“Some people need medication. Insulin is the most urgent, but we’ve got manic-depressives, folks with hypertension, thyroid cases ...”

“If you’ll furnish a list to the parish authorities ...” Omar began. He really wasn’t in charge of medication, except for the illegal kind.

“I was hoping we could get Dr. Patel here to write some prescriptions.”

“He’s at Clarendon looking after the injured. I could talk to him, but maybe it’s just better if you make up a list and visit him yourself.”

“We also need shelter. We don’t have many tents.”

“We didn’t get much in that line,” Omar considered. The mangy tents that came off the helicopters had been delivered to the Clarendon camp. Omar suspected there was something in the way of a tent shortage in the U.S. right now.

“We can give you some plastic sheeting,” he said.

“We’ll take it. But I was thinking you might send us some cotton wagons. We could park them in the camp, put plastic sheeting or canvas on the top, and they could hold quite a few people.”

“
Cotton wagons
,”
Omar repeated.

There were scores of them in the parish, he knew. They were big open wagons with chicken-wire sides, used during the time of the cotton harvest to carry freshly picked cotton to the gins. Wisps of cotton blew across the roads at that season, caught in trees and fences, piled in the ditches like a strange summer frost. Cotton wagons choked the roads, slow-moving targets often as not drawn at five miles per hour by a tractor, sometimes even by a mule. The wagons were unlit and dangerous at night, the cause of many an accident as fast-moving cars piled into them from behind. The rest of the year the wagons sat in barns or fields, useless.

“I’ll put out a call for cotton wagons, Reverend,” Omar nodded.

Black folks wanted to live in cotton wagons, it was all one to him.

Omar returned to his car, saw the firearms piled in his open trunk.
Real
guns, he saw. Glocks, Colts, Remingtons. And all the ammunition you’d need to stage a small war.

Tomorrow,
Omar thought as he looked at the guns piled into the trunk of his cruiser,
we better do this to the white folks’ camp.

There was the sound of distant thunder to the north. The earth trembled to an aftershock.

Micah Knox strolled up, and with an elaborate gesture pulled a large gold pocket watch that was on the end of the chain he’d been wearing. He opened the watch cover, looked at the dial. Bells in the watch played “Claire de Lune.”

“One hour and twenty minutes,” he said. “Pretty efficient, Omar, with so many people who ain’t been trained for police work.” He snapped the watch shut and put it in his pocket. “I think we got some real potential, here. Don’t you?”

“Your people will get more practice at Clarendon,” Omar said. “That’s where we’re going next.” He looked at his own watch. “We’ll have a bite, then get there just in time for their noon meal.”

He had less trouble searching the Clarendon camp, but he collected many more firearms. The Clarendon camp, he decided, was going to be more trouble: it was closer to town, and people kept wandering off the camp limits into Shelburne City.

He wondered if he could get the parish council’s permission to fence it off somehow. The parish was a little short of food and hospitality, but there was plenty of fencing material.

*

Hunger burned in Nick as the boy Orville guided him to Rails Bluff. In Rails Bluff there were fourteen people who came off boats from Toussaint two days before, and according to the boy one of them sounded like Arlette.

Yearning filled Nick to the brim. He saw Arlette every time he closed his eyes.

Love, your daughter.
And a row of hearts.

Orville was twelve years old, and he, his older brother, and his uncle the church deacon had been sent out the day before, after the second big quake, to look for refugees and guide them to Rails Bluff. Orville had joined Jason and Nick as guide, while the others continued their search. He hadn’t looked twice at the firearms piled around the boat. Guns weren’t anything to Orville one way or another, just a part of the background.

The way to Rails Bluff was difficult, but not as difficult as their earlier wanderings had been. Orville’s father had blazed a trail through the wreckage, and though there was still a lot of tree trunks that had drifted back into the channel and needed to be shoved out of the way, it was easier with much of the work already done. And part of the journey was along the Arkansas River, which though flooded and nearly choked with debris was open to movement by small boats.

Jason was quiet, Nick noticed, but he did his job. Nick couldn’t manage to concern himself with the boy’s moods, though, not with his daughter’s presence tingling through his mind.

There was a rumble, and the boat tilted to port as something large and solid thundered along its aluminum bottom. Nick cut the throttle and jumped to the stern to tip the outboard up, out of the water, so its prop wouldn’t be sheared off.