The Rift (88 page)

THIRTY-TWO

The earthquake that was felt at Natchez on the 16th of December, has been severely felt above and below the mouth of the Ohio
—
we may expect detailed accounts of the damages soon. Travelers who have descended the river since, generally agree that a succession of shocks were felt for six days; that the river Mississippi was much agitated; that it frequently rose 3 and 4 feet, and fell again immediately; and that whole islands and parts of islands in the river sunk.

“An Observer,” Tuesday, January 14,1812

“You came from Rails Bluff?” the deputy said. “The place that’s on the news?”

Jason saw his own surprise reflected on Nick’s face. “On the news?” Nick repeated.

“The Army flew in there and took the place over. The radio hasn’t been talking about much else.”

Jason and the others looked at each other. If they had stayed in Brother Frankland’s camp, they might be living safely and happily on government bounty.

“Was there any shooting?” Nick asked.

“Some, I guess. They needed the Army and all.”

Well,
Jason thought,
maybe it was smart to have left anyway.

“Let’s get these people to the camp,” said the other deputy, the one without a uniform.

It was a strange, eerie world that Jason and his party had walked through, the mist floating overhead and graying the world in all directions, the floodway waters on one side and the flooded field on the other. When the police car rolled slowly out of the whiteness ahead it seemed to emerge from nothing at all, as if the mist itself had formed itself into the car, into the ghostlike occupants.

As soon as the car pulled to a stop in front of them and the deputies swung out onto the road, Nick ran up to the deputies and told them he needed to get to a phone to speak with the authorities about the camp they’d just escaped from in Arkansas.

“Rails Bluff, right?” the uniformed deputy said.

This deputy, obese and wearing a khaki uniform, seemed relaxed and talkative, but his partner radiated hostility. The other man was young, in his early twenties, and wore a mixture of military uniform and civilian dress, with his deputy’s star pinned to a hunter’s camouflage vest. He wore wraparound shades and glared through them at the four refugees, arms folded on his chest.

“Let’s get these people to the camp,” the younger deputy said. “They can listen to the news there.” He had a flat Northern voice that sounded a harsh contrast to the Southern speech Jason had been hearing for weeks.

The uniformed deputy hesitated. “Maybe we can take them to the camp in town,” he said.

The younger man just scowled. “There’s sickness in that camp. These people need to go to the
other
camp.” He nodded at Nick and Manon. “They
belong
there. You know that.”

“I guess.” Jason could hear reluctance in the voice of the uniformed deputy.

Jason looked from one deputy to the other. He didn’t know what he was sensing between the two, but he knew he didn’t like the vibe.

“Take us to a hotel,” Manon said. “I have a credit card. We can pay for hospitality.”

“No hotels in this parish, ma’am,” the uniformed deputy said. “Not in years. Sorry.”

“Boardinghouse?”

“Full up since the quake.”

“Perhaps we should talk to the district attorney,” Nick said. “We can provide evidence about what was happening at Rails Bluff.”

“Got to get you registered at the camp first,” the younger deputy said. “I’ll radio for a truck,” he added, and ducked into the car.

The uniformed deputy looked at Jason for a moment. “We could take the boy to another camp,” he ventured. “A camp for— for young folks.”

Jason looked at Arlette. “Can my friend come with me?”

“I’m afraid not, son. It’s for, uh, boys only.”

Jason turned to the deputy. “I’m staying with my friends,” he said.

The fat deputy gave him a strange look. Jason could feel a warning chill run up his spine. “I really think you’d like this other place better,” the deputy said.

Jason decided that he would not go anywhere with this man. He took a step closer to Nick. “I’m sticking with my friends,” he repeated.

The deputy just stared at him for a long moment, then said, “Fine. Your choice.”

The other deputy left the car and spoke to his partner, without even looking at Jason or his party. “The camp’s sending a truck.”

There was a long moment of silence. The silent mist hovered about them, sealing off the rest of the world. Jason looked at Nick, at the others, and drew away from the sheriff’s deputies. Nick and the others fell back a few paces as well.

“What’s happening here?” Jason said in an urgent whisper.

Nick looked over his shoulder at the silent deputies standing by their car. The two men stared back, and Jason thought of the black-eyed cormorants sitting above the flood. “I don’t know,” Nick said. “Maybe they’re sick of refugees here.”

“That’s not what it is.” Manon stood stiffly, spine straight, chin tilted up, and touched Arlette’s back. “Cracker cops,” she said. “They don’t like black people, that’s all. Especially educated, well-spoken black people.” She turned to Arlette.
“Souviens-toi qui tu es. Ces gents ne peuvent pas emporter ton amour-propre.”

Nick rubbed the healed wound on his left arm, the wound which— Jason suddenly remembered— had been inflicted by a deranged cop. “There’s more to it than that,” Nick said. “There’s something they’re not telling us.”

Jason shared Nick’s suspicion. “This reminds me of Rails Bluff,” he said. “Maybe we should just get in our boat and head back down the river.”

“Not without food,” Manon said.

Nick considered this. “Maybe we can just
buy
some food.”

These speculations were still unresolved when another vehicle appeared from the mist, a small white Toyota pickup truck. Two more men got out, both with deputies’ badges worn over civilian dress. Neither of them smiled, not even at the other deputies.

“We’re here to take you to the camp,” one of them said. “You-all got any more belongings than what you got with you?”

Manon walked toward them, head held high. “Not really,” she said.

“Where’s y’all’s boat?”

“We were wondering if we could just buy food,” Manon said. “Then we’d get back on our boat and head downriver to where we’ve got family.”

There was a glimmer of interest in the deputy’s eyes. “You got anything to buy food
with?”
he asked.

“A credit card,” Manon said.

The deputy lost interest. “Nobody’s taking credit cards. Cash or nothing.”

“I’ve got cash,” Nick said. A hundred and twenty-some dollars that had been sitting in his pocket since before the quake. “If you can take us to where the food is.”

The deputy hesitated. “We can buy the food for you,” he said.

Nick shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. There was some kind of racket here, police selling the refugees their rations, and he wasn’t having any part of it.

The deputy gestured toward the truck. “Get in back. There’s food in the camp.”

“We’re really not interested in going to this camp. Can you just take us to Shelburne City? We’ll get along fine once we get to town. We’re not
destitute.”

The deputies looked at each other. One of them shrugged. “Why not?” he said. “Get on in.”

Jason felt a decided reluctance to get in the Toyota. The situation was too strange: the highway elevated above the flood, the mist that masked the world, the uncommunicative deputies, the attempt to separate him from Nick and his family, so reminiscent of Frankland putting him in the young men’s camp ... But his objections were unclear, even to himself, and so he found himself following the others, getting in the back of the truck.

Rainwater sloshed around in the bed of the Toyota. Jason perched uneasily, with the others, on the sides of the truck bed. Jason noticed a shotgun and a rifle in a window rack in the truck cab.

The truck turned around and began moving slowly toward Shelburne City. As they moved farther into the country, the land on the right slowly rose and emerged from the flood, rows of immature cotton plants in red soil, the furrows silver with water. The highway left the levee top and continued into the country. Broad puddles shimmered on the blacktop. A few buildings appeared. Unlike Rails Bluff, where every building had been wrecked, the quakes here seemed to have left the buildings largely intact— windows and chimneys were gone, and shingles had been lost, but for the most part the homes seemed to have survived without major damage. Only some outbuildings, mostly ramshackle old barns, seemed to have collapsed altogether.

The truck slowed as it approached a roadblock, two vehicles drawn across the road with only a narrow space between them. A handful of deputies stood there, mostly in civilian dress or bits of military surplus, and they waved the Toyota through. The truck picked up speed as it drove down the highway, past a highway verge cluttered with abandoned vehicles, and then the Toyota swung suddenly across the highway toward the chainlink-and-razorwire fence that loomed behind the abandoned cars, and splashed and bounced across drowned ruts to the gate.

There was a somber refugee camp beyond the fence.

Huddled miserably beneath the low sky were scattered a strange collection of tents, awnings, and primitive wagons—
cotton
wagons, Jason recognized, cotton wagons with open sides of wire netting, and with canvas or plastic stretched on top to make dwellings.

Jason was shocked. The contrast with Frankland’s orderly camp left him appalled.

The truck slouched to a halt in front of the gate, where another pair of deputies waited, both with shotguns couched in their arms. People— black people— watched listlessly from behind tent flaps, through the wire netting of the cotton wagons, from beneath blankets or sleeping bags tented over their heads and shoulders.

The deputies in the truck bounded out. “Everyone out!” one of them said. For the first time, Jason saw, he was smiling.

Nick and his family rose to their feet and stared aghast at the camp. “I’m not going in there,” Nick said. “And neither is my family.”

Without a word one of the deputies, standing behind Nick, reached into the truck cab and drew the shotgun out of the rear window rack. Jason cried a warning, but the deputy was fast: he slammed the butt of the shotgun into one of Nick’s kidneys before Nick was aware of the threat. Nick gave a cry and fell to one knee. The deputy raised the shotgun again.

Fury flashed like steam through Jason’s veins, and he screamed. Without thought he found himself flying through the air at the deputy that had hit Nick, arms outstretched to claw open the man’s throat. Jason bowled the man over and their heads came together with a crack. The world spun in wild sick circles. Something hit him in the face, then a heavy boot stomped him in the stomach. He gasped and curled into a fetal ball, and then something dug into his throat and his wind was cut off. He clawed at his throat as the strangling-strap pulled him, half crawling and half falling, along the wet, rutted ground. Then he was flung onto the grass, and he heard the chain fence slam shut behind him.

Air sighed at last into his lungs, and he choked, began to cough. He pulled the ligature from around his throat and found that it was the Astroscan strap that he hadn’t slipped off before launching himself at the deputy. For a while Jason was sick, puking up burning acid from his empty stomach onto the grass. He heard Arlette sobbing, Nick muttering. Tears blinded him. Then a cool palm touched the back of his neck.

“Take it easy, Jason,” Manon said. There was a strange sadness in her voice. “We’ll be okay. Just take it easy,
cher.”

*

After the pain came rage. Nick staggered to his feet, breath hissing through his teeth with the agony that throbbed through his kidneys. Blind anger almost sent him lunging after the deputies, who were backing away from the closed gate with their shotguns leveled. With his bare hands he would tear the gate to shreds, then the armed men.

Arlette must have seen the fury in his face, because she ran to him and flung her arms around him.
“No, Daddy!”
she cried.
“Don’t!”

And he didn’t. He stood there, poised to launch himself at the deputies, and Arlette clung to him, her terrified, tear-stained face pressed to his chest. Then Nick shuddered as a wave of pain and nausea rolled through him, and he looked down at his daughter and raised a hand to caress the back of her head.

“It’s okay, honey,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”

The red rage faded from his mind as he stood holding Arlette and he became aware of Jason huddled on the ground nearby, Manon crouching over him, absently caressing his hair.

Somewhere a baby wailed. Nick glanced around, saw people approaching from all directions. Approaching cautiously, not yet convinced that shots wouldn’t be fired.

Black, he saw, all black. And the deputies all white.

A dreadful certainty began to chill his anger, the certainty of nightmare. The river had cast him up on an unknown shore, where some madman’s malevolent fantasy was being enacted.

*

A woman was walking up to him with a firm tread. She wore boots and bib overalls and a yellow T-shirt. Her white hair was shorn close to her scalp, and her skin was a deep ebony.

“I’m Deena Johnson,” she said. “Come with me, please. I’ll take care of the young one, and perhaps I might find you some food.”

Miss Deena Johnson performed some first aid on Nick’s and Jason’s abrasions, then found the newcomers some food: stale cheese and some kind of flat, greasy crackers that tasted as if they’d been buried in a pit for fifteen years; but it was the first food that Nick had eaten in almost two days, and he devoured everything that was put before him.

“Perhaps the young people might take a walk,” said Miss Deena, “and Nick and Manon and I can talk grownup business.”

She had an authoritative way of speaking, like the David women, that choked off debate before it began. Unlike the Davids, she had a way of not making it seem overbearing. Even Jason, who Nick suspected would bridle at being sent away because he wasn’t old enough to talk with the adults, accepted Deena’s ruling without protest, and left the dining tent along with Arlette.