The Rift (93 page)

“Nick, I’m worried about the children,” Manon said. “I haven’t seen Arlette since nightfall.”

“Where can she go?” Nick said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she whispered. “What if that boy’s talked her into going over the fence?”

Nick breathed in the fresh air and considered this. “We haven’t heard shots, right?” he said. “So if they’ve gone, they’ve got clean away. We should be grateful they won’t be here for what will happen tomorrow.”

“Damn it, Nick!” Manon flared. “I want you to help me look! This is your
family
— this isn’t an army, this isn’t some soldier you’ve sent away on a mission; this is
our baby
we’re talking about.”

Nick looked at her. “If they’ve escaped, it’s a good thing. Jason knows enough about survival and the river to get away if he can find a boat. If he can get to the authorities, he may be able to save our lives.”

Nick’s eyes were adjusting slowly to the darkness. He saw Manon outlined before him, her tall, proud figure standing by the corner of the cookhouse. “And what if they haven’t tried their escape yet? What if they
didn’t
try to escape?” Manon demanded. “What if they’re together somewhere? Off in the night doing what they shouldn’t?”

Nick took in a breath of night air. “Good,” he decided.

Manon’s outrage was palpable.
“Good? Good?
Is that what I heard you say?”

Nick licked his lips. “I wouldn’t want either of them to die without knowing love.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Manon moaned. “Oh, my God.” He could hear the keen-edged grief suddenly enter her voice. “Oh, my God, that you would say they will die.”

Nick’s head swam. “I’ll do my best to see that they don’t,” he said. He was tired, far too tired, to offer any degree of false reassurance.

“You’re blaming me. I know you are.”

Nick looked at Manon in surprise. “Why would I do that?” he asked.

“I know it’s true.”

“Daddy! Daddy!” Arlette’s urgent whisper cut through the night. “We found someone! Someone from the outside!”

Nick looked up in surprise as Arlette and Jason came out of the darkness followed by a strange figure, a bizarre bearded apparition, as if a scarecrow dressed in second-hand clothes had come suddenly to life. To his astonishment, Nick saw that the scarecrow was carrying a gun over one shoulder.

“Bonsoir,”
the man said. “I am Cudgel, me. I come see how you get along.”

Nick took Cudgel to the Escape Committee, and they set out to round up as many of the absent members as possible, along with any from the Camp Committee who could be found. Rumor spread swiftly, and a small crowd gathered, murmuring in the darkness as speculation spread among them. Cudgel seemed taken aback by all the sensation. Nick urgently whispered for everyone who didn’t have business here to get away, that such a crowd would only attract attention and, maybe, bullets. Reluctantly, the crowd melted into the darkness. Jason and Arlette remained, and Nick saw a defiant look in Jason’s eye. Nick decided he might as well let them stay. They’d found the man, after all, or he’d found them.

Cudgel sat down amid the remaining people, slid the rifle off his shoulder into his lap. He wore a bartered wide-brimmed hat decorated with feathers, and his long hair was so tangled that it hung down his back like a wiry horsehair mat. His beard, spread over his chest, looked like Spanish moss, and his eyes glimmered yellow in the night. He smelled as if he’d been wrapped in newspaper and buried for twenty years.

“How’d you get here?” someone on the committee asked. “How’d you get past the guards?”

“I move quiet, me,” Cudgel said. For all his outlandish appearance, his voice was soft, and he seemed a little intimidated by the presence of all these curious people. “You go hunting, you, you want nice goose
pour le diner,
you sho-nuff creep that goose. You no let that bull-goose see you, that goose, so you creep him goose.”

There was a moment of bewildered silence. It took Nick a moment to work out that “creeping the goose” was something done while hunting, slipping past the sentinel geese to get within shooting distance of the flock.

“I’ve been in your house!” Jason said suddenly. “Down in the floodway, that treehouse!”

Cudgel looked at him. “I live there sometime,
mais oui.
In spring I go for crawfish, me, in fall for shooting.” He smiled, yellow teeth flashing in the starlight. “Plenty birds there, come autumn.”

“Can you take some others out?” Nick asked. “Can you take some of the children to safety? Or some messengers who can try to find help?”

Cudgel thought about this for a long moment. “I consider that could be hard, me,” he said. “You got a man can creep the goose for true?”

That looked like to set off an argument about who in the camp was qualified, and who not, and since Nick doubted that anyone in the camp had ever crept a goose or was likely to try, he wanted to cut the discussion before it got started.

“Why did you come here, Mr. Cudgel?” he asked.

Cudgel frowned. “I see them kill, them trash,” Cudgel said. “Down Cattrall’s old cotton field,
la bas,
by where I go fish sometime in
bateau,
that sixty acres down by the bayou. They line them up, them black boys, and—” He raised a hand, mimed a finger squeezing a trigger. Made a sound,
psssh,
like a shot being fired.

There was a horrified cry from Manon. Stifled groans from the others.

“C’est vrai,”
Cudgel said. “So I think, why for them do that, them. Saw the Paxton boy, son of the High Sheriff, that Paxton boy, so I knew them be Kluxers. So I come the camp here, me, see what I find.” He smiled again. “Creep the goose, me. Talk you fellas.”

“We need help,” said a woman on the Camp Committee. “Can you help us? You’ve seen what they do. Can you tell someone?”

Cudgel looked thoughtful. “I pretty grand fella, me, down Plaquemines Parish. Everybody know Cudgel there. But here—” He shook his head. “Nobody know Cudgel. I don’t got but ten cents, me. Ain’t nobody listen Cudgel up here.”

The woman persisted. “Can you take someone out to speak to the locals? Or phone for help?”

“No phone here, no,” Cudgel said. “Not since the earth-shake. But someone come out, some fella, come out the camp, I take him where you say, me.”

“The A.M.E. people used to come here, bring food and look after us. Brother Morris and his family, other people from the community. Then they stopped coming. And the— the hateful things— began to happen. Can you get word to Brother Morris?”

“Morris, he dead, that Morris.”

There was another collective sound from Cudgel’s audience, another half-gasp, half-groan.

“They say he been shot, Morris,” Cudgel said. “Say a man from the camp did the shooting, them. But I take a man wherever you say, me. I take him Morris wife, you want.”

“Yes. To Mrs. Morris. Yes, that would be good.”

Nick listened to this discussion with only partial attention. His mind was factoring Cudgel’s presence into his plans, this strange, stealthy swamp man who lived by his wits and by hunting, who carried a rifle over one shoulder and knew the country like the back of his hand.

“Mr. Cudgel,” he said, “I think we may have to fight, whether you get a chance to talk to Mrs. Morris or not. If we don’t fight to defend ourselves, we may have more people taken from the camp and killed before any help can come. You have a gun, you hunt and trap— can you help us fight?”

There was a sudden silence in the small group. Cudgel considered Nick’s words, then nodded. “I do what you want, me. But if you can fight, what for you here? You got guns, you men, why never you shoot a mess o’ Kluxer ’long time back?”

“We only have a few handguns,” Nick said. “Everything else was taken. But I’m making other weapons— claymore mines, if you know what those are.”

“He quoi!”
Cudgel said in surprise, and a moment later a sudden broad smile lit his face. He held up a hand, thumb crooked over his fist, and he pressed the thumb down.
“Took,”
he said, a little falsetto birdlike sound.

Nick realized, to his astonishment, that Cudgel was miming his thumb pressing the button of a detonator.

“I know them claymores, me,” Cudgel said. “I serve in Army, fight them V.C. I fight in Delta, me, I fight in Vinh Long, in Can Tho.” He raised his fist again, crooked his thumb.
“Took.
No more V.C. I creep them Congs, them V.C, just like I creep the goose. I get my name in Delta, me.”

I get my name in Delta.
Realization flooded Nick’s mind as he looked into Cudgel’s beaming face.

“Your name isn’t
Cudgel,”
he said suddenly. “It’s
Cudjo,
isn’t it?”

The man nodded. “Cudjo,
c’est moi.
I get the name in Vietnam, me.”

“That’s an African name,” Nick said. “A warrior name.”

Pride straightened Cudjo’s shoulders, glimmered in his yellow eyes.
“C’est vrai,”
he said. “I a warrior, me. Get in trouble down Plaquemines Parish, come here to live. Never touch them liquors and drugs no more, for true.”

Astonished hope beat in Nick’s heart. “You can help us fight, can’t you?” he said.

“
Si,
with them claymores.” He took the rifle gun from his lap and held it out to Nick. “You take my gun, you. Kill them Kluxers. I help.”

Nick took the gun, looked at it in surprise. “I’m not very good with a rifle,” he said. “But I’ll make sure it goes to someone who can use it.”

“Take these shells, you.” Cudjo dug in the pockets of his old coat, dropped cartridges into Nick’s hand. Little ones, he realized, .22s.

“I don’t want to leave you without a rifle,” Nick said. “I’m sure you can use this better than anyone.”

“That my squirrel gun, there,” Cudjo said. “Only a two-two. When I come back tomorrow, me, I bring my deer gun, yes? Thirty-ought-six.”

Nick was almost blinded by sudden possibility. Even Cudjo’s little .22 would make a difference to the camp. Fired from cover it could make the deputies keep their heads down, if nothing else. And when Cudjo returned with his deer rifle, his .30-’06, he could do a lot of damage from the cover of the woods, and with reasonable safety to himself.

Eagerness seized Nick. “Let me tell you what I’m planning,” he said. He unrolled his entire plan for Cudjo, while the woodsman listened, nodded, and asked questions. Then Cudjo analyzed Nick’s plan, took it apart, and reassembled it in an altered, more perfected form.

“Yes,” Nick said. “Yes, I see.”

“Kill them Kluxers, take them Kluxers out, before you push the people on, yes? You no run them into guns, you.”

“Yes. I understand.”

“Direction you want run, that depend. No use planning too much, plans go to hell when shooting starts.”

No plan survives contact with the enemy,
Nick thought. His father had said that. “I understand,” he said.

“Can you take the women and kids to where it will be safe?” Nick asked.

“I try, me.”

“But what about getting someone out?” someone else asked. “What about Mrs. Morris?”

“You give me someone, you, I take him,” said Cudjo.

“It’s important that Cudjo be there with his rifle,” Nick said.

“If we can get word out, there won’t be a need for guns.”

Nick considered an argument in favor of keeping Cudjo near the camp instead of running errands. Cudjo was an
asset;
he was the most hopeful thing that had occurred in the camp’s entire miserable history. Sneaking someone away with him, someone who might not be so good at creeping the goose as Cudjo, seemed an unnecessary risk to Nick’s asset. And sending Cudjo off on an errand to Mrs. Morris’s house, when he might be needed in the camp, seemed dangerous.

But on the other hand, the idea of contacting the outside was seductive. It meant no one inside the camp had to take any risks, or fight other battles. All they had to wait was for Mrs. Morris to call in the U.S. Cavalry. Nick could see how the others were attracted by the idea, how much they wanted to escape this situation without having to fight a war.

“Listen,” Nick said. “We don’t want to risk Cudjo. We don’t want to risk him in the company of someone who’s less expert at—” his tongue stumbled “—at creeping the goose.”

Whispers flurried at him in urgent debate. The only person who held Nick’s point of view was Tareek Hall, the conspiracy theorist, who said that there wasn’t any point in sending for help, that the authorities were all part of the conspiracy anyway. But Tareek and Nick were clearly outnumbered.

“Send Cudjo out
first,”
Nick finally said. “Your messenger can go next. That way if he’s—” He was about to say
killed,
then changed it. “If he’s caught,” he said, “then Cudjo won’t be caught with him.”

There was more whispered debate, but Cudjo ended the debate himself. “I reckon Nick right, me. I be better alone, for true.”

The committee members chose one of their number as their messenger, a thirtyish woman named Nora. She was small and nimble, had taught gymnastics, and it was hoped that speed and agility would aid her escape. The fact that she was a woman might make her less threatening to the locals she would approach for help. She listened eagerly when Cudjo gave her instructions— vague hints, really— for avoiding the guards’ attention. Nick approached the chain link with Cudjo, then hesitated. “I shouldn’t come to the fence,” he said. “I might be seen.”

“Can’t see nothing, them guards,” Cudjo said. “That light along the fence, it make dark behind. Can you see the woods from here, Nick? They should point their lights into the camp, those Kluxers, they want to see in here.”

Nick gazed past the fence in surprise. Cudjo was right. The spotlights, trained parallel to the fence, created a comparative darkness on either side. The pathway along the fence was brightly lit, but the camp itself was shrouded, and so were the woods on the other side of the lane.

“You kiss you lady for me, yes?” Cudjo said. His yellow teeth flashed for a moment, and then he stepped from Nick’s presence and was gone.

Nick stood in silent surprise, his heart hammering. For a long moment his eyes searched the darkness, and then he saw Cudjo crouched just inside the fence, his big hat slowly scanning left and right as he observed the guards. Then there was swift movement as he lay flat and rolled under the fence into the tall, untrimmed grass that grew beneath the wire.