Rivers

by Michael Farris Smith

  He thought of how this was going to end, realizing the things he had gained and the things he had lost, and it almost seemed to him like these thoughts were the thoughts of another man’s life.

  SINCE THE MOMENT THAT CHARLIE first heard the rumors of the buried money, he had begun to lose interest in his truck and his deliveries below the Line and the small bills he got in exchange for his assortment of small goods. Initially he had figured it was like the other ridiculous news that had been delivered to the Gulf Coast over the years. The prediction that the storms would not stop and would become more harrowing. The prediction that they could go on for years. The prediction that the government was thinking of drawing some bullshit line that you weren’t supposed to cross over. All of it had seemed so far-fetched at one time. Yet all of it had been true. And the rumor of this buried money seemed to Charlie exactly like these other bits of fairy-tale information that had come to fruition. So strange that it had to be right. And he wasn’t going to be outhustled for it by a bunch of yokels in pickup trucks packed with shovels and picks and coolers of beer.

  For two years he had called everyone he knew to call trying to figure out exactly what had been said and who had said it. Most recently, some ex–casino man admitted on television that he had ordered trunks of cash to be buried. And he hadn’t thought any further ahead than that because nobody truly believed the storms would last this long or that the Line would last this long. But in the interview, the ex–casino man had his face blacked out, his voice altered, and he didn’t identify what casino he had worked for or if that casino was in Bay St. Louis, or Biloxi, or Gulfport, or wherever. Only that it was down there somewhere, buried on casino grounds. Unsure how much but that it was millions, at least ten or fifteen. He had lost count when they were stacking it into the trunks.

  Those were the bits and pieces Charlie had put together from his phone calls, the he-saids and she-saids that had spread across the Southeast with jetlike propulsion. The images of buried treasure dancing in the heads of anyone who thought they had the means and ability to get down and search, nearly all of the dreamers unequipped and unprepared for the risks they would encounter below.

  But Charlie was not unprepared. He had the means. Knew the roads. Had the muscle. Had the firepower. Had the guts.

  He was unlike others who had lost so much. He had been without a wife, without children, and his friends had either passed on or evacuated, and he had taken the government’s first pathetic offer for his land to get as much cash in hand as possible to prepare for his role in the new world. The gradual breakdown in order had fed his talents as a hustler, as a trader, and he had found satisfaction in a return to the natural world, where there was no credit. There was no payment plan. There was what do I have that somebody wants and how much are they willing to pay for it. It was a system that he thrived in. A system that gave him a purpose.

  He had come into possession of a backhoe, which heightened his expectations and obsession. He explained to his crew that the focus of their responsibilities would be in pursuit of the buried money, which had not been a difficult sell as the job of warding off potential looters of Charlie’s truck had become tiring and cumbersome. He told them that things might get a little hairy. He told them that shooting first and asking questions later was acceptable. He told them to be prepared to receive the same treatment. He told them that whoever saw the backhoe would want it. He told them that many a son of a bitch had been put down over a hundred dollars, much less a million. He told them to expect everything. He told them there would be several hundred thousand dollars in it for the finished job. After that, he didn’t have to tell them anything else.

  Charlie and the crew had begun on the east end of the coast. If it was possible to identify a casino’s grounds, and possible to dig on those grounds, they dug. Charlie would drive the backhoe and the muscle would make a wide circle, keeping watch, fingers on triggers. Charlie would dig a hole and move on. Dig another hole and move on. And over and over until the casino land appeared as if it were home to a brotherhood of giant aggravated gophers. The first few digs had been uneventful and fairly irritating, as the rain didn’t stop to let Charlie dig a hole. But as they had moved west across the coast, the digs had become more lively as more treasure seekers appeared, and warning shots had been fired.

  The more holes Charlie dug, the more frequent the sound of warning shots, until the warning shots finally hit the side of the truck and pinged off the backhoe and the friendly fire several times turned into straight-up gunfire. In reaction to the increasing danger, Charlie decided to dig at night with a rack of rigged spotlights, but that damn near got them killed the first night out as all it did was shine a bright light to the targets on their backs and blind them from seeing who it was attacking them and from which direction.

  But he kept on digging and sliding across the coast. The muscle kept on ducking and firing back. And the influx of interested parties only fueled Charlie’s insistence that somewhere out there was the buried money. He believed that it existed. He was certain of it. And like most of the treasure hunters he had seen in movies or read about in books, he decided that he was either going to find what he was after or he was going to die trying.

  24

  THE RAIN CONTINUED ALL DAY. Not much stirred around the compound except for trips back and forth to the supply trailer for something to eat or drink. From time to time a high-pitched cry from the baby cut through the sound of the rain. Ava paid most attention to the child. She was the oldest woman there, with wrinkled hands and eyes, but she moved in a straightforward manner, with a stiff back and shoulders high, like a kid at boot camp. She knew where to find the bottles and formula and diapers because she had helped Aggie stash it all away. She moved in and out of the rain, taking things for the baby, delivering something to drink to Brisco, helping open cans and slicing apples for the others when they were hungry. She had been a part of Aggie but now seemed a part of them once the decision of life or death was presented to her. She wore a pair of men’s jeans, baggy and rolled to midcalf, and two sweatshirts and the faded blue bandana around her head, with strands of gray-black hair trailing down her neck.

  During the day, each time Ava moved from one trailer to the next, Aggie called out to her but she ignored him. Even shouted once for him to shut up.

  Around evening the rain let up and Cohen and Evan built a fire. The others came out, stretched, passed around the baby. The woman named Nadine was the first to notice Lorna’s grave and she walked out to it. Stood with her arms folded. Stared at the soggy mound and off into the slate-colored horizon. Then she came back to the fire with the others.

  In half an hour the fire was going strong and they sat around it in their newfound freedom with their plates full, after taking what they wanted. Baked beans and yams and corn and the empty cans of whatever else appealed to them littered about. Some drinking beer. Some drinking Cokes. Some smoking cigarettes. All of them thinking about tomorrow. The keys to the vehicles and trailers sat on a table as it had been decided that no one alone was to keep them.

  The woman named Kris held the infant and held a bottle to his mouth. But he wouldn’t take it and he fussed and wailed.

  “What he needs is a good tit,” Nadine said. She had a scar on her forehead and her legs were long and she had a sharp chin. She wore a pair of black laced boots with her pants tucked into them. Ava sat with them drinking coffee.

  “Well,” Kris said and she set the bottle on the ground. Her hands were small and her eyes were close together and she was six months pregnant. “He ain’t getting one. Not one that’d do him any good.” She took her pinkie finger and held it down to the baby’s mouth and he sucked at it and closed his eyes and sucked more until he fell asleep.

  “Mine never would do it,” Ava said. She ate from a can of green beans.

  “Yours? You got kids?” Nadine said.

  “Somewhere. Two boys. I ain’t seen or heard from either one in probably twenty years.”

 
“Damn,” Nadine said. “I thought I hated my momma but I at least knew how to call her.” Nadine’s long legs were crossed out in front of her. Her dirty-blond hair was cut short and uneven and a small harelip gave her the kind of snarl you might see at a county-fair roller derby.

  “I didn’t say they hate me,” Ava said. “I said I don’t know where they are.”

  “It’s all the same,” Nadine said.

  Ava shrugged. Looked at her wrinkled, spotted hands. “Maybe it is,” she said.

  Kris hummed a lullaby while she held the sleeping baby, but she paused to say, “Aggie’s sure been calling out for you.”

  “Yep,” Nadine said. “You ain’t been over there to him, I’m guessing.”

  Ava shook her head. “I done told y’all.”

  “You might tell us again.”

  “Fine. I want to go like everybody else,” she said.

  “I saw her walk on past him,” Kris said to Nadine.

  Nadine cut her eyes at Ava but didn’t say anything else.

  The night went on and the wind began to pick up, pushing at the fire and blowing cups and napkins out across the field. Cohen tried to keep the coffee going on the gas burner but it kept blowing out. Mariposa offered to put the burner in her trailer but Cohen shook his head, said he didn’t really want any more. Finally he got up and walked over to Kris and the baby and said, “Can I hold him?”

  Kris looked at him, a little surprised. “You ever held one before?”

  “He ain’t gonna break,” Nadine said.

  “No,” Cohen said. “I never held one.”

  Kris stood. Cohen folded his arm and Kris set the tiny child in the crook. Cohen adjusted the baby some, couldn’t believe how small and light the child felt. He wrapped his other arm around the baby and cradled it.

  “It’s easy when they’re asleep,” Ava said.

  “Let him be,” Mariposa answered.

  Cohen looked at the baby’s wrinkled eyes and chin. A little sound came from the baby’s nose when he breathed. Cohen walked a few feet with him, stepping carefully around the fire, around the others sitting close to the flames. He kept walking, away from the firelight, away from the others, out of the circle of trailers and out into the dark field, where it was easier to pretend that this was a little girl and this was the dark of his own land and the light from the fire was the light of home.

  COHEN RETURNED AND GAVE THE baby back to kris and they all sat for a little while longer. Howls and screeches came from the woods surrounding them. Aggie called out every half hour or so for something to drink or something to eat but no one reacted to him any more than they did to the animals in the woods.

  Thunder and lightning joined the wind and they knew it was time to go in. But before they dispersed and went to bed it was decided that in the morning they would load whatever they needed and leave out for the Line. Cohen had gone from truck to truck to see what would crank and out of the four sitting in the field, two of them would run. Two trucks and his Jeep. He and Evan searched around for gas cans and they rounded up a handful of containers that still held some gas. They would keep all the supplies in the back of one of the trucks. Cohen would drive the Jeep alone. He told them about Charlie and the supply truck and they decided it would be best to go and see if he were around before heading north. There wasn’t enough gas to make it very far otherwise.

  The women went to bed, the infant and Brisco going with them, and Cohen and Evan stayed up looking around for what they’d need. In Aggie’s trailer, they found plenty of protection. Back in the bathroom, the toilet and sink had been ripped out and the small area was stacked with rifles and shotguns and boxes of ammunition. Cohen spotted his sawed-off shotgun, his own blood smeared across the stock. He picked it up and handed it to Evan and told him to set it in there on the bed. Then he began going through the stack. There were pump-action shotguns and rifles and semi-automatic pistols. As he held each piece he imagined where it had come from. Where it had been found or who it had belonged to and the way it had been taken away. He asked Evan if he could shoot and Evan said all you gotta do is aim and pull the trigger.

  “Guess so,” Cohen said. “What about Mariposa? Can she shoot?”

  Evan shrugged. “All you gotta do is aim and pull the trigger,” he said again.

  Then Cohen remembered her urging the boy to shoot him, shoot him, and giving her a gun didn’t seem so smart. Not until he was certain whose side she was on.

  Cohen chose a pump-action .12-gauge for himself and a rifle for Evan. He took two of the pistols and stuck them in his coat pockets. And then he told Evan to go get a bag somewhere and when Evan came back he filled the bag with boxes of ammunition.

  When they were done they went into the storage trailers. Several empty boxes were on the floor and they filled the boxes with canned food and bags of coffee and gallon water jugs. There were diapers and a few cans of baby formula and they packed it all and Evan walked the boxes out to one of the trucks while Cohen kept on. Cigarettes and cases of beer and charcoal. Blankets and pillows and toilet paper and towels. Cohen filled up another half-dozen empty boxes and Evan took them out and when the boxes were gone, Cohen sat down next to the fire with a case of beer. Evan sat down with him and he gave the boy a can. The wind pushed the flames down to nothing and a steady stream of orange sparks trailed away.

  They sat, drinking the beer, listening to the crack of the fire and the sound of the wind. There seemed to be something in that natural quiet that Cohen didn’t want to leave. A humble silence. An honest silence. A silence that seemed so pure, veiled by the dark.

  After a little while, Evan said, “You think we’ll make it?”

  Cohen smiled at the boy. Turned the can in his hands. “Don’t see why not.”

  Evan moved his hand across his smooth face. He had been leaning back in the chair but he sat forward with his elbows on his knees and he stared into the fire. His pupils reflected the red. “The thing is, when we do, what then?”

  “Maybe it ain’t that bad.”

  “Maybe not. Think there’s even roads to get all the way there?”

  “Could be we’re gonna hit the highway and be there in two hours. Like the good old days.”

  Cohen got up and walked circles around the fire, trying to keep his leg from getting too stiff. He sat back down and finished his beer and took another one. Evan continued watching the fire.

  “It’s gonna be slow going,” Cohen said. “No idea what roads are left. What bridges are left. Looks like it’s gonna be raining all the damn time. Not to mention we got a full load of not the most agile.”

  “And a baby.”

  “Yep. And a baby.”

  “What’d that feel like holding him?”

  Cohen thought, then said, “Felt good. Like you really got something.”

  Evan blew on his hands then held them out to the fire. “Wouldn’t nobody hurt a bunch of women anyways,” he said.

  Cohen watched him. Tried to figure what to say. He wanted the boy to be certain about getting to the Line, but he also wanted him to be certain about what might have to be done to get there.

  “Men down here aren’t like the men you think of,” he said. “Men down here will probably hurt a bunch of women before they’ll hurt anything else. I don’t figure nobody ever hurt anything without knowing they could hurt it first. That’s the way it is and probably the way it’s always been.”

  “Then that’s right,” Evan said.

  “What’s right?”

  “The men down here are just like the men I think of.”

  Cohen set his beer and down and lit a cigarette. “Where’s your momma?” he asked.

  “Where’s yours?”

  “Heaven or hell.”

  “Mine, too,” Evan said and then he tossed his empty can into the fire. He sat back down and said, “What we supposed to do when we get there?”

  “I don’t know.” Cohen shook his head. “But this ain’t a place for nobody.”

  “How c
ome you stayed? Your woman?”

  Cohen laughed some. “My woman. I guess so. My woman.”

  “She get killed?”

  “Yeah. A while back. Before all this.”

  Evan looked confused. He thought a second, then said, “So. What’d you stay for?”

  “What for,” Cohen repeated. “What for.” He sat up and looked around. Out across the fields where there was nothing more black. “You can probably understand better one day a long time from now. A long time from now you can probably understand carrying something around with you that can’t be real in no way but yet it feels as real as a bag of cement strapped across your shoulders and you walk around with that heavy thing and can’t get loose from it. And for whatever reason, that time is now up.” He leaned back in his chair again and stretched his legs out in front of him.

  Evan got up and took another beer from the case and he stood closer to the fire. “What you gonna do with it when we get there?” he asked.

  I don’t know, Cohen thought. “Don’t know,” he said.

  “Sounds like it’s going with you.”

  He looked at the boy. So lean and so young and responsible for so much. Cohen said, “You’re doing good taking care of that boy.”

  Evan turned around and went back to the chair and sat. Then he said, “You worry about something that ain’t here. At least can’t nothing else happen to her. She can’t get hurt no worse. But mine walks around and gets hungry and cold. Cries when he’s scared. Holds on to my leg.”