by Scott Ely
“Do you think my mother is all right?” Stephen asked.
“She’d hire good people,” Mr. Parker said. “If I had a couple of them here, I’d sleep like a baby.”
Stephen wondered if Mr. Parker knew about his mother’s young men and, if he did, what he thought about it.
“Do you see my mother often?” Stephen asked.
“Now and then,” Mr. Parker said. “Courtland would bring her out here for dinner. We had dinner in New Orleans a couple of times.”
Mr. Parker adjusted the harness on the flamethrower tank and settled it more comfortably on his shoulders.
“Josephine still works for your mother?” he asked.
“I guess,” Stephen said.
“She is one good-looking woman. I wonder if she’s gone back to Lake Charles or is sticking it out with your mother. I expect Lakes Charles is underwater too.”
“I don’t know.”
“No way you could know. Well, I guess I’ll take a stroll around the property.”
He settled the tank on his shoulders one last time and walked off along the bank. From time to time a stream of flame shot out.
Stephen set up the mosquito netting and then climbed under it, along with the Saiga and the radio. He gave the generator another good cranking and tried to find the mystery station. To his surprise the Swamp Hog’s voice came out of the speakers, riding the air over the flooded land.
“Hello, all of you in Memphis,” the voice was saying. “You’re on high ground. Stay there. Fish are swimming in New Orleans and Charleston. The land is shrinking, the temperature is rising. Beware of low ground. Hello, there in…”
Then the voice disappeared in a hiss and crackle of static.
“What about Baton Rouge?” Stephen asked. “What about my mother?”
He tried adjusting the dial, but the only reply was more static.
“Hello, hel…,” the voice said.
But then it was gone. He felt like tossing the radio into the water.
“Who are you?” he asked.
His only reply was static.
He turned off the radio and wrapped his arms around the Saiga and tried to sleep. Periodically he heard the whoosh of the flamethrower. He could not sleep. He tried to clear his mind of the voice on the radio.
Hello, Hello, Hello.
The voice went on and on in his head.
Finally he slept. But it seemed to him that he had barely closed his eyes when he was awakened by the whoosh of the flamethrower. Mr. Parker had made a circuit of the island and was approaching. The flame leaped out, like the breath of some fairy-tale dragon. Mr. Parker played the light over the airboat. Stephen gave up on sleep and sat up under the netting, awaiting his arrival.
The last blast from the flamethrower incinerated something just off the bow of the airboat. Stephen felt the heat of it. He took a deep breath as his lungs searched for oxygen the flame had consumed. Mr. Parker was laughing, a deep rich laugh.
“Boy, are you awake?” he shouted.
Stephen did not reply.
A stream of fire shot out again, this time over the water, followed by the same laughter.
“Wake up, Stephen, wake up!” he shouted.
As Mr. Parker played the light over the airboat, Stephen shielded his eyes against the glare with one hand.
“You be careful with that thing,” Stephen shouted.
“It’s a lullaby for you,” Mr. Parker said.
This time he was close enough he did not have to shout. But he came no closer and turned and walked back up the hill to the house, the flame now and then leaping out from the machine.
EIGHT
Stephen woke at first light. A banded water snake was draped across the bow of the boat, but it dropped off into the water with a solid splash when he moved. The sun was rising on the other side of the mound, while his side was still in shadow. He heard the sound of the helicopter’s engine starting.
As he started to pack up the mosquito netting, he stood and waited for the helicopter to rise above the pecans. Finally it did and flew directly over him. He waved to it. One of the pilots waved back. Then suddenly it tilted downward and flew directly into the water only a few yards away. There was no fire, no explosion, just the thump of the body of the chopper against the water. The water it threw up rained down on him. The wreckage floated for a few minutes and then slowly sank out of sight, leaving just a piece of the tail rotor above the water. Just then the sun rose over the trees on the top of the mound and illuminated the wreckage, the light glinting off the metal blades.
Then it occurred to him that Angela might have decided to go with them. He scrambled out of the boat and had started up the hill when he saw Mr. Parker and Angela running down it.
When they reached him, he threw his arms around her. He told her he thought she might have been on the helicopter. And he wondered if his concern was a sign of love. He supposed it could be. But a girl as old as she was would be unobtainable for him. He wondered how many people you had to kill before you could no longer love. Was it a different number for different people?
“Those poor people,” she said, looking out toward the wreck. “They thought they were going to sleep in a hotel tonight.” Then she turned back to him. “We started out together. We’re going to stay together until we get to Baton Rouge.”
Mr. Parker stood at the edge of the water, weeping.
“God, they’re all gone,” Mr. Parker said.
Stephen noticed something floating in the water that looked like a piece of a body, but he said nothing.
“I cooked breakfast for them,” Mr. Parker said. “How can they be dead?”
Angela put her arms around Mr. Parker, and Stephen joined her.
Mr. Parker was making Stephen feel old. Stephen recalled running his hands over his father’s body. They were dead; they were not alive. It was as simple as that. He wondered if he had now grown older than his mother and Josephine. What had they seen in New Orleans? Those security men, although young, were probably the oldest people he was likely to meet. They, and men like them, had traveled the furthest from life.
His father had obviously been one of them, but now it was too late to learn any of his hard-earned wisdom.
Angela began to cry too, but she was comforting Mr. Parker, telling him they did not suffer, that it was quick. Stephen found he could not weep for them. His mind was filled with the sound of those cries of the wounded man the night his father was killed. He had definitely decided the cries had not come from his father.
She was telling Mr. Parker they were all gone to Jesus, and he was saying that was true.
Stephen still could not focus his attention on the dead. He was studying what he was feeling for Angela. But he did not think there was any hope for him. He supposed she regarded him as her little brother. It was not like his mother and her young men.
Mr. Parker sat in the mud by the side of the water. The sun shone brightly on the now perfectly calm brown water. Stephen walked over and put his hand on his shoulder.
“Let’s go up to the house, Mr. Parker,” he said. “We can make some coffee.”
They turned their backs on the wreck and went up the hill. Stephen was going to suggest they have coffee on the porch. Stephen made the coffee. They all sat and looked out on the flooded land.
“You’ll be going to Baton Rouge today?” Mr. Parker asked.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Mr. Parker asked them again if they had his wife’s address in a safe place. Angela had memorized it and recited it to him. He seemed to be satisfied.
Stephen wondered how he was going to feel being alone again.
“You can come with us,” Stephen said. “You can use the airboat to come back.”
Mr. Parker thanked him for his offer but said he’d rather stay.
“I’ve got property to protect,” he said. “I don’t want to come home and find looters have been at this house. They could burn it down just for fun, you know.”
&
nbsp; Both Stephen and Angela told him they understood about that. Then he went off to check on the generator he was using to run a freezer.
“We can’t go today,” Angela said.
“Why not?” Stephen asked.
“And leave him here all alone?”
“He could come with us.”
“Didn’t you see him when the helicopter crashed. It’s more than just those people dying. He’s unsettled.”
“You mean crazy?”
“No, but look what’s happened to his land. And going around at night with that flamethrower after snakes. Why, one man couldn’t make a dent in them. There’re millions more out in that water.”
So when Mr. Parker returned, they told him they would be staying a few more days.
“If that’s all right with you,” Angela said.
Mr. Parker seemed pleased.
“Sure, stay as long as you want,” he said. “But if Anna is in Baton Rouge, you need to go there. You know she’s worried about you.”
Stephen pointed out he had been gone all summer.
“She can wait a few more days,” he said.
“I can’t say I won’t appreciate your company,” Mr. Parker said.
The rest of the day Stephen spent listening to the radio. There were the usual conflicting reports. The water was rising. The water was going down. Nothing but static when he turned the dial to the mystery station.
After they ate dinner and it grew dark, Mr. Parker went out and used the flamethrower on a few snakes that had crawled up near the house. But he took Angela’s suggestion to leave those near the water alone.
Mr. Parker went to sleep early at one end of the porch. It had grown too hot at night to sleep in any of the bedrooms. Stephen and Angela sat there in the dark. Now and then splashes came up from the water. A gator grunted.
Stephen wondered what it would be like to lie with her on the mattress. He wondered how many lovers she had had. She was telling him about a trip she had taken the summer before to visit a friend in the North Carolina mountains.
“The water won’t come up to those mountains,” she said.
“Did it rain all summer?” he asked.
“No, it was hot and dry.”
“I wonder if it’s raining there now?”
“You could try the radio.”
“I’ve never heard anything about those mountains on the radio.”
He decided not to tell her about the Swamp Hog’s talk of the Rocky Mountains covered with jungle.
Then he thought about both of them sitting there naked.
“Stephen?”
“What?”
“Are you thinking about your mother?”
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
He felt a little strange and uncomfortable telling that lie.
“Maybe we’ll find her in Baton Rouge. We’ll be there in a few days.”
Stephen wondered if she believed that. He was not sure what to believe himself. It was taking them a long time to get to Baton Rouge. As for his mother, he would not be surprised to learn she and those security people were the only people, besides a few over-optimistic looters, in New Orleans.
She said she was going to sleep.
“Mr. Parker is going to rig up a shower tomorrow,” she said. “And he’s going to let me have some of his wife’s clothes.”
Stephen lay down to sleep. From the other end of the porch came the regular sound of Angela’s breathing. He found himself lying there and thinking not about Angela but the safety of the airboat. Although he had the keys in his pocket, someone who knew what he was doing could find a way to start the engine. Tomorrow he would disable the distributor. Then he was sure he would sleep soundly.
In the morning he woke at first light, and taking up the Saiga and one of the gigs, he went down to the airboat. There was a thick fog lying on the surface of the flooded field, but he could see the ground before him clearly. He prodded several snakes out of his path with the pole.
He was relieved to see the airboat exactly where he had left it. The piece of the tail rotor had vanished beneath the brown water. The water was on the rise. It was filled with trash. And there was a current, bearing trash and dead animals and then one, two, three and perhaps a fourth body off to the southwest.
Angela was calling his name. He shouted out to her that he was coming up the hill. He would do something about disabling the airboat after breakfast. As he neared the house, Angela came out to meet him.
“The water’s rising,” he said. He told her that the wreckage of the helicopter had vanished.
“Try your radio and let’s see what’s happening,” she said.
So before breakfast they all sat on the porch and listened to several contradictory reports. He did not try the mystery station.
Mr. Parker was disgusted.
“Next thing you know they’ll be telling us that it’s all the result of the snow melting off the bluff at Memphis,” he said.
“Some levee or dam broke someplace,” Stephen said. “Or maybe it’s more rain upstream.”
“I’m just glad we don’t have to look at that helicopter,” Angela said.
Stephen thought that he was glad they did not have to look at the bodies from the wreck. But he said nothing. He turned off the radio.
“I’m hungry,” he said. “Let’s eat.”
“God, I wish I could have some scrambled eggs,” Angela said.
“How about pancakes and blackberries,” Mr. Parker said. “I’ve got some of Sally’s in the freezer. I picked the blackberries.”
Stephen tried to imagine what Mr. Parker’s wife Sally looked like. He imagined her in the kitchen making the pancakes and looking out across the fields of soybeans or corn that stretched to the horizon. It seemed strange to him that people might die, as those in the helicopter had, and the survivors might mourn, but pretty quickly folks got interested in eating and drinking again.
He stood up and walked to the edge of the screen so he might have a good view of the flooded fields. The brown water glittered in the sunlight as a morning breeze stirred its surface. He tried to imagine the field lush and green with beans and cotton.
NINE
They were having lunch on the porch when Angela spotted something far off on the flooded field near the tree line marking the edge of a swamp. It was blue and moving across the open water toward them.
“It’s a canoe or a kayak,” Angela said.
He picked up the field glasses and took a look.
“It’s a kayak,” he said.
They all took a turn with the glasses. The kayak came on straight toward them. Stephen could for the first time see the paddler clearly through the glasses. Her long blond hair was tied back in a ponytail under a baseball cap.
“It’s Holly,” he said.
It was if he was witnessing some act of magic, the dead raised before his eyes. The only thing better would be to see his father come paddling out of the trees. But finding his mother could turn out to be just the same. He imagined taking the airboat to Baton Rouge and there she would be, standing on the levee, as if she were keeping an appointment to meet him. Perhaps his problems with her had been his fault. After all, she had the right to a private life. Once he found her, he was determined to conceal his disdain for those young men. But he would not be unhappy if she sent him off to school. She would be easier to deal with if he just saw her at Christmas and Thanksgiving. Maybe in the summer he could go stay in his father’s house.
Mr. Parker asked for the glasses.
“Yes, that’s her,” Mr. Parker said.
They all went down to where the airboat was moored to await her arrival.
When she was several hundred yards away, she stopped paddling.
“What’s she doing?” Angela asked.
“Looking us over,” Stephen said.
“Yes, it’s what I’d do,” Mr. Parker said.
Angela began to wave her arms and yell out Holly’s name.
“I told you that smok
e was off in the wrong direction to be the barge,” she said.
Stephen shrugged.
“I hope you’re right,” he said.
Holly still sat motionless in the kayak, her hair bright in the sunlight. She took up the paddle and dipped it into the water. As she lifted it, a shower of golden drops trailed after the blade.
Now Stephen and Mr. Parker began to wave their arms too and call out her name.
She finally waved back and took up the paddle and swung the bow of the kayak toward them.
“Come on!” Angela yelled. “Come on!”
Stephen and Mr. Parker joined her.
Holly stopped paddling. The kayak, caught by a slight breeze, swung in a slow circle.
“Stephen, if she doesn’t come in, you take the airboat out to her,” Angela said.
“I think she’ll come in,” Stephen said.
He was wondering where Fred was. Perhaps off fishing in the johnboat.
Holly took up the paddle again and, obviously having made up her mind, she paddled hard toward them.
Soon she was standing beside them, hugging Angela. She handed out hugs to Stephen and Mr. Parker. Then she abruptly sat down on the charred grass. She began to alternately laugh and weep, and then, it seemed to Stephen, she was doing both at the same time.
“I never expected to find you two here,” she said. “I came to see if William was sticking it out. I knew he would be.”
Her face was wet with tears.
“Where’s Fred?” Mr. Parker asked.
“Oh, William, I don’t know,” she wailed.
Mr. Parker reached down and helped her to her feet.
“You come on up to the house,” he said. “Have something to eat, maybe a drink. Then you can tell us all about it.”
Back at the house she stood at the screen and looked out over the flooded fields.
“The water keeps rising,” she said.
“It’ll go down,” Mr. Parker said.
He made her and Angela drinks. Stephen got his last Coke from the refrigerator.
Holly sat and sipped her drink and told them how she was in the kitchen cooking when Fred came running into the room with a deer rifle in his hands. At the same moment, she heard automatic gunfire, and the windows of the house fragmented. Stephen imagined the fragments tinkling as they fell, a heavy rain of glass, onto the steel deck. Then there was an explosion that shook the entire barge. She heard Fred shooting the deer rifle, the sound of it filling the small space.