The Marauders

by Tom Cooper

  Before long he passed the salt dome with the wooden cross wreathed in plastic flowers. Then the islet with the enormous dead willow tree. Tonight its skeletal branches were empty. Sometimes the egrets were there, sometimes they weren’t. A mystery.

  It was almost two when he reached the spit of land covered with marsh grass and cypress stumps and salt-stunted tupelo. He anchored his boat and got into his pirogue, lowered it into the bay, oared toward the island. He saw flickering movement in the corner of his eye and twisted around, but it was only his own shadow jerking along the illuminated water.

  Before long he nosed the pirogue onto the thin ribbon of bracken that made up the shore, and got out of the boat and wallowed wide-legged over to a cypress stump. He set the lantern down and went back to the boat and retrieved the metal detector and shovel-scoop. He leaned the tool against the stump and switched on the metal detector and began to sweep the coil. Salamanders like squiggles of ink slithered away across the slimy leaves.

  The metal detector blipped faintly. He put the machine aside and started spiritlessly but quickly digging. Like an automaton. Slime filled the hole like blood in a wound. Lindquist kept gouging away. A hook-armed silhouette, the only light for miles his lantern on the trampoline-sized hump of sediment.

  After a half minute the shovel-scoop blade tinked against something small. Lindquist stooped and rooted through the mud and his fingers seized on something coin-shaped, heavy for its size. He stood and stuck the tool into the ground, and then he went to the lantern and crouched to inspect the coin-shaped piece of metal.

  A washer, he thought. A lug nut.

  His heart quickened.

  He spat on the object and rubbed the mud off on his pant leg and then looked again.

  It was a coin.

  It was.

  And no ordinary coin. Embossed on one side was the bewigged profile of some royal personage. On the other side was a seal or coat of arms.

  Lindquist leapt upright and looked absurdly around. No one. The plashing of tiny waves. The moon a milky blot behind a cloud.

  He held the coin up to his eyes and stared. Kept staring, still not quite believing what he saw.

  “Well, hell,” he said, a low whisper to himself. Then his voice raised in insane glee. “That’s right,” he said, “that’s goddamn right.”

  The gold coin was the size of a half dollar, its weight satisfyingly heavy in Lindquist’s palm. He spent hours fondling the doubloon, worrying it between his fingers, flipping it across his knuckles like a street-corner magician. Mealtimes he placed the coin on the table and studied heads and tails. Printed on one side: CAROL.IIII.D.G.HISP.ET IND.R.1798. On the other: IN.UTROQ.FELIX.AUSPICE.DEO.FM.

  Within a day Lindquist knew by heart every surface intricacy of the coin. The tiny chips along its edge. The palimpsest of scratches fine as spider silk along its face. He could spot the doubloon in a lineup of a hundred similar coins if he had to. With his eyes closed. By touch, by weight.

  Lindquist knew the coin would fetch hundreds, maybe thousands, at a collectors’ auction. But he wouldn’t part with it, not this one.

  Here was proof he was right. Right for the first time in his life.

  Others? He’d part with other coins no problem. Why, there might be hundreds, thousands, in the Barataria. And he thought of this possibility hundreds, thousands, of times a day.

  If he found other coins—he would, he knew it—he’d pay off his debts first thing. He wasn’t a ne’er-do-well. He was simply a man who’d fallen on hard times. Like most folks in the Barataria. The way these creditors had treated him: like he was an animal. Pretty soon they’d bust down the door with a medicine ball and drag him away in chains.

  What was it the diesel guy at the wharf told him? “You’re not a check bouncer, Lindquist,” he said. “You’re a dribbler. A Harlem Globetrotter.”

  Then the man dropped Lindquist’s check on the pine-plank floor of his office. He stared down at the check. Kept staring. Lindquist asked what the hell he was doing. The man said waiting for the check to bounce back up and knock out one of his teeth.

  The diesel guy: Lindquist would pay him off first thing. Here’s a little something for you, he’d say, handing the man an extra twenty. Man of my word, me.

  The diesel guy would never make fun of him again.

  And he would give some of the money to that Trench kid, for his boat. Good kid, Wes. If only his daughter were half as good. A horrible thought, he knew, but true. Maybe all Reagan needed was an opportunity, another chance. A lot like him, with Gwen. Well, he’d give his daughter another chance. With a little money she could go back to school—to University of New Orleans, to Nicholls State—and straighten herself out. “You’re still young, you still have a shot,” he’d tell his daughter. He pictured the two of them sitting at a window booth in Magnolia Café, a sunny afternoon, and he’d unpocket the check and push it across the table.

  And Gwen. Of course Gwen. Hopefully she’d give him another chance too. With some money in the bank, things might be a little different this time around. Funny, the power of money. People said it couldn’t buy love, but it could keep people together, which was pretty much the same, wasn’t it?

  He imagined Gwen and himself on a far-flung vacation in the near future. A Caribbean dusk, a beach with sand like confectioners’ sugar. Spindly palm trees, their wind-bent silhouettes against the tropical gloaming. What would he be doing? Metal detecting along the tide line, the quicksilver surf warming his toes. And nearby in her umbrellaed lounge chair Gwen would be sipping a coconut cocktail. He’d look over and she’d smile and then he’d smile. She’d lift her drink in a little toast, the light of love and admiration in her eyes once more.

  The bank. Lindquist’s wife had told him not to come here, but the bank held two hundred and thirty dollars of his money. His only money. Well, if his only money was in this place, didn’t that make the place partly his too? In his reasoning: yes.

  When he walked into the bank ten minutes before closing on Friday afternoon, his wife’s coworkers looked up cold-eyed from their desks and carrels. At her teller window Gwen was counting out bills for an old Vietnamese woman in a foam neck brace. When she glanced up at the door and saw Lindquist her expression soured.

  Lindquist walked to the customer service table and picked out a deposit slip and stub pencil. Then he sat on a vinyl-cushioned chair under a plastic ficus tree and balanced the deposit slip on his knee and started filling it out. Four dollars and thirty cents. He’d never usually bother with such a small amount but he wanted to show Gwen the coin. He wanted to show Gwen he’d been right all along.

  When his wife finished with the Vietnamese woman, Lindquist got up and zigzagged through the maze of velvet ropes and went to her window.

  “Hey, Gwen,” he said. He put the deposit slip and the money on the counter.

  Gwen looked down and saw how much money was there and spitefully shook her head.

  “How you doing?” he asked his wife.

  The other tellers were watching in a way they thought discreet.

  “Not too good,” Gwen said, glassy-voiced. The neck of her purple sateen blouse was open and Lindquist could see the livid red of her chest.

  “Why not?”

  “I think you know, Gus.”

  “Well, hell. I’m just making a deposit. Ain’t here to cause any trouble.”

  She took the money and deposit slip and clacked away at her computer.

  “I like that color on you,” Lindquist said. “That fingernail polish. That’s a good color. Real flattering.”

  Gwen printed out the deposit receipt and handed it to Lindquist.

  “Have a good day,” she said.

  Lindquist stood there with the slip in his hand, grinning like a dog. “I got a joke for you,” he said.

  “Please, Gus.”

  “You’re in a bad mood. Maybe this joke’ll help.”

  “It won’t.” Gwen sounded immensely tired.

  “You haven
’t heard it yet.”

  “There’s people waiting. This is my job.”

  Lindquist glanced over his shoulder. No one.

  “Knock knock,” Lindquist said.

  Gwen said nothing.

  “Knock knock,” Lindquist said again, louder.

  “Who’s there?” Gwen asked in a small drowning voice.

  “Dewey,” Lindquist said, resting his forearm on the counter, leaning his face closer to the glass. Then he said, “You’re supposed to ask ‘Dewey who.’ ”

  “Dewey who?” Gwen asked quietly.

  “Dewey have to use this condom?” Lindquist said. He threw his head back and cackled, his Adam’s apple jerking up and down like a grease-slicked ball bearing.

  Gwen’s face was red and twitching.

  “Didn’t like that one?” he asked.

  Behind Lindquist a man cleared his throat. Lindquist turned and saw one of the managers, that guy with Bela Lugosi hair staring like some sheriff in a standoff, his arms crossed psychotically over his chest.

  “Excuse you,” Lindquist said. He turned back around and grinned at his wife. He saw that the orange-haired teller next to her was watching.

  “How you doin’, Marcy,” Lindquist said.

  “Good, Gus.”

  “Glad to hear it. Your hair looks nice today. That’s a good look on you.”

  “Thanks, Gus,” Marcy said.

  “Well, hell. Don’t thank me for telling the truth. Telling the truth is easy.”

  “Please, Gus,” Gwen said.

  “Please what?”

  “Please leave.”

  “That’s kind of rude. I’m a friendly customer.”

  “Have a little dignity is all.”

  “Sure, I’ll have some,” Lindquist said, looking around as if for an hors d’oeuvres tray. “Where is it?”

  By now the room was silent, only the sound of the air-conditioning, of people shuffling papers and scratching their pens.

  “Knock knock,” Lindquist said.

  Gwen stared at the counter.

  “Knock knock,” Lindquist said again.

  Silence.

  “Okay, fine,” Lindquist said. He looked at Marcy. “Hey, Marcy, knock knock.”

  “Who’s there?” Marcy said.

  “Little Boy Blue,” Lindquist said.

  “No,” Gwen said. “Don’t ask him. Marcy, don’t do it.”

  “Marcy, ask who’s at the door,” Lindquist said.

  “I’m not sure if I should, Gus.”

  “Where’s people’s sense of humor?”

  No one said a word.

  The desperado cleared his throat again.

  “Okay, I’ll quit bothering you,” said Lindquist. “One little thing first, though.” He grinned and reached into his pocket and set the doubloon on the counter.

  Gwen glanced down at the coin but her face showed no change in expression. “You’re going to get me fired,” she said.

  “But look. That’s a doubloon. A real doubloon. I found it, me. That’s the real deal there.”

  Gwen’s eyes were wet and now Lindquist saw the tear on her cheek. She knuckled it away.

  Lindquist slipped the coin back in his pocket. “All right, okay,” he said. “I’ll leave.”

  About three in the morning Lindquist heard a heavy thump on the boat deck, scuttling footfalls. Adrenaline shot through him. He looked through the wheelhouse windows. No one. The bay in hushed slumber, dark as dark could be, the diminutive sound of waves against the hull. He wondered if back at the wharf a dog had snuck onto the boat. Maybe some other animal.

  These possibilities were careening through his head when Lindquist heard someone clamber swiftly up the ladder. He looked frantically about for something he could use as a weapon. Only a Louisville Slugger propped in the far corner, too far to fetch because the person was already halfway up to the wheelhouse.

  At last a head popped up from the floor like some fiendish jack in the box. One of the Toup brothers.

  “Evening, Lindquist,” he said. He came into the wheelhouse and stepped close enough forward that Lindquist could see his third eyebrow, fainter, between the two.

  “You’re crazy,” Lindquist said.

  This one was Victor. He knew because of the tattoos on his arms.

  Victor’s eyes seared with contempt. “You know what I can do to you?”

  Now ten or twelve yards away a light came on in the bay. Lindquist glanced. A small listing motorboat, the other brother, Reginald, standing like a sentry, a vale of dark beyond.

  Victor went to the metal detector hanging from its peg and took it from the wall. He wrapped both hands around the handle like he was holding a golf club and slammed the coil against the floor over and over. Lindquist watched disbelievingly. The coil twisted away from the machine and dangled askew from its wiring and then Victor flipped the metal detector around and began smashing the other end. The control box exploded apart, shards of broken plastic and red and green wiring. One of the screws struck Lindquist on the cheek, raising blood.

  Victor tossed the ruined machine to the floor and glared at Lindquist. A giant-shouldered troglodyte, a menagerie of tattoos on his arms. “We told you,” he said.

  “You gonna pay me for that,” Lindquist said, childlike. He saw the handgun handle poking from the waistband of Victor’s black jeans, an insignia that said SIG SAUER.

  “Pay you? I just busted the fuck out of it.”

  “I don’t even smoke it, me.”

  “Smoke? What the hell you talking now?”

  “Reefer.”

  Victor bared his teeth. “You have no idea how close to fucked you are.”

  “What I do to you? Why you bothering me?”

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you did to my house, you fuck.” This time the fuck came out with such venomous force that spittle flecked Lindquist’s face. He recoiled.

  “Your house?”

  “I’ll bust your fuckin’ head, Lindquist.”

  “Stealing my arm wasn’t enough?” Lindquist said. “How about the alligator in my house?”

  Victor glared, rough breaths scraping quickly out his nose.

  “I’m seeing Villanova,” said Lindquist.

  “Go to Villanova. I’ll deny everything. ‘Hell you talking about, metal detector?’ Everybody knows you’re a crazy pill-popper. Even your own daughter says.”

  Lindquist blinked, mouth twisting mutely.

  “Look at you. Fuckin’ retard.”

  Victor stared another moment and then started down the ladder, his eyes staying on Lindquist until his head ducked out of sight. Then Victor jumped back onto the motorboat and it rocked under his weight. Reginald started the motor. The brothers crouched, Victor staring up at the wheelhouse. Lindquist watched the boat cut away, its light shrinking to a wavery dot before fading altogether.

  Lindquist stared at the broken machinery on the floor. He cursed softly and reached to pick up the machine but then he sat back down.

  An irreparable ruin.

  Lindquist’s throat narrowed and grew hot. He didn’t want to cry but he did.

  Lindquist leaned against the counter, forearms on the glass, his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper though there was no one else in Trader John’s to hear. He asked the owner, Mrs. Theriot, to keep secret what he was about to say.

  “What’s with the funny voice?” Mrs. Theriot asked.

  “I need you to keep quiet about this.”

  “Get off the glass.”

  It was early morning and sun shined brightly through the shopwindows. Lindquist hadn’t slept in a day and his head hummed with exhaustion. The follicles of his scalp hurt, his eyelids. He’d been rationing his pills because only a dozen were left. Earlier he’d ransacked his house looking for something he could pawn, but everything of worth was already hocked. The flat-screen television, the stereo, the microwave, the blender, all of them sold. For pills. Ostensibly the appliances had been collateral, but Lindquist never returned w
ith the money so Theriot ended up selling the merchandise.

  Now Lindquist eyed the metal detector, a waterproof Fisher, hanging from the wall behind the counter.

  “I got something, me. Need you to keep it out of sight for two weeks.”

  “A week.”

  “Ten days?”

  “A week. Always been, always will be a week.”

  Lindquist hesitated, looked around uneasily. Then he unpocketed the coin and chinked it down on the glass.

  Theriot raised her hoary eyebrows and picked up the coin. She tapped it on her teeth. Then she studied one side and then the other through her jeweler’s loupe.

  “My,” Mrs. Theriot said. “Where’d you find this?”

  “Serious,” said Lindquist. “Don’t show anyone. Please.”

  Mrs. Theriot looked at Lindquist speculatively. “Look at you. When’s the last time you slept?”

  “Give me ten days?”

  “A week.”

  Lindquist pointed with his chin. “That metal detector up there.”

  WES TRENCH

  Wes looked around the parish for work, walking the docks and talking to ship captains and deckhands. Nobody was hiring and everybody was hurting. The captains, comrades in penury, were contrite when turning him down. “You might want to try Captain John over there in the Grand Pass,” they’d say. Or, “You try Harry Bogardus’s boat yet? The Mustang Sally? Piece of shit, can’t miss it.”

  The sweltering days slid into mid-September and the heat was nigh apocalyptic. Halloween still seemed very far away. Nights Wes slept in the public park in the cab of his truck. His eighteenth birthday fell on a Monday and it didn’t seem much different from any other day. He bought himself a Twinkie and went to the movie theater to see some movie about Wall Street with Michael Douglas.

  Wes knew he should give up, go home with his head hung low and beg his father’s forgiveness. It had been more than a month. More than anything else except maybe his bed, he missed building his boat. He’d wanted to finish it in time for the next shrimping season, but no way was that going to happen now. Maybe it would never happen. Maybe he should leave the Barataria like everybody else. Give up.