by Rex Miller
A lot of rain was coming. You could tell from the air and from the sky. It stunk of fish and worms and stagnant ponds; a funky, festering rankness that fumed up out of the turgid road ditches to meet the humid, malodorous promise of the descending rain clouds.
Only a few hours later, but hours of a day that had been so long and eventful that it already seemed like the next day, Ray was pulling up in front of the motel. Sharon heard his now familiar truck motor outside the door and was peering out around the curtains when he knocked.
“Come in,” she said.
He dripped in out of the wetness. “Hi."
“Urn, hello,” she said, as he kissed her.
“Thought I'd stop by on the way home. Guess who I talked to today?"
“FBI."
“You got it. They'd just finished with you. There they were in the Bayou City police chief's office. Asked me a lotta’ questions about you, girl."
“That's nice. You told them I was an okay person?” He moved over close and leaned down for another kiss.
“I told them you were very okay,” he said, breathing in the fragrance of the woman who was all he thought about now.
It was a long, soulful kiss, but it wasn't quite the same as earlier in the barn, and then in the house. Some of the heat had cooled.
Sharon reached up and touched his face and smiled, and moved over to the window, seemingly preoccupied, pushing the curtains aside and looking at the sky. In between the buildings across the road you could glimpse the horizon. The flatlands were all cottony looking with a misty look to the blue tree line, and where Sol was beginning to set there were slashes of blood and flesh-tone pink across the bruised black and blue cloud banks.
“Thinking about your dad?"
“Mm.” She nodded.
He put his hands on her shoulders very gently, coming up behind her, and she tightened a little. “S'matter?"
“Nothing."
“Sure?"
“Just tired."
“I wish I could say something—you know—optimistic. Promising. Give you an encouraging word."
“Thanks.” She smiled. You could hear the television laugh track on the speaker in the next room.
“I just thought I'd stick my head in the door on the way home. Tell you I was thinking about you."
“You're a nice guy. Very sweet.” She smiled again but her mind was blank. She knew she should invite him in or something, but it was the “or something” she wasn't in the mood for. “Don't mind me, Ray. Women are too strange."
“Tell me about it. I never could figure them out."
“Now hold on a second, we're strange but not impenetrable."
“'Zat so?"
“All we want is perdurable love from a caring person. That's not so hard to figure out."
“It is if you don't know what the per-thing is,” he said.
“Perdurable,” she smiled prettily, “my dear, means permanent. Lasting. Very durable. A love that won't pale over time, one that won't wear out through all the female mood swings."
“Fine, Sharon. Very durable. Why not say that in the first place?"
“Because we think in words,” she said, too pooped to realize he'd been teasing her.
“That's a heavy concept."
“Come on. Perdurable. Good word. Expand your mental horizons. How many words can you name that begin with the p-e-r prefix? Perform. Performance. Pertinent. Perky. Perfect. Come on."
“Person ... purple.” They laughed. “I'm going home,” he said and started out.
“Keep going,” she said, softly. “Percolate. Permanent. Pertain."
“I got one,” he said, putting his big hands on her shoulders. She looked exquisitely beautiful framed there in the doorway. Tired or not, she was so spectacular.
“Perdurable,” he said, in a hoarse whisper.
“No way,” she said. “You can't use my word.” She looked about seventeen at that second, and he leaned over and kissed her right below the ear on the throat and held her like that, then kissed her again, gently as he could, on the nape of the neck and whispered, “Perfume."
At one of the stop signs on his way home, a car full of boys, so Bayou City bored they could only booze ‘n’ cruise, jumped the stop and nearly rammed him. He watched them roar away, remembering what it was like to wait for thunder so you could spring into your ride and chase the night lightning. His first truck had Riders On The Storm painted on it.
Face it, killer, he told himself, you've finally found something worthwhile. He realized he was grinning idiotically.
48
According to TV, the investigations into the “4 Corners Murder” of Brother Beauton, who ran the 4 Corners Gas Station, and the murder of Jerry Rice, had so far “yielded no leads.” The day didn't look too promising either. Meara, an early riser, had taken to leaving all his news sources blasting through the small farmhouse, and as he walked from bathroom to kitchen to living room, the scanner, big radio, and television fed news and weather snippets.
“—Bayou City schools are also closed—"
“—flash flooding, swelling rivers and overflowing drainage ditches, have become serious hazards for motorists. Many homes and businesses are finding themselves in deep trouble—"
“In deep shit,” Meara said back to the radio.
“Road banks are overflowing along the highways into Sikeston, Dexter, East Prairie, Bayou City, and many of the surrounding communities. A female reporter was doing a locally televised stand-up. “Captain Dave Vineyard of the Public Safety Department says it looks bad."
A uniformed man spoke. “It's the worst I remember it in fifteen years on the job. This is the only time I can recall when old Highway 61 was completely under water. If this keeps up, we'll start evacuating Sikeston in the morning."
Meara cursed and stomped out of the house.
The river stages looked bad. They were talking about how it was going to crest in twenty-four hours, but that was the standard meteorological line of bullshit. They'd predict a crest, then revise it upward, then predict another crest. They didn't know jack-o-logical shit about the river.
Water was already above the flood stage at Cairo and pushing in fast. A few more inches and the back way would be closed, and it would be a mess. Nobody could go in or out past Big Oak, even in a flatbed, yet it'd be too shallow to put a boat in.
The water was no longer just a silver gray ribbon along the far horizon. You could took way down in the fields to the south of the Meara ground and see that big silvery-blue-gray mass of water pushing in. That far away it looked as still as a sheet of glass, but up close it was powerful and always moving, the river currents making it slither like a million serpents, filling the low spots, coursing through the trees and over the ditch banks, all of it aiming at Raymond.
The stoutest bailing wire he had on the place was about the consistency of a steel rod. But he had a big loop of that new, triple-thick barbed wire, and he got down under the house and started working. He'd be damned if he'd let that river have the house.
It took him all day to sink four railroad ties wired to the foundation. Four of those big, creosoted crossties, each wound in three strands of triple-thick, the wire going up under the foundation and twisting around back under the ties, which he sank as far down as he could get.
It was rough work, with no room to use the posthole digger or get full movement of the shovel. He had to angle it and it took its toll in scratched hands and barked knuckles. Then there was the barbed wire. It was like razor wire, it slashed anything it touched, and when Meara crawled out from under the house he'd ruined the knees of his Levis, his shirt, and both new leather work gloves. On top of that, when he was pulling his tools and what was left of the wire out from underneath, he raised up too soon and drove a rusty nail about an eighth of an inch into his skull.
For about five minutes he didn't know whether to cry, cuss, shit, or go blind, he was in so much pain. He ended up sitting on the old wooden porch feeling his sore head an
d wondering if he should go in and get a tetanus shot, because the way the day was going, the way his luck was running, he'd have lockjaw by morning.
When he went inside, the telephone was ringing and he actually had a few seconds of fleeting hope. It seemed he had entered one of those sweepstakes and—no, there was no catch—he was being phoned long distance from somewhere in Arizona to be informed that he, Ray Meara, had just won a seventeen-foot fiberglass Chimera Jon boat, with seventy-five horse motor, and a new Superglide Trailer. No, he was told, he didn't have to buy a thing.
“As soon as you check in here at Rancho Hacienda we'll be validating your eligibility prize number and you're guaranteed that as soon as you take the tour—” To his credit he neither cursed nor broke the phone into tiny pieces.
It rang immediately, even as he was hanging up, and he picked up the receiver thinking the line had not been disconnected.
“I am not interested,” he said.
“Raymond Meara?” The woman's voice was muddied, the connection so bad he could scarcely hear her.
“What?"
“Raymond, this is Marsha at the bank?"
“Oh! I can't hear you too well, Marsha."
“You cashed a check recently for two hundred dollars. It was written by Doug Seifer? That check just came back. It's marked insufficient funds and we need you to take care of the discrepancy please."
“Insufficient? You mean it bounced?” The nail still hurt. Perhaps his brain was leaking out of the hole, slowly evaporating.
“That's right. We need you to make up the two hundred dollars, Ray, plus there is an additional ten-dollar charge for putting the check through. Did you want us to take that out of your account or do you want to come in and pay it?"
“Marsha, may I call you back immediately on this?” he asked. She said yes, and they hung up. He tried to reach Doug and got nothing. He dialed the operator and a phone company employee assured him the lines were still working. He tried the number again and got nothing. Calmly, one hand on his brain hole, he dialed O and this time got an A T & T operator.
“Could you try a number for me please? I'm having difficulty getting it to ring. Water in the terminals, I guess."
“Sorry you're having difficulty, sir. Glad to help.” The man told him this in a sincere, pleasant tone. Good ol’ efficient A T & T. They'd get this call through, even if the floodwaters were coming. The busy signal rang loud and clear, a fast busy, unlike the ones Meara was used to.
“Uh, listen, could you make sure that number's working? I couldn't get it to ring and, you know, now it's busy."
“You want me to verify if it's busy?"
“Yeah. Please."
“You realize you'll be charged extra for verification of a B-Y sir?"
“I'll be charged?"
“Yes, sir. There is an extra charge.” The man told him how much.
“You gotta be shittin’ me, Jack. I gotta pay extra to find out if a phone is in working order?"
“Yes, sir.” Meara told him never mind and hung up. Again he didn't break the phone.
The telephone rang. He hoped it would be Doug straightening the mess out. It was Rosemary, mad as a wet hen.
“Just who in the flaming hell do you think you are you two-timing—” Mercifully the phone lines were going out and he barely heard fragments of her cursing. The phrase “gutless, lying bastard” was an endearment that broke through the crackle. Her voice was suddenly loud and clear. “What kind of weasel are you, Ray?"
“What got under your saddle?” he asked, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.
“I'm getting goddamn sick of hearin’ about this bitch from Kansas City you're running around all over town with, and you and I are gonna get one goddamn thing straight and I mean—” She was really shrieking at him. It was like a series of poisoned darts entering his left ear, and he was afraid they'd poke through and meet the nail hole, and what little remained of his gray matter would leak out once and for all, so he pulled the phone straight out of the wall.
Rosemary James, A T & T, Sprint, Western Electric, Whatever Sweepstakes, General Electric, Ma Bell, siding salesmen, the nice lady at the bank, the weather girl, teleconferencing boiler rooms, and at least half the assholes working for the phone companies, the Army Corps of Engineers, Rancho Uranus, the Department of Agriculture, the VA, Doug Siefer—he threw the whole taco about a hundred yards out into the field.
Verify that.
49
1-55
Shoney's was fairly crowded. A busload of folks on the way to either the Opry or Branson were lined up at the food bar loading plates, and the tables and booths were abuzz with eating sounds.
The waitress named Sherri looked up and saw a nightmarish vision, the stink of him warning her first, but not preparing her for the sight. A vastly fat, humongously big man waddled toward her in stained T-shirt and filthy battle fatigues, oblivious to the folks around him. One poor fellow, who didn't see the human parade float behind him, was almost knocked headlong into the food bar.
It stopped in front of Sherri and sound rumbled from its innards.
“You got pancakes or waffles?"
“Yes, sir,” she said, fighting to smile in the poisonous proximity of his stench. “We have pancakes."
“Got blueberry?"
“No, just plain. They're scratch-made, though. Real good,” she said.
“How many in an order?"
“Two in the short stack. That's $2.39. Or we have the tall stack, that's three,” she said brightly, figuring him for a tall stack.
“Three?” he sneered. “Three pancakes?” He couldn't believe it.
“Yes, sir."
“I'll take a tall stack. No, bring me two tall stacks on the same plate.” He'd been ready to order thirty, as an appetizer, but he, too, smelled something. Heat. Probably a plainclothes dick or undercover heat. His vibes were never wrong.
The waitress brought the two tall stacks in due time and he put all the butter pats on the six pancakes, pouring approximately half the jar of syrup onto them one by one as he built a layer. It would do as an appetizer. He stood, wadding up the dripping food, turning to survey the watchers. He'd felt out his audience the way an intuitive actor will. A smile split his face as the shark's mouth opened and accepted the stack of pancakes, butter, and syrup. There was no chewing. He merely swallowed, inhaling the food. Every eye was glued to him, but one man in particular was looking at him funny. The gaze was steadier. Perhaps this was the cop.
Chaingang, his left hand dripping from the pancake snack, smiled at the man and approached his table. People fought back revulsion as his aroma wafted across their plates. He maneuvered himself so that he was to the right of the seated man, leaned over, beaming and friendly, and asked, “Aren't you Ted Goldberg from frannus's?"
“Huh? No,” the man said, turning, backing up slightly as the befouled leviathan breathed toxic waste into his face. The thing's massive left paw was patting his shoulder in a warm gesture.
“Oh! I'm sorry,” the beast rumbled. “You look like Ted, from the American Legion cremmer. You got a twin,” he boomed, waving good-bye. Friendly chap. Big smile. You sure couldn't judge a book by its cover.
Chaingang waddled to the cash register, leaving behind his blinding odor, the image of a two-legged beast-man, and an immense sticky handprint of maple syrup on the back of the man's new polyester jacket.
50
New Levee Barrow and Route W
Ferris and Donnie Meuller and Donnie's oldest boy Scott were in Donnie's big silver V-boat. They'd played out the catfish around Stocker's Store and were letting the current take them back, fishing their way back in the fast-moving floodwaters, letting the current scrieve the boat, propelling them downstream.
A man could get into the big, heavyweight outlaw cat real good if he knew where to fish. Hit ‘em about half an hour before dawn, go back around five and catch another fine mess before suppertime. They were hitting livers the way the rich gobble caviar—th
ey couldn't get enough of it.
The water gushing through Lyman Hole Lateral sluiced into the St. Petersburg Ditch and overflowed the banks, moving out over 221 and the tree-clogged drain canals where the big boys liked to hang out and feed. From the bottom of the canal, which was Lateral Three on the maps, the St. Pete Ditch carried about eight and a half feet of moving river water, and as the drainage ditches continued to overflow into this fast-moving stream it became a rushing nine-foot-tall wall of water that buried everything in its path.
At the outskirts of Bayou City the nine-foot moving wall, with the power of the Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee rivers behind it, smashed across the fifty-four-inch drainage culvert, flooding the banks of the ditches adjacent to the already full Bayou City sewer lagoon, moving out across 218 and the highway bypass that was now the bottom of a swiftly moving lake.
An ever-building, merging, growing wave of water overflowed the Cedar Isle Slough, Old Route 17, Catch-basin Ditch, and the set-back levee itself, joining the backwaters of the Cumberland, Platte, Missouri, and God-only-knows how many overflowing tributaries. This entire mass with a life all its own now swirled, flowed, and intermixed, becoming an unstoppable force of nature, spreading, moving, inching inland over what was no longer dry land, the water seeking its own level, moving higher and higher, putting everything it touched beneath it.
“Oh, shit!" Ferris screamed.
"Lookout!" Donnie screamed at Scott, and the three of them tried to strike out at the black thing suddenly looming in the pathway of the V-boat. The first to hit it was Ferris, who caught a good shot on the blade of the oar, catching it against the unyielding steel. The oar splintered as it smacked back into Scott's paddle, knocking it into the water, then smashing him down into the boat as the broken oar whacked him in the nose. Donnie got a halfway good stance but the oar slid over the slick metal as their prow collided with what was later discovered to be the left front fender of a Mercury Marquis. The boat took a hit, shooting Donnie Meuller out into the water, where he plunged over his head, beginning to panic as he could not move in the coat that now felt as if it weighed two hundred pounds, caught in a current too strong to swim against, and only a lucky probe with the broken oar saved him from drowning.