Over the next few days they put up a chain-link fence and then dropped the sign behind it. I told Frico about the goingson, and said that we should go check out the sign and everything, but he was busy writin’ love letters to Teesha Grey. Yeah, love letters. Now, don’t get excited, cos look, I went ahead and read one of those things with a flashlight under the bed when everyone was asleep. Damn, that boy should learn to spell. But really the love letter wasn’t nothin’ hot and nasty or anythin’. More about birds than pretty words. That girl had my brother by the bells, I tell ya. You could see he was tryin’ to show interest in her environmental stuff. Her birthday was comin’ up, and he bought her a Hallmark card and everythin’, and he was taking his time to find the right words. Aww, sweet. So far he’d gotten to the “Dear Teesha” part. Pathetic.
Anyway, I didn’t bother Doug neither, cos he was busy calculatin’ how much fish and shrimp we’d have to sell to give Pa his share and still have money to leave the swamp.
But soon I didn’t have to call anybody’s attention to the fact that we had real trouble in the swamp. Our part of the bayou was dying. The water in front of our house was low and stagnant just like the Benet side had always been. Moms banned us from goin’ anywhere near the water, not even to set a trot line or a pot. She said the summer days of jumpin’ off the roof into the bayou were over. And if we were fishin’ or swimmin’, it was to be in the lake towards the Gulf or further east in the swamp. Soon Al Dubois came callin’, sayin’ he wasn’t seein’ much swamp seafood comin’ in, and he had customers. So we were up a creek. We could always find somethin’ to feed ourselves, but hell, we had a client to satisfy.
But by the end of August we had bigger problems than supplyin’ Al Dubois. Those men came back in the eighteen-wheeler. They crossed over the train tracks and marched into L-Island. We tried to talk to them, but they tramped past us like they owned the place. They put on yellow rubber suits with the same logo from that TV ad in the diner and waded into the mud and water in front of our house. They got stuck a coupla times, and one of them had a paddle lookin’ around for gators. I was expectin’ them to drop into a sinkhole any minute, but finally, after lots of curse words, they stopped in waist-deep water and together they pressed a long cylinder deep into the mud and then pulled it out. Bubbles came up from the bayou floor. The men looked at the bottom of the cylinder and chatted back and forth for a few minutes about what they saw. The way they hurried away I knew it was somethin’ important. Doug walked after them and asked why they were there.
“We don’t know why you’re still here,” is what one of them told him, like a jerk. Moms tried to contact Benet, but he had gone to Europe, she heard.
Just before we went back to school, it seemed like the whole swamp was shrivellin’.The ground around us cracked into uneven mud tiles. Raw salt glistened on the soil. We were in the middle of a summer drought and with the death of our creek, it was gettin’ worse.
We weren’t the only ones who saw it. Every day from up in the tree I could see Mai’s mother, directin’ fishermen over at Lam Lee Hahn. They were in a hurry. Just reapin’ shrimp and cullin’ crabs. The boats of the Floatin’ Market were on land, and there was no cookin’ going on. I told myself they were gettin’ ready for a Vietnamese holiday or somethin’. I decided to go get dressed and ask Mai, but when I got into our house the whole damn room was full of chickens. Chicken crap was on Pops’ workbench, on the bed, and a couple o’ hens were goin’ wild, jumpin’ off the fridge and the stove. Outside, Calvin’s kids barked like crazy. Doug and Frico were standin’ on top of the workbench holding the broom and a mop like spears.
“Stay still, Skid. Look in the back doorway.”
A twelve-foot alligator was more than halfway into our house, and she meant business. Doug said it came up Pa Campbell’s wheelchair ramp, but that would mean she’d walked through the house once before front to back, while we were sleepin’. Shivers. This was one hungry mother – and maybe the same one that took my father’s leg. She looked the part – but that critter also looked so desperate I felt sorry for her. She hissed and took a step inside. A cluckin’ hen dropped her wings and moved between her chicks and the seven-hundred-pound pair of scissors. I could see more gators convergin’ on the back porch and out in the mud, like a serious alligator mafia meetin’ was goin’ down.
Now, Moms for some annoyin’ reason always put away the rifle when she went to work, even though Doug is responsible and a good shot. What’s worse, Frico’s sketchin’ material was on the bed – on the other side of the room. I wasn’t sure what he could do in this situation if he had them, anyway. So we just looked at each other and lit out through the front door. Yessir, we surrendered our house to those lizards without even discussin’ it. And all we heard from outside was snappin’ and cacklin’ and stumblin’ around. We alerted Ma. She couldn’t come over. Pa Campbell was really ill, she said. We ran around the back of our house and tried to lure the monsters out from a safe distance.
Then Frico pointed. “That’s why.”
We turned around, and the water in the bayou was razorsharp, reptiles everywhere as usual. But around them, dead fish and dead frogs by the score. Bluegill, catfish, bass all floatin’ belly up. Some of our chickens were keeled over in the same spot where they went to drink. The gators were all bunched up in one spot, uninterested in all that dead meat and lookin’ a little sick themselves.
“Somethin’s wrong.”
We stood there, shocked, as if we just landed on a nasty planet. Turkey vultures swooped down and dipped into the slime, bobbin’ their heads up and down like they knew somethin’ we didn’t. The chickens got out of the house and ran off. The gator came out and splashed back into the sludge. They all jostled against each other, mud-covered. Then one bighead male, he grudgin’ly snapped at a dead fish, and a war began. Those killers churned the muddy water into brown butter. When the struggle stopped, we saw that the sludge continued boilin’. Tiny bubbles, by the thousands, came up to the surface.
When Moms came home and we showed her the bubbles with a flashlight, she just turned on her heels.
“We can’t sleep here tonight.”
As if beddin’ down on Ma Campbell’s floor was any better than sleepin’ with a gator. But it wasn’t about being safe from the lizards. The bubbles in the muddy water was the trouble. It was gas. And whatever kind of gas it was, it had killed off nearly all the fish and was forcin’ the gators out.
The followin’ mornin’ we hopped onto our landing with T-shirts over our noses, just in time to see one of them big beasts havin’ breakfast. He was a terrible-lookin’ thing. A cranky machine with dark-green, corrugated steel skin on his back. He might as well have been put together with rivets.
Then all that body armour just trailed off and turned into the chainsaw tail, slicin’ through the surface of the brown slime. Maan, that critter raised up his head slowly, like two clasped hands with teeth between them, ready to grab whatever God would give. We didn’t see that the bastard was actually after somethin’ until he rushed out of the slime and snapped up one of Calvin’s kids, the one with the white patch on his foot like a sock – my favourite. The puppy had fallen asleep under the house, much too close to the edge.
We clapped and cussed loudly. But that gator had clamped down solid. He was reversin’ with the dog’s head in his snout, and the poor back legs were powerless to do anythin’ but walk with the lizard. Then, almost as if waitin’ to make sure that we saw, the gator paused, adjusted his jaws around the poor puppy, and flung himself into a death roll. Everythin’ went red and bubbly.
Twenty-Four
Close to the end of summer, we officially moved in with Ma and Pa Campbell and gave up livin’ in our house for good. It was a breeze. No, really. Too much breeze. Ma kept the large wooden windows open all day for “fresh air”, so the wind from the lake would come through and disturb everything you were tryin’ to do. We got used to it though. What Moms couldn’t get used to was us growin’ up
so suddenly. It had been a while since I really looked at my face properly, what with the smashed mirror at our house and all. Now, in Ma Campbell’s old-people magnifyin’ mirror, I realized I was gettin’ a moustache. A real one. And some fuzz was stickin’ out my chin too. Typical goofy-lookin’ teenager – but at least my pimples were all gone. It was about time too, cos Lord knows I was tired of that old woman Ma Campbell hollerin’ out every mornin’ “Did ya do it? Did ya do it yet, Skid?” Now, the “it” she was referrin’ to was her “acne remedy”. I couldn’t even tell my mother about it. That old woman called me one mornin’ and told me to catch my own pee in my hand, midstream, and wash my face with it while it was still warm. ’The hell. Said she guaranteed my face would clear up in one week tops. Yah. I never answered her about all that crazy advice. And it didn’t work anyway, so whatever.
More beards gathered around the table at Ma and Pa. Breakfast was meagre on account of the lack of fishin’ and more mouths to feed from one pot. But we made do. It was the only time we held hands around a table and I didn’t feel afraid. Ma Campbell prayed for about five minutes. Meanwhile I’m holdin’ Pa Campbell’s hand flat on the table and it’s shakin’ so much I wonder if he’s doin’ it himself. Meanwhile, Calvin’s kids kept walkin’ in and out of the house during breakfast, like they used to do at my house when we were eatin’. That ticked off the old lady, who thought that everythin’ with four legs except a table and a chair needed to stay the hell outside. Moms on the other hand saw dogs and pets as family. She had this notebook where she kept notes, recipes and dates. She wrote down the date that the gator killed one of the puppies. When six of her yard fowls disappeared (on the Floating Market), she wrote that down too, even though with all her conjurin’ she couldn’t tell where they went. Come to think of it, maybe it was because we were all gettin’ older why she always talked to the chickens and the puppies, cos they still had the baby energy inside of ’em. She always said the four children she had are somewhere else, and the men before her at the table are impostors with facial hair and arm sweat.
Well, after breakfast, Peter Grant popped into the swamps. One of his old man’s spotters was drivin’ the truck. It was the Saturday before the new semester, so I thought he just wanted to say what he was plannin’ to do on the first day of school. He brought Suzy Wilson. Moms asked me how I could have visitors over when I don’t even have decent water for them to drink. The water was just an excuse. Moms had taken one look at Suzy Wilson and saw Fiola Lambert’s face. The whole time we were on the porch, Valerie Beaumont didn’t sit down. And Suzy prob’ly felt it. Moms just kept starin’ at the girl, and I was glad that Suzy and me hadn’t become an item back at Long Lake Elementary. Cos maybe by the time we grew up and got to the altar, she would be Flawless Fiola in the flesh. And Moms would probably have to gouge the bride’s eyes out.
Anyway, Peter came by to tell me there was a lot of talk in the city about the swamplands. People were movin’ out of some places and into New O’lins. Well, we knew that already. We’d seen strange activity, and I knew we couldn’t stay, but I reckoned Frico’s spell would kick in and the city would be advancin’ before we even budged. Of course, I decided against tellin’ Peter and Suzy that Frico’s art-competition entry was really a conjuration. And I didn’t bother mentionin’ anything more about Frico’s powers, period. If Peter Grant of all people didn’t think that face-fixin’ incident was a miracle, then so be it. I was done tryin’ to convince people. They’d prob’ly just talk about it in French in front of my face and be all sceptical – so, no.
Soon Suzy starts feelin’ sick, so the spotter guy revved up the truck and they drove out. Peter told me before he left that if we needed anythin’ or needed to bug out of the swamps real quick I should just let him know and he’d have his old man get a truck there in a hurry, no problem. The boy is cool. Anyway, they couldn’t leave soon enough, cos that bein’ the final summer weekend we had lots to do – and then some.
Moms wanted us to move the few remainin’ things that were in our house over to Pa Campbell’s place. Now, their place was bigger, so I could see how the stuff could fit, but that was still too many people in one house.
Well Moms, she cleared that up right quick. “Ma and Pa are leaving.”
“ Leavin’ to go where?”
“The city.”
“But, those cops. They told him to stay put...”
“Those cops can come throw his dead body in jail if he stays here. He’s very sick, and whatever is bubblin’ out of that bayou isn’t helping. It isn’t helpin’ any of us, as a matter of fact. So these are the last days here, Skid. For all of us.”
She got that right. But I was still wonderin’ what was takin’ the city so long to move. So while me and Doug and Frico hauled things out of the house and over to Ma and Pa, I mulled the conjuration over in my head until I dropped Moms’ “Home Sweet Home” lampshade halfway across the yard and it smashed into pieces. Frico walks up behind me, stoops down and hands the lampshade back to me, perfect, all in one piece. And he keeps walkin’ like nothing happened.
Pause. Now, let me make this clear, real quick. Simple occurrences like Frico fixin’ that lampshade perfectly before anyone even knew it got broke is what made me a believer. I never thought that we’d “fall asleep in the swamp and wake up in the city” like Pops said when he was half drunk. I didn’t think the city would just pop up in the swamps in ten seconds the way I saw it in my head up in that tamarind tree when I was a kid. No, that wouldn’t make sense. I was old enough to know that any kind of development was goin’ to take town-plannin’ and land-surveyin’ and meetin’s and contracts and mobilizin’ people and machinery and all that yawn. But I knew the power of a good spell too. I’d seen Moms conjurin’ in my house since I was born. She called on powers that turned back floods from our door or made our swamp shack stand still in a storm. Powers that cooled down a fever and chased away shadows that were sent for us. I saw Valerie Beaumont use rocks to make a circle in the yard, and she stepped into it and prayed in the rain and blue skies came back, for godssake. I used to think that this was ordinary, but thanks to Pa Campbell, I realized these were workin’s that turned impossible things into somethin’ as doable as dishes. So before any man moved a muscle or a machine, that was where it would all begin: in my house.
That same afternoon, I saw Mai’s mother on the porch talkin’ to Moms. She had brought some bougainvillea plants in Vietnamese pots and some jasmine tea for Moms’ nerves. She showed Moms how to brew a cup. They looked out at the swamp and sipped and talked low about whether bitter melons and cerasee are really the same thing, and what plants can survive the salt. Then they talked about raisin’ boys and girls and argued about which one was more difficult. Then they jawed about how humans are all from one place but we broke into tribes and now we have to find our way back together.
Well, after you go that deep, there’s really nothin’ else to say, so Mai’s mother bowed to Moms. Moms hugged her. Mai’s mother didn’t know what to do with her hands durin’ the hug. Then I saw the fishermen comin’ up from the lake in boats so silently. They had baskets draped on their shoulders. Mud crabs, about two dozen, were tied in them. Buckets of shrimp and dried fish. Large aquatic containers and chicken wire. The fishermen scurried around, and in an hour they took the chicken wire and boards and transformed the house we used to live in into a crab crawl. That’s a kind of coop for keepin’ crabs just like chickens. You tend to them and feed them fruits and greens till they’re big and juicy and clean. One of the fishermen, that guy I sold the chickens to, he gave us a lesson in perfect English about how to grow the live mud crabs they brought for us. It wasn’t safe to eat from the water any more. Now we had food for days. All we needed was rain for our gardens before they all went brown.
Then those men and women in their Sam Pan hats, they stood at the edge of our dead part of the bayou and made the sign of the cross on their chest and waded out. Some distracted the gator with food, while the others d
id their best to rake in as many of those dead things and passed them along in a line. We stepped in to help, but they refused. We lit one dead fish, and it burned bright blue. The fishermen dug a deep hole and buried the rest.
Twice the rain clouds came over and twice we took shelter almost sure it would be pourin’ in minutes. The fishermen and women just kept workin’ and lookin’ up while lightning crackled everywhere. And when they were done, they just bowed and disappeared back into the water.
Twenty-Five
Moms came runnin’ up from the lake after seein’ the fishermen off.
“Quick, hide!”
Tony had appeared in the swamp. He was walkin’ down the slope from the train tracks. She was up for playin’ jokes, even when she was tired. And who better to play one on than ol’ Tony Beaumont?
Hell, last time we saw that guy, he was screechin’ out of L-Island like it was almost midnight, and he was drivin’ somethin’ that used to be a pumpkin. We hid beside Pa Campbell’s house and watched ol’ Tony Beaumont walk into L-Island with his pretty girlfriend on his arm. She was clingin’ to him and lookin’ all around. It must have looked like some cursed forest with all the dried-up waters and the witherin’ trees. He stepped up on the porch of our house. He knocked and waited. When no one answered the door, he opened it and saw chicken wire and two dozen huge, helluva mud crabs crawlin’ around inside the Beaumont house, where people used to be. We could hear the door slam and Doug shouted out: “Ow!” from behind the house, the way he thought a crab would prob’ly say it. Man, you shoulda seen the sheer terror on Tony’s face. Now he’d have some explainin’ to do. Imagine takin’ your girl to meet your whole family and – boom – your girl thinks your folks are some big ol’ nasty mud crabs in a godforsaken swamp somewhere. You could see superstition givin’ his logic a good ass-whoopin’. He wiped his brow and told his girl to sit on the porch for a second. He ran over to Ma Campbell and she was ready for him. That old lady just opened that door and grabbed her cheeks and looked ever so worrisome, and before he could say a word she beat him to it.
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