by Mike Blakely
Whatever the reason, I couldn’t overcome it. The tiny window on the bayou side of the log jailhouse drew me like a magnet. I had to have a look.
The mud oozed between my toes as I sneaked silently up the slope to the jailhouse. I felt like as much of a thief as Brigginshaw himself, though all I wanted to steal was a peek. I never got the chance.
When I reached the window, I heard a familiar voice:
“ … but why, Trev? Why did you need to steal it?”
“I have no excuses, Billy.” The Australian’s voice was muted in defeat, and slurred a little by the laudanum, I supposed.
“I’m not asking for excuses. It’s too late for excuses, anyway. But you must have had a reason.”
There was a brief silence, then the captain’s voice rose with a touch of the familiar bravado. “I’m an independent, Billy. These bloody freshwater-pearl rushes are like hell to me. I go to sleep feeling the Wicked Whistler under my feet. I see the palm trees, and the island divers. The bare, brown breasts of the women. All the beautiful women. And the waters so clear you can see six fathoms. I dream of them at night, Billy. You probably do, too.”
“I used to.”
“Yes, well, I’ll never make it back now any more than you will.”
I heard Billy sigh. “If there’s any way,” he said, “I’ll get you out of this. I’ll do everything I can.”
The jailhouse bench creaked under Brigginshaw’s weight. “Leave it alone, Billy. There’s no use.”
“I felt the same way that morning the pirates came down on Mangareva. I didn’t think I deserved to live after that. But you got me out of there, Trev. And I’ll do everything I can to get you out of this.”
“Mangareva was different. It was the pirates who should have been punished there, not you. In this case, I’m the guilty one. I killed a man. Didn’t bloody mean to, but that does him little good. No, Billy, there’s nothing you can do for me now … .”
A sudden unexpected image drew my attention away from the jailhouse conversation. I saw my Ashenback drifting slowly down Big Cypress Bayou. It took a second for me to make sense of it. I knew I had pulled the boat up on the bank. It had never dislodged itself before. It didn’t seem possible. But I knew my bateau, and there it went.
I sprinted from the jailhouse and dove off the wharf, splashing into the muddy water. When I came up and caught the gunnel, I heard some townspeople laughing at me. Everybody knew how I treasured that boat. As I swam back to the wharf, pulling my bateau, I glanced up at the jailhouse window. The huge bearded face filled it, smiling. Captain Brigginshaw had roused himself from the bench to witness the commotion. Any embarrassment I felt was worth it. I had given a doomed man reason to smile. There was nothing more I could have done for him.
I didn’t figure out until later why my bateau had taken off on its own. The bayou was rising and had lifted it from the place I had beached it. It was raining hard somewhere upstream.
I sold my catch and went about my daily routine, which seemed sadly empty since the pearl camps had been struck. There were no water barrels to haul, no dead mussels to feed our hogs. My partners and I had been buying corn to feed them, but we didn’t have the cash reserves to do that for long. We were thinking about turning them back out into the woods, or selling them, unless the pearlers came back soon. Anyway, lessons would take up at the Caddo Academy in a couple of weeks, and we wouldn’t have time to fool with hogs.
I hid my bateau under some pine branches at Goose Prairie Cove and made the evening trotline run with Cecil and Adam. We had no idea that it would be our last run. When the sun set beyond Port Caddo, we had no way of knowing it was setting on the summer of pearls, and even on the town itself.
22
A BARRAGE OF WIND-WHIPPED RAINDROPS AGAINST MY WINDOW WOKE ME that night. I could hear gusts roaring in the trees. I slept in the half-story attic of our house and there was nothing between me and the storm but a few boards and cypress shingles. The first thing I thought of was my bateau filling up with rainwater where I had left it down at Goose Prairie Cove.
I got out of bed and went to the dormer window that looked out over the street. A flash of lightning gave me a glimpse of pines whipping in the wind like stalks of grass. The roof was shaking around me. A light passed below—a lantern that stopped in front of Constable Hayes’ house, just up the street from ours. No one would have been out on a night like that unless there was trouble. I stepped into my pants, pulled on my shirt, and scrambled down the narrow stairway to the parlor. My pop was there, lighting a lantern wick.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. His eyes shot up the staircase and he almost told me to go back to my room. But then he looked at me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go see,” he said. “Maybe somebody needs help.”
The wind nearly tore our door from the hinges when we went out. The cold rain soaked us to the skin instantly. Water ran down the cobblestones like rapids. I can smell tornado weather now, and that’s what I smelled that night, though I didn’t realize it at the time. Twister weather charges the air with a fine, rich aroma—almost like the smell of fertile dirt.
The ground was already saturated from the rain we had received in previous days, and the water had nowhere to go but into the bayou. I remembered my bateau lifting mysteriously from the bank that morning. I knew what was happening. The bayou was coming up. It had been coming up all day.
The lantern came back down the street from Rayford Hayes’ house. Rayford was in his nightshirt, his gun belt around his hips, his black boots on his pale legs, the key to the jailhouse in his hand. The tinsmith, Robert Timmons, carried the lantern.
“What’s wrong?” my father asked as we fell into a trot beside them.
“The bayou’s up!” Timmons shouted over the roar of the storm. “The Treat Inn and the jailhouse are flooded! We’ve got to get Brigginshaw out!”
When we got to the end of the cobblestones, we stopped and stood in shock, along with several other people who had brought lanterns out. The wharf was invisible under the rushing current. I had never seen the bayou go any faster than a crawl, but it was piling up against the cypress trees now. Billy and Carol Anne were helping their guests to high ground. The bayou was into the lower floor of their inn. The jailhouse was already half under. I could see Captain Brigginshaw’s fists on the iron grating of the jailhouse door.
“My God!” Timmons shouted to Hayes. “It’s come up two feet since I ran to get you!”
Hayes didn’t hesitate. He ran upstream about thirty yards and waded in, feeling for footholds.
“Wait, Rayford!” my pop shouted. “You need a rope or something.”
“No time!” the constable shouted.
I knew he was right. He had to get the jailhouse door open and help Captain Brigginshaw to the shore before the current grew too swift to cross. Brigginshaw wouldn’t be able to swim well with a wounded leg. I made a move toward the water, but my pop held me back.
Constable Hayes was in up to his waist when he slipped. The water had filled his boots like sea anchors and dragged him down. He floundered helplessly, cartwheeling in the water, clawing at the bayou with the fist that held the key. The current carried him twenty feet away from the jailhouse door.
I tried to go in after him, but my pop held me back again. I saw Brigginshaw’s arms reach through the iron grating, almost too thick to fit. “The key!” he shouted. “Throw the key, Rayford!”
The constable lobbed the key on the iron ring as he went under. It arched through the rain and hit the side of the jailhouse, about a foot beyond the Australian’s reach. The captain drew his arms back into the jailhouse. I knew he was on his stomach, underwater, feeling for the key through the grating. I also knew he would not be able to reach it.
Without the key in his hand, the constable was able to stay afloat a little better. Then I saw Billy dive into the bayou after him. Carol Anne was helping the last of the inn guests up to the cobblestone st
reet. I saw the expression of terror on her face when she saw Billy dive in.
Her eyes sparked something in me. I tore away violently from my father’s grasp and plunged in to help. I heard Pop come in after me. The current carried us swiftly down to where Billy had grabbed Constable Hayes. I swam against the torrent as hard as I could, but still slipped quickly downstream. I passed the flooded Treat Inn as I reached Billy and Rayford, and grabbed the constable’s arm. Pop was soon there with me, and the four of us drifted into the shadows. We pulled the constable out of the swift current, into shallow water. We finally found our footing behind the Treat Inn.
When we pulled him out, Hayes was coughing and heaving, but we knew he would survive. His boots and the weight of his gun belt would have killed him if not for Billy, my pop, and me.
“Get higher!” Billy shouted. “I’m going after Trevor.”
The constable’s hand grabbed Billy by the elbow. Hayes couldn’t speak yet, but he shook his head, begging Billy not to go in again.
Billy pulled loose and ran through the water toward the Treat Inn, diving in and swimming up to the back porch.
I found more strength than I had ever known. I could have lifted Constable Hayes myself, but with Pop there to help, he felt light as a feather. We carried Hayes to high ground and came through a neck of brush to Widow Humphry’s inn, where I dropped the constable and ran back toward the jailhouse.
Pop shouted for me to wait, but I tore on toward the flood. I saw Carol Anne holding onto Billy beside the rushing bayou. He had a crowbar in his hand that he had taken from his flooded store. She was crying, begging him not to go in after the Australian.
The jailhouse was almost flooded now, and the rain was coming down harder than ever. My pop overtook me and grabbed ahold of me with a permanence I knew I wouldn’t break. He all but tackled me. Through the lashing rain and the roaring wind, I could hear the long, horrifying cry of Captain Brigginshaw:
“Biiillyyyy!”
I tried to fight my way closer to the rushing bayou. If Billy was going in, I wanted to help him. But my pop wrestled me down with a physical might I had never before felt him use. We slid down the muddy bank together and stopped near Billy and Carol Anne.
“Please, Billy!” she cried, pleading, clinging to him as my father was to me. “You can’t help him!”
“Let me go!” he shouted.
“Billy! Billy! He’s going to hang, Billy! Don’t risk yourself for him! He’s going to hang anyway!”
The big prisoner’s desperate cry was nearly lost in the maelstrom of wind and water. “Biiillyyyy!” It sounded miles away.
Billy tore free of Carol Anne and sprinted up the bank with his crowbar. The lantern light from high ground illuminated her as she sank to her knees at the edge of the rising bayou and buried her face in her hands. My father would not let me go. I tasted tears of helplessness in the streams that ran down my face.
The hero Billy Treat dove into the water well upstream of the jailhouse and let the current carry him to it. The water piling against the upstream side was almost going over the roof. I was wishing the flood would simply lift that roof off or tear it to pieces so Brigginshaw could get out. But I knew the chances of that were slim. The jailhouse had been built to prevent escapes. Iron bars rooted it deep into the ground to keep prisoners from jacking up the logs and crawling under. Trevor’s only hope was Billy.
He came against the jailhouse door like an eagle landing on its prey. Brigginshaw had hardly a foot of breathing space left, and the bayou was still rising. I saw Billy’s head bobbing, the arms of both men on the pry bar. I could see only the top of the iron door above the water, hoping any second to see it open. But even if it did, the two men would still have to swim to safety, and the Australian with a broken leg.
The current piled higher against the log jailhouse, obliterating hope as it pressed the air out. Maybe it was just my imagination, but the last glimpse I got of the jailhouse door before it went under was by the brief flare of a lightning bolt, and in that fleeting instant, I thought I saw it swinging open, away from the log wall.
A horrible creaking sound came to me from downstream, and I looked in time to see the Treat Inn floating from its foundation blocks. It drifted downstream like a toy and shook as it hit the trees and the abandoned dry dock behind it. The water was inching toward us, so my father pulled me to my feet and forced me up the bank to high ground.
I watched the Treat Inn shake and tilt strangely in the force of the flood, then my eyes turned to Carol Anne. She was backing away from the rising bayou, looking toward the jailhouse, her soaked dress plastered against her like a second skin. When she called his name, it came out as an animal scream:
“Billeee!”
I looked back toward the jail, but the bayou had sucked it completely under. It—like Billy Treat, Trevor Brigginshaw, and the wonderful summer of pearls—was gone.
23
WHEN THE RAIN STOPPED THE NEXT DAY, EVERY BOAT THAT HAD SURVIVED the storm was on the lake looking for traces of Treat and Brigginshaw. My bateau was not among the searchers. The lake had sucked it into some deep hole and buried it. After searching all day, the general feeling was that the bayou had done the same to Billy and the Australian.
The water receded amazingly fast. Less than twenty-four hours after the flood, the jailhouse poked back into view and began rising almost as quickly as it had sunk. Some men in a boat examined it before sundown and found that Billy and Trevor had succeeded in prying the jailhouse door open.
It was a relief to me. In the first place, I hated to think of Captain Brigginshaw drowning in there. I knew how he must have felt waiting for Billy to rescue him from the jail as Billy had rescued me from the Glory of Caddo Lake. In the second place, I didn’t want to see them pull his body out.
Carol Anne remained down at the bayou from dawn to dusk that first day after the flood, waiting hopefully for a miracle. I felt bad enough about Billy, and I figured it probably hurt her twice as bad as it did me. That’s why it surprised me so when she spoke to me. I was watching the men in the boat look over the jailhouse when I heard her steady voice touch my ears.
“He’s out there, Ben,” she said.
I turned and found her standing at my shoulder. “What?” I said, startled.
“Billy’s a strong swimmer. He used to dive for pearls in the South Seas. I’m afraid Trevor’s dead. He couldn’t swim with that leg wound. But Billy’s still out there. He’ll turn up.”
It was sad to hear her hanging on to a hope so slim. But it was also a little infectious. For a moment, I believed. Billy was one heck of a swimmer. “If my boat hadn’t got washed away,” I said, “I’d be out looking for him right now, myself.”
She looked at me and smiled, and briefly I saw the flawless beauty I had once fallen in love with. She put her hand on my shoulder. “I know you would,” she said. “Don’t worry. He’ll come back.”
The Treat Inn had settled crookedly, about thirty yards from its original location, and it suddenly occurred to me that Carol Anne’s home had been wrecked. “Where are you going to sleep tonight?” I asked.
“I’m staying in my old room above Snyder’s store until Billy comes back. Then we’re going to leave this town and start over somewhere.”
The floodwaters were still subsiding when the town went to bed that night. No one could have guessed that the lake would continue to fall to a level lower than anyone—even Esau—could remember. But when the morning came, Cypress Bayou and Caddo Lake looked as if they had suffered six months of drought.
My pop was the first to figure it out. Those government snag-boat men who had been clearing the Great Raft from the Red River had made a gross error in their calculations. They had predicted that removal of the Raft would provide a better channel into Caddo Lake, opening our town to steamer traffic more of the year. What they had failed to figure out was that the logjam was actually a natural dam that caused Big Cypress Bayou to back up, deepening Caddo Lake. The floo
d had washed away the last vestiges of the Great Raft and removed the natural dam, lowering the lake level instead of making it more navigable, leaving tens of thousands of acres of lake bed exposed.
The government, in one ill-planned stroke, had crippled our riverboat trade, drained our mussel beds, and doomed our town. I know it’s not a productive thing to hold grudges in life, but I held a dim view of the government for decades because of what happened to Caddo Lake in 74.
The second day after the flood, Cecil and Adam and I walked over to Esau’s place to find Goose Prairie Cove nothing more than a mudflat. Esau’s shack had been flooded, but it was out of the way of currents and didn’t get washed away. Esau was taking things out and setting them in the sun to dry.
“Good mornin’, boys,” he said, as if it were just another day. “Come to check the trotline? Sorry, but my boats‘all floated away or sank.”
“What trotline?” Cecil said with no small tinge of disgust in his voice. “It probably got torn off into the lake somewhere.”
“Probably so,” Esau said. “Too bad, ain’t it?”
“We just came down to let the hogs loose,” I said. “Unless you want them.”
The old Choctaw reached for the ever-present flask of whiskey in his hip pocket. He took a small swig, same as always.
It struck me that I had never seen him empty that flask. I had never even seen it near empty. I wondered if he ever really drank any whiskey at all. He shook his head as he put the flask away. “No,” he said, “I don’t want them hogs. Let ‘em go back to the woods. You boys breakin’ up your partnership?”
I hadn’t exactly thought of it that way, but it seemed as if that was what we were doing. Adam looked at me and I looked at Cecil. Cecil looked out across the ugly field of mud that had once felt the toes of a thousand pearl-hunters.