The River of Kings: A Novel

by Taylor Brown

  “No,” said Lawton. He looked up. “Why, you think I am?”

  “Getting fat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No.”

  Lawton shook his head. “Lot of the guys, they got eight-packs and shit. Veins in their fucking stomachs.”

  “I mean, you got a two-pack, at least. Not eight, but hell. I’m sure you can out-lift most of the guys.”

  Lawton shook his head, swallowed. “You’d be surprised, brother. I was always top dog in the gym. I’m still up there, but some of these guys, it’s crazy. We got a guy can deadlift his mile time. Six-minute mile, six-hundred-pound dead lift. Speaks Dari, too.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “I figure I got enough shit to carry around as is. Don’t need any extra fat on top of that.” Lawton cut into his burger cake. “Besides, one of the Team docs said my blood pressure was a little high.”

  “How high?”

  “I don’t know, like one-thirty over ninety. Nothing serious.”

  “Huh.” Hunter finished his first hot dog and licked the ketchup from his thumb, then leaned his elbows on the table. “Tell me something. You really hit that film guy just to turn up the sheriffs, like Andino said?”

  Lawton looked up, chewing.

  “What, I ain’t crazy enough to do it just for fun?”

  After lunch they walked over to where a group was assembling around the weigh-in stand of the South Altamaha Flathead Association. They had the tall hats and liver-spotted skin of men who spent too much time under the killing light of the sun. Mounted to the wall behind the stand was a plywood board painted with a rebel flag, a big river-cat curling over the white-starred X. Below this, in yellow, it said: FEED THE RUN.

  The fish that had everyone’s attention was a fat-bodied giant with a cartoon mouth. A whale of a cat big enough to swallow a man to the waist, halving him like a mermaid’s tail. It took two of them to haul the monster onto the hanging scale. The man who’d brought it in had a goatee and camouflage ballcap, cut-off jean shorts and dirty white sneakers. He drove a log-truck for the mill, they said. His cap read: RAYONIER. He’d caught the flathead on a 50-pound mainline with a 3-ounce sinker, fishing a 15-foot hole. The old-timer who was refereeing the action squinted at the circular gauge of the scale, watching the red arrow quiver as the dead fish settled on the hook. Hanging there, it looked like a mutant tadpole, swollen on whatever scary chemicals flowed from the discharge pipes of the plant upstream.

  “Seventy-eight point three,” read the judge. “Five shy of the all-tackle record.”

  Everyone groaned.

  Hunter turned toward Lawton, to say didn’t it look bigger than that, but his brother wasn’t there. He searched the crowd and saw him at the corner of the building, talking to a wiry little man with a ballcap and mustache, an unfiltered cigarette burning from his mouth. Hunter started toward them but Lawton held up his hand. He turned back to the man and said a few more words and shook his hand, then came toward Hunter.

  “Good news,” he said. “He ought to be up there tonight.”

  “Who ought to?”

  “Wild Dill. Who you think?”

  “Shit,” said Hunter.

  * * *

  Hunter has reached the top of the ladder now. The last light of day slants through the high limbs, and the old rails run elevated into the woods, a long concrete bridge through the cypress. He expects to find a hard surface under his feet but doesn’t. The rail-bed is buried beneath a deep layer of moldering leaves, soft underfoot, and the rest of the bridge is grown over with spidery roots and vines, a gray hulk drawn slowly back into the wild. In the failing light, it runs a straight shot into the distance, offering what seems an old wagon-road suspended amid the trees.

  “Jesus.” Lawton plants his fists on his hips. “It’s like something you’d find in the jungle. Like from the Mayans or something. Don’t take long, I guess.”

  “Nope,” says Hunter. “You know they can’t even find some of the early forts. They’ve been swallowed up. For years they thought the first European fort in the New World, Fort Caroline, was down in Florida. Jacksonville. Now they know it wasn’t.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Maybe here.”

  “Spanish?”

  “French. People don’t realize, if things turned out a little different, we might be speaking French right now.”

  “Or German or Japanese,” said Lawton.

  “Or Russian, to hear the old man talk growing up.”

  Lawton spits. “Come on, that’s enough English for now.”

  He turns but Hunter doesn’t move.

  “Wait, Lawton. I want to know what it is we’re doing, exactly.”

  Lawton looks at him. “We’re going to have a conversation with the guy is all. Wild Dill.”

  “Bullshit. If that was the case, we’d just paddle up to his door.”

  “Thing is, Hunter, I don’t know what language he speaks yet.”

  “What the hell language would he speak?”

  Lawton shrugs, cracking his knuckles.

  30

  New France, March 1565

  They depart Utina’s village at first light. Le Moyne and the rest of the arquebusiers form the advance guard of a column three hundred warriors strong. The chief they are moving against is called Potano, king of the foothills, and he is detested by Utina and his people. His defeat will open the road to the mountains, the gold-rich streams they birth. Of this Utina has assured them.

  It is said to be a single day’s journey into the land of Potano, but the Indians have failed to anticipate the encumbrance of French guns and armor. The sun roars from on high, and Le Moyne and his companions cook inside their metal helmets and breastplates. They sweat pools into their boots, groaning and cursing, slogging over the swampy ground like ironwork facsimiles of men. In the end, the two-spirits must lift the French onto the great mountains of their shoulders, bearing them like sacks of feed.

  At the end of the first day they have come but half the way, and they make camp near the shore of a lake. Utina beds down at the center of a burning ring, each campfire attended by a sixfold bristling of archers. The Indians hardly sleep. They have partaken of la boisson noire, the black drink that keeps them awake and alert on their battle marches, and they have inhaled the blue smoke of the tabac leaf as well.

  Some of the French lie propped on their elbows, lifting the long pipes to their lips. The soldier nearest Le Moyne watches a long plume of smoke come curling from his mouth. He seems entranced, watching the smoke untangle itself into the night. He holds out the pipe.

  “Le Moyne, you want some of this?”

  “Not tonight.”

  The man shrugs and brings the pipe again to his mouth.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Le Moyne rolls out his bedding on the night-dampened earth. Exhaustion weighs him down like a spell. His stockings are mired to the knees of his culottes, his skin raw in its creases and seams. His every joint sings its hurt, and he cares for nothing but sleep. He rests his head on his powder bag, his arquebus cradled beside him like a lover. Sleep infects his prayers. They meander down paths heretofore untraveled, carving new and glowing visions in the black lands of his mind. Thoughts rise riverlike, unwilled. He sees thy kingdom come upon these shores, great castles of metal and brass risen from the trees, their iron turrets smoking like gun barrels, and men who tramp upon their ringing parapets with tools instead of weapons.

  Let us, Father God—

  Bundles of trees are fed into the bowels of the place, whole forests consumed like fagots of kindling.

  Let us, Father—

  The lanterns shine on the walls like crystallized fire.

  Let us—

  He sleeps.

  In the morning they start again, making better progress as the land firms beneath their boots. By midday they are three leagues from the enemy village. They are readying themselves, their swords and long-guns, when the forward scouts are spotted by three natives fishi
ng from a cypress dugout. Cries sound through the woods, and soon the scouts return proud-chested, bearing an arrow-shot corpse. They busy themselves scalping and dismembering the body.

  Meanwhile, Utina stands questioning them. Le Moyne has learned but little of the Indian language, yet he can interpret the blanching of the chief’s face easily enough. The man is afraid of the two fishermen who escaped, surely to alert their king of the enemy await in the woods. Surprise, this was his great advantage.

  Lord d’Ottigni stands watching the men butcher the corpse. He spits and looks at the interpreter.

  “Tell him we must advance at once, before the enemy can organize a defense.”

  The chief shakes his head, refusing.

  “Jarua,” he says. “Jarua.” He turns to his warriors. “Jarua!”

  The natives part as an old man comes shuffling to the front of their ranks. His body is strangely young, his limbs rifled as by rope and fiber, his skin tight and unadorned.

  “This man,” whispers the interpreter. “Utina says he has the power to see the future, to read the outcome of future events.”

  “Blood of Christ,” says d’Ottigni.

  The old priest takes one of the French shields and sets it before his feet. Upon this dome he kneels, as upon an orb buried mostly in the ground, allowing no part of himself to touch the earth. With a sharpened stick, he draws a border around the shield, nearly perfect in its arc. He adds within this circle all manner of signs and symbols, stars and scrawls unreckonable. He is, Le Moyne realizes, dividing himself from the earth on which they stand. Now he begins to grunt and spasm upon his knees, his body torqued suddenly one way, his arms another, his form twisting into shapes inhuman, unnatural, struck as if by some unseen force. He is wrecked by it, his very joints popping and snapping out of place, their angles aberrant and sickening, like a corpse broken upon the rack. His lips peel back, showing his red gums, his bared teeth, his throat convulsing, erupting as if with the rumored war-screech of the ape. His sharp red tongue stabs the air like a dagger. His fingers are locked and clawed, his every vein evident, a figure tortured doll-like at the hands of some terrible god.

  He suddenly quiets. The storm, it seems, has passed through him, and he is again an old man kneeling upon a shield in the woods. He rises and exits the circle to address Utina, who kneels in his war regalia to hear the man’s tidings. The priest’s eyes are glazed; his voice seems to come from a tiny demon buried in his breast, a chilling rasp rarely heard in the world of men.

  “What does he say?” asks d’Ottigni.

  The interpreter’s head is cocked.

  “He says Potano, king of the foothills, knows of our advance. Further, that he awaits it. He says the enemy king has two thousand of his warriors ready with cords to bind up the prisoners they will take.”

  “C’est d’la merde,” mutters d’Ottigni. What shit.

  Utina speaks to the interpreter, pleading with his hands.

  “He says he does not wish to fight, sir.”

  The scar tightens on d’Ottigni’s face.

  “I did not slog for two days through this green hell of a land to turn back now. Tell him I thought he was a great warrior. A man. Tell him, if he turns back now, my men and I will be forced to regard him as a man sans couilles.”

  Without balls.

  “He says he is a man with testicles.”

  “Oh?” says d’Ottigni. “Tell him to prove it.”

  31

  Crooked Lake, Day 3

  They march along the old rail line. Hunter’s knee is throbbing, a pulsing ball of hurt, and his limp has become more pronounced. The pain is a song almost, hummed against the scar that zippers his kneecap, all the time threatening to wail. He grits his teeth to keep up with Lawton. The sun is fully down and moonlight is stalking through the roof of limbs, puddling on the old rail-bed set high through the trees. Crooked Lake looks more like a wide stream. He can see it gleaming through the trees, running parallel to the elevated rail line for half a mile before it begins rounding back and forth amid the concrete pillars, ducking through their shadows.

  Lawton marches steadily on, his trophy-shaped calves quivering with each step, his feet grinding out hollows in the mulch. He has his chin tucked into his chest, his pair of black fins dangling from his vest. Hunter wants to ask him to slow down. The words are simple but won’t come. They are rocks in his lungs, whole and unsaid. His mouth shuts only tighter, paled like a scar in his face.

  He can’t help but remember the night he blew his knee. It was a simple play: I Right 36 Power. He was lined up at tailback in the I. Lawton, at fullback, would kick out wide to the right, blocking the outside linebacker, and Hunter would accept the handoff as the backside guard pulled in front of him, leading him into the gap.

  The November sky was black beyond the stadium lights, the players’ breath pouring from their helmets like exhaust fumes. Lawton lowered himself into his three-point stance, the fingers of one hand spread out before him on the ground, his opposite forearm laid across his knee. His haunches were giant in their golden pants, his hamstrings lumped with power. The week before, Hunter had watched him squat 405 for five reps in the school weight room. High bar, ass-to-ankles, without even a belt.

  Hunter set his hands on his knees, scanning the two lines of armored giants, trying to see what would happen before it did. On the other side of the ball, eleven boys in blue helmets who would hurt him if they could. He had never been afraid of being hit. It felt almost an honor to be the target of all that hate. In boyhood games of smear-the-queer, he would take up the ball again and again, tackled and beaten and kicked and gouged until he could taste the blood in his mouth, his knees and elbows badged red, his body absorbing the punishment that Lawton took at home. But as he listened for the snap-count, something didn’t feel right. An acid burned in his throat, a warning waiting to be spoken. He felt almost weak.

  “Hut!”

  Helmets crashed, a wreckage of bodies, and the backfield choreography began. Lawton exploded to the right, sealing his man to the outside, and Hunter hovered a moment in the backfield, taking the ball as the guard pulled in front of him. He fell in just behind his blocker, hiding behind his bulk as they shot upfield, off the tackle and into the gap. Hunter watched a seam open in the storm of plastic and flesh, just wide enough for him to fit. He was about to burst into the open field when the pulling guard, Billings, dropped low to chop-block the inside linebacker, but the boy dove over the top of him, flattening in midair, 190 pounds of weaponized sophomore driving into the very point of Hunter’s knee.

  The next week, after watching the game film, Lawton broke Billings’s nose in the school parking lot. Everyone watched the boy roll around in the gravel, holding his face in his hands. Hunter, recovering at home, only heard the story later. Lawton never said a word. Hunter figured he should have been thankful, but he wasn’t. He didn’t blame Billings for the missed block. It was simply a miscalculation, a mistake, a turn of bad luck—not ill will. He tried to tell Billings this later, but there was only fear and hate in the bigger boy’s eyes.

  He’d never quite forgiven Lawton for that.

  * * *

  Lawton kneels in the road, holding up a closed fist. His movements are silent, deliberate as a man in enemy country. He points over the side of the bridge.

  Hunter looks. There below them, in a wing of moonlight, stands a stag the size of a thoroughbred horse, head motionless and erect, trees of bone-white antlers twinned crooked and perfect from the crown of his skull. He seems a revelation almost, the king of some nation long vanished, and Hunter finds himself wondering if the earth harbors the ghosts of beasts as well as men, if their majesty and torment echo through time. But there is the subtle swell of the chest, the wet blackness of the eyes, and he knows the big-hearted stag is alive beneath them, vigilant, breathing the power of his ten thousand generations.

  Hunter’s knee screams; he puts out a hand to steady himself, and the stag whirls back into the darkness,
silent, silver as a wraith. No branches rattle in his wake, no leaves.

  Lawton stands.

  “Shit, boy. You see the rack on that? Twelve, fourteen point?”

  Hunter is working the pain from his knee.

  “Don’t get your dick hard.”

  “Shame, though. That gash in his belly.”

  “Gash?”

  “You saw it. Looked like he got caught on a fence or something.”

  “Huh,” says Hunter. “I didn’t notice.”

  Lawton points two fingers at his own eyes, clicks his tongue.

  “Got to work on that situational awareness, boy.”

  Before Hunter can tell him where he can shove his situational awareness, Lawton turns and starts back down the road. Hunter follows, limping worse now. The ache has transformed. His knee is a ball of stone, cold and unyielding, that he bears through the tunneled trees. He thinks of the stag standing tall despite its wound, and he lets the pain remind him of who he is, what he can endure.

  Ahead of him the long pair of fins, sleek and black, flop from Lawton’s vest. Hunter watches them, so like trophies cut from a whale or seal. They will transform his brother, he knows. Turn him into an amphibian, a creature made to swim. A frogman. He always has them now.

  The day they packed:

  “What you got those for?”

  “Mother Ocean. It gets too hot, we can always escape to sea. Don our fins and slip into the surf. Put a couple miles of ocean between us and the boogers.”

  “You figuring there’s gonna be a lot of bad guys on the river?”

  “There’s boogs everywhere, little brother. You’re living in a dream world, you don’t think that. But Mother Ocean is always waiting.”

  “Hopefully she treats you better than she did Daddy.”

  “Hopefully. I figure having a nuclear submarine on your side helps.”

  * * *

  They stand above the silvery waters of Crooked Lake, their moon-shadows pointed like a pair of horns against the surface. The stream wheels away, and in the far crook of the bend a mob of yellow lights hovers in the trees, flickering.