by Taylor Brown
“That’s it,” says Lawton. “Wild Dill’s.” He leans over the bridge. “No ladder, we’re gonna have to jump.”
“All right.”
Lawton sits on the edge and slips on his fins, hooking the straps behind his heels, then duckwalks toward Hunter. “Your vest cinched tight?”
“It’s good.”
“Come here.” Lawton yanks on the buckles and straps of Hunter’s vest, cinching it down like a corset. He slaps him on the chest. “There. I’m gonna jump first. When you hit, don’t struggle or nothing. Just let the vest bring you back up.”
“Got it.”
Lawton grins. “Show you a little of what I do for a living.” He sits on the edge of the bridge and spins to face the water, his legs long and tapered with the fins. He pushes off, a body used to falling through space, and smacks the water with a natural sound. Hunter follows, a twenty-foot drop. The water crashes under his feet, a black night that envelops him, and then he’s up under the moon. They start swimming for the lights, making dark arrows in the current. Breaststroking.
They were water-babies growing up, so their mother called them. Always playing in the creeks or ponds or blue kiddie pools in the backyard, and Hunter took to the YMCA pool after his knee reconstruction, swimming laps until college and the timber sports club. He’s light and fast in the water, unlamed, but this is no lap pool. There are alligators watching from the banks, he knows, and great catfish that comb the bottoms, big enough to swallow a man nearly whole. There are snakes that wriggle themselves across the river’s surface, full of venom that can turn your blood to fire, and who knows what other monsters frozen in time and hungry. Still, he isn’t afraid, and he wonders how much of this is due to Lawton, who seems above such worry, whose enemies have guns instead of teeth.
They edge toward the bank as they swim, the water laced with the shadows of overhanging cypress, and soon they can hear the drone of a generator through the trees. The place assembles itself out of the dark. There’s a homemade floating dock, buoyed on plastic drums, and an airboat hitched to its cleats, the eight-blade propeller caged in wire. Above this hovers the baithouse, a two-level houseboat dragged out of the river and perched on pilings of stacked cinderblocks like some low-rent ark for the end times said to come. It’s flat-bottomed and blocky, with a sitting deck at the stern. The railed roof holds an irregular flock of white plastic chairs, and a hand-painted sign hangs from the edge: WILD DILL’S BAIT ’N TACKLE.
Lawton leads them past the dock to the pale cut of the bank, and they pull themselves dripping from the water, the hull of the houseboat hovering over them like a threat. The cinderblocks are stacked unevenly, like books in a genius’s office, and little mounds of powdered concrete halo their bases. The sitting deck, set like a porch at the stern, serves as the entrance, reached by a set of metal rolling stairs that once graced the tarmac of a jetport.
The yellow lights they saw from the bridge, they’re bug zappers. A throng of them have been strung through the trees, hellish lanterns that snap and hiss as they work, exploding moths and mosquitos in sooty poofs.
“Jesus,” whispers Hunter.
Lawton turns his eyes on him, big and glowing, and holds a finger over his mouth. He slips off his fins, dainty as bedroom slippers, and clips them to his vest. He is shirtless beneath his vest. His arms look ax-hewn, his shoulders like knotty oak. He kneels and cups his hands in the shallows, pulling his beard into a long red point. When he stands, the lights flicker evilly above him.
“How do I look?”
“Like the devil.”
32
New France, March 1565
The enemy village lies in a fold of low yellow hills, the circular huts emitting thin spires of smoke. No one moves within the walls. A couple of dogs. A barabicu burns before the council house, a sacred fire pit. Meat lies smoking on a wooden rack above it, untended.
Le Moyne cannot tell if his weapon has grown heavy or light. His arms are shaking, as if strained, and yet he feels he could fling the instrument wheeling against the sun. He looks to the hill before him. The cold yellow grass bends in the wind. The woods are calm.
Lord d’Ottigni strides before the French ranks. The panache of his helmet waves proudly over the field, a bloodred plume. His cuirass shines like the torso of a god. His face undercuts all this, ugly and serious as an ogre’s. He carries no arquebus, not since the flash-burn. He draws his sword and raises it silvering into the sun.
“En avant, marche!”
They start down the hill, arrayed like the iron tip of a spear, and all at once enemy warriors come streaking from the woods. Their teeth are so white, thinks Le Moyne, their limbs so brown and strong. They scream as they come, a shrill tenor that sounds almost girlish. Arrows scatter the sun, wiggling as they fly, and without thought Le Moyne finds himself crouching to one knee, lifting his gun. The clubmen are coming now, racing through the ranks of archers. Metal trinkets jingle about their waists and thighs, and strings of glass beads, and they hold their war clubs high over their heads as they run.
Le Moyne leans into his arquebus, aiming downhill, and pulls the trigger. The weapon leaps in his arms, belching smoke. He watches a red star erupt in the chest of the warrior before him, a bowman nocking his arrow. The man falls to the ground, flopping and clawing at his heart, a burning stone he hopes to free. Already Le Moyne is reloading as one of his comrades steps ahead of him, firing, guns booming everywhere as he works. They are moving forward almost as one, treading over the bodies of the dead and dying, a storm of powder smoke rolling down into the fold of hills, spitting bolts of flame.
The enemy is where the holy man said they would be, armed with their clubs and cords, but he was wrong in his presage of defeat. The enemy warriors shudder and crumble at every thunder of the guns, struck down as if by the sound itself. Here is a truth barked louder than words. A destiny. Utina’s warriors fall screaming upon the bodies of the dying like wild dogs, dragging them into the trees. There they cut a line around the crown of the skull, winding the hair up in their fists and tearing it free, balding heads to the bloody pate.
Lord d’Ottigni waves his men on, deeper down the slope of the meadow toward the village itself. They will take what provisions they can and burn the rest, nothing save a toppled forest of charred timber left in their wake. No one will be left to bar their march into the mountains.
“En avant, marche! Ne faites pas de quartier!”
Give no quarter.
Just then a warrior comes charging out of the powder-storm, a giant of a man wreathed in smoke, trailing three striped war-tails like some new kind of beast. He charges for d’Ottigni, raising his club two-handed to brain him where he stands. Lord d’Ottigni catches the blow clanging upon his shield and runs his sword through the man’s navel, planting his boot just below the wound to free the blade. The man falls squirming to the ground, clutching his belly and roaring. D’Ottigni pierces his heart, and the man thrashes like an insect as he dies. The scar-faced lord steps past him and keeps advancing down the hill, his plumed helmet gleaming in the sun, his bloodied sword urging them on.
The villagers are fleeing from their huts now, panicked like ants, and the enemy warriors are turning tail to the coming storm, the pale soles of their feet flashing as they fly for the woods. But Le Moyne sees no arrows chasing after them, no men running them down with spear and club. He turns to look over his shoulder, expecting to see Utina’s great pledge of warriors swelled behind him like a tide, weapons bristling to finish what the guns have started. But the warriors are scattered, knotted around the fallen, rapt in the disassembly of bodies. They drive their wedges into the joints, breaking limb from trunk, rising triumphant with their dripping trophies, the scalped heads littering the slope like a batch of grisly half-peeled fruit.
“Attention, Le Moyne!”
He ducks. An arrow sings past his head, a man behind him screams. More of them come black-streaking through the air, like wingless birds, looking for men’s hearts.
Le Moyne raises his arquebus again, squinting through the storm of gunpowder that stings his eyes, searching for shadows in the fog.
33
Crooked Lake, Day 3
Lawton goes first, climbing the boarding stairs to the houseboat’s porch. His bare feet clap across the deck and he pushes through the dangling plastic ribbons that cover the door.
“Evening,” he says loudly.
Hunter, just behind him, sees Dillard Rollins straighten behind the counter. His eyes round large a moment before narrowing. He has graying curls piled on his shoulders, uncut for what looks a presidential term, and a giant gunfighter’s mustache hides his mouth. An unlit cigarette hangs down like a walrus tooth.
Lawton looks around.
“Some place you got here.”
There’s a rack of tackle and another of snacks. There are coils of glistening fishing line and heavy leaders and an array of angry-looking hooks, barbed and snarled in various interpretations of the letter J. A few gummy worms that sparkle or shift color depending on the light. There are sunflower seeds, shelled and unshelled, and fried pig ears and corn nuts, and boxes of candy bars in dusty wrappers, waiting for their gloried future in the days post-apocalypse, when they will be treasured. There are cans of peaches and sausages and Spam. Along one wall a deep freezer freckled with rust, perfect for the storage of bodies, and along the other a fog-windowed cooler housing a range of Coca-Cola products, some of them with labels not seen in years. Next to this a screened trough for live bait. Above it all hangs a big half-acre bug zapper, chandelierlike, caging an electric-blue bulb soot-spotted with kills.
Dill leans back on his stool, his eyes flicking below the counter. His surveillance screens are down there, most likely, and who knows what else.
“Something I can help you boys with?”
Lawton thumbs the barb of a big 10/0 Kahle hook on the rack.
“I heard these Kahles are real fish-killers, bad for gut-hooking.”
Dill fishes a scarred Zippo out of his shirt pocket, lighting his cigarette with a snick.
“Any cat’ll swallow a hook, you don’t set it quick enough.” He blows the smoke from his nostrils. “’Side from the fact, killing the fish is the point.”
“Sure,” says Lawton. “Guess you’re right in that aspect.”
Dill leans forward, the feet of his stool clicking down. He shelves his arms on the counter, his cigarette smoking away. He has a long face, like an old dog, but his eyes are quick.
“I seen you didn’t come in a boat.”
“Good night for a swim.” Lawton pats his fins.
“You swim out here to ask me ’bout catfish hooks?”
“Pardon me, I should of introduced myself.” Lawton walks up to the counter. “Name’s Lawton Loggins, and this here’s my brother, Hunter.” He pauses a moment, leaning his hands on the edge of the counter, cocking one eye at the man. “Hiram Loggins, he was our daddy.”
Wild Dill doesn’t blink.
“I’m real sorry to hear that,” he says.
“You know anything about it?”
“’Bout what?”
“’Bout the way he went down.”
Dill leans back on his stool and examines the tip of his cigarette.
“I heard it was a sturgeon got him.”
“You don’t think there was nothing funny about it?”
“Funny how?”
“I heard there’s been something going on, on this river. Something funny. And I heard you were the man to ask about it.”
Wild Dill looks over them, past them, his focus shifting across the room. Hunter notices the man’s hands have crept to his sides now, below the level of the counter. Surely Lawton sees it, too. His own hands are still on the counter’s edge, his heels elevated from the floor like a boxer’s. He doesn’t turn to look, can’t, but Hunter does. He doesn’t see anything at first. No one is on the porch. Then he sees what has the man’s attention. A giant cockroach has fixed itself over the door, hump-winged and gleaming, its antennae dancing like tiny reeds.
“Goddamn things,” says Dill. He reaches under the counter. Lawton tenses, ready to strike, but the man pays him no mind. Up comes a lever-action rifle in miniature, a Red Ryder BB gun like from A Christmas Story. In a single movement he has the toy gun shouldered, high-aimed, a fart noise as he pulls the trigger. The roach’s wings spread wide as the BB strikes it, a whorl of black petals that falls flat on the floor, upturned, legs beating the air.
Wild Dill works the lever and sits back on his stool, the air rifle propped on his thigh.
“Nasty fuckers.” His eyes are glassy, watching the stricken insect. “Got ’em so big out here they set off the goddamn mousetraps. People think people run the world. They don’t. It’s the goddamn bugs.”
“Huh,” says Lawton. “Some shot. That how you got your name, sniping roaches?”
“No,” says Dill.
“You were telling us about our daddy.”
Dill’s focus shifts back, surprised to find the boys standing before him.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“But you were about to.”
Dillard Rollins lays the rifle on the counter. It still has the original leather thong hanging from the lariat ring. He sucks on his cigarette, a crumbling pillar yet to be ashed even once.
“I’m real sorry your daddy got hisself killed, son, but I don’t have nothing to tell you.”
Something goes through Lawton’s body then, like a shadow or current. The bug zapper flickers and snaps. Hunter looks up in time to see the puff.
“Don’t or won’t?” says Lawton.
“What’s it matter?”
“Oh, it matters.”
Dill leans forward, eyeing them through his hangdog face.
“I got my name about ten years ago,” he says. “I was big into antler velvet then. Women’d come out here to get some for their husbands, try sprinkling it in their coffee or whiskey. See if it might wake up a sleeping cock. This boy said I was putting it to his old lady whenever she come out here for the stuff. Said I must of fucked her some kind of good on that velvet, ’cause she wasn’t never the same after that. He come out here with a pistol, old cap-and-ball Colt like a cowboy or something. He come down the bridge, just like you two, and I was up there fishing largemouths in the shadow of the piers. He started shooting soon as he saw me, before he was even out the trees. I had my old Smith & Wesson .38 on me.” He taps the back part of his hip. “Fired once.”
“What range?”
“Seventy-five yards.”
“Prone?”
“Standing.”
“That’s a lucky shot,” says Lawton.
“Not for him.”
“I want to know what happened to my daddy.”
“No, you don’t. You want to walk out of my place before I got to put you out.”
Lawton’s face is bright now, wired for extra voltage.
“You’re a real bad mother, ain’t you? What you got under that counter, baggies of crystal and a sawed-down twelve?”
“Try me and find out.”
“What happened to our daddy?”
“He was a son of a bitch, and he had him son-of-a-bitch sons.”
Lawton straightens from the counter, slowly, and looks around. The muscles in his jaw work. Through the windows the bug killers spark and pop, worlds on the edge of shorting out.
“It’s like you got you a complex or something, ain’t it? Like you’re some kind of bug murderer out here.”
Wild Dill jams his cigarette in the tray.
“Kill ’em all if I could.”
Lawton nods, his hands hooked in the lapels of his vest. He starts to turn away, then lurches across the counter and embraces the man in his mammoth arms, hauling him flailing and kicking from the stool and onto the floor with a crash that shakes the houseboat. Lawton kneels over him like a lover, his forehead pressed to the floor so the man can only flail vainly at the back of Lawton’s head with his fists. The bug zapper i
s swinging over them, the room swimming with light. Lawton drives his knees under Wild Dill’s armpits, forcing his arms akimbo. They flop uselessly, and Lawton sits upright on Dillard’s chest, riding the man’s thrashings like a bucking horse.
“Hunter, hand me that roach.”
Hunter looks down at it. It’s still squirming, death throes or dead nerves. He picks it wriggling from the floor and brings it to Lawton, who takes the antennae in the pincer of his thumb and forefinger. He holds the winged medallion over the man’s face, swinging it like a hypnotist’s watch, the barbed legs chewing for grip.
“Thing is, Dill, our daddy taught us you always eat what you kill.”
Wild Dill has his mouth clamped shut, his lips tucked between his teeth. He grinds his head this way, that way. His eyes are white, unable to close. His throat rattles with terror. Lawton lowers the gruesome pendant closer to the man’s face, letting it swing back and forth. Closer, closer. The legs comb through the bristles of Dillard’s mustache. It’s too much.
“Russians,” he bursts out.
Lawton pulls the roach back from his face.
“Say what?”
“Russians. They shown up on the river a few years back. Keep to themselves, mainly, two or three motoring up and down the river in a couple old skiffs.”
“How you know they’re Russian?”
“Couple boys run into them said they sounded like Rambo III.”
Lawton rolls his eyes.
“So they’re Slavic, maybe. What is it they’re into?”
“Hell if I know. Poaching, maybe. Snaring whitetail or baiting alligator. There ain’t nobody down in that part of the river, hardly. Could be anything.”
“You got any truck with them?”
“I never hardly seen them. Could be they ain’t but fishermen, working the trade same as everybody else, just in a different language. It takes all kinds, I tell you. America was built by immigrants.”
“That seems a enlightened notion, coming from you.”
“Fuck you, you big ginger fuck. I was smoking grass and eating pussy, you was still swimming in your daddy’s balls.”