The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  The water was so wide and still that it seemed almost a lake. It reminded Jason of something, but he couldn’t remember what.

  Jason had drowsed through the night, half-conscious of the movement of the water, the trees shivering in aftershocks, the slow grind of pain in his back. By morning he had stiffened to the point where he could barely move. His face hurt. His throat was swollen from his near-strangulation of two days ago, and he could only relieve the sharp pain in his trachea by tilting his head to the left. He could breathe only in short little pants, like a winded dog. He suspected he now bore a strong resemblance to the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

  But Arlette was alive. There were cuts on her face, but she was otherwise unharmed. She sat on the foredeck opposite him, her legs dangling into the cockpit. In her hands she cradled her grandfather’s watch, something she’d seen dangling across the chest of the red-haired deputy when he’d threatened her. Just seeing the watch had so overwhelmed her that she hadn’t been able to say a word in answer to the deputy’s questions.

  Jason rested one hand on her bare knee. She smiled at him, that close-lipped Mona Lisa smile. When he looked at her, his pain faded beneath a warm surge of pleasure.

  “I think we passed it,” Bubba said. “I think Vicksburg is way the hell behind us.” He had replaced Manon at the controls of the boat. He had the AAA map of Louisiana propped in his lap, for all the world as if he was taking a car out for a Sunday outing.

  He was a small, wizened man with skin parched and wrinkled as a raisin. He had a little mustache and knobby knuckles and narrow, peglike tobacco-stained teeth.

  “What’s the next town, then?” Manon asked.

  “Natchez. Thirty, forty mile, I guess.” His face broke into a grin. “Big ol’ gambling boat down there. I won two hundred dollar there, one time.”

  “And if we turn around and head back to Vicksburg?” Manon asked.

  “Same distance, maybe a little less. Best we go with the current, I reckon.” Jason couldn’t work up much interest in the matter one way or another. He was just glad to be out of Spottswood Parish, glad to be on the river again. The river had become his home, his fate, the thing that nourished him. The longer he and Arlette stayed on the boat, the farther they could get from the forces that would separate them. If only it weren’t for Nick—if only he knew that Nick was safe—he would happily follow the river forever.

  But now the river was strange, limpid and stagnant and steel-gray in the morning sun. It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t think what.

  The boat swayed as Bubba steered clear of a raft of lumber. Gulls perched in the twisted roots. And then Jason remembered where he’d seen a river like this before. “Oh, no,” he said. Manon looked at him in concern. “What is it, honey?”

  Jason straightened, clenched his teeth against the pain. “We’re in a, a reservoir,” he said. “The river’s all dammed up with crap. With—” He gasped in air, pointed at the raft of floating trees. “With that,” he said. The pain in his throat was intense and he tilted his lead to the left. “Nick and I ran into something like this upstream,” he said. “We don’t want to get caught in that dam, and we don’t want to be around when it breaks. You’re going to see rapids like you’ve never imagined, with timber instead of rocks.” Bubba frowned. “Twelve year on the river,” he said, “I never heard of nothing like that. Not on a river big as this one.”

  “You’ve never been in an earthquake this big before, either,” Jason said.

  “I don’t know,” Bubba said, and scratched his chin. “There ain’t much current, that’s for sure.” Jason looked up at Arlette. “Can you get my scope?” he said. “Look ahead and see if you can find anything ahead.”

  Arlette put Gros-Papa’s watch in her pocket, then took the battered red Astroscan from one of the boat’s compartments and set it on the foredeck. Bubba throttled the outboard down, the boat settling onto its bow wave until the bass boat was barely making headway. Arlette put her eye to the scope. “It’s upside-down,” she said.

  “Just look at the horizon,” Jason said. “Tell me what you see.” Arlette adjusted the scope the wrong way, overcorrected, then finally found the horizon. “The river bends around to the left, I can’t see much,” she said. “But what I can see is white. Like fog or something.”

  “Mist,” Jason croaked. He gulped a shallow breath. “That’s from water going over the falls.” Arlette nudged the scope, panning along the horizon. Then she gave a start. “There’s a boat!” she cried.

  “A big boat right ahead of us!”

  Bubba grinned, showing his yellow peg teeth. “Now that’s the best news I heard in three weeks.” He pushed the throttle forward. Jason winced at a jolt of pain and turned again to hang over the port side of the cockpit. The bow planed upward, and Arlette put the cap on the telescope to keep spray from spattering the lens, then returned the Astroscan to the nearest of the boat’s coolers. Delight danced in her eyes.

  “It’s over!” she cried. “It’s over!”

  Jason didn’t know whether he was pleased by this prospect or not.

  Debris clattered on the hull, then was left bouncing in the wake. Rafts of logs were overtaken and left astern. Bubba leaned out over the starboard side, frowned at what he saw ahead.

  “That’s not a boat,” he said. “That’s a barge.” He reached a hand to the throttle to lower his speed, then hesitated. “Hey, they’s people on board!” he said. “They must have lost their tow in that quake last night.” Jason straightened again, biting back the pain, and peered over the bows. A slab-walled barge was clearly visible downstream, broadside to the current. He could barely make out two people on board, both waving frantically.

  “Well,” Bubba said. “At least they can tell us where the hell we are.” He throttled down as the bass boat neared the barge. It was loaded with what looked like huge steel bottles, and mooring hawsers trailed fore and aft.

  As the noise of the outboard lessened and the bow dropped into the water, Jason heard a rumbling sound ahead and looked to see the horizon ahead filled with white mist.

  “Look!” Jason said, pointing, and he hissed with pain at his own abrupt gesture. “Mist from the falls!” he panted. “There’s a dam ahead! We’ve got to get those people off the barge before it goes over the dam!” Bubba looked startled. He maneuvered Retired and Gone Fishin’ alongside the rust-streaked flank of the barge, looked up at the two hard-hatted men peering over the gunwale.

  White men, Jason thought. The pale faces looked strange after his time in the camp.

  “Get in, you fellas,” Bubba said. “Before the barge goes into them rapids.”

  “We can’t!” one of the men said. “You’ve got to tow us clear!” Bubba made a scornful sound, spread both hands to indicate the bass boat. “This look like a towboat to you? We got a fifty-horse Johnson here.”

  “This barge is full of nuclear waste.” the man answered. “If it goes over the falls, it’ll poison the river for twenty years.”

  “You’ve got to tow us clear!” the other man said.

  Bubba looked bewildered. “Ain’t gonna happen, man! Look at this little boat! How many tons cargo you got there?”

  “It doesn’t matter!” the first man screamed. “You’ve got to tow us out of here!” Nuclear waste, Jason thought. What he’d seen already on the river was bad enough, the rafts of dead birds, the terror of the harbor of Memphis and the gassed-out city of Helena, but this… poison the river for twenty years.

  Jason looked at Bubba. “We need to try,” he said.

  “Yes,” Arlette said. “There’s not much current.”

  “Try,” Bubba snorted. Then he shrugged. “Okay. We try.” He looked up at the two crewmen. “Pass us a line,” he said.

  One of the crewmen ran to the bows, pulled the dripping mooring line from the river. Bubba nudged the throttle, steered the boat to where the crewmen waited. “Look at that!” Bubba said, gesturing at the six-inch-thick hawser. “What are we going to hi
tch that to?”

  Jason wrenched his head around to look at the little mooring cleats placed fore and aft on the bass boat. There was no way the hawser could pass around them.

  “Tie it to my seat!” he said. “I’ll sit on the deck up front!”

  “You’d just have your seat ripped out,” Bubba said.

  “We’ll pass you a cable!” the crewman shouted.

  He dangled a steel cable over the flat bows of the barge. Manon grabbed it, pulled, gave a surprised shout as the cable tried to rip the flesh from her hands. “Sorry!” the crewman said, removed his pair of leather gloves, and tossed them to Manon.

  “There’s no way,” Bubba said. “Those little cleats will tear right off.”

  “Use all of them!” Jason said. “I’ve seen how you tie barges together!” He moved over into the little jumpseat between him and Bubba. “You lash the cable onto the cleats. I’ll steer—I’m used to the boat.” Bubba gave Jason a dubious look, then jumped up and took the pair of gloves from Manon. The crewmen on the barge began feeding him cable. Jason wedged himself in behind the wheel of the bass boat. The seat and the side of the cockpit was in just the right position to put pressure on his wound, and a sudden sharp spasm made him draw in a shuddering breath.

  He could hear the roaring of water ahead. He looked downstream and saw that more of the bend ahead had been opened as they’d come downstream. White mist rose between the trees. Bubba lashed the cable around all six of the boat’s cleats, the steel wire zigzagging over the casting platforms fore and aft of the cockpit. Manon and Arlette stepped clear as the cable passed beneath their feet. “I tell you one thing, man,” Bubba said. “One of these cleats tears free, this wire is going to cut us in half.” He looked at Jason. “All set, boy,” he said.

  Ignoring the flare of pain, Jason looked over his shoulder at the bows of the barge that loomed behind them, took a gasping breath. “You guys ready!” he said.

  “Go! Go!” one of the men screamed.

  “God,” said Bubba. “I wish I had a smoke.”

  Jason shifted the boat out of neutral, nudged the throttle forward. Retired and Gone Fishin’ began to move forward, then came to a sudden check as it reached the end of its tether. The engine took on a labored note as it began to feel the strain. Jason pushed the throttle forward, saw the cable tighten around the cleats. He was breathing in rapid pants, the oxygen fueling the adrenaline that snarled through his body. He could feel the boat vibrating at the end of the steel wire. He pushed the throttle forward again, slowly moving it as far forward as it would go.

  The engine roared. The stern dug into the water, and the bow lifted, not because it was planing out of the water, but because the cable was holding the boat back. Jason turned the wheel, and somewhat to his surprise he found that he was swinging the bow of the barge upstream, toward safety. He straightened the wheel and the full weight of the barge came onto the cable. The stern dug in and the racing engine began to labor. Pungent engine exhaust drifted over the boat, stung Jason’s nostrils. He gasped for a breath of fresh air. Foam creamed aft of the boat, whipped to a froth by the racing propeller. Bubba, standing on the foredeck, began to dance a few nervous steps as he looked at the cable drawn taut over the deck.

  Jason looked left and right, tried to judge his motion relative to the trees in the flood plain. “Are we moving?” he breathed. “Can you tell?”

  Manon and Arlette peered at the cypress on the banks. Long minutes ticked by. The bass boat shivered and hummed as it strained at the end of its leash.

  Manon turned to Jason, shook her head. “We’re still going downstream,” she said. “The current’s beating us!”

  The current was slow, but it was remorseless, still stronger than the little outboard trying to tow the huge barge.

  “Okay, then,” Jason said. “I’ll go across the current, not into it.” If he couldn’t get the barge upstream, he would try to drag the barge into the flood plain and moor it to a cypress.

  He turned the wheel. Relieved of the weight of the barge, the boat jittered over the water like a junebug on the end of a string. Jason heard shouts behind him from the bargemen, who clearly thought he was abandoning the job.

  “Tell them what I’m doing,” he said. He didn’t think his lungs were up to more shouting. Bubba bellowed at the bargemen through cupped hands. The boat shivered as weight came onto the cable again. The barge’s bows swung around. The Johnson outboard took on a throatier roar. Jason aimed forty-five degrees off the current, to bring the barge in to a landing on the tree-filled point short of the bend.

  Bubba peered downstream, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening. “I think you got less’n a mile ’fore we hit that bend,” he said.

  “You tell me,” Jason gasped. “You tell me if this is working.” He could see the trees moving past the bow of the bass boat faster now, as he was no longer fighting straight into the current. If the trees were getting any larger, they were doing so very slowly. The boat bucked and spat and juddered. “We’re moving!” Arlette shouted with a triumphant grin. “We’re getting there!”

  Even over the sound of the screaming outboard Jason thought he heard a rushing sound, the water rolling over the falls. He looked to his right—working around his injuries involved a corkscrewing of his body that had him looking out from under his own right armpit—and he saw the trees on the point nearing.

  “Come on, come on,” he muttered. He beat an urgent tattoo on the wheel with his palm. “Move move move.” Then he stopped speaking, because it hurt too much.

  Manon and Arlette were suddenly dancing their delight, their cries dimmed by the roaring that now filled the air. Jason saw a willow float cross his bows only fifty feet away, its dangling leaves trailing in the water. Jason looked under his armpit again and saw that he was right on the point, that a pair of trees were going to cut along the length of the cable between the barge and the bass boat. He turned the wheel, felt the cable slack slightly as he aimed the boat into the trees. There was a sudden lurch as the cable went around a willow, and Jason spun the wheel to the right. The propeller began to chew up willow leaves. Bark peeled in tight curls from the tree as it took the weight of the barge. Jason throttled back as he circled the tree, wrapping the taut cable around 270 degrees of stout trunk. The cable draped across two more trees. Through the trees on the point, Jason saw the barge fall wide of the point, saw it hang in the current with white water just a few hundred feet beyond its stern. Yes! Jason punched a hand in the air, then winced with the pain. He leaned over the boat’s wheel and panted for breath.

  The roaring sound increased, and a dark shadow crossed the sun. Jason’s heart gave a lurch as he saw that the roaring he’d heard over the straining outboard had not been falls or rapids downstream, but a helicopter circling overhead.

  The helicopter was losing altitude now, the dawn light edging its rotor blades with silver as it dropped toward them, safely upstream of the point and its foliage. The river water was chopped into a froth by the downdraft as the helicopter hovered with its skids just a few feet above the surface. Jason blinked and narrowed his eyes against the furious gusts of wind. The helicopter was modest in size and olive green in color. Jason could see through the canopy to a helmeted figure inside, someone talking into a microphone. With modest surprise Jason realized the figure was a woman.

  And then the woman raised a hand in greeting, and her face broke into a spontaneous, devilish grin, a grin of shared joy and wild mischief. So unexpected was the smile that Jason found himself grinning back. At that moment Jason looked up to see an additional four helicopters, big ones, thundering over the water toward them.

  The U.S. Cavalry, he thought. They’ve arrived.

  “People seem to think I’m some kind of Tennessee Williams character,” said Mrs. LaGrande Shelburne Ashenden. “They think I spend my days languishing under a ceiling fan and dreaming about past glories. Well, they might have forgot that my family got where it is by knowing how to kill Indians and
drive niggers, but I haven’t.”

  General Jessica C. Frazetta gazed at Mrs. Ashenden with curiosity. What, she wondered, does a Southern gentlewoman of a certain age wear to a political assassination? A celadon chemise-cut summer linen dress. Straw summer hat with matching ribbon. Rolex with platinum-gold expansion band, tiny little earrings with freshwater pearls, sandals, and an Hermes tapestry clutch bag containing a very ladylike pearl-handled nickel-plated two-shot derringer.

  Jessica was feeling decidedly outgunned, at least in the fashion sense. The fact that she could only see with one eye did nothing for her social confidence.

  Mrs. Ashenden sat demurely in the straight-backed wooden chair in the coroner’s office in the parish courthouse. Knees and ankles together, hands in her lap, as she had no doubt been taught in dancing school. Her careful affect was only slightly spoiled by the plaster arm cast that had just been applied by Dr. Patel. The derringer had been loaded with .357 magnum rounds, which on discharge had broken Mrs. Ashenden’s wrist.

  “The Paxtons were always trash, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Ashenden said. “And they’re not one of the older families, not really. They arrived just before the War.” She sighed. “It’s a pity about his wife. She’s a Windridge, you know. She married beneath her in choosing a Paxton.” She looked up at Jessica with bright birdlike eyes. “Do you think I should undertake her social rehabilitation? Perhaps I should invite her into my bridge club…” She looked uncertain as a thought struck her. “Oh dear, someone will have to tell poor Wilona about her husband’s demise. I fear that task may fall to me.” She looked at Jessica again. “Unless I am under arrest? I’m afraid I don’t quite know my status.” Jessica didn’t know, either. Ever since she’d flown into this situation, she’d been unable to decide whether she’d wandered into Gone with the Wind or one of the more macabre works of Edgar Allan Poe.

  “If you can assure me,” Jessica decided, “that you’re not planning on shooting anyone else, then I suppose I can let you go home.”