“I’ve got to go.”
“What the hell are you doing, Marie?”
“Following leads. Isn’t that what you taught me?”
“Let me help.” It was Parks’s turn to plead.
“You are helping.”
“Whatever you say, Doc,” he snapped, sarcastic.
Parks knew she hated being called Doc.
“Doc, do you think Marie-Claire remembers me? It’s been nearly a year.”
“She remembers you. She’s got a good memory, like her mother.”
“See you, Doc. I mean, Marie.”
She knew she and Parks were both smiling.
“See you.”
“Marie!” Parks shouted into the phone before she hung up. “Baton Rouge. If Katrina turns, I’ll get Marie-Claire to Baton Rouge. I promise.”
Too emotional to answer, she clicked the cell phone shut.
EIGHT
BAYOU WATERS
LATE MORNING
Marie heard the airboat before it arrived. It buzzed like a thousand wasps and bees combined. It came round the bend, a huge caged propeller, like a peacock’s fan, at its rear.
K-Paul was standing, waving. Next to him, sitting high on the airboat, was a skeletal sunburned man wearing a New Orleans Saints T-shirt and a baseball hat.
She headed for the dock. The engine shut down and K-Paul, with a rope, jumped off the airboat, tying it to the dock.
“Marie meet Riley. Riley, Marie.”
He looked like an emaciated Popeye. He took off his hat, flashing a freckled bald head. His eyes were jaundiced, his cheeks flushed from heavy drinking.
“Heard you wanted to see my country. The Gulf. Bayous. Marshes. Waterlogged soil.”
“I do.”
Riley stared at her hard, almost defiant. She could tell he knew he was dying.
She stared back, keeping her face neutral, her compassion dampened.
“Come on,” grinned Riley. “I’ll show you my kingdom.”
K-Paul extended his hand, helping her climb onto the airboat’s perch. “Put these on,” he said, handing her ear muffs.
“Sit.” Riley patted the chair next to him. Then he started the engine—a wild roar. K-Paul hooted.
The muffs only dampened half the sound.
The boat bucked forward, accelerating. K-Paul, still standing, held on to the metal stabilizing bar.
The boat swerved, almost like a jet ski, twenty, thirty miles an hour. Spray dashed her face; wind unraveled strands of hair. Riding high, the boat felt like a thrill ride, their bodies swaying into the curves. K-Paul and Riley grinned like crazy men. She held on tight.
There wasn’t a single cloud on the horizon.
This was the first time Marie had actually been inside the marsh, not just seeing it from the shore or trudging through it piecemeal. She could feel the struggle of predators and prey—cottonmouth moccasins and other snakes, small game such as rabbit and hare. Even cicadas, insects, catfish, and bullfrogs struggled for life.
By boat, she sensed the depth, breadth of water and soil blending for miles upon miles. There were warrens of water trails, marked by tall marsh grass, small islands of trees, and bush growth. Wisteria covered pines, moss covered oaks; pink trumpet vines and white spider lillies contrasted with lush greens.
Ibis flew overhead.
Riley cut the engine. The silence was jarring.
Marie took off her muffs, awed by stillness, Riley’s serene expression, and her own desire that this moment would last forever.
Every sign of civilization was gone. She’d entered a primordial world where fowl, reptiles, and insects ruled, lurking in the bush, sky, and water. Here, in this vast wilderness, you’d never imagine that, hours north, a city like New Orleans even existed.
“Look there,” said K-Paul.
A log floated in the water.
“A gator,” said K-Paul.
“Really? Looks like driftwood.”
“Look close.”
Just above the water level, she saw the opening and shutting of a yellow eye.
“Alligators were almost hunted to extinction,” said Riley. “Good meat. Hides became shoes, saddles for the Confederate Army. Oil harvested from them was used as a lubricant for steamship and cotton engines. They’re protected now. Every first Wednesday in September, hunting season starts and lasts for thirty days.”
“Have you ever hunted and killed one?”
“No. They’re vicious. They’ll eat anything, including each other. Besides,” he said, smiling, “you can’t help but respect a species that’s been around for over two hundred million years.”
Marie liked Riley. He was smart; his eyes glinted with irreverence.
“As a boy, I’d keep baby gators in pails,” said K-Paul, squatting behind Marie. “When young, a gator’s skin is softer than you can imagine. Like velvet. But I always threw them back into the swamp. Never kept them for more than a day or two.”
Marie could imagine the young K-Paul, compassionate, curious about nature and biology. It had never occurred to her that a bayou childhood was the perfect preparation for becoming a doctor.
The airboat bumped up against a small island. A nest of birds, a mother and her babies, was settled in the grass.
“These birds, green herons, are sweet to look at,” said K-Paul, “but they can roust your eyes in a second.”
“You love it here,” she said.
“Yes, and I’m losing it.”
“Everybody in Louisiana is,” said Riley.
“What do you mean?”
“See these waterways, canals?” Riley stood, pointing north, south, east, and west. “For decades, oil companies have dredged them. Look there. Pipeline valves.” Rusted metal stuck upward from the sluggish water.
“Canals were dug deep. So deep, roots and natural barriers were destroyed. All this here”—he pointed up and down the waterways—“used to be freshwater. Because of erosion, salt seeps in from the Gulf, killing the wetlands. Destroying animal habitats. Destroying one of the greatest wildernesses ever. Breaks my heart.”
“We’re losing what’s impossible to get back,” said K-Paul.
Marie looked carefully at the vista of marsh and swamp. K-Paul and Riley had altered her sight. What she’d seen as a paradise was a kind of slow dying. What else didn’t she see clearly?
“New Orleans will one day go under, too.”
“What do you mean?”
Riley stared at the water; his eyes squinting in the sunlight’s glare. “In the 1890s the Army Corps of Engineers changed the direction of the Mississippi.”
“You’re kidding?”
“No. They wanted a more direct passage to carry oil and goods to the Gulf. The Mississippi used to birth tons of silt. Silt that became new land. There used to be thousand of miles of land between here and the Gulf, thousands more between New Orleans and the Gulf.
“Changing the river’s flow, deepening canals, letting salt into the marsh has destroyed almost all the land that had once been. To make up for the land that’s disappeared, the corps built levees, doing more damage to a damaged environment. Every half hour, a football field of land disappears. Floods wouldn’t be a problem if land was still here. Eventually, even New Orleans won’t exist.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“I’ll show you,” said Riley, grimly. He downshifted the shaft. The boat moved forward in low gear, past trees, the fading landscape. The motor still growled but she kept her earmuffs off.
The boat veered south for a mile, then right.
She gasped. Hundreds of dead tree trunks, leafless, nearly branchless, were rotting in the water. The trees looked as if they’d been burnt and made barren by fire, but they were in and surrounded by water. The landscape was a nightmare world, as if Marie-Claire had painted sickly stick trees that needed a magician to revive them. The slow-moving, moss-covered water looked putrid. And the sun, drenching the world yellow, made it all seem a fevered dream. Just minutes a
go, she’d thought the bayou wilderness was vast, but it was all an illusion. They’d turned a corner and encountered a landscape no longer green and vital, but black and disappearing.
Riley cut the engine and the world seemed more funereal, punctuated with articulate, almost mournful bird cries.
K-Paul murmured, “I used to hunt here when I was a boy. Now there’s not enough land to walk on.”
Riley grunted. “Used to be thousands of miles of healthy delta land. Nearly three thousand miles gone in my lifetime. And I’m not that old.”
Marie guessed Riley was in his fifties, far too young to be dying.
“Land. Just gone,” Riley went on. “The United Houma Nation used to grow medicinal herbs all along here. Now this stretch is just gone.” Riley’s voice choked.
“I haven’t heard of the United—”
“—Houma Nation,” K-Paul finished. “There’s hard evidence that they’ve been in Louisiana since the 1600s. They’re recognized by the state. But they’re still waiting for federal recognition by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”
“In the meantime,” said Riley, wiping forehead sweat on his arm, “they’re losing more land, like all Louisianans, to erosion and hurricanes.
“Losing marsh, wetlands. Folks don’t understand our marshes are a great big womb for shrimp, oysters, and crabs. These marshes have been declining, infected with oil and salt. Seafood production has been declining. Sons and daughters are abandoning family fisheries. And this area here is just dead. Plain ol’ dead.
“Even the city of New Orleans used to be inland. Now it sits on the coast. Land mass used to buffer it from hurricanes. But as oil companies drilled, all along the coastline, acres of good land disappeared. Vanished.”
“Water turns to salt. Oil turns to money,” K-Paul said, mournfully.
Marie thought the landscape looked like a movie horror set.
“Why don’t people stop it?”
“You think the government cares about habitats dying?” asked Riley scornfully. “Louisiana is a poor state. Poor, with corrupt officials. Oil companies are given cheap leases and have no incentive to give a damn about the land, water, or people. When the oil’s gone, they’ll move elsewhere. And to make it worse, the federal government barely funds environmental repair or rehabilitation. But it funded all the ways to divert the river, deepen the channels, and widen its mouth so oil could move from the Gulf up to city refineries.”
“Is that why you quit?”
Riley looked bleak.
“K-Paul said you’d done environmental work. Public health.”
“Yeah. I quit.”
She’d touched his wound. K-Paul signaled her with his eyes. She nodded. She understood his work was what had driven Riley to drink.
“The environment’s going from bad to worse. Decided I’d quit and live on the land until the erosion destroyed it all or a hurricane blew it away.”
K-Paul squeezed Riley’s thick shoulder. “You tried.”
“The Clinton years were the best. Won a few court cases, settlements proving contamination. Environmental damage to land, animals, and humans. But, on the Gulf, good news doesn’t last. We went back to the same old same old. Broken promises. Did I tell you there’s a dead zone the size of New Jersey in the Gulf? Nitrogen, pesticides, animal waste, all wash down the Mississippi, depleting the water’s oxygen. Nothing can live. Bribed officials don’t care. Hell, America doesn’t even know what it’s losing.”
“I didn’t,” said Marie.
“Oil men,” hollered K-Paul like a circus barker, “just want you to think about how oil fuels America—”
“—our economic engine, some say.”
“Our lifestyle. Hell, our American way of life,” shouted K-Paul, his voice reverberating through the dead trees and grass.
“What’s happening here can happen all along America’s Gulf Coast. Oil poisoning will continue to threaten Texas, Mississippi, Alabama . . . even Florida. Who cares if fish and wildlife die?”
“I’ve got my gas,” whooped K-Paul.
“Dredge the Mississippi. Slice it open. Put up another rig. Dig another well. Hell.” Riley reached beneath his seat, pulling out a metal flask. His entire body was trembling. He drank his spirits, hard and fast.
Marie felt such sadness. She knew Riley and K-Paul had this conversation down to a ritual.
“Oil and water, oil and water,” Marie muttered, gazing at the seemingly endless plain of petrified and rotted trees, dead grass and dry bushes. The landscape was like a body starved of oxygen and drained of blood. This bayou marsh had become a morgue.
“The apparition,” she said, slowly, “the threads at the L’Overture homesite, were like veins in a body, spreading oil, destabilizing the soil.”
“K-Paul told me you were special.”
“Not spooky?” she joked.
“Spirits been haunting the bayou since forever,” responded Riley. “I’ve seen native peoples, Creoles, Cajuns, African Americans call them. Hell, I plan on haunting this place myself. Expect to be doing it by the end of the year.”
She and K-Paul didn’t respond.
“Nothing wrong with oil itself.”
“An organic substance,” said K-Paul. “Exploitation spreads harm.”
“Disease,” coughed Riley.
“The river mermaid, the unstable soil—all of it’s starting to make sense. Or, rather, I feel a glint of sense inside me. Feel a foreshadowing doom.”
“You’re feeling the tragedy of Louisiana.”
Marie stared at the withered trees. “Why do I feel I’ve only scratched the surface?” she said. “Everything has life, spirit. That’s the true message of voodoo. My role is to solve, to explain mysteries. To make sense of the connections between real and spirit worlds.”
The heat and humidity were sapping her energy. Images of bodies—Huan’s, the L’Overtures’, and the river of dead—were making her feel unhinged.
The three sat on the airboat, K-Paul on the platform, she and Riley in the tattered upholstered chairs. Riley reached into a cooler and popped open a beer. He handed it to K-Paul, then reached for another. Marie shook her head. Riley kept the beer for himself.
She could feel death. This wasn’t the Guédé’s landscape. This was death outside the natural cycle—nothing less than murder.
“There’s a phrase,” she murmured. “ ‘Loas created the world; man uncreates.’ ”
“Ain’t that the truth,” said Riley.
“Storm’s coming,” said K-Paul, pointing at birds in formation, dark silhouettes flying home to roost.
“Yes, I know.” She could feel the air thickening, the rise in barometric pressure. Hairs rose along her neck. “It means something that all this is happening now. This time, this season.”
“Hurricane season?”
“Yes.”
“Katrina’s out there, tearing up the sea. Maybe this season, all of this will be swept away. Like me. My doctor doubts I’ll make it to the end of the year. Ain’t that right, K-Paul?”
Marie looked at K-Paul. His shoulders were slumped. She knew it was hard watching a friend die. But she and K-Paul knew that some drunks couldn’t stop drinking. Still, Riley’s dying was as unnatural as the blighted landscape.
“Spirits—both water and earth—are calling me. I need to figure out what they’re saying, what all this”—her hands swept the scene—“means.”
“Can I help?” asked Riley.
“I think you already have.”
“What about me?” asked K-Paul, masking his grief for Riley with a Cajun boy’s enthusiasm.
“You were destined to help. What else would explain why you’d get me down to your home?”
K-Paul whooped. “It was all part of my plan. Cajuns don’t take rejection easily.”
“Romance going on?” boomed Riley. “K-Paul needs a girl. I been telling him that for years.”
“Time to go, Riley,” said Marie dryly. “Steer the boat.”
K-Paul
handed her the muffs. “Marie.” His face was an open book. Expressive. For a minute, he let her see his longing, his desire, and affection for her. Then he shuttered his feelings, saying softly, “Let’s visit where the L’Overtures died.”
“Yes,” she murmured. The engine revved and the wind-powered boat sliced through green, mucuslike water and all the creatures, ancient survivors, watched their passing. “And visit Sheriff Malveaux and all the other good citizens of DeLaire.”
The airboat sped over muddy, slick water. Waves kicked up broken bark, tangled brown algae. “No good fishing here,” said Riley. “No nothing.” His voice was starting to slur. “Going fishing elsewhere.”
K-Paul patted his shoulder.
Riley started singing, off-key.
Marie whispered into the whipping spray and wind, “Time’s short, running out. Any grace I have, let it come.”
NINE
L’OVERTURE HOMESITE
AFTERNOON
As soon as Marie stepped onto the homesite, she saw the ghosts.
John L’Overture was pulling pails of water up from the well, tasting, then tossing the water onto the ground. He kept repeating the sequence. Lowering the pail, pulling it high, tasting the water, then throwing the remaining water onto the ground. Water sprayed the vegetable garden—the moldy beans, the scarred tomatoes.
Mimi fed her baby at her breast.
El was leaning against a tree, flicking her red nails; she’d always been proud of her nails. Huan sat cross-legged in the dirt, her wrists on her knees, like a composed Buddha.
All of them had died violently, yet their spirit bodies appeared whole. No sign of trauma. But what about their souls?
“Do you see Huan?” she asked K-Paul.
“Don’t see anything.”
“El and the L’Overtures are here, too.”
K-Paul made the sign of the cross.
“You’re not scared?”
“No. Just recognizing the blessing. You’re special.”
She stepped closer to where the house had once been. Someone had set a raging fire. The only things left of the cottage were ashes, cinder, and scarred wood. The gleaming truck was gone, as well as the ax that had been propped against a tree. None of the split logs for the potbellied stove had escaped burning. They’d burned, collapsed like thick cigars, dead, graying and black.
The Legend of Marie Laveau Mystery Trilogy Page 53