Flight of the Scarlet Tanager

by Bevill, C. L.

  Five miles away as the Louisiana Marsh Thrush flew sat the Howe mansion. One could simply drive through the small town of LaValle, negotiate country roads for a few miles and enter the huge gated estate that her father had built for her mother as a wedding present. Or one could go through Twilight Bayou, a bayou that had an area of a hundred square miles, and was protected by the federal government. Teddy had discovered, that the back area of the estate, which ran right up to the bayou, with its gnarled cypress trees and black waters covered with algae and filled with beaver and nutria and alligators, was the least guarded section of her prison.

  And it was the way she had escaped. Wading through miles of bayou with only a compass and a kitchen knife. Teddy shuddered as she stared at the sign. ‘Twilight Bayou,’ it announced with the National Park Service emblem bordering it.

  The road curved around the sign and twisted back to the north. Beyond the sign they both could see the beginning of the swamp. The water was dark and black, and the meager amount of sunlight that trickled through the canopy of trees and vegetation made it seem as murky as its name suggested. She finished with a weak voice, “And that’s how we’re going to get back in.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  August 18th

  From Dr. Morrison’s Guide to Birding, written by Frank Morrison, Starlight Publishing House, May, 2001, pg. 84: The Melospiza georgiana is also known as the Swamp Sparrow. A member of the Emberizidae family he ranges over the eastern half of the northern United States all the way to Missouri, Ohio, and Maryland. The Swamp Sparrow winters in the eastern United States from Texas to Florida, and as far north as Iowa. His natural food is insects in spring and summer. By late summer and into fall his diet reverts to seeds. As his name suggests he breeds in freshwater marshes, bogs, and swamps, with the nests about a foot above water in low brush, grass, or other vegetation, laying four to five in a clutch, pale green to green-white eggs marked with reddish-brown scores. One of the most interesting characteristics of the Swamp Sparrow is that barring migration he rarely flies higher than a few feet above his chosen domain, the grass tops of the marsh or swamp. Additionally, he seldom flies more than a few dozen yards at a time, preferring his designated realm to rule within, the wetlands for which he is identified...

  After traveling for many hours, Gower stepped onto Louisiana soil. His tall frame appeared as though he had stepped from a hotel room, rested and ready to continue a regular business day. Dressed in his typical suit, a garment from an exclusive boutique in Washington, D.C., his blonde hair was neatly combed, and his aquamarine eyes were keenly observant, that of a predator seeking out his next quarry. However, he already knew where his prey would be. He did not know where she was at the present time, but he knew where she was going. And he knew that he had a modicum of time in which to complete his end of the bargain he had made with Jackson Theron three years before.

  In that time he had made a great deal of money from the deputy director. Money that was used to cover up their previous crimes. Money that was used to conceal the ongoing hunt for Theodora. Money that was used to hide crimes like the arranged accident of Edward Morris the writer. Money that was used to track down every last cd-rom that Theodora had made, the clever little girl. Money that was used to bribe underworld criminals to post their own lookouts for the elusive teenager. And money that made it possible to keep the news of her fugitive status out of the press. And much of that money went into Gower’s private offshore accounts.

  Given enough time there had to be mistakes made. Gower found it difficult to believe that a small county sheriff could have been bright enough to call him on some of the time-line problems of the related chain of events through the hospital concerning Theodora. But there were too many witnesses and there was the nasty problem of the young heiress managing to get and keep his weapon. Given other opportunities, it would have been possible to effectively conceal this mess, transferring the blame on other parties, but the young woman had gained an ally, a well-placed and well-classed individual who hadn’t realized the mess he was involving himself in. Not only that but the pair had carried off several potent escapes, causing Gower to work ten times harder to keep abreast of the matter, and the loss of Redmond had forced more possibility of error. It was, simply put, a house of cards that was tumbling down.

  The Learjet that had been placed at Gower’s disposal had been chartered by Theron himself. The jet was parked at the Shreveport Regional Airport and a dark Lincoln Navigator was waiting nearby. A man who was one of Theron’s privately employed security force stood next to the vehicle and held the door open for Gower. “Mr. Gower,” he said pleasantly.

  “Lapeaux,” said Gower and climbed into the luxury SUV. “Has Mr. Theron arrived?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied the head of security. He was as broad as the side of a barn and appeared as though football would have been a sport he would have excelled at playing. Dark haired with hazel eyes, he wore an ill-fitting suit that barely covered his thick shoulders and a holster with a bulging sidearm could clearly be seen underneath. He also possessed a slight accent; he was a man who came from the southern part of Louisiana, a man who took pride in calling himself Cajun. “Two hours ago.”

  “And has there been any sign of the young lady and her accomplice?”

  “No, sir,” Lapeaux said. He was about to shut the door of the Navigator when Gower made a motion.

  “We’re expecting someone else,” said Gower and looked at the plane sanguinely. He hadn’t approved of the maneuver, but the man had come forward on his own account, and provided the necessary supporting information. He had been insistent upon payment from Theron himself. Gower had warned Theron of the potential for backlash, but Theron had negated him.

  The man in question exited the Learjet and stood on the tarmac for a moment, looking around him, stroking his gray beard. He announced loudly, “So this is Louisiana. It doesn’t look anything like Oregon, that’s for damn sure.”

  •

  “It’s after twelve,” Fitch observed, looking at an overcast sky. “I’d like to eat before we go wading in the swamp. You know, before something eats me alive.”

  Teddy pointed down the state highway. “Down that way. And Fitch?”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “I have no intention of ‘wading’ back to my home.”

  “Oh.”

  Minutes later they came up on a general store. The name was simply, ‘Twilight General Store’ with a subtitle of, ‘Maps and Guides of Twilight Bayou Inside!’ The old weathered building sat up against the edge of the bayou, with a graying boat dock that had several small fishing boats tied to it. The air was so humid that moss grew up the supports of the dock and a wild arrangement of ivy curled around the steps of the store.

  Fitch was so amused that he chuckled when he saw it. “And what is it that we’re going to do here, Miss Scarlet?” Then he guffawed at his own pun.

  Teddy snorted derisively. “Let’s see, hotshot. We ram the main gates with the old truck or we sneak in the back. My choice. Sneaking in, unless you have a better idea?”

  “I say we call in Petraeus and the troops.”

  “Who?”

  “You don’t know who Petraeus is?”

  “I’ve been a little preoccupied in the last few years, Fitch. You know, staying breathing and all that.” She directed him past the general store to a small timber road and they took a few minutes to pull the old truck off the road as far as they could, well beyond the line of sight of the highway, right up to the edge of the bayou, where there was a small pull-out that had been carved out by repeated drivers pushing their trucks and cars into the dense forest. They could both tell that it had been used as someplace where people came to drink beer and fish.

  He sighed. “Which makes it no fun at all to tease you. So how do you know that whoever owns the store here won’t pick up the phone and call the police immediately? As soon as they look you in the face?”

  “You’ll see when you go in,” she sa
id mysteriously and got out of the truck. Fitch followed at a leisurely pace. They walked back toward the road and the general store. When they reached it, she added, “You do the talking. Ask him to rent a pirogue.”

  “What the hell is a pee-row?”

  “It’s French for a small, flat-bottomed boat. You use a tiny engine in deeper water and push poles in shallow water where you can’t use the engine.” She fixed her eyes on Fitch. “It’s a whole lot better than plowing through thigh-deep, snake-infested waters that alligators crawl around in and nibble on your toes. Did I mention the quicksand?”

  Fitch stopped abruptly on the stairs to the store and stared out in the bayou. For a single moment everything was still and quiet. The bayou stretched away fading into black shadows where vegetation gathered into seemingly impenetrable walls that even the most canny swamp occupant couldn’t pass. The birds silenced into respectful secrecy that belied the calm. The colors were brilliant greens and emeralds and the water itself was the color of deepest night, but the mute quiet needled across the back of his neck, sending a shiver of reaction down his flesh. In his mind’s eye he could see the teenaged Teddy struggling through murky waters, full of God knew what, fighting to break loose, doing what a thousand people would never have contemplated, much less succeeded. Then he said what he was thinking, his voice tinged with awe, “You did that. You crawled through the swamp to get away?”

  “Afterwards, I was sick for a week,” she said, reflectively. “I suppose I was lucky that something didn’t try to take a bite out of me. I guess I wasn’t good eating.”

  And Fitch didn’t know what else to say. He took another step up and then held the door open for her, wishing that he could reassure her, wishing that he had not done what he had, because she would discover fairly quickly that she had been betrayed...again. There had been points in his life where he had truly believed that his life was going down the crapper at a rate faster than anyone would have managed to crawl right back out. But all Fitch needed was a moment of clarity to understand that there were problems and there were problems. If they were walking around the following day he would have some extensive explaining to do. Possibly some considerable time would be spent in front of a judge. Probably some more money spent from his trust fund would be used on a lawyer, probably stone-faced Jack Macintosh. But Teddy, that was altogether different. She would be wondering how she could ever learn to trust anyone ever again. She’d be wondering why she still believed in a God who had treated her like this? Allowed someone to murder her parents, murder people in pursuit of her, threaten and violate every decent tenet to which she had ever ascribed.

  Fitch wanted to vomit. But it was too late. Everything was too late. All he had left was to compose his face and pretend as though everything was fine.

  When they entered the store he learned what she meant. He was a black man in his sixties with dark glasses on and a snow-white hound at his feet. The hound lifted her head when the door opened and quietly snuffled. The man turned his head and stopped his fingers from running across a book. Fitch realized he was blind and glanced at Teddy. She knew this man. She had known him when she had been a child. Her father had brought her to this place, getting a cold coke for his only child, after showing her the mysteries of the bayous. “Hey ya’ll,” said the man. “Guess you folks stopped to take a gander at the bayou.” He pronounced it, ‘By-yew.’

  “We’d like to rent a pirogue,” said Fitch respectively.

  “A northerner,” exclaimed the man. “I git a lot of you folks in from time to time. Although the summer is running out fastly. Where you from?” He held up his hand and added, “Let me guess. I kin tell a lot from a fella’s accent.”

  Teddy looked at Fitch quickly and nodded. She stood next to a rack of maps and handed him a U.S. Department of Agricultural Forest Service map of part of St. Germaine Parish. It was a detailed map of the area that was 1:50,000 or one inch represented 50,000 feet. It included the vast region of the bayou. “Well, we’ve traveled a bit, interested in birds, particularly,” said Fitch. He winked at Teddy but his heart wasn’t in it.

  She shook her head to herself. Then she picked up a package of ding-dongs and shoved it at him. She added a plastic compass, made for a child, which was attached to a blue cord.

  “Do say,” said the man. “My name’s Feltus Scott. I bin running this general store since the year I came back from Viet Nam.” He paused and pointed at his eyes. “I spent a whole month over there before I got shot in the head. Dint do nothing to my brain but the docs said I cain’t play the piany no more.” He laughed to himself. Then he commented, “You folks don’t mind me. Sides which the VA up to Shreveport done taught me to read in Braille. I read more books in the last few years than I did in my whole life when I could see.” He patted the book on the counter. “I’m readin’ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. I bet that gal is as sweet on the outside as she is as eloquent with her words.”

  “About that pirogue?” asked Fitch.

  “Shore. Shore. I gotta boat for you. You know how to use that outboard motor?”

  Fitch assented. “Know how to use all kinds of motors.”

  “The west coast,” said Feltus. “You from Californee. Maybe Washington state? Bet you got blonde hair, boy.”

  Fitch couldn’t help his hand going up to his head. “Good guess, Mr. Scott. My girl here is dying to see those bayous. She hasn’t been around these parts for years and...”

  A sharp elbow jabbed him in his side and Fitch abruptly lost all of his air.

  “She don’t talk much, do she?” asked Feltus. “That’s all right. I know when a gal is shy.” He reached down to pet his snow-colored hound. “Just like Mabel here.”

  The dog was staring at Teddy and she could have almost sworn that it was the same hound that had been in the store with Feltus Scott years before. He was the same man who had given her a towel and patted her head while he called his sister to give her a ride to Natchitoches. Teddy had shivered in soaking clothing and her teeth had chattered while she waited, almost helplessly, wondering if one of her uncle’s cronies would burst through the general store’s door. She reached down with a hand and the hound put his nose to it. She snuffled again and allowed the young woman to scratch her jowls.

  “You just go ahead and take what you need. We’ll settle up when ya’ll get back.”

  Teddy shook her head at Fitch, who pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of his pants. He placed it on the counter and sat a bit of petrified palm wood on top of it. He said, “Here’s a deposit, Mr. Scott. Just in case we get back a little later than you’re open.”

  Feltus touched the rock and then the bill. “Not necessary, son, but that’s all right. I gotta go get a lottery ticket for my-sef. I don’t intend on being an entrepreneur forever, ya’ll know? Lotto’s up to sixty-seven million and I got plans for that amount of money. Think I’ll buy my dog a diamond collar. You’d like that, Mabel?”

  The dog barked in response to her name being spoken.

  Not ten minutes after that Teddy and Fitch sat in the pirogue heading into the deeper part of the bayou. He gazed around him interestedly and she handled the tiny motor, pointing the way into the blackest regions of the swamp. The small motor purred like a kitten.

  Fitch dragged his hand in the dark waters, surprised at its warmth. Teddy made a noise and shook her head at him. Then she pointed off to their left. A small alligator, perhaps four feet in length from snout to the tip of his tail, scuttled off a warm grassy bank, disrupted by their passing. It sank into the water like an ancient aquatic monster until there was only a bit of froth left from its passage. White ibis took flight nearby, followed by a flock of grackles. He looked down at the impenetrable color of the water, and it occurred to him that a thousand alligators could be swimming around underneath them, waiting for some kind of tasty morsel to present itself. Without pause he snatched his hand out of the water and Teddy hid a grin by turning her head. “I knew there’s alligators here,” he said.
“But...”

  She said, “You see that tree over there.” She pointed to a large oak, shrouded with what Fitch thought were white flowers, some hundred feet away. Spanish moss hung heavily from the branches and he looked back at her curiously. Teddy clapped her hands together, causing a loud snapping that echoed over the purr of the outboard. There was a flutter of snowy white wings as the birds that had been sitting on the oak were startled. A few took flight and the rest followed, anxious to avoid whatever peril the first to fly had perceived. In a moment the sky was shadowed with the white flowing shapes of a thousand birds. “Snowy egrets,” Teddy identified for Fitch.

  “I thought they were flowers or something...leafy,” muttered Fitch, his eyes on a sky full of fluttering shapes. They dispersed and some lighted on the same oak again. Others took wing and flew out of sight, disappearing into the darkness of the trees. Moments later the area had settled once more and he glanced at his companion, feeling oddly out of place for once.

  “My father took me here many times. My mother as well.” Teddy checked the compass and adjusted their heading avoiding a dead fall of ancient cypress and flood debris from a hundred rains and a hundred storms. “It was just as well for me. When I left my home, I knew where to go. Mr. Scott gave me a blanket and called his sister to give me a ride. His sister took me all the way to Alexandria in an old Pontiac. She even gave me a twenty-dollar bill and said I should go as far as I could. These people around here, they know the truth. They knew my father. He was good for the community. He gave millions of dollars to local charities in the years that he and my mother lived here. They knew and they couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to Feltus Scott?” Fitch asked slowly.