by Seth Pevey
“I know the feeling brother,” Melancon said.
The man turned and said something in bastard French to his fishing buddies. Then he pointed to an old rotting dock about 100 yards away.
“Meet me over der in twenty minutes podna. I’ll take half of that now by the way.”
“You’ll take a hundred now. Give you the rest as soon as we are on the way there. I never did trust a Cajun,” Melancon said. But he smiled when he said it, attempting to match the man’s condescending geniality.
It seemed to work. The man took the bill and pursed his lips, nodding at them. “Yes sah, private dickies,” he grinned. The men all got into their pickup truck and were gone with the hundred dollars.
“What about that famous intuition of yours, Felix. How is it feeling about all this?” Melancon asked.
“It’s singing, that’s for sure.”
“Well keep the puns to yourself and your pistol ready.”
The man, surprisingly, pulled up at the dock in a small bateau exactly as he said he would. He stepped out of the boat and looped a rope around one of the piles. Then he counted Felix’s nine hundred and said something in French that neither of them could understand.
“You going to take us there?” Felix stammered.
The man spit in his hands, rubbed them together. He pointed. “Head up dat bayou ten minutes on full power. The first split go right and when you see a sandy shore on your left, that is going to be da island. No, I ain’t going there, me.”
“Nine hundred bucks for a few hours in that little thing?” Melancon tried.
Felix shrugged his shoulders, offered to throw in a few hundred more. He didn’t care about the paper.
“It ain’t happening fellas.”
The Cajun looked at the dog skeptically and rocked on his timber legs. Then he watched the detectives pile into the boat with their mutt, helped them shove off, sang a song in French as they floated away.
“Les maringouins ont tout mangé ma belle,
Ils n'ont laissé que les gros orteils.”
Felix looked over at Melancon. “Something about mosquitoes eating his girlfriend, kid. Don’t look at me. I just got the French name is all.”
Once they engaged the little trolling motor the dog grew excited, running in a tight circle before sitting up in the front of the boat with his front legs on the bow.
“You’ve checked your pistol, Felix?”
“Only about a hundred times today.”
The water was still and smooth and green as polished jade. A marbling of life. As they went deeper into the swamp, nutria rats darted, hogs tripped over roots, coons squawked at the dog. But Scrappy paid them little mind, posted as he was in the front of his craft like Washington crossing the Delaware. All creatures in his wake scurried for the protection of the forest.
A few mid-sized gators followed the boat for a few minutes. From tail to head they were no more than four or five feet. Not dangerous or aggressive enough to pose a threat to a boat, Melancon hoped. Though they certainly didn’t invite the urge to go swimming.
Deeper and deeper they went, waiting for the split the Cajun had mentioned. Felix’s GPS would come on in spurts, the little pin popping wildly around the swamp as the great satellite in the sky alternately turned its back on them. Sometimes they would pass old houses raised high on pillars, rotting on the grassy shore. Once, they just missed bouncing off a shipwrecked houseboat that looked like it had washed up years ago, the mire slowly reclaiming it.
“Wonder who would live out here,” Felix said.
“Reckon they are just fishing camps, kid. But yeah, I don’t think you could get a pizza delivered, anyway.”
Just as Melancon had begun to grow worried that perhaps the Cajun had been full of shit, they came to the split in the river. He pointed the craft to the right, where the bayou got far narrower. Now it slimmed down until it was more of a wet path than a waterway. The branches of trees smacked their faces and spider webs frosted their hair. It was around noon, and though the March weather was mild, the famous swamp humidity was still very much in play.
After a football field or two, the water widened again and the sandy shore on the left gave Melancon a deep feeling of relief. He took off his fedora and wiped the leaves and webs off of it. One final time he checked his weapon, feeling reassured by the heaviness of the cool metal at his hip. He also fondled the speed loader in his right pocket, which contained six more rounds ready to fall into the gun at a moment’s need.
He hoped there wouldn’t be any.
Felix jumped up on the shore and dragged the bateau onto the bank, where it scraped roughly against the sand and rocked to a rest. The dog followed close behind him, keeping its nose to the ground but staying in Felix’s shadow.
Melancon picked out a cypress knee that looked particularly sturdy, tied his best knot around it to secure the craft.
“Alright city boy,” he said quietly to Felix, “make sure you remember your boy scout training here. I know this island ain’t too big but I reckon it is real damn easy to get lost on a swampy sandbar. I want you to make some mental notes.”
“We can always follow the shoreline,” Felix said. But he regarded the small clearing studiously.
It was true. The shoreline, aside from this bright and sandy strand, was more of a suggestion than a clear delineation. All around them, drowned forests blurred the line between dry land and the gator-ish pools of water.
“You got your gun ready to go, right?” Melancon asked.
“Yes, damn it. You don’t have to keep asking that.”
The old detective was looking around. “I reckon we ought to have brought some machetes or bug spray or something. Not real well prepared are we?”
They stood there looking into the thickness of the forest, scanning the wall of trees before them. They did look a bit ridiculous in their city clothes, Melancon figured.
“Look.”
The old detective pointed. “I do believe that’s a path.”
A small hole in the forest wall could be seen about fifty feet from where they had landed.
“Could just be a game trail,” Felix said.
“Alright Daniel Boone, let’s go check it out anyway.”
They followed it through a forest that seemed, to Melancon at least, to be somewhat holy. He wasn’t any kind of forestry expert, but he believed that much of what he was seeing was likely virgin woodland, flooded in places by the spring rains. Virgin, in that it had never become acquainted with men’s saws and axes and skidders and chains. They were some of the largest oak and sycamore and cypress and gum that he had ever seen in his life. The sight of the great, green bath sent shivers up his spine. If there was a God, or spirits, they would probably be here. But, looking up in reverence, the city detective found only fat squirrels barking, dancing through the boughs, dropping big drops of water and acorn shells on his hat brim.
The dog wanted only to sniff anything and everything, and was clearly enjoying himself, unaware of any danger. Melancon envied that—there were so many questions jolting through his mind, doubts, misgivings, worries, plain old fears. The dog asked only what was next.
The path led on for a few hundred yards, straight and flat and silty. At the end of it, they came to another clearing where the first signs of man’s activity became apparent.
The first thing they saw were ax marks on some small stumps, as if some of the clearing had been extended. The two detectives crouched at the edge of the meadow, hoping to see whoever might be there before they themselves could be seen. Felix pushed down on the dog’s backside and the animal sat obediently.
But they saw nor heard any sign that the ax swingers were still about. The long white swamp birds, the wind in the leaves, the crickets: that was all that seemed to be here. Making their way into the meadow, they found the blackened remains of campfires and three wooden benches in a row. In some low hanging branches were tied five pointed stars made of sticks twined together with bark strips and straw.
About ten in total. They floated in the wind, innocuous. Felix eyed a little table, built low to the ground, made out of bamboo. On it were some unopened snacks—Twinkies, Ding Dongs, strawberry shortcake, an airplane-serving of whisky, still sealed. A pack of cigarettes twinkled with raindrops against its cellophane.
“This what that coonass was so scared of?” Felix asked, pushing one of the wicker stars away from him so that it swung back and bounced harmlessly against his shoulder.
“Gifts for the spirits,” Melancon said.
The dog sniffed the snacks, started licking the Twinkie wrapper until Felix gently pulled him away.
“No Scrappy, those are for the spirits. You’re not a spirit are you?”
But the dog continued to sniff, now moving away from the snack altar, meandering in tight circles around the area, nose pressed urgently into the black dirt.
Felix squatted to call him back. But Melancon raised a hand.
“He smells something,” the old detective said. “Let’s see what he does.”
It did seem that the powerful nose had honed in on a scent. The circles began to get smaller and smaller. Scrappy stuffed his long face a few inches into the dirt, removed a pawful of the topsoil and tried again. Then he began to dig in earnest, his long claws ripping through the silt and spraying it behind him.
Six inches down, the dog found something. Whatever it was, he began trying it with his teeth, digging more when he couldn’t quite get the purchase he needed.
Felix pushed him away, bent down and pulled the small, dirty object up from the soil. He brushed it off and held it up in the waning sunshine.
It was a doll. The head of it was made from black, volcanic glass that had no place on a sandbar. The stone was conical and bald, tapered on both ends. There were little white dots of paint speckled on the cheeks, and bright green for the eyes.
Melancon stated the obvious. “A Voodoo doll?” They scrutinized it closely. The body of the thing was made from a long chicken bone wrapped in straw, and it seemed to have no arms. It had been covered in some discarded sackcloth, possibly to look like clothing. Upon closer inspection, under this cloth, Felix found some black, curly human hairs.
“This thing looks damn familiar,” Felix said. “Where do I know this face from?”
“Slow down kid, let’s finish looking around, see if we find anything else. Then let’s get the hell back to the office. Sun’s not that far from dropping and I don’t think either one of us want to be out here when that happens.”
Felix bent down, face to face with the dog, who sat panting on the grass. “Good boy.”
They surveyed the area for another hour, but finding nothing new except the shadows growing longer, the crickets and frogs rising to a crescendo, and the sun sinking in the western sky, they agreed it was best they start making their way. The island had a strange feeling about it—something Melancon could almost, but not quite, put a finger on. An old, distant memory of something traumatic stirred within him. It was a lost place, away from prying eyes. That was its purpose, perhaps. Human will had chosen it for just such a reason. Maybe that was what gave the place such a profoundly unsettling aura. Whatever it was, he wasn’t going to stick around and study on it any longer than necessary—he was ready to be gone long before darkness set in.
They traced their way back to where they had tied the boat. It wasn’t as difficult to find as Melancon had feared. The path they’d come in on seemed to be the only thoroughfare of the island, splitting it in two from the protected beach to the worn tip that jutted out against the current. But, upon their approach to that particular sandy spot, with its particular oak trees and cypress knees, they found one thing missing: the bateau.
The rope was still there, tied sadly around the same knee. But the other end was not connected to anything at all. It had been cut, at least from the look of it, and now dangled in the current, wafting from side to side with the water.
“Shit,” Melancon said.
They hauled in the rope and inspected it more closely. “Looks like knife work to me,” Felix said.
“Well, we had better check our phones.”
But it was more bad luck. They both found that they had no signal at all. The isolation of the place was complete—a forgotten sand bar, stuck in a forgotten branch of a forgotten river, in a swamp land inhabited only by a few fishermen and Cajuns stubborn enough to just keep building higher and higher buildings to crest the ever-rising waters.
The shadows grew long and the sky had gone crimson and final. Melancon stood on the bank in his city clothes trying not to show Felix the panic he clearly felt.
“I guess…” Melancon said, looking around. “Maybe we ought to gather some firewood?”
“Shit man… I don’t want to spend the night on this creepy old island,” Felix complained. “Maybe we could swim for it?”
“That is what you might call a very stupid idea,” Melancon said to his young friend, trying a smile to take a bit of the bite out. “Did you see those gators coming in? That’s not even mentioning the current. Or the snakes. Or the darkness. Or the fact that…”
“I got it. Bad idea.”
The dog lounged comfortably in the soft sand at the bank. Scrappy seemed to be right at home, enjoying this little outing and ready to call this sandy beach his own for the night. When Felix bent to pet him, Scrappy sniffed at his pocket, hoping to get his jaws back on the Voodoo doll made of bone, no doubt.
They looked around for wood. Ten minutes later they had a pile of damp drift collected, only to realize they’d neglected to bring a lighter or a match. After throwing on some Spanish moss, preparing to try his hand at a few old Indian tricks, Melancon paused. He was sure of it all at once—the unmistakable sound of an outboard motor coming towards them.
“I suggest we hide, at least until we know who it is,” Melancon said.
Darkness was fully on them now, and they receded into the wood line, easily out of sight. Felix put his arm around the dog and held him quiet there just beyond the shore.
“If you in der come on out!”
It was a voice unmistakable in its cadence. The stocky Cajun man who had rented them the boat stood in his own aluminum bateau, this one with a far more impressive looking motor.
He called to them and turned on an enormous spotlight. They had no choice, and slowly emerged out onto the shore, blinded by the powerful beam.
“Now what in the hell is going on out here?” the Cajun man bellowed, over the crickets and frogs.
“The rope was cut,” Melancon said plainly, blinking into the light. “Can you get that damn thing out of my face.”
“You are lucky I came out here looking for you. Damn bateau done passed right out da bridge and was on its way down to the Gulf. I said to my man I said, ain’t dat the bateau what we did rent to those two city dicks a few hours ago, just drifting on by? And he said to me indeed ‘tis…and I said…”
“We got it. Can you just get us out of here? It looks like someone out here wasn’t too happy about us poking around this island.”
“The soona the better I reckon,” the man said. “But I ain’t got no life jacket what can fit on a dog.”
Eight
The next morning Felix woke up early, back in his citified apartment by the bend in the Mississippi. It was as if the island, the swamp, the Cajun, and everything else had all been a dream. But the doll was just where he had left it, on the bar between his kitchen and living room, confirming the odd reality of it all. He sat and drank a cup of coffee with the little stone-faced man, wondering just where he had seen this likeness before. A television celebrity? A political figure? He couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but the tugging familiarity of the thing did not let up. All through Felix’s scrambled eggs, the fetish glared up at him, expectant, nagging him to remember.
That morning he was to report to Tulane Medical center for a checkup on his shoulder. The wound that Lena Troxclair had given him still itched, burned, ached, and all the rest.
His poor brother. It all still hurt. The fact that he had put her away for a long time, had avenged his brother’s death with the deaths of the two murderously corrupt NOPD officers, gave him solace if not peace. None of it brought back Robert though, and none of it put his shoulder back the way it once was in those long-gone baseball summers.
He was still alive, though. His checkup confirmed that much. The room was slate grey, and the hallway squealed with linoleum on rubber. The doctor poked and prodded his wound, assured him that he was healing well. But Felix no longer had a lot of trust for doctors. When the gray-haired man tried to write him a prescription for oxycodone as he was leaving, Felix shook his head and said he had a few bullets left to bite down on first.
He met Melancon for another coffee at the café near the office. Around ten: a beautiful day, forming up, with the wind cracking the tree limbs, the first hints of pollen sweeping down the streets, that vividness of all things that belongs to a southern spring.
“Someone cut that rope, Felix. We both saw the way I tied it. Now I’m no boy scout but that knot was solid. And you could see where the rope had been cut shorter by a knife or machete or something.”
Felix watched a few pigeons pecking at the Quarter’s shale sidewalk, sipped his coffee and thought about it.
“Now if someone was prepared to strand us on an island out in the middle of a damn swamp, you have to reckon that they were prepared to see us die. Maybe they weren’t the type to come up to us and pull a trigger, but they were ready to watch us starve to death or succumb to gators or what not.”
“And yet, here we are drinking coffee.”
Melancon nodded. “That’s right. All we know now is that we are in a fight. But we aren’t down for the count yet…You bring that doll thing? Pull it out and let’s have another look.”
Felix placed it on the center of the table. The volcanic glass took in the spring sunshine and spilt a dull, blood-hued ray onto the tablecloth. The two detectives leaned in close to study the fetish.
That odd shaped head. Was it just a coincidence of geology? Or had it been shaped that way? Closer inspection showed chipping that looked deliberate, concentrated at both the chin and the top of the head. It was a shape that was almost…