Roots of Misfortune

by Seth Pevey

  The old man stared up at a tall, metal thing before them.

  “The elevator bridge!” Felix finally said, the realization dawning on him all at once. “You brilliant bastard.” The young man was out of the car in a flash, running towards the span.

  Of course, he thought. They were just off the parking lot where they had met the Cajun man, at the end of the highway where it fell into the river. Where it used to run over this tributary. Had it really only been a few days ago that the two detectives had stood here and hired that boat? Gotten castaway out on that creepy island? So much had filled up the short time that it felt like some ancient memory.

  Melancon and Tina met him at the foot of the ladder leading up to the raised bridge. The old man pulled the two of them into a huddle. “We have to assume G.D. has a gun, and remember that we don’t. But so long as we can get this thing to work he won’t be getting to the Gulf tonight.”

  The sun had all but lowered, and the last lights of day were flickering out into the western sky. A small wind crinkled the slow surface of the water. They looked at each other.

  Tina spoke up. “Mind letting me in on the plan? Maybe I can help.”

  Melancon raised a finger to the pylon looming above them. “This old bridge raises and lowers. An elevator bridge. It used to lower down for road traffic going east, but it’s not used anymore. When it does lower, it lowers all the way down to the water, blocks off this whole area from getting into the main channel of the Pearl. Which goes straight down to the Gulf. Which is the only place our man is headed.”

  “You really know all this?”

  “This old Cajun fella told us about it when we were first checking out that Dead Possum Island. All we have to do is figure out how to lower it and he is trapped. Lest he wants to go off into the swamp on foot, at night.”

  “And alligators don’t like history lessons,” Felix said, trying to diffuse the tension.

  But no one had a laugh to spare him. “So you’re going to try and break in and flip the lever?” Tina asked.

  “We can only hope it is that simple.” Melancon put a hand on the first ladder rung, made a forward motion with his chin.

  Felix and Tina stood on the roadway where it ramped up and ended abruptly, their eyes cast out into the growing darkness of the swamp, waiting for Melancon to pull his old body out of the way. They listened. Over the cry of a lonesome whippoorwill, they could just discern the low hum of a motor at full throttle.

  The bridge was small, short and squat. The biggest part of it were the two steel pylons stuck deep into the river’s banks, each one at least seventy feet tall. But the roadway, elevated fifty or so feet above their heads, was only the length of an eighteen wheeler and just about wide enough for one to pass at a time. Draped over these pylons were thick steel cables, large counterweights, and tight nests of pulleys. It was clear from a glance that this was not the normal drawbridge, splitting apart and raising both sides like a saloon door. As the pylons and their pulleys suggested, the entire length of the bridge would simply raise and lower like an elevator platform, or like the fork of a lift. In the middle of it all was a small operator’s cabin overlooking the deepest part of the river.

  However it worked, Felix knew he was no engineer. This was going to require some luck and quick thinking, and even then, it was a slim chance. Still the boat engine’s hum grew louder, closer, and more insistent.

  All three of them were climbing the ladder now, a row of ants in the ruddy glow of dusk.

  After gaining the elevated asphalt, Felix looked out over the rapidly darkening water. Crickets and frogs were just stirring for the night, but he could still hear the engine. Now, across the rippling, black current, he located a pinpoint of light where it waxed behind a bend in the river. This light twinkled for a moment, and then burst through the cypress needles and into reality. It was the small shrimp boat headed straight towards them, maybe three or four hundred yards distant. Just a pinprick, but coming steadily, making a beeline for the bridge, the orb of light on its bow glowing larger until it shone its reflection in the window of the operator’s cabin, where the three of them stood debating the next step.

  Melancon wasn’t taking any chances. After trying the door with the crowbar and meeting resistance, he used it to smash the second window of the night, and began to climb inside.

  The boat grew closer, the small current at its back.

  Melancon opened the door from the inside, and they found him hovering over the control board, a snarl of concentration on his face. “Ok. It looks like it takes a key. There is an ignition switch here, looks like it is a pretty old one. Look in those drawers over there Felix.”

  Before he turned to obey, Felix caught a glimpse of the boatman’s face out in the darkness. At least, the outline of a wooden jaw hovering over the spot light. Lambent, angular, hard: the grin had left him. In the back of the boat, a dark shape cowered, swaddled up against the splashing water. Closer still they rocketed.

  Felix broke the spell that had entranced him, watching the dark man come bubbling towards him out of the swamp. He pulled open drawer after drawer inside the tight cabin, rifling for the key, but finding only old, rusty tools. Panicking, he began pulling out drawers one by one and dumping the contents on the ground.

  But no key shone up at him. And still, the roar outside grew only louder, full throttle. 200 yards now and G.D. could be gone forever out into the Gulf, taking Min Ji with him.

  Closer.

  “Let me try something,” Tina said, and began picking through the tools until she found a thin piece of rebar.

  One hundred yards. A football field. A two-minute drive. All the difference between justice and outrage.

  “Whatever you are going to do, do it quick,” Melancon said, now with his back to her, scrambling still for the key.

  Tina put the rebar up to the ignition switch, pointed it into the keyhole slot.

  “I guess we could use some of those spirits about now,” she said. She pulled the John the Conqueror root out of her pocket, showed it to Felix, and winked at him. “Now pick up that hunk of cement and hit the end of this.”

  Felix did. It only took one gentle hit and the rebar slid inside. Tina grabbed his hands and placed them on the metal rod.

  “Twist it!”

  Beyond all imagining, a roar erupted beneath the cabin—a deep sound of shifting metal and a vibration that shook the entire room, rattling the pile of tools on the floor.

  Melancon grabbed the largest lever and pulled it down with his whole weight.

  They could hear the metal cables go taught, the rust in the pulleys breaking apart all at once and filling their bones with a deep echo.

  Felix ran to the window. The boat was still coming, but now the trio of heroes were being lowered down to meet it. Behind them was a bridge the size of two eighteen wheelers—solid and impenetrable, blocking the escape route, sealing the door to the wide-open waterways of the Pearl.

  For a moment, it seemed like G.D. opened the throttle even more, that he would make a final charge under the bridge, which crept down at a frighteningly glacial pace.

  But as the water came flush with the roadway, they could see they had him beaten, if only by a few merciful, glorious seconds. They could look down from the cabin and see the top of his head where he stood at the wheel of his small craft. If he didn’t relent, if he didn’t make a bold shift in trajectory, G.D. would come to a sudden and crushing halt against the side of the bridge.

  At ten yards, he cut the engine and pulled the boat sharply to the right, sending up a wave that thudded against the operator’s cabin.

  Melancon waved to him.

  “Stay low guys. We may get some lead thrown at us yet,” he said over his shoulder.

  Felix and Tina hunched down low in the cabin, putting blessed steel between their centers of mass and the boat. Even if G.D. were to shoot, it would have to be a hell of a shot. He stood over his spotlight, bobbing there, the night crowded in around him. Felix
peered just over the lip, looking down on G.D., and knowing that they had him at last. Was this long-armed man feeling the fear now? Hearing the cold clink of the prison bars slamming home? Felix hoped so.

  There was nothing G.D. could do except run back up river, trapping himself in his little web of tributaries. He seemed to know the futility of that, and glared up at the trio. His teeth shone in the light as he pulled a long knife out of his belt and waved it at the detectives.

  It was not the kris, which Tina had tucked away somewhere in the El Camino, but a small, machete-like blade. No gun they could see. Min Ji bounced in the wake, covered and cowed in the back of the boat, a less brave and rebellious figure now by miles.

  Melancon put two hands on the empty window frame and leaned towards them. “End of the line,” he yelled loudly at the boat, which rocked side to side and drifted towards them, still tugged by the weak current.

  “There is no line, old man.” G.D. yelled. “I will show you. There are only circles.”

  He made a quick move, abandoning his controls, and a second later he had her.

  Min Ji dangled there, in the grip of G.D.’s spidery hands. He held her by her cropped hair and she looked up at him, her face contorted with surprise and betrayal. The blanket she had draped around herself blew away on a stiff breeze and fell like a flat lily pad on the bayou’s surface. She looked from the knife, to the face of the man she thought she knew, and let out a cry of despair.

  “Raise the bridge, or I will kill this one too,” G.D. shouted. “And it will be on your soul, old man.”

  The look on Min Ji’s face broke Felix’s heart. She couldn’t hide the way her lips turned down into that awful question mark, realizing perhaps the syrupy fly trap she had fallen into all too late. She wailed indecipherable admonishments at the long-armed man, those too passing away in the wind.

  “I’ve got a history lesson for you. Whatever your real name is,” Melancon yelled. “It’s about a guy who thought he could get away with murder. But instead he was lethally injected at Angola. And there weren’t no spirits to help him there. Only enough poison to close his veins and stop his heart. Only… he had one last chance. One final opportunity to do something that a jury might see a little humanity in. Just maybe see a glimmer of a human being with remorse.”

  Felix saw the blue flashes in the corner of his eye, three sets of them pulling into the parking lot. He ran towards them, through the cabin door and across the bridge, his heart leaping with joy.

  “You listen to me David Melancon!” the long-armed man was screaming, jerking his victim across the bow of the boat. “I will never spend a moment in bondage. Not in this life or the next. Some men cannot be made to bow down. And I am one of them.”

  Felix was waving the police vehicles onto the bridge now, where it joined with the long unused patch of blacktop. A dead end brought back to life. The three, flashing sedans fit snugly across the breadth of the bridge. As they passed Felix, he read the jurisdictions on the side. Two of them were St. Tammany Parish, one a Louisiana State Trooper.

  Below, in the dark river, the long man smirked up at them, clutching the girl, clutching the knife, bringing it to her throat. The patter of a helicopter could be heard overhead. A loudspeaker came on from the parked cruisers. “Drop your weapon!”

  Officers leaning over car doors. Pistols drawn in the night. The swirl of the river and the humming of the bridge’s engine. It was all Felix could do to watch and hope, hope and watch. It was a hope beyond reason.

  “Listen,” G.D. shouted, looking wildly into the swampy air around him.

  “Can you hear them singing, David Melancon? Can you hear them rolling the dice for me? Can you hear Julie and the baby calling?”

  “I don’t hear a damn thing except a crazy motherfucker whose about to get filled full of lead.”

  The chopper lowered behind the boat, casting a blinding light on its two occupants. G.D. turned, and in that moment, Min Ji let out a cry as she twisted, pulling a clump of her hair loose in the man’s hand. She fell to the bottom of the boat, a patch of follicles gone from her scalp, and began crawling to the side. When she was close enough to lean over the railing, G.D. put a boot on her bottom and kicked her out into the river.

  She landed with a splash and began treading water wildly, shouting that she couldn’t swim.

  In the spotlight of the chopper bearing down on him, G.D. put the knife to his own throat. Felix could see his big Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed a few final breaths, perhaps summoning his strength. They looked into each other’s eyes, across the black water.

  In those eyes Felix saw nothing. No spirits. No second world. No firelight circle of the dead.

  Just nothing.

  A nothing that was beyond certainly.

  “Now, I go to join them,” he shouted, and let the blade cruelly worm its way across his own chords.

  The hulking silhouette fell to its knees, the fine mist of blood twinkling in the chopper’s light.

  Twenty-Four

  The police detectives had worked through the night—documenting, cataloguing, investigating the many trappings to be found at the elevated shrimping cabin on the end of Oyster Shell Road. There was a buzzing interest among the men. A professional curiosity. Whispers of incredulity. They bagged and bagged: effigies, fetishes, herbs, concoctions, weapons, photographs, blood stains.

  A voluminous library dedicated to an obsession with the occult, with New Orleans, with torture and death and with the whole history of misfortune.

  A Bonneville with plates of great interest to the FBI.

  Melancon sat on a couch sipping coffee, without the Irish addition, and kept vigil over the work. Hard to tell if the shakiness, the sweat and the nausea were from the booze withdrawals, or from the clusterfuck he had just been through.

  And it wasn’t over yet. He bided his time until morning, sent Felix and his new girlfriend on their way. The next thing he had to do needed daylight, needed the privacy and candor of impersonal professionals.

  And probably some heavy machinery.

  He’d already been around to the back of the house, down by the dark banks of the bayou, and seen what he’d feared and dreaded would be growing there. The leaves of it quivered in the wind and a few of them blew off and spiraled down into the little Pearl tributary. A heartbreaking, scraggly little thing, with no place in a cypress swamp. Not a thing that would normally grow out here. Even Melancon, with his concrete jungle of a life having taught him little about the ways of trees, knew that for a certainty.

  Fig trees did not grow in Louisiana swamps. Not by chance. No sir, they did not.

  And yet this one had. It had grown for about twelve years by the look of it, if Melancon had to guess, which he did. His flashlight shone on the trunk, on the splayed-out leaves and the little clustering buds of fruit, and he hung his head and cried.

  He shed a tear or two and then he waited in that horrible certainty, dozed an hour in the same lounge he’d nearly died in, and once the sun was up he put in the calls.

  Men with shovels. Lots of them. Yes, he would pay extra. Whatever it took. Just have them here by eight.

  Janine made the drive up to stand beside him. The first spade didn’t stab the soil until noon.

  The roots were thick and unyielding.

  Twenty-Five

  A week later the crepe myrtles had grown heavy with new buds, the heat splitting their skins and poking their pink innards out into the spring. The papery bark of them peeled and ran along the city streets, scraping brick as they blew away. Then the rain stopped. The world dried out, and yellow cakes of pollen dusted cars and front porches and parks, causing Tina Green to launch into a sneezing fit ten or twelve salvos deep.

  She carried a mason jar with her, tucked under one arm. Felix took it from her so that she could lean into the sneezes a bit more. After she was finished they sat down on a bench and watched the people walking by in Louis Armstrong Park.

  The men wore sho
rts now, the women skirts. Pastel colors and sunglasses. Happy, expectant faces. It was Easter Sunday. Lent and its austere restrictions had just ended. People were laughing and free, walking unencumbered here in the old Congo Square, where jazz was born of bondage on other, long-ago Sundays.

  “You ready to do this?” she asked him. He nodded his head, cradled the glass jar in the crook of his arm as he stood up.

  They walked over towards a quiet corner of the park, hand in hand now. Tina hummed the tune of Amazing Grace, while Felix unscrewed the lid from the jar and knelt in the soft St. Augustine.

  “Scrappy was a good boy,” Felix said. “He was my dog, even though I only had him for about a week. But it was like he had been my dog all along. It really felt like I had raised him from a puppy. He was loyal. Loving. A calming presence in times of stress. And, he was…well…scrappy. He saved me from a mugger, and he saved me from worse out on the Pearl, even though he had to sacrifice himself in the process.”

  Tina nodded. “Dust to dust,” she said.

  Felix poured the ashes at the root of a palm tree, where a gentle breeze ate away at them, mixing them in with the yellow dust of spring and the common dirt on which slaves had once danced away their burdens.

  Felix felt he could cry. Perhaps if he’d been alone he would have cried. But he wouldn’t let her see tears in his eyes—not when she looked at him like that. He wanted to preserve his strength for her, just a while longer.

  “It’s ok to cry, you know,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  They walked on. Felix turned his head a last time to see the ashes nearly all gone with another gust, the residue of them dancing in the wind.