by Lopez, Rob
Manny returned on his hands and knees, dragging the rifle. He peered briefly out of the window and dropped back down.
“I can’t see nothing,” he said.
They waited, unsure what to do.
“Were you really a lawyer?” said Manny.
“Yes,” said Zack. “Among other things.”
“You lost your daughter?” said Darla.
There was a moment’s silence. “Yes,” said Zack.
Darla lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling she could hardly see. “How old was she?” she asked.
“Two.”
Darla bit her lip. “What happened?”
“Traffic accident,” said Zack. The pain was evident in his words and suddenly he wasn’t so talkative anymore.
“I’m sorry,” said Darla. “I’ve been a jerk.”
“No,” sighed Zack. “I probably deserved it.”
“You didn’t, okay? I’ve got a big mouth.”
There was no reply.
Darla said, “Nobody deserves what you had to go through. I … I understand, you hear me? It’s not your fault.”
Zack’s disembodied voice sounded mournful. “It was my fault. I was driving the car when they died. I lived, and they didn’t. It’s been nearly twenty years and … it’s difficult to stop punishing myself for it.”
Darla got a sense of vertigo, the ceiling spinning and threatening to suck her up like a black hole.
“I understand that too,” she whispered.
15
Next morning a warm, gentle rain fell. Firing up the boiler, Mississippi Rose built up enough steam pressure to dock at the port. Darla went ashore and scoured the warehouses for some plywood to cover up the broken window.
In contrast to the evening before, there was now a lot more security present, with extra police and armed security guards. Ms. Roberts and the police chief had returned, and they consulted with the mayor and his security detail. A large crowd had gathered again at the port gates, but they were pushed back by a cordon of police with riot shields.
Back at her boat, Darla watched from the pilothouse as mounted police arrived, parting the crowds and forming a corridor through their midst. There were scuffles in the crowd as people protested, and the police line surged forward, batons raised. Rubber bullets were fired, and protesters who fell beneath the hoofs were dragged away. The National Guard troops provided overwatch with their rifles aimed from the warehouse roofs. It was an ugly scene, made worse as the rain fell harder.
Down the corridor came doctors, nurses and escorting guardsmen. Behind them came patients pushed in wheelchairs, carried on stretchers or wheeled along on hospital beds while nurses and medics held saline bags aloft. The hospitals of New Orleans were being evacuated and it was for this major effort that Darla’s boat had been summoned.
While that was happening, the Pride of Orleans arrived, and the stages of the two boats were lowered for embarkation. There was no band to reduce the tension in the air this time, and the weather ensured that everyone looked grim faced. Darla looked across at the other boat, seeing Eric posturing by the bow as usual, but there were two others with him, engaged in casual conversation. Eric nodded toward the Mississippi Rose, and they turned to look. Darla didn’t like how they looked, and she didn’t recognize them as part of Hartfield’s original crew. While she’d been away it appeared he’d been on a hiring spree, and Darla wondered how much Eric had been involved in the recommendations.
Maybe it was a coincidence that they happened to have similar tattoos to him.
Embarking the patients took a while, with wheelchairs and stretchers being maneuvered through the narrow doors. The saloon soon looked like an aid station in a war zone, with nurses clambering over the patients lying on the carpet, hooking up saline bags and pumping manual ventilators. These patients were the worst cases, too ill to make the journey out of the city any other way. The stretchers were emptied and reused to bring up the patients from the hospital beds. By the time the Mississippi Rose pulled away from the dock, the wharf was littered with empty bed frames.
At the nuclear plant, engineers in yellow slickers rigged up metal sheets to shelter the vital generators from the rain. Beyond that, in the sugarcane fields, people were cutting down the tall crops, toppling random clusters and walking away with the bundles. Darla wasn’t sure whether they were harvesting it for the farmer or simply helping themselves. So many people had come out of the city, there likely wasn’t much the farmer could have done to stop them, especially since several of them were armed.
At Point Clair, the camp had grown to fill the fields. It was like Woodstock without the happiness. They’d run out of tents, and shelters were being constructed from wood and garbage sacks. One of the huge barges Darla had towed down had already been emptied of its beans, and distributors with buckets were digging into the next. Carl stood on the levee, watching the patients getting carried off the boat. He had a holstered pistol on his belt. The rain streamed off the peak of his cap and he looked seriously annoyed. Darla pulled on a raincoat and went out to him.
“What’s up?” she said.
“Everything,” he said. “We’ve got too many people coming in.”
Darla pulled a face. “Got more to come still.”
“I know. They were meant to be processed here and moved on, but the governor’s ordered a blockade to prevent anyone getting into Baton Rouge.”
“Wasn’t that the guy who agreed to evacuate New Orleans in the first place?”
“Yes. Did Eleanor come up with you?”
“Who?”
“Eleanor Roberts. FEMA.”
“Oh. No, I think she’s still in New Orleans,” said Darla, a little disappointed to find that Carl was on first name terms with the woman.
“We need her up here. She might be able to convince the governor to back off.”
“Yeah, because it’s not very loving of him, is it?”
“What?”
“Governor Loving. Not very loving. Get it?”
Somewhat distracted, Carl clearly didn’t. “We’ve got nowhere to shelter these people and we’re going to run out of food. We’re low on water and there’s not enough fuel to cook with, but the governor’s ordered away most of the National Guard to provide a cordon around his city. We’re being abandoned.”
“Got a lawyer on board, if that helps,” tried Darla.
“Nobody cares about the law now,” said Carl. The way he gazed off into the distance put Darla in mind of a screen idol preparing to storm the beaches of Iwo Jima and she had to make a conscious effort to avoid staring.
Darla watched a stretcher being carried past. A sheet covered the patient from head to toe. Whoever it was hadn’t even survived the journey here. The dead patient, rigid and stiff, was lifted off the stretcher and placed to one side on the dock, and the stretcher was rushed back to the boat.
Darla couldn’t think of what to say next, and couldn’t think of an excuse to hang around, especially if she was only going to make another dumb comment that she’d regret. She wandered back to the boat and watched Zack pushing a patient in a wheelchair down the stage. Thinking that the least she could do was help, she gave a hand with the other patients.
When all the passengers were off the boat, Darla grabbed the rum bottle from the locked cabinet behind the bar and poured herself a drink. Zack entered the saloon and Darla proffered the bottle.
“Thanks, but I don’t drink anymore,” he said.
“I’ll drink for you,” said Darla, topping off a glass. “Here’s to what we’ve lost,” she murmured, “and to what we might still lose.”
Zack looked at her. “That’s not very optimistic,” he said.
“Not feeling very optimistic,” she replied. “Guess I’m just not the right kind of person for this.”
Zack appraised her for a moment, then drew up one of the stools and sat down. “You said yesterday that you understood my loss, and I could feel that you meant it. Who did you lose?”
“Bequeathed.”
“That’s the one. No, she left it all to my sister, and Jo gave me half.” Darla thought about it for a moment. “Seemed like a lot for half. I think maybe she gave me all of it. I should have asked her, but … I was just thinking of what I could spend it on. I was pretty selfish. It was probably why my mom didn’t want me to have a cent.”
“Did you see your mom much before she died?”
“No. We didn’t get along. I used to steal money from her and we’d argue about it. In the end she threw me out. I was a bitch. I blamed her, you know? For my dad leaving. I was an angry young kid. I called her every name under the sun. I wanted her to hate me, and in the end she did. And then, after she died, I spent her money and didn’t think about it. Didn’t ask myself whether I deserved it. All I wanted was this boat, and now it’s all I’ve got.”
“What about your sister?”
“She’s in Pittsburgh. She’s been looking after me for longer than she should have. She’s a good person. Like, a good person, you know? Kind of a goody two shoes. I mean, she’s so perfect.”
“Did you want to hate her the way you hated your mother?”
“Sometimes,” admitted Darla. “She doesn’t deserve that.” Darla pulled a face. “My mom didn’t either. My sister and my mom are both the same. Were both the same. Jo was just more patient with me. And she didn’t have the burdens my mom had to carry. If I was even half the mom they were, my daughter would have grown up fine.”
Zack said nothing and Darla realized she’d given too much away. She went to pour herself another glass but Zack reached out and gently pushed the bottle away. A tear trickled down Darla’s cheek.
“But you know what it’s like, right?” she said. “To lose a child. Except your child died in an accident, and I bet you were a great father before that. It must have hurt. But my little Rose died of neglect. I was the worst mom ever. I was either high on coke or drinking. I wasn’t cutting it. I couldn’t cope. Didn’t know what to do. Then one night, Rose didn’t wake for her feed. I thought nothing of it and carried on sleeping. In the morning she was dead.” Darla wiped the tear from her face. “I got arrested with alcohol still in my blood. They were going to charge me with second degree. Then third degree and neglect. Finally the autopsy came through and they said she died of crib death, cause unknown. They let me go but I knew I was guilty of being a shitty mom. Been living with that ever since.”
Zack took the bottle and poured himself the tiniest amount in a glass. He drank it down slow, savoring the taste.
“I wasn’t such a great dad,” he said. “Just ordinary. I don’t know how I’d have been if they’d lived. I had a great capacity for punishment. I punished myself for a long time. Maybe something else in life would have happened that made me fall apart. It’s not like we can ever get through life unscathed. Sometimes stuff just happens. Like what we’ve got now. I doubt that your sister was that perfect, by the way. You two probably aren’t so different. She likely had to cope too with your father leaving. I daresay she had her own problems and had to fight in her own way. She just hid it from you. When you see her next, you should ask about that.”
Zack placed his glass upside down on the bar, slid off the stool and walked away.
16
It rained hard for three days and the camp turned into a quagmire. Sodden tents began collapsing and people were crammed into the hard buildings of the armory until there was barely any room to lie down. Firewood got too wet to light and Darla brought up drums and diesel from the refineries until there was a line of half-cut barrels cooking beans and sterilizing water non-stop, but there were more people coming up from New Orleans and there simply wasn’t enough to go around. Cholera began to spread and patients were dying. Graves that were dug filled with water immediately and medics worried that the groundwater and wells were getting contaminated. Civility crumbled and the few remaining guardsmen struggled to maintain security as fights broke out and thefts were reported. Tempers shortened. For the first two days the camp echoed to the sound of warning shots. On the third day one of the camp occupants was killed for refusing to stand down. Unrest simmered.
In New Orleans, people fought to get onto the boats. There was no food left even to loot and neighborhoods took to defending what they had. Homicides became a nightly occurrence and cops began leaving to protect their families. The remaining guardsmen were brought to the camp to reinforce security, and the mayor and other dignitaries left the city. Ms. Roberts set up her office at the camp and tried to coordinate the evacuation from there. Baton Rouge remained sealed off and refugees diverted north-east, crowding the highways. Rumors abounded of gangs preying on the fleeing people, and of others who took shelter in the swamps only to get eaten by alligators, but it was impossible to tell which stories had been exaggerated or simply made up, and at that point nobody really cared. The Pride of Orleans had so much trouble controlling people on the docks one time that it was forced to back away from the wharf and ended up sailing away half-full while jostling people fell or jumped into the river and tried to swim after her.
Darla took her boat downriver for the second time that day. They were running non-stop now. Complications at the nuclear plant were causing problems. The pumps kept malfunctioning and hydrogen build-up in the spent-rods chamber had the engineers worried. The plant supervisor wasn’t sure how long they could keep the reactors safe. The city was running out of time.
A man in a canoe paddled out from the bank. Darla watched him through the driving rain. She thought at first he was simply crossing from one side of the river to the other, though there was a bridge ahead that would have made that far easier. Then she saw that he appeared to be trying to intercept the Mississippi Rose. He raised his hand once to wave, then leaned into his strokes as he tried to get to the steamer before it went past.
“Jacques,” yelled Darla. “There’s a nutjob trying to get to the boat. Find out what he wants, but don’t let him on board.”
With his head bowed against the rain, Jacques made his way to the forecastle. Darla stopped the paddle wheels, letting the boat drift. When the canoe got close, she called for Slow Reverse, holding the boat steady against the current. The canoe came alongside and the man reached up to grab the base of the rail, holding the boat steady in front of the splashing wheel. Jacques went to the rail to find out what the man wanted. Darla assumed he was going to ask for help or passage. Instead he dropped his paddle and pulled out a pistol, aiming it squarely at Jacques.
“I need food. Give me your food,” yelled the man.
Jacques stood stock still. He murmured something to the man.
“Not you,” said the man. “You stay right there. Someone else can bring it.”
Darla considered slamming the boat into Full Ahead. That would have thrown the man off balance as he hung on, trying not to get sucked under the paddles. It wouldn’t be an instantaneous maneuver, however, and it would have given the man enough time to pull the trigger.
“Manny,” she called down the tube. “Get up here and bring your rifle.”
The man in the canoe glanced up at the pilothouse, then back to Jacques.
“Come on,” the man yelled.
Manny appeared in the pilothouse.
“Shoot him,” said Darla.
“Say what?” said Manny.
“That idiot down there in the canoe. Shoot him before he shoots Jacques.”
Manny checked a clip was loaded and fumbled with the safety.
“Are you sure?” he said.
“Sweet Jesus,” said Darla. “Take the shot.”
Manny aimed the rifle. At that range, he couldn’t miss. He pulled the trigger and the boom of the rifle echoed within the pilothouse.
He missed. The man, however, flinched as a gout of water shot
up by the canoe. He stared up at the pilothouse and Manny fired again. Another gout of water shot up.
The distraction should have been enough opportunity for Jacques to get away and take cover, but he remained exactly where he was, in exactly the same position. Darla wondered if he’d frozen.
The canoeist, on the other hand, hadn’t frozen. He’d dropped his pistol, let go of the rail and was now paddling furiously back to the bank. Manny fired again and again, the semi-automatic rifle hammering out its eight rounds in quick succession, splashing water about the canoe and, at one point, actually hitting it and making a hole in its stern. Manny kept firing until the gun was empty, the spent clip springing out of the top of the rifle with an audible ping.
Darla was amazed.
“How could you miss?” she exclaimed.
“He was a moving target.”
“He was in a canoe! Not a goddamn jet ski.”
“I ain’t comfortable shooting a guy when he’s running away.”
“He had a gun on Jacques.”
“If you’re so gung-ho, how about you taking the shot?”
“You’re a trained Marine.”
“I ain’t no trained Marine. Never trained for nothing in my whole life. And don’t you go telling me you thought I was because you ain’t ever believed a thing I ever said.”
Darla stared at him, her ears still ringing from the shots. “Unbelievable,” she said.
“Believe it, sister. I bought this rifle cheap to scare folks off from robbing my trailer.”
Exasperated, Darla said, “Get back to the boiler room. And tell Jacques to get up here. I want a word with him.”
They got underway again and Jacques came up to the pilothouse, toweling his hair.
“We tried to save your life back there,” said Darla. “We had him distracted and everything and the best thing for you to do was to get the hell out of harm’s way, but you didn’t move. What the hell were you playing at?”