*
Nick watched Beluthahatchie fall astern as he drifted down the river. He hadn’t started the outboard except for a brief burst to show that he could start it if he needed to. He didn’t want to speed downriver at night and risk running into an obstacle or losing his way, so he planned to drift easy till dawn, then make his way by whatever landmarks were still visible.
Beluthahatchie’s turbines revved, the sound filling the still river. Winches clattered. It was tricky pulling the tow off the mud, Captain Joe had explained, because all fifteen barges were held together with just a single steel cable. If the cable parted, the entire tow would come apart, and the whipping steel cable could cut a man in half.
The river had risen four inches in just three hours, according to the captain, which should more than float the tow. Captain Joe hadn’t expected it— reports from upriver had indicated a much slower rise— but the towboat’s captain was going to take advantage of the flood while he could.
Nick looked ahead and felt anxiety claw lightly at his nerves. He hadn’t been able to reach Toussaint with his radio call. The water was rising there, too, Arlette had said, and was threatening to flood the telephone exchange. Perhaps all communication with Toussaint was out.
Captain Joe had said that he’d keep calling. All Nick could do was hope that he hadn’t delayed too long in getting on the river, that Arlette and her mother would still be in Toussaint when he arrived.
Nick jumped at the sound of the towboat’s horn blasting over the river. It sounded three times, the echoes dying away in the trees, and then Beluthahatchie began to move, its diesels whining as it backed away from the hidden sandbar. Then it paused while the stern anchors were taken up, the boat’s outline glowing in the darkness; its horn sounded again and it began to move forward.
Nick raised a hand and waved.
The towboat moved slowly and cautiously, but nevertheless, in a few short moments, it left Nick alone on the river.
*
“Omar?” Wilona asked sleepily. “Who is that?”
“I’ll find out, darling,” Omar said.
He reached for the pistol he kept on the nightstand as the knock on the front door persisted. It was four in the morning, and he had left Jedthus and Leckie with their corpse around midnight.
They’d probably screwed it up, he thought. He could hardly believe that they were stupid enough to come here asking for advice.
And if it wasn’t Jedthus knocking, it was someone else who had even less business knocking on his door. Black militants. Jew assassins. Even that crazy Micah Knox, wanting vengeance for the way Omar had treated him. Omar was famous now, which meant that people he had never met would want to kill him, just like they’d killed John Lennon.
Omar held his pistol ready as he slipped to the front window and twitched aside the curtains, saw the familiar face under the porch light. His heart leaped. He put his pistol on a side table, unlocked the door, and threw his arms around his son.
“David! What are you doing here?”
His boy grinned at him, patted him on the back. “Baton Rouge is being evacuated. My summer job’s gone, so I thought I might as well come home.”
Omar stepped back, grinned. “Why didn’t you call?”
“I tried. The phones were all jammed. So I just came.” David was a younger version of his father— tall, with broad shoulders, curling black hair, and movie-star features that got him a lot of girlfriends.
“David!” Wilona called from the bedroom. She rushed to embrace her son. Omar helped David carry his bags into the back room.
“The traffic was bumper-to-bumper almost all the way here,” David said. “It looked like the whole state was on the move.”
“They started driving through earlier tonight,” Omar said. “I don’t know why they’re heading this way.”
“I don’t think they know, either. They’re city people, you know? They’ll just keep driving till they see something familiar, like a Holiday Inn or a McDonald’s.”
“Can I get you something to eat?” Wilona asked.
David nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I haven’t had anything since lunch.”
“I’ve got some cold ham and potatoes. I could reheat it in the microwave.”
“Cold is fine, Mama.”
“Heating it’s no problem. You want some Co-Cola?” Retying her bathrobe, Wilona headed for the kitchen.
David and Omar looked at each other for a moment. Then David grinned. “I saw you on TV, Dad. You looked good.”
“Thanks.”
“There was a lot of talk on campus about you. You’d be surprised how many friends you have there.”
Omar nodded. “I’m glad to hear it.” Campus. He had a son who was on campus. No Paxton had ever been to college before.
Father and son, they were on the move.
They walked back to the front room and sat down. David looked around. “The house seems to have come through okay,” he said.
“Your mama put a lot of work into making it look that way,” Omar said. “But you’ll be eating off a plastic plate tonight. All the china fell out of the cabinet and smashed.”
David made a face. “I hope the insurance covers it.”
“No. The policy has an exemption for earthquakes and floods.”
“Bastards,” David said. “Jew bastards.”
“Here’s your Co-Cola.” Wilona, returning with a plastic party cup in her hand.
“Thank you, Mama.” Smiling. David turned back to Omar. “Is there any more work I can do around the house? Or should I see if I can find a paying job somewheres else?”
Omar considered. “The National Guard shipped too many of my deputies up north. I’ve been swearing in special deputies. And with all these refugees coming through, we’ll need more just to handle the traffic.”
David grinned. “Sounds great,” he said. “Kind of like working for the family firm.”
It would be good to have somebody intelligent working for him, Omar thought.
Not like Leckie and Jedthus, who were probably up to their hips in the bayou right now, finding a place to hide a corpse.
*
The current was sluggish, and American Dream turned slow circles around Retired and Gone Fishin’ as it drifted. Nick let the boat do what it wanted, and only tried to keep it in the center of the channel, between the dimly sensed flood plain on either side. The night was dark, but the stars blazed overhead with an intensity Nick had never seen. He could see dozens of nebulae with the naked eye, little bright clouds between the stars, and he could never remember seeing so many before.
He wished he had Jason’s telescope aboard.
He felt a breath of wind on his skin, and then he heard a distant rushing sound ahead. He turned his head downstream, cupped hands to his ears. The sound might be wind through trees.
It might be rapids.
It might be a waterfall.
The wind freshened, fell, freshened again from another direction. The rushing sound grew louder. Nick strained his eyes for sign of white water.
Captain Joe hadn’t received any reports of rapids on this stretch. Boats had been going up and down the river and hadn’t reported white water here. It didn’t make any sense.
Stay alive for Arlette, Nick thought. He dropped into the cockpit seat and started the engine. He turned the bow upstream and motored slowly for ten minutes. Then cut the motor and drifted again, till he felt the winds and heard the rushing. Then he did it again. And again.
Till dawn.
When the east turned pale he was surprised by the size and sluggishness of the river. The trees in what Captain Joe would call the batture sat deeper in the water than he’d seen them before. Debris floated aimlessly on the still water, turning small circles or pushed around by little predawn wind gusts. It was as if the river had almost ceased to flow, had become a lake three or four miles wide.
Almost. The water was moving south very slowly, taking the boat with it. Nick folded back the boat’s canvas top, then stood to peer ahead, scratched his bristly chin in thought. Something, he thought, was causing the river to rise, had floated Beluthahatchie off its bar. What could cause the river to rise four inches in just a matter of hours? Four inches over this huge expanse was a lot of water. Nick wondered if the Arkansas had changed its course, struck the Mississippi just south of here and backed up the water.
The sun blazed above the trees to the east, brightened the dark river with its touch. Nick could hear that roaring sound again. What was going on?
The southern horizon seemed indistinct, misty. Banks of fog?
Fear shivered up Nick’s spine. He wondered if the mist was rising off rapids.
“Hey, Nick. What’s happening?”
Nick turned and saw Jason sitting in the bass boat’s little cockpit. His hair was tousled, and there was a sleepy smile on the boy’s face.
Fury flashed like fire along Nick’s nerves. “What are you doing here?” he roared.
Jason’s eyes widened in surprise at the strength of Nick’s anger, but when he replied his tone was deliberately casual. “Didn’t want to spend the summer with my aunt. I thought I’d go with you.”
“God damn it!” Nick banged a fist on the gunwale. “God damn it, you’re not my kid!”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Jason said. He lifted his hands in appeal. “I won’t get in your way. I can be useful. You know that.”
Nick glared at him. “Now I’ve got to take you back to Captain Joe,” he said. He threw himself into the cockpit seat, pulled out the choke.
“Hey, wait! You’ll never catch the Beluthahatchie. You’ve been going down the river all night.”
Nick didn’t even bother to look at Jason as he shouted his answer. “No, I haven’t! I’ve been staying in the same place all damn night long! And if you had any damn brains, you’d know that!”
“No! Wait!”
Nick punched the starter, felt the big Evinrude catch. He gunned the engine to drown out Jason’s protests, then put it in gear. He spun the wheel, turned the speedboat upstream, and pushed the throttle forward. He felt the little tug that meant the tow rope to the bass boat had gone taut, and imagined rather than saw Jason being flung back in his seat as the bass boat accelerated on the end of its line.
The boat’s nose rose as it gained speed. Nick could still hear Jason’s shouts over the roar of the engine. He dodged debris as he roared upriver at top speed, smiling as he pictured the bass boat playing crack-the-whip on the end of its line. Run it into a few trees, he thought, serve Jason right.
Then he sighed. Who, he wondered, was he trying to kid? There was no way he could catch the towboat with its head start.
He pulled back on the throttle, then switched off the ignition. There was a rush of water as the speedboat fell off its bow wave.
“I’m sorry!” Jason called in the sudden silence. “I didn’t think you’d be mad!”
“You didn’t think at all,” Nick said. Anger beat a slow throb in his temples. He stood, turned to face Jason as the boat lost momentum. “What am I going to do with you?” he said.
“Take me with you? Come on, Nick— I won’t be any trouble.”
That bright grin, Nick thought, must have got a lot of goodies out of Jason’s old man. Rage burst like a firework in Nick’s brain.
“I’m not your father!” he shouted. And then added, half to himself, “And your daddy’s gonna kill me.”
“Tell him it’s all my fault,” Jason said. “He’ll believe that. He’s used to blaming me for things.”
Nick glared at the boy. “I suppose he’s got his reasons!” he said. He collapsed into his seat, shook his head. “I don’t know what I should do.”
Jason crawled onto the bass boat’s foredeck, then began pulling on the tow rope, drawing himself closer to the speedboat. “It’ll be okay, Nick, really.”
“Bullshit.”
Jason clambered aboard the American Dream, dropped into the seat next to Nick. “Listen. You can say you didn’t have a choice.”
Nick looked at him. Fury simmered in his veins. “First town we come to— first landing, first boat, first inhabited damn building— I’m putting you off. I don’t care if you have to live on somebody’s roof for the next two weeks.”
Jason opened his mouth, closed it.
“And another thing,” Nick said, and he heard the echo of his father in his voice, General Ruford chewing out some subordinate, and he was pleased by the sound, “you better mind me from this point, boy, because if you don’t, I’m going to kick your lily ass all over this boat.”
Jason stared, swallowed. “Yes, sir,” he said.
Nick hit the starter, felt the Evinrude growl, like one of his father’s tanks. “Now,” he said, “there’s something weird going on downstream, so I want you to keep an eye out, right?”
“Umm. Shall I get my telescope?”
“You’ve got it with you? Okay. Yes.”
Jason set up the telescope on the foredeck, peered into it, fiddled with the focus knob. Nick motored cautiously downstream, standing behind the wheel so that he could see to avoid debris. Sweat prickled on his forehead as the rising sun began to burn down on the flooded country.
Over the murmuring engine he could hear the rushing sound, and the southern horizon seemed indistinct and misty. He called to Jason. “What do you see?”
Jason looked up from the eyepiece, shook his head. “I can’t tell. It’s all weird.”
“Is it rapids?”
Jason shook his head again. “I don’t know. It looks like there might be white water.”
Nick clenched his teeth. This didn’t make any sense.
He motored closer. Puffs of wind gusted from different parts of the compass. Nick put the Evinrude in neutral and throttled down so that he could hear better. Jason’s eye was glued to the eyepiece of the Astroscan.
“It’s an island,” Jason said. “I think. It looks like water’s breaking around something. And I see lots of driftwood piled up.”
If it was an island, Nick thought, he could go around it. “Okay,” he said.
“It’s a big island,” Jason said. He panned the scope back and forth, muttered something as he inadvertently shoved the inverted image the wrong way, then regained his view. Finally he sat up, looked at Nick.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “It looks like the island is right across the whole river.”
Nick gnawed his lip. “Let me see,” he decided finally.
He made his way onto the foredeck, knelt next to Jason, put his eye to the scope. The upside-down image bobbed uneasily with the motion of the boat. He saw tree roots, white water, mist.
Carefully he nudged the scope left and right, panning across the horizon. He could hear the roar of white water. The island looked huge.
He straightened. Rushing water dinned at his ears. His brain whirled, and then his mouth went dry as comprehension dawned. “Oh shit,” he said.
“What?” Jason asked. “What is it?”
“It’s not an island,” Nick said. “It’s a dam.” He rose, the boat swaying under him, and made his way back to the cockpit.
Jason looked after him. “A dam? How can it be a dam?”
“Dam’s made of driftwood,” Nick said. “All that debris going downriver— a lot of it got hung up here. Maybe there was an island, or some rocks, or just a mud bar. But once the driftwood and other rubbish started collecting, it just kept stacking up. That’s why the river’s rising so fast. It’s been dammed.”
Nick bit his lip as he thought about the water piled up behind the dam. Millions of tons, all pressing on the haphazard accretion of rubbish that was holding them back. He knew how much power water could exert, how it would push through every crevice, prod at every weak point. Even well-built levees and breakwaters failed under the constant pressure of water: the driftwood dam, he suspected, wouldn’t last long, not with the weight of the flooded Mississippi behind it.
And when the end came for the dam, he thought, my God. All the water pouring out in a flood and carrying the debris with it. A huge wave heading downstream, churning with tons of battering wreckage.
He was going to have to wait for the dam to burst, he thought. And then wait a long time after that, so as not to get caught in the flood or the wreckage the flood would carry with it.
Impatience twitched along his nerves. He wanted to get south, get to Arlette. Maybe he could find a way around the dam, find a chute of water he could ride south, or some way through the trees where the water flowed more normally.
But no. Even if there was a chute, even if he could get down the chute without mishap, that would just put him in the way of that deadly wall of water when it finally broke free.
Stay alive, he told himself. Stay alive for Arlette.
He turned the boat around, pushed the throttle forward. They might as well head for the treeline to the east, where they could tie up in the shade and wait.
Jason looked at him questioningly.
“Breakfast,” he said.