As I go around to the passenger door, I remember that Wilma Deen is the woman who blinded Keisha Harvin. But it’s not her I’m rescuing. It’s the testimony about Snake Knox killing Viola that Wilma began back in the stinking shack. Will she ever repeat those words? I wonder as I catch her under the arms and drag her from the truck. Or is all this for nothing?
It takes me nearly two minutes to drag her limp body down to the tree where the boat is moored. By the time I get there, Lincoln has pulled the ski boat over to the bank.
“I can’t help you lift her,” he says.
“Just hold the boat.”
As I did with Sleepy Johnston three months ago in the basement of Brody Royal’s house, I get down and work myself under the woman until I’m in position to get her into a fireman’s carry, then heave her into the air by main strength. My knees nearly buckle from the strain as I struggle erect, and before I make it, the familiar rumble of engines makes my heart stutter.
“Throw her in!” Lincoln shouts. “In thirty seconds we die.”
“You get in! Use the ladder in the back.”
As four headlights top the rise, I roll Wilma over the gunwale, then climb into the boat like a kid rolling over a fence.
The key on Snake’s ring fits the ignition. One glance into the stern shows me Lincoln dropping to the deck and waving for me to go. As the boat drifts away from the riverbank, I lower the motor’s trim, hoping to get some separation from the shore without having to crank the motor and pinpoint our location.
The headlights on the bikes cut through the mist over the water like spotlights in an old war movie. What are those guys thinking? That we rode into the river and drowned?
Just as I think we’re going to slip away clean, one of the bikers sweeps his headlight right to left along the surface of the river. There’s nothing to do now but run. With a turn of the key and a little choke added, the inboard roars to blessed life, and when I shove the throttle forward, the boat throws me back against the seat with reassuring power.
But light travels faster than matter, and the headlight picks us out before we make much headway. Another burst of gunfire kicks my heart into overdrive, this time accompanied by blinding muzzle flashes from the bank receding behind us. Shoving the throttle to the wall, I crouch low and pray for deliverance.
The next shots come from Lincoln, who’s kneeling in the stern with his right arm outstretched, emptying the clip of his pistol at the shore. Get down, I urge silently, afraid he’ll be killed by the last stray bullet fired in anger, like some soldier who dies an hour after a peace treaty is signed. The bikers’ return fire chops up our growing wake, and then a bullet punches through the hull. If they hit the engine, we’re screwed.
“Get down, you crazy bastard!”
After a few more reckless seconds, Lincoln drops to his knees and crawls slowly up to the captain’s chair to my left. Blood streaks the deck beneath him. Looking back, I see that we’ve cleared the range of anything but a rifle, and not even one-percenters carry rifles on their bikes. Sawed-off shotguns, maybe, but not long guns.
With heroic effort, Lincoln struggles into the captain’s chair and faces forward. His breathing is alarmingly ragged.
“How long, you figure?” he asks, coughing.
Natchez lies roughly twenty-five miles south: one river bend, then a long, straight shot down to the big bluff and the landing at Under-the-Hill. “Forty minutes, max. Thirty if we’re lucky.”
Lincoln nods, then grimaces.
“Can you make it?”
“Somebody needs to live through this shit. Might as well be me.”
Snake’s speedboat is making fifty-three knots now. The broad river runs silver-black under the moon tonight, the Mississippi shore looming high on our left, the Louisiana Delta fading away on our right. Clouds of stars fill the sky over this dark stretch of water. A mile ahead, the lights of a pushboat and its barges are rounding the bend. At long last, I realize, we are headed downstream. Even if our engine fails, the river will carry us home.
“Hey,” I say. “Where’s home for you? Chicago?”
Lincoln considers the question. Then he shrugs. “Ain’t got one, really. Not anymore. Guess I need to find me a new one.”
“Or an old one.”
“What’s that mean? Mama’s dead now. Nothing here for me.”
“Maybe. But at least you’ve got a start here.”
“What you mean?”
I laugh quietly, thinking of Serenity. “You’ve got Mississippi blood, man.”
“Mississippi blood? Shit. What’s that mean?”
I recall reading Serenity’s galley in my basement, and with that memory comes the taste of her skin and the scent of her hair. “Just something that writer put in one of her books. Something her uncle used to say. An old pulpwood cutter named Catfish.”
“Yeah? What was that?”
“He said, ‘Mississippi blood is different. It’s got some river in it. Delta soil, turpentine, asbestos, cotton poison. But there’s strength in it, too. Strength that’s been beat but not broke.’”
Lincoln grunts. Then, after a period of reflection: “I reckon that describes Mama pretty well. If she hadn’t had that, she’d have died a long time ago.”
“I think you’re right.”
I can tell from his breathing that he’s turned the chair to face me.
“What is it?” I ask, a little anxiously.
“What you think about what Snake said? About your mama being the one?”
I turn to him and shake my head. “No way. She tried to do what your mother wanted, and she failed. The Double Eagles murdered Viola. Just like they killed Henry, and Caitlin, and Walt, and Sleepy Johnston, and all those black boys so long ago. And now they’re dead themselves. The ones who did the worst of it, anyway.”
Lincoln nods slowly, weighing my words. “Are you sure you killed Snake back there?”
“Brother . . . that Harvester crushed three Harleys after it hit him. He’s nothing but a pile of meat on that road. The possums and coons are already eating him. Don’t give it another thought. It’s over.”
I turn my gaze back to the dark water, and to the faint dome of light over the horizon that marks the presence of Natchez and Vidalia. Already fewer stars are visible overhead.
“Mississippi blood, huh?” Lincoln murmurs.
I nod and smile into the wind. “You got it on both sides.”
Epilogue