He had breakfast on the screened porch and considered his options. But his mind kept returning to thoughts of his father. He imagined how good it would be to see his father, returning from a morning hunt in the marsh, come walking along the edge of the water, his shotgun in one hand and a duck in the other. It was pleasant to indulge in such a dream, but he suspected doing things like that would make it all that harder to accept that his father had died brutally not forty yards away. He did hope his father had not been the one who was screaming. The location of the wounds in his chest suggested he had died quickly.
He turned and looked at the grave. He realized he had sat with his back to it. He wondered if he had done that on purpose. The grave was unmarked. He had considered what might make a good marker, but he could not come up with anything. All that came into his mind were things like engine blocks or tools. They would mean something to him, but people would laugh when they saw the grave decorations. Yet his father deserved some sort of remembrance. He would think about that.
He thought again of the man he let escape returning. He suspected his mother would have been in favor of him killing all of them. She would have done it herself if she had been there and known how to shoot. That man he spared and his friends could come in the night when he was sleeping, and he would not have a chance. Maybe if he had a dog? But the only dogs he had seen were dead ones.
After he ate he went out and looked at the grave. The first rain would wash away the patches of blood on the sand, and future rains would level the mound. He turned and looked toward the creek, wondering if the bodies he dumped there had already made their way to the river.
He would repair the airboat and go to New Orleans and find his mother. Those security people she had hired would keep her safe, but he could imagine them abandoning her if things got too bad. His father would have wanted him to go. He wondered what the difference would be between the security people and his mother’s collection of artists. Former Navy Seals would be—unlike most of the artists—athletic men, the sort of men who were the stars on their high school football team.
By now she had probably installed one of them in her bedroom. And that seemed to him something that should not disturb him. His mother was doing nothing wrong, breaking no promises or vows.
So why does it bother me so much? he thought.
He was less disturbed with the thought of her in bed with one of the security men than with one of the artists.
He recalled his mother taking him in bed with her when they lived in New York. He must have been about four or five. He had been sick and kept waking with fever and nightmares. That recollection of her scent, that woman-smell of perfume and scented soap and flesh, different from the scent of men. Then there was the heat of the fever and the soft feel against his body of the cotton sheets. They were a cluster of sensations that every time he was in her presence seemed to hover about her. In her absence he could call them up anytime he wished.
If she was not there, perhaps someone in the neighborhood would know where she had gone. Surely by now troops were in New Orleans and there was order. Getting the carburetor should be easy. He did not expect to find anyone in the town.
So he loaded the johnboat with extra fuel and water and food for a few days. He took the Saiga and plenty of ammo and an AK-47. He poled the boat out of the marsh and then along the flooded road that was marked by power poles. As the road neared the bridge over a tributary of the big creek, he started the motor and eased the boat along the flooded road. Soon he reached the paved road that ran into town. It had several feet of water over it, and he was able to run the boat at a slow, steady pace, watching out for debris.
He came upon a body in military camouflage and steered around it and then another and another. Bloated carcasses of cows and goats were scattered among them.
So this was what it was like, he thought. My father must have viewed scenes like this in Iraq, although not watery ones.
He realized there was no difference between the dead men and the dead animals. They were just dead. He recalled his father’s words about the danger of cultivating an indifference to the dead.
Vultures sat on the power poles. In the middle of a flooded field was a dead tree filled with them. He did not expect they could feed on dead things in the water, but they would have a feast when the water went down. It made no difference to them whether they were eating a goat or sitting on a dead man’s chest and dining on his liver.
His father’s shop, unfortunately built on low ground, was a little outside of town. Someone had stolen the boats from the fenced lot beside the shop. He saw where they cut the fence. That was not surprising. Boats had become a precious commodity. The water was still up to above the top of the door. He did not even bother going inside. But the auto parts store was on high ground, and he was hopeful. He expected some water. It all depended on which shelf they kept the carburetors. He hoped it was a high one.
As he approached the auto shop, the water got shallower. He became even more hopeful about a successful trip. As he turned a corner, he saw a red canoe, paddled by a girl, moving up the street away from him. She was working hard with the paddle as if her life depended on putting some distance between them. He opened the throttle a little and caught up with her easily.
He used the boat to block her passage, forcing her into a chain-link fence. She tried to back the canoe out and escape.
“Whoa,” he said as he put the engine in neutral. “Just wait.”
She put down the paddle and turned to face him. She was dressed in a pair of chest-high waders whose top came almost up to her neck. Her face was covered with sweat from the exertion of paddling on the hot day. She bent over and picked something up from the bottom of the canoe. When she turned back to him, she held a butcher knife in her hand.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”
But she was still scared, so scared she was trembling and breathing hard, taking in great gulps of air. She looked at him closely and then gradually grew calmer.
“Why, you’re just a boy,” she said.
“I’ll be sixteen in December,” he said.
“Do you have any water?”
He tossed her a full canteen. Her hands shook as she unscrewed the top. Then she started gulping down the contents.
“Careful,” he said. “Don’t drink too fast.”
But she ignored him. He guessed she was twenty, maybe a little older. It was hard to tell with her dressed in waders and one of those broad-brimmed hats decorated with flowers women used when they gardened. She finished the canteen and sat there breathing hard.
“More,” she said and tossed him the empty canteen.
“In a minute,” he said. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
“I’ve had nothing to drink for two days.”
To let her know that he had plenty of water and more was coming her way, he started to fill the canteen from one of the big water coolers. He took his time doing it.
“I’ll give you this,” he said. “But you’ve got to promise me that you’ll just take sips.”
She nodded her head and reached out for the canteen. He tossed it to her. To his surprise she did as he asked.
He asked what she was doing in the canoe.
“Looking for some bottled water,” she said. She pointed at the muddy water. “If you drink that, you’ll die.”
They both looked at the trash-strewn water around them. Here and there were oil slicks.
She told him her father owned an appliance store in the town.
“When everybody left, he decided to stay. To protect his washing machines. The store is in an old building downtown and has a second floor and an elevator. He moved everything up there. We all thought the water would go down in a few days.”
She went on to tell him that their house was close by, on high ground, and they thought they could live upstairs. They were running low on food and water and getting nervous because the water was rising, not falling, when one day she heard the sound of a motor.
“I thought it was the National Guard,” she said.
She had been in the attic and was preparing to come downstairs to investigate the motor when she heard a shot and then her mother’s screams. Then there were two more shots. She heard the sound of men laughing.
“I knew they’d be coming up to the attic,” she said.
But there was a place to hide, a secret room her father had built for her when she was a child, concealed behind a fake wall.
“Just like in the movies,” she said. “You push this hidden button and the wall swings away.”
She had sat there in the dark on the floor of the tiny room, no bigger than a closet, her arms wrapped around one of the stuffed animals from her childhood.
“They rummaged around the attic for a while,” she said.
One wanted to set the house on fire, but the others talked him out of it. That would just call attention to themselves. Any military helicopters in the area might come to investigate.
“I heard them leave,” she said. “But I sat there on the floor for a long time. I cried but tried to do it silently just in case one of them stayed behind. Finally I decided they weren’t coming back. I had to go downstairs.”
She described finding her parents’ bodies. Her mother had fallen in an awkward position across a chair. One hand was thrust upward as if she were trying to turn on the lamp. That was why the men had laughed.
He told her about his father and how he too had cried.
“I think maybe there’re no more tears left in me,” he said.
“Me too,” she said.
She had no way to bury her parents so she abandoned the house and went to live downtown in the store.
He told her about the purpose of his trip to town and that he was planning to use the airboat to go to New Orleans. He explained to her that his mother was there, the house protected by security men.
“You come with me,” he said.
“I’d be crazy not to,” she said. “Your family must be rich.”
“She’s got paintings and furniture to protect.”
“Like I said your family is rich.”
He supposed what she said was true. His mother had done well in New York. She had told him she had done well. But his father had not had money. He built the house himself. He worked long hours repairing outboard motors and boat engines. It seemed to him his father was much happier than his mother.
She climbed into the johnboat and took off the waders. She was a plain-looking girl. He could smell the unwashed stink of her. Her brown hair was greasy and matted. He might not even recognize her if she had a shower and put on makeup and a dress. He still could not tell exactly how old she was, only that she was considerably older than he.
“I’m Angela Marks,” she said.
Then he introduced himself. She recognized his father’s last name.
He put the motor in gear, and they went off down the flooded street to the auto parts store. When it came in view, he was pleased because there was only a foot or two of water in the doorway. He put on his waders. He took the Saiga in case somebody showed up. His supply of water would be a good enough reason to kill them.
Inside there were some parts cartons floating about, along with the swollen body of a dead man. He smelled pretty bad. Stephen made his way around him carefully, not wanting him to start breaking up and smell even worse. He went behind the counter and back into rows of shelves where the parts were stored. He had to go down four rows before he found the carburetors. They were on a shelf just within his reach. He also took a couple of water pumps and some belts, because these were things that could easily break and would be impossible to repair. Then he retraced steps past the stinking dead man, whose bloated body bobbed a little in the slight wake his passing made. Now he saw the wisdom in his decision to tow the bodies to the creek.
The trip back was uneventful. The dead soldiers and cows and goats were still in the same place. The vultures were still patiently watching. Angela looked at the dead men as they passed, the boat’s wake causing the bodies to bob. At least here in the open there was not much of a smell. He hoped Angela was not thinking of her parents.
Then Angela turned from the dead men to look back at him.
“The dead stink,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
“My parents are like them.”
He had no idea what to say so he just nodded. He wanted to say that they were dead, that now it did not matter. But he thought better of it.
“Don’t you think so?” she said.
He hated it that she was pressing him. He wondered why she would ask him a question like that.
“They’re dead,” he said.
“Yes, they are,” she said.
He opened the throttle a little.
“You watch out for trash,” he shouted. “I don’t want to run into somebody’s dead cow.”
She turned around and fixed her eyes on the water ahead of them.
By the time they reached the house it was late afternoon. He brought the boat up to the dock slowly, looking for any sign of the return of the man. He did not want to tell Angela about him. His letting the man escape would make him look foolish.
Perhaps he had enough time before dark to install the carburetor.
“If you wish, you can take a shower,” he said to her.
“You have a shower?” she said.
“And plenty of water and power to heat it.”
He told her he would switch on the water heater and then go work on the engine.
It was almost dark when he finished with the engine. When he turned it on, it purred, no sign of any problem. He walked up the steps and smelled something cooking. She had found the leftover venison stew his father had made. She had transformed herself into a nice-looking girl, not exactly pretty but nice-looking: brown hair that was close to blond, nice breasts, long well-shaped legs. She looked good even dressed in a pair of his shorts and one of his T-shirts.
“Those clothes of mine need to be burned,” she said.
They ate dinner on the screened porch. As they ate the stew, he could not help but think of his father. When he made the stew, he had complained that he had no carrots. He never had any luck growing carrots in his garden.
She told him she was a senior at LSU, majoring in math. Her parents had expected her to become an accountant, but she wanted to have an academic career.
“They weren’t pleased with that,” she said. “There’s no money in it. My daddy pointed that out right away. To him those washing machines were the most important thing in his life. Now he’s dead because of them. And nobody tried to steal a single one. Those thieves were after other things.”
He recalled that his father had never seemed particularly concerned about the fate of the shop.
“My father cared about this house, not those boats and motors,” he said.
“Smarter than my father,” she said.
She sighed.
“I guess I’m being too hard on my father,” she said. “My mother didn’t want to stay. She told me. But I’ll bet she didn’t say a word to him.”
“He did the best he could,” he said.
“I suppose.”
She looked toward the airboat moored at the dock.
“Your mother’ll be surprised when you drive up,” she said.
He did wonder how his mother would react but did not speak of this to her. He was going to have to tell her his father was dead. She might laugh. She might cry. But she would not react in the way a normal person might.
“She’ll be surprised all right,” he said.
“She won’t be glad to see you?” she said.
He told her about his mother’s plans to send him off to military school, how she and her father never got along. And then he explained about all those young men.
“Better than old ones,” she said.
She laughed, and then he did too. Her indifference to the spectacle his mother was making of herself with those young men made him consider that his reaction was not a reasonable one. And he looked out into the darkness and wondered if there was someone out there listening to their laughter. He had not turned on any lights, and she had not asked any questions about why he had not.
“You worry about those men of hers a lot?” she asked.
“I guess,” he said.
“It sure sounds like you do.”
“What if it were your mother?”
She began to laugh.
“My mother hadn’t had sex with my father in years,” she said. “Who was going to be interested in her? She sure wouldn’t be interested in them. I’ll bet your mother is beautiful.”
Talking about sex was making him uncomfortable. He decided to work hard to make sure he gave no sign it did.
“I guess,” he said.
“Don’t you know if she’s beautiful?” she asked.
And he wondered if somehow she knew that he knew absolutely nothing about sex and women. She could be playing with him.
“She’s beautiful,” he said.
“I expect she is,” she said. “Maybe she wants to send you to military school because she likes you too much.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You’re a nice-looking boy, her only child. She might feel that it’s time to let go of you.”
He was thinking of his fever breaking and feeling cold and how his mother wrapped her arms around him and stroked his hair.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
“I wonder,” she said.
“Sometimes people don’t think anything at all.”
“Oh, is that so.”
“Yeah, sometimes it happens to me.”
Then she began to talk about herself. She told him how she planned to go to graduate school in mathematics. He wondered exactly what it was you studied after studying math for four years.
After a while she stopped talking. There were tree frogs on the screen, giving their calls over and over, their voices tiny compared to the deep voices of the marsh bullfrogs. Big moths bumped against the screen from time to time. She began to yawn.
He pointed out they would need to stand four-hour watches. He also explained why it was not a good idea to show any lights.
“No use getting killed on our last night here,” he said.
“Ironic,” she said.
“Do you know how to shoot?”
She told him she had never shot a gun. He decided this night was not a good time for her to learn.
“I’ll take the first watch,” he said.
She went off to sleep in his father’s bed. He sat on the porch with the Saiga beside him and listened to the frogs and the night birds. After a time he got tired of sitting and went out to his father’s grave. He stood over it, trying to think of something to say, but could find no words.
He found it was true he had no more tears, at least not at this moment. He wondered if he would be able to come to this place in ten or twenty years or if the sea would rise and put everything around him permanently underwater. It would not be so bad for his father to have a grave at the bottom of a warm shallow sea.
When he went back to the house, he decided to stand a double watch and let Angela get some sleep. She was exhausted. Besides, standing watch would give him time to think about the best way to get to New Orleans. The most direct way would be across Lake Pontchartrain. But then they would be vulnerable to the presence of speedier and more powerful boats, boats constructed to deal with rough water. The airboat was designed to run in a few inches of water or even a heavy dew, as his father liked to say. And the airboat would be overloaded with gas and water. He planned to find a route where the water was shallow and those other boats could not go. His plan was to follow the highway to the lake and then work around to the west end of either Pontchartrain or Lake Maurepas. He was not sure how long it might take to make the journey. It would be slow going through the swamps. But at least the danger of being ambushed would be greatly diminished.
He sat on the screened porch, thinking about these things, as the hours of his double watch wore on.