Stephen woke at first light. A banded water snake was draped across the bow of the boat, but it dropped off into the water with a solid splash when he moved. The sun was rising on the other side of the mound, while his side was still in shadow. He heard the sound of the helicopter’s engine starting.
As he started to pack up the mosquito netting, he stood and waited for the helicopter to rise above the pecans. Finally it did and flew directly over him. He waved to it. One of the pilots waved back. Then suddenly it tilted downward and flew directly into the water only a few yards away. There was no fire, no explosion, just the thump of the body of the chopper against the water. The water it threw up rained down on him. The wreckage floated for a few minutes and then slowly sank out of sight, leaving just a piece of the tail rotor above the water. Just then the sun rose over the trees on the top of the mound and illuminated the wreckage, the light glinting off the metal blades.
Then it occurred to him that Angela might have decided to go with them. He scrambled out of the boat and had started up the hill when he saw Mr. Parker and Angela running down it.
When they reached him, he threw his arms around her. He told her he thought she might have been on the helicopter. And he wondered if his concern was a sign of love. He supposed it could be. But a girl as old as she was would be unobtainable for him. He wondered how many people you had to kill before you could no longer love. Was it a different number for different people?
“Those poor people,” she said, looking out toward the wreck. “They thought they were going to sleep in a hotel tonight.” Then she turned back to him. “We started out together. We’re going to stay together until we get to Baton Rouge.”
Mr. Parker stood at the edge of the water, weeping.
“God, they’re all gone,” Mr. Parker said.
Stephen noticed something floating in the water that looked like a piece of a body, but he said nothing.
“I cooked breakfast for them,” Mr. Parker said. “How can they be dead?”
Angela put her arms around Mr. Parker, and Stephen joined her.
Mr. Parker was making Stephen feel old. Stephen recalled running his hands over his father’s body. They were dead; they were not alive. It was as simple as that. He wondered if he had now grown older than his mother and Josephine. What had they seen in New Orleans? Those security men, although young, were probably the oldest people he was likely to meet. They, and men like them, had traveled the furthest from life.
His father had obviously been one of them, but now it was too late to learn any of his hard-earned wisdom.
Angela began to cry too, but she was comforting Mr. Parker, telling him they did not suffer, that it was quick. Stephen found he could not weep for them. His mind was filled with the sound of those cries of the wounded man the night his father was killed. He had definitely decided the cries had not come from his father.
She was telling Mr. Parker they were all gone to Jesus, and he was saying that was true.
Stephen still could not focus his attention on the dead. He was studying what he was feeling for Angela. But he did not think there was any hope for him. He supposed she regarded him as her little brother. It was not like his mother and her young men.
Mr. Parker sat in the mud by the side of the water. The sun shone brightly on the now perfectly calm brown water. Stephen walked over and put his hand on his shoulder.
“Let’s go up to the house, Mr. Parker,” he said. “We can make some coffee.”
They turned their backs on the wreck and went up the hill. Stephen was going to suggest they have coffee on the porch. Stephen made the coffee. They all sat and looked out on the flooded land.
“You’ll be going to Baton Rouge today?” Mr. Parker asked.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Mr. Parker asked them again if they had his wife’s address in a safe place. Angela had memorized it and recited it to him. He seemed to be satisfied.
Stephen wondered how he was going to feel being alone again.
“You can come with us,” Stephen said. “You can use the airboat to come back.”
Mr. Parker thanked him for his offer but said he’d rather stay.
“I’ve got property to protect,” he said. “I don’t want to come home and find looters have been at this house. They could burn it down just for fun, you know.”
Both Stephen and Angela told him they understood about that. Then he went off to check on the generator he was using to run a freezer.
“We can’t go today,” Angela said.
“Why not?” Stephen asked.
“And leave him here all alone?”
“He could come with us.”
“Didn’t you see him when the helicopter crashed. It’s more than just those people dying. He’s unsettled.”
“You mean crazy?”
“No, but look what’s happened to his land. And going around at night with that flamethrower after snakes. Why, one man couldn’t make a dent in them. There’re millions more out in that water.”
So when Mr. Parker returned, they told him they would be staying a few more days.
“If that’s all right with you,” Angela said.
Mr. Parker seemed pleased.
“Sure, stay as long as you want,” he said. “But if Anna is in Baton Rouge, you need to go there. You know she’s worried about you.”
Stephen pointed out he had been gone all summer.
“She can wait a few more days,” he said.
“I can’t say I won’t appreciate your company,” Mr. Parker said.
The rest of the day Stephen spent listening to the radio. There were the usual conflicting reports. The water was rising. The water was going down. Nothing but static when he turned the dial to the mystery station.
After they ate dinner and it grew dark, Mr. Parker went out and used the flamethrower on a few snakes that had crawled up near the house. But he took Angela’s suggestion to leave those near the water alone.
Mr. Parker went to sleep early at one end of the porch. It had grown too hot at night to sleep in any of the bedrooms. Stephen and Angela sat there in the dark. Now and then splashes came up from the water. A gator grunted.
Stephen wondered what it would be like to lie with her on the mattress. He wondered how many lovers she had had. She was telling him about a trip she had taken the summer before to visit a friend in the North Carolina mountains.
“The water won’t come up to those mountains,” she said.
“Did it rain all summer?” he asked.
“No, it was hot and dry.”
“I wonder if it’s raining there now?”
“You could try the radio.”
“I’ve never heard anything about those mountains on the radio.”
He decided not to tell her about the Swamp Hog’s talk of the Rocky Mountains covered with jungle.
Then he thought about both of them sitting there naked.
“Stephen?”
“What?”
“Are you thinking about your mother?”
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
He felt a little strange and uncomfortable telling that lie.
“Maybe we’ll find her in Baton Rouge. We’ll be there in a few days.”
Stephen wondered if she believed that. He was not sure what to believe himself. It was taking them a long time to get to Baton Rouge. As for his mother, he would not be surprised to learn she and those security people were the only people, besides a few over-optimistic looters, in New Orleans.
She said she was going to sleep.
“Mr. Parker is going to rig up a shower tomorrow,” she said. “And he’s going to let me have some of his wife’s clothes.”
Stephen lay down to sleep. From the other end of the porch came the regular sound of Angela’s breathing. He found himself lying there and thinking not about Angela but the safety of the airboat. Although he had the keys in his pocket, someone who knew what he was doing could find a way to start the engine. Tomorrow he would disable the distributor. Then he was sure he would sleep soundly.
In the morning he woke at first light, and taking up the Saiga and one of the gigs, he went down to the airboat. There was a thick fog lying on the surface of the flooded field, but he could see the ground before him clearly. He prodded several snakes out of his path with the pole.
He was relieved to see the airboat exactly where he had left it. The piece of the tail rotor had vanished beneath the brown water. The water was on the rise. It was filled with trash. And there was a current, bearing trash and dead animals and then one, two, three and perhaps a fourth body off to the southwest.
Angela was calling his name. He shouted out to her that he was coming up the hill. He would do something about disabling the airboat after breakfast. As he neared the house, Angela came out to meet him.
“The water’s rising,” he said. He told her that the wreckage of the helicopter had vanished.
“Try your radio and let’s see what’s happening,” she said.
So before breakfast they all sat on the porch and listened to several contradictory reports. He did not try the mystery station.
Mr. Parker was disgusted.
“Next thing you know they’ll be telling us that it’s all the result of the snow melting off the bluff at Memphis,” he said.
“Some levee or dam broke someplace,” Stephen said. “Or maybe it’s more rain upstream.”
“I’m just glad we don’t have to look at that helicopter,” Angela said.
Stephen thought that he was glad they did not have to look at the bodies from the wreck. But he said nothing. He turned off the radio.
“I’m hungry,” he said. “Let’s eat.”
“God, I wish I could have some scrambled eggs,” Angela said.
“How about pancakes and blackberries,” Mr. Parker said. “I’ve got some of Sally’s in the freezer. I picked the blackberries.”
Stephen tried to imagine what Mr. Parker’s wife Sally looked like. He imagined her in the kitchen making the pancakes and looking out across the fields of soybeans or corn that stretched to the horizon. It seemed strange to him that people might die, as those in the helicopter had, and the survivors might mourn, but pretty quickly folks got interested in eating and drinking again.
He stood up and walked to the edge of the screen so he might have a good view of the flooded fields. The brown water glittered in the sunlight as a morning breeze stirred its surface. He tried to imagine the field lush and green with beans and cotton.