After breakfast they all started down to the airboat. They carried gas, water, food and plenty of ammunition. As they reached the shoulder of the hill and the view of the flooded fields below presented itself, Stephen saw the airboat was gone. In its place was a wooden skiff. In the skiff was one paddle, but no outboard was attached. The skiff was partially filled with water. Someone had made a bailer out of a half-gallon milk jug by cutting off the bottom.
“Had to paddle and bail at the same time,” Mr. Parker said.
Stephen pointed out to the others he did not believe the thief or thieves would get far. There was only a little gas in the tank. He scanned the flooded fields with the glasses, but there was no sign of the airboat.
Mr. Parker offered Stephen the use of one of his johnboats. He and Holly would stay and guard the house. They would have to postpone their trip to the barge until Stephen returned.
“You think you can handle that thief?” Mr. Parker asked Stephen.
“Yes, sir, I do,” Stephen said.
“It sure looks like it was one person,” Mr. Parker said. “If there’d been two, they’d have made another paddle out of a board. There’s plenty of lumber floating around. Don’t you take chances with him. Kill him. Get your boat back.”
“Yes, sir, I will,” Stephen said.
He realized that Mr. Parker was right. He should take no chances with the thief.
“Do what your daddy would’ve done,” Angela said.
“He would’ve disabled the motor and that airboat would still be sitting right here,” Stephen said.
They all laughed.
“But he won’t get far,” Stephen said. “There wasn’t much gas in the tank.”
Now the task of carrying the heavy cans up the hill was worth it. His father would have been proud of that.
Once they had loaded the johnboat, they set out across the flooded field. Angela ran the motor, and Stephen sat in the bow with the field glasses and the Saiga.
He spotted a few alligators with the glasses, but there was no sign of the airboat. He had Angela run the boat slowly along the edge of the swamp, thinking that the thief might have run the boat up into the cypresses.
“We’re lucky he didn’t come up to the house and kill us all while we slept,” Stephen said.
Angela sat in the stern with the motor, a grim look on her face.
Not having a watch had bothered him from the first night, but he had deferred to Mr. Parker and the rest of the adults.
“No use getting a good night’s sleep if you wake up dead,” Stephen continued.
“I know you’d have liked to set a watch,” she said.
He wanted to tell her they wouldn’t be out here right now if they had, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
Then he noticed a broken sapling. The break looked fresh to him. They had done that too as they maneuvered the airboat in tight places in a swamp. He asked her to take the boat into the trees.
She eased it through the trees, now and then banging the hull against a cypress knee or a tree. They heard the airboat engine. He had her cut the motor.
The big engine started and sputtered and went silent. He would not have thought that the thief had run out of gas quite so soon. Then the engine started, and they heard the thief maneuvering the boat through the trees. He would have heard the sound of their motor too. Stephen scanned the trees ahead with the field glasses.
Gradually the trees thinned, and they came out into an open space and moving water. The johnboat shuddered a little as the current caught them up and bore them downstream, the channel running straight through the cypresses. Up ahead, several hundred yards away, he saw the airboat. The engine was running rough, the boat turned sideways in the current. It was going to be easy to catch up with it. A single figure was in the boat.
The airboat made a sudden turn to the left and disappeared into the trees. When they reached the spot, he saw it had encountered an even swifter current. He realized the turn had not been a voluntary one. He turned to warn Angela, but it was too late. The current seized the johnboat and jerked it to one side.
Ahead he saw a chute, the water hissing as it slid between the trees, and at the bottom was a smooth, glasslike standing wave. The wave had caught the airboat and was holding it. As the boat tilted at one angle and then another, the thief tried to maintain a precarious balance.
It was the bartender.
He was yelling something at them. As the wave pitched the airboat up at an angle, he toppled into the water. The airboat shot out of the wave and downstream. Stephen expected to see him emerge, but he did not.
When they hit the wave, the johnboat shuddered and stopped. The propeller whined as it turned in air instead of water. Then it gained purchase again. He looked up at the wave, higher than his head. As the boat climbed the face of the wave, he saw, up in the clear sky, the contrails of some sort of aircraft, flying so high he could not make out the shape of it.
The boat, now half full of water, tilted to one side. He began to bail frantically, using his hat and holding the Saiga with the other hand. Ahead, on the right side of the flow, the airboat was being carried into the trees. It made a crack when it hit them and turned on its side. Then there was a tearing sound as the metal was ripped apart.
He looked back at the wave but saw no sign of Byron Williams in the river below. The motor died. Angela was frantically pulling on the starter rope. The motor started, and she straightened up the boat so it was no longer borne sideways by the current. As he continued to bail, she gradually regained control.
They swung around a bend. He motioned for her to try to steer the boat to the calmer water on the inside of the bend. But the current was too strong. The boat turned sideways again. They both saw the snag coming, a cypress treetop, but it was too late to avoid it. The boat hit it with a thud, the force throwing them both into the bottom of the boat. They were caught fast.
When he picked himself up, he saw a big boat approaching. The olive drab boat looked like a floating rectangular box. Two black men dressed in blue and white uniforms stood in the cockpit. He had seen those uniforms on a tv show about the rodeo held at the state prison every spring. The men were prisoners from Angola.
Their boat did not seem to be affected by the swift current. The pilot slid it up to them, and the other man helped first Angela and then him into the boat. Angela had lost her rifle, but Stephen had the Saiga securely slung across his body. The dry bag containing water, ammo, food and the radio had fallen out of the boat when they encountered the wave. With any luck they should be able to find it, unless it had gotten hung up in underbrush upstream from them.
As the johnboat turned on its side and filled with water, there was that now-familiar sound of metal tearing.
Then the pilot turned the boat, and they went downstream with the current. Stephen realized the boat was a pump jet. The current was no problem for it at all. As the current gradually diminished, the pilot pulled back on the throttle and ran the boat into an eddy. Stephen unslung the Saiga and held it casually at his side. He saw no weapons in the boat.
The dry bag had ended up in the same eddy. The pilot maneuvered the boat so that Angela could retrieve the bag. Then he saw the body of Byron Williams floating facedown. The prisoners paid no attention to him. Neither did Angela. He thought about telling them the dead man had stolen their airboat, but he did not think it would be worth the trouble. Stephen was glad that the water had done the killing and not him.
“What are you children doing out here?” the pilot asked.
Stephen guessed the pilot was in his forties. The other man was much younger. They were Richard and Drexel.
“Trying to get to Baton Rouge,” Stephen said.
He was going to be careful not to mention his mother’s house in New Orleans or her hiring of security men. That had caused problems with Byron Williams. He did not want the prisoners to start looking on him as someone who could be a ransom opportunity.
“This water’s rising, and pretty soon there’ll be catfish swimming in the mayor’s office,” Drexel said. “We think we’re north of interstate twelve and west of fifty-five.”
“You don’t know that,” Richard said. “Those interstates are underwater.”
“I know it’s rising,” Drexel said.
Richard told them he was serving a life sentence for killing his wife.
“I didn’t mean to,” Richard said. “I put my hands on her, and then she was lying there. It didn’t seem real at all. You know what I mean?”
Drexel was serving a long sentence for armed robbery.
“Might as well be life,” Drexel said. “No parole. I’ll be ninety years old when I get out.” He paused and looked up at the sky as if he were pondering something.
“What’s that Mississippi song?” he said. “Let’s see. It’s about Parchman Prison. ‘I’m gonna be here for the rest of my life/And all I did was shoot my wife.’” They all laughed. “But that’s about Richard, not me. I didn’t shoot nobody. I had a pistol, but I wasn’t planning on using it. The jury didn’t believe me. That da said I was a killer. But what about all those other banks I robbed? I didn’t hurt a single person. Just scared ’em.”
“I ain’t from Mississippi,” Richard said.
“Well, that song’s about you anyway,” Drexel said.
Stephen was surprised by how matter-of-fact they were about their crimes.
They were looking for someone to surrender to. They had volunteered to help the Corps of Engineers. When the levee they were working on had failed, they became separated from the engineers and had used the boat to save themselves.
“This is an army bridge erection boat,” Richard said. “That chute was no problem for it.”
“We’ve been going around looking for folks to save,” Drexel said. “But I don’t imagine there’s nobody left to save. Just the dead floating about.”
“I like the dead to stay put,” Richard said. “In the ground, where they belong.”
“We’re hoping maybe the governor will give us a pardon for bringing the boat back,” Drexel said.
“They’ll say we stole it,” Richard said.
He turned to Stephen.
“You can put that shotgun down,” Richard said. “I ain’t got any more killing in me. Drexel won’t be making anymore illegal withdrawals. Just tell the police we saved you.”
“There’s no pardon in showing up with a boat full of dead folks,” Drexel said.
Stephen hoped they were telling him the truth. He planned to keep the Saiga close by and to make sure that either he or Angela was awake at all times.
“Take us to Baton Rouge,” Angela said.
“Not possible,” Richard said. “This water’s rising. We’ll go to Natchez.”
The prisoners began to discuss the best way to get to Natchez. They finally decided to find the levee and follow it north to high ground.
That night, the boat anchored in the calm waters of a swamp, Stephen got the radio out of the dry bag and dialed in a few stations. They learned the Mississippi was still rising and more levees were breaking.
The prisoners discussed the breeches in the levees. Richard thought that would relieve the pressure on the levees from the rising river as more water spread out into the fields. Drexel held the opposite opinion.
“See about the mystery station?” Angela asked.
So Stephen dialed it up, and to his surprise it came in loud and clear.
“This is the Swamp Hog,” the voice said.
The prisoners started to laugh.
Richard explained that the Swamp Hog was the name of a prison disk jockey. The prison had a small radio station. Drexel wondered how the signal was going this far.
“Besides, that station is underwater now,” Richard said.
“He’s found himself another transmitter,” Drexel said.
“I wonder where that is?” Richard said.
“Someplace dry,” Drexel said.
“Maybe on high ground in Mississippi,” Stephen said.
“Duck Hill,” Drexel said. “I used to live near there. It’s got that hill that’s mostly rock right beside the railroad tracks.”
“There ain’t no transmitter on the top of Duck Hill,” Richard said.
“I’m not sure that’s what they call that hill,” Drexel said. “Maybe Snake Hill. There’re lots of snakes on it.”
“He don’t know what he’s talking about,” Richard said.
It turned out that the Swamp Hog was known to be a little crazy.
“I wouldn’t believe nothing that crazy man says,” Richard said.
Drexel agreed.
“He uses words he don’t know the meaning of ever since that lady from the university taught him to write poetry.”
The Swamp Hog was going on about how there was nothing left of New Orleans but the tops of the buildings (he called it the French Quarter Archipelago) when static broke in, and they lost his signal.
Drexel picked up the radio.
“Hey, Swamp Hog,” he said. “Where you broadcasting from? Hey, you listening to me?”
When they went to sleep, Stephen did not bother to set watches with Angela. But he did sleep with the Saiga and make sure a round was in the chamber.