They worked their way through the flooded fields and swamps. The boat handled the swift currents from levee breaks with no problem. Stephen wondered if they would by chance pass by Mr. Parker’s house on the mound, but they never saw it, although they passed over many immense flooded fields.
Richard and Drexel were worried about running low on diesel fuel. They had only two drums left.
“That high ground is only a day away,” Richard said.
“What does he know?” Drexel said. “We could be a week from Natchez.”
“Why, I could get us to St. Louis in a week,” Richard said.
“On two drums?” Drexel said. “You can’t get us nowhere on that.”
So the banter between the two went on. Stephen could tell that Angela was getting just as tired of it as he was.
The afternoon of the third day they came out of a swamp and into a flooded field. In the center of the field was a nineteenth-century riverboat, complete with smokestacks, paddlewheel and plenty of gingerbread on the pilothouse. It had tilted slightly to one side.
“Come to rest on a mud bank,” Richard said.
Richard put the engines in neutral as they all looked at the incongruous scene.
“One of them gambling boats,” Richard said.
Richard suspected it could have been moored at Natchez or Vicksburg and been torn loose by the rising river.
“I wouldn’t have thought one of them fake things could float long enough to get way down here,” Drexel said.
“Looks real to me,” Angela said.
“It probably don’t even have engines in it,” Richard said. “No smoke has ever come out of them smokestacks.”
“Then how did it get down the river?” Stephen said.
“You’re right,” Drexel said. “It should’ve been smashed into little pieces against that flooded timber.”
“God having some fun,” Richard said.
“He has a plan,” Angela said.
Stephen wanted to point out that it seemed to him that God’s plan included plenty of dead people. He almost came out and said that luck, both good and bad, was the same as God.
They decided to spend the night on the riverboat.
“I’ll sleep in a bed,” Richard said.
Then Drexel started to talk about playing the slots. Richard pointed out he had no money and the machines had no power.
Drexel tossed a rope over a railing and climbed up the side. Everyone went up the rope. They carefully moored the bridge boat to the riverboat with both bow and stern lines.
“What’s going to happen if the water rises?” Stephen asked.
“Why should it rise tonight?” Drexel said.
“If it does, it’ll just be easier to get back in the boat,” Richard said.
Stephen remembered how the wreckage of the helicopter had vanished overnight.
“We’ve seen it come up fast,” Angela said.
But the prisoners were no longer listening. They had wandered off to the big room where the gambling machines were in place. Stephen and Angela followed them. There was rotting food in the serving trays at the buffet in the dining room. Richard and Drexel each helped themselves to a bottle of whiskey from the bar. Then they all had a dinner of army combat rations. Stephen wanted to suggest they stand watches. He did not wish to wake in the morning and find the bridge boat gone.
When it began to grow dark, they all selected a bedroom. Stephen and Angela took bedrooms next to each other.
“Those men are drunk,” Angela said.
“They’ll go to sleep,” Stephen said. “Besides they’re looking for a pardon from the governor.”
“I don’t want to sleep alone.”
They decided she would sleep in his room. It was hot in the room. The bed sat at a slight angle.
“That window needs to be opened,” she said.
“I’d rather be hot than have mosquitoes,” he said.
“Being hot is worse.”
She went to the window and searched for a way to open it, only to discover it was the kind you could not open.
Stephen broke a chair and used the leg to smash the glass in the window. He tried to make as much of it as possible fall on the outside.
“We’re up high,” she said. “Maybe they won’t bother us up here.”
“In a few minutes you’ll see that you’re wrong,” he said.
Before they went to sleep, he pushed a sofa against the door. He lay down on one side of the bed and she on the other. He put the Saiga between them. He closed his eyes. To his surprise there were no mosquitoes.
“You have the shotgun close?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “We’ll hear someone at the door. They’re unarmed. They won’t try to come in here.”
He slept but was awakened not by mosquitoes but by a thunderstorm passing over them. The boat shook as the thunder boomed. He looked across the bed. She was sitting up.
“Do you hear someone at the door?” she asked.
“It’s just the thunder,” he said.
She crawled across the bed to him and hit her knee on the Saiga.
“Oh,” she said. “You do have it close.”
“Careful, there’s a round in the chamber,” he said.
She picked up the gun. The lightning flashed, and he saw she was pointing it at the door.
“They wouldn’t have a chance,” he said.
“You think so?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I could do it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“You could if you had to.”
“Have you noticed there’re no mosquitoes?”
So far she was right about that.
“It’s early,” he said. “They’ll be here.”
She put the gun on the bed behind her and lay down beside him.
“Holly thinks we’re lovers,” she said.
“What did you tell her?” he said.
“That we’re not. Not yet.”
She sat up and bent over him and kissed him. She tasted of the Tabasco sauce they had all put on their rations to make them palatable.
She slipped out of her clothes.
“You’re going to make love with your clothes on?” she asked. “If that’s your style, I’ll just have to find somebody else.”
She laughed and then he did. He slipped off his clothes.
“Have you ever been with a girl?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
He had considered lying but decided that she would know somehow, and that would make him look even more foolish.
“What about Jesus?” she asked.
“What about him?” he said.
“I don’t know if I could sleep with a boy who doesn’t believe in Jesus.”
He imagined she thought that his father was in Hell and that was exactly where he was going.
“My father didn’t,” he said.
“I’m not asking you about your father,” she said. “Jesus has been watching out for us. You heard what Richard said about this boat. That it’s a miracle it got down the river and into this field.”
“He didn’t say anything about a miracle.”
“Not exactly, but what he said amounts to the same thing. Anyway, I’ve been praying ever since we met. We’re still alive. That’s a kind of miracle too.”
“I guess you could call it that.”
He discovered it was easy for him to be evasive about religion. Besides, it was unfair her holding that over him.
“Just say you do,” she said.
“I don’t not believe in Jesus,” he said.
“What does that mean?” she said.
“That I’m not opposed to the idea of him.”
“That makes me so happy.”
She reached out and put her hand on him.
“Well, it doesn’t look like you’re nervous,” she said.
She pulled him toward her and guided him into her. All his fantasies and dreams of sex were brushed away by the reality of being connected in this way to another person. He was eager to move in her but at the same time not completely sure how he should go about it.
“You remember where that shotgun is?” she said.
“Right beside us,” he said.
“I’ll listen out.”
She began to move. He was relieved to let her set the rhythm. Then a mosquito buzzed in his ear. It was followed by another. He slapped at them.
“Can’t fly this high?” he said.
She laughed.
“They’re biting me too. Be quiet and concentrate.”
The storm had moved off to the east, and the thunder gradually diminished. In the lightning flashes, he saw she had her head thrown back and her lips parted. The shotgun lay beside them. He wondered if she were actually listening for footsteps in the hallway.
Even as the mosquitoes swarmed about him, he was able to ignore their attacks. He came in a great rush. He looked down at her, and a lightning flash revealed she was smiling.
He rolled off her and lay on his back. They lay side by side for a long time until the sweat had dried on their bodies. Then they pulled the sheets over them against the attacks of the mosquitoes. The thunder was out of earshot now, the lightning reduced to a faint flicker on the horizon. She got up. He reached out and put his hand on her leg.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To look out the window,” she said.
“Put some shoes on. Watch out for broken glass.”
She did as he asked and went to the window. He heard the crunch of broken glass under her shoes.
“The stars are out,” she said. “Come and look.”
When he looked up at the sky, he saw it was clear. Then they heard laughter from the other end of the boat.
“I don’t think they’ll bother us,” he said.
“Just keep that shotgun close.”
They got back in the bed, neither of them bothering to put on clothes. He lay on his back, his hand on one of her breasts. It was too hot for any more contact than that. He waited to feel the sort of breathing from her that would mean she was asleep. But it never came.
“Can’t you sleep?” he asked.
“Will you stand watch?” she asked.
He looked at his watch and saw there were three or four hours before sunrise.
“Sure,” he said. “You go on to sleep.”
“If they come, don’t argue with them,” she said. “Just kill them.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes, before they do it to us.”
He almost made a joke about that being an un-Christian thing to do but decided against it. He did not like having to contemplate harming Richard and Drexel. They had plucked them out of their sinking boat. Prison or their belief in God or some force, perhaps unknown even to them, had transformed them into good men. He did not care how many banks Drexel had robbed or that Richard’s wife was dead by his hand. That was in the past.
Richard, if he were telling the truth, had probably not meant to kill his wife. Stephen recalled how Richard had observed it did not seem real that she was dead. He remembered his father and his killers lying on the sand, how that did not seem real.
Then he got up and put on his clothes. Taking the shotgun, he sat in a chair placed in a position that allowed him to have a view of both the window and the door. He supposed if they tried to force the door he would kill them. It would be a simple thing to do. Yet he hoped he would not have to do that.
Angela’s breathing had fallen into the slow, heavy rhythm of sleep. To pass the time he began to count all the dead people he had seen floating in the water. Not a single one of them would receive a burial or even have the briefest word said over them. When he reached thirty, the count slowed down. But as he sat there, the images of the floating dead, some grotesque and some peaceful, kept forming in his mind. And he felt a vague sense of panic there would be no end to the count, that it would go on and on until he was exhausted. He would break his promise to Angela and sleep. The prisoners, whose characters he might have misread, would slip into the room, and he and Angela would join the floating dead.