Half of Paradise (27 page)

It was noon when he awoke and heard the dogs barking. They had picked up his trail at the crossroads. He grabbed his rifle and ran out of the cabin into the hot light. He hadn’t thought they would catch up with him so soon. He cut through the woods and hoped that he could find a bayou where he could throw the dogs off his scent. The trees were thickly spaced and slowed his running; there was no bayou. The barking of the dogs seemed farther behind him now, but that was because the police had stopped to search the grounds around the cabin; it would not take them long to discover that he had just fled and was less than a mile away. He had left the sack of food behind.

He headed for the marsh. It was the only thing left. If they caught him in the open he would either be killed without a fight, or worse, handcuffed and returned to camp. The marsh was a long way, and he had to travel at a steady pace without halting to rest. The main highway was off to his left and the state troopers were skirting the woods to the right, trying to cut him off. His path was laid out for him like a geometric rectangle; on one extreme was the dead end where he would make his stand, and on both sides were the police, who tightened the rectangle like a vise with each passing hour.

Once they almost got him. He was crossing a dried-out river bottom when the deputies opened fire. The river bottom was flat and reddish brown and baked by the sun, and the clay broke up and sank under his boots. He splashed through the few remaining rivulets of water that flowed through the low places in the bottom. He ran up the opposite bank and crouched behind a log and shot at them until they retreated from the bluff out of sight. The log was a cypress trunk that had washed over the bank in a flood and had been left when the water receded. The trunk was eaten by worms. A bullet splintered against it and filled his face with slivers of wood. A trooper had climbed down into a wash and was shooting at him from his flank. Toussaint fired back and saw a puff of dust jump up behind the trooper. He shot again as the man crawled rapidly back to the bluff and took cover. He sighted his rifle across the log and waited. They weren’t going to try again. They were going farther down the bluff to slip across the river bottom and flank him. He ran up the levee and down the other side into the woods. His face stung and bled slightly from the cypress splinters. He had been lucky. If they had been more careful they would have taken him.

He continued due west, pausing at intervals to fire at the police. He came out of the woods at evening and crossed a railroad embankment. He could see the swamp ahead of him. He saw the oaks with the moss in their limbs, and the cypress with their trunks swollen out at the waterline, and the alligator grass and bamboo and willow trees, and the white cranes that flew above the gray of the treetops.

The troopers had finally closed the rectangle. He broke through the underbrush, holding the Winchester at port arms, and started up the slope in a full run towards the marsh. It was almost dusk, and if he could reach the top of the rise without being hit the troopers would have to wait until morning before they tried to take him again. There was a rifle report behind him and a bullet slammed into the dirt by his feet. He hunched his shoulders and zigzagged from side to side as two more shots rang out. They were getting closer. He knew they were missing their mark by only a couple of inches whenever he heard that hollow
throp
near his head. He stumbled and fell, landing on his elbows so he wouldn’t drop the rifle. He dug his boots in the ground and lurched to his feet. There were more shots behind him, but they were shooting too fast now to be accurate. He thought his lungs would burst before he reached the top of the slope. He dove headlong over the crest and lay panting in the weeds.

They had stopped shooting. Toussaint raised his head just enough to see a dozen men spread out in an even line behind the undergrowth. The swamp was to his back, and there were two deep clay gullies that flanked each side of the crest. He had been in this part of the country before. The state had used convict labor to sandbag the levee when the river overflowed a year ago. He had deliberately chosen this particular place to make his stand. He could knock them down one at a time if they tried to move up through the gullies. He didn’t think they would come up behind him. The marsh was twelve miles across, and it would take more than a day to get a flatboat through, because there was only one channel and it was shallow and choked with logs and sandbars. They could enter the marsh farther down on this side and try to circle him, but there were many quicksand bogs and deep holes and he doubted if they would risk losing any men in the water.

They would come in the morning. They didn’t have machine guns now, but they would have them in the morning and the sun would be at their backs. They had it all in their favor, but he would make their job hard. He took his handkerchief from his back pocket and spread it neatly on the ground. He counted out his cartridges on the handkerchief. Fifteen, plus nine in the magazine. He wouldn’t waste a round. He would wait until they came into full view (and they would have to) before he shot. He put the shells back in his pocket. The bluing of the rifle was worn off. There were specks of rust along the barrel. He rubbed the thin rust off with the palm of his hand. He opened the breech and wiped it and the action clean of grit with his handkerchief.

The afterglow of the sun faded to darkness. He heard a truck grinding in low gear through a field opposite him. They were bringing in more men and guns. He thought about water. He could go without food, but he would have to have something to drink in order to last through the next day. The July sun would beat straight down into his eyes until afternoon. Toussaint crept down the backside of the slope to the edge of the marsh. He would take a deep drink now, and just before daylight he would take off his shirt and soak it in the water so he could suck the moisture from the cloth throughout the morning. The water was thick with lily pads and reeds. He cleared the scum off with his hand. It wasn’t good to drink from the swamp, but he had no choice. He could bear the mosquitoes, the hunger, and the long hours without sleep, and if he didn’t become sick he could make his fight a good one. The water tasted sour in his mouth. He climbed back up to the crest and lay down, cradling the Winchester in the crook of his arm. A fire was burning down the slope. They were making coffee. He could see a man shadowed against the light throwing sticks in the fire. The range was too far for an accurate shot, and Toussaint would not have fired, anyway. He would wait and give them their chance in the morning.

He waited on his stomach in the dark for dawn to come. He weakened during the night and there was a hard cramp in the lower portion of his body. The swamp water had been bad and he was beginning to feel its effect. He felt light-headed, and the campfire in the distance was blurred and out of focus. He pressed his fist in the pit of his stomach to ease the pain. God, don’t let me pass out, he thought. Let me be ready for them in the morning. I got to be at my best tomorrow. This is the end of the line and it’s got to be right. I’d rather turn this gun on myself than have them come up here and find me passed out.

He wiped the sweat out of his eyes and shook his head. His mind cleared for a moment, then something twisted inside him like a piece of hot metal. He clenched his teeth to keep from crying out. He had had dysentery in the camp, but not this bad. He gripped his stomach so tightly that his fingernails tore through his shirt. The pain was getting worse. That was the way swamp fever was. It came in spasms. One minute his forehead was hot as an iron, and then he would be shivering with cold.

If only he had a blanket. Or a big, warm quilt like the one he and his brothers slept on behind the French Market in New Orleans. He was thirteen then and the twins were a year older. They came to town on the weekends and stayed behind the Market where the trucks were unloaded. It always smelled of dead fish and rotting vegetables. At night they went down to Bourbon Street and danced on the sidewalk for the tourists. One of his brothers beat on a cardboard box while he and the other brother clapped their hands and sang.

Oh Lord I want to be in that number
When the sun begins to shine
.

The tourists threw their nickels and dimes on the pavement, and he hated them for it. He even hated himself when he stooped to pick them up and say Thank you, suh. Yes, yes, thank you, suh. My daddy don’t have money to put clothes on our back and we got to crawl around on our hands and knees to scrape up your pocket change, but thank you anyway.

Lord I want to be in that number

When the new world is begun
.

After the Quarter had closed for the night they went back to the French Market and counted their money in the dim light of the streetlamp. He felt ashamed when he saw his brothers laugh and shake the change in their hands. They would turn up their palms for the white man’s tip the rest of their lives. When they went to sleep he hid his face in the quilt and cried.

Toussaint rolled over in the grass and unhitched the top button of his trousers to ease the knotted ball in his abdomen. The campfire burned lower as the night passed. He bit his lips and his face strained as he tried to straighten his legs. The pain was spreading into his loins. The crickets and the nightbirds were quiet, and he could faintly hear the troopers talking. He thought of Billy Jo and Jeffry, and he wondered if the police would return him to camp in the back of a pickup truck with a tarpaulin over him. Evans would uncover him, and everyone in gang five would stand motionless and sullen and look down at him while the captain made his speech, and Daddy Claxton would cough up phlegm and spit, and Brother Samuel would stand with his straw hat over his ears and pray something about devil warts and the Black Man, and maybe somebody would turn aside and get sick, and Evans would pull the tarpaulin back over him and the truck would drive off and he would roll back and forth with the motion of the truck until it stopped and they put him in a box which would be picked up by the state health board and either buried in the parish cemetery without a headstone or turned over to the medical school.

It was nearly dawn. The eastern sky was rose-tinted with the morning’s first light. He pumped a shell into the chamber of his rifle and shifted himself so he could watch the troopers. The slope was covered by a mist from the marsh. His clothes were wet from the dew. His body ached terribly, and he felt like water inside, but the worst part of the fever was over. His head was clear and he would be ready for them when they came.

The sun was red and just above the horizon. The mist over the slope began to thin as the morning became less cool. The troopers were gathered in a circle while the parish sheriff spoke to them. Off to one side a man held the dogs by their leashes. Toussaint squinted down the slope; he couldn’t mistake the cork sun helmet and the sunburnt face. It was Evans. The sheriff left the other men and walked to the foot of the rise. He was within range of Toussaint’s rifle. He put his hands on his hips and glared up at the crest.

“Come down, Boudreaux.”

Toussaint chewed a weed between his teeth. You got courage, he thought. I could bring you down like a coon in a tree.

“I gave you your chance,” the sheriff said, and went back to the troopers. They moved up to the base of the slope. Toussaint sighted at a man’s throat to allow for the drop of the bullet and fired. He ducked his head just as a burst from a machine gun raked the crest. He ejected the spent cartridge and rolled sideways. They would be waiting for his head to appear at the same place. Two troopers tried to get farther up the rise. They wore campaign hats and Sam Browne belts. He shot at the first one and watched him grab his knee and tumble back down the slope. The other trooper kept coming. He was a heavy man and his face was sweating from the effort. Toussaint worked the lever action and hit him in the chest. He spun around and dropped on his back. He tried to sit up and pull his revolver from his holster. His rifle lay behind him. He fell flat again with his mouth and eyes open, staring at the sky.

Toussaint wished he had a bolt action rifle. It was hard to shoot from a prone position with the Winchester. A deputy fired from behind a log with a machine gun while another trooper ran for the gully. The deputy fired until his clip was empty, the bullets cutting pockmarks in the dirt, ripping up divots of grass around Toussaint’s head. Toussaint waited until the hammering of the machine gun had stopped. He put the V of his sights on the campaign hat that showed just above the log. He shot and the hat flew in the air, and he turned his rifle on the trooper in the gully. He missed and the trooper slid back down the clay embankment to safety, then the firing stopped altogether.

Evans came out from behind the truck with the dogs. They were going to turn them loose. Evans released the two German shepherds and kept the bloodhound on its leash. The dogs charged up the hill towards Toussaint. They were fine animals and he didn’t want to hurt them. Only a man like Evans would turn his dogs loose to get killed, he thought. He pulled back from the crest, standing erect, and held the rifle by its barrel. He swung and hit the first dog across the muzzle with the stock. The dog flipped sideways and lay quivering on the ground. There was a split along its jowl that ran back to the thick gray-black fur around the neck. The second dog bounded over the crest and tore into Toussaint’s legs. He kicked and pounded its neck with the rifle butt. The dog’s jaws were locked around his ankle, cutting to the bone. He inverted the rifle and shot it through the back. The bullet broke the dog’s spine, and he had to shoot it again to put it out of pain.

He limped back to the crest and took his position. The troopers had moved up the gullies while he fought the dogs. The firing was heavy and it came at him from both flanks. The acrid smell of burnt powder filled the air. He took the last cartridges from his pocket and pushed them down into the magazine. He crawled to the edge of one gully and tried to hold them back. There was a shot behind him, a whine like a bullet ricocheting off rock, and suddenly his stomach was aflame. His eyes throbbed and he couldn’t breathe; he was spitting blood. He held his forearm across his belt line, his rifle in one hand, and stumbled away from the crest to the water’s edge. He fell in a sitting position with one leg bent under him.