The Elephant Mountains (3 page)

But by the time the sun slipped behind the trees and it began to grow dark, he had still seen no sign of a duck.

He heard a motor in the creek. Pretty soon a powerful light was shining among the cypresses and then out into the marsh. Someone had come up from the river. He'd had been told over and over if someone showed up he should hide himself and let his father deal with intruders. By now Stephen expected his father had heard them too and seen their light, so he would be ready. He carefully walked out of the cover of the trees and into the marsh a little way so he could see the house.

The boat slowed to a crawl. The searchlight played over the house, but there was no sign of his father. Then they reached the dock, and someone cut the engine.

“Walter,” someone yelled. “Walter.”

The light disappeared. He took that as a bad sign. The men in the boat had decided not to expose themselves. Were they friends of his father? They knew his name. He could not see anything, just the outline of the roof of the house against the lighter darkness of the night sky. The moon was not up yet. His father did not reply.

“Walter,” a different voice called, this one not as deep.

He heard the whistle of wood ducks overhead, along with the thrum of their wings. Then there were splashes in the marsh. The ducks had gone to roost at the last possible moment. Almost at the same instant, the shooting began, most of it from AK-47s, but then there was also the sound of his father's machine gun. Someone began to scream, the sound so terrible he clapped his hands over his ears. He just hoped it was not his father. He thought again of his father's instructions: if something like this happened he was to stay away. His father would come find him. If he did not come, that would mean he was dead.

But it could be his father screaming. He started along the trail that wound through underbrush and high grass. Because it was under a foot of water, he had to move carefully so as not to make noise. The screaming faded away to a few murmurs and then stopped. Now he was out of the water, and it was easier to be quiet. Then the searchlight came on again. Through the trees he could see the figures of three men. None of them looked like his father. Three bodies lay on the ground.

He sat down and slipped out of the waders. It was going to be impossible to move silently in them. Ahead of him was a clear sandy area. They would not be able to see him approach because they would be blinded by the light. He wished he had the Saiga-12 instead of the Browning filled with duck loads. He took out two shells and held them between the fingers of his left hand so he could reload quickly. The shotgun held one in the chamber and four in the magazine. The men were talking, but he could only catch a word here and there: “ammo,” “gas,” “Walter.” One of them kicked at a body with his foot. They all laughed.

Now he was moving forward at a crouch. He was just about to enter the edge of the circle of light, the men no more than twenty-five yards away. He eased off the safety of the Browning. As he took a deep, slow breath to calm himself, he thought of his dream-fight with the dead man in the creek. And he found himself lost in that dream so that the two things, the dream and the men standing in the clearing, bled into each other. He stood motionless, watching it happen as if they were being projected on a giant screen before him. His legs and arms felt heavy. He could not imagine he would have the strength to bring up the shotgun. As he took another deep breath, he heard the sound of his own heart beating. He pulled himself away from the sound and its hypnotic effect. The men and the night around him sprang into sudden sharp focus as if his body had been awakened and propelled into action by a sudden electric shock.

He ran toward them, his bare feet making little squeaks in the sand. The man closest to him turned toward him, and—just like in his dream—he saw him raise his rifle. He put two shots into the man's chest. The man crumpled. The other one was firing, and he heard the bullets zip by his head. Suddenly the light went out. Had a stray round hit it? Was there another man in the boat? He shot the man before him too and tried desperately to bring up the shotgun on the third man. The removal of the light had reduced the man to a dark figure standing before him. Stephen realized that the third man had had plenty of time to kill him. But when he turned toward him, he saw the man was fumbling with his rifle. It was jammed.

Stephen swung the barrel of the shotgun up to the man's chest. The man dropped his rifle and held his crossed arms over his face.

“Don't!” he screamed. “Please! I didn't shoot him! I can't! It's jammed!”

For the first time Stephen realized his father was lying facedown in the sand only a few feet away. Now that Stephen's eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, he could see the dark outline of the submachine gun by his side.

“I didn't!” the man continued to say. “I didn't!”

Stephen turned back to him and brought up the shotgun.

“No!” the man cried. “No!”

It seemed it should be easy to pull the trigger, to empty the shotgun into him. Vengeance for the death of his father. But he found he could not.

“Walter was my friend,” the man said.

Stephen almost shot him for that.

“I want to see your face,” he said.

“What for?” the man asked.

Stephen did not have an answer for that. He had already pulled the mini-flashlight out of his pocket. He pressed the button and shined the light on the man's face. He was a little redheaded man wearing an Atlanta Braves cap. His skin was a pale white. Stephen imagined he must be one of those people who never tanned. He had had his nose broken at some point in his life. He was breathing hard as if he had just finished a race. Stephen felt as if he had been looking at him for a long time, but he knew that it could not have been more than a few seconds. He turned off the flashlight.

“Get out of here,” Stephen said.

The man was gone in an instant. Stephen heard his feet on the sand and then on the dock. The motor started, and the johnboat moved out along the channel toward the creek.

Stephen now regretted he had not shot him.

He would've killed me if his rifle hadn't jammed,
he thought
.

Then he turned to his father. It seemed that none of this could be real, that any moment his father was going to come out of the house, angry at him for disobeying his instructions. Stephen resisted the temptation to lose himself in that dream, and again sand, the insects, the hot sticky air, the scent of his own sweat overwhelmed the dream. He reached out and put his hand on his father's back. He was still warm. But he knew this kind of stillness, the face in the sand, could only mean death.

He rolled him over, not an easy job. Stephen felt wet spots on his chest and back where the bullets entered and exited the body. In the daytime he would be looking at his father's blood, bright against his khaki work clothes. He was glad the face was unmarked, or at least he thought it was. He reached into his pocket for the flashlight but realized he had dropped it. He would go to the house for a gas lantern. He ran his hand over his father's face and felt no wounds, only sand. He brushed it away. Then he touched his father's face again, feeling the stubble of his beard, the strong thrust of his arched nose, his square chin.

If he had not gone hunting, this might not have happened. He imagined coming to meet the men with his father. The two of them might have survived.

No, I'd be dead too
, he thought.
There were too many of them. Or I could have started shooting when they came into the marsh. But they were out of range. Too far. Too far.

Crying took him by surprise. It came as a relief. He listened to his sobs as a counterpoint to the choruses of frogs. He lay on his back beside his dead father and wept as the moon rose over the cypresses along the creek. Some of his killers were dead, but he found no satisfaction in that. He realized he was going to have to bury them along with his father. If he did not, they would rot and stink. Vultures would fill the yard and roost on the roof of the house.

He got up and blew his nose and wiped his eyes. Then went to the house for a lantern and a shovel.

After he lit the lantern, he placed it next to his father's face. He was right. It was unmarked. A cloud of insects, mostly moths, danced around the light. He sat there for a long time looking at his father and brushing away the moths that settled on his face. Then one by one he looked at the faces of his killers. They were unshaven, rough-looking men dressed in the same sort of work clothes his father wore. One had his name, Ed, stitched on his shirt. He wondered if they ever did anything criminal before the hurricanes arrived. They looked like ordinary working men. But like his father they had stayed behind deliberately, in their case to loot and kill.

He began to dig his father's grave. It was not difficult going in the sandy soil but still hard work. It took him a long time, and he did not like to have to think about his father lying a few feet away while he was doing it. The lantern was running low on fuel and beginning to flicker, its circle of light gradually diminishing. He realized he should have filled it before he started. He hated to just roll him into the grave, but he had no way of lowering him gently. When he pushed the body into it, it landed with a heavy thud.

“I'm sorry, Father, I'm sorry,” he said.

His voice sounded unusually small and insignificant. When he turned off the lantern and looked up at the sweep of the stars overhead, he felt even smaller. And he was not really sure what he was sorry about except that he was duck hunting when his father was murdered. He stood by the side of the grave and cried for some time before he worked up the nerve to drop the first shovelful on him.

When he swung the shovel out over the grave, he paused, the blade with its load of sand suspended over his father. He delayed the moment of dropping it, a moment when his father seemed not dead and the grave did not yawn before him. But it was going to be impossible to hold everything in suspension. He could not stay frozen over the grave, not even for five more seconds. So he gave the shovel a little twist in his hands, and the sand dropped, the weight on his arms gone, and the load fell onto his father's body with a heavy
plop
.

After the first, the next one was much easier. He wondered if he should say some words over him now or wait until the grave was filled. He decided to keep working. So he applied himself to his task and shoveled with a methodical regularity, dropping shovelful after shovelful into that rectangular patch of darkness.

When he dropped the last shovelful of sand on top of the little mound that had risen over the grave, he tossed the shovel aside and took off his sweat-stained work gloves. He sat down on the sand, breathing hard. For the first time in his life, he wished he had been in the habit of going to church, because there he might have learned some words to say.

“Now you won't ever have to leave paradise,” he said.

That sounded foolish, especially set against the croaking of the frogs and the insistent mindless hum of the insects. But somewhere, deep in the swamp, whippoorwills were calling, and he knew his father would like that. And maybe the calls of those night birds were better than any words he or anyone else could say.

He calculated it would take him the rest of the night to bury the others. He considered pouring gasoline on them, but he knew it would take an extraordinary amount of gas to consume the bodies. He did not have it to waste. He sat down and cried again, out of despair for what lay before him. But then he thought he had a solution. He would use the johnboat to tow them to the creek. Once in the current they would float down to the river to join the dead man in the suit, turtles and catfish their undertakers. He recalled his father's words about there being too many dead things to bury.

So he dragged them to the water. He roped them together, heads to ankles, and then brought the john-boat from the dock and tied the free end of the rope to a cleat. He started the engine and carefully towed them into the nearest channel. He was surprised that his plan was working so well. He considered how, at the beginning of the summer, this scene would not have been a part of his wildest nightmare.

I killed them
, he thought.
How can that be?

And he discovered revenge was sweet. In fact, he wished he could kill them over and over again. Now he understood why sometimes men at war mutilated the bodies of their enemies.

Once at the creek he worked the boat through the line of cypresses and towed the bodies out into the slow but powerful current. He steered the boat upstream so the bodies were strung out behind him. The motor strained as it felt the tug of them. He put the engine in neutral, took out his knife and cut the rope. He played a flashlight over the bodies as they floated off down the creek, thankful they escaped becoming entangled with the timber on the flooded banks or the midstream snags.