The Elephant Mountains (9 page)

That night he was awakened by the sound of music. It was Bach. His mother played it on the piano. He supposed for a moment it was a recording, but then it started and stopped again. He slipped out of his room and followed the music. Holly, dressed in her white bathrobe, was sitting in a dining-room chair, her back to him, playing a cello. He listened for a long time before he went back to sleep. As he lay in bed, he knew he wanted to leave soon. There was no future for them here.

The weather was hot but calm, the sky blue and filled with harmless-looking white clouds. They learned from the radio no hurricanes were wandering about in the Gulf. New Orleans had been totally evacuated, and people had been forbidden to return. Baton Rouge was filled with refugees. For the first time he recalled his mother had friends in Baton Rouge.

He and Fred listened to the radio one night after Angela and Holly had gone to sleep. Without telling Fred, he tried to dial in the mystery station. But for his efforts he was rewarded only with static.

“Nothing much up at that end of the dial,” Fred said.

So he tried the Texas station, but that failed to come in too.

“Whose idea was it to live on this barge?” he asked.

“Holly's,” Fred said. “We were thinking about building a cabin on a patch of high ground further down the creek. Then she heard about the barge for sale.”

Stephen wondered if he could persuade Angela to live with him in his father's house. It could be that the water would go down and the march of the hurricanes cease and the sea rise no further. He could work on motors, just like his father, in the shop. He wondered if Angela would want to go back to the little town if the water went down. He doubted if she could ever stay in the house where her parents were murdered. She might be willing to come live in his father's house. But with a boy like him?

They tried the radio a few more times but then gave up and went to bed. But he found himself unable to sleep. He sat on the edge of his bed in the darkness and searched for stations on the radio. The result was the same: nothing but static. He wondered, if he climbed to the top of one of the big poplars on the creek bank, would that be enough to draw in the mystery station or any station at all? Finally he gave up and went to sleep.

Every day he made sure to keep the Saiga close and listen for sounds of gunshots or motors in the creek. But there was nothing. He did not even hear an airplane fly over. At night he slept in a real bed with the Saiga by his side. Angela was sleeping in another room. He wondered if she slept with the AK-47. He had heard Fred and Holly making love. That made him think of his mother and her young men. It also made him think of Angela. He wondered how many lovers she had had. He wondered how it would feel to put his hands on her. Because that was something he had never done with any girl, he found it hard to imagine.

At breakfast one morning, Stephen talked about going to Baton Rouge.

“Why not stay here until the army returns,” Holly said.

“Yes, then it'll be safe,” Fred said.

He told them what he thought, that they had been lucky so far. One day someone was going to come down the creek and kill them.

“My father thought we were safe,” Angela said.

“But that was in a town,” Fred said. “No one has a reason to come here or even think someone would be living on a barge.”

“We came here,” he said. “If we were some of those people, you'd be dead.”

He imagined Fred and Holly floating facedown in the creek, borne by the steady current toward the Mississippi.

Holly and Fred argued against their leaving for a time but finally gave it up.

Angela wavered about his decision.

“They've got plenty of food,” she said.

“Someone can come here at any time and take it,” he said.

“The army could come.”

“Like I said, anybody could come here and take it.”

“You don't trust the army.”

“Not when folks are hungry.”

She finally agreed that maybe he was right.

When they left one morning, Fred gave Stephen a six-pack of Cokes.

“You'll have to drink them warm,” he said.

“I don't care,” he said.

It was not going to be pleasant to return to a diet of rice and beans. But if all went well, they should be in Baton Rouge in a few days.

They headed down the creek. He planned to cross over into the swamp when they got close to the river and then follow the levee down to Baton Rouge. They had traveled two or three miles when he looked back and saw a plume of black smoke against the sky. He told Angela to run the airboat into an eddy next to the bank and cut the engine.

The only sounds were those of the birds. Far off toward the river, he thought he might hear the sound of an airplane. He asked Angela if she heard it, but she said she did not. Angela thought the plume of smoke seemed to be back off toward the pine-covered ridges, not along the creek at all. He wanted to believe that, but he was not so sure.

“Should we go back?” she asked.

“For what?” he said.

He explained that if the smoke was coming from the barge, whoever started the fire might decide to continue on down the creek. They would be better off when they were out of the creek and into the swamp.

Angela lowered her head into her hands and sobbed.

“Those people,” she said.

He knew what she meant. They were so beautiful. Amid all the chaos, all the death and suffering, they moved as if some god had placed a magic spell on them.

“Nothing's happened to them,” he said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean that I think you're right. That smoke is more in the direction of the ridges.”

“You don't mean that.”

“I do.”

But he was thinking of all those windows shattering: blood on bathrobes, white tablecloths floating in the brown water.

“I'm going to believe you,” she said. “Don't you be lying to me.”

“When have I done that?” he asked.

She had to admit he had not.

“I'm telling no lies now,” he said. “But we need to get down this creek and into the swamp.”

She started the engine. Before she turned the boat back out into the creek, she looked in the direction of the smoke one more time. It was still thick and black and showed no signs of diminishing. She turned her back to it and concentrated on piloting the boat.

He took up the Saiga, glad talk was now impossible. He was pretty certain they were far enough from the barge so no one could hear the sound of the engine. But he would not relax until they were out of the creek and into the swamp.

SEVEN

T
hey finally found a passage. Once beyond the screen of trees bordering the creek, he saw they were in an enormous flooded field. The river was somewhere off to the west. He looked up at the sun and turned the airboat to the south and Baton Rouge. They ran for several hours. From time to time they came upon dead animals, both wild and domestic, but no humans.

Then up ahead he spotted a tree-covered mound of earth rising out of the submerged field. He had Angela stop the boat while he scanned it with the field glasses. A house was built on the truncated top of the mound. Off in an open space between some pecan trees a helicopter sat.

At any moment he expected to see someone launch a boat from the tiny island to have a look at them or even for the helicopter to venture out. He had Angela stop the airboat.

“The National Guard?” Angela asked.

“Looks like it to me,” he said.

The helicopter had military markings. But just because it was a military aircraft did not mean it was in the hands of the military. He expected by now someone on the island was looking at them with field glasses.

“What's that hill?” Angela asked.

“Someone built a house on an Indian mound,” he said.

He got out of his seat and took up a position in the bow. He laid the Saiga on the bottom of the boat. He wanted to make it clear to the people on the mound that they had peaceful intentions. No doubt the inhabitants of the mound had food and water to protect.

“Take us in slow,” he said.

As they drew closer, he saw two johnboats drawn up on the grass and several people, both men and women standing there looking at them. Two of them waved, and he waved back. Down near the water's edge, the grass was charred black in a band running both ways.

He turned to Angela and motioned for her to go slow.

“Anything happens, give it full throttle,” he said. “Run south.”

As they drew closer he scanned the people with his field glasses and saw that none of them was armed. They were all dressed in civilian clothes. He would have preferred to see them dressed in National Guard uniforms. Several of them carried long poles to which gigs were fixed. Perhaps they were living on frogs or were spearing fish in the shallow water.

They were only a hundred yards away now. He looked down at the Saiga and rehearsed in his mind how he was going to pick it up if anyone threatened them. He smiled at the people and waved at them. He turned his head and saw Angela doing the same.

Angela ran the bow of the airboat up onto the grass. There were two women, about his mother's age, and three men. One of the women grabbed the bowline. He stepped out of the boat, followed by Angela, and then everyone was talking at once.

“Where did you children come from?” one of the women asked.

So he gave them a quick summary of their journey, how his father was dead and Angela's parents were dead. He mentioned nothing about the men he killed or the murder of the family or of the couple on the barge. He hoped Angela would keep quiet about those matters too.

The people had been plucked off the levee by the National Guard helicopter. After developing engine trouble, it had been forced to land on the mound. The pilots had given their position but had been told not to expect rescue for a long time. Resources were needed elsewhere, and they were on dry ground.

The refugees were all from some small Mississippi town he had never heard of. One was a banker, another an insurance agent, and the third owned a funeral home. One of the women was married to the banker and the other to the insurance agent. The undertaker had lost his wife in the flood.

“Mr. Parker is beginning to think he made a big mistake staying,” the banker said.

Mr. Parker owned the mound and the house on it and the land for miles around. He was determined to ride out the flood just as his ancestors had ridden out previous floods and the Indians before them. The mound was already a large one when the first settlers cleared the land. It had been further enlarged over the years, first with slave labor and then with a bulldozer.

Stephen discovered that the poles and the frog gigs were for snakes. They were having a bad problem with snakes. Mr. Parker had somehow acquired a flamethrower. He made a circuit of the mound every night and killed snakes. The black band near the water was scorched grass.

“I didn't imagine there were that many snakes in the whole world,” the other woman said.

“You had to shoot anybody with that combat shotgun?” the insurance agent asked.

They had moved off from the women and were standing in a group by the bow of the boat.

“No, sir,” Stephen said. “Just snakes.”

“You can't blame us for asking,” the undertaker said. “Looks to me like you're all set to go to war.”

“He's got an AK-47,” the insurance agent said.

“It's dangerous out there,” Angela said.

“I expect it is,” the banker said.

Stephen wondered if they were going to be interested in his supplies. Now he wished that he had carried the Saiga ashore. And again perhaps it would have been a good idea to let them know he had killed a few people. But it was too late to start telling stories like that. They would think he was making it all up. To them he was just a boy.

“Let's go find Mr. Parker,” the undertaker said. “He'll want to talk to them.”