Beginning (3 page)

6

COHEN HAD WATCHED
the road for a couple of hours and decided if they were coming back, it wouldn't be today. He sat in a beach chair on the porch outside his front door. A stadium cup filled with bourbon and Coke was next to the chair and the shotgun lay across his lap. He watched the storm gathering and he listened to the gunfire that had appeared not long after the station wagon had driven away. He couldn't tell which direction it was coming from underneath the wind and thunder but he knew it was close. Too close.

A cluster of shots. Then a pause and a single shot. Two swallows of the big drink and then three more shots. A roar of thunder and a flash of silent lightning and he got up from the chair and walked out to the driveway. He wore rubber boots and he splashed through the water that stood in the yard around the short brick house. When he got to the Jeep he opened the glove box and pulled out a stack of letters.

He returned to the porch and leaned the shotgun against the wall and then he went through the letters one more time. They were months old. The earliest came from the State of Mississippi and made an offer for his land and property. He had ignored it and then came another with a slightly less ridiculous offer but still a monetary sum that would make his father roll over in his grave. Probably less than what he paid for all this land fifty years ago, Cohen had thought as he laughed at the offer per acre. Then came the letter from the US government that repeated the offer except that it used more emphatic language. Threatened that this was the best opportunity he was going to have. Promised that this was in the most vested interest of both him and the region. Explained that if he did not accept the offer before a certain date, then he would stand to lose all property rights if such a thing as regional realignment were to occur. The letters had his dirty fingerprints on the edges, were wavy from the moisture, had been read again and again. They had threatened to draw the Line, showed signs that they were drawing the Line. And now they had. He looked at the date on the final letter. Then he found the sentence that told him the deadline for accepting the offer. He had less than a week left.

He picked up the stadium cup and drank. Out across the road trees were bent and twisted as if trying to create some natural artistic exhibit and the flatlands of the acreage surrounding the house had become marshes. Scattered raindrops from the approaching storm smacked in the water like tiny explosions. Cohen took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. Twirled the white gold wedding band around his ring finger. Looked out into the slate-colored sky and wondered if he should even bother loading anything else onto the flatbed trailer though he had done only a halfass job. A few pieces of furniture and a couple of garbage bags filled with clothes, towels, blankets. A couple of air compressors and nail guns and miter saws were strapped down on the back end. He didn't know where he was going or what he was going to do when he got there.

Another set of shots. Closer, he thought.

The letters flapped in his hand. He lit a cigarette and stood up from the chair, taking the drink and shoving the letters in his back pocket. He splashed around to the back of the house, turned up the bourbon and Coke that was warm and burned but he stayed with it and when he was done he tossed the cup and the stiff wind sent it tumbling across the high grass.

You said today was the day so go, he thought. Just go get in the damn Jeep and drive off. You got all you need in your pockets, in that duffel bag sitting on the kitchen counter. You said today was the day now go. There's not another choice. You know what it's like down here. Know it's gonna get worse. Go.

He walked around to the carport. A generator was running and he turned it off. Unplugged the extension cord that ran from it and up through the kitchen window. He hoisted the generator and carried it to the trailer and grunted and heaved it up. Then he went back to the carport and pulled the cord from the window and rolled it and hung it over his shoulder. He picked up a couple of five-gallon gas cans and he carried it all to the trailer. After he slid the load around and had everything tied and secured he stepped back and huffed. Looked around and tried to figure out if he was missing anything.

He was missing plenty.

He was missing the woman that he had loved since they were teenagers and the way that she stood in the open doorway in the mornings and drank her coffee and stared out into the Gulf sky as if it held something new on each horizon. He was missing the green pastures of spring and the first turn of the tractor engine and bushhogging with his shirt off and the first sunburn. He was missing coming home at the end of a good day of hard work and the dried sweat on his face and arms and sitting outside and drinking a couple of beers and talking to her about how many miles she had run after she had gotten off work or if she wanted him to toss steaks or shrimp or both on the grill. He was missing the sunshine. The goddamn sunshine and its glow seemed like a foreign thing, like something he had once seen in a movie or in a dream and he was missing the daughter that he had never known, that never had a chance to be born or to be held because of all of this. Because of whatever this world had become and he was missing having someone to love and he was missing the idea of tomorrow.

Thunder echoed and this time the gunfire came in a smattering and Cohen raised his head and looked west, in the direction of the crossroads a half mile away. He knew the storm was on them but he wouldn't let whoever was out there show up at his front door. His last memory of this place would not be of someone else having it.

He stomped over to the porch and grabbed the shotgun. Stomped back to the Jeep and unhitched the trailer. Then he got in and cranked up and drove down the muddy driveway to see what the hell was going on.

7

AFTER A MOMENT
of watching the blood from Bub stretch across the asphalt, Aggie had reached down and picked up the jumper cables. He strutted to the truck bed and tossed them in. The rain fell diagonally, snapping against the earth.

He slammed the hood of the truck and got in. He lit a cigarette, cranked up.

Ava had risen to her feet, took a long look at Bub. Turned her face to the wind and felt its strength and a raindrop struck the middle of her forehead and pushed across her skin and into her wild hair.

He set the hammer on the dashboard and waited. Knew she was coming. She had walked to the passenger window and he hadn't looked at her, only touched the cut on his head and then rubbed the blood between his fingertips as if it were something alien and precious. She turned and walked back to the side door of the van and reached in and then returned to the passenger door of the truck, opened it, and climbed in.

She set a pistol and a fifth of vodka on the seat between them. He winked and nodded and they drove away as the sky opened and the rain came on.

SHE TOLD HIM
which way to go. They skirted through downtown Gulfport, plywood covering storefronts and windows. Busted roads and the rain beating at the already standing water that covered sidewalks and seeped under doors.

Away from downtown they drove past a trio of casinos, their fourth incarnation since the stream of hurricanes began. Each time they went back up they were smaller and a little of the shine, a little of the luster was left behind. These were functional, made of stucco and brick, as if the third little pig had assisted with the blueprints. The Grand Casino was the last in line and its orange stucco facade and red-lettered sign gave it more of the look of a giant candy store than of a fortified house of drink, smoke, and loss. Cars sat in the parking lot. Somehow cars were always in the parking lot.

They drove out of Gulfport, west along Highway 90. Random lights in surviving stores and houses, hard rain and constant wind. Ava sipped from the bottle of vodka and leaned close to the windshield as if wary of some giant sinkhole. Aggie smoked and followed her directions. Several miles out of town she said turn here and Aggie made a right.

The truck wound through a tattered, marshy countryside. The last faint light of day had nearly disappeared in the storm. Aggie didn't ask where they were going, only took her word for it when she said we've got a place out here.

“Who's we?” he asked.

She shrugged. Drank. “I guess it ain't we no more. Just me,” she said. “Unless me and you are a we.”

“We are right now.”

In a couple of miles she pointed and said, “This is it.”

Aggie stopped the truck. The road she pointed to seemed to have an incline and a wooden sign held strong in the storm, attached to fence posts. Crawfield Plantation.

“Up there about a mile,” she said.

“What is? That old house?”

“No such thing. Just a slab and a chimney. But this is where me and Bub been staying. You'll see.”

Aggie turned up the road and it climbed and at the top of the hill they arrived at a driveway. Two brick columns stood on each side of the entrance and only one side of the wrought-iron gate hung on and it pushed back and forth in the storm. The driveway was paved and the truck moved between the columns. Overgrown fields on each side. Snapped oaks and maples that had once proudly lined the driveway.

Aggie stopped the truck at the end of the driveway. Like she had said, the chimney stood and was wrapped in kudzu. A fountain and courtyard were to the right of the house, covered in vines. Out in the field over to the right stood a single white FEMA trailer.

“Home sweet home,” Ava said.

“At least y'all were smart enough to get the high ground. But that thing is liable to take off in the wind anytime, like Dorothy and that dog.”

“No it won't. We filled it up with cinder blocks in the places we don't need. Like the bathroom. And you can't see it right now but we got cinder blocks all the way across the top.”

Aggie studied the trailer. Looked around and studied the darkening landscape.

“There's gotta be a better way to hold it down,” he said.

“Maybe, but that's worked so far.”

“It wouldn't be much fun to have to keep carting cinder blocks out here.”

“We don't have to. We got enough.”

“I'm saying if you had more trailers. They're all over the place. All you gotta do is hook them up and drag them out here. Have a whole little neighborhood.”

“For who?”

He didn't answer but instead took the vodka bottle from her hand. He drank and gave it back. Touched the cut on his head where the blood had clotted and he grimaced.

“Was Bub right about you?” she asked. She leaned back against the door, gathered a strand of hair in her fingers and twisted it.

“What part?”

“All of it.”

“Then yep.”

“You really handle them snakes? Don't they bite?”

“If you don't handle them right.”

“Ain't it scary?”

“No more scarier than anything else in this world. Look around.”

The sky had turned dark now and the rain beat like a thousand drums. The truck rocked a little in the wind and pellets of hail joined the rain.

“What about the preaching part?” she asked.

“What about it?” Aggie said and he reached out and touched the Bible on the seat. He took in a deep breath and let out an extended sigh. Ava reached over and touched the top of his hand. Reached over and stroked Aggie's leg. Around them the devastated land and the violent storm and seemingly no mercy. Aggie stared out the window. He envisioned this place populated with his own people. Governed by his own rules. With his own plan for the new world. He had lost one congregation but he could find another and this time they would love him whether they wanted to or not. Even in the dark, he could see what he wanted to see. And it was time to begin again.

8

COHEN DROVE THE
winding back road in the final, faint light without his headlights. He smelled the coming rain and the tattered Jeep cover slapped as he moved slowly in first gear. The shotgun leaned against his leg and knocked against the floorboard and he wished he had a pistol, something easier to handle in a tight space. He sat forward with his face close to the windshield. He came around a bend, passed through a strip of road he had cleared himself with his chainsaw and he stopped. Up ahead was the crossroads, a four-way stop. The four cinderblock buildings at the crossroads were once a gas station, barbeque joint, small grocery, and a bait and tackle shop, but now the buildings sat empty and all had been sprayed with graffiti and were missing windows and parts of roof.

Two trucks sat at the crossroads. Shots fired and Cohen saw the white blasts from the barrels in the darkening night. They appeared to be firing back at something. The headlights came on and three or four men crossed in the beams. They went to the back of a truck and let down the tailgate. They slid something to the back and one man took one end and another man grabbed the other and Cohen saw the bend in the middle and he knew it was a body. He swallowed hard and took hold of the shotgun barrel.

Cohen watched as they laid the body down in the gravel. He expected a moment of mourning. Expected the smallest bit of reverence for perhaps one of their own but then they opened fire and the body gyrated as if electrocuted as it took the hate. The men filled the body with two dozen blasts and when they were done and the echoes disappeared, Cohen heard a cackle of laughter and the men stood and stared at the body and passed around a bottle.

But then another shot fired from somewhere and the men jumped and hurried into the trucks. Not this way not this way, Cohen thought, but both trucks swung around and turned in his direction. He put the Jeep into gear, his back tires spinning but the front tires on the asphalt and he pulled forward, backed up, tried to get turned around. By the time he managed they were on him.

Horns honked and they yelled out the windows and fired over and around him. Cohen squeezed the shotgun and tried to figure out what to do. Didn't want to lead them past his house but there was no turnoff between here and there and any side dirt road would be nothing but a sinkhole. Maybe they won't notice the house with the night and the cloudthick sky so just drive on by like you don't see it either but maybe they will and you know they'll either stop at the house or chase you until either you or them run out of gas. He beat at the steering wheel and tried to think and the truck right behind him flashed its headlights and a head leaned out the window and screamed and another shot was fired over the Jeep.

He couldn't lead them there and there was only one curve left. A hundred yards from the house Cohen slammed on the brakes. The truck so close behind skidded and swerved right to miss him and whoever was leaning out the window tumbled out and into the flooded ditch. The second truck had no time and its grill slammed into the other truck's back end and then it fishtailed and caught a big patch of water and slid to a stop with its front tires submerged. The two pair of headlights shined into the grayblack night at crooked angles and Cohen jumped out of the Jeep and fired into the side of one of the truck beds, two big metal thwacks. They yelled out, cussing and pleading and Cohen knew they couldn't see him, didn't know if he had an arsenal or if he was done. He hustled back into the Jeep and threw it in gear and killed his headlights, knowing every bump and lean in what was left of this piece of road. The shots came but he disappeared into the night and just as he made it to his driveway, the sky opened and the rain pounded the flooded land.

COHEN KNEW THEY
were coming. No matter the strength of the storm. No matter how long it took them to get out of the ditch. He knew they were coming and that they would drive slowly and look for him. And if they didn't come, someone else would. And they would go into his house and sleep in his house and look at what he left behind. They would go through Elisa's closet and sit in the chairs she used to sit in and stand at the kitchen counter where she used to stand. They would eventually wander out across the back field to the still-standing clump of trees where she and the baby were buried and they would touch the tombstones and he couldn't have any of that.

He sat on an ottoman on the ceramic tile floor in the living room. A lantern and a box of shells on one side. The bottle of bourbon and a Coke can on the other. The shotgun across his lap and a hacksaw in his hand and he had worked up a sweat sawing off the double barrels. The window was open and he paused, wiped the moisture from his face. He stared into the storm, into the black pit of night, and the gusting wind sounded like the push of one world into another and he knew he would not sleep. Would not try. And even if he did, it had become nearly impossible to separate the dreams and the nightmares from the real thing.