Gone South (34 page)

She had to, because there was no turning back.

They drifted on, the skiff being drawn along with the slow but steady current. They passed evidence that others had come this way: a few abandoned and crumbling shacks, a wharf jutting out over the water on rotten pilings, a wrecked and vine-draped shrimp boat whose prow was jammed between the trunks of two huge moss trees. Dan felt weariness overtaking him, and he caught himself dozing off between stretches of paddling. Arden likewise had begun to close her eyes and rest, fighting thirst but not yet ready to drink any of the water they were gliding through.

Dan let himself sleep for only a few minutes at a time, then his internal alarm went off and roused him to keep the boat from drifting into the half-submerged trees on either side. The water was probably eight or ten feet deep, he figured. Their boat was still in the slow process of sinking, but he went to work bailing with his hands and Arden helped him until their craft had lightened up again.

Dan noted that the branches overhead were beginning to unlock and draw apart. In another twenty minutes or so — a little over an hour since they’d set off in the boat — the bayou merged into a wider channel that took a long curve toward the southwest. Heat lightning shimmered in the sky, and an occasional fish jumped from the channel’s ebony surface and splashed down again. Dan looked at the water in the boat and decided it wasn’t wise to think too much about what might be roaming the depths, making those fish want to grow wings. He paddled a few strokes and then rested again, the muscles of his back starting to cramp.

“You want me to paddle awhile?” Arden asked.

“No, I’m all right.” Resting the paddle across his knees, he let the current do the work. He scratched the welts on his forehead where a couple of mosquitoes had been feasting, and he sorely missed his baseball cap. “How about you? You hangin’ in?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He listened to the quiet sound of the hull moving through the water. “I sure could use a cold six-pack. I wouldn’t kick a pizza out of bed, either.”

“I’ll take a pitcher of iced tea with some lime in it,” she said after a moment of deliberation. “And a bowl of strawberry ice cream.”

Dan nodded, looking from side to side at the dense walls of foliage that lined the bayou. Yes, he decided; a man could get lost in here and never be found. “This ought to take us out to the Gulf, sooner or later,” he said. “Could be daylight before we get there, though.” He made out ten forty-four by the luminous hands of his watch. “Once we clear the swamp, maybe we can find a fishin’ camp or somethin’ along the coast. Could be we can find a road and flag a car down, get you a ride out of here.”

“Get
me
a ride out? What about you?”

“Never mind about me. You took a pretty hard knock on the head, you need to see a doctor.”

“I don’t need a doctor. You know who I need to find.”

“Don’t start that again!” he warned. “Hear me? Wherever LaPierre is, we’re long past it. I’m gettin’ you out of here, then you can do what you please. You ought to get back to Fort Worth and count yourself lucky to be alive.”

“And how am I gonna do that? I lost my purse and all my money. Even if I could find a bus station, I couldn’t buy a ticket.”

“I’ve got some money,” he said. “Enough to buy you a bus ticket, if you can hitch a ride back to Houma.”

“Yeah, I’ve sure got a lot to go back to,” she answered tersely. “No job, no money, nothin’. Pretty soon I’ll be out on the street. How do you think I’ll do at a shelter for the homeless?”

“You’ll find a job, get back on your feet.”

“Uh-huh. I wish it was that easy. Don’t you know what it’s like out there?”

“Yeah,” he drawled, “I believe I do.”

She grunted and allowed herself a faint, bitter smile. “I guess so. Sorry. I must sound like a whinin’ fool.”

“Times are hard for everybody. Except the rich people who got us into this mess.” He listened to the distant call of a night bird off to the left, a lonely sound that tugged at his heart. “I never wanted to be rich,” he said. “Seems to me, that’s just askin’ for more problems. But I always wanted to pull my own weight. Pay my bills and take pride in my work. That’s what was important to me. After I got back from ’Nam, I had some tough times, but things were workin’ out. Then … I don’t know.” He caught himself from going my further. “Well, you’ve got your own road to travel; you don’t need to walk down mine.”

“I think we’re both headin’ in the same direction.”

“No, we’re not,” he corrected her. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“The difference between us is that you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, and I’m windin’ it down. Nobody said livin’ was gonna be easy or fair, that’s for damn sure. I’m here to tell you it’s not. But you don’t give up. You’re gonna get knocked down and beat up and stomped, but you don’t quit. You can’t.”

“Maybe you can,” Arden said quietly. “I’m tired of bein’ knocked down, beaten up, and stomped. I keep gettin’ up, and somethin’ comes along to knock me down again. I’m tired of it. I wish to God there was a way to … just find some peace.”

“Go back to Fort Worth.” He slid the paddle into the water and began pushing them forward again. “Somethin’s bound to open up for you. But you sure don’t belong in the middle of a swamp, tryin’ to find a faith healer.”

“Right now I don’t know where I belong. I don’t think I ever have known.” She was silent for a moment, her hands working around the pink drawstring bag. “What was your best time?” she asked. “I mean, the time when you thought everything was right, and you were where you were supposed to be. Do you know?”

He thought about it, and the longer he thought the harder the question became to answer. “I guess … maybe when I’d first joined the marines. In boot camp, on Parris Island. I had a job to do — a mission — and I was gettin’ ready for it. Things were black and white. I thought my country needed me, and I thought I could make a difference.”

“You sound like you were eager to fight.”

“Yeah, I was.” Dan paddled another stroke and then paused. “I liked bein’ over there the first couple of months. At first it seemed like I was doin’ somethin’ important. I didn’t like to kill — no man in his right mind does — but I did it because I was fightin’ for my country. I thought. Then, later on, it all changed. I saw so many boys get killed, I couldn’t figure out what they were dyin’ for. I mean, what were we tryin’ to do? The Viet Cong didn’t want my country. They weren’t gonna invade us. They didn’t have anything we needed. What was that all about?” He shook his head. “Here it’s been over twenty years, and I still don’t know. It was a hell of a lot of wasted lives is what it was. Lives just thrown away.”

“It must’ve been bad,” Arden said. “I’ve seen a couple of movies about Vietnam, and it sure wasn’t like Desert Storm, was it?”

“Nope, it sure wasn’t.”
Movies about Vietnam,
he thought, and he lowered his head to hide his half-smile. He’d been forgetting that Arden was all of four years old when he’d shipped to ’Nam.

“My best time was when I was livin’ on the youth ranch,” she said. “It was a hard place, and you did your chores and toed the line, but it was all right. The others there were like I was. All of us had been through a half-dozen foster homes, and we’d screwed up and gotten in trouble with the law. It was our last chance to get straight, I guess. I hated it at first. Tried to run away a couple of times, but I didn’t get very far. Mr. Richards put me to work cleanin’ out the barn. There were five horses, all of ’em old and swaybacked, but they still earned their keep. Jupiter was in charge of the stable, that’s where I met him.”

“You think a lot of him, don’t you?”

“He was always kind to me. Some of those foster homes I was in … well, I think solitary confinement in prison would’ve been better. I had trouble, too, because of … you know … my mark. Somebody looked at me too long, I was liable to lose my temper and start throwin’ plates and glasses. Which didn’t make me too popular with foster parents. I wasn’t used to bein’ treated like I had sense.” She shrugged. “I guess I had a lot to prove. But Jupiter took an interest in me. He trusted me with the horses, started lettin’ me feed and groom ’em. After a while, when I’d wake up early mornin’s I could hear ’em callin’ for me, wantin’ me to hurry up. You know, all horses have got different personalities and different voices, not a one of ’em alike. Some of ’em come right out of the stall to meet you, others are shy and hang back. And when they look at you they don’t care if you’re ugly or deformed. They don’t judge you by a mark on your face, like people do.”

“Not all people,” Dan said.

“Enough to hurt,” she answered. She looked up at the stars for a moment, and Dan went to work with the paddle once more. “It was a good feelin’, to wake up and hear the horses callin’ you,” she went on. “It was the first time I ever felt needed, or that I was worth a damn. After the work was done, Jupiter and I started havin’ long talks. About life, and God, and stuff I’d never cared to think much about. He never mentioned my mark; he let me get to it in my own time. It took me a while to talk about it, and how I wished more than anything in the world I could be rid of it. Then he told me about the Bright Girl.”

Dan said nothing; he was listening, but on this subject it was hard not to turn a deaf ear.

“I never really expected I’d ever be lookin’ for her,” Arden said. “But the way Jupiter talked about her … she seemed like somebody I’d know, if I ever found her. She seemed so real, and so alive. I mean, I know it sounds crazy for somebody to live so long and never get old. I know the faith healers on TV are frauds tryin’ to squeeze out the bucks. But Jupiter would never have lied to me.” She caught Dan’s gaze and held it. “If he said there’s a Bright Girl, there is. And if he said she can touch my mark and take it away, she can. He would never have lied. And he was right about
you,
too. If he said you’re the man God sent to help me find her, then I be—”

“Stop it!” Dan interrupted sharply. “I told you I didn’t want to hear that” —
bullshit,
he almost said, but he settled on —” junk.”

She started to fire back a heated reply, but she closed her mouth. She just stared at him, her eyes fixed on his.

Dan said, “You’re chasin’ a fairy tale. Where it’s gotten you? Do you think you’re better off than before you left for Worth? No, you’re worse off. At least you had some money in the bank. I don’t want to hear any more about the Bright Girl, or what Jupiter told you, or any of that. Understand?”

“I wish
you
understood.” Her voice was calm and controlled. “If —
when
— we find her, she can heal you, too.”

“Oh, Christ!” He closed his eyes in exasperation for a few seconds. When he opened them, Arden was still glowering at him. “You could argue the horns off a billy goat, you know that? There is
no
Bright Girl, and there never was! It’s a made-up story!”

“That’s what you say.”

He saw no point in going around in circles with her. “Right, that’s what I say,” he muttered, and then he concentrated on putting some elbow grease into the paddling. The current seemed to have gotten a little faster, which he thought must be a good sign. He was hungry and thirsty and his headache had returned, pounding with his heartbeat. Dried blood was in his nostrils, he’d lost his much-prized baseball cap and his muscles — what remained of them, that is — were rapidly wearing out. The water was rising in the bottom of the boat again, and Dan put aside the paddle for a few minutes while he and Arden cupped their hands and bailed. Then he shook off the sleep that was closing in on him and paddled them down the center of the bayou with slow, smooth strokes. He watched Arden’s head droop as she fell asleep sitting up, and then he was alone with the noises of the swamp. After a while his eyelids became leaden and he couldn’t keep them open. The heat pressed on him, lulling him to sleep. He fought it as hard as he could, but at last his weariness won the battle and his chin slumped.

He jerked his head up, his eyes opening.

They had drifted toward the left of the channel and were almost in the branches. Dan steered them toward the center again, and then he heard the sound that had awakened him: a muffled thudding like the heartbeats of a giant. Ahead and to the right, electric lights glinted through the thick woods. Dan looked at his wristwatch and saw that another hour had elapsed since they’d entered the wider channel.

“What’s that noise?” Arden asked, waking up almost as quickly as he had.

“Machinery,” he said. “I think we’re comin’ to somethin’.”

Around the next curve the trees had been chopped away on the right to make room for a hodgepodge of weatherbeaten clapboard structures built on platforms over the water. Electric lights cast their glary circles on a dock where an assortment of motor skiffs and two houseboats were tied up. On the dock were gas pumps and an attendant’s shack, also lit up with electricity supplied from a rumbling generator. Plank walkways connected the buildings, and Dan and Arden saw two men standing in conversation next to the gas pumps and a couple of other men on the walkways. A rusty barge loaded with sections of metal pipe, coils of wire, and other industrial items was anchored past the dock at a concrete pier where a long building with corrugated aluminum walls stood, the legend
WAREHOUSE
# 1 painted in red across the building’s doorway. Beyond the warehouse loomed oil storage tanks and twelve or more spidery derricks rising up from the swamp. The giant heartbeat — the sound of pumps at work — was coming from that direction.

The entire scene — a large, mechanized oil-pumping station, Dan had realized — was almost surrealistic, emerging as it had from the dark wilderness. As he steered them toward the dock, he saw a pole that held a tired-looking American flag and next to it was a sign on stilts that announced
ST. NASTASE, LA. HOME SWEET HELLHOLE.
On the supporting stilts were a number of other directional arrows with such things as
NEW ORLEANS
52
MI., BATON
ROUGE
76
MI.,
and
GALVESTON
208
MI.
painted on them. One of the men on the dock picked up a line and tossed it to Arden as they approached, then he hauled them in. “Hey there, how you doin’?” the man asked in a thick Cajun patois. He was a husky, florid-faced gent with a red beard and a sweat-stained bandanna wrapped around his skull.