Rising Tides (14 page)

“How come we gotta be so quiet?” Ferris asked.

“Val has something to show us,” Hugh told him. “But we have to be quiet, or we might not get to see it.”

“No. It’s more than that,” Val said. “You make noise, you might not live long enough to see them.
C’est tout.
”

“Them? Who’s them?” Ferris demanded.

“Pirates.”

Ferris’s eyes grew as big as the egret eggs the boys had found in the marshes earlier that week. “No such thing as pirates.”

“Tha’s where you’re wrong.”

“What are you talking about, Val?” Hugh demanded. “You’re just trying to scare him.”

“You’ll see. If you’re quiet enough.” Val maneuvered the skiff into the pass between the chénière and the is land. There had been talk for years of building a high way across Chénière Caminada and a bridge to Grand Isle. But neither had materialized.

“I’m not getting out of the boat unless you tell me what you’re talking about,” Hugh said.

“Then the mosquitoes’ll eat you, and I’ll have the fun.”

“Come on, Val.”

Val was silent for a long time. Finally, not too far from the chénière, he relented. “What kin’ of treasure you think people want now, Hap? Heh? What kin’?”

Hugh didn’t know what his friend was talking about.

“What is it men’s payin’ for now, payin’ big-big money?”

“Liquor?” Hugh said.

“Ti parle!”

“What’s that got to do with pirates?” Ferris sprang forward eagerly, and the boat rocked harder in the waves from the shore.

“Bootleggers?” Hugh said, grabbing Ferris by the collar and forcing him to sit flat on the floor. “Here?”

“You don’ see a lot, do you, Hap? Where you think that liquor all over New Orleans’s comin’ from? Ca nada?
Mais no.
Comes from down here, then up through the bays and b’yous.”

Hugh knew about Prohibition, which was regarded as a joke in New Orleans. A federal agent investigating American cities had found that it took more than two hours to find liquor in Washington and minutes in most other places. But in New Orleans, the agent had found a drink in thirty-five seconds. Some indignant residents insisted that it wouldn’t have taken so long if he had just been friendlier.

“The liquor comes here?” Hugh tried to imagine.

“Ships bring it to Cuba, the West Indies, places like that. Then more ships bring it out to the Chandeleur Is lands, the Bretons.”

“How’s it get here?”

“You think. How does it?”

Hugh tried to imagine such a thing. “Not in big ships. They’d be easy to trace. By lugger?”

“T’es bien.”

“Whose? You mean people from Grand Isle?”

“
Mais
yeah. Men makin’ five hundred dollars a trip.”

Hugh whistled softly. That kind of money was a fortune for the island dwellers. “And they bring it here, to the chénière?”

“Not just here, no. Down on the Delta. Over on the back side of the island. But can you think of a better place than this? Nobody livin’ here. Nobody wants to. There’s ghosts. You can hear ‘em on the win’. Man brought his family here jus’ las’ year. One month, they were gone.” He snapped his fingers.

Hugh knew about the ghosts. Once a fishing village had stood on the chénière, but a hurricane, the same one that his
mother and Ti’ Boo had witnessed from Grand Isle, had destroyed the village and most of its residents. The ghosts were said to haunt the peninsula still. “But the bootleggers don’t care?”

“They don’, no. What’s a ghost or two when a man can make a fortune?”

“Ghosts?” Ferris sneered. “No such thing.”

“There’s lots you don’ know.”

“There’s houses here. I’ve seen ‘em.”

“A few maybe. Jus’ a few. Used to be a whole town. Thousan’ people or more. One night the win’ jus’ wiped ‘em away. Ghosts still livin’ here.”

“Ghosts and pirates.” Ferris made a sound of disgust—or tried.

“So you,
tais-toi!
Or I’ll leave you for the pirates and ghosts to split between them. Understan’?”

“I’m not gonna make any noise. I want to see those bootleggers.”

Val seemed satisfied. He guided the boat in to shore in silence. Together they hid the boat as best they could in scrub about fifty feet from the shore. Ferris was practically dancing with excitement. Hugh, on the other hand, felt vaguely uneasy. Didn’t bootleggers carry guns? Would the lives of three boys be worth as much as a case of good Jamaican rum?

They crouched and crept quietly across the width of the chénière. There were few trees, and those in residence were wind-tortured, agonized specimens that made Hugh uncomfortable. Scrub had grown up in clusters where houses must once have stood. The boys stayed away from open stretches of land, zigzagging for what seemed like a mile. Then, when Hugh was just about to suggest that they rest, Val led them into a marsh.

Hugh was glad he had taken the time to pull on his shoes, but he felt sorry for Ferris, whose short pants didn’t protect his legs. Val signaled that they should step only where he did, and Hugh made sure that Ferris understood before he followed Val into the marsh. The sounds of Gulf waves gave way to a crescendoing rhapsody of wildlife. He recognized the bellowing of an alligator, probably hundreds of yards away, but entirely too close. An owl hooted from a nearby cypress tree, its golden eyes gleaming like beacons from the forked branch. Val picked his way along a solid path, but Hugh wondered what would happen if he took a wrong step.

The wind picked up as they walked. Willow and water oak testified to the presence of solid ground, but the deeper they went, the more certain Hugh was that the next step would send him headfirst into the oozing, undulating earth-water that was the marsh. He dreaded placing each foot. Mosquitoes attacked him as he ineptly defended himself. He wondered how he would explain the welts on his face to his mother tomorrow.

Val halted suddenly, and Hugh nearly plowed into him. He put his hand out to stop Ferris, who had kept up with no signs of difficulty. Val pointed, then signaled that they should crouch low and make their way to an oak cluster twenty yards distant. He pantomimed water rising to his crotch, then turned his palms up to ask if they were brave enough to follow.

Hugh wasn’t feeling brave at all, but he could hear the beat of Ferris’s dancing footsteps behind him. He knew if he tried to go back, there would be a struggle. A noisy and therefore dangerous struggle. Resigned, he nodded. Val sank into the marsh as naturally as if he were one of its creatures. Hugh followed, gritting his teeth. He heard Ferris splash behind him, and he turned back to be sure he was all right. Reassured—Ferris had sunk only to his waist—he started after Val.

The distance seemed unending, but gradually the ground grew firmer—one of nature’s marshland tricks. Under the cover of the trees he emptied his shoes, and then he followed Val’s example and scraped off the mud and spread it on his cheeks and bare arms as protection against the mosquitoes. He helped Ferris do the same.

They had invaded the marsh, and her children had grown momentarily silent in defense. In the lull, Hugh thought he heard the sound of a motor. Val crouched lower, and they followed his lead. “I didn’ know they come so soon.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t know?” Hugh asked. “We could have run into them!”

“Shh…”

Lights appeared, a parade from the opposite direction. Three lanterns flickered, yards apart. Hugh thought he heard voices. Then, just when he was sure, the drone of the motor grew louder and drowned out everything, even the warning honks of the bull alligator somewhere in the marsh beyond.

Waves rippled at their feet. The motor died, and a man’s voice shouted from the marsh. “Over here!” Lanterns waved a signal.

“You had to pick a place like this?” The man on the boat let loose with a torrent of rapid French. Hugh’s French was excellent. He and Ferris had spent several months with distant relatives of their mother’s in Lyons to broaden their vocabulary and perfect their accents. But this French was Acadian, and although that was familiar, too, many of the words the man was using were words he hadn’t heard before.

Val chuckled softly. Hugh didn’t even smile. Under different circumstances, the man’s tirade might have been funny. But he was increasingly sure that he should never have brought Ferris here. And now it was too late to turn back.

The spokesman on shore answered. “Talk about! You wan’ us to bring this to your house, maybe? Unload it from a truck in the middle of day? We cou’ do that, sure. Jus’ say tha’s wha’ you wan’ nex’ time, Coton.”

The man named Coton spewed another tirade. Closer, this time. Hugh could see the boat now. A flat-bottomed skiff that shouldn’t have been able to traverse the marsh. The fact that Coton could guide it to where the men waited was proof he knew the area well.

The tirade ended, and Coton sounded almost normal. “Jus’ load the fuckin’ skiff. You hear? Load it full, too, like a gator’s belly.”

“Gotta pay us firs’. Tha’s the way we do our business now. Pay, then we load.”

“Wha’s this?” Coton sounded surprised. “Pay firs’? Since when?”

“Since the price went up.
Quoi y’a?
Don’ you have it? Because we can sell to Galbert Perrin. He’ got money comin’ out his ass.”

“I have it. I jus’ wanna see wha’ I’m gittin’ firs’.”

“You can see. Git out and come look. Bes’ we got. And lots of it. More than you can take.”

The boat glided closer. Hugh could see a figure silhouetted against the horizon now. Coton was a giant, a familiar giant. Hugh recognized him as the owner of a fishing camp on the island. Clearly, this particular fish was worth more than even a record-breaking tarpon.

“So. You show me, then I’ll decide.” Coton stepped out of the boat, and for a moment he disappeared from Hugh’s sight. Then he reappeared near the men with the lanterns. Hugh couldn’t identify anyone for sure, but one of the other men looked familiar, too.

“What’re they doing, Hap?” Ferris whispered.

“Shh…”

“I wanna know what they’re doing!”

“They’re sharpening their knives to slit our stupid throats. Be quiet!”

“What d’ya think?” the spokesman asked Coton.

Hugh watched Coton bend over. He lifted a bottle into the air and held it to his mouth.

“You drinkin’ your profits, Coton.”

Coton lowered the bottle. “Go ahead. Load.”

“Money firs’.”

There was silence, and Hugh guessed someone was counting bills. His knees ached from squatting, and the mud had done little to deter the mosquitoes. He had seen more interesting business transactions at the Gulf Coast offices.

“S’not enough.” The spokesman spoke calmly. “I tol’ you it wou’ cos’ more, Coton. I tol’ you how much.”

“Let me take it. I’ll pay the res’ when I git back from the city.”

“Fout ton con d’ici!”

“I mean it. I’ll pay the res’, and give a little more be sides. I didn’ know the price was goin’ up, not ‘til you tol’ me las’ nigh’. Then I didn’ have time to git more.”

Everyone was silent. Hugh brushed a mosquito off his cheek.

“Jus’ this one time,” the spokesman said at last.

Hugh was relieved. The men would load, Coton would go, and he and Ferris could return to Val’s skiff.

“Merci bien,”
Coton said, little gratitude in his voice.

“Go on. Load,” the spokesman told the others.

Behind him, Hugh felt Ferris moving. He turned to tell him to be still, that they wouldn’t have to stay much longer. Then
he saw the reason his brother was on his feet and circling the tree. The bull alligator they had heard earlier, or a close cousin, was on solid ground, moving toward them.

“Jesus.” Hugh tugged at Val’s shirt. “Jesus, Val!”

The gator was waddling slowly, either well fed or so sure of his prey that he saw no reason to hurry.

Val jumped to his feet and grabbed a dead branch from the ground beside him. He skirted Hugh and waved it wildly, hissing as he did. Hugh couldn’t take his eyes off the gator. He caught Ferris by the shirt and pulled him to stand behind him. Val thrust the stick closer to the gator. The gator kept coming.

Hugh could feel Ferris’s hands clutching his waist. He said a silent prayer. Trapped between the bootleggers and the gator, he realized how foolhardy he’d been to bring his little brother here.

“Quoit c’est à?”

“You hear somethin’?”

“
Mais
yeah. I di’.”

The bootleggers’ conversation registered somewhere at the edges of Hugh’s mind as he focused on the more immediate problem. Val was backing toward them, still brandishing the stick. Hugh looked around for some thing, anything, with which to defend Ferris. He saw an other branch, a larger one, dangling from the tree. He was lunging sideways to reach for it, taking Ferris with him, when a shot rang out behind them. The bullet flew past his ear. Either he or Ferris—perhaps both—would have been shot if they had remained where they were.

“Don’ move, or we kill you all!”

Val hurled a torrent of French in their direction. Hugh was too agitated to follow it. The shot had frightened the gator;
in a matter of seconds, it had disappeared back into the water. Hugh pushed Ferris against the tree and shielded him with his body.

“Are they gonna kill us, Hap?”

“No. I’m not going to let anything happen to you! Be quiet and let me talk when they get here.”

“I’m scared!”

“Don’t be. I’ll take care of you.” Hugh had no idea how he was going to do that, but he knew he would give his life if he had to, like one of the martyred saints. No one was going to hurt Ferris.

“Don’ move,” Val said. “Jus’ stay still. I tol’ them we were jus’ watchin’ for fun.
Dit pas rien.
I’ll talk.”

A man slogged through the mud toward them. His rifle barrel was visible first, then a tall, muscular body. “What is it you’re doin’ here?”

“We jus’ come to watch.”

“How’ you know we was here?”

“I hear’ someone talkin’. When I was takin’ groceries to a lady. I hear’ someone talkin’ on the gallery nex’ house.”

“So?” Two more men joined him. “How’ you know where to go?”