Water Witch (23 page)

Inches away, a small, open mouth . . . two
needle-length fangs . . .

Nicky screamed.

The earth moved again, only now it folded
time into milliseconds . . .

The small mouth jerked—Nicky wailed—needles
flew—

So much pain in her right cheek . . . fire .
. . her face was on fire . . .just like the sky.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“I can’t believe we stole a fucking boat,”
Angelle said, as we pushed against the nose of the skiff to move it
off the trailer and into the water.

“Hey, you were the one who started talking
about stealing boats in the first place.” I blew a shock of hair
out of my eyes.

“I did not! That was Poochie.”

“Huh-uh, you wanted to take Trevor’s boat
first thing, remember?”

“That’s different, and you know it. He’s my
husband.”

“Technicality.” I gave her a little smile to
let her know I was teasing. “Doesn’t really matter. Everything
worked out okay. I mean, it’s not like we really stole this
boat.”

“Close enough, though. I lied through my
teeth, telling Pork Chop that story,” Angelle said. “Vern’s going
to come back, see his boat’s missing, and Pork Chop’s going to tell
him what I said. Vern’s going to know right off it’s a bullshit
story and probably call Trevor. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Nobody’s going to give two shits about any
boat when we get back with those kids.”

Angelle stopped pushing and stared at me for
a moment. “What makes you so sure now that we’re going to find
them?”

“Bottom line? ‘Cause this stupid finger’s
never railed me when I really needed it. Now come on and push so we
can get out of here. People are going to start paying attention if
we don’t get our asses in gear.”

She nodded and started pushing again. “After
we get this think launched, I’ll go park the car and trailer back
in that grove we passed a couple hundred yards back. Less chance of
somebody I know seeing them.”

“Good idea.” As eager as I was to start the
hunt, I felt weird out in public without my gloves and kept
glancing around. My paranoia wasn’t only about the boat not
belonging to us, most of it had to do with how vulnerable I felt. I
remembered the tree, the conviction, the heat of shame I’d felt and
took a big breath to calm and control the fear.

When it was obvious that Trevor wasn’t
returning home with the boat, we’d headed right over to the Bucket,
not wanting to waste anymore time. As soon as we got there, Angelle
laid out a story that sounded plausible enough. She told Pork Chop
and Sook that Vern had asked Trevor, who also worked odd jobs as a
mechanic, to fix some doomathingyon his boat.Since Vern had asked
for a stat job, according to Angelle, and Trevor was working late
at the plant, she’d been asked to pick up the boat for him. That
way he’d be able to start working on it as soon as he broke shift
and got home. As she spun the tale, Poochie had sprinkled in a few
“Dat’s right!” and “Yep, he said dat,” while I just hung back and
nodded.

Luckily, Vernstill hadn’t returned from his
scouting trip, so Pork Chop had no way to verify the story, and
since Trevor had worked on Vern’s boat before, few questions were
asked. Sook had simply said, “Sure, go ‘head. Don’t make me no
never mind.” And Pork Chop added, “Tell Trevor he can slot in my
Evinrude when he’s done with Vern’s and has time.”I didn’t know
what Pork Chop meant by ‘slot in,’ but Angelle quickly agreed to
pass along the information.

Cherokee had been standing behind the bar
while the production unfolded, and I saw in his eyes that he
thought the whole boat repair story was a crock of shit. Still, he
said nothing, only stepping outside to watch with Pork Chop as we
drove away, boat and trailer fishtailing behind the car.

The most difficult part of the plan so far
had been Poochie, when we’d insisted she stay home. She’d screeched
and hollered, cried and wailed, insisting that since she’d played
such an important
and
convincing role in getting the boat,
she should be allowed to go.

It had taken over an hour to calm Poochie
down and convince her that she was needed at the prayer tree with
their shoes. Someone had to stay and pray to make sure everyone
came back home safely. We reminded her, too, that five people
wouldn’t fit in a boat designed for two. If she came, she’d wind up
endangering the kids’ lives—all of their lives, actually—by
overloading the boat.

That last part eventually sunk in because she
suddenly became as docile as a kitten, saying, “I didn’t think
about it like dat.” But she’d looked so hang-dogged when she said
it, I felt sorry for her. Angelle must have felt the same because
she’d gone out of her way to make sure Poochie was comfortable
before we left. She’d settled her onto the couch, placed an afghan
over her lap, left a sandwich and a glass of milk on the coffee
table for her, then turned on her favorite movie, which happened to
be GI Jane, something Poochie claimed she’d seen forty-two times
already. She also swore she’d seen the scene where Demi Moore
struggles to her feet, all bloodied in the face, and yells for her
master sergeant to, “Suck my dick!” at least a hundred times.
Poochie recounted that scene so many times, that by the time we
finally did leave the house, I couldn’t get those three words out
of my head. I think Poochie just liked saying the word dick.

At first, I’d been a little worried about
leaving Poochie alone in the house, what with all the weird things
going on lately—Angelle being violated, the dark fucker that had
gotten in my face, the one that had slipped across the hall from
the bathroom, the moving toaster, shattering light fixture. So I’d
suggested we bring Poochie back to the Bucket and have her stay
with Sook while we were gone. But Poochie wouldn’t hear of it.
She’s insisted that if we were leaving her behind to pray, then she
had to be by her tree. No argument there, but it was the
way
she’d said it that troubled me. There’d been hardcore mischief in
her eyes at the time, and her demeanor had gone from wildcat to
pussycat to Cheshire cat. A sort of ‘put-on-Demi’s
uniform,-shave-my-head-and-get-to-the-business-of-kicking-ass,
look.

It was hard to tell whether Poochie was
slipping off the deep end or if she had something brewing in the
back of her mind. The latter felt probably because concocting
adventure seemed to be an abstract hobby of Poochie’s, one she was
very good at. Regardless, we’d left her sitting on the couch, movie
already playing on the television. The perfect picture of an
elderly woman settling in early for the evening. Poochie played the
part so well, Norman Rockwell would have been impressed—grossly
naïve and more than likely in for the shock of his life, of
course—but impressed nonetheless.

“Here,” Angelle said, startling my thoughts
away from Poochie. She handed me the towline. “Hang onto this while
I go park the car and trailer.” Then she hurried off to do just
that.

As I watched my sister drive away, I noticed
that the horizon had become a vacuum cleaner, sucking the sun down
to its borders, soon to leave Angelle and I with darkness and
disadvantage. The moon was already out, a huge gauzy, translucent
ball, waiting patiently for its turn to take center stage. Wisps of
clouds floated across its face.

A late afternoon breeze carried with it a
fecund odor swaddled in humidity. I’d never been anywhere that felt
so damned wet. My clothes stuck to me, my hair stuck to me, gnats
stuck to me. It was as if the air was made of some kind of
glue.

The steady
shhoop . . .
shhoop
shhoop
of water lapping against the aluminum hull of the
boat made my eyelids heavy. I imagined schools of fish swirling
close to the bank to check out the sound, saw them serpentine
through labyrinths of vegetation, some of them predators, some
prey, all of them constantly on the move. They had no knowledge of
me, of my problems, or of the danger Angelle and I might be headed
for. In that moment, I envied them their mindless, singularly
focused life, to search for food and shelter. Perhaps they had
their own horrors to deal with. Perhaps life was one game of eat or
be eaten for them. Perhaps I was envying the wrong things.

The water that lie ahead, whether swamp,
bayou, river, I couldn’t tell the difference, looked like a
tarnished silver highway that stretched on seemingly forever. Along
its roadside were cypress trees, many of them heavy-laden with moss
that hung from their branches like clumps of course gray hair. Some
were only stumps, jagged knees and fingers that rose from the water
like gnarled, brown body parts refusing to die. Amongst them were
willows, tupelos, maples and cottonwoods, all of them a perch for
singing, twittering birds. The shadows created by the lush forest
life that packed both banks seemed to converge down the middle of
the highway, bringing darkness before the death of the sun.

It would take a lifetime to absorb the
richness of this place, but as beautiful as it was, there was no
mistaking the underlying sense that came with it—these waterways
might be able to nourish and sustain life, but they could also take
it away.

I turned my gaze back to shore. Having come
from a dustbowl, all of this water—so much of it—was daunting and
intimidating. And it didn’t help that I couldn’t swim for shit, nor
could Angelle as far as I knew.

I had every excuse I needed to be scared
shitless, turn tail, and run. To go back to that dry hole I called
home, where all I had to worry about was a mangy old dog scratching
on my back screen door and the deadlines from the newspapers I
wrote for. Life was easy and quiet back there—as long as I didn’t
mind the memories—as long as I didn’t mind the loneliness. And I
didn’t. Not really.

Sighing, I wiped sweat from my forehead. Here
I was, holding onto a rope tied to a boat, getting ready to fuck
all that easy, quiet life. Maybe Poochie wasn’t the only one with a
few cogs slipping.

When Angelle returned moments later, her
expression was somber, her face slick with sweat. She climbed into
the boat and went straight to the motor that sat on its squared-off
back end.

“Get in,” she said, squatting near the motor.
As I do so, she pulled her hair back in a ponytail with a rubber
band from her wrist, then grabbed a red rubber ball that sat in the
middle of a rubber hose, which ran from the gas tank to the motor.
She began squeezing the ball rapidly, as if working an exercise
ball.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” I
asked, wondering if she’d have to keep pumping the ball the entire
time we’d be moving through the bayou.

“Yep. Just priming the motor.” She gave the
bulb a couple more squeezes, then hit the start button on the
throttle. The engine sputtered . . .coughed . . . roared to life. A
plume of gray smoke rose from the back of the engine, filling the
air with the scent of gasoline. Angelle smiled, then motioned to
the bench seat near the bow of the boat. “Sit there.”

As soon as I plopped my butt in place, she
revved up the motor, and the boat began to inch away from the
landing and further out on that tarnished silver highway.

This was one road trip I wasn’t looking
forward to.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“Unload the supplies from the bag will ya?” Angelle
shouted over the roar of the engine. “We’re going to need the
flashlight pretty soon. Don’t want to be searching for it once it
gets dark. And check under the seat you’re sitting on. There’re two
paddles under there. Pull ‘em out. We’ll need ‘em if we get stuck
in a patch of water lilies. Those things get tangled up in a prop,
it’s major shit to cut ‘em loose. Have to paddle your way out
then.”

Paddle our way out? Shit . . .great.

“O- okay . . . there any life jackets in
here?”

“Should be. Probably in the seat compartment
under me. I’ll look in a minute. Don’t worry, I won’t go fast.”

I wasn’t worried about going fast. I was
worried about falling into the water. But I kept my mouth shut and
searched through the supplies we’d brought along. Within minutes I
had the flashlight in hand and two bottles of water were rolling
around on the floor of the boat. As we puttered along, I turned in
my seat so I faced the front of the boat instead of my sister and
tried to relax. I wondered how different this would be had I come
here on vacation instead of on a mission. I’d probably be taking
pictures right about now, catching the sunset over the water,
laughing with Angelle, maybe getting a lesson or two on how to cook
shrimp stew. I wasn’t so sure I’d want to be headed where we were
headed, though, even on vacation. All those shadows. The dark
water. The hanging moss. Snakes—alligators. Shit . . . I hadn’t
thought about the possibility of snakes out here. There were
probably tons of them . . . big ones. Poisonous ones. I felt my
butt cheeks tighten on the seat.

True to her word, Angelle kept the boat
running at a snail’s pace for quite some time. When we came upon a
fork in the waterway, the whine of the engine quieted to a soft
putter, and the boat slowed even more. I turned back towards
Angelle. She was standing now, lifting the top of the seat she’d
been sitting on with one hand. After looking into the compartment
beneath it, she looked up at me with pursed lips.

“No jackets,” she said.

“Great.”

She let the seat drop back into place. “It’ll
be okay. I’ll be careful. Just make sure not to stand up in the
boat while we’re moving.”

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

Angelle shrugged apologetically. “Sorry.
Didn’t think about bringing some because Trevor always keeps two in
his boat.” She aimed her chin in the direction of the fork. “It’s
your show now. Which way do we go?”