Across the farm, Joe watched a couple men patrol the walkways, rifles at their shoulders. They were the local militia he’d hired earlier today after hearing of some large cat sighted near the coast. He had been warned by radio to evacuate the area, but the Gulf was far away. And he would lose thousands in deposits and campsite rentals from the Scout troop alone if he evacuated.
Besides, the warning was just that: a warning, not an order. He hadn’t let Katrina chase him off; he wasn’t about to let some wildcat do the same. To justify his decision, he had hired four men from the parish’s sheriff’s department. In these hard times, everyone was looking for a little overtime.
Footsteps approached behind him. “Papa, I’m off to feed Elvis.”
He glanced back as his daughter crossed the porch. She carried a cookie tray stacked with chicken carcasses. “Not too many. We have a show scheduled for the morning for the campers. I want him hungry.”
“You can’t starve the old fella,” she scolded him gently.
He waved her away, feeling a welling of love and pride for his only child. At twenty-two, Stella had been accepted to business school at Tulane. The first of his family to attend college. She was aiming for an MBA, but also took classes in environmental law. While his preservation efforts here at the farm were motivated by profit, she was a true conservationist. She knew about his under-the-table dealings, but she had a good head on her shoulders. This was Louisiana. Nothing got done without some backroom bargaining. And besides, many of his illicit profits went right back into the farm and its many conservation programs.
She climbed down the stairs to the first of the elevated walkways that crossed the ponds. Footsteps again sounded behind him, accompanied by a slight shaking of the deck. His wife joined him, wiping her pudgy hands on a dish towel. She took his beer bottle, shook it to judge how much was left, then pulled out a fresh bottle from her apron pocket and handed it to him.
“Thanks, Peg.”
She settled next to him and leaned her elbows on the rail. She sipped at the remains of his old beer. She was a large woman, but he liked her big. He was not exactly skinny himself, with his belly hanging farther and farther over his belt buckle each year, and under his LSU ball cap, his hairline was retreating just as quickly as his belly was expanding.
“I wish she’d wear more clothing,” his wife said.
He watched Stella cross toward the central pool. He understood his wife’s concern. She wore cutoff shorts and a blouse tied around her midriff, exposing her belly. She hadn’t even bothered with shoes. And she definitely hadn’t inherited any fat genes from them. She was all muscle and curves, with long blond hair, like some Venus of the bayou. Joe was not unaware of the effect she had on the local boys. Not that she gave any of them the time of day.
In fact, it was long odds that he’d ever get the opportunity to change the name of his farm from Uncle Joe’s to Grandpa Joe’s. He suspected Stella’s interests lay elsewhere than boys. She talked much too much about her friend at Tulane, a girl named Sandra who wore a biker’s jacket and leather boots.
But maybe it was just a phase.
He took a big swallow from his bottle.
If only she met the right boy . . .
“C’MON, BIG FELLA, who wants a late-night snack?”
Stella stood on the observation deck over the largest of the farm’s ponds. Her only illumination was a single lantern on a pole. The black water below merely reflected the light, hiding what lurked beneath its surface. She unhitched the gate in the fence with one hand while balancing the tray of chicken carcasses in the other. She had freshly slaughtered the four chickens herself. Blood, still warm, spilled off the tray and down her arm.
She grimaced and headed out onto the bare plank that extended over the pond like a diving board. She moved to the end and leaned over the water until she could see her own reflection in the pond.
There wasn’t even a ripple, but she knew Elvis was down there. The bull alligator had been at the farm longer than any of them, one of the original inhabitants of the breeding pond when her daddy first bought the place. Since he’d been caught in the wild, no one knew Elvis’s exact age, but a team of biologists guessed the alligator had to be close to thirty years old. The scientists had come here to collect blood samples from the pond’s denizens. Apparently a protein found in alligator blood showed promise for a new generation of powerful antibiotics, killing even resistant superbugs.
But even the biologists hadn’t attempted to approach Elvis. He stretched eighteen feet long and weighed well over half a ton. No one messed with Elvis. Past his breeding age, he had the pond to himself and liked it that way.
He was definitely spoiled.
She set down the cookie tray next to her and knelt at the end of the plank. Grabbing one of the bloody carcasses, she extended her arm out over the water. Droplets of blood fell and lightly splashed into the water below, sending out faint circular ripples.
She waited—but it didn’t take long.
Across the pond, a new set of ripples formed a V and aimed toward her position. The tip of the alligator’s snout was all that was visible. It glided smoothly toward her, unhurried but determined. Behind, a sashaying swirl marked the swish of Elvis’s massive tail, still hidden under the water. It was that movement, almost sexual in its sway, that earned the alligator its nickname.
“C’mon, Elvis. I don’t have all night.” She shook the chicken.
As if put off by her demand, he sank out of sight. All ripples died away. Stella tensed. Movement at the corner of her eye drew her attention across the pond. Caught for just a glimpse, something bright flowed through the forest, reflecting the moonlight, then vanished back into the darkness. She stared at the spot, already beginning to doubt she’d seen anything. The swamp was full of stories of ghosts, usually attributed to glowing swamp gas, what the Cajuns called feu follet, or crazy fire.
But this wasn’t swamp gas.
She squinted for any other sign of it, concentrating with both eyes and ears—then an eruption blasted below her. Water fountained upward, along with the explosive surge of a half ton of armored muscle. Massive gaping jaws, lined by jagged yellow teeth, surged up toward her, close enough she could’ve leaned down and tapped the creature’s nose.
Elvis could leap high out of the water, clearing even his hind legs. Stella dropped the chicken into those open jaws. They clamped shut with an audible snap. Gravity took over and dragged Elvis back down. He splashed heavily and sank away with his prize.
Stella dropped another two chickens into the water. Normally alligators needed movement to draw them to feed, but Elvis was accustomed to being hand-fed. He’d fish out the other two carcasses at his leisure. Minding her father’s instructions, she left the fourth chicken on the tray.
Done with the feeding, she collected the cookie tray and turned to head back. A large shape blocked the gate. Startled, she fell back a step, almost tumbling off the end of the plank.
But it was one of her daddy’s hired guns. He carried a shotgun, a military-grade twelve-gauge, over his shoulder and leaned on the gatepost. “Done feeding the beast, eh? See you gotcha an extra chicken there.”
The man shifted so that the lamplight revealed the speaker. Ten years older, he was a bull of a man, though a bull that had gone to pot. He wore a dirty Stetson that did little to hide the greasy strings of his mud-brown hair. He sucked on a toothpick and spoke around it. One hand rested on a fat belt buckle shaped like a set of steer horns.
She scowled and headed toward the gate. “Shouldn’t you be patrolling? That’s what my daddy paid you for.”
He leaned on a hip, completely blocking her way. “Why don’t you be a good girl and head on back to the house and cook me up some of that chicken, sweetheart.”
His gaze traveled up and down her form, as if he were interested in more than just chicken. Disgust churned up, but also a trickle of fear. She was all too conscious of her exposure—not just the amount of bare skin, but als
o her precarious perch on the plank.
She also knew this man well enough to fear him. Garland Chase— better known around these parts as “Gar” because of his resemblance to the nasty snake-fish that plagued these swamps—was the sheriff’s son, and everyone in Pasquamish Parish knew his daddy turned a blind eye to his boy’s less-than-legal activities, including running his own protection racket. Stella’s father volunteered a monthly stipend to the “policemen’s orphan fund,” paid directly to this asshole.
“My daddy’s paid you plenty for the night,” she said. “You can fetch your own dinner.”
Feigning more courage than she felt, she straightened her shoulders and headed toward the gate. She refused to let him intimidate her. He backed aside, but only a step. She tried to push past him, but at the last moment he blocked the way with a thick arm again.
He leaned in close. She smelled his breath. He had been drinking.
“What’s wrong? Can’t dykes cook?” he asked. “Or is it your girl-friend who does all the cooking? What you need is a real man . . . someone to teach you how to fetch and carry like a good wife.”
Fear turned to fury in a heartbeat. “I’d rather fuck Elvis.”
The man stiffened, his fat lips disappearing into a sneer. “Maybe I’ll throw you in there and you can try. Accidents happen all the time in the swamps.”
Stella knew this wasn’t an idle threat. The man wasn’t above such actions. Gar and his cronies were known to have caused accidents in the past. It was one of the reasons her daddy never missed a payment.
She shoved his arm out of the way, but he kept tight to her, his eyes gone dead mean.
At that moment the screaming started—loud, strident, and terrified.
They both turned.
It rose from the Boy Scout camp.
Chapter 14
Lorna sat by herself on the front deck of the CBP boat. It slid smoothly down a narrow canal, framed by ancient cypress trees. The low rumble of the engine had a lulling effect. She had not realized how tired she was until this quiet moment. She took what rest she could, staring out at the spread of the bayou.
Half a mile ahead, the sharper whines of the two airboats led the way. Their searchlights were will-o’-the-wisps in the darkness. Closer at hand, fireflies flickered in branches and flew in warning patterns across the channel.
She listened to the swamp breathe around her. The wash of water through cypress knees, the whispery rattle of leaves from an occasional ocean breeze, all accompanied by the heavy croaking of bullfrogs, the screech of an owl, the ultrasonic whistle of hunting bats. Beneath it all she sensed something timeless and slumbering about this place, a glimpse of a prehistoric world, a sliver of a primordial Eden.
“Are you hungry?”
The voice made her jump. She had been close to drifting off, lost in her private thoughts. She sat up, smelling something wonderful and spicy in the air. It cut sharply through the moldy mire of the swamp.
Jack approached. He had a helmet under one arm and a plastic bowl in the other. “Crawfish gumbo. Hope you like okra.”
“Wouldn’t be a southerner if I didn’t.”
She took the bowl gratefully. She was surprised to discover a couple pieces of pain perdu floating in the stew. Her mother used to make it every Sunday morning: soaking stale bread in milk and cinnamon overnight, then frying it in a skillet. The smell would fill the entire house. She’d never had pain perdu served with gumbo.
She spooned up a piece questioningly.
Jack spoke, a grin behind his words. “My grand-mére’s recipe. Try it.”
She tasted a chunk of the sodden bread. Her eyes slipped closed. “Ohmygod . . .” The blend of heat from the gumbo and sweetness of the cinnamon came close to making her swoon.
The grin in his voice reached his face. “We Cajuns know a thing or two about cookin’.”
He sat near her as she worked her way through the bowl. They kept each other quiet company, but it slowly turned uncomfortable. There was too much hanging between them, ghosts of the past that grew all too real in the dark swamp and the silence.
Jack finally broke the tension. As if needing to push back the darkness, he swept out an arm and captured a flash of light that flickered past. He opened his fingers to reveal a tiny firefly, gone dark, its magic broken, just a small winged beetle again.
“Where my grand-mére was a great cook, my grand-pére was a bit of a medicine man. He had all sorts of homegrown remedies. Bathing in pepper grass to soak away aches. If you had a fever, you slept under the bed. He used to crush fireflies and mix them with pure-grain alcohol to make an ointment. Cured rheumatism, he claimed.”
Jack blew on the beetle and sent it winging away, again flickering and winking brightly.
“I still remember him walking around the house in his underwear at night with glowing goop smeared all over his shoulders and knees.”
A warm laugh bubbled out of her. “Your brother once mentioned that. Said it scared him to death.”
“I remember. grand-pére passed away when Tom was only six. He was too young to understand. ’Course it didn’t help that whenever we spotted some fiery swamp gas in the bayou, I’d tell him it was the ghost of grand-pére coming to get him.”
She smiled as their two memories wrapped around each other, centered around Tom. Silence again dropped around them. It was the problem with keeping company with Jack. No matter what they discussed, they had their own ghost haunting them.
In that moment they could’ve let the silence crush them, drive them apart, but Jack remained seated. Plainly there was much left unsaid between them, left unexplained for years. His voice dropped to a breath, but she still heard the pain. “I have to ask . . . do you ever regret your decision?”
She tensed. She had never talked about it aloud with anyone, at least not directly. But if anyone deserved an honest answer, it was Jack. Her breathing grew harder. She immediately went back to that moment in the bathroom, staring down at the E.P.T strip. As always, the past was never more than a heartbeat away.
“If I could take it all back,” she said, “I would. And not just for Tom’s sake. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about it.” Her hand drifted to her belly. “I should’ve been stronger.”
Jack waited a half breath, clearly weighing how much and what to say. “You and Tom were just kids.”
She shook her head slightly. “I was fifteen. Old enough to know better. Before and after.”
She and Tom had made love in the garden shed at her house after a spring dance. They were stupid and in love, having dated for almost a year. They’d both been virgins. Their coupling had been painful and ill-conceived and full of misconceptions.
No one got pregnant the first time.
After she missed her period, followed by confirmation with a pregnancy test kit, that particular misconception was shattered. The full weight of reality and responsibility came crashing down on them. They’d kept silent about it, a terrifying secret between them that wasn’t going away. Over the next month, she had practically cleaned out a neighboring town’s drugstore of its test kits. She prayed on her knees every night.
What were they to do?
She wasn’t ready for a child, to be a mother. Tom was terrified of how their parents would respond. She had also been raised Catholic, had her first Communion at the St. Louis Cathedral. There seemed no options, especially if her parents learned the truth.
Tom had suggested a solution. In the neighboring parish, there was a midwife who performed abortions in secret. And not the clothes-hanger sort of deal. She had been trained at a Planned Parenthood clinic, taking that skill, along with some black-market tools and drugs, and setting up a makeshift clinic out of an old house in the delta. The midwife ran a booming business. And it wasn’t just scared teenagers, but also cheating spouses, rape victims, and anyone who needed to keep a secret. There were plenty of those in southern Louisiana. The region had an unwritten rule: as long as you didn’t talk abou
t it, it never happened.
And in the end, that was the true power of the bayou. Under its dark bower, secrets could be drowned forever.
But it was a delusion to think such secrets truly died. Someone still had to live with them. And often what was thought gone forever rose to the surface again.
JACK READ THE pain in the woman’s posture, the grief shining so plainly in her face. He should’ve kept his mouth shut. It wasn’t his place to question her, to drive this stake through her heart. When it came to this story, he had his own burden to bear. Maybe that’s why he was here, to find some way to forgive himself.
Jack spoke into the quiet. “Tom never said a word about the pregnacy. Not even to me. We were sharing the same bedroom, so I knew something was wrong. He got all sullen and quiet, walked around the house like he was waiting for someone to hit him over the head. It wasn’t until he called that night, half drunk, sobbing . . . perhaps seeking absolution from his older brother.”
Lorna turned to him. She had never heard this part. “What did he say?”
Jack rubbed at the stubble on his chin. It made too loud a scratching sound, so he dropped his hand back to his lap. “You were with the midwife at the time. While he was waiting, he slipped off to a nearby backwater moonshine bar and got drunk.”
She stared at him, waiting for more. He knew she was well familiar with that part of the story already.
“I could barely understand him,” Jack continued. “He got you pregnant. That much was clear.”
“That wasn’t all on him,” she added.
He nodded, moving on. “Tom was racked by guilt. He was sure he had ruined your life. Sure that you would hate him. But more than anything, he felt like he had pressured you into going out there. That it was the wrong choice. But now it was too late.”
She glanced back to him. “I knew he was scared . . . like I was. But I didn’t know he was that tortured. He kept that locked away.”