“Bitch!” He hit her in the face, hard. The next instant he screamed, grabbing at the back of his knee, and crumpled to the ground. Scarlet jumped back, grinning, brandishing her hairpin.
Sloane’s head was ringing and there was blood in her mouth. She picked out a big young man in a ripped shirt who was lumbering up Randall’s steps. “You! Get Mr. Denton out of the way. Everyone inside!” Sloane shouted, waving frantically. “Everyone inside!”
The wind was screaming now, and the flying rain was mixed with hail. Lightning exploded overhead. A tremendous grinding crash filled the air as the church across the street foundered farther under the renewed press of the gale. The drenched mob poured through the front door of the Bishop’s Palace like water coming through a breached dike. Muddy, battered, draggled people threw themselves down on Randall Denton’s velvet upholstered sofas or sprawled on his gorgeous Persian carpets. Sloane had her commandeered deputy keep Randall behind her and out of the way. “Shoes against the wall. Manners, everyone!” Sloane shouted. “Nobody’s here to cut your throat, Randall,” she said over her shoulder. “They’re just trying to stay alive.”
Randall slumped sullenly against the wall in his drenched velvet bathrobe, moodily rubbing his injured wrist. “It’s not manners to bite, Sloane.”
She swallowed blood, feeling her teeth with her tongue to see if he had broken any of them when he hit her. “Well, we’re even now.”
The noise of the storm came roaring through the broken windows; Randall’s heavy drapes shook and bulged as if a knife fight were going on behind them. Another tremendous peal of thunder shook the house, making the china in the cabinets rattle and Colonel Denton’s medals bounce in their red velour display cases. A blast of wind slammed open Randall’s oak front doors and a volley of rain drenched the Persian carpet in an eye blink.
Sloane jumped to the doors and tried to shove them closed. She wasn’t strong enough. Wind tore into the house to smack Randall’s crystal chandelier and set it jangling like a wind chime. Then her fat young deputy threw his shoulder into the door beside her, and an instant later Lianna joined them. Together they heaved the door closed. As Sloane turned the dead bolts she could feel the cypress wood shuddering under her hands, vibrating with the force of the gale outside.
Sloane drew a deep breath and held out her hand to the heavyset boy. “Thanks. What’s your name?”
“Japhet,” he said stolidly, taking her hand and shaking it. “Japhet Mather, ma’am.”
Recognition clicked in. This must be Ham’s little brother. That sort of explained the six-foot, two-hundred-pound body with the twelve-year-old’s head on top. Hi! she didn’t say. I’m the reason your brother is outside in this, marooned somewhere on the Bolivar Peninsula. She grinned brightly. When in trouble, smile. That was one thing Sloane and Sly agreed on.
Glancing around, she saw one of Randall’s housemaids peeping out from behind the doorway that led into the library. No sign of any other servants. The rest would be cowering in the kitchen, probably. Sloane dredged up the girl’s name. “Hey, Lindsey!” The maid’s face disappeared. “Your master needs some warm water and a bandage. Lindsey, I know you’re there. Be a good girl. None of these people are going to hurt you.”
“What about the things?” the maid shouted.
Sloane looked around. Oh—the revellers. More than one had rushed into the shelter of the Bishop’s Palace. She spotted the Heron she had met in her first poker game in Mardi Gras, standing motionless on one leg over by the china cabinet. Lianna jumped lightly on top of Randall’s baby grand piano and curled up, licking her bloody muzzle. A stilt-walker, hunched double to get through the front door, straightened too fast and smacked his head on Randall’s chandelier, making it shake and sway so diamonds of light veered wildly through the foyer.
“Monsters,” Randall remarked. “Well, that’s just great.”
The human refugees, eyes wide with fear, were backing into the parlor, leaving the foyer and the great central staircase to the revellers. Sloane saw a man pick up a heavy crystal ashtray. A thin teenage boy with a bloody face drew a knife from his hip and held it out, blade trembling in his shaking hand. Better take charge of this situation now, before anybody else has a chance to think. “You—you look hurt,” Sloane said, making eye contact with the knife-wielding kid. “Go to the back of the parlor and we’ll get some treatment for you.” He didn’t move. Sloane pretended not to notice. “Anyone else injured?”
The mother of a crying child raised her hand. “I think my son’s arm might be broken.”
“Go to the far end of the room, away from the windows.” The mother picked up her boy and limped across the room. A moment later a young woman followed, holding her shoulder. Then an older man with a blood-soaked piece of shirt wrapped around his knee. “Thank you,” Sloane said gratefully. A moment later the bloody-faced teenager followed the rest. “Thank you, folks. Lindsey, get a basin of hot water and some clean cloths.” The housemaid came slowly around the corner from the library. “If you don’t have bandages in the house, we can use clean rags or pillow slips. Is there a doctor here?” Silence. “Anything close?”
“I know a little first aid,” Japhet Mather said.
“Bless you. I’ll help.” Sloane turned to look at Randall. “Are you going to make trouble?”
“Later,” he said with one of his old sardonic smiles. “And that’s a promise.” Outside the hurricane raged and roared. “Very happy to be of service,” he said loudly. The mob stared at him with loathing. “Please—make yourselves comfortable! Set a spell, pardner,” he said, slapping Japhet on the back. “If any of you are hungry or thirsty, my staff will be pleased to rustle y’all some grub,” he drawled.
Sloane’s mouth fell open. “Now, don’t look so shocked,” Randall said. “You think I have no conscience at all?”
“Well, frankly—”
“Besides which, you’ll be paying for every red cent of it,” Randall said. He switched his smile back on. “Every mouthful of rice, every bloodstain on my carpet, every bottle of wine. Sloane? You look a little pale,” Randall said solicitously. “Don’t you worry your pretty—well, your not wholly unattractive—little head about a thing. I will personally take care of all the pricing and billing.”
Sloane stared at the crowd of refugees currently trailing blood and mud over Randall’s stupefyingly expensive antique furniture. “Oh, well,” she said faintly. “That’s all right, then.”
“Nice of you to show up at last,” Randall continued. Scarlet hissed at him. His eyebrows rose. “Though you might have done it a tad earlier, Sloane, for the sake of those two fellas we had marooned for killing you.” Another blast of lightning rattled the chandelier. Randall shook his head. “Tsk tsk. Poor bastards.” His face filled with transparently insincere concern. “Imagine what it must be like to be caught outside in this!”
Part Four
Chapter Fourteen
VENOM
JOSH and Ham began their exile within twenty-four hours of being sentenced. In the dark before dawn, they were turned out of their separate cells and marched down to Pier 23 at gunpoint. There they were forced into the hold of the Fat Tuesday, a shrimper whose captain was a second cousin of the Gardners.
It was pitch-black in the Fat Tuesday’s hold, nothing for Josh to look at but fragments of humiliating memory. The condescending smile of the woman in the Krewe of Momus offices. Scar-faced Kyle Lanier, grinning as he kicked Josh in the side with his shiny polished shoes. Sloane Gardner lying on his ancient exam table, his little front parlor stinking with yeast and fermenting rice wine. His shelves loaded with pathetic witch doctor’s potions in salvaged pop bottles and Noxzema jars. The strap of her dress just off her left shoulder. Her puzzled eyes—I’m sorry. Should I know you?
Bound at the ankles with lengths of rope, Josh and Ham sat three inches deep in seawater that was slimy with algae and smelled of rotting shrimp. Josh could feel bits of shrimp bumping against him, whiskers and legs torn
off during loading or unloading, left to float in the brine. He had retched and retched after they were lowered in here, gut muscles still screaming with the beating Kyle Lanier had given him two nights before. He kept retching long after his stomach was empty, as if there were some toxin in his gut he couldn’t manage to spit out. As if shame were a poison.
“Some of these sumbitches are still alive down here,” Ham said, slapping at the water. Spray splattered over Joshua’s face. “We oughta catch one of the little bastards. You ever eat a raw shrimp? Texas sushi,” the big man said.
Joshua’s stomach heaved. “Bowel parasites,” he said. His face was hot and he felt feverish, stomach churning and churning. He thought of Sloane’s lips closing around a spoonful of rice porridge. Fancy dress dyed in bright pre-Flood colors, the Mardi Gras smell of cigarette smoke clinging to her hair and clothes.
“God, I’m thirsty,” Ham said, shifting noisily.
“Don’t drink this stuff.”
“No shit.”
Josh stared into the darkness. Somewhere underneath them a motor kicked into life. The floor rocked as they began to move away from the dock. “Ham?”
“Yeah?” The floor tilted and subsided again as the Fat Tuesday came around and the swell took her gently abeam. The boat gathered speed, churning steadily into the Gulf.
“How did Sloane’s hair get into your boat?”
Ham’s voice came out of the darkness. “You dumb shit, the hairs were in the boat because Sheriff Denton put them there.”
“They just lied?”
“Josh, sometimes I despair of you.” Ham sighed gustily. “It’s not like they hadn’t found their killers. They just needed to get a conviction. You keep thinking they wouldn’t do something like that to one of their own. But guess what, Sherlock? To them, you’re just another one of us.”
“I grew up with her. We went to the same parties.”
Another explosive smack showered Josh with filthy bilgewater. “I think I got the fucker. Feel around in there, Josh, and see if you find a flat shrimp.” Joshua’s stomach twisted up and he retched again. Ham coughed. “And it probably didn’t help that the stockings were, ah…”
“Soiled.”
“Right,” Ham said. “Now, once they unload us out of this shithole, we’re going to have to find some water. Reckon they’ll take us west down to Corpus, or east up by Beaumont, in and amongst the cannibals?”
“I don’t care.”
“Hey, now. That ain’t my buddy. The Josh I know was a surly little fucker who never gave up in his life,” Ham said. “The Josh I know is the guy who came back every day when that mad dog bit Matt Biggs.”
“Matt died. Ham.”
“Of course he died, Josh,” Ham said patiently. “He had the fucking rabies, didn’t he? The point is, you stayed in there fighting when everybody knew he was a goner—and you didn’t even like that lying little bastard. You’re no quitter, Joshua Cane.”
Josh closed his eyes against the sickening memory of that moment in the courtroom when he finally understood how thoroughly Galveston despised him. How much he was suffered to exist on the strength of Ham’s goodwill. “There’s a word for a guy who plays hands he ought to fold,” Josh said. “A sucker.” He hunched in the stinking water. “Ham?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry you got dragged into—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up already.”
A few hours out from the dock. Ham began to snore. The little cell of darkness moved on, carrying Joshua along like Jonah in the belly of the whale. Water slapped and gurgled around him. The suffocating hold of the Fat Tuesday grew hotter and hotter. Josh slid down until he was lying on his back, trying to suck in the coolest air, just above the filthy bilgewater. He stopped noticing the smell of shrimp. Sometimes his eyes were open, sometimes they were closed. His stomach hurt, and his ribs.
He didn’t realize he had fallen asleep until he woke to a blast of light as someone threw open the overhead hatch. He squeezed his eyes shut against the glare. The head of the Fat Tuesday’s captain appeared in the square of daylight. “Get up, you dogs.” A mate unrolled a rope ladder into the hold. Josh climbed it. His legs shook, weak from hunger and thirst.
Abovedecks a stiff breeze was blowing from the land. Josh gulped the clean air, then grimaced as pain stabbed through his side. Cracked rib, probably. On the landward side of the Fat Tuesday, four deckhands were lowering the ship’s launch into the water. Four more crewmen with rifles flanked the captain. He nodded at the launch. “In you go, boys.”
Josh and Ham were lashed back-to-back with yellow nylon rope and dumped on a rear thwart. Ham said nothing when the sailors jerked the ropes tight, but to his shame Josh cried out. The sailors looked at him contemptuously. The launch headed for shore.
“At least there’s a breeze,” Ham said. His voice was cracked from lack of water. “How far have we come? Fifty miles maybe?”
None of the sailors answered. “Talk all you like. It’s allowed,” the captain said. He was a small, bearded man with hard eyes. “But if I were you, I’d save my spit.”
The launch stopped fifty yards shy of the beach. Two sailors came back to untie them. The others sat with rifles at the ready. It was clear that if either Josh or Ham struggled or tried to escape, they would be shot at once. “Over you go,” the captain said. A sailor gave Josh a poke with his clasp knife to encourage him. Josh and Ham crawled over the side and stood waist-deep in the warm Gulf water.
While one sailor coiled and stowed the rope that had been used to bind them, the master’s mate brought a small chest to the captain. He opened it. “By the articles of the Krewe of Thalassar and the justice of the court, any exiled person or persons must be supplied and equipped with certain provisions adequate to permit survival,” he recited. “These items are as follows: one canteen.” He lifted out a battered tin canteen and passed it to the mate, who handed it to Josh, who gave it to Ham, who dunked it in the sea and then held it up before his eyes. After a moment a small drip appeared at the bottom. Drip, drip, drip.
“This leaks,” Josh said.
The captain scratched his beard. “A supply of matches and a waterproof container,” he said. The mate handed Josh a handful of cheap wooden matches of the sort Joshua made up himself. Several dropped into the sea.
Joshua tried to imagine how many matches would stay dry through the long wade they had left to make it to the shore. “What about the waterproof container?”
“You have a metal canteen.”
“There’s water in it.”
The captain shrugged. “That was your choice, not my concern.”
“But it leaks—”
“One knife,” the captain continued. His mate produced a Buck folding pocketknife with a two and a half inch blade.
“This is mine,” Josh said, recognizing the initials he had scratched into the wooden handle. “My father gave it to me on my ninth birthday. The matches are mine, too, aren’t they? Stolen from my house.”
“Lastly, a gun and ammunition.” The mate handed over a small revolver.
Ham slung the canteen around his neck and reached for the gun. Sweat was running down his wide red forehead. “A .32 caliber Colt,” he said. The mate passed over a dirty cotton bag. Ham peered inside. “And six .38 caliber bullets. Thank you so very goddamn much. You know, y’all can just kiss my ass until my hat pops off.” The captain nodded to his men. The launch motor kicked over and the boat began to slide away, leaving Ham and Josh standing in the Gulf swell, marooned. “You pussies!” Ham yelled. “If I die you can expect to see my ghost, you sons of bitches! I’ll see you in hell!”
The launch put-putted away from them. Josh turned and waded toward the beach, holding the matches and pocketknife high above his head to keep them from getting wet. It partly worked. The shore looked much the same as it did beyond the Seawall on Galveston: dark firm sand up to the waterline, pale powdery sand above it that stretched back twenty yards to a low dune, no higher than Jo
sh’s waist. Behind that, a wide salt grass meadow.
Josh waded out of the sea and walked up the beach. The drought had withered much of the vegetation that capped the dune, but his apothecary’s eye could still pick out sea purslane and camphor daisy, bitter panicum and gulf croton and small powder-grey leaves of sage. The strong land breeze made the whole plain seethe and tremble. Shifting waves of blue-green salt grass stirred and whispered. Farther inland Josh could see occasional thickets of scrub: chinaberry and baccharis and woolly-bucket, Chinese tallow and sugar hackberry. Over to the west, he spotted a stand of tall grass or reeds, cattails or wild bamboo or cane; the first good fortune they’d had in a while. Stands of cane and cattails meant fresh water, a pond or swale or creek line. Even if the drought had dried up the surface water, a cane thicket was a good place to dig for more. With luck there would be a black willow or two nearby, and he would be able to use the bark as poor man’s aspirin for their aches and bruises.
Ham was at the waterline, looking back to sea, shading his eyes with one thick hand. “The boat’s heading west. If they’re heading home, we’re on the Bolivar Peninsula.”
Josh turned and squinted into the afternoon sun, watching the Fat Tuesday recede. “Then we’re in cannibal country, right?”
“I ain’t ripe yet.” Ham pointed at a thin dark band on the horizon. “Hey. Clouds. If it rains, we’ll need some way to keep the water.” He held up their canteen. It dripped steadily into the sea. Ham swore and rubbed one fat hand over his forehead.
God, Josh was thirsty. He’d never felt so thirsty in his life. His voice was cracked, and his tongue felt like a hank of hot felt. “I’m dizzy,” he said. “You?”
“Yeah. And my head aches like that fucking deputy was still kicking it. And I feel like throwing up.”
Dehydration. “We need water. I think I saw some cane over yonder.”