Frank sounded as if he were trying very hard to be patient. “So what you’re telling me is that you’re stranded. You’re not going anywhere.”
“I don’t think the captain sounds very competent,” Una contributed.
“He’s fine, Una,” Jason said. “The boat’s going to Cincinnati when we can get it afloat. And that shouldn’t take too long, the captain says, because the river’s rising.”
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, then,” Frank said. “When you get to Cincinnati, there will be a ticket waiting for you. And then you’ll fly to Syracuse, and your aunt Stacy will be waiting for you.”
“Aunt Stacy?” Jason couldn’t believe he was hearing this. His aunt Stacy, who was actually his great-aunt, lived in upstate New York. Though she was kind, he couldn’t see spending the whole summer with her. She was elderly and didn’t get out much, and where she lived there was nothing to do.
“Why can’t I come to California?” he asked.
“Our apartment is really too small for a family, Jason.”
Horrid visions of staying forever with Aunt Stacy flashed through Jason’s mind. “Wait a minute!” he said.
“I was coming in August.”
“That was just for two weeks, Jason,” Una said. “If you’re coming to stay for good, we’ll need more room.”
Hatred blazed in Jason’s heart. He had never hated anyone so much as he hated Una in that instant.
“Una and I will look for a house,” Frank said. “We’ll have it all ready for you when it’s time to start school in the fall.”
Jason was appalled. “I don’t even get to see you?” he said.
“I can’t come,” Frank said. His voice was almost a shout. “They won’t let me come and get you.” Jason blinked. “What?”
“The government isn’t letting anyone fly into the quake zone!” Frank’s voice was almost a shout. “They aren’t letting phone calls in. You can fly out, you can call out if you need help, but I can’t get in to you. They won’t let me come!”
There was a moment of silence. Jason could hear atmospherics hissing from the radio speaker.
“Once you get to Syracuse, I’ll come see you,” Frank said. “They’ll let me fly there. But in the meantime the only way I can talk to you is to get a radio operator to try to call your boat.”
“Fly me to California,” he said. “I don’t want to go to New York.”
“We’ve been into that. There’s no room in our apartment. I’ve talked to Aunt Stacy, and it’s all arranged. Now could you hand the receiver to the captain of the Beulah-whatever, so I could talk to him?”
“He’s not in the pilothouse at the moment.”
“Could you go get him, then?”
From the sound of it, Jason’s father planned to give Captain Joe some orders. Which he did. Captain Joe opened the conversation with a cheerful, “Hi, y’all,” but soon fell silent as Jason’s father began to speak. This went on for some time.
When the conversation was over, Joe put his arm around Jason’s shoulders and walked with him down the companionway. “Your poppa’s got a lot of opinions,” he said.
“Yeah,” Jason said. “I know.”
“He wants me to keep you away from Nick. He seems to have something against that man.” He gave Jason a look from under one bushy eyebrow. “Is your poppa prejudiced or something?”
“No,” Jason said. “He’s a lawyer.”
Captain Joe nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Now I understand.” Nick heard Arlette’s voice over the sound of hammering. Some of the family, she had explained, were up on the roof, replacing the shingles that had spilled during the big quake. “We’re trying to get the house in shape,” she said, “because we don’t want it to fall apart if we have to leave.” Sudden anxiety clawed at Nick’s heart. “You’ll be leaving Toussaint?” he asked. “When?”
“That depends on the bayou. Looks like it’s getting set to rise. And I’ve never seen it run so fast.” He had wasted too much time, Nick thought as he rubbed the nearly healed wound on his left arm. He should have taken the speedboat to Toussaint after the first night on the Beluthahatchie. But it had been comfortable on the boat, and safe, and he’d been able to talk to Arlette every day. And every time he thought about getting back on the river again, a bloated body would float by. He and Jason had been on board five days. He’d talked to Arlette twice a day. And he’d tried to get in touch with Viondi’s family, but there was no answer at Viondi’s number, or his plumbing business, or at the numbers of Viondi’s sons that Nick’d been given by directory assistance. He wondered if the whole family had been wiped out.
Finally, after several days, he’d got an answering machine at Viondi’s business. He hated to pass on the news by machine, but he had little choice: he identified himself and told the machine that Viondi was dead, and that he’d try to call later.
When he called the next day, he didn’t even get the machine.
“The phone exchange is sandbagged,” Arlette said. “And we’ve got pumps running. But if the bayou gets much higher, we could lose the phones. Half the people here are living in the second floors of their homes already. So Gros-Papa is getting everyone organized to leave by boat. He and Gilly and Aunt Penelope are going to stay and look after things.”
Nick bit his lip. “How are you going to get out? The river’s a mess.”
“We’re not going to follow the river. We’re going to follow the road. In our boats, it shouldn’t matter if the roads are torn up or the bridges are out.”
“Honey. The roads might be blocked. A lot of trees and power lines have fallen down.”
“We can float around obstructions, Gros-Papa says. But we’ll have chainsaws just in case. And plenty of food.” Her voice turned reassuring. “We’ll be okay, Daddy. We know where we’re going.” Should have gone there, Nick thought. Should have been there for her. And for Manon.
“Besides,” she added, “we’ve got to leave. Did you hear the President’s address? We’re getting our water from the bayou—we can’t keep on drinking it, not with the fertilizer plant upstream.” The President should be doing something, Nick thought. Something besides making speeches.
“I’m coming to you, baby,” Nick decided. “You just hang in there for another couple days, and I’ll be there.”
“I want to wait for you, Daddy.” She hesitated, then spoke. “But it’s the bayou that has to wait.” With Captain Joe’s assistance, Nick plotted his river journey in the chartroom just below Beluthahatchie’s pilothouse. Down the Mississippi, up the White River to Lopez Bayou, and up Lopez Bayou to Toussaint Bayou.
“But it’s not goin’ to look like this, podnah,” Captain Joe said. “Everything on the map is nice an’ neat, but you can look right out this window here and see how neat this river is.” He looked down at the map and tapped the Arkansas Delta with a big knuckle. “This is all goin’ to be under water. It will be hard to find the channel. Some of the navigation markers are goin’ to be missing, others will have moved. The White River may have shifted its mouth—already done it once—and you maybe won’t be able to tell one from the other. There ain’t no towns on that stretch at all. Your marks are gonna be these three lights—Clay Wilson, Smith Point, and Henrico Bar. If the lights are there at all—they could all three have been wrecked.”
He shook his head. “If you get to the light at Montgomery Point, you’ve gone too far. This Napoleon light here—” tapping again with his knuckle “—that’s on a town that the river took over a hundred years ago. Napoleon, Arkansas. You used to be able to see parts of it at low water, but now maybe even the light ain’t there.” Captain Joe looked at Nick and tugged on his grizzled mustache. “This river just went through a big change, podnah. Maybe Napoleon’s above water again. Maybe some other town’s under. This map will prob’ly just get you lost. All’s you can hope to do is stay in the river and out of the batture.”