The stars burned overhead, arching across the destroyed landscape. Jason stared up at them in fascination and horror.
Captain Joe showed Jason the Veil Nebula next, but Jason’s pleasure in the sight, the gorgeous phosphorescent threads that floated in the darkness, was tempered by the knowledge that this was the remnant of another supernova, something else that had torn itself to shreds at the behest of Nature. He could feel a pressure in his mind. His internal scale was growing, pressing against the inside of his skull. He felt as if his thoughts were racing outward at the speed of light, trying to catch up with the universe. A trillion stars…
It was a matter of scale, Jason felt. He did not know how to relate what he’d seen, the universe of stars and galaxies and immeasurable distances, to the rest of his life, to Nick and the Beluthahatchie and the torn landscape, the sagging bridges and the bodies floating down the river, a raft for crows. All things were mortal, he thought. That was what everything had in common.
Everything was mortal, and even a star could die.
Jason didn’t see why he needed to go to Aunt Stacy’s. It was just another pointless scheme of his father’s to stick him out of the way where his father wouldn’t have to think about him. He helped Nick stock the speedboat with supplies for the trip to Toussaint. Canned food, lots of fresh water. Ice and fresh food in the bass boat’s cooler. Blankets, clothes, rain gear, a pair of proper oars for the bass boat, a pair of flashlights, tools, insect repellent. Much of it went into the lockers of the bass boat, which Nick planned to tow behind him—“like a tender,” as Captain Joe said. Anticipation glittered in Nick’s eyes as he planned the trip to his family. Jason tried to stay cheerful about it for Nick’s sake, but all he could think about was that Nick would soon be with his family, and that Jason would never be with his family—his whole family—ever again.
Nick was going to leave in the morning. The only adult who had ever talked to him as if he was a human being, not a little marching moron to be given orders, or tried to pay for his neglect with presents that he didn’t even pick himself.
Jason felt a sudden yearning to be on the river again, to hide somehow on the speedboat and not come out until they arrived at Toussaint, at the place where there was a family waiting. But it was pointless to think about stowing away on a twenty-foot boat. It wasn’t as if he wouldn’t be seen. He went to bed that night with fantasies of escape spinning through his mind. He thought about flying up into the night sky, free in Captain Joe’s world of stars, the universe to choose from. Jason woke to a knock on the door of the cabin he shared with Nick. “Better get up, podnah.” Captain Joe’s voice. “The river’s risin’ fast. We’re gonna float off this sandbar, and we’ve got to get you onto the water before we head upriver.”
“It’s still dark,” Jason said.
“River makes up its mind to do something, we gotta do it,” Joe called. Jason and Nick dressed in the dark. Beluthahatchie’s big turbines vibrated up through the deck. Jason reached under his bunk and grabbed his telescope by its strap. Outside the towboat sat in a pool of white light, crewmen bustling, winches tightening the anchor lines that had been trailed aft. The speedboat and the bass boat had been moored to the side out of the way, ready to be boarded.
“Godspeed, then, podnah,” Joe said, and stuck out his hand. Nick shook it.
“Thanks, Captain. Thanks for everything.”
Jason held out his hand. The words take me with you were on the tip of his tongue. “Good luck,” he said.
“Thanks.” Nick took the hand, then put the other around Jason’s shoulders, gave him a brief, fierce hug.
“You take care, Jason.” He released Jason, looked at the telescope. “You going to watch me with your ’scope?” he said.
“Sure.”
“I don’t know if you’ll see much. I won’t be carrying a light.”
Nick turned to the boat, then hesitated. He turned to Captain Joe. “Can I call my girl?” he said. “Tell her I’m on my way?”
Joe glanced over the side at the rising river, then nodded. “Make it quick,” he said, and then he and Nick hurried forward to the pilothouse and the radio.
There was a sudden loud clatter as a winch hauled on an anchor line. Jason jumped. His heart hammered. Light glittered on the river’s wavelets.
Below him the speed boat tugged on its line, eager to be off. Retired and Gone Fishin’ bobbed behind on its towline.
The river was terror. The river was liberation. The river was Edge Living, and his fate. Jason walked aft a few feet, then went over the side and dropped soundlessly into the bass boat. He crawled under the casting deck forward. The space was narrow, with only an inch or two to spare. It was damp and it smelled bad. Water chuckled against the boat’s chine.
Dad is going to be really pissed, Jason thought, and closed his eyes. Paxton looked down at the dead body in the bar ditch. “God damn it, Jedthus,” he said.
“Didn’t meant to kill him,” Jedthus said. “There ain’t more’n three inches of water down there.”
“Nigger asked for it,” said Jedthus’s new partner, a Klan boy named Leckie who hailed from Washington Parish, and whom Omar had made a special deputy.
Jedthus gave Omar a defiant look. “He was talkin’ smack, Omar, and that’s the truth.” Omar walked around the car that Jedthus and Leckie had pulled over for reckless driving, looked with his flashlight at the license plate. New Orleans, he saw. The car was a late-1970s Mercury with a battered paint job and torn upholstery.
Leckie turned his flashlight on the body. “We was just sittin’ on him and whalin’ on him with our flashlights,” he said. “Guess he must’ve drowned in the ditch without our knowing it.” Fury howled in Omar’s veins. ” Turn off that light!”
Leckie stared at him in surprise, then obeyed. There was a moment of silence filled only by the night songs of insects.
Omar stalked again around the car, looked up and down the two-lane road. The Bayou Bridge was visible, a shadow on the night’s darkness, a quarter-mile away.
These boys were going to put him in goddam prison, he thought. Killed some stranger passing through, then panicked and called him to ask what to do next. They’d made him an accessory! His whole career, his whole life, could end right here.
What a fucking joke. He took off his cap, ran his hands through his hair. At least it happened late at night, on a stretch of road where there was almost no traffic at this hour.
“We could say he resisted arrest,” Jedthus said. “We could say he attacked us.”
“So you drowned him?” Omar said. “In a ditch? In self-defense? Oh yeah, they’ll believe that, all right.” Jedthus blinked, turned away. Omar closed his eyes and tried to think.
“Okay,” he said. “This never happened. None of us ever saw this car. None of us ever saw this boy. Okay?”
“Sure, Omar,” Jedthus said.
“Now what you two do,” Omar said, “is put this boy in the trunk of his car. And you take the car down the bayou, where nobody can see, and you shove the car in. Okay?”
“Yes, sir,” said Leckie, and looked back at the Bayou Bridge.
“And I mean far down the bayou,” Omar said. “Not just down to the bridge. Take the car someplace where nobody ever goes fishing. Where no teenagers go to screw. Where nobody’s been in a hundred years. I don’t care if you have to cut a road to get there.”