“I’m not your father!” he shouted. And then added, half to himself, “And your daddy’s gonna kill me.”
“Tell him it’s all my fault,” Jason said. “He’ll believe that. He’s used to blaming me for things.” Nick glared at the boy. “I suppose he’s got reasons!” he said. He collapsed into his seat, shook his head.
“I don’t know what I should do.”
Jason crawled onto the bass boat’s foredeck, then began pulling on the tow rope, drawing himself closer to the speedboat. “It’ll be okay, Nick, really.”
“Bullshit.”
Jason clambered aboard the American Dream, dropped into the seat next to Nick. “Listen. You can say you didn’t have a choice.”
Nick looked at him. Fury simmered in his veins. “First town we come to—first landing, first boat, first inhabited damn building—I’m putting you off. I don’t care if you have to live on somebody’s roof for the next two weeks.”
Jason opened his mouth, closed it.
“And another thing,” Nick said, and he heard the echo of his father in his voice, General Ruford chewing out some subordinate, and he was pleased by the sound, “you better mind me from this point, boy, because if you don’t, I’m going to kick your lily ass all over this boat.” Jason stared, swallowed. “Yes, sir,” he said.
Nick hit the starter, felt the Evinrude growl, like one of his father’s tanks. “Now,” he said, “there’s something weird going on downstream, so I want you to keep an eye out, right?”
“Umm. Shall I get my telescope?”
“You’ve got it with you? Okay. Yes.”
Jason set up the telescope on the foredeck, peered into it, fiddled with the focus knob. Nick motored cautiously downstream, standing behind the wheel so that he could see to avoid debris. Sweat prickled on his forehead as the rising sun began to burn down on the flooded country.
Over the murmuring engine he could hear the rushing sound, and the southern horizon seemed indistinct and misty. He called to Jason. “What do you see?”
Jason looked up from the eyepiece, shook his head. “I can’t tell. It’s all weird.”
“Is it rapids?”
Jason shook his head again. “I don’t know. It looks like there might be white water.” Nick clenched his teeth. This didn’t make any sense.
He motored closer. Puffs of wind gusted from different parts of the compass. Nick put the Evinrude in neutral and throttled down so that he could hear better. Jason’s eye was glued to the eyepiece of the Astroscan.
“It’s an island,” Jason said. “I think. It looks like water’s breaking around something. And I see lots of driftwood piled up.”
If it was an island, Nick thought, he could go around it. “Okay,” he said.
“It’s a big island,” Jason said. He panned the scope back and forth, muttered something as he inadvertently shoved the inverted image the wrong way, then regained his view. Finally he sat up, looked at Nick.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “It looks like the island is right across the whole river.” Nick gnawed his lip. “Let me see,” he decided finally.
He made his way onto the foredeck, knelt next to Jason, put his eye to the scope. The upside-down image bobbed uneasily with the motion of the boat. He saw tree roots, white water, mist. Carefully he nudged the scope left and right, panning across the horizon. He could hear the roar of white water. The island looked huge.
He straightened. Rushing water dinned at his ears. His brain whirled, and then his mouth went dry as comprehension dawned. “Oh shit,” he said.
“What?” Jason asked. “What is it?”
“It’s not an island,” Nick said. “It’s a dam.” He rose, the boat swaying under him, and made his way back to the cockpit.
Jason looked after him. “A dam? How can it be a dam?”
“Dam’s made of driftwood,” Nick said. “All that debris going downriver—a lot of it got hung up here. Maybe there was an island, or some rocks, or just a mud bar. But once the driftwood and other rubbish started collecting, it just kept stacking up. That’s why the river’s rising so fast. It’s been dammed.” Nick bit his lip as he thought about the water piled up behind the dam. Millions of tons, all pressing on the haphazard accretion of rubbish that was holding them back. He knew how much power water could exert, how it would push through every crevice, prod at every weak point. Even well-built levees and breakwaters failed under the constant pressure of water: the driftwood dam, he suspected, wouldn’t last long, not with the weight of the flooded Mississippi behind it.
And when the end came for the dam, he thought, my God. All the water pouring out in a flood and carrying the debris with it. A huge wave heading downstream, churning with tons of battering wreckage. He was going to have to wait for the dam to burst, he thought. And then wait a long time after that, so as not to get caught in the flood or the wreckage the flood would carry with it. Impatience twitched along his nerves. He wanted to get south, get to Arlette. Maybe he could find a way around the dam, find a chute of water he could ride south, or some way through the trees where the water flowed more normally.
But no. Even if there was a chute, even if he could get down the chute without mishap, that would just put him in the way of that deadly wall of water when it finally broke free.
Stay alive, he told himself. Stay alive for Arlette.
He turned the boat around, pushed the throttle forward. They might as well head for the treeline to the east, where they could tie up in the shade and wait.
Jason looked at him questioningly.
“Might as well have breakfast,” he said.
The debris dam cracked around noon. There were a series of concussions, like bombs exploding. Flocks of birds flapped skyward in surprise. Jason and Nick both straightened, looked toward the sound. Another boom sounded over the still water. And then they both heard the roaring, building over the trees, as water began to flow.
Jason turned to Nick. “Do we go now?”
“Too dangerous. Wait for the water to go down.”
It dropped fast. Six inches in the first hour, judging by the high-flood marks left on the boles of trees. Every so often another blast from the dam echoed through the trees, as well as prolonged grinding noises, as if pieces of driftwood were being torn away from the dam with incredible violence. By two o’clock the water was falling so slowly that Nick couldn’t track its progress, debris was moving on the river at what seemed to be a normal pace, and the roaring sound had faded, replaced by the calls of birds in the trees. Nick decided that he may as well investigate.
The water was moving fast in the center of the river, and as Nick approached he began to hear the roaring sound again. Parts of the southern horizon were misty, presumably where the driftwood dam was still intact, but other parts were clear. Nick steered for the widest of the gaps, the Evinrude throttled down so far it barely kept headway. The roaring sound grew, and apprehension tingled along Nick’s nerves.
Go or no-go? He stood behind the wheel, peered anxiously ahead. Half-submerged debris ground against the boat’s side and set his teeth on edge. Suddenly he realized, from the strong breeze in his face, that the current was carrying the boat along at high speed.
Go or no-go? The decision might well be taken out of his hands at any second. The boat dropped into a kind of watery chuckhole, bounced up again. Nick swayed on his feet, felt spray on his face. The Evinrude whined in protest. Ahead the water looked choppy.
“Can you see…?” he asked Jason.
Jason shrugged. “Looks clear.”
“Right.” He pushed the throttle forward. He didn’t want to barrel through at high speed, but he wanted enough momentum to get himself out of any trouble he might run into.