“Okay,” he said. “You boys can relieve some of my trained men, and they can look after the camp.” Knox’s strange emerald pupils blazed from within their rim of white. “We are trained, sir,” he said.
“Not for police work, son.”
Knox accepted this judgment with reluctance. Omar took them into the courthouse, swore them in, and assigned them as partners to other deputies, then sent the deputies’ old partners either to bed or the A.M.E. camp.
He was going to have to do something about that camp, he thought as he sat in his office and listened to radio calls crackling out. Too many guns out there. Too many strangers. Too much unruliness. He thought about it, and an idea came to him. He smiled.
Knox and his Crusaders might be useful after all.
The morning after the quake, Nick and Jason continued their water journey. But the waterscape had changed completely: they floated through a forest of broken trees, stumps, and raw wood spears jabbing from the flood. The water was choked with wreckage, and it was very easy to wander from the roadway they had been following. After losing it and finding it several times, they lost it for good, and after that they tried to navigate by the position of the sun.
Eventually they stopped using the speedboat’s engine, because it spent so much time idling that they reckoned they were wasting fuel. Because the speedboat was too wide to row, they moved to Retired and Gone Fishin’, which they could row with the oars that Captain Joe had provided them. They towed the speedboat behind on a line. They traded rowing with fending off wreckage and trying to clear a path for the boat.
It was hot, backbreaking work. Insects buzzed round them in swarms. They had no idea whether they were moving in a straight line or in circles.
The next morning was no better, but by noon they found themselves rowing through water that was perceptibly moving, trickling past the stumps and standing trees. They decided to follow the direction the water seemed to be flowing, even though it was in a different direction than the one in which they’d been going. The trees seemed to open up gradually, and they found themselves in what might have been a river, or a flooded road, or possibly even a section line cleared of trees, but at any rate seemed to be a straight path that was taking them somewhere. The sun seemed right overhead, and they couldn’t tell whether they were moving east, west, or south.
They moved from the bass boat to the speedboat, though they didn’t start the engine, just drifted with the current. They stretched their kinked and sore muscles, and shared a can of tuna, some pickles, and an orange.
Then the trees opened up to the right, and drifting into sight came an open field with an old Allis-Chalmers tractor standing in it, the water up to its motor. Visible in the near distance were the collapsed remnants of a farm and its out-buildings. And between the farm and their boat was another boat, a fifteen-foot open flat-bottomed aluminum fishing boat with three people in it. Jason’s heart leaped. “Look!” he said. Nick jumped up with a shout poised on his lips, and then he hesitated. A darker look came into his eyes.
“Get into the driver’s seat,” he said. “Take us close to them. But not too close.” Jason’s mouth went dry as Nick reached for his rifle and crouched down in the cockpit. Nick looked over his shoulder, saw Jason’s expression. “I’m just being careful,” he said. Jason’s heart hammered in his chest. He got into the driver’s seat, pulled the choke, pressed the starter. The Evinrude started up with a roar.
The people in the other boat heard the engine start up, and they jumped upright and started waving. Jason coasted closer to them. All three were black, he saw, one older man and a pair of boys about Jason’s age.
“That’s close enough,” Nick said.
Jason cut the engine and drifted. Jason watched Nick’s hand clench and unclench on the barrel of his rifle. The three in the other boat waved their arms and shouted.
“Heaven-o!” they cried. “Heaven-o!”
TWENTY-FIVE
It was now light, and we had an opportunity of beholding, in full extent, all the horrors of our situation. During the first four shocks, tremendous and uninterrupted explosions, resembling a discharge of artillery, was heard from the opposite shore; at that time I imported them to the falling of the river banks. This fifth shock explained the real cause. Whenever the veins of the earthquake ran, there was a volcanic discharge of combustible matter to a great height, as incessant rumbling was heard below, and the bed of the river was excessively agitated, whilst the water assumed a turbid and boiling appearance—near our boat a spout of confined air, breaking its way through the waters, burst forth and with a loud report discharged mud, sticks, &c, from the river’s bed, at least thirty feet above the surface. These spoutings were frequent, and in many places appeared to rise to the very Heavens. —Large trees, which had lain for ages at the bottom of the river, were shot up in thousands of instances, some with their roots uppermost and their tops planted; others were hurled into the air; many again were only loosened, and floated upon the surface. Never was a scene more replete with terrific threatenings of death; with the most lively sense of this awful crisis, we contemplated in mute astonishment a scene which completely beggars all description and of which the most glowing imagination is inadequate to form a picture. Here the earth, river, &c. torn with furious convulsions, opened in huge trenches, whose deep jaws were instantaneously closed; there through a thousand vents sulphureous streams gushed from its very bowels, leaving vast and almost unfathomable caverns. Every where nature itself seemed tottering on the verge of dissolution. Encompassed with the most alarming dangers, the manly presence of mind and heroic fortitude of the men were all that saved them. It was a struggle for existence itself, and the mede to be purchased was our lives.
“Oh it’s just lovely,” Wilona said. “Miz LaGrande has moved beds in, and she’s divided the big rooms into wards. She’s so gracious to everybody, even the ones who are in pain and shouting for help.” She shook her head. “Those poor people. Broken bones, most of them. Some bad burns. But Dr. Patel is wonderful! I don’t think he’s slept in days.”
She looked down at her drink. “I’m getting used to Co-Cola warm, you know that?” Warm because there was no ice. Electricity had still not been restored to Hardee, even though most of Shelburne City had power.
Some things never changed.
Wilona sat on the couch in the old double shotgun with her feet tucked under her. Omar sat with a warm beer in his easy chair, gazing with heavy-lidded eyes at the dead television set.
“We lost a little colored girl this morning,” Wilona said. “No older than six. Her mama crashed the car into a power pole during the quake. I held the little girl’s hand till she passed, and her mama held the other.” A look of melancholy crossed her face. “Gone where the woodbine twineth,” she sighed. Omar said nothing.
“Mrs. Ashenden was so kind to the little girl’s mama afterward. Sat her down in the kitchen and talked to her for half an hour.”
“Did Miz LaGrande give her any macaroons?” he said. “Serve her off the good china?” Wilona looked cross. “You are so tacky sometimes.”
“Everybody’s been working hard,” Omar said. “The old lady shouldn’t get any special credit. I’ve been dealing with criminals and drug addicts. I’d like to see Miz LaGrande do that.”