At least the activity kept them warm. And Jason enjoyed just being in Arlette’s company, working next to her on the foredeck.
The strange cypress-shadows floated past, as if in and out of a dream. Little aftershocks trembled in the still water, then faded. The motor’s low rumble echoed from the invisible forest around them. Water streamed from the branches above. Jason was morally certain that they were heading in the wrong direction, that they were just getting deeper into the wilderness, but he was part of the adults’ dance now, too, and there was no escaping it.
After an hour or so the cypress swamp came to an end. Instead of trees there was a tangle of bushes and low scrub, much of it covered with creeper and strung with floating debris. Nick cut the motor for a moment, and the boat drifted in the sudden silence. “What is this?” Nick asked. “Is it somebody’s field?”
“If it’s a field, it’s overgrown,” Manon said.
“The current’s strong here,” Arlette said, looking over the bow. “Stronger than in the cypress swamp.” The boat spun lazily in the current. Arlette reached out with an oar, pushed the boat away from a tangle of scrub. “It’s a flood plain,” Nick said. “We’re in a flood plain.”
“We’re in the batture?” Manon asked, using the old Louisiana name for the country between the levee and the river. “That should mean we’re near the Mississippi.”
“I think we’re going the wrong way,” Nick said. “We’re in a—what’s the name?—floodway. The Corps of Engineers, or somebody, keeps this place clear of trees so that it can be flooded deliberately when the water gets too high. We’re being carried off into an area that’s been set aside intentionally as a place to store flood water.”
“I think that makes sense,” Jason said. Not that anyone cares what I think, he added to himself. Manon’s voice was uneasy. “Well,” she said, “this really doesn’t look like the Mississippi, what we can see of it. But what if we’re in a river, and the current’s taking us to the Mississippi?”
“That’s possible,” Nick said. “I’d rather not use any more fuel until we know for certain.”
“Nick,” Manon said, “I am so hungry. And Arlette hasn’t had any food since the day before yesterday.”
“I’m okay, Momma,” Arlette said. “I’m getting used to it.”
“We’ll know soon where we’re headed,” Nick said. “If this is taking us to the Mississippi, we’ll get there pretty quick. No mistaking the big river when we find it.”
“I hate to do nothing,” Manon said. “Just sit here and do nothing.” Her voice trailed off into the mist. The current lapped against the bass boat’s chine as it drew the boat into the pale unknown. Jason planted his oar on the deck and leaned his forehead against the smooth wooden haft. River water, trickling down the length of the oar, tracked its cooling path against his forehead. Suddenly Jason was very, very tired. He hadn’t really slept during last night’s rain, just drowsed against Arlette’s shoulder while the rain rattled on the plastic sheet overhead; and the previous night’s sleep on the metal foredeck had not been restful.
Jason lowered his oar to the casting deck, then sat on the deck. If nothing was going to happen, he might as well rest. He began to stretch out along the length of the deck.
“Wait, Jason,” Arlette said. She put down her oar and sat beside him, her legs crossed. “Put your head on my lap,” she said.
Jason felt suddenly awkward. He felt that he ought not to look at her parents, should not receive whatever signal their faces were sending. “Thank you,” he said. He shifted himself on the foredeck and put his head in Arlette’s lap, her crossed ankles below his neck. He looked up at her, saw an enigmatic Buddha smile on her inverted features.
“Comfortable?” she asked.
“Yes. Very.”
He closed his eyes. He felt the warmth of her bearing him up, a yielding touch of softness in the cool mist. The current rocked the boat lightly. For a moment Arlette’s fingertips brushed his cheek, and he inclined his head slightly, like a cat, to strop his jawline along her fingers.
His thoughts whirled into the warmth of Arlette, into the touch of her fingers, and then his thoughts flew away and were lost to time.
When Jason opened his eyes he saw Arlette, the silent smile still on her face as she bent over him, drowsing. Her fingers lay curled against his cheek. In a pocket of her shorts he could feel the little jewelry box that held the necklace her father had given her. Above her was the whiteness of the mist. The current still chuckled against the bass boat’s hull.
Without moving his head Jason looked left and right, and saw to his surprise that the mist had lifted slightly: it hovered about fifteen feet from the surface of the water, a perfect, featureless shroud of white that hung unbroken in the air, as if the world had simply dissolved into nothing a few feet over their heads. Jason looked at Arlette against the backdrop of white and for the first time observed the little scar that disrupted the perfect arch of her right eyebrow, the length and richness of the lashes laid against her brown cheeks, the way her eyelids pulsed to the dream-movement of the eyes beneath. Arlette must have sensed his scrutiny, because her eyes fluttered open. Jason watched the eyes as they sleepily focused on him, the mouth as the smile broadened.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” Her chin tilted as she looked up. “We can see a little,” she said. “Look.” He rose reluctantly from her lap, and Arlette straightened her cramped legs with a sigh. He saw that the boat was in a wide flooded channel, with a cypress swamp on one side and a line of cottonwoods on the other. The speed of the current had slowed, and the boat spun like an errant compass needle below the great sheet of mist above their heads.
Jason glanced at the other passengers. Nick was slouched in the cockpit, eyelids half-shut. Manon stood on the after-deck, gazing in silence at the great, dark, silent mass of water. She gave a sigh, her shoulders slumping. “I think you’re right, Nick,” she said. “We’re in the wrong place. This can’t be a real river.” Nick opened his drowsing eyes, straightened in his seat. “We can head the other way. But I’d rather wait till we’re absolutely sure before I use any more gas. I think we should just tie up to something till we can see the sun.”
He rose slowly from his seat and rolled his shoulders to take the kinks out of them. He turned to Arlette.
“Hand me that rope, honey.”
Arlette reached for the neatly bundled mooring rope, turned to hand it to her father, and then said, “Is that some kind of house?”
They all followed her pointing finger. There was a structure of some kind in one of the cottonwoods, a boxy-looking object that clearly had not been put there by Nature.
“Looks like a kid’s treehouse,” Nick said.
“Kids build treehouses near their real houses,” Manon said. A smile broke across her face. “I think we may be close to civilization here.”
“If civilization hasn’t been evacuated,” Nick said. He started the engine and motored across the flood. The object was in truth a treehouse, and a big one, a sort of split-level with two main rooms and a pitched roof of irregularly shaped, homemade wood shingles. The unpainted planks of the structure were green with age. Beneath, cross-pieces of wood had been nailed to the bole of the tree as a primitive ladder.
“Look!” Arlette said. “Power poles!”
As the boat neared the treeline, the passengers were able to see farther into the mist a little beyond the trees. The line of cottonwoods was narrow, and behind it was an embankment, or perhaps a levee. On the embankment two power poles stood with their heads crowned by mist. The lines between them had fallen, and another pole, farther down the line, leaned at an oblique angle, strands of wire hanging limp like the arms of a man in despair.