“Let’s get these people to the camp,” the younger deputy said. “They can listen to the news there.” He had a flat Northern voice that sounded a harsh contrast to the Southern speech Jason had been hearing for weeks.
The uniformed deputy hesitated. “Maybe we can take them to the camp in town,” he said. The younger man just scowled. “There’s sickness in that camp. These people need to go to the other camp.” He nodded at Nick and Manon. “They belong there. You know that.”
“I guess.” Jason could hear reluctance in the voice of the uniformed deputy. Jason looked from one deputy to the other. He didn’t know what he was sensing between the two, but he knew he didn’t like the vibe.
“Take us to a hotel,” Manon said. “I have a credit card. We can pay for hospitality.”
“No hotels in this parish, ma’am,” the uniformed deputy said. “Not in years. Sorry.”
“Boardinghouse?”
“Full up since the quake.”
“Perhaps we should talk to the district attorney,” Nick said. “We can provide evidence about what was happening at Rails Bluff.”
“Got to get you registered at the camp first,” the younger deputy said. “I’ll radio for a truck,” he added, and ducked into the car.
The uniformed deputy looked at Jason for a moment. “We could take the boy to another camp,” he ventured. “A camp for—for young folks.”
Jason looked at Arlette. “Can my friend come with me?”
“I’m afraid not, son. It’s for, uh, boys only.”
Jason turned to the deputy. “I’m staying with my friends,” he said. The fat deputy gave him a strange look. Jason could feel a warning chill run up his spine. “I really think you’d like this other place better,” the deputy said.
Jason decided that he would not go anywhere with this man. He took a step closer to Nick. “I’m sticking with my friends,” he repeated.
The deputy just stared at him for a long moment, then said, “Fine. Your choice.” The other deputy left the car and spoke to his partner, without even looking at Jason or his party. “The camp’s sending a truck.”
There was a long moment of silence. The silent mist hovered about them, sealing off the rest of the world. Jason looked at Nick, at the others, and drew away from the sheriff’s deputies. Nick and the others fell back a few paces as well.
“What’s happening here?” Jason said in an urgent whisper.
Nick looked over his shoulder at the silent deputies standing by their car. The two men stared back, and Jason thought of the black-eyed cormorants sitting above the flood. “I don’t know,” Nick said. “Maybe they’re sick of refugees here.”
“That’s not what it is.” Manon stood stiffly, spine straight, chin tilted up, and touched Arlette’s back.
“Cracker cops,” she said. “They don’t like black people, that’s all. Especially educated, well-spoken black people.” She turned to Arlette. “Souviens-toi qui tu es. Ces gents ne peuvent pas emporter ton amour-propre.”
Nick rubbed the healed wound on his left arm, the wound which—Jason suddenly remembered—had been inflicted by a deranged cop. “There’s more to it than that,” Nick said. “There’s something they’re not telling us.”
Jason shared Nick’s suspicion. “This reminds me of Rails Bluff,” he said. “Maybe we should just get in our boat and head back down the river.”
“Not without food,” Manon said.
Nick considered this. “Maybe we can just buy some food.”
These speculations were still unresolved when another vehicle appeared from the mist, a small white Toyota pickup truck. Two more men got out, both with deputies’ badges worn over civilian dress. Neither of them smiled, not even at the other deputies.
“We’re here to take you to the camp,” one of them said. “You-all got any more belongings than what you got with you?”
Manon walked toward them, head held high. “Not really,” she said.
“Where’s y’all’s boat?”
“We were wondering if we could just buy food,” Manon said. “Then we’d get back on our boat and head downriver to where we’ve got family.”
There was a glimmer of interest in the deputy’s eyes. “You got anything to buy food with?” he asked.
“A credit card,” Manon said.
The deputy lost interest. “Nobody’s taking credit cards. Cash or nothing.”
“I’ve got cash,” Nick said. A hundred and twenty-some dollars that had been sitting in his pocket since before the quake. “If you can take us to where the food is.”
The deputy hesitated. “We can buy the food for you,” he said.
Nick shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. There was some kind of racket here, police selling the refugees their rations, and he wasn’t having any part of it.
The deputy gestured toward the truck. “Get in back. There’s food in the camp.”
“We’re really not interested in going to this camp. Can you just take us to Shelburne City? We’ll get along fine once we get to town. We’re not destitute.”
The deputies looked at each other. One of them shrugged. “Why not?” he said. “Get on in.” Jason felt a decided reluctance to get in the Toyota. The situation was too strange: the highway elevated above the flood, the mist that masked the world, the uncommunicative deputies, the attempt to separate him from Nick and his family, so reminiscent of Frankland putting him in the young men’s camp… But his objections were unclear, even to himself, and so he found himself following the others, getting in the back of the truck.
Rainwater sloshed around in the bed of the Toyota. Jason perched uneasily, with the others, on the sides of the truck bed. Jason noticed a shotgun and a rifle in the rear-window rack in the truck cab. The truck turned around and began moving slowly toward Shelburne City. As they moved farther into the country, the land on the right slowly rose and emerged from the flood, rows of immature cotton plants in red soil, the furrows silver with water. The highway left the levee top and continued into the country. Broad puddles shimmered on the blacktop. A few buildings appeared. Unlike Rails Bluff, where every building had been wrecked, the quakes here seemed to have left the buildings largely intact—windows and chimneys were gone, and shingles had been lost, but for the most part the homes seemed to have survived without major damage. Only some outbuildings, mostly ramshackle old barns, seemed to have collapsed altogether.
The truck slowed as it approached a roadblock, two vehicles drawn across the road with only a narrow space between them. A handful of deputies stood there, mostly in civilian dress or bits of military surplus, and they waved the Toyota through. The truck picked up speed as it drove down the highway, past a highway verge cluttered with abandoned vehicles, and then the Toyota swung suddenly across the highway toward the chainlink-and-razorwire fence that loomed behind the abandoned cars, and splashed and bounced across drowned ruts to the gate.
There was a somber refugee camp beyond the fence.
Huddled miserably beneath the low sky were scattered a strange collection of tents, awnings, and primitive wagons—cotton wagons, Jason recognized, cotton wagons with open sides of wire netting, and with canvas or plastic stretched on top to make dwellings.
Jason was shocked. The contrast with Frankland’s orderly camp left him appalled. The truck slouched to a halt in front of the gate, where another pair of deputies waited, both with shotguns couched in their arms. People—black people—watched listlessly from behind tent flaps, through the wire netting of the cotton wagons, from beneath blankets or sleeping bags tented over their heads and shoulders.