He looked back at the house, a dim shadow, the kitchen light off. Maggie was asleep there. The old bell had given the kitchen a certain marsh stink, from the odor coming out of the dirt on its surface. Maggie said that she was so tired she did not even care and had stumbled upstairs to where she had her sleeping bag. “My home with the squirrels,” she called it. It was still hot out in the night air. An insect of some kind flew by Frank’s right ear. He could hear its wings whirring as it swerved to miss his head. His skin was sticky in the heat.
He started towards the site. Not wanting to use a light, he walked the path from memory, toes feeling the way. As he came through the box bushes and walked into the area of the shipwreck, he could feel the air currents in the open space of the field. There was still not much light even from the stars and there was no moon. His eyes were becoming aware of shapes around him, lighted somewhat by the dim starlight. He decided to move slowly towards the riverbank. He knew from memory where the gridlines were located and passed beside them.
He saw a glint of the starlight off the pump engine on his right. He smiled. They’d start it first thing, try to get a little more water out. There might be time for a few more minutes of digging before the bulldozer started up. He reached the small riverbank. The tall reeds brushed against his bare skin, sharp against his feet. His foot snapped a small branch.
“Be quiet,” someone whispered to him from a few feet to his right.
Maggie. Frank knew the slight perfume she wore. Charlie Cong always said that his Viet Cong soldiers could smell out the Americans. They followed the trail of the deodorant, the stuff the GI’s bought at the Post Exchange by the gallon to keep their body odor down in the intense heat, the stuff they bought to impress the Red Cross nurses, because they did not bother to wear it for their Vietnamese girlfriends.
“What are you doing here, Maggie?” he whispered back.
“I walked down for a quick swim it was so hot. There’s something going on up at the bridge.”
“I heard a shot.”
“There were two.”
He moved toward her. The starlight twinkled on her body.
“I’m sorry. You don’t have any clothes on,” Frank whispered, moving back a step.
“I thought I was the only one out here,” Maggie replied. “Quiet. There’s something going on out there.”
Another shot was fired. The muzzle blast came from the island end of the bridge. The glare flashed over the bridge railings and through pinpoints of light into the river surface. Frank instinctively ducked down to a squatting position. He pulled Maggie’s left arm and she dropped down beside him in the cattails. He could sense the heat of her body next to his.
“Come on, let’s get closer to the bridge,” she said. She broke free from his grip and waded out into the river.
“Keep low, Maggie,” he whispered as he followed her, his heart beating. He was anxious to see what was going on but apprehensive, his legs wobbling slightly with his own fear and his increasing concern for Maggie’s safety. Maggie moved ahead of him, inquisitive, not showing yet any concern. Racing through Frank’s mind were bits of Vietnam memories like echoes of incoming explosives and screams of pain.
They waded slowly along the riverbank towards the bridge. They crouched as they moved, trying to hide, the dark water up to their waists. Halfway to the bridge they had to go out into the river to bypass several large fallen trees whose limbs had crashed together forming a convulsed mass of branches. Maggie threaded her way through the limbs first stepping up on a branch then moving to another closer one and then dropping quietly back into the sometimes shoulder high water. Frank did the same, his feet feeling for support among the wet wood, his eyes almost useless in the pitch black, his ears listening for the direction of Maggie’s tiny noises ahead. Too much noise and he knew they could be noticed by the person with the rifle on the looming bridge, noticed and fired upon.
Suddenly Frank missed a step and found himself underwater, his right hand searching in vain for a limb to grasp. His mouth filled with water. He resisted the urge to cough, to make noise, to draw attention to Maggie and himself there in that darkness. Then his hand found a rough branch and he pulled his head to the surface. Briars tore against his bare skin, ripping his shorts into fragments as he came up to the air. His feet moved against water trying to find any grip. Finally he was free of the last of the entwined jungle of old wood.
Maggie’s hand was there waiting for him. They moved ahead side by side, their bare bodies glistening with the wet of the river, like a modern Adam and Eve. The bottom changed to deep muck and it was hard for them to make quick progress. They were in waist high water several feet from shore. Frank had a new worry that the person on the bridge would see them, hear them, shine a light down and perhaps put them into the sights of the rifle. Frank could hear Maggie’s fast breathing, fear beginning to replace her impetuous curiosity. They held hands and, through the touch of each other, the trembling, Frank realized that they were foolish to be here, naked to the terror above.
The bottom of the river became their guide in the blackness, the muck interspersed with hard sand and oyster shells guiding their bare feet into the high reeds where they could rest and hide like the animals Frank knew were around them. Frank motioned Maggie to squat and they moved down into the reeds, wetness up to their chests, heads hidden in the tangle of the reeds and branches of overhanging trees. They waited in the darkness, in the silence.
Across from them the dim starlight reflected from the huge crane of the dredge barge, silent, hulking, strained out into the air at the middle of the channel, its cables still awry from the afternoon collapse. The massive pulley wheel of the top of the crane arm was directly opposite Frank and Maggie, its great sprocket silent, still, powerless.
Frank was aware of the closeness of her body. He sensed her complete trust in him, a total trust they had by chance achieved with each other, a complete reliance on each other in a moment of peril, a trust not unlike that of lovers. Their nakedness in this isolated place far enough away from danger yet close enough to be suddenly inescapably drawn into the conflict, gave them even more vulnerability, more than soldiers who went to war in armor. Yet, this was still the same absolute reliance soldiers had in each other. The memories came back of mortars coming in, waiting with his fellow soldiers in places of safety that were not safe, trusting them.
Frank smiled as he silently pushed away another mosquito. Maggie grinned back, the white of her teeth all he could really see in the black.
“Mosquito lover,” she whispered. “You’ve been around Birdey Pond too much.”
Maggie motioned to Frank to duck his bare skin into the river water every few minutes to keep the bugs away. She did the same.
The bridge was dark but they began to make out some shapes. The stoplight had apparently been turned off again. Its regular changing from green to red was not working and there was no light. Up on the bridge, about a hundred yards to the right of where Frank and Maggie were hidden in the reeds, were the shapes of four silent and halted automobiles and a pickup truck, looming as dark hulks pointed across towards the island and with the first car stopped at the middle of the bridge. There was a smell of burning rubber and a few sparks tumbling on to the roadway.
“There’s an electrical fire up there,” whispered Frank. He could feel Maggie nodding agreement in the darkness beside him. Another car arrived above them on the road before the bridge. Its headlights punched over the river water outlining the bridge with the beams of light. A thin wisp of smoke, reflected in the glare, could be seen drifting up from the engine compartment of the first stalled car at the middle of the bridge.
The lights played on the tree line across the river, reflecting off the tall evergreens and the leaves of the full oaks that grew untamed a few feet from the river. A willow drooped its fronds into the river lap. Light also glinted from the wrecked leaning steel of the crane, its dead square metal contrasting with the live curved trees, a scrimmage li
ne of opposites, the unnatural and the natural.
There was a flicker of red. Across the river they saw a small American flag draped from one of the Gothic window openings of the old church. In addition, at the end of the bridge on the island side the lights picked up a pile of small logs barricaded the road.
A voice roared out. “You got the River Sunday police patrol up here. You all stop before somebody gets themselves hurt. You put down them guns. We won’t hurt you none.” The voice droned out over the water.
A rifle shot answered. Automobile glass shattered and sprayed against the hard road surface. The light on the river surface dimmed. Another shot took out the other light with a second shattering of glass. The night was black again.
“Whoever he is, he took out those headlights,” whispered Maggie.
They could hear the angry voices. “What in hell happened here?” said one voice. Another voice answered, “Old Clemens there, he works for Jake Terment on the island. He was just going home to his house out there and somebody shot out his engine right up there in the center of the bridge. He stopped the car. There was a bullet right in the engine. It’s still smoking. Then the other cars got held up by him being stopped. He came back to talk to them and then there was another shot into his engine, and more sparks. Folks shut down their cars and ran back over here. Maybe we better call the fire department.”
“I ‘spect we can fix this car ourselves if we can just get this boy to set down his rifle. You think there might be more than one of them? We got the call from another car that turned around and came back into River Sunday. Tell you the honest truth I didn’t push it too much coming out here after all the trouble at the bridge already today. On top of that, did you hear that black preacher wrecked that old car of his?”
“Probably drinking wine, but ain’t nobody going to ask him for no breath test. All his church people would start complaining about discrimination.”
“You got that right. Goddamn shame, that car was a classic and worth something. I’ll just be glad when they got that old marsh all covered over.”
Another voice, “Nobody wants to walk out there and get shot at. Anybody tries to talk they just going to get shot at. Clemens he say he called out to the guy and that’s why he got the second shot into his car engine. He say he don’t want to try no more.”
“Nossir,” said an old black man in a white shirt and blue overalls and a rattled straw hat.
“What do you think we ought to do?” said one man, scared.
“I called for some backup,” replied the officer.
“How many do you think we are up against?” the scared voice said.
“Yeah, is it just one guy out there with a grudge against Clemens or is it something worse? Maybe some of those human butterflies,” said the officer. Frank had heard this voice before at the party. He was the fat deputy named Cheeks.
A man chuckled. “You mean the ‘butterfly butts.’ That’s what my wife calls them. No, they just walk around. They ain’t got no guts. You know what I think we got over there? Bunch of guys with some rifles, fooling, just rowdy. It’s a hot night that’s all.”
“I’m not planning on taking any chances. I radioed the Chief to ask for some help from the State Police.”
Two more cars drove up, their headlights whisking across the bridge, then there was darkness and the car doors slammed.
“Going to hell around here,” said the voice of Billy, the chief.
He said to Cheeks, “The boys over to Baltimore are sending me over a helicopter to scare these folks out of here.”
“Terment going to be mighty pissed, Billy.”
“Yes, he probably will be,” said the chief.
“These folks over there with that flag, they want trouble, they can have it,” said the scared man, becoming braver.” I got a rifle too, right behind the seat in my truck. It’ll shoot a man just as good as it’ll shoot a deer.”
“You stay out of it. One angry civilian with a rifle is enough for one night.”
“You boys better ask some of us pretty soon because I for one am getting pretty damn sick of these damn liberals,” said the man.
“OK. You just sit over there with the rest of the folks until we get some more information about all this,” said Billy.
A radio squawked. “Billy, that you boys down there, over?”
“You come on back, helicopter.”
“We’re gonna light up the bridge, over”
“That’s a 10 -4.”
“Approaching the bridge,” squawked the radio.
“You do your thing, over,” said Billy.
Frank heard the chop chop of the machine rushing up the Nanticoke River, its lights flashing first far distant then closer in the night. The water in from of the bridge began to ripple from the air currents. The wavelets began to splash against the reeds in front of him. He reached out his hand and took Maggie’s hand in his. She was trembling.
The machine rose up in the night right above the crane with a tremendous roar. The wind from the revolving blades smashed the water into large waves which crashed against the bridge supports. The water washed against Frank and Maggie. Still the machine was invisible except for its lights.
“He better watch out for that crane,” said Cheeks.
The radio crackled. “Billy, you didn’t tell us about that crane boom out in the water.”
“You watch yourselves, over,” replied Billy.
“Proceeding.” There was a popping noise and a white parachute flare opened and began its dainty descent into the stillness at the bridge. The water surface was dazzled. The piers of the bridge became huge forceful barriers with many shadows. The small flag flapped taut in the helicopter wind. On the far shore light ricocheted off the leaves and limbs of the large trees in an insane dance.
Frank remembered a night long ago at the start of Tet. His small team was outnumbered by masses of Viet Cong. He remembered shots and the padding noise of Vietnamese running in their sandals. He recalled the shadows where they hid inside a small chamber of the old once beautiful Buddhist temple. His team had fled with the loyal villagers into the temple to try to protect themselves from the onslaught of the Viet Cong attack. The enemy was everywhere, in the outer buildings, in the courtyard areas, in the other rooms of the building.
Then the American gunships began a counterattack. The rockets came into the temple. The American gunners did not realize Frank and his buddies were inside. They did not know that the villagers were there. The building began to collapse around them. The villagers died and his buddies cried out as the timbers crushed them. He heard Texas die, screaming, “Boston man, get me out of here.” There was another explosion, knocking Frank unconscious. Then he woke up, the crushed building all around. He was untouched, but once again all his friends were dead. In the blackness a shape was coming towards him, a furtive shape. He could see a glint of a rifle barrel held level. He assumed the person was the enemy.
Frank moved first, swiftly, stomping the rifle back into the man’s face. There was a grunt and the shape was still. Frank picked up the rifle. He saw a bloody face, that of a boy. He didn’t wait to see if the boy was dead. Then Frank escaped outside into the night air of the temple courtyard. Texas, Alaska, Philadelphia were all dead behind him. He was the only one to get out. Frank heard the familiar chorus again.
“we gotta get outta this place
we gotta get outta this place”
“You’re shivering, Frank.” Maggie put her left arm around his bare shoulder. He could feel her breast against his skin.
“It’s like Tet.”
“Yeah, they caught us with our pants down,” she tried to giggle, her teeth chattering instead.
The helicopter circled around behind the trees on the Island and then began another run at the bridge. Water splashed again on the piers of the bridge. Frank and Maggie were spattered with water and seaweed particles whipped from the river surface. They crouched lower, hoping to remain out of sight of the machine.<
br />
The helicopter pilot turned on his searchlight and the beam sprayed over the small flag and the simple pile of logs. Frank could see it was a small barricade, high enough to hide several men, but lightly built. None of the barricade logs were heavier than those that could be carried or dragged by one or two men at most. There was no sign of movement behind the barricade.
The helicopter moved along the island shoreline for a few minutes its light searching up the riverbank for any sign of the source of the rifle shots. Then it began the trip back toward the bridge.
Frank noticed the person in the scuba suit first and pulled on Maggie’s hand. Then he pointed to the person. They could see him under the bridge but he was out of sight of the police on top of the bridge and the officers up in the helicopter.
“Maybe we should warn them,” said Maggie.
“Keep low. If we stand up, we might get shot. They’re all trigger happy up there.”
They crouched lower and continued to watch as the person climbed up under the pier of the bridge until he reached a perch on one of the concrete slabs. The person brought out a rifle from a pack on his back . Before Frank or Maggie could decide what to do, the person fired. Frank recognized the crack of an M16.
The searchlight of the helicopter shattered, bits of the glass dropping, glittering in the waning light of the parachute flare. The helicopter roared its engine and lifted away. In another moment the flare reached the water’s surface and it too went out with a hissing sound. The river was again dark except for the blinking lights of the helicopter which was very high off the river in the distance.
“Damn,” Frank heard the chief yell.
The radio crackled, “Billy, you boys got too much action down there.”
“We got trouble all right, over.”
Slave Graves (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 1) Page 24
