Sketcher

by Roland Watson-Grant

  Anyway, I couldn’t wait to get back to the swamp, even though those big-boned Mississippi Valley girls at the funeral made me want to hang around for a coupla days. I could bathe in their muddy drawl and listen to their bracelets rattle all day, no lie. And they smelt so good. It was a little annoyin’ how they kept sayin’ “Who dat? Where yat?” like they thought all people from Louisiana speak that way. I wished my San Taino patois was up to par so I could confuse them. They grilled some serious sirloin, and fed us and asked about our topknots and the dirt-pourin’ and what not, and wanted to stay “in touch”. But look, you really shouldn’t encourage the women you meet at family gatherin’s. And if I have to explain why, then maybe you shouldn’t be invited to family functions in the first place.

  More importantly, it had been eight or nine days since I ran into L-Island like a madman. All that time the machines were out there at the crack on the map, workin’. I was anxious to see what was happenin’ and, out of habit, I got the urge to call a conference about it. Then I realized that the life of conferences and callin’ up the crew was a long time and one funeral ago.

  The changes happened fast. We moved out of L-Island early durin’ those eight or nine days. I turned sixteen the same week. It was September Nineteen Eighty-nine. Tall Horse had an apartment on – of all places – Hayne Boulevard, and he said he’d rent it to us. Oh man. You shoulda seen Moms just shakin’ her head and lookin’ around and smilin’ real sad when she walked into that place, twenty-one years late. We left Ma and Pa Campbell in the swamp, but they had arranged for their people from Arizona to get there around the time we came back from the funeral.

  When I woke up, the rain had stopped and the car was crunchin’ gravel. Only Doug and Tony stayed awake the whole way. A song was stuck in my head from listenin’ to Tony’s music the whole way. You know when you wake up and it’s only one line that keeps goin’ and goin’ and you can’t stop it? Well, the way to stop that is, you’ve got to conjure up that cassette player in your head and see yourself pushing that imaginary stop button. Or just imagine yourself smashin’ the damn thing. That’s how I stop it. Anyways, I rubbed my eyes and realized we were not on Hayne Boulevard. Instead, we were headin’ into the swamp.

  “Momma left somethin’ back there,” Tony said, lookin’ all around.

  I tried to see where we were, and I couldn’t tell if we had passed where that overpass used to be or not. I looked for any sign of the machines. They were gone. All they left us was empty pink sky and New O’lins in the haze behind us, but I couldn’t tell the distance with no overpass to mark it with. Nothing remained: no excavator, dump truck, nothin’: just a great, big, gapin’ hole – a wide canal that stretched in every direction and never ended until we got into the L-Island. And in that wide-open, empty wilderness there was nothing but water grasses and marsh and new water wellin’ up like blood in a fresh bruise. Oh, and birds. Waves and waves of egrets and blackbirds and waterfowls – by the hundreds – not flyin’ home, but pickin’ up after the machines, feedin’ and settlin’ into trees I hadn’t noticed before. I was confused. Maybe at that very moment the machines were headin’ back. You just don’t leave a wide trench open for miles. I looked across at Frico: he was asleep and snorin’.

  Then way ahead, we saw the smoke. L-Island was burnin’. Not blazin’, really, but smoulderin’ in the sunset. We could smell it. Smoke hung in the trees – and you could see the glow of fire without bein’ able to tell where it was started from.

  Moms woke everybody up and told Tony to be careful as we ended the ribbon of road that now had more marsh on both sides. Ma and Pa Campbell – we all thought of them at the same time. Or maybe it was because Pa’s old truck was abandoned at the side of the road and his wheelchair was turned over on its side, in a ditch. Moms started chanting. The truck keys were still in the ignition, but those two old people were nowhere to be seen. A wind came through from behind us and just up ahead, the smoke rolled away and we saw it – a drillin’ rig: fluorescent lights all over the tower like a multi-eyed monster. The rig was on the exact same spot where the Benet house used to be. All around it, there were more contraptions inside the chain-link fence.

  Well, that whole thing just looked like an overnight growth of steel forest standin’ tall and strange in the smoke and mist – or the deck of some invadin’ ship that brought the fire into the swamp. One light blinked on top of the tower, as if the rig was waitin’ for orders. Bushes had been cleared away, so a reflective sign glowed in the Honda headlights. At the top of the sign was that little green logo from the TV infomercial.

  Tony spoke up, so soft it scared you.

  “That’s a natural-gas drillin’ rig. But there’s no one anywhere.”

  “Don’t get out.”

  We didn’t need Valerie Beaumont to tell us that.

  We turned at the train tracks into L-Island. Tony cut the engine. As soon as the car had rolled down the slope, he flicked on the high beams, and those car lights showed you a place that would make you gasp for more reasons than the smoke in your lungs. “Desolate” is the word. No sound ’cept for the tyres in the dry riverbed, one weakened cricket and the broken creek pourin’ into the earth. Smoke everywhere. In the distance, the Campbells’ house had no lights in it, and the crab crawl – the shack we used to live in – leant forward into the dead pond that was now really a big puddle. Dead alligators were on their backs in the mud. They were swollen and looked like cylinders you could roll around. I was halfway through lookin’ for my father’s bones out there in the pond before I realized that I had been doing that for weeks. As the water level fell, I’d climb into the tamarind tree, lookin’ into the pond for bones or clothes, relieved to see nothin’ but the rusty tin roof toasted by time. In the smoke now, on the surface of the dark water, orange and blue flames appeared and vanished like mischievous spirits. This was hell.

  Jerusalem. Jerusalem.

  “More like methane, Momma. That gas has been comin’ up from underground this whole time. Let’s go.”

  “Hell, no. Not until we know where those old people are. Doug, you stay with Skid and Frico. Roll those windows up. Tony, come with me.”

  They walked in the beams from the headlights until they disappeared at the turn of the L. So, I’m there thinkin’ we needed a knife or a rifle or a sketch pad and a pencil for protection. But Doug and Frico, they’re fascinated. They were sittin’ there, reminiscin’ about a tyre swing we used to have on the tamarind tree that swung you out over the water and back in – and you should try not to fall in with the gators.

  That’s when I turned to see, by those ghost lights on the rig, that our tamarind tree was uprooted, chopped up and hauled away, maybe for firewood. Only the tangled roots of it lay exposed above the dirt, half on the bank, half in the pond, the wood white and the last of the fruits cracked and scattered here and there. There were more trees flung down, or stampeded through, like somethin’ large had come in and forced itself on the place. All that was not broken was beaten down or limp and still flappin’ in the wind. And the piano started in my head again. It swelled up into a big ol’ church organ that was holdin’ a high note at the end of a stanza, but there was no chorus comin’.

  Twenty-Eight

  We had left one dog, the scale model Frico built and the second-place map of “New Orleans 2020” in the swamp. The scale model and the map were right where Moms had hung them in the Campbells’ house. She forgot them cos she was so focused on those boxes she packed that night after that little squabble with Pa Campbell. Anyway, when Moms and Tony got to the house in the dark, the dog had disappeared and the house was fresh on fire: the source of all the smoke.

  Later Tony said Moms just walked into the fire like she belonged in it. She called out for Eleanor and Lobo Campbell a couple times. Only a cracklin’ fire responded. He said she grabbed the scale model and the map off the wall and walked out like it had been cool in there, and there was no soot on her white dress and head wrap. Then, when they were hurryi
n’ back past the crab crawl, they saw a doused fire and heard voices. Inside the crab crawl, five men had their hands tied behind them. They’d been stripped down to their boxers and had cloth bags over their faces.

  Moms and Tony climbed down into the house and tried to free these guys. When they pulled the cloth bag off one guy, they saw that his mouth and nose were covered with a strip of cloth. Soon as they tried to talk to him, he shook his head and looked wild in his eyes and pointed with his face tellin’ them to get out, get out now. Well, Moms decided that it was all too weird, and she’d get the hell out and alert the cops as soon as we got back into the city. She was still worried about Ma and Pa, but Tony said she just grabbed his arm and said: “We’re leavin’ now and never settin’ foot here again.”

  So, meanwhile, we’re sittin’ in the car keepin’ our eyes peeled for Moms and Tony, and we’re relieved when they appear in the headlights again, walkin’ fast from the bend with the scale model and the map in their hands. The smoke, it gets thicker and starts driftin’ across the path.

  Now, I gotta tell you, that nauseous, drownin’ feelin’ Suzy Wilson had? Well, we all felt that way, heavy, even though we rolled up all the windows like Moms said. So, at first I thought it was the methane messin’ with my head, but then suddenly Doug and Frico, they saw the same thing I saw at the same time I saw it, and in a chorus we all yelled out the first four-letter word we could find on short notice.

  “Tony!”

  Someone – no, something – had crossed through the headlights right in front of the car. That boy needed to get in the car and move it right quick.

  “Did you see that?”

  Doug was not keepin’ his usual cool, and Frico was halfway out the car door. I didn’t blame them. If you saw what we saw in the darkness and the smoke you’d wet yourself whether you had powers or not.

  Op’a.

  Human form – six feet tall – no face to speak of – vulture skull – big ol’ glassy eyes shinin’ – a beak that rounded out into a snout – hunchback – walkin’ machine-like – leather skin like a bat’s wing and jet-black from head to foot. Turned his whole head at the last second to look at us – dead expression – the car lights reflectin’ off both of his eyes – before he slipped away into the curlin’ smoke.

  Tony and Moms walked up. They might as well have been runnin’. They had their hands over their noses. Anyway, Frico, he gets back in the car, and we’re chattin’ like crazy all at once about the spirit. We’re not makin’ sense.

  Moms turns to us and chucks the map and the scale model into our laps.

  “One at a time!”

  Then she cuts us off with instructions to Tony on how to drive like hell and cussin’ about five half-naked men in the crab crawl. Great, we got spirits collectin’ navels and faces and Tony can’t start the damn Corolla quick enough. He dips the headlights and we’re reversin’ out of hell when Op’a, two of them now, appear in the rearview. We look around and they’re standin’ side by side in the dry river bed beside the footbridge, waitin’.

  “ Floor it!” Doug shouts.

  He doesn’t floor it. In fact, he put the brakes on. Yes, Tony stops the goddamn car, addin’ dust to smoke and darkness and gas. Now, Tony is gettin’ out of the car – Moms is pullin’ him back in – Doug is tryin’ to get into the driver’s seat. Hell, we’re all tryin’ to get into the driver’s seat.

  Suddenly voices are all around us, speakin’ in bubbles or from the spirit world. Moms steps out the car and starts walkin’ toward the Op’a, hands to the sky, callin’ on the Lord. Tony takes his chances with the woods. We can’t believe he ran away and left his mother. We grab the stuff and get out the car, collect Moms, and we all follow Tony high-tailin’ it into the trees. I’m at the goddamn front, no lie. We’re safely under the trees when Ma Campbell – yes, Ma Campbell – she appears out of thin air, I swear. Now, that old woman is standin’ up straight, floatin’ on the surface of the damn creek. This is a nightmare.

  “Psst. Skid!”

  Short, old, dead woman callin’ your name in the swamp. Run the other way.

  My whole family keeps movin’ towards the spirit of Ma Campbell standin’ on water. They drag me and the stuff in my hands along with them. But I’m still pointed in the other direction, believe me.

  I turn around, and Ma Campbell is actually hoverin’ above the hole where Herbert and Orville went to hell. That’s even worse. I knew Ma was headed to hell from that hush-puppy-fryin’ incident. My hair is standin’ on end like a blowdryer’s goin’ through it by the time we get right up to this woman floatin’ above a hole in the earth – the same hole Moms made us swear never to go near again.

  Well, Moms, I thought she had no interest in talkin’ to the dead. But she’s askin’ Ma Campbell’s spirit all these questions – meanwhile Op’a are appearin’ from behind cypresses, mumblin’. One charges towards us. I cover my navel. Frico swings around. He’s got his camera hangin’ round his neck. The Op’a is closin’ in, and my brother, he’s straight shootin’ with his camera, poppin’ the fluorescent flash all over the place, lightin’ up those suckers rapid-fire. You should see spirits duckin’ into bushes and gettin’ back behind trees to escape the light. By the time my pupils get readjusted from all that flashin’, I realize that only Fricozoid and me are standin’ at the creek.

  A hand reached out of the hole and grabbed my foot. I screamed like a girl. But it was Moms’ hand. They all went down into that goddamn hole. She’s pullin’, Frico’s pushin’, and I fall into hell with them. When they finally get me down in there, it wasn’t all that bad. It was a cave, man, a cave. That sinkhole had opened up into underground caverns. Frico’s lighter came out. Tony said with all the gas around that’s a bad idea. He started blabbin’ about limestone caves and groundwater in Louisiana and the fallin’-away of the rock caused by frackin’.

  We were sittin’ on a rocky ledge, and the creek was pouring past us down into the darkness of the earth. Behind us someone groaned. My breath got stuck in my neck, but it was good ol’ Pa Campbell lyin’ there on a limestone ledge, shakin’ and coughin’ his head off. Ghosts can’t cry, so I was happy when Ma Campbell burst into tears in the pitch black.

  “Valerie, it was horrible. Lobo got wet. We saw all these people come and set up overnight – and they were frackin’, and the earth was shakin’ and – oh, Lord – suddenly there were gunshots and voices comin’ around the bend. They set our house on fire and we ran out the back. I was pushin’ Lobo in the wheelchair when we saw them roundin’ up the frackin’ men. They stripped them and ordered them into the crab crawl. We got in the truck and got as far as up the road before Lobo’s chair fell out the back of the truck and I stopped to pick it up. Then, when they started comin’ up the train tracks, we just pretty much crawled into the mangroves and found we could slide down in here.”

  “Who was doin’ this, Ma?” Moms’ voice in the dark.

  “Couyon!” Pa Campbell’s voice jumped in. “He’s back” – cough – “him and his goddamn goons attacked the men over at that drill rig. The tower appeared overnight and he was in heah snoopin’ around with his punks by noon the next day, for godssake!” – Cough. Cough. – “Now they’re tryin’ ta take over somethin’ they don’t know jack about. Somethin’ that was illegal in the first place!”

  “Calm down, Lobo.”

  “Go calm your son down, I told you a’ready Ellie.”

  The lighter comes on again. Tony is holdin’ it – against his own common sense. He just had to get a word in.

  “That drillin’ is illegal?”

  “Yep... Yew all... better believe it.”

  We all jumped, cos that answer came out of the darkness deeper in the cave. A voice echoin’ from another dimension or somethin’. Frico’s lighter went on again. A vulture skull, shinin’ eyes and a snout pushed out of the darkness, right beside us.

  Pa Campbell threw a shaky punch at the thing. The creature grabbed the old man’s arm and dragged him away into
the darkness. You could still hear it talkin’.

  “Yew... heard your waaf. Take it easy... Lobo. All of yew.”

  Familiar voice. This was Broadway’s Op’a, for godssake. We were screwed.

  Everybody held back. But then Pa pushes back out of the darkness with a big leathery arm around his neck followed by Backhoe Benet’s face. The ugly O’pa face was now in his hand – and a green logo was on his chest.

  “Gas mask. Oil-company hazmat suit. Thought so.” Tony took less than ten words to destroy the O’pa.

  Backhoe Benet let Pa go and rearranged himself in the cave. The leathery suit squeaked.

  “I told yew, Valerie. It was time to go. I sold this place... a little while back. Then the people... the company that... bought it... said they’d work somethin’ out with the occupants.”

  “Well, they sure did.”

  “Anyways, after they acquired it... they heard that the State wanted to turn this whole stretch into conservation lands. Well, from experience... I know there warn’t much gas under here to speak of, but the company, they thought the opposite... so they came in and started without any preparation and after just a few tests. Matter of fact, the deal hadn’t even been sealed yet when they started.”

  “So... you just happened to turn up here today, Cap’n?” Cough.

  “I came ta see for maself if they’d gone ahead with... frackin’ the place. People been complainin’... for months on the east side of the swamp. I’m partly to blame. Now they’re right here in the west. When I got here t’day, the company’s men were in these gas masks and suits... cos of the methane in the air... and the frackin’ chemicals they been floodin’ the damn place with. Well... I got here just in time to see James Jackson ambushin’ the whole operation and takin’ the suits. I hid in a company truck and put one on. Was the best way to hide. Soon as I could, I went down a hole before he could count his gang members again. Crawled on my belly and found myself here.”