“Well, Benet, I haven’t trusted you in years – and I still don’t – but you just said theah’s a hole out of here?” Pa was ready to get out.
We crawled for a couple of feet underground until we could stoop, then we could stand and carry Pa Campbell. Benet had a light on the hazmat suit that showed you a few inches in front of your face. I couldn’t believe this big cavern was under our feet the whole time we lived there. I could have stashed a million things down there.
Tony and Benet were up front with Pa Campbell. Tony held him under the arms. Pa would only let Benet hold down at his legs, and he watched him the whole time. I thought about the friends huggin’ in the picture up in that volcano. I reckon it was like a photo torn in the middle that couldn’t be put back together.
Well, by this time we’re all not doin’ so well, especially when we walked around a small underground pond and it bubbled with gas. We had to feel our way around it while carryin’ the old man.
It wasn’t easy, but right after that we could smell the smoke from above ground again. Soon we popped up into one of the dry shrimp ponds over at the Lam Lee Hahn side, about a hundred yards from where we went down the sinkhole. If you saw us, you’d high-tail it out of there, cos we were comin’ out of a hole in our funeral suits and Moms was wearin’ white.
Pa Campbell was babblin’ about the cave when Benet gave Moms the mask to put over her face. She gave it to Pa Campbell instead. Frico stopped for a second at the hole we’d just come up through. He flicked on the lighter and dropped it. With a whoosh, a tall column of blue fire leapt out of the hole like a genie. In a split second the flame sprayed out of the hole and then curled at the top like it was a wave. The base of the flame disappeared, leaving only a ball of pure blue fire hangin’ above Frico’s head. You could smell his hair singeing. Moms grabbed his shoulder, and he grinned. She was worried the flame gave away our position. We could see the old Ford truck through the trees. There was no sign of James and his gang.
We scrambled up the slope into the truck. Tony was in the driver’s seat. Ma and Pa were in the front with him. Moms flung in the wheelchair, and when we were all tumblin’ into the back of the truck, Tony, he just floored it and took off.
We saw Couyon and his thugs coming out of the mangroves and climbin’ up onto the road and runnin’ behind the truck. In the night, they looked evil in those hazmat suits, worse than O’pa, cos now they had guns out.
I could tell which one was Couyon. You couldn’t tell who any of the others were without seein’ their faces. They looked funny, like a bunch of vultures. It wasn’t a joke when they cranked those pistols, though. “Condition One” is a sick sound. Especially when you can hear it from afar – and cocked in a chorus. Everybody lay down in the back of the truck. Everybody ’cept Skid, who was still not on board.
As soon as I was climbin’ into the truck, Tony took off, and I had the scale model in my hand. So I couldn’t dive in, or I’d prob’ly crush the thing. So I’m runnin’ beside the truck, holdin’ the scale model with one hand while Couyon and his fools are behind us, and Tony is speedin’ up. All of a sudden, everybody has a goddamn suggestion, but I’m hardly hearin’ them above my heartbeat blowin’ up in my ears.
DOUG: Get in.
FRICO: Jump in, Skid.
I put the scale model in before me.
DOUG: Let it go.
MOMS: Let it go, Terence.
MA: Hold on, Skid.
PA: Hold on, Skid.
Then Frico, he just reaches over and knocks the scale model out of my hands. I’m lookin’ back at it tumblin’ and rollin’ behind us when Benet and Doug, they reach across and they lift me right up into the back of the truck like it was nothin’. Benet was holdin’ me weird, like he did with Broadway and Squash at the sinkhole, so I sort of wrestled myself away, but slowly. And he looked off, back at the fadin’ gang and that damn light winkin’ at the top of the drill rig. Then everythin’ was smoke. I was waitin’ for gunshots. I didn’t get why they didn’t shoot. Prob’ly because of his mother. Maybe there was an angel there. Or we were ridin’ with the Devil himself.
Moms was cryin’, Benet tried to touch her. She glared at him. I could hear his Rolex. I imagined them takin’ it off his hand when they laid us out like those alligators, if they’d caught us. Then Moms, from the back of the truck, she tapped on that rear cockpit window, and Ma slid it open.
“I need a cigarette.”
“ Last one,” Ma said.
“Yeah, last one.”
She covered it from the wind. It smelt like somethin’ roasting. The puffs were almost invisible ’cept for when it just escaped from her burnt lips.
Salt air dragged the cigarette smoke away. It pulled my top-knot, whipped my hair into a mop and dragged some tears out of the corners of my eyes. I looked off into the darkness that went on for ever. You could tell that there were animals out there in the thousands – I couldn’t see them, but I imagined most of them with folded wings, huddled together on branches. Crickets called after us the whole way, and somewhere along the dirt road, Frico reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of dirt. He put his hand over the side of the truck and let the wind take it from his open palm. He kept his hand out there for a long time, until all of the swamp dirt Doug had given him at the graveside was gone. Then I realized it took us twenty minutes to cross that crack on the map – twenty minutes. So I got suspicious, and when the strip of road finally ended and we burst into the orange lights of the city, I looked over at Frico for a long time. But he was now busy fiddlin’ with the back of the wood-and-glass frame that held the sketch of New O’lins. I saw him slide an envelope out from behind the sketch: Teesha’s birthday card. That was the new hidin’ place. The boy knew I’d been readin’ his stuff. Whatever. He put his back flat against the rear window and opened the card, holdin’ it firmly in the breeze. By the looks of it, he had gotten way past “Dear Teesha” – and every time we slipped under a street light, he wrote a bit more. I made out the last few lines:
...couldn’t think of what to get you for your birthday. It took me a while, but Skid helped me out. Just looked at it one last time. It’s a big surprise. I can only tell you that it has birds all over it. Lots and lots of birds.
You will love the birds.
Then, when I looked over at the map for the first time since the competition – I mean really looked at it – it hit me like a brick. One inch equals just over a mile and a half in real life. I could measure it even without a ruler. That boy Frico Beaumont had moved the crack on the map. He hadn’t taken it out like I thought he would: he’d moved it. And not even forward into the swamp, but backwards. By more than ten minutes, I reckoned. The bastard. Matter of fact, it’s best to say he extended it. Now it was wider and longer and stretched into New O’lins. A whole new place in Louisiana where birds and the fish and gators could start again and maybe even the annoyin’ swamp rats would have somewhere to stay. As far as Frico was concerned, the city wasn’t broken in the Seventies: the swamp was. So he fixed it. As best he could. And made a wildlife refuge for his girlfriend. Neat idea. She’d love it. She was a strange bird herself, no lie.
And me? Maan, I was pissed and proud at the same time. The guy’s a genius. You can’t beat a genius. So I just sat back and listened to Benet’s Rolex and watched the highway rollin’ away like a black carpet behind us. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him, beside me, Frico Beaumont, my brother, sketchin’ the swamp back into the city.
Sketcher Page 25
