by Rhodi Hawk
“Hell no she ain’t herself! She always a crab, but not like this!”
Madeleine said, “Shh, you need to keep your voice down. It’s not safe. Listen. You’re coming to stay with us for a while. OK?”
Bo fell silent. The rain had plastered Madeleine’s hair into her ear canal and made it itch. She flicked it away with her little finger.
“Come on now, Bo. We should hurry.”
“Awright, I’m comin out.”
She waited, her stomach tightening. She looked down at the knife in her hands, but could only see it when she turned the blade so that it caught a reflection of light. It felt obscene. And with Bo drawing nearer …
If Zenon was up there with Mare and Ethan, he was probably about to come looking for Madeleine or Bo any second now. No telling what Ethan was doing to keep him occupied. Madeleine could hear Bo moving toward her, clicking, shuffling. It seemed to be taking an awfully long time. Her eyes were wide and sightless. She closed them and listened.
Bo cried out.
“What’s the matter?” Madeleine whispered.
“I can’t get out.”
“Why don’t you come out the way you went in?”
“The water filled up over there and now I—I think I’m stuck.”
“What do you mean, stuck?”
“I can’t move! And something’s cuttin on me!”
“Hang on,” Madeleine said.
She turned and ran to the porch steps but stopped short, looking up at Ethan’s silhouette. His posture was clearly tense. Combative, even. She turned away and rushed instead to the car and threw open the door. A thin flashlight was tucked inside the glove box. She took it and placed the knife inside, grateful to be rid of it, and slammed the glove box shut. She ran back to the trailer.
The flashlight beam was strong for such a small light. (Good old Ethan—a man of fresh batteries.) She ran it along the trailer’s underbelly. There were pipes and wheels and cinder blocks, and old wooden pallets shrouded in cobwebs thick enough to crochet an afghan.
“Bo, wave your hand or something. I can’t find you.”
The beam reflected against the broad side of what looked like a discarded minifridge. He clicked, and then she saw him. The pads of his waving fingers caught in the beam just under the living room where Mare and Ethan were. Bo lay face down under a tangle of pipes. She couldn’t tell what had snagged him but he looked extremely uncomfortable, his back bowed and his neck straining. The flashlight beam caught under the hoods of his empty eyes.
He was only ten feet away, but it was ten feet of a mouse maze. Not a place Madeleine cared to go crawling around in.
“I’m coming, sweetie.” She said it as much to reassure him as to commit herself to the task.
twenty-six
NEW ORLEANS, NOW
SHE WENT DOWN ON her back and shoved herself under the trailer. Her body wriggled head-first between the minifridge and a wooden crate, her flashlight carving a path through the cobwebs. The older ones dislodged in weightless drifts and settled over her cheek.
“It hurts,” Bo whispered.
“I’m almost there.”
He click, click, clicked. She rolled over to climb across a cracked plastic step stool that didn’t seem sturdy enough to support her weight, so she had to scrunch up and throw her legs wide. For all the blockages and hurtles, the distance from Bo to the edge of the trailer had easily gone from ten feet to thirty. Something skittered over her flashlight hand and she shook it wildly. In the erratic beam, she could see where the rains had pooled on the far side of where Bo lay, a French drain that allowed water to run off away from the trailer. It must have been where he’d come in.
No sitting up. Madeleine had to stay in a crawl on her back or belly. She moved as fast as she could on her elbows.
“Doc LB,” Bo said.
“Yeah.”
“If I live don’t tell my mom I said the H word, OK?”
“Shh, honey, be quiet.”
And then she was at Bo’s side. The belt loop of his pants was snagged on a metal fitting. She reached for it and immediately knocked her head, hard. She sucked air between her teeth.
Somewhere above were Ethan, Mare, and Zenon. Surely they heard that bang beneath their feet.
Her hand went to the pain at her forehead. She could see clearly now. The flashlight beam had been joined by a misty glow. Briar light. It had ridden in on the sudden rush of pain in her head. Severin was rising from the drain so that just her eyes were above water, and her hair was fanned out and floating. Water was fountaining from behind her.
Madeleine grabbed the belt loop and whispered, “We have to be silent and fast, OK?”
“Yes ma’am.” Bo said.
She tugged. His belt loop wouldn’t unhook itself. His shirt was torn and she could see a bloody welt along his lower back. Whenever he moved the fitting gouged his skin. She covered the wound with his shirt, feeling him wince under her, and gave a forceful pull. The fitting now gouged her own hand but Bo’s back was protected. The belt loop snapped.
“Come on,” she whispered.
She guided him toward her, but the pain at his back prevented him from scooting the rest of the way under the pipes. She had to go around, picking over foul-smelling dust where something had nested, until she got to the same side of the pipes as Bo. She reached under his arm.
Severin was laughing from the other side. “Ah, to please, a nice drowning maze!”
Madeleine turned to see her lift herself completely from the drain, and behind her came a torrent of water. Severin’s nude, gray, little girl’s body looked like that of a butterfly whose wings were made of water. The wake surged forward.
Madeleine launched her wrists under Bo’s armpits and dragged him two feet in the direction from which she came. But no way were they going to make it low-crawling through that same convoluted path with the flood surge. Water swirled, turbulent and frothing.
Zenon’s voice came from above: “Now or never, Sis.”
Breathing in heavy gulps, she turned her head toward the sound.
He was overhead. His upper torso on the underside of the trailer while his legs were still in the living room. River devil style. As though he were leaning into a swimming pool.
Madeleine looked down at Bo, thrashing in her arms. His head was twisted around and he was clicking like mad. Clicking in the direction of Zenon.
The water rose. Bo was struggling against her now, trying to get a foothold. She gripped him. In her mind’s eye she saw herself as a wolf spider with a cricket. Oh, the briar, it brought forth such a taste for hunting.
That’s not what this is!
The flashlight had gone down and cast an underwater shard of light, illuminating the sand and silt so that it looked like dancing sprites. And then the light went out. The water was already to their necks.
If Madeleine didn’t drown the boy, Severin would; and if neither of them succeeded Zenon was sure to find a way.
Madeleine clamped her arms around Bo’s chest and whispered into his ear, “You’ve got to trust me.”
He lessened his struggle, trembling in her arms.
She whispered, “One deep breath.”
His face contorted into a grimace of fear but he obeyed her. He drew a great big lungful. And then Madeleine dragged him down under the water’s surface.
All sounds reduced. She held tight while the water rushed around them. Objects were surging by—wood, metal, glass. Her arms encircled his narrow shoulders and her hands were fixed squarely over his heart. She felt its rapid beat. Heard her own blood rushing in her ears. His body tensed, and she could tell he was on the verge of panic.
She wished she could tell him to stay calm. She wanted to say, “You won’t need to breathe for a long while if you just listen to what your body is telling you.”
But she couldn’t say these things. She could only grip him, and impart the gift that Zenon had imparted to her.
Madeleine reached down and grabbed his fis
t. She’d never learned much sign language, but she did know the alphabet. She shoved her hand inside his fist and signed, “s-t-a-y.”
His body relaxed a fraction. He moved his hand around to her fist and though she found it difficult to interpret the sign by touch alone, it seemed like he was signing back, “o-k.” She nodded over his shoulder.
She realized that Severin was there. Right in front of them. Though Madeleine’s eyes were closed against the unclean water, she could see the river devil as plainly as though she were gazing into an ugly aquarium.
Severin said, “To kill him now, it will not sting. Not for you. Not for this lumen.”
Madeleine replied only, “Go to sleep.”
“You delay!”
Madeleine sang to her from the voice inside her mind:
Away, away, John Carrion Crow,
Your master hath enough.
Down in the barley he hoes, you go.
Away with you, John Carrion Crow.
Severin did not reply, but she was listening. Madeleine continued:
One for the pigeon,
Two for the crow,
Three to rot,
Four is too slow,
Five …
Six …
Seven …
Severin looked sleepy. Her visage in the water dimmed.
Nineteen …
Twenty …
And then Severin was gone. Madeleine kept counting.
* * *
THE WATER AND DEBRIS churned around them in a micro-maelstrom. The trailer creaked ominously. And then, silence again. Nothing but the blood rush in her ears. She kept counting. They remained where they were, clutched and curled, Madeleine’s hand over Bo’s heart to reassure herself of his stout, steady heartbeat.
When the count reached four hundred, Madeleine signed into Bo’s hand, “p-l-a-y d-e-a-d.”
He gave her the OK sign.
She lifted her head above the surface, her hand on Bo’s shoulder to remind him to stay put. Above, the briar mist had receded. All was so very black once again.
All except Zenon, who was staring at her with a river devil’s glow. “You’re good and tainted by that lumen, but it’ll wear off. They still carry the glow a while after they die.”
She looked down at herself, but then realized Zenon was playing something of a trick: To see the lumen glow, she’d have to recede a step into the briar. That was the state of mind Zenon had probably maintained for years—carrying a river devil backdrop with him wherever he went—and it probably was the reason he kept fully, sanely cognizant.
He gave her a wan smile. “So. How does it feel?”
She clenched her jaw and didn’t answer, instead looking back to where the drain had fountained with overflow runoff. All black but for the occasional glimmer. No sign of Severin.
Zenon said, “You did what you had to. Move on.”
Madeleine said, “I’m fine, Zenon.”
“Alright then. Welcome to Team Predator.”
She looked at him, furious, her hand still on Bo’s shoulder beneath the surface.
Zenon said, “Quit lookin like you been wronged. You can pretend it’s all my doing, if it makes you feel better. Truth is, little sister, I’m doing you a favor. You didn’t even know that lumen kid. My first kill? Was my damn stepfather. Someone I grew up knowing. A fuckload lot meaner way to pop your cherry than offing some stranger.”
Madeleine wiped the water from her face. “I’m getting out of here.”
Zenon said, “You do that. Rest up and suck it up. We’ll start again in a few days.”
She shook her head with a snort.
But he’d already gone. Nothing left but the sound of rushing water and the blackness. With any luck he’d take his sick ghost of a self all the way back to his physical body.
She wondered how she was going to figure out a better plan to keep them all safe in just a few days. And how long before Zenon would realize that Bo was still alive.
twenty-seven
BOUTTE, 1927
THE DAMN BULL HAD still been there when the LeBlanc children had made it back to the Ford. And other than lifting his tail to take some relief, the beast still had no interest in moving. The Ford had been facing the bull, which meant the only direction the Ford could go down the lane was backward. Only, as Francois had advised in his driving instructions: Reverse don’t work. And so the children had had to push the car backward all the blessed way until they came to a fork in the road. It had taken hours just to get to the fork. Finally, they had been able to drive again, only to get stuck in the mud—twice. By the time the four LeBlanc children arrived in New Orleans they were covered in mud, thirsty, starving, and the hour was well past midnight.
Patrice had intended to find a suitable place to park, but that was not to be; driving the streets of New Orleans was much different from driving River Road. All her new skills were put to the test. Parking had never been one of them. Francois had showed her how to stop the Ford, but not how to park it. It seemed there was a difference.
Also, despite the late hour, New Orleans had been teeming with people on foot, hoof, and wheel, and all seemed drunk or at least mischievous. The children saw things they’d never before witnessed—paved roads, hordes of strangers, shops mashed up against one another, people kissing in public, enough electricity to boggle the mind. And it smelled. Even the Ford’s nauseating fumes couldn’t cover it. These were not like the odors of Terrefleurs—burning sugar cane was about the most intolerable thing Patrice had ever smelled until now—here were human and animal and maritime and industrial smells condensed into one.
Finally, Trigger hopped out and waved folks out of the way so that Patrice might find a place for the Ford to rest. That place was a rail yard.
“What do we do now?” Marie-Rose asked.
Patrice didn’t answer. Because she had no idea whatsoever what they were going to do, where they would sleep, or how they would eat. No idea whatsoever.
* * *
THEY WERE ALL TOO stunned to sleep, which was good, seeing as the Ford offered the only place to do so.
They peeled themselves out of their seats and ironed kinks from their muscles. Patrice was vaguely aware that at some point she ought to get more gasoline but she wasn’t sure how or when to do that.
From somewhere to the east came the sound of a piano. A celebration?
“What do we do now?” Marie-Rose asked again.
Patrice put her fingers to her temples. They were at the near corner of the rail yard, close to a main road that was as nameless to Patrice as any of them. (On which one of them did their mother live?)
In the absence of direction from Patrice, the boys were now shouting ideas for how to proceed.
“We should hole up in one of these rail cars—”
“Let’s walk a spell—”
“—til first light, then we can—”
“I’ll be right back…”
Patrice snapped out of her reverie. “What? Wait!”
Trigger was already striding away from the Ford but he stopped dead at Patrice’s command.
She said, “We must stay together at all times. All four of us.”
“I gotta go,” Marie-Rose said.
“Me too,” Gil said.
And Patrice did as well. She sighed, looking around. The rail yard was quiet.
“Alright, but we stay within earshot of one another.”
The boys headed for a nearby tree and Patrice took Marie-Rose to a stack of crates, but as they approached, they heard a cough. Patrice paused, listening.
“Who’s—” Marie-Rose started to say, but Patrice placed a hand over her mouth and pulled her back.
“Who was back there?” Marie-Rose whispered when they were walking back to the Ford.
“A vagrant, I think.”
“I still gotta go!”
“You wanna go with a vagrant standing there watching?”
Marie-Rose was quiet for a moment, and Patrice said, “You’ll ha
ve to go behind the tree.”
“With the boys standin there?”
“Better them than a vagrant.”
“What’s a vagrant?”
“Someone in front of whom you ought not pee.”
They walked over to the tree while the boys sat whistling and shuffling by the Ford. Marie-Rose got going on her business, but for all that talk Patrice couldn’t bring herself to do so as well. She heard other sounds—human sounds—in other corners of the rail yard. Perhaps it wasn’t as deserted as it had seemed. She watched the shadows while Rosie was occupied. She saw that someone had carved something on the tree trunk. Hard to see in the darkness, but it looked like a drawing of a train. After all, they were standing in a rail yard.
From somewhere in the city, a bell tolled once.
“That for church?” Rosie asked.
“No, I think it’s just chiming the hour. It must be one in the morning.”
And suddenly it all seemed so stark. They needed to figure out a way to hide from their mother. Truly hide. But for now, they needed food and a place to sleep. None of these things seemed possible. She had to think of something to do next. Anything!
Rosie finished and Patrice took her by the hand and led her back to the Ford.
“We have to look for Ferrar,” Patrice announced to the other three.
Silence. The boys exchanged looks.
Rosie screwed up her forehead and looked confused. “Ferrar?”
“Yes. Ferrar. After he healed up from the gunshot, he said he was going to New Orleans.”
Gil said, “But he’s … with that light. I don’t think the river devils will abide.”
Patrice said, “No river devils around for now. Ferrar’s the only person we really know here in New Orleans. We saved his life.”
Trigger grimaced and adjusted his hat. “We were gonna kill him but didn’t follow through. That ain’t the same as saving his life.”
“Isn’t.”
“How we gonna find him?” Marie-Rose asked.
“We’ll just … ask around.”
She looked in the direction of the piano sounds. “We’ll ask over at that place.”
“Good idea.” Trigger was in motion, looking downright gleeful at the idea of following the gay music.
