The Grace Painter (The Grace Series Book 1)

by Mark Romang

  Fighting a strong undertow, he struggled to keep his head above the surface swells. The floodwater propelled him along at nearly twelve knots, smashing him without regard against trees and flood debris caught in the current. Rafter felt like a pinball as he crashed pell-mell against the obstructions.

  Now, for the second time in under an hour, death grasped at his throat. He knew with a certainty that unless he found a buoyant object to help him stay afloat, he would soon become a feast for the alligators.

  Your pants! Take them off! In a pinch, trousers can be fashioned into a makeshift flotation aid. Years ago his captain in the seventeenth precinct told him how to do it. A former Navy SEAL, his captain said to tie a knot in the end of each pant leg and inflate them by whipping them rapidly overhead to catch air.

  Desperate to help himself, he reached down under the surface with both hands and tugged at his shoes, praying he wouldn’t inadvertently make a knot in the process.

  He sorely wished he’d worn sneakers. He still wore his clunky work boots that laced halfway up his shins. His body performed underwater somersaults as he fumbled at the laces. After several seconds he finally got one shoe untied and moved on to the other one. Fortunately he got this one untied much faster. He kicked off the boots.

  Moving on to his pants, he unzipped his jeans and tried to wriggle out of them. Regrettably, he had on his tightest pair. They barely budged under his frantic pushing movements.

  What I’m doing can’t be much different than Houdini’s water torture cell illusion, Rafter thought as he peeled his jeans down over his thighs, inch by stubborn inch. His lungs screamed for oxygen. Harry Houdini had been able to hold his breath for three minutes while performing the trick. Rafter knew he’d be lucky if he could hold his breath for half that amount.

  Which way is up? He wondered. His sense of direction had gone haywire while floundering about in the jet black depths. He pointed himself at what he thought was the surface and kicked for it. A half-dozen seconds ticked by, but still his face failed to break the surface. The vehement undertow fought against him, slowing his ascent.

  Trying not to flail his arms, Rafter streamlined his body into a bullet shape and executed a sweeping downward motion with his arms and hands. He didn’t bother to kick his legs as they were encumbered by his pants hanging at his knees. Just as he thought his luck had played itself out, he sensed himself ascend through turbulence and silt. Ever so slowly he rose through a virulent current until his head cleaved the writhing surface.

  Savage rain greeted his face. Rafter exhaled so violently that a gurgling whistle fled his gasping mouth. He treaded water the best he could, and sucked in as much oxygen as he could hold. And then in a moment of surreal observation, took in a horrifying spectacle.

  The usually placid Atchafalaya River resembled a tempest-tossed sea. Prodigious waves heaved and pitched. Two-hundred-year-old cypress trees that had somehow escaped a logger’s saw were bowled over and swept away in an instant.

  Rafter hoped the storm surge wouldn’t travel this far inland. If it did he didn’t stand a chance. No land-living creature could survive a three-story wall of water with that much pulverizing force.

  Without warning the rabid current suddenly pulled him back into the black nothingness.

  Not liking the river’s homicidal attitude, he resumed his effort at removing his pants. He reached down with both hands and discovered his jeans had already dropped to his ankles on their own. With just a small effort he removed them and started tying a knot at the cuff of each pant leg. He wanted to tie a simple overhand knot, but found even a rudimentary knot is difficult to tie when visibility is limited. The floodwater was as nebulous as the velvety-black reaches of outer space, minus the stars and planets.

  I might as well be blindfolded, Rafter thought. Operating entirely on a sense of touch, he formed a loop and managed to push the hem of a pant leg through. Relief energized him as he realized he’d just completed a crude knot. He scissor-kicked his way back to the surface and stole a quick gulp of air before resuming work on the other pant leg. He knew what to do now. His fingers fumbled less. He suddenly thought of Samson as he tied the second knot. It wasn’t like the devoted Newfoundland to take off and leave him in a bind like this. He’d better return with a powerboat or the Coast Guard, Rafter thought grimly.

  He completed the second knot and surfaced once more. The rough surface swells cuffed him about like an angry sparring partner, reminding him he needed to snap and re-zip the pants before inflating them. Completing this all-important step, Rafter raised the pants overhead and then whipped them back in front of his face. As soon as his inflated jeans slapped against the water, he quickly squeezed the waistband shut to prevent air loss.

  Rafter rested his chin on the upturned crotch of his inflated jeans and relished the buoyancy of his jerry-rigged life preserver. For once his captain hadn’t been pulling his leg.

  He relaxed a bit as he floated along. Powerful waves still crashed over him, but couldn’t hold him down as long. From time to time he could feel tiny objects bump against his bare legs, and surmised they were Gulf shrimp washed inland by the storm surge.

  Rafter struggled to keep his eyes open. The rain pelted his face. He studied the graying sky through scrunched eyes. Sunrise would come in an hour or less, and by the looks of things it promised to be another dreary day of torrential rain and roof-raising wind.

  He could hardly remember what blue skies and sunshine were like. The rain held his thoughts hostage. It thrummed in his head. And as he bobbed along in the swampy cataract, he promised himself he would one day soon establish his permanent residency somewhere in Death Valley.

  Distracted by dreamy thoughts of cacti and sagebrush, he didn’t realize he was sinking. It never occurred to him he needed to keep inflating the jeans. Captain Schofield never told him about this nettlesome drawback.

  Lifting the jeans behind his head, he started to snap them rapidly forward but a thudding blow to his solar plexus stopped him in mid-motion. His startled lungs expelled air with a grunt. As he gasped for air, Rafter deduced the cause behind the violent impact.

  He had crashed into a partially submerged tree limb. And just as quickly as the wind fled his body, his fingers lost their grip on the jeans and they floated off.

  He should have grabbed for them, but his first instinct had been to latch onto the tree branch. The current had other ideas, however, and pried him off before he could find solid purchase. He slid down the branch.

  Panic-stricken, he dug his fingernails into the bark of the limb and wrapped his feet around its narrow girth, stopping his momentum.

  He clung to the branch, his ribs on fire and his spleen feeling as if it had been kicked by a draft horse. Over the pounding rain, Rafter could just make out a snap-snap-snapping sound close by. He looked toward the noise. Only a few feet away he saw his pants. They hung from a scrubby branch no larger in diameter than his pinkie. His jeans flapped like a windsock and threatened to take flight at any moment.

  If the tree limb had more girth, he would simply ride it until it ran aground. But it was way too small to use as a makeshift raft. The abusive floodwater would eventually reduce it to splinters. He had to get his jeans back. They remained his best option for staying afloat.

  Rafter picked his way hand over hand down the branch. His back hovered just above the churning water. The strain to his chest wound increased tenfold. At any moment he expected the wound to gush blood again.

  He cursed his luck with a few choice words. The day had started off so well, but had quickly evolved into a crummy night. One minute he painted a mural, and the next he’s thrashing around in a flooded river. He felt so ill-suited for the task at hand. Annie Crawford better find a knight with shinier armor than his tarnished suit. He needed rescuing just as much as her.

  As he inched ever closer to his jeans, the limb bent sharply under his weight. His fluttering jeans dipped down into the water and popped loose. The foamy current snatched
up the jeans and spirited them away. Rafter desperately dove for his escaping pants. In midair he stretched himself to his full length, threw in a half-twist, and flopped into the river on his belly near where the pants disappeared.

  His ugly dive would have surely garnered snickers and a zero-score from judges at a dive competition. Regardless, he burst to the surface a half-minute later with the jeans firmly in hand.

  For the second and hopefully final time, he inflated the jeans and tucked them under his chin. He took in his surroundings as he floated along like flotsam. The Atchafalaya River’s eastern bank appeared tantalizingly close, and by the faint morning light he could see sandbags stacked along the service road that topped the levee. The sandbag bastion stretched for at least a hundred-and-fifty-yards.

  The National Guard had obviously been here recently. Why they bothered to sandbag the Atchafalaya River bewildered him. The Basin acted as a natural flood control for the bigger Mississippi River, where scores of towns sat in harm’s way along its banks.

  Wary now of submerged trees, he shifted his attention to the water ahead. He quickly spotted a dark-colored animal swimming in the current. He wondered if the animal might be a beaver out gathering building material. But then a sneaking suspicion convinced him otherwise. If he had money he’d wager it all that the mystery animal was Samson out enjoying a recreational swim.

  He continued to monitor his canine companion with keen interest, and wondered if the resourceful dog had pondered a way out of his own predicament. Even with webbed feet, Samson couldn’t doggy-paddle forever.

  A hair-raising lightning flash spotlighted the Newfoundland in an electric-blue tone. Rafter watched in amazement as Samson suddenly veered toward the bank. Moments later he witnessed the dog scramble nonchalantly up to solid ground. Rafter could hardly believe what he just witnessed. The dog’s exit from the river looked so easy. It could only mean one thing. A stronger current ran diagonally to the bank. And this new current pulled Samson to safety.

  He had to find a way to get into that opposing channel. Rafter kept his eyes trained on a medium-sized branch floating a few yards ahead of him. He hoped to use the branch as a way to gauge the confluence of the intersecting channel. In just a second or two the branch would be at the very place where Samson veered off. As he watched the branch, he could feel his jeans deflating again. If things worked out the way he hoped, he wouldn’t have to worry about inflating them again.

  All at once he felt a powerful tug on his legs. And like a train car diverted onto a different track, was pulled rapidly toward the sandbagged levee. A huge smile cracked his face. It looked like he’d cheated Mr. Reaper once again.

  Rafter bodysurfed his way to shore. He stood up when his knees banged into a boat ramp used by game wardens to check on the Basin’s wildlife population.

  He tucked his head against the wind and rain and staggered up the boat ramp. His chest hurt and he felt thirsty enough to guzzle swamp water. But he was still alive, and that’s all that mattered. Rafter looked up as he neared the sandbag retaining wall. He spotted Samson perched atop the sandbags. The Newfoundland wagged his tail and barked encouragement.

  Rafter grabbed the top layer of bags and pulled his water-soaked body up and over the sandbags. He collapsed in the mud.

  Samson trotted over and licked his face. “Since when did you become such an adrenaline junkie?” he asked as he pushed away the dog. “I thought you didn’t care for extreme sports.” Samson normally didn’t show industry unless a steaming chili bowl sat under his nose.

  The big dog whined and trotted a few yards away, then came back and clamped onto Rafter’s slicker with his teeth. Demonstrating strength common to his breed, Samson hauled him through the mud in a northerly direction.

  “Hey, can I at least put my pants on first?” Rafter complained. He tried to break the dog’s grip but couldn’t. Samson dragged him nearly twenty yards up the service road before finally releasing him.

  “What is it, Sam? What do you want me to see?” And then he spotted the objects lying in the mud. His spine tingled.

  The National Guardsmen had left valuable equipment behind. Something caused them to pull out in a big hurry. Rafter surveyed the goodies and shook his head. I must be living right, he thought as he picked up a flare pistol. Either that or God wanted him to stay alive a few hours more.

  Chapter 27

  Sebastian Boudreaux didn’t like long odds. Taking risks ran contrary to his conservative nature. During his incarceration at Angola he’d learned to protect his life by calculating every move. He only took action after careful deliberation. But considering his present circumstances, he really had no choice but to throw caution to the wind and risk his life for a chance at a big windfall, hurricane or no hurricane.

  Most people, even the most conservative wallflowers would do the same for a shot at three-million-dollars. Greed is a universal language. No other language is spoken more fluently. Sebastian understood the dialect perfectly. It ruled his life.

  So now he bucked long odds and navigated a Wave Runner through floodwater and a merciless wind that could topple brick buildings. He had never been so waterlogged. The windblown rain measured up to biblical proportions. Forty more days and nights like this and the Earth would surely flood again. Even though dawn had broken, oily-black storm clouds blanketed the horizon, eclipsing the morning sun. Daylight hid behind a doleful mixture of battleship-gray and melanin-black.

  Sebastian believed the ransom money was somewhere near this location. He floated in a two-acre clearing, and in the middle of the watery plot stood an abandoned oil derrick. Two more derricks lay on their sides in the distance, victims of the hurricane. At first he’d been totally baffled by Claude’s death bed poem. The ambiguous clues easily flummoxed him. They mocked the advanced intellect he’d acquired while in prison, even laughed at him.

  Floating down a hidden stream, a vine-covered tomb facing east to west, my gravestone is a rusty wheel.

  But then Sebastian systematically analyzed each line, and the riddle began to unravel. He discovered the trick to deciphering the clues was to not view them from a literal sense, but ponder them from a figurative one. The hidden stream his father wrote about didn’t necessarily refer to a secret waterway. More likely the hidden stream referenced fossil fuel.

  Louisiana’s southern half is practically covered with oil wells. And there’s no shortage of drilling equipment--in operation or abandoned--littering the Atchafalaya Basin. Pinpointing the oil field in question would be difficult. But he figured the ransom money had to be tantalizingly close to the fishing shack. Claude would’ve wanted the money close at hand where he could get to it quickly. The small oil field he now searched lay closest to the fishing shack. Two-hundred yards separated it from the shack.

  The key to finding the money lay in deciphering the rusty wheel verse. Since his father had been cremated shortly after his execution, the rusty wheel gravestone made little sense to him. Did it actually exist, or had Claude simply exercised artistic liberty through symbolism?

  As the question brewed in his mind, he slowly drove the Wave Runner from the center of the oil field outward to its tree-flanked perimeters. Ten minutes later he’d completed the search grid but saw nothing resembling a rusty wheel, and speculated that if it indeed existed, it lay submerged under floodwater.

  Sebastian guided his Wave Runner up alongside a small thicket of kudzu-covered ash trees. Nor’easter-type wind gusts made the vines shimmer and shake. The modest thicket stretched thirty-feet in length, but provided him a partial windbreak. He hid behind the thicket’s protection while he plotted his next search pattern. His mind scrabbled for a cogent thought.

  Against his best efforts discouragement settled in. The odds of actually finding the money grew longer by the moment. He didn’t mind being a fugitive if he had plenty of cash to live on. But the thought of being both destitute and on the run sounded almost as terrible as being incarcerated at Angola.

  Negative t
houghts sidetracked him, and Sebastian didn’t see the wave bearing down on him. The six-foot swell lifted up the Wave Runner and slammed it into the thicket. He managed to stay on his PWC but bumped his head on something hard and rigid inside the tangled vines. He rubbed his head. That wasn’t a tree I banged my head on, he thought groggily. It made a clanging sound when his head struck it.

  Curious, he reached through the kudzu vines and felt around. His fingers soon touched a metallic surface. Sebastian pulled his hand back from the kudzu and examined it. Just before the driving rain washed it away he spotted a dark blemish on his fingers.

  Sebastian reached inside his pack and pulled out a flashlight. He turned it on, and then reached a hand back through the kudzu. Once again he pulled his hand back from the vines. But this time he quickly shined the flashlight onto his fingers before the rain could wash away the residue. The flashlight exposed an orange film.

  It looked like rust!

  Goosebumps crab-walked across his skin. Excitement intoxicated him. Progress pushed away his glumness. Just like a treasure hunter knows when his pickaxe is about to strike the mother-lode, Sebastian knew a great discovery awaited him.

  He secured the Wave Runner to a sturdy tree that somehow escaped the ever-expanding kudzu. He then pulled a twenty-five-foot-length of rope from his pack. He tied one end to the same tree that moored the Wave Runner, and then threaded the opposite end through his pant loops, wrapping it tightly around his wrist.

  Satisfied the treacherous current couldn’t wash him away; Sebastian slid off the PWC and stepped into the turbid water. His shoes sank into the boggy muck as the water swirled up around his shins. Holding tightly to the rope, he explored the underside of the kudzu. He dragged his hand slowly across the massive metal artifact hiding behind the vines. He kept the rope taut as he walked, not trusting the devilish current and hazardous peat sucking at his shoes like quicksand.

  He wanted to carry out a thorough and deliberate search, but knew the declining weather wouldn’t allow it. He hastily pushed aside even more kudzu but stopped when his hand rapped against a raised object. Sensing he’d arrived at something significant, he feverishly tore kudzu away from the protuberance.