The River of Kings: A Novel

by Taylor Brown

  At flood stage, men and women hunt the hogs of the island with assault rifles, the wild hulks driven to what high ground remains and killed in droves, bristled mounds of hide bleeding into the mud. Some years ago a man from town, hunting alone, was shot in the head. The man who mistook him for a hog was his boss at the hardware store, neither knowing the other had taken the day to hunt. The shot man made a full recovery, despite the bullet passing partly through his brain.

  Hunter rehearses the steps it would take to bring his hand-ax to bear, unclipping the carabiner and unsheathing the bit. Long seconds, he knows, when bad things happen quick.

  They have been hiking nearly an hour when they come upon a giant iron chassis, brown with rust. It’s a donkey engine, or was, a diesel winch once used to drag whole trees through the swamp. It sits on a massive sled, a contrivance of drums and pulleys and gears, the braided steel cable frozen on its enormous spool.

  “Somebody left in a hurry.” Lawton juts his chin. A felled cypress lies some twenty yards away, still bound in the cable’s choker. It was dragged only partway back to the machine and left there, a carcass half-sunk in decades of moss and muck.

  Hunter reaches out to touch the winch. It is of a color, the red-brown of old train rails, its pistons and gears seized by age and rust. More monument now than machine. The spool at its center is the size of a whiskey barrel, sized like a reel for dragging leviathans from the deep, and a dizzy of levers and controls juts from one side. He sees the finned rectangle of a detached radiator lying in the mud nearby.

  “Let’s keep on,” says Lawton. “Find them trees.”

  Soon the road ends and they are directionless in the swamp, trudging over the sodden earth, watching for old-growth survivors to shoot skyward from the muck. The way is thick with bright shoots of grass and palmetto, endless groves of new-growth cypress and tupelo. There are pools left by the tide’s retreat, vast purgatories where armies of crawdads lie trapped, their oversize claws working in slow motion. They crawl over one another, looking for answers.

  Hunter and Lawton walk and walk, hacking their way through the undergrowth, breathing hard. Another hour. Longer. The handful of anti-inflammatories Hunter swallowed with lunch is wearing off.

  Lawton stops, hands on his hips, his chest heaving.

  “Where are they?”

  “It’s so thick you got to walk right up on them.”

  “No shit, Hunter. I just thought we would of done it by now.”

  “No need to be a dick about it. I been nothing but a good sport about this shit.”

  Lawton looks at him, his mouth set tight in his beard.

  “The fuck does that mean? I’m just trying to figure out what happened to Daddy.”

  Hunter looks about. Dark is coming early through the leafy canopy, the light flattening in its slant. The world turning, and Hunter feels a tug inside him. A limit. He’s let this go on long enough.

  “Thing is, Lawton, we already know what happened to him. You got to accept that at some point.”

  Lawton spits and wipes his mouth. One eye rises cold over the back of his hand.

  “You don’t tell me what I got to accept, Hunter. You don’t tell me shit.”

  “It’s time somebody does. It ain’t healthy, Lawton.”

  “Healthy?” Lawton seems to swell between the trees, his shoulders rising like a yoke. “It’s about time you step out of the sheep-world you’re living in, Hunter. Your cute little college bubble. The world ain’t a healthy place. It’s full of sick people doing sick things—rabid as wolves—and the only reason they ain’t infected your cute little world is because there’s people out there willing to put them down.”

  “This ain’t some Third World war zone, Lawton. Daddy’s dead and there ain’t a thing we can do about it.”

  Lawton steps toward him, quick, his finger flicking like a switchblade in Hunter’s face.

  “You know what, Hunter? Sometimes I think you just don’t give a fuck.”

  Hunter feels his body grow taller, swelling with rage.

  “You really are the high and mighty, aren’t you? The son he really wanted, loyal as a fucking dog.”

  Lawton’s eyes blaze, set alight.

  “You ungrateful little prick. I lost my chance to play for Navy because of you.”

  “Don’t put that shit on me. That was your fuckup. Always got to prove you’re swinging the biggest dick in the room, don’t you? Show everybody how them big balls of yours just drag the ground.”

  “Least I ain’t a half-cripple with a pile of books for a crutch.”

  Hunter’s eyes burn. He is seven feet tall, built of brick.

  “That panic attack of yours on the chopper, too bad it wasn’t a fucking bullet.”

  Lawton lunges at him, arms out.

  A bluff.

  “Pussy,” he says.

  Hunter hits him in the mouth with a straight right, his knuckles cracking on jawbone, and then they are on the ground, thundering in the mud. Lawton is bigger, stronger, but Hunter is fiended with rage, wild-struck, his knuckles and elbows edged for blood. He wants to beat it out of his brother, the dumb worship, the stupid duty locked in his mind. He wants to break him, to spill the softness he keeps hidden inside. The tender blood. He wants to roll in it, to scream and cry. He rises atop the fury of limbs and lands a blow on Lawton’s forehead, busting open the scab. Blood flees over his brother’s face, zigzagging in gleaming creeks and forks.

  “Is this what you want, you son of a bitch?”

  Lawton’s mouth is closed, his nostrils flaring. His blue eyes, surprised at first, burn coldly through the blood. He works his arms in and out of Hunter’s blows, maneuvers his feet. He is trying to grab hold of one of Hunter’s wrists. Hunter lands blow after blow, fists and elbows, but the flesh is obstinate beneath him, clad with muscle. It’s like hitting a sack of feed. It maddens him, and he strikes harder, faster. Lawton gets hold of his wrist and pulls the arm straight down to him, clasping Hunter’s hand over his heart, and then his leg comes sweeping over Hunter’s head, hooking his neck, and Hunter is thrust to the ground, his arm locked across Lawton’s body.

  Arm-bar.

  Lawton bridges his belly, bowing Hunter’s elbow the wrong way.

  “Submit.”

  Hunter, locked like a man on the rack, says nothing. His body rages in place, quivering against the pressure.

  “Submit,” says Lawton. “Say ‘uncle.’” He bridges himself yet higher, threatening the joint. “Tap out, goddammit. So help me God, I’ll break your fucking arm in half.”

  Hunter’s elbow is going the way it shouldn’t. He can feel the tendons straining, the searing jets of pain. The first rips in the cords that bind him.

  A pain he knows.

  “Fuck you.” His neck is jammed in the crook of Lawton’s leg. His words strangled, unbeaten. “Break it, motherfucker.”

  Lawton roars, releasing his arm. He kicks himself away and stands red-faced over Hunter, panting like a beaten man.

  “Pussy,” he says.

  A flung little stone, weak now. Defeated.

  Lawton turns and storms off into the swamp. The last Hunter sees is the flash of a hand, a middle finger raised high and crooked, like for those two little boys spitting from the bridge.

  50

  Fort Caroline, July 1565

  A black tower of smoke leans against the western sky. A wildfire, perhaps. From this distance it looks motionless, charcoaled. Le Moyne, sitting on his bluff, returns to the new piece he has been working on. In the foreground of the page, six naked Indians hold a tree trunk, three a side, ramming it into the mouth of an alligator. This is the hunting scene he has witnessed several times. The scene he and his compatriots tried to replicate with such calamity.

  But to his surprise, the creature begins to swell beneath his hand, to transform, the tail lengthening into a mammoth S, the snout sharpening into a beaklike point, the eyes retreating into hollow orbits of skull. The arms grow muscled, with sharp elbows
and knuckled claws. He can almost hear the anatomy of the creature snapping and groaning under the force of his will, the mountains of armor surfacing along the spine, the ribs curving out like those of a ship’s hull, the heart inflating to the size of a man’s head. The page seems almost to tremble, a guttural bellow such as the beast might make, and the lives of the six hunters fall into question.

  Le Moyne sits back from the work, breathing hard, his forearm burning from exertion, the tongue stone heavy in his pocket. The lines are steady and sharp. Inspired. He gets up to fetch La Caille.

  * * *

  They approach the room where Utina is being held, Le Moyne going first. Guards are posted on either side of the door. They cross their halberds before him, barring entry until he shows them the note of permission he carries, signed by Laudonnière. They uncross their weapons but slowly, eyes narrow with suspicion. The men of the fort are furious with the captive chief. Since he was taken hostage, his people have tried again and again to deceive them. Some of the men have clamored for the chief’s life. Hang him, quarter him, shoot him against the wall. The guards are posted as much to protect Utina as to prevent his escape.

  The Indian king is squatting on his heels in one corner, refusing chair and bed, his ink-scrawled body covered in a white linen shirt that fits him like a sail. His brow is gathered, his hands working carefully with a pair of reeds, twisting and folding them one upon the other, the chain of his irons scraping the earthen floor. He looks up.

  “Olata,” says Le Moyne. The word for chief. He gestures toward the chair. “May I?”

  Utina shrugs, looks down again at his work.

  Le Moyne sits.

  “What are you making?”

  The chief mumbles something, and Le Moyne looks to his friend.

  “Man,” says La Caille. He leans against the wall.

  Le Moyne removes the roll of paper from his pocket, the sketch. He sets it on the floor and pushes it across to Utina.

  “Do you know this thing?” he asks.

  Utina looks over the top of the reeds a moment, then casts his eyes toward the door and speaks. La Caille translates.

  “He wants to know if Saturiwa, king of the coast, has come for his head.”

  Le Moyne leans back in the chair.

  “Tell him yes, his enemy has come, but our commander denied him.”

  Utina sniffs at this, then looks again at the paper on the floor, speaking.

  “He says he knows this thing,” says La Caille. “Though he finds it a poor likeness. The claws are not like this. The neck is too short.”

  Utina casts his sharp-nailed hands at the drawing, chattering. La Caille grins.

  “He has many grievances with your picture, it seems.”

  Le Moyne smiles and interlaces his fingers against his chest.

  “Well, tell him I spent too much of my talent on La Caille’s mother.”

  “Bastard,” says La Caille, grinning despite. He translates for Utina.

  The war-chief looks from one of them to the other, slyly. An amused show of teeth.

  “He says it is the great water-serpent,” says La Caille. “That which hisses and bellows.”

  Le Moyne leans forward, clasping his hands between his knees.

  “Ask him where I may find it.”

  “He says he thought it was corn we sought.”

  “Tell him I only wish to see it.”

  Utina makes a noise in his throat.

  “He says you cannot even see your own god.”

  “That isn’t true,” says Le Moyne. He taps his chest. “We see him here.”

  Utina keeps speaking, jutting his chin upward.

  “He says every eye wishes to see the serpent, as every belly wishes bread. He says his own god has ripened the crop. He says to tell our commander that his people will now deliver all the corn we may desire.”

  “Tell him I did not come to speak of corn.”

  Utina holds open his palm. There stands a doll of corn husks, arms outstretched.

  “He says you should have.”

  “Merde,” says Le Moyne.

  As they step out the door, he hears a crackle of husks, the doll crushed in the man’s hand.

  * * *

  That afternoon, Le Moyne returns to his bluff over the fort. More dark pillars hang over the river now, a forest of smoke. The sun is descending, an angry red eye that burns through the haze. Le Moyne squints as if he might see the roots of the fire. It is too far upstream. He is laying out his materials, brushes and vellum and gouache, when cries rise from the fort.

  “Ils sont de retour! Ils sont de retour!”

  They are back.

  He looks up to see a barque rounding the bend, returning from a foraging expedition upstream. The crew lines the rails, dancing, prizes of corn held aloft while men crash into the shallows beneath them, fighting one another for alms. Le Moyne leaves his brushes and paints; he is running toward the riverbank, hot springs bubbling under his tongue.

  He wades into the shallows. Around him, men are shoveling the corn ears into their gnashing teeth, husk and all. They huddle waist-deep in the river, shoulders rounded over their boons.

  “Have you any more?” he cries.

  The crewmen shake their heads.

  “No, man, you are too late. We took all the corn we could find.”

  “But take comfort,” says another. “We have avenged our countryman Gambie, so despicably murdered. We have burned his island village to the ground.”

  “Yea,” says another. “Like a ship burned to keel.”

  By nightfall the fort is alive with moans. Men writhe in their beds, unable to belly such glut. Their stomachs are shrunken to tiny fists, confounded by even a single ear of corn. Their bodies are too weak. When they struggle outside their huts to vomit, others are waiting with spoons. Le Moyne watches through a chink in the wall of his hut. Shame, it seems, learned first in the Garden, is first to go, men so quick to crawl on their bellies, to grovel in the dirt like swine. He closes his eyes. He thinks how Utina was right: he has never even seen his own God. How easy it must be to have one that arrives each day at dawn, rising as surely as anything in the world, and what strength it must give you and what joy. Never has he wanted so badly to see his own God, who plies the heavens, a Spirit sliding unseen through the world of men. A God of mystery, armored in shadow, who so rarely shows his face. Le Moyne turns over in bed, away from the wall, trying not to think of his spoon.

  * * *

  Mid-July, they return to the western lands with their hostage, hoping the people will ransom their king. They leave their barques at the river, then march the long leagues to Utina’s village, the manacled chief paraded before them like an honoree. Every soldier, Le Moyne included, wishes to believe the man is speaking the truth. That his fields are ripe, his people prepared to pay his ransom from their harvest. Utina says he has sown whole fields for the French. Never again shall they hunger.

  Instead his people parley.

  “Our king must be free,” they say, “or we will not give up our grain.”

  “If we pay his ransom,” they say, “what is to keep you from killing him?”

  “Release him,” they say, “and we will pay.”

  The French confer.

  “Yet another ploy,” says Lord d’Ottigni. “We must not let him go.”

  Laudonnière gazes at the thick forest that swaddles the village, roaring with insects and birds. His cheeks are splotchy and red, as if someone has slapped him repeatedly with a glove.

  “Give me the key,” he says.

  D’Ottigni stands back.

  “Sir.”

  “La clé, seigneur!”

  D’Ottigni’s face darkens. He reels in the key he has taken to wearing like a necklace beneath his tunic. Laudonnière takes it and turns to the interpreter.

  “Tell them I want two hostages in return,” he says. He looks at the villagers, holding up two fingers. “Deux otages.” He speaks slowly, as if speaking to children
or idiots.

  Le Moyne looks at the natives. They nod eagerly at the interpreter’s words, and soon two young men are brought forth from the crowd to be set in irons. Laudonnière begins to unshackle Utina.

  “Ten days.” He speaks for all to hear, but his gaze remains locked on Utina’s face. “In ten days we will return to collect what is owed. If we are refused again, we will cut the throats of our hostages and set fire to your lands. Your enemies will tread upon your graves.”

  The irons fall at Utina’s feet.

  “Ten days,” Laudonnière repeats. “Our final visit to your lands.”

  Le Moyne looks at his countrymen. Surely there is some better way of putting it than that.

  51

  Lewis Island, Day 4

  Hunter slogs through the brush and mud, looking for his brother. The world is dimming, twilit, the green blades of sea oats sprung like glowsticks from the muck. There is no road, and his legs are black to the knees. The mud makes wet sucking sounds beneath him, almost sexual, and more than once he stubs his toe on the spiked point of a cypress knee. They are everywhere, thrust like rotten canine teeth from the earth. He crosses a creek, balancing on wet roots that straddle the flow, and pushes through saloon doors of palmettos, his legs sinking thigh-deep in a muddy flat. It is cold down there, far from the sun, and his foot touches something strange. He yanks it free and peers into the hole he stove. He reaches down and up comes a man’s tennis shoe, black-caked, heavy and limp as something dead. He tosses it into a nearby pool for the crawdads to study.

  He fights his way across the mud, swinging his arms parallel to the earth, his body tottering like that of a man in cement boots. Halfway across, his shin strikes something and he trips. His outthrust arms plunge into the swampy earth, and mud slaps his face. He rises, blinking the cake from his eyes, and finds a braided steel cable buried like a tripwire in the mud. He begins following it, pulling the line foot by foot from the muck. It runs on into the trees, slithering over roots and through pools, crossing game trails churned over by paws and hooves. Mosquitos sing in his ears. He slaps them from his face and neck, his head bent to the ground, eyes tracing the iron seam weaving before his feet. The ground begins firming, rising, and he pushes through a thicket of palmetto, his arms red-scratched and stinging, and there before him stands the massive trunk of an ancient cypress, like a stone tower from the earth. The cable belts it, the choker set with a giant steel knuckle rusted brown.