James Burke - In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

A TROPICAL STORM THAT HAD BEEN EXPECTED TO HIT THE Alabama coast changed direction and made landfall at Grand Isle, Louisiana. At false dawn the sky had been bone white, then a red glow spread across the eastern horizon as though a distant fire were burning out of control. The barometer dropped; the air became suddenly cooler; the bream began popping the bayou's darkening surface; and in less than an hour a line of roiling, lightning-forked clouds moved out of the south and covered the wetlands from horizon to horizon like an enormous black lid. The rain thundered like hammers on the wood dock and the bait shop's tin roof, filled our unrented boats with water, clattered on the islands of lily pads in the bayou, and dissolved the marsh into a gray and shapeless mist.

Then I saw a sleek white cabin cruiser approaching the dock, its windows beaten with rain, riding in on its own wake as the pilot cut back the throttle. Batist and I were under the awning, carrying the barbecue pit into the lee of the shop. Batist had two inches of a dead cigar in the corner of his mouth; he squinted through the rain at the boat as it bumped against the strips of rubber tire nailed to the dock pilings.

"Who that is?" he said.

"I hate to think."

"He wavin' at you, Dave. Hey, it's that drunk man done fell in the bayou the ot'er night. That man must surely love water."

We set the barbecue pit under the eave of the building and got back inside. The rain was whipping off the roof like frothy ropes. Through the screen window I could see Elrod and Kelly Drummond moving around inside the boat's cabin.

"Oh, oh, he trying to get out on the dock, Dave. I ain't goin' out there to pull him out of the bayou this time, me. Somebody ought to give that man swimmin' lessons or a big rock, one, give people some relief."

Our awning extended on wires all the way to the lip of the dock, and Elrod was trying to climb over the cruiser's gunwale into the protected area under the canvas. He was bare-chested, his white golf slacks soaked and pasted against his skin, his rubber-soled boat shoes sopping with water. His hand slipped off the piling, and he fell backward onto the deck, raked a fishing rod down with him and snapped it in half so that it looked like a broken coat hanger.

I put on my rain hat and went outside.

Elrod shielded his eyes with his hands and looked up at me in the rain. A purple and green rose was tattooed on his upper left chest.

"I guess I haven't got my sea legs yet," he said.

"Get back inside," I said, and jumped down into the boat.

"We're going after speckled trout. They always hit in the rain. At least they do on the Texas coast."

The rain was cold and stung like BBs. From two feet away I could smell the heavy surge of beer on his breath.

"I'm going inside," I said, and pulled open the cabin door.

"Sure. That's what I was trying to do. Invite you down for a sandwich or a Dr Pepper or a tonic or something," he said, and closed the cabin door behind us.

Kelly Drummond wore leather sandals, a pair of jeans, and the Ragin' Cajuns T-shirt with my name ironed on the back that Alafair had given to Elrod after he had fallen into the bayou. She picked up a towel and began rubbing Elrod's hair with it. Her green eyes were clear, her face fresh, as though she had recently awakened from a deep sleep.

"You want to go fishing with us?" she said.

"I wouldn't advise going out on the salt today. You'll probably get knocked around pretty hard out there."

She looked at Elrod.

"The wind'll die pretty soon," he said.

"I wouldn't count on that," I said.

"The guy who rented us the boat said it can take pretty heavy seas. This weather's not that big a deal, is it?" he said.

On the floor was an open cooler filled with cracked ice, long-necked bottles of Dixie, soda pop, and tonic water.

"I can outfit you with some fly rods and popping bugs," I said. "Why not wait until the rain quits and then try for some bass and goggle-eye perch?"

"When's the last time you caught fresh-water fish right after a rain?" He smiled crookedly at me.

"Suit yourself. But I think what you're doing is a bad idea," I said. I looked at Kelly.

"El, we don't have to go today," she said. "Why don't we just drive down to New Orleans and mess around in the French Quarter?"

"I planned this all week."

"Come on, El. Give it up. It looks like Noah's flood out there."

"Sorry, we've got to do it. You can understand that, cain't you, Mr. Robicheaux?"

"Not really. Anyway, watch the bend in the channel about three miles south. The water's been low and there're some snags on the left."

"Three miles south? Yeah, I'll watch it," he said, his eyes refocusing on nothing. His suntanned, taut chest was beaded with water. His feet were wide spread to keep his balance, even though the boat was not moving. "You sure you don't want a tonic?"

"Thanks, anyway. Good luck to you all," I said.

Before I went out the cabin door, Kelly made her eyes jump at me, but I closed the door behind me and stepped up on the gunwale and onto the dock.

I began pushing huge balloons of water out of the awning with a broom handle and didn't hear her come up behind me.

"He'll listen to you. Tell him not to go out there," she said. There was a pinched indentation high up on her right cheek.

"I think you should tell him that yourself."

"You don't understand. He had a big fight with Mikey yesterday about the script and walked off the set. Then this morning he put the boat on Mikey's credit card. Maybe if we take the boat back now, the man'll tear up the credit slip. You think he might do that?"

"I don't know."

"El's going to get fired, Mr. Robicheaux."

"Tell Elrod you're staying here. That's about all I can suggest."

"He'll go anyway."

"I wish I could help you."

"That's it? Au revoir, fuck you, boat people?"

"In the last two days Elrod told both me and my wife he'd like to go to an AA meeting with me. Now it's ten in the morning and he's already ripped. What do you think the real problem is-the boat, your director, the rain, me, or maybe something else?"

She turned around as though to leave, then turned back and faced me again. There was a bright, painful light in her green eyes, the kind that comes right before tears.

"What do I do?" she said.

"Go inside the shop. I'll try again," I said.

I climbed back down into the boat and went into the cabin. He had his elbows propped on the instrument panel, while he ate a po'-boy sandwich and stared at the rain dancing in a yellow spray on the bayou.

His face had become wan and indolent, either from fatigue or alcoholic stupor, passive to all insult or intimidation. The more I talked, the more he yawned.

"She's a good lady, El," I said. "A lot of men would cut off their fingers with tin snips to have one like her."

"You got that right."

"Then why don't you quit this bullshit, at least for one day, and let her have a little serenity?"

Then his eyes focused on the cooler, on an amber, sweating bottle of Dixie nestled in the ice.

"All right," he said casually. "Let me borrow your fly rods, Mr. Robicheaux. I'll take good care of them."

"You're not going out on the salt?"

"No, I get seasick anyway."

"You want to leave the beer box with me?"

"It came with the boat. That fellow might get mad if I left it somewhere. Thanks for your thoughtfulness, though."

"Yeah, you bet."

After they were gone, I resolved that Elrod Sykes was on his own with his problems.

"Hey, Dave, that man really a big movie actor?" Batist said.

"He's big stuff out in Hollywood, Batist. Or at least he used to be."

"He rich?"

"Yeah, I guess he is."

"That's his reg'lar woman, too, huh?"