Walter Williams - The Rift

Nick stepped back, looked at Cudjo. “I need you to guide most of these people someplace safe.”

“Mais oui, I do that, yes. Take you-all down bayou, me, take you across on batteau. Small batteau, my batteau, take all night cross that bayou, but you-all on south bank by morning. Lord High Sheriff can’t follow you there, no, you be safe.”

“Good. Good.” Nick nodded. He glanced over his shoulder. “Is there a place in town I can take some of the fighters? Some place defensible. I figure the best chance of covering your withdrawal is to go right into Shelburne City and seize the most public building I can find.”

Cudjo was surprised by this idea, but as he considered it an approving light began to glow in his eyes. “That sho-nuff gon’ put the weasel in that chicken house, for true,” he said admiringly. “But the Lord High Sheriff, that Paxton, he got his sheriff’s men in the courthouse.”

“Any place other than the courthouse?”

“There’s Clarendon. Big ol’ plantation house, that Clarendon, and that Miz LaGrande who live there, that Miz LaGrande, she hate Sheriff Paxton. Big refugee camp at Clarendon, that big house, all the white people go there.”

Nick shook his head. “I don’t think we’re going to get any of these people to walk back into a refugee camp. Do we have anywhere else?”

Cudjo thought for a moment. “Carnegie Library. Big ol’ place, that library. She got big lawns, that library, nice fields of fire, yes.”

“How do we get there?”

“You go down highway, that highway, you turn left Jefferson Davis Street.”

Nick gave a weary smile. “I’m not likely to forget the name of that street,” he said.

“How ’bout the wounded?” A stout middle-aged woman came up to Nick. “We got some people shot up and no doctor. Some can’t walk. These people gonna die if they don’t see a doctor.”

Nick bit his lip. “I don’t suppose there’s a hospital?” he asked Cudjo.

“No hospital in this parish, mais non. But they put sick people in Clarendon, that big house, there.”

“And you say the lady who owns Clarendon hates the sheriff?”

“Mais oui. But your people there, they no be safe. Lord High Sheriff find them.”

Nick turned to the woman. “I’m afraid we’ll have to take the wounded with us. That’s bad for them, but they won’t be safe if they’re not with us.”

“Some of them are bad hurt.”

“Yes, I know, but-” He stopped as he saw a bright, incongruous blond head crossing his line of vision. The white man he’d talked to that morning, walking across the grass with his black wife and three kids.

Wild inspiration struck Nick. “Hey!” he called. “Hey!” For the life of him he couldn’t remember the man’s name.

Jack Taylor stopped, turned, gave Nick an inquiring look.

“Yes! You!”

Taylor told his family to wait, walked toward Nick. Nick looked at him.

“Your family get through okay?”

“Yeah.” Taylor seemed surprised by being singled out this way.

“You have a car? You still want a job?”

Taylor gave a little incredulous laugh. “Now?” he said.

“I want you to go to Clarendon and talk to the woman who owns it-” He looked at Cudjo.

“Miz LaGrande,” Cudjo said. “LaGrande Shelburne Ashenden, she.”

“Mrs. LaGrande Ashenden,” Nick repeated to Taylor. “I want you to follow us to Shelburne City in your car- not with us, see, but later. And then I want you to go to this plantation house called Clarendon and talk to Mrs. Ashenden.”

“What do I say?” Taylor asked, wide-eyed.

“Tell her what’s happened here. She’s part of the local power structure, and she hates the sheriff. She’ll be able to get word out.” Another thought occurred to him. “No,” he said. “Wait till after midnight. Make sure all our people can get clear.”

Taylor considered this. “Okay,” he said. “But I have to know someone will be looking after my family.”

“We’ll do that,” Nick said. “We’ll-”

Bang! The ground picked Nick up and dropped him again. “ Incoming !” Cudjo yelled, and threw himself flat.

Nick dropped to the ground himself, hugged the long moist grass, but not because he thought the sheriff had somehow trained a howitzer on them.

It was the primary wave of another big earthquake. Nick knew quakes well enough by now to know that, at least.

He heard the secondary waves coming, a roaring sound like a great wind passing through a forest, and then the earth began to dance.

*

He had been dreaming more and more of New Mexico. The busier he got, the more demands his job made on him, the more his mind seemed to need that anchor, that sense of home. He woke in the morning to the scent of mountain flowers, to a memory of high meadows shimmering gold in the sun. And then rose to a day of heat, sweat, and Mississippi mud.

It was time to go home, Larry thought. As soon as he got things set up here, as soon as Poinsett Landing would relax its grip on him.

“I’ll be with you in an hour or so,” Larry said into his satellite phone. “Just as soon as we get this ol’ barge tied up.”

“I’ll have something hot waiting,” Helen said. “We just got electricity restored today, so I can actually cook.”

The second barge of spent nuclear fuel was ready to start its journey to Waterford Three. This one contained several of the hot, partly melted fuel assemblies from the reactor’s last unloading, and thus its mooring merited Larry’s particular attention.

Larry watched as the barge eased its way out of the short canal from the auxiliary building to the west side of Poinsett Island. A pair of crewmen stood on the barge, minding the steel mooring and tow cables, while an Army backhoe drew the barge slowly to the Mississippi.

The barge would have to moor alongside the flank of the island overnight. There was supposed to be a towboat here to take the barge downstream, but some last-minute hitch with insurance had resulted in a delay. Larry didn’t understand the problem: the last load had traveled to Waterford without special insurance, but now, somehow, things were different.

Larry explained this to Helen over his cellphone while he watched the barge slide into the Mississippi and swing with the current.

“A typical screwup,” he concluded.

“Isn’t it good,” Helen said, “to deal with a typical screwup for a change? Instead of something new and completely unprecedented?”

Larry grinned and tipped his hard hat back on his head. “Waaal,” he said, “I guess you’re right.” He watched the current swing the barge to its mooring place.

“Looks like we’re going to be finished here in just a few minutes,” Larry said. “I’ll call for my helicopter.”

Helen gave a chuckle. “Just listen to yourself,” she said. “‘I’ll call for my helicopter.’ You sound like Donald Trump.”

“I’m still the same cowpuncher you married,” Larry said. “And I’ll prove it if we can ever get back to New Mexico.”

“The company owes you a long vacation,” Helen said.

“It surely does. And I’m planning to collect it as soon as I make sure this operation is working.”

“See you in an hour.”

“Bye, sweetie.”

Larry clicked off his cellphone and stood watching the barge. The backhoe cast off the tow cable, and the cable was made fast to a tall steel stanchion that had been sunk and cemented into the close-packed rubble of Poinsett Island. The backhoe spun nimbly on its wheels, gravel flying, as it began its journey to shift an empty barge into the auxiliary building canal in order to take on another load of spent fuel.