Walter Williams - The Rift

The current was slow, but it was remorseless, still stronger than the little outboard trying to tow the huge barge.

“Okay, then,” Jason said. “I’ll go across the current, not into it.” If he couldn’t get the barge upstream, he would try to drag the barge into the flood plain and moor it to a cypress.

He turned the wheel. Relieved of the weight of the barge, the boat jittered over the water like a junebug on the end of a string. Jason heard shouts behind him from the bargemen, who clearly thought he was abandoning the job.

“Tell them what I’m doing,” he said. He didn’t think his lungs were up to more shouting.

Bubba bellowed at the bargemen through cupped hands. The boat shivered as weight came onto the cable again. The barge’s bows swung around. The Johnson outboard took on a throatier roar. Jason aimed forty-five degrees off the current, to bring the barge in to a landing on the tree-filled point short of the bend.

Bubba peered downstream, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening. “I think you got less’n a mile ’fore we hit that bend,” he said.

“You tell me,” Jason gasped. “You tell me if this is working.”

He could see the trees moving past the bow of the bass boat faster now, as he was no longer fighting straight into the current. If the trees were getting any larger, they were doing so very slowly.

The boat bucked and spat and juddered. “We’re moving!” Arlette shouted with a triumphant grin. “We’re getting there!”

Even over the sound of the screaming outboard Jason thought he heard a rushing sound, the water rolling over the falls. He looked to his right- working around his injuries involved a corkscrewing of his body that had him looking out from under his own right armpit- and he saw the trees on the point nearing. “Come on, come on,” he muttered. He beat an urgent tattoo on the wheel with his palm. “Move move move.” Then he stopped speaking, because it hurt too much.

Manon and Arlette were suddenly dancing their delight, their cries dimmed by the roaring that now filled the air. Jason saw a willow float cross his bows only fifty feet away, its dangling leaves trailing in the water. Jason looked under his armpit again and saw that he was right on the point, that a pair of trees were going to cut along the length of the cable between the barge and the bass boat. He turned the wheel, felt the cable slack slightly as he aimed the boat into the trees. There was a sudden lurch as the cable went around a willow, and Jason spun the wheel to the right. The propeller began to chew up willow leaves. Bark peeled in tight curls from the tree as it took the weight of the barge. Jason throttled back as he circled the tree, wrapping the taut cable around 270 degrees of stout trunk. The cable draped across two more trees. Through the trees on the point, Jason saw the barge fall wide of the point, saw it hang in the current with white water just a few hundred feet beyond its stern.

Yes! Jason punched a hand in the air, then winced with the pain. He leaned over the boat’s wheel and panted for breath.

The roaring sound increased, and a dark shadow crossed the sun. Jason’s heart gave a lurch as he saw that the roaring he’d heard over the straining outboard had not been falls or rapids downstream, but a helicopter circling overhead.

The helicopter was losing altitude now, the dawn light edging its rotor blades with silver as it dropped toward them, safely upstream of the point and its foliage. The river water was chopped into a froth by the downdraft as the helicopter hovered with its skids just a few feet above the surface. Jason blinked and narrowed his eyes against the furious gusts of wind. The helicopter was modest in size and olive green in color. Jason could see through the canopy to a helmeted figure inside, someone talking into a microphone. With modest surprise Jason realized the figure was a woman.

And then the woman raised a hand in greeting, and her face broke into a spontaneous, devilish grin, a grin of shared joy and wild mischief. So unexpected was the smile that Jason found himself grinning back.

At that moment Jason looked up to see an additional four helicopters, big ones, thundering over the water toward them.

The U.S. Cavalry, he thought. They’ve arrived.

*

“People seem to think I’m some kind of Tennessee Williams character,” said Mrs. LaGrande Shelburne Ashenden. “They think I spend my days languishing under a ceiling fan and dreaming about past glories. Well, they might have forgot that my family got where it is by knowing how to kill Indians and drive niggers, but I haven’t.”

General Jessica C. Frazetta gazed at Mrs. Ashenden with curiosity. What, she wondered, does a Southern gentlewoman of a certain age wear to a political assassination? A celadon chemise-cut summer linen dress. Straw summer hat with matching ribbon. Rolex with platinum-gold expansion band, tiny little earrings with freshwater pearls, sandals, and an Hermès tapestry clutch bag containing a very ladylike pearl-handled nickel-plated two-shot derringer.

Jessica was feeling decidedly outgunned, at least in the fashion sense. The fact that she could only see with one eye did nothing for her social confidence.

Mrs. Ashenden sat demurely in the straight-backed wooden chair in the coroner’s office in the parish courthouse. Knees and ankles together, hands in her lap, as she had no doubt been taught in dancing school. Her careful affect was only slightly spoiled by the plaster arm cast that had just been applied by Dr. Patel. The derringer had been loaded with.357 magnum rounds, which on discharge had broken Mrs. Ashenden’s wrist.

“The Paxtons were always trash, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Ashenden said. “And they’re not one of the older families, not really. They arrived just before the War.” She sighed. “It’s a pity about his wife. She’s a Windridge, you know. She married beneath her in choosing a Paxton.” She looked up at Jessica with bright birdlike eyes. “Do you think I should undertake her social rehabilitation? Perhaps I should invite her into my bridge club …” She looked uncertain as a thought struck her. “Oh dear, someone will have to tell poor Wilona about her husband’s demise. I fear that task may fall to me.” She looked at Jessica again. “Unless I am under arrest? I’m afraid I don’t quite know my status.”

Jessica didn’t know, either. Ever since she’d flown into this situation, she’d been unable to decide whether she’d wandered into Gone with the Wind or one of the more macabre works of Edgar Allan Poe.

“If you can assure me,” Jessica decided, “that you’re not planning on shooting anyone else, then I suppose I can let you go home.”

Mrs. Ashenden gave a little purse-lipped smile. “Oh, I don’t imagine I’ll need to shoot anyone else, dear. Sheriff Paxton was the sole remaining obstacle to a resolution of the crisis. The only one who was still dangerous.” She rose, smoothed the straight lines of her dress. “I think now that Omar Paxton has gone where the woodbine twineth, you will find things much easier.”

“I hope so, ma’am.”

“I think you should just take all of those people away, you know, the refugees. In your helicopters, or whatever they are. I do not imagine they would be comfortable here, nor do I imagine the people in the parish would be comfortable with them present.”

“I’ll consider that,” Jessica said.

Mrs. Ashenden made her way to the door, then paused. “Oh by the way,” she said, “I hope I will get my gun back eventually? My husband gave it to me some years ago, so I could protect myself when he was away, and it has sentimental value.”

“That may not be up to me, ma’am,” Jessica said. “But I’ll see what I can do.”