Michael Smith - Rivers

Then he cranked the Jeep and turned out of the parking lot.

At the end of the gravel road, the dog was standing there. Wet and ragged. He whistled and the dog jumped up into the passenger seat, and they started down the highway in the direction of Himmel Road.

AGGIE HAD ALWAYS BEEN THE kind of man who needed to be watched. A strong, wiry build and a sharp brow and thin lips that held tight when they weren’t sucking on a cigarette. Thick gray-black hair down tight on a low forehead and tanned skin that didn’t lose its dark shade even in the winter months. He had been fired for stealing, stabbed for sleeping with married women, jailed for taking cars that didn’t belong to him. He had seldom slept in the same place for longer than a couple of months and the women that he had known weren’t aware until he was gone that the name they called him wasn’t really his name. He’d always had a curious ability to make friends, to get people to trust him, that had allowed him to live the life of a renegade and when, on a dare, he had started handling snakes in front of a congregation in the strip-mall church on the east end of Biloxi, his calling had been found.

Energized by the reaction of the worshipers, his adrenaline pumping with the pulse of the snake in his hands, its tail rattling and tongue seething, he had become the man who could heal or cleanse or predict the future before he had hardly even acknowledged to his followers that he was capable of such things. It was as if those who sat in the metal chairs and chanted and sang as he twirled the rattlers made him what he was without his consent. Yet he knew that it was right. That the power he held over them was in the proper hands. And he had been wielding that power for almost twenty years, back and forth across the Gulf Coast, moving his serpent church in a carnival-like caravan that waved the flag of the Holy Spirit until the room was full and then in the dark corners of the night, using his position that had been delivered by God to penetrate both bodies and souls that didn’t belong to him.

In this new world, the snakes had been exchanged for guns and the strip-mall church exchanged for a colony.

He had let the women out to go to the bathroom and to eat. They were scattered in the fields around the trailers, pants down and squatting, the high grass the only shroud of modesty. Aggie stood under the tarp next to a low fire with the revolver in his hand, dangling down against his leg. The rain blew in below the tarp and the fire hissed back at it like a threatened snake. He watched them carelessly as he tapped the revolver against his leg, humming an old gospel he remembered his grandmother playing on the living room piano.

Four days now since Joe went off, he thought. He couldn’t decide if Joe had run off or if he was dead or dying, but he didn’t believe the man would desert. They’d been in it together for too long, gotten in and out of too much, hoodwinked too many people, and Joe had been as much of this new world as he had. Helped him find the place, helped him tow and circle the trailers, helped him loot houses and stores, helped him smile at the stragglers, promise them food and shelter. Helped him keep the women and get rid of the men. And nothing Joe had done or said suggested that he would run off. Aggie had taken one of the trucks and gone where he could, looking for the Jeep. Looking for Joe. But Joe was gone. At least for now. Aggie was finding it more difficult to believe that he’d see him again. So without his enforcer, he’d been more careful with his colonists, keeping the doors locked longer during the day, showing the revolver when they were out.

He thought that without Joe, it was time to start working on Evan. He would need another man. Someone strong enough to help hold them the way they needed to be held. Someone to increase their numbers.

One by one they came back into the circle of trailers and on a table next to the fire there were paper plates and plastic forks and gallon jugs of water and Coke. Next to the plates were two loaves of sliced bread, a package of bologna, peanut butter, and jelly. A bag of apples sat on the end of the table. They moved about slowly, as if resurrecting from a lengthy, dreamless slumber, unfamiliar with this place and what might have brought them here. Odd, shapeless figures, so draped in layers that it seemed as if the bodies beneath were nothing more than knobby frames of bone and flesh. They formed a line and waited for him to speak. Their coats were too big for their hungry bodies, some with bandanas tied around their heads, some with sock hats, some with gloves. Eight of them. Eight women who did not do anything that they were not supposed to do. Two of them pregnant. One in a big way. At the end of the line stood the blond boy and the dark-haired girl and the child, Brisco. Evan held Brisco’s hand and the child pushed the man-sized sock hat up off his eyes so he could see. All of them were damp, like everything else. The smoke gathered against the tarp and made a cloud around them.

Aggie stood in front of them and he tossed away his cigarette. Then he removed the Bible from his back pocket and opened it up to the same place that he read from every day before they ate. His rough fingertips brushed the featherlike pages, then he began.

“ ‘The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth. And behold, I Myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life, everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish My covenant with you, and you shall go into the ark—you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you, they shall be male and female. Of the birds after their kind, of animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive.’ ”

One of the women coughed and Aggie stopped. Looked for the culprit. Then he read again. “ ‘Then the Lord said to Noah, Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation. So Noah, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, went into the ark because of the waters of the flood. Of clean animals, of animals that are unclean, of birds, and of everything that creeps on the earth, two by two they went into the ark to Noah, male and female, as God had commanded Noah. And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.’ ”

Aggie paused. He looked up at them and moved his eyes from one to the next to make certain they listened and watched the man who spoke. He rubbed his hand over his mouth, smacked his lips, turned a page in the Bible and began again.

“ ‘So He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive.’ ”

Aggie closed the Bible. He looked toward the sky, shut his eyes and held out his arms, and repeated the last verse with something akin to vengeance in his voice. “ ‘Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive .’ ”