Adam Johnson - Emporium

Randy smirks. “Maybe it’s more like ninety percent,” he says. He casts a weary glance at the bicycle pedaling toward us. “That’s James Green, isn’t it? The former gravity drainage commissioner?”

The gravity drainage commissioner approves all building permits. He can rezone your house while you sleep, revoke watertable access, run a bayou through your land, or declare your property in a floodplain. Everyone must deal with him.

“Yeah, my dad and those guys all went to the Cold War together.”

“They have a video on James Green in current events.”

“Sobriety is their only current event. They flew high in Germany, that’s for sure. Then they ran southwest Louisiana for a while. Now, they drink a lot of coffee.”

“No offense, but your dad’s had documented problems running boats, planes, and cars, let alone the eighteenth state of the union.”

“You can’t even manage taking me to a dance.”

“I’m coming to your fish fry,” he says, “and we’re at ninety percent, okay?”

This is the point where he’s supposed to kiss me. I’m assuming he wants to kiss me. I’ve got him loosened up, joking, but he glances away, wishing, I think, that I’d kiss him. This is half of why I’m sweet on him. But I won’t let him off the hook.

“Bring a fishing pole,” is all I tell him before he climbs in his Jeep and burns out, leaving zaggy trails in the shale.

Jim’s brakes squeak him to a stop beside me. “I used to have a Jeep just like that,” he says.

He dismounts, and we walk across the big grates that mark our property. The grates are made to break the ankles of cows that try to cross, but there’s been no cows on our land for years.

“I presume that’s the Future ATF boy Teeg told me about,” Jim says. He wears a bubble-head helmet and Spandex cycling shorts tight enough that you can see his noodle, but he has dark, intense eyes and a silver tooth that will give you les frisons when he flashes it at you.

“He won’t go to the Sadie Hawkins with me,” I tell Jim.

“An obvious fool.”

Ahead through the trees are the muffled sounds of an engine revving and the clipped barking of Beau.

“You sure that raid’s this weekend? I mean, couldn’t we get it moved back a week? You can make a call or something, right?”

Jim thinks a moment on this. A storm blew through last week, clearing all the dead wood from the pecans and live oaks, and the downed branches give like dry sponges under our feet.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to get the dance moved back instead?” he asks me.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say and stuff my hands in my pockets. He sounds pretty dang casual considering they raided his offices earlier this year. Though he knew they were coming, he didn’t realize they were going to tear the place apart. All his fish died and his carpets still stink like pepper gas.

Around a bend in the drive, my father stands next to Doc Teeg’s dually pickup, which has obviously just seen a rut. Brown water still drips from its panels, and there’s about a thousand pounds of mud-splashed slot machine in back. They’ve been driving around our property unlocking all the old gates so that the ATF doesn’t knock our fences down. My father’s pants are wet, though Teeg’s are clean.

“Shotgun,” I call.

Berlin sits in the back seat with Jim as we drive down to throw the slots in our lake. I change all the radio presets while Teeg talks to my dad about Beau, the two of them eyeing each other in the rearview mirror.

“I’m just saying, maybe we should tie him up. I don’t want him loose with all those people running around,” Teeg says.

“Nothing’s gonna happen to Beau,” Berlin tells him.

“A man doesn’t want his dog to get shot for no reason.”

“He’s not your dog anymore.”

“Shot?” I ask.

“Whoa, whoa,” Jim Green says. “Slow down now. From what I gather, there’s a newer, friendlier ATF out there, one committed to nonlethal means — concussion canisters, caustic sprays, stun wands, and so on. They’re not into bullets anymore.”

Teeg opens his mouth to speak, but from above comes the drone of an airplane, and we all power down our windows to lean out for a look. The trees are thick though, so there’s nothing to see.

At the water’s edge, we back down the creosote planks of what was the seaplane dock. Our lake is really a long, open area where twenty miles of marshlands drain into the Coubillion River. The water is brackish, the color of chicory coffee, when it empties from the wetlands, but now, as the tide pushes seawater in from the Gulf, it is gray and cloudy with a shimmer to its surface, like hot fish broth.

Teeg drops the tailgate, and he and my father both hitch their pants before beginning the work that will erase the last traces of our past lives, that will be a final step on our year-long road to lame-o.

But before the first slot gets the heave, my mother appears in flower-print overalls, carrying a roll of duct tape and smelling of the heavy lemon wax she’s been using to seal her cherry buffet, sidebar, and secretary. In the past two days, she’s put down carpet runners, draped the antiques, and packed her grandmother’s Rutherford crystal and Celine service for twenty-four.

She walks right by me, moving with deliberateness past the pylons. When she passes Jim Green, his awful bulge clearly outlined in those shorts, she lifts a hand in disgust and says “please.”

She halts before Teeg and Berlin.

“It is enough,” she says, “that my dining hall has suffered under green felt, fake gold trim, velvet wallpaper, and spangled flooring. It is sufficient that thirty men are to tromp through our house in short order. But that’s my friend’s china off the end of this pier, and you’re not throwing your foolish gaming machines atop it.”

Teeg closes his tailgate, carefully latches it. He tips his cap and nods to her.

“Don’t you sheep me, Doctor,” my mother says. “I know all about you. I was at those officers’ parties, if you’ll remember. I could read a German newspaper, too.”

We hear another plane, faint and pitched, high in the bright haze above.

“Smile for the birdie,” my mother says, but nobody looks.

I cross my arms and turn toward the water. The straight-on sun gives an illusion of great depth, and for the first time I wonder what else is at the bottom of that lake.

* * *

Six hours later, we are again on the end of the dock, this time in lawn chairs, fishing for dinner. The sun shines low at our backs, casting our outlines on the water. The lowering tide is draining the marshes, drawing currents rich with shrimp, bait crabs, and fingerlings into our lake. This is the time when gar and specs swim up the river to hunt in fast schools. But we’re after redfish today, and Berlin has decided that light, temperature, and water-clarity all dictate the use of the simple gold spoon. Randy has joined us, and we cast flashing spoons in turn.

To keep from crossing lines, we have established zones: Berlin casts to the left of the dock, near shore, at ten o’clock; Teeg casts at eleven; my mother fishes over Mrs. Teeg’s china at noon; I aim for one o’clock, while Randy must fish over the submerged slot machines we ended up dumping along his bank. The air holds the rotty smell of raw cane, and we drink Junior League tea, sweet enough to fur your teeth.

Randy and I have our shoes off, our pants cuffed, so when I swing my legs, our feet brush. Randy keeps snagging his lure. He tugs his line all different directions.

I’m afraid we’ll pull up some strange article of Mrs. Teeg’s, a brooch or brassiere she’s been missing out in California.

“You say you’re from Kansas City?” Berlin asks Randy.