Half of Paradise (6 page)

“You’d put me out of business.”

There was a rustle in the bushes, and two men came into the clearing. They were bootleggers who picked up Tereau’s whiskey to run it through the marsh downriver to Morgan City, and eventually to New Orleans and the dry counties in Mississippi. The whiskey was sold for four dollars a gallon at the still and twelve dollars a gallon at the retailers. It was clear and tasted like Scotch, and sometimes coloring was added and the whiskey was sold with a bonded Kentucky label, although its maker had never been out of Louisiana. The bootleggers were sunburned, rawboned men; their hands and faces were smeared with mud and handkerchiefs were tied around their necks to protect them from the mosquitoes; they were dressed in heavy work trousers and denim shirts with battered sweat-soaked straw hats. They were from the Atchafalaya basin, where there is nothing but lowlands, swamps, mud-choked bayous, scrubby timber so thick it is almost impassable in places, and swarming clouds of mosquitoes that can put a man to bed with a fever.

The bootleggers came into the light of the fire. Their names were LeBlanc and Gerard. LeBlanc was the taller of the two, with an old army .45-caliber revolver stuck down in his belt. He was dark and slender, and his eyes were bright in the light. Gerard was thick-necked, unshaved, with heavy shoulders that were slightly stooped; he had long muscular arms and a crablike walk. He cut a slice off his tobacco plug and dropped it into his mouth.

“You all are late tonight,” Tereau said.

“We had to take the long way,” LeBlanc said. “State police is on the river.”

“We’re going to have to change our pickup night. They got it figured when we move our stuff,” Gerard said.

LeBlanc looked at Avery.

“Who’s the boy?” he said.

“He’s all right,” Tereau said.

“What’s your name?”

“Avery Broussard.”

“I reckon Tereau told you it ain’t good to talk about what you see in the marsh at night,” he said.

“He told me.”

“Tereau says he’s all right,” Gerard said.

“Sure he’s all right,” LeBlanc said. “I’m just making sure he understands how we do things down here.”

“He knows,” Tereau said. “Where’s the boat?”

“Down in the willows. We got it covered up good,” Gerard said.

Avery looked at the wild stare in LeBlanc’s eyes.

“There’s too much moonlight. You can see us for a half mile on the river. We had to come down the bayou,” LeBlanc said.

Tereau went to the wagon to get tin cups for their coffee. “I got some rabbit. You want to eat?” he said.

“We ain’t got time. It’s about four hours till dawn. We got to reach Morgan City before daylight,” LeBlanc said.

They sat down on the log while Tereau filled their cups. LeBlanc stretched out his legs and removed the pistol from his belt and placed it on the log.

“Do you use that thing?” Avery said.

“They ain’t nobody around to say I have,” he said. He picked it up and rolled the cylinder across his palm. “I got it in the army.” He snapped the cylinder open into a loading position and snapped it back again. His eyes were hard and distant as he looked into the fire. “They teach you how to shoot real good in the army. I was a B.A.R. man. I could knock down nips at a thousand yards with a Browning.”

Gerard stood up and threw the rest of his coffee into the fire. “We better get moving,” he said. LeBlanc continued to stare ahead with the pistol in his hand. Gerard nudged him with his foot. “Come on, we better move. We still got to load the boat.”

LeBlanc rubbed the oil off the pistol barrel on his trouser leg. He put the gun on half cock and slid it back in his belt. He still had that same hard, distant look in his eyes. He finished his coffee in one swallow and got up and went over to the wagon to count the kegs of whiskey with Tereau.

“Don’t get him talking about the army no more,” Gerard said to Avery. “He ain’t been right since he come back from the war.”

“Did he ever use that gun on anybody?”

“I don’t ask him no questions. He knows his job, and what else he does ain’t my business. The only time I got to watch him is when we have a scrape with the law. Soon as he thinks they’re around he takes out his pistol and puts it on full cock. His eyes get like two pieces of fire when he sees a uniform.”

Avery looked over to the wagon. Tereau was fastening the tailgate after LeBlanc had climbed down from the bed. The mules shuffled in their harness.

“What happened to him in the army?” Avery said.

“He was in the South Pacific about a year. He even got decorated once. Then one day he tried to shoot his commanding officer and deserted. They found him about a month later and put him in the stockade. He went kind of crazy in there. They sent him to a hospital for a while, but it didn’t do no good. They finally give him a medical discharge because there wasn’t nothing else they could do with him.”

Gerard took the coffeepot off the iron stake and poured the coffee over the fire. The coals hissed and spit as the fire died and the clearing darkened except for the light of the moon. He pulled the iron stake out of the ground and kicked dirt over the faintly glowing embers.

“Don’t let LeBlanc worry you,” he said, and went over to the wagon in his slow, crablike walk, his shoulders slightly rounded, with the iron stake and coffeepot in each hand. Avery followed.

“Twenty-five kegs,” LeBlanc said.

“I reckon you want some money,” Gerard said to Tereau.

“I reckon you’re correct, Mister whiskey runner,” Tereau said.

Gerard loosened his shirt and unstrapped a money belt from his waist. He propped one foot on the hub of the wagon wheel and counted out the money on his thigh. He put the bills in a stack and handed them to Tereau and strapped the belt around his waist again.

“When you going to start putting my name on the labels?” Tereau said.

“Soon as you start paying federal taxes and we both go out of business,” Gerard said.

“I hear something out there,” LeBlanc said.

They listened for a moment.

“I don’t hear nothing,” Gerard said.

“It’s out on the river somewheres,” LeBlanc said.

“There ain’t nothing out there. We got rid of the police three miles back.”

LeBlanc moved his hand to the pistol and looked off into the darkness. “There’s something wrong,” he said. “Everything is going wrong tonight. I can feel it. There’s too much moonlight, and there’s somebody out on the river.”

“There ain’t nobody out there.”

“I heard it I tell you.”

Gerard looked at Tereau.

“Maybe he did hear something. Let’s go to the boat and don’t take no chances,” Tereau said.

Gerard threw the coffeepot and iron stake into the back of the wagon. Tereau got up on the seat and wrapped the reins around his fist. He drove the wagon around the edge of the clearing through a narrow break in the trees that opened onto a wheel-rutted road leading between the levee and a deep gully. They could hear the nutrias calling to each other in the swamp, a high-pitched cry like the scream of a hysterical woman. The oak trees stood at uneven intervals along the rim of the gully, and the moonlight fell through the branches, spotting the ground with pale areas of light against the dark green of the jungle. Tereau sat forward with the reins through his fingers. He looked back at Avery and Gerard, who were following, as the wagon banged over the ruts. LeBlanc walked ahead of the mules, straining his eyes against the darkness. He stopped and without turning put one hand in the air.

“What’s the matter?” Gerard said.

“There it is again. It’s a boat laying out on the river. I can hear the water breaking against its sides,” LeBlanc said.

“How in the hell can you tell it’s a boat?” Gerard said.

“I know it’s a boat.”

“I can’t hear nothing,” Tereau said.

“I’m going ahead to take a look,” LeBlanc said.

“You stay here. Me and the boy will go,” Gerard said.

“I reckon I don’t need nobody to tell me what to do.”

“We need the gun here,” Gerard said.

“Tereau’s got a rifle in the wagon.”

“I ain’t carrying it this time,” Tereau said.

Gerard touched Avery on the arm and they moved up the road past LeBlanc.

“I don’t like nobody telling me what to do,” LeBlanc said.

“I ain’t telling you nothing,” Gerard said. “I’m just asking you to watch the wagon.”

They walked on out of sight. The road continued in a straight line between the gully and the levee. Directly ahead was the cove where their boat was moored in the willows. The cove was about fifty yards wide, but the entrance was a bottleneck formed by sandbars, deep enough for small craft to enter and too shallow for anything larger. The river was swollen from the rains, flowing swiftly down to the Gulf. Avery and Gerard left the road before they got to the landing, and worked their way around the edge of the cove to where it met the river. From there they could see the willow trees, the cove, and the river without being seen. They went through the brush until they reached the river’s edge where the backwater rippled over the sandbar that formed one side of the bottleneck of the cove. They squatted in the sand and looked out through the reeds.

“There ain’t nothing here,” Gerard said.

“Look over yonder.”

“Where?”

“Just out from the sandbar. It’s an oil slick,” Avery said.

“It could have come from upriver.”

“It’s not spread out enough. A boat has been here in the last hour.”

Gerard spit a stream of tobacco juice into the sand. “Let’s get further downriver. Maybe we can see something.”

They worked back along the shore away from the cove. They kept in the shelter of the trees and didn’t speak. The frogs and crickets were loud in the marsh. Gerard walked ahead, not making any sound. They arrived at a small inlet that washed back through the trees. They waded into the water until it was around their thighs. Gerard stood with his hand on a tree trunk, looking out over the river.

“I can’t see a goddamn thing,” he said.

“Maybe they went on past us,” Avery said.

“Let’s go back to the other side of the cove. If there ain’t nothing there, we’ll load the boat and get out of here.”

“There’s another slick.”

Gerard looked at the metallic blue oil deposit floating on the water. He raised his eyes and studied the opposite bank.

“Sonsofbitches,” he said. “They’re hid back in the shadow against the bank. They must have cut their engine and floated downstream to wait for us.”

“What do you want to do?” Avery said.

“There ain’t no way to get my boat out as long as they’re sitting there.”

“Sink your boat and go back on foot.”

“They’d find it sooner or later and get my registration number.” Gerard spit into the water and waded to the bank. “We got to get rid of them. Let’s go get the others.”

They started towards the cove.

“What’s the sentence for running whiskey?” Avery said.

“One to three years.”

“Do you have a drink on you?”

“I never touch it.”

They went through the underbrush to the cove where the sandbar jutted away from the shore. They could just see the hard-packed crest beneath the surface in the moonlight. Gerard stopped for a moment in silence and looked out over the water at the sandbar, and then followed Avery back through the trees towards the road. They passed the clump of willows and turned along the gully. They could see the outline of the wagon and the kegs on its bed in the shadows. LeBlanc was sitting up on the seat with Tereau.

“What did you see?” Tereau said.

“They’re there,” Gerard said.

“Bastards,” LeBlanc said.

“I think I got a way for us to get out,” Gerard said. “We’ll have to load the whiskey first.”

“You can’t outrun them with a boatload of them kegs,” Tereau said.

“They ain’t going to chase us. They’re going to be piled up on the sandbar. Take the wagon up to the boat and we’ll get loaded.”

Tereau slapped the reins against the mules’ backs. The kegs lumbered from side to side as the wagon creaked forward. LeBlanc sat beside the Negro with his hand on the butt of his revolver.

“You ain’t going to need the gun,” Tereau said.

“I’m the judge of that.”

“We never had no shooting. We don’t shoot and they don’t shoot.”

LeBlanc looked grimly ahead. Gerard and Avery took the mules by their harness and turned them around so the tailgate would face the boat. Tereau tied the reins to the brake, and climbed down and went to the rear of the wagon. He pulled the metal pins from their fastenings and eased the gate down.

“It ain’t too late,” he said. “I’ll give you your money back and take the whiskey to the still.”

“We’ll make it,” Gerard said.

“It’s your three years,” Tereau said, and took the first keg off the bed onto his shoulder.

Avery got up on the bed and handed the kegs down. In a quarter hour the boat was loaded.

“Now what?” Tereau said.

“You better get ready to move,” Gerard said.

“It ain’t smart what you’re doing.”

“I never had to ditch a load yet.”

LeBlanc got into the long flat outboard and climbed over the kegs to the bow. Gerard got in and sat on the board plank in front of the motor. He took a flashlight from under the seat and placed it beside him. He wrapped the rope around the starter, put the motor in neutral and opened the throttle; he yanked hard on the rope. It caught the first time, and he increased the gas feed and raced the motor wide open in neutral. They heard the two Evinrude seventy-five-horsepower engines of the police boat kick over across the river.

Gerard took up the flashlight and shone it through the willows so it would be visible from the river. The throbbing of the police boat’s engines became nearer, then they saw it come around the river bend full speed towards the mouth of the cove, the water breaking white in front of the bow, the flat churning wake behind and the spray flying back over the uptilted cabin. Someone on board must have seen the sandbar, because the boat swerved to port just before it struck the crest. The bow lurched in the air, and the engines, still driving, spun the boat around on its keel until it came to rest with part of the stern out of the water and the starboard propeller churning in the sand.