Emerald Hell

Chapter 11

Deeter Ferns stobpoled Plume Wallace's skiff through the morass with great efficiency and poise. His drunken, brutal father hadn't been good for too damn much, but the man had certainly taught his sons all there was to know about living on the bog.

"I still don't see why we had to bring this old boy along," Duffy said. "He startin' to stink somethin' awful. Passed a perfectly good sinkhole back aways where he'd'a been gone forever and not ruinin' our day. 'Stead we got a half a gallon'a blood sloshing in the bottom of the boat and evidence a'plenty if we run afoul of the sheriff or anybody else."

Brother Jester, seated in the back of the boat, held the corpse up beside him, his arm around Plume Wallace like he was hugging a drunken friend. The dead man's mouth was parted slightly, an inch of tongue jutting between the rotted stumps of teeth, with its ashen face still showing the frozen leer of a painful death on it, turned to jester's ear.

Shadows twined around the corpse's lips and urged the secrets up from his undeparted soul. They slowly tore free like the deep roots of an old maple.

"Someone camped right there, at the edge of the basin last night," Deeter said.

"It was our enemies," Jester said. "We're growing nearer."

The long rumbling cry of a bull gator resounded like thunder across the weeds and hummocks, the gator's musk filling the air. Duffy drew his cutting blade, still crusted with Mrs. Hoopkins's blood, and cleaned it in the waters of the lake before replacing it in his sheathe. He saw the bull gator's rutted forehead skimming through the mire in the distance and watched his brother easily divert the skiff to avoid the beast. Duffy checked both the pump shotgun and the double-barrel ten-gauge they'd stolen from Plume Wallace's cold hand.

"'Sides that there weird-lookin' big red fella, who we aim to fight?"

Jester said, "An honest young man graced and blessed the way I was once graced and blessed."

Duffy waited for more and when no more was forthcoming asked, "That it? That all you gonna tell us?"

"That's all there is to tell the likes of you."

"Well, I figure a couple'a shell blasts in their gizzards are likely to stop them just fine no matter how weird or God blessed or graceful they be. What you say to that, Preacher?"

"I'm not a preacher anymore," Brother Jester told him, his ruined voice sounding even uglier as it snapped and echoed across the basin, imposing itself upon the natural sounds of the swamp. He turned his full attention to the corpse beside him.

Jester patted Plume Wallace's back-still wet with blood-running his hand back and forth and gripping a shoulder adamantly, the way a best friend offers condolences to someone lost in bereavement. Even after being shot twice by Deeter, it had taken Plume Wallace almost five minutes to die while crawling in the dirt behind his shack, drawing himself around and around in agonized circles.

He'd refused to plead or beg or beseech. He'd left the world cursing and reaching for Deeter's ankle. A man of pride and courage, Jester respected him deeply. Patting the body even harder, Jester felt a profound love for Plume Wallace.

All the dead had reasons to live, even if they didn't know those reasons while they were alive. Plume Wallace had a sister he hadn't seen in over thirteen years because of some fool argu- merit they'd had over an old car radiator. Plume wanted to use the one in their daddy's junked Ford for his still, and she fought him on it because even a drop of radiator fluid would poison the moon and make him go blind. By God, but he knew how to flush a damn radiator he told her, what'd she think, that he was an eedjit? But she didn't want him to take the chance. She loved him too much and she worried. So he booted her in the ass and sent her packin' to go live with their lame Aunt Etta in Waynescross.

Only the recently dead understood real regret.

Now more than anything the spirit of Plume Wallace wished he could speak to his sister and beg forgiveness. She was right to have worried-he'd flushed that radiator plenty but when it was time to take the first sip of moon he gave it to his neighbor Earl Groell. Earl Groell was already mostly blind so it didn't matter much, but it didn't stop Plume Wallace from throwing the rest of the batch in the swamp and flushing that radiator again.

Now he sought to send his soul sixty-two miles northwest to the door of his Aunt Etta's home and pledge his love for his sister, even if she couldn't hear him. It was a need that consumed him, and the first step toward his shrugging free of his mortal self and finding peace at his entry into the beyond.

Jester's shadows held firmly to Plume Wallace's soul while it struggled to leave the rotting bag of flesh. The tortured expression on the dead face seemed to become even more despairing. "Not yet. Not yet. I have need of you, friend."

"What's he goin' on about?" Deeter whispered to his brother, and Duffy, the blood in the bottom of the boat rising halfway over his shoes, said, "Just you get us the hell out of these black waters, all right?"

Speaking quietly into Plume Wallace's cold ear, Jester told him, "Go on ahead of us. Visit with my true enemy. My shadows can see deeply in most things, but they cannot see him."

"I ain't your huntin' dog," the dead man told him. "Do your own damn villainous work, and let me alone. Sweet Jesus is waitin' on his throne to greet me comin' up the golden stairway. Ain't you done enough bad will on me?"

"You won't rest a wink in the afterlife until I release you, friend-"

"Ain't very friendly-like at'all…"

"And I won't do that until you aid me in my undertaking."

The dead were extremely sensitive. The ghost of Plume Wallace, already agitated because it hadn't found the peace of oblivion yet, grew angry and struggled harder to be free of its body. "That supposed to be funny?That what tickle your ribs,you skinny sumbitch? Mentionin' undertakin' to a murdered ole boy never done you no harm?"

"A poor choice of words," Jester admitted. "In my crusade to find my daughter and unborn grandchild in these dark waters I seem to have forgotten my manners."

Butting a log, the skiff jolted and shook, and the corpse flopped sideways away from Jester as if scrambling toward freedom. "I remember you now," said Plume Wallace's spirit. "I sat in on one of your gospel sings when I was no more than twelve, thirteen. You had a voice come straight from on high. You done good for folks, healed my mama's bunions, cured Daddy of a cyst in his eye. How'd you come to this?"

Smiling, his sorrow and madness entwined, jester said, "I loved and I trusted."

Feathered shadows tugged at Plume Wallace's soul and Jester's hand ignited with his fury. He pressed his palm on the corpse's chest, shoving out the ghost but binding it to him. A thin silver strand no mortal could see connected them, and would until Jester decided to sever it and let Plume leave this world.

"Go on ahead and seek out my enemy. Find my daughter if you can, and return to me again with whatever you glean."

"I ain't got no choice, so I'll be back, and hope when I do I find you burnin' from your own malicious deeds."

"I already am," Jester said.