Emerald Hell

Chapter 17

They had stobbed to the far side of the dark lake and were working their way around inlets too shallow for the pole. It had rained briefly but the black clouds had quickly rushed across the sky as if with great intent. Deeter had his hands on the oars, careful of running atop gator ground and sinkholes. Duffy had just torn off a wad of chaw and was offering it to his brother when Jester let out a cry like a dying loon and both Ferris boys practically jumped out of the boat.

Jester shot straight up in his seat, standing there with his head thrown back and eyes wide, crying up to the sky the way their ma had when they'd used the ax handles to beat her to death. Ma with her mouth open and hissing all manner of vile words right up to her unholy departure. Brother Jester was now looking the same way with his muscles locked, his top lip skinned back to bare his teeth.

Deeter's first thought -was that this was their chance to be free of the damn crazy preacher. If the lake had been a little deeper then who knows, maybe he would've run forward and cracked Jester across the head with an oar and thrown him from the skiff.

As things were though, he was much too afraid to make any kind of move except nervously hop from foot to foot, which caused the boat to rock wildly and froth the silt beneath them.

Duffy knew that his brothers gesturing meant Deeter was hesitating on some kind of stupid thought. He reached out to put a hand on Deeter's shoulder to calm him some. As he did, an explosion deep in the jungle blew timber and scrub high up across their line of sight. The breeze rose through the cypress and a ghastly, putrid smell wafted toward them.

"Lord almighty," Duffy said, "boiled radishes and cabbage!"

"You reckon one of them old stills back in the woods done blown up?" Deeter asked.

"Don't smell like it none."

Jester's demented howl grew louder. The Ferris boys watched him, unsure of what to do.

With sparks of energy drifting from Brother Jester's eyes and mouth and fingertips, and skipping across the blackwater, the preacher floated a few inches out of the skiff. His heels caught on the slats of the seat for a moment and then struck the gunwales as he climbed into the air with his teeth electrified.

Deeter whispered, "The devil is with us this day. He done paying us a mighty long visit."

"Mayhap you're right," Duffy said, his head cocked, almost entranced by the scene. "But we always known it was comin'."

"I reckon, but it don't salve my heart none."

"Salvin' hearts is the last thing on the devil's mind, I s'pect."

The strange lightning played havoc across the marsh prairies ahead. The swamp was smoking now. A whitish-gray haze crawled over everything.

Both Ferris boys covered their noses and mouths, the stink of death heavy in the air. The foggy fumes crept closer and reached across the bow of the skiff. Deeter and Duffy backed into one another and held there unmoving. They'd dumped quite a few old boys in the mud from time to time, but neither had ever smelled anything like this. Meanwhile, Brother Jester just kept hanging there above the boat, looking all prophetized and full of apocalyptic vision.

"Should we just wait?" Deeter asked. "I'm really hungering."

"How can you eat with that hell-broth reek all over the marsh?"

"I'm a little partial to boiled radishes myself."

Brother Jester's mangled voice came from some endless well inside him. And yet, somehow, it also sounded as though that ruination came from far off in several directions as the preacher began to speak."lite mother dies without bearing any children. The seeds never taking root, the pollen too strange for the bitter soil. What grace is this? Where is the beauty promised by the land?"

"What's he sayin' about his mama?" Deeter asked.

"I figure it ain't his own mama he talkin' about."

"He gonna come back down in the boat or he just gonna hover there like a wasp all day long? I don't see why we can't have no fritters and beans while we waitin'."

"Let's give him whatever time he needs," Duffy said. "I don't want him trackin' behind us if we go on our way. Man like that, he don't forget those that cross him."

"I remember his grievous touch, but I don't like bein' no man's drudge, 'specially if he don't even allow me to have no lunch when it's past midday. We got any jerky and biscuits left?"

"Forget that. Ain't much more to this venture so long as we find them girls today and attend them fellas. We be home by sunset."

"Iffun Preacher ever come on down from the mid-air."

"The mother burns and bubbles and boils." Jester went on. "She who was alone and without any friend. She who did nothing except give. Give to the prey and give to the ground and water. There was love and kindness. And now only jive and splinter and ash. Whoever heard, whoever listens to the heartfelt plea, blight those that eradicate me. Do unto them as they have done. Burn them. Burn the children."

With that Brother Jester's head slumped and he dropped back into the boat, the sparking display of power dwindling and going out. He landed so hard that the boat tipped hard to one side, and the twelve-gauge pump sloshed overboard. Deeter whispered, "Why that no good-"

"Hush," Duffy told him. "We still got Plume Wallace's weapon."

"A damn double-barrel instead of a pump."

"I'll get you a new one fer yer birthday."

"You will?"

"Iffun we live to see the day."

Jester sat there in the stern, his eyes full of terrible thoughts. The Ferris boys waited. They chawed their chaw and spit into the water. Deeter's stomach rumbled. The smoke drifted out of the deep brush and across the waterways.

Shadows wreathed Jester, within and without, his body and soul, and they told him how the destructive hand of his hellish enemy had murdered a strange and unique being out in the greenery.

Its death throes continued to send harrowing Shockwaves through the mystical currents that Jester was privy to. Its dying petitions assailed and besieged him. Ivory as his skin was, it paled further.

He had not felt such a strong sense of sorrow and faithlessness since his own death.

His archangel shadows offered bits of knowledge about the great mother, now dead, and the swamp was more desolate for it. He was mournful that they had not been faster today. The murder might have been averted, the mother saved, the lonely men attended and set free upon the backs of seraphim.

"You all right, Preacher?" Duffy ventured. "What was all that caterwaulin' about?"

"Row us out of here."

Deeter sat and took the oars again. "Iffun you say." He kept to the same course, which would lead to the tussocks and the mired shore where all the smoke seemed to come from.

"No," Jester said."Not that way Take the other inlet." Pointing with a claw-like finger. "There, you see."

"Why that one?" Duffy said. "It ain't nothin' much but a creek."

Jester looked at him. "It is where we wish to go."

"Well, that'll learn me for ponderin' on a foolish question."

Deeter rowed them over the shallows and into a new channel that brought the skiff to thinner tracks of tattered pine. Timber wolves prowled in the lightwood, their eyes anxious in the underbrush. Duffy took to stobbing again and Deeter angrily picked up the double-barrel shotgun. They might run aground on a sandbar and the wolves, though fearing man, might still take a run at them.

The emerald thickness around them fell away as they passed more hummocks. Bull gators in the distance roared and tore up the stillness of the late afternoon.

"It brings us to the women," Jester said, grinning. "To my Sarah. And her child."

Duffy worked the stobpole, easing it free from jetsam and occasional logjam. "And what we gonna do when we get there, Preacher, if you don't mind me askin'?"

"You'll do as you're intended to do."

Deeter spit some chaw. "And for me and my brother, those intentions in this case might be what…?"

"Well… murder, Deeter,"Jester the walking darkness said, his teeth burning. "Whatever else are you good for except murder?"