Rivers

37

THE GAS GAUGE WAS RIGHT at the e as they drove into ellisville. The high-way led them into downtown, a decrepit town square with a fractured awning running the length of the buildings, and underneath the awning stood groups of men sheltering from the rain, watching the truck as Cohen drove around the square looking for a place to park.

“What they all waiting for?” Evan asked.

“Nothing, it looks like,” Cohen answered.

Lights shined from the square buildings. A café stood in one corner and its door was open and a big man with an apron loomed in the doorway. Cohen lapped the square twice, watching them, some with the look of menace, others with the look of the defeated, but all seemingly interested in the unfamiliar truck and the unfamiliar refugees.

Cohen turned off the square and drove around to the backside of a row of buildings. He parked in between two dumpsters. A metal staircase rose up the back of one building, and at the top of the staircase, standing with an umbrella, was a square-shaped woman in only her panties and bra and she was waving at them to come on up, calling out in a singsong voice muted by the rain.

“Let’s go to that café and eat. Maybe find out about a place to stay,” Cohen said.

“You sure?” Evan asked.

“Not much other choice. Just stay close. Hold on to Brisco.”

“What about all that stuff in the back?” Mariposa asked.

Cohen reached into his coat where he still held two pistols and he took them out, made sure they were loaded. The bowie knife was still on his belt. The rifle leaned against the truck door next to Evan and Cohen told him to lay it down across the floorboard. They raised their legs and Evan set it down and pushed it under the seat.

“We won’t be long,” Cohen said. “Nobody saw us park back here.”

“Except her,” Evan said and he pointed up at the woman, who waved again.

“She ain’t going nowhere. Come on.”

They got out of the truck and hurried through an alley that took them to the square. The water rapped against the awning and it was mostly rotted and let in almost as much as it kept out. The café was on the other side so they started walking. Along the sidewalk, nobody moved to let them by and they wove carefully through and around the faces of men ready to take what didn’t belong to them. Some of them whistled at Mariposa, called out the things they’d do to her. Evan held Brisco tight and Mariposa held Cohen tighter. It smelled like cigarettes and old beer and here and there were bodies curled against building fronts, sleeping or passed out or dead. At the first corner a group of women huddled around a doorway of a building that had iron bars across the windows. The women were dressed like thrift-store mannequins with strangely matching low-cut shirts and hiked skirts that ignored the rain and cold. A woman wearing a baseball hat and a boa promised them anything they wanted for twenty dollars.

“I’ll do all that twice for fifteen,” another one said and they all laughed and called out after Cohen as he crossed the street and made a left and continued along the square. Cohen saw the big man with the apron protecting the doorway of the café and they walked a little faster and halfway there, a man threw his shoulder into Cohen as they passed, knocking him off balance. He staggered against Mariposa but kept his feet. Several of them stood together, all of them with beards and wild red eyes and they each held a bottle and together they smelled like hell. Cohen stood up straight and looked at the one who had shoved him. Tattoos circled his neck and his nose was a little crooked.

“Good day, sir,” the man sang out and a couple of them laughed. Up and down the sidewalk, everybody stopped and watched and waited.

Cohen nodded and he took Mariposa by the arm and started to walk again but the man moved in front of him.

“I said good day. You got manners, you say the same.” He stood close to Cohen and glared, then he looked at Mariposa, up and down. A couple of his buddies moved in behind him.

“Go on, Evan,” Cohen said. “Take Brisco and go get something to eat.”

Evan and Brisco started to move and Cohen was surprised the men let them but they did and the boys walked on toward the café, Evan watching over his shoulder.

“What you want here?” the man asked.

Cohen nodded at the café. “Something to eat.”

“Who you got with you? Sister? Cousin? Daughter, maybe.”

“We’re just walking over there.”

“You might have to hold on. We here are the welcome-to-town committee. I’m president and them behind me is vice presidents.”

Cohen looked past him and counted. “You got four vice presidents.”

“That’s right.”

“What for?”

“It don’t matter. Does it?”

“Not to me. But I wouldn’t split the vice presidency with three others.”

The man reached out to touch a strand of Mariposa’s hair and Cohen swatted his hand away.

“You better be careful,” Cohen said.

“I was thinking the same thing about you,” the man answered, loudly, over the rattle of the rain. The others moved in closer.

“We just want food and gas,” Cohen said.

“I done heard that one. Seems like it unites us all.”

“We’re not looking to be united.”

“That right?”

“That’s right.”

“You might get a whole lot more than that. Might get united and anointed and invited and provided and God knows what else. ’Specially her.”

“Got that right,” one of the others said.

“How old are you, darling?”

“Don’t talk to her,” Cohen said.

She squeezed his arm.

“Well, then,” the man said and he grinned. He stepped back and waved his arm as if showing them to their table. “Cowboy gets to get on his way. Pardon the interruption. Y’all go and enjoy yourselves and we’ll be right here watching. Right across there we’ll have us a drink or two tonight, maybe.” He pointed at a storefront on the other side of the square where JOINT was spray-painted across the glass in a childlike script.

“Come on,” Cohen said to Mariposa and they moved ahead. Cohen watched the men as he walked past, uncertain.

“We gonna make you feel right at home,” the man called out. “Know why? ’Cause there ain’t nothing else to do. Ain’t nothing else to do but take care of the visitors to this fair city. God knows we about to be wiped away anyhow. Might as well enjoy it.”

38

IT WAS AS IF THEY were a quartet of unrehearsed actors who had been cast into an ongoing production and directed to play the role of silent, exhausted, and bewildered. They sat in a booth at the front of the café next to the window. Brisco and Evan on one side, Cohen and Mariposa on the other. Along one wall were more booths and nearly every seat was filled. Women with children, old people sitting six in a booth, a table of Mexican boys talking quickly with nervous looks. More people and more normalcy than any of them had seen in years. More normalcy than Brisco had seen in his life.

Opposite the booths there was a long counter with ten stools occupied by men with coffee mugs and cigarettes. Behind the counter stood a black woman wearing a sweatshirt and a red bandana tied around her neck that she used to wipe the sweat from her upper lip as she worked the grill. A black girl hurried from table to table with a small notebook in one hand and a towel tossed over her shoulder.

“What’s she doing?” Brisco asked.

Evan leaned down to him. “She goes around and asks people what they want, then she writes it down and takes it over there to the cook. The cook fixes it, then when it’s done, she goes back and gets it and takes it to the person who asked for it.”

Brisco’s eyes followed her as she moved between tables, pausing to write down an order or lift plates from a table. “Oh,” he said.

The girl stepped carefully across the slick linoleum floor. Crooked cracks ran from the ceiling to the floor in the plaster walls and in some places the plaster had fallen away, exposing the original brick walls. The big man with the apron stood in the doorway like a roadhouse bouncer and in his right hand he held the heavy end of a pool stick, a foot long, and he tapped it on his leg to the rhythm of the song that he was humming.

Mariposa put her head down on the table and Cohen watched the square through the window. The rain still falling and the people lining the sidewalks and the water rising and spilling over the curb about halfway around. The men drank. They smoked. Some whispered to one another. Every now and then a push and a shove. A ragged blend of the young and the old. Across the square, Cohen noticed two police cars parked in an alley and he figured that was why things hadn’t escalated before when the men confronted them.

The big man, tall and barrel-chested with his hair in buzz cut, walked over and tapped the end of the pool stick on the table and they turned their attention to him. His sleeves were rolled up past his elbows and a scar ran the length of one forearm as if it were an extension of the pool stick.

“Y’all hungry?” he asked.

“I am,” Brisco said.

“I bet you’re always hungry.”

“Mostly,” Evan said.

“We got burgers and breakfast, and that’s about it as far as eating,” he said. “Coffee, Coke. Milk, juice.”

They all looked at one another. Seemingly unsure how to answer being asked what they wanted to eat or even how to think about it.

“We don’t have anything else so don’t try and dream something up.”

“Gimme some scrambled eggs. Bacon. Sausage. Toast. Better yet, everything you got with breakfast on it,” Cohen said.

“Me, too,” said Mariposa.

“Me, too,” said Brisco.

“You don’t even know what half that stuff is,” Evan said to his small brother.

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t,” Evan said. “Maybe we’ll just get some toast or something.”

“Hell you will,” Cohen said. “Bring it all for everybody.”

The man turned and shouted to the black woman behind the grill. “Four breakfasts. All of it on all of them.” Then he asked what they were drinking and he shouted that out too and then resumed his place in the doorway along with the humming and the tapping.

“God knows you’ve earned a breakfast,” Cohen said to Evan and the boy nodded.

Cohen stood up, took off his coat, and set it on the seat next to Mariposa. Then he reached into his pocket and took out the folded money. “Might as well see what we got.” He unfolded the money and began to count the hundred-dollar bills. When he was done, he said, “Thirteen hundred.”

“Damn,” said Evan.

“Damn like good or damn like bad?” asked Cohen.

“Damn like good. Right?”

Cohen shook his head. “Damn like bad. We got this and we got the truck and everything in it, though. But we’re back in the real world now where it costs money to breathe.”

“Not me. Watch this,” Brisco said and he huffed and puffed as if trying to put out a fire.

“It’s enough,” Mariposa said.

“Not really. It’s more than nothing. But less than something,” Cohen said. I could fix that, he started to add, but he stopped.

At the doorway, two men holding bottles in brown paper bags tried to come in but the man told them to go on and he poked at them with the stick. They backed off and walked on by, looking longingly into the café as if the mere sight of food might ease their hunger.

It wasn’t long before the food arrived. Plates of eggs and grits and bacon and sausage. Toast with butter and jelly and biscuits with gravy and sliced tomatoes. There was no more talking for some time.

When Cohen was done, he stood up and walked to the doorway and lit a cigarette. He asked the man if he wanted one but he said no and then Cohen asked if there was such a thing as a hotel around here.

“Where you coming here from, anyway?” the man asked.

“Down there. Kinda expected something different at the Line.”

“The Line?” the man said and huffed. “That’s turning into an old wives’ tale.”

“That’s what I keep hearing.”

“You better keep on going then,” the man said. “That Line is bullshit. See those cop cars over there?” He pointed the pool stick. “Been sitting there for about a year. Go look at ’em. Windows busted out. Gutted. Same way with anything else that was supposed to mean something. Been more than a year since we had anything to hold on to.”

“How much farther to where it all starts?”

The man shrugged. “I got no idea. Everywhere I know about is like this. Probably as far up as Tennessee, I guess. On the east side. West side is washed out.”

“What you mean, washed out?”

“Damn, man. You need to get educated if you plan on getting anywhere with that crew. Go look over there at the end of the counter. There’s a newspaper about two months old but it’ll do.”

Cohen crossed the café and sat down on a bar stool at the end of the counter. He picked up the newspaper and unfolded it. It was a national newspaper, and the front-page articles spoke to the weather, boundary issues, relief issues, banking issues. The legend at the bottom said WEATHER 16A. It also said BOUNDARIES 16A.

Cohen found 16A to be the back page. Across the top half of the page was a map of the United States that provided regional weather information. Across the bottom half of the page was another United States map, the boundary map. “Good Lord,” he said.

A blue-shaded area split the country and covered all the states bordering the east and west sides of the Mississippi River. Across the blue-shaded area was written THE FLOODLANDS. Texas and the southeast region, above the Line, were red, up to Tennessee and North Carolina. SERVICES AND SECURITY LIMITED covered the red region. The Line was a thick black line that appeared to be in its original place ninety miles inland. Maroon covered the region below the Line and read ACCESS FORBIDDEN. On either side of THE FLOODLANDS, the northeast and the west, the map was green, and across both of these regions was written SERVICES AND SECURITY UNLIMITED.

Cohen laid the newspaper on the counter. His mouth was open some as he turned and looked blankly at the man in the doorway, at the riffraff milling about on the sidewalk.

He had no idea what to do.

“Don’t look too spiffy, does it,” said the black woman working the grill.

He didn’t register her.

“Hey,” she said loudly.

Cohen shook his head some and turned to her.

“I said it don’t look too spiffy,” she said again and she pointed her spatula at the newspaper.

Cohen closed his mouth. Shook his head.

Then he got up and walked back over to the big man in the doorway.

A woman with a blanket draped over her head and shoulders came along. She held out a shaking hand and said, “Got dollar? Got dollar?”

“No dollar. Go on,” the man said. “Can’t buy a damn stick of gum with a dollar.”

She went on. There was a clap of thunder and a snap of lightning and some of them out on the sidewalk applauded and cheered. The man turned and saw Cohen behind him and said, “You educated now?”

“Yeah. More than I’d like.”

The thunder roared again and again they cheered.

“They do this all day, I’m guessing,” Cohen said.

“All day and all night. Sidewalks never get still. They crawl in and out of these building like goddamn rats. Starting to grow little rats now. It’s a crying damn shame. Used to sit right here in this spot every morning and read the paper. Drink my coffee. Say hey to whoever. By the way, I’m Big Jim.”

The two men shook hands and Cohen lit a cigarette. They stood there watching the rain, watching the others. When Cohen was done, he tossed the butt out on the sidewalk. A bent-over old man reached down and picked it up and tried to smoke it.

“Get the hell out of here,” Big Jim yelled and the old man looked at him without care but shuffled away.

Big Jim folded his arms and looked at Cohen. Then he looked over at their table. “I got two rooms upstairs. Second floor. I live up on the third so you probably don’t have nothing to worry about. Best you’re gonna get.”

“How much?”

“Hundred.”

“A hundred what?”

“Dollars.”

“For both?”

“For one.”

“Jesus.”

“Fine. Both. How long you planning on being here?”

Cohen looked out at the rain. Imagined someplace where the sun was shining on the sidewalk. “At a hundred dollars a night not very damn long.”

Cohen walked back to the table and sat down. The plates were empty and they sat slumped in the booth. The three of them seemed to have changed color with their full bellies as if they had ingested some magical potion for happiness.

“We’re gonna stay upstairs tonight,” Cohen said. “Got two rooms. The café man lives up on top so everything will be fine.”

“And we go tomorrow?” Mariposa asked.

Cohen heard her but didn’t answer. He repeated the question in his head with the emphasis on the word “we.” And we go tomorrow? Yes, he thought. We.

“Won’t be going nowhere tomorrow, by the looks of it,” Evan said.

“We’ll see what the storms do first.”

The woman came over and refilled their coffee mugs.

Evan said, “You think the others made it to the hospital?”

“They will. Eventually. Gonna take a while,” Cohen said. “They seemed serious about getting them there.” He thought about Kris getting into the black vehicle, about the guard telling him it was a hundred miles to a safe place. He wondered what that meant for the Line. Or if there was such a thing anymore.

“Think that baby is okay?” Evan asked.

“I bet he’s fine,” Cohen said. “I hope so.”

Evan sat up straight. Put his elbows on the table. “Only seems fair that he would be,” he said.

The others nodded. And then they sat quietly for a while. Brisco laid his head in his brother’s lap, his feet hanging out of the end of the booth. Mariposa leaned against Cohen’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

Outside they moved along the sidewalks, looking in at those lucky enough to have a seat in a dry café and money to spend once they were inside. Big Jim shooed them away like flies. The man with the tattooed neck walked by, stopped when he noticed Cohen in the window. He grinned and pointed at him and he pointed at Mariposa and then he clapped his hands softly and nodded. Cohen, trying not to wake the girl, slowly stuck his hand into his coat that lay on the seat, took hold of a pistol, and he raised it and showed it to the man. The man threw back his head and laughed, and then he grabbed at his crotch and walked on.

Then Charlie walked into the café.

39

“DAMN. I FIGURED YOU WERE dead,” Cohen said as he met him inside the doorway. He shook hands with his old friend.

Charlie’s face and eyes looked tired and he smelled like a wet dog. “Pretty damn close. Looks like you finally wised up,” he answered. “Where you sitting?”

Cohen pointed at the booth where Mariposa and Evan and Brisco napped.

“Where’d you find them?” Charlie asked.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I wouldn’t believe it neither if I didn’t see it all myself.”

“That’s a lot of mouths to feed.”

“Come on,” Cohen said. “Let’s sit down.”

Charlie took a chair and slid it to the end of the table and sat down. Cohen touched shoulders and woke the others and introduced everybody. Charlie shook Evan’s hand. He looked curiously at Mariposa, and then at Cohen, and then at Mariposa again.

“What the hell happened?” Cohen said.

Charlie waved to the girl waiting tables and told her to bring him some coffee. His hands were dirty and there was a scrape across his cheek and mud on the elbows of his coat. “I tell you what happened. Ever since that backhoe got spotted, every time I rode it out of the back of the U-Haul, the damn Indians started popping out from everywhere. Especially them crazy-ass army boys or Line patrol or whatever they are. They came from everywhere but me and another boy somehow managed to drive that backhoe back up in the truck and haul ass while they were busy killing each other. Shot my U-Haul full of holes.”

“I still can’t believe you’re running around digging blind on a ten-mile stretch of beach.”

“I ain’t no more. Lost damn near all my boys. All but one laying up there waiting to die.”

“Up where?”

“Across the square over there. I got a top floor where I come and go.”

The girl brought Charlie’s coffee and set it on the table.

“Looks like y’all are trying to get fat,” Charlie said as he took in the empty plates and cups on the table.

“It’s been a while,” Cohen said. “You want something?”

Charlie sipped his coffee, then he stood up. “Come over here, Cohen. Let’s me and you talk.” Cohen got up from the booth and Charlie nodded to the others. Cohen followed Charlie over to the counter and they sat on bar stools.

“What you got going on?” Charlie asked.

“I got nothing going on. We had to haul ass out of there, too. Think the same boys that got after you got after us. We hit a couple of them and then ran out of Gulfport. Ended up here just a little while ago but it wasn’t easy.”

“It never is. You staying?”

“No longer than we have to.”

The girl passed with the coffeepot and refilled Charlie’s cup.

“We?”

Cohen nodded.

“You know about this storm coming, huh?” Charlie asked.

“Like I know about all the rest.”

“Nah. Not like the rest. That’s what the word is.”

“We’ve been down here too long to get worried.”

“Maybe. But I was listening to the radio and they kept on like this one is bigger than hell. A real monster.” Charlie took another sip of coffee, then said, “You’re right. I ain’t worried. I gotta go see about that boy up there. Where you gonna be?”

“Staying here. Man said he’s got rooms upstairs.”

“That’s good. Don’t run off. I might need some help.”

“I might, too.”

Charlie set down the cup and he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “Here. Let me pay for that food.” He held the money out, but Cohen pushed his hand away.

“Save your favors for helping me out with supplies and gas. I don’t plan on being here but for a day or two.”

Charlie put the money back into his coat and he stood up. “I’m right across there,” he said, pointing out of the café door. “Top floor, middle building. Stairway is in back. But don’t sneak up on me.” He took out a cigarette and turned up the collar of his coat, then he walked out of the café and onto the crowded sidewalk. Cohen watched him walk, thought he had a limp. Thought he looked old and worn. More than usual.

He moved from the counter back over to the booth and asked if they were ready to go upstairs. Outside there was thunder and then more thunder. More lightning. More applause from the crowds on the sidewalk in their satisfaction of the storm. As if it gave them what they desired.

THE TWO ROOMS WERE MUCH the same. Off-white walls with mismatched furniture, end tables and dressers and headboards that looked as if they had been gathered at yard sales. Scratched hardwood floors, discolored here and there, and windows that looked across the square. In each room, a chair and small table sat next to the windows, and on each table was a short stack of several-year-old magazines. A small glass chandelier hung from each ceiling. The bathroom separated the rooms, with its claw-foot tub and its sink that had streaked orange from the years of the dripping faucet and its diamond-shaped ceramic tile. A bookshelf next to the sink, with candles and matches on the top shelf and toilet paper and towels on the bottom.

Brisco ran to a bed and jumped up and down and Mariposa headed into the bathroom and turned on the faucet. The water came out copper-colored but after a minute ran clear and she washed her face. She walked into the other bedroom, took off her coat, and fell back on the bed.

Cohen and Evan went out to the truck and they took what was important and returned to the rooms, staying off the square and sneaking around and behind buildings and knocking on the back door of the café until the big man let them in. They brought the guns and ammunition and bags of clothes and the big man only nodded at the rifles and shotgun when Cohen said I gotta keep them somewhere. Once they were all upstairs again, Cohen slid the rifles and shotgun underneath the bed in the room that he and Mariposa would share. He stashed the boxes of shells in the bottom drawer of the dresser and then he handed one of the two pistols to Evan.

“I don’t want it,” Evan said.

“You need to keep it. Hide it somewhere.”

“What for?”

“Jesus, Evan. You know what for. For whatever the hell comes along.”

“Unload it,” Evan said.

“It don’t work if it’s not loaded. You don’t have to sleep with it, just hide it in there somewhere. Take it,” Cohen said and he pushed it on the boy. Evan took it and went into the other room where Brisco had discovered the television.

“Go hide it for him,” Mariposa said when Evan was gone.

“If I hide it for him, he won’t know where it is.” Cohen put the other pistol in the top drawer of the dresser. “You see where this is?” he asked her. She nodded.

He walked to the window and pushed back the curtain. He looked out at the rain, at the people across the square. He thought about the guard at the Line warning about the monster that was coming, thought about Charlie’s mention of the same thing. Maybe we haven’t seen it all.

“What do you think?” Mariposa said.

Cohen closed the curtain. Sat down in the chair next to the window. “I think we’re dry. We’re safe. I think we won’t be here long.”

Mariposa walked into the bathroom and closed the door to the adjoining room. Then she came back into their room and began to undress.

“What do you think?” he asked.

She let the dirty, damp clothes fall in a pile and said, “I think I’m going to be clean. And then I think I’m going to sleep in a bed.”

THE FIRST NIGHT HE DREAMED of children. He dreamed of babies on their backs, their mouths open and bodies relaxed in innocent slumber. He dreamed of early walkers, wobbly and unsure, knocking against coffee tables and doorways and dropping flat on their bottoms and then getting up and going again. He dreamed of big kids riding horses and playing freeze tag and fishing from the bank and he dreamed of teaching a girl to ride a bicycle without the training wheels and the trust she put in him to make sure that she didn’t fall. The children of his dreams were both girls and boys, sometimes blond and sometimes dark-haired, sometimes loud and rambunctious and sometimes tender and mild. The children of his dreams were never wet and never cold and they had shadows because they had sunshine. He woke several times in the night and each time he hurried back to sleep, trying to catch up with the little bodies and voices running through his mind.

HIS RESTLESSNESS KEPT HER AWAKE and then her mind began to spin and she couldn’t sleep. She got out of bed and put on her jeans and sweatshirt and walked to the window. She was unsure of the time, though it was still the middle of the night. The rain fell hard and she saw only blurry images of bodies out under the awning. Some standing, some sprawled out, orange tips of cigarettes dots in the dark. She closed the curtain and walked quietly to the door, eased it open and slipped through, and went downstairs to the café.

The café was dark. Chairs were upturned on tables and the lights were off in the seating area, but the storage room light glowed through the square window of the swinging door. Along the counter, coffee mugs and hard plastic glasses were lined in rows and spatulas and tongs sat in a silver bowl on the grill top. Condensation fogged the windows and the café was thick with humidity.

Mariposa walked to a booth along the wall in the darkest corner, and she sat down facing the café windows.

She was unprepared for the uncertainty that came with this place. She had thought that tonight would be a night of heavy sleep, of rest for the body and rest for the mind. A night of satisfaction in survival. A night that would be a bridge into the land of new beginnings. But it was none of those things. It was a night of four walls and a bed and a warm meal eaten on a real plate with a real fork but it was not a night that signified the end of anything. It was not the night she had expected and she felt a tinge of defeat as she stared at the back of the empty booth on the other side of the table.

I have people somewhere. And she wondered now if she did. How far do we have to go before the world doesn’t look like this?

The rain and the rain and the rain. The awning leaked everywhere and those who stayed out in the night moved around like waterlogged, mindless drones. Why didn’t they go inside? Why didn’t they crawl under something? But she knew the answers to those questions and she knew what it felt like to have no one and nothing and she knew that there was a fine line between standing inside the café and standing outside the café and she thought of Cohen tossing and turning in the bed upstairs.

She thought of the day that she and Evan got into the Jeep and she thought of wrapping the cord around Cohen’s neck because she had to and trying to pull the air from him and she thought of Evan with the shotgun on Cohen as he struggled in the water and how she had urged Evan to shoot him. Shoot him now. She thought of Evan pulling the trigger once, and then twice, and how the shotgun didn’t fire and she wondered about the God who had decided that the last shell already would have been fired and wondered what her life would be like right this minute if that last shell would have remained. She wondered if it was the same God who decided everything else.

She got up and walked to the counter. At the end of the counter, next to the coffee mugs and plastic cups, lay the newspaper that Cohen had looked at earlier. The light from the storage room filtered down the counter and she picked up the newspaper and lay it out, back page facing her. She stared at the map and the different shades of the different parts of the country and she read the headings and she realized they were a long way from anywhere.

Outside a woman screamed above the pounding rain.

Mariposa folded the newspaper and put it back in place.

She crossed her arms on the counter and put her head down and thought of her father and his belief that he could defend his livelihood and his life against the violence of either man or nature and how foolish it seemed then and how foolish it seemed now. But there was no second-guessing because it had been impossible to make decisions then. Nothing seemed right. Nothing seemed logical. Nothing seemed safe. And nothing had changed. She thought of the stubbornness of her father and his dedication to protect and defend what belonged to him and then she thought again of Cohen in his house, on that land, with those memories and the box of keepsakes and the closets that still held her clothes and the baby’s room with the dusty stuffed animals.

She wondered if he would remember her part in separating him from those things he had tried so hard to protect. She wondered when he would leave her. She wondered where he would leave her.

There was another scream and this time it sounded like a man and Mariposa lifted her head. She looked toward the window but there was nothing clear, only vague rain-covered images. More screaming and yelling and now the images moved in a shuffle along the sidewalk, pushing and grabbing and going for one another. A loud crack cut through the storm and she thought she heard breaking glass but the voices gained strength and she couldn’t tell what was going on. Part of her wanted to go to the window and wipe it clean and take a closer look. Part of her didn’t.

Behind her, the door to the staircase opened and she turned and saw Cohen. There was another scream and Mariposa looked from him and back to the window. As she watched anxiously the scene on the street, Cohen came across the café to her. He touched her elbow and she looked at him. “Come on,” he whispered. “You don’t want to see what’s out there.”

40

A WEEK AGO THE DECISION would have been simple. Go get the jeep. Much like the decision had been made to go and get the shoe box of memories. Just go get it. There was no one else to think about, no one else to ask, nothing else that needed any consideration. What do you want to do and do it and that’s the end of it, like every other decision he had made in the last four years, including the one to bury Elisa under the tree in the back field and stay there with her. But that was a week ago and walking away and going back down there was not a simple decision now.

He wanted to tell Mariposa that he was leaving and give her enough money to eat for the next couple of days and go find a ride with somebody crazy enough to take him back down there. By now it had to be sixty-five, seventy miles to the Jeep on the north side of Gulfport. But he figured that he knew the way, and if he went alone he could make it down in three or so hours, make it back in less time when he was sure of the way, do the whole thing in a night. He wanted to extend his arm when she came near him. He wanted to tell her to be quiet when she started talking. He wanted to slide out of bed in the middle of the night and go and do what he needed to do.

Instead of making the move, he had spent the next two days and nights with her in the hotel room, the rain strong and the room warm. They had made love carefully, awkwardly, and sometimes clumsily, like two kids learning their way, unsure of their movements, their sounds, their reactions, this thing different in a real room with electric light and pillows and sheets than it was in an abandoned, candlelit farmhouse. They would fall asleep naked and he would wake with her talking and he would lie there, pretending to be sleeping, and listen to her, her voice low and patient like a mother speaking to an infant. I will listen to you when you want to talk about her. Or about anything. I will listen to you. If we go together we might be able to believe in each other and I will believe if you will believe. I don’t want to be left alone and I don’t think that you do and there is nothing that makes sense and I think that is okay. I don’t think we should try to make any sense. I will listen to you if you ever want to talk about her. And I will stay with you as long as you want me to.

He would wake in the middle of the night and she would be talking, her head against him and her black hair across him like some type of protection. He noticed her hands, her fingers long and beginning to get into him, to sink below his skin and through the blood and into the places that mattered. He smelled her and listened to her and sometimes he wanted to answer her and sometimes he wanted to stop her and sometimes he was disappointed when she had nothing else to say.

She fell asleep quickly then, as if what she had to say emptied her, and afterward he would lie there and listen to the music and the voices coming from the square below, the yelling and the breaking bottles and the wild laughter, and he wondered if this was what we would all become if given the opportunity. If what they had seen below would ultimately win when it was all broken down. He imagined a world where there was nothing to rule but man’s own instinct and desire and wondered would that make us better or worse. Cohen had seen the worst and it seemed to be standing at attention, ready to strike, but then he would remember Evan and his almost inexplicable goodness and the image of Evan and Brisco walking together, holding hands, would be enough to ease his mind and allow him to sleep.

Each time he woke she was talking and later, when they were both awake, he did not mention it and neither did she. He didn’t say anything about the Jeep for two days, as the monster in the Gulf crept closer, grew stronger, prepared itself to teach them all a lesson in true power.

During other moments in the night, when he wasn’t listening to her whispers, he thought of Nadine and Kris and the baby and the other baby that was to come. He regretted the haste with which they had all been separated. He regretted the quick ending because he had suffered his share of quick endings. Elisa and his unborn child. The ambush and the house being ransacked. Habana disappearing in the storm. The dog being shot by Aggie. It seemed as if each ending came and went like a pulse of lightning and he wished now that he had told the men at the station to hold on, I need to talk to them a second. And he wished he had gotten out in the storm and gone back to them and climbed in the truck and held the baby once more and he wished that he had told Kris and Nadine that he thought they were braver than hell and he wished that he could have been with them for a moment. To see them before they were gone. He believed they were safe. He believed they were going to be taken to a place that would help them all. But he knew that though there was a quick ending, it also meant that there was a quick beginning. And this time their beginning seemed hopeful.

For two days, he had been clean. He had been dry. He had thoughts of others. He had touched and been touched. Sometime during the second night, as he lay still next to her, as he thought of the others, as he replayed his dreams filled with voices and sunshine, he decided that the Jeep and the shoe box could stay right where they were. The road was out in front.

MARIPOSA STOOD IN THE WINDOW looking down across the square. It Was the evening and the lights had gone out in most of the buildings but the lights had now come on in the few places that stayed open until whenever. The music had started, the clunky sound of an electric guitar accompanied by clunky drums, sounding out into the early night, through the rain that had not stopped. Cohen sat on the bed watching television, trying to figure out when the lull would come, those handful of hours when the rain stopped and the wind fell still, before the next storm poured onto the coast. The sound of another television came from the other room, as Evan and Brisco had been for days hypnotized by the bluish glow from the nineten-inch screen that picked up two random channels from somewhere, one of them in Spanish.

The bedsheet was wrapped around Mariposa and it had been this way for most of the two days, as they only got fully dressed to go down to the café to eat. She turned from the window and slid herself down onto the bed and leaned against him, her hand across his bare stomach.

He raised the remote and turned off the television. “It’s coming. Tonight. The lull is after midnight. Before dawn,” he said. “And that’s our best chance to make a move.”

She raised up from his chest and sat with her back against the headboard. He stood and put on his shirt and jeans. She crossed her legs Indian-style and pressed her fingertips on her knees. “What about the Jeep?” she said.

“I don’t care about the Jeep,” he said.

“What about the other stuff?” she asked.

“What other stuff?”

“Her stuff. And your stuff. The box.” She uncrossed her legs. Held her hands together.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. “It’s gone.”

“It might not be.”

“No. It’s gone,” he said.

“It’s okay if you want it.”

“I know it is. And I do want it. But I don’t want to die because of it. Not now.”

He stood from the bed and walked across the room. Looked out of the window. It was almost dark, gray turning black. A neon light glowed from the corner building down to the right. He shoved his hands in his pockets, thinking about Elisa. He wondered if there was such a thing as rising and living in another world where there was only light and no rain and no pain.

He turned and looked at Mariposa. “There’s more than one reason I wanted to go back to the Jeep. And one day I’m gonna tell you what that reason is, but not tonight.”

“I’ve been dreaming about you,” she said quickly, almost interrupting him. “You leave and you don’t come back.” It seemed to leap out of her mouth as if it were something she’d had to fight to hold in.

He sat down on the bed next to her. Outside the voices howled. The music howled. The storm howled. He could see that she had resigned her fate to him. And he thought that maybe he was doing the same.

She crawled off the bed and began to get dressed. He moved across the room and stopped her. “I’m not leaving,” he said.

She wouldn’t look up at him.

“Mariposa,” he said and he waited on her to look at his face. He held her shoulders and waited and then she turned to him. “I’m not leaving. Not without you. Not without Evan and Brisco. Tonight when it calms, we’re all getting in that truck and we’re all driving out of here and we’ll go as far as we can. And whenever we get to where we’re going, I’m not leaving you there. But you gotta promise me something.”

Her anxious expression relented. “What?”

“I said you gotta promise.”

“Okay, okay. Promise what?”

He moved his hands from her shoulders down to her arms and held them carefully. “You won’t leave me.”

She moved her hands to his. “I won’t.”

It seemed as if a window had been opened in the room. He moved back from her and she continued to dress. She pulled on her jeans and buttoned up the shirt and pulled a hooded sweatshirt over her head. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

He put on his socks and boots and said that he was going to go out and try and find Charlie and if he couldn’t find Charlie then find some gas from somewhere else. Maybe the man in the café can help us out. He put on another shirt and a coat. He stepped through the bathroom and knocked on Evan’s door. Evan said come in and he and Brisco were in the bed, the covers over them, watching a cartoon cat chase a cartoon mouse.

“I’m going out for a minute,” Cohen said. Neither Evan nor Brisco acknowledged him. So he walked over and stood in front of the television. “I said I’m going out,” he repeated. “I gotta find some gas. See if I can find Charlie. After we get back, I need you to help me take some stuff to the truck.”

“What for?” Evan asked.

“ ’Cause we’re leaving tonight. Should be a lull sometime and we’re gonna get going.”

“You want me to go out with you?”

Cohen shook his head. “No. You stay with him.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Relax. Mariposa is in the other room. If y’all want something to eat, go get it. I’d hate for you to miss five seconds of television, though.”

But Evan didn’t hear the last part as he stared at the light. Cohen shook his head, then closed the door and went out of the room and down the stairs, imagining how good it was going to feel to be somewhere else.

41

THE CAFÉ OWNER WASN’T THERE, so Cohen went out across the square. He made his way around to the back of Charlie’s building but he found the door locked. He beat on it but there was no response and he didn’t figure Charlie could hear from upstairs even if he was there. So Cohen set out to find somebody to tell him where he could get gasoline.

Charlie was sitting in the top-floor window and he had watched Cohen come out of the café and over to his building. But then Cohen had disappeared into the alleyway alongside and Charlie decided he didn’t want to talk to him right now. He didn’t want Cohen to come in there and see what he would see.

The building had been a checkpoint for him and his men for as long as he’d been tracking back and forth with the U-Haul. A handful of folding chairs and a couple of cots and empty beer and liquor bottles littered an otherwise empty space. The hardwood floors bowed and a bathroom in the back sometimes worked.

Charlie got up and looked at the man lying on the cot. He had been lying there for two days, slowly bleeding to death, slower than Charlie wanted. He’d been shot in the low back and through his shoulder and he was lying there dying. Charlie had promised to find him some help but they both knew there was none to be had. The first day Charlie had tried to talk him through it with the promise of that money-filled trunk at their fingertips. How there were fewer people to split it with now. I can’t help they came from all sides like a bunch of goddamn fleas. You know they all been sitting and waiting for us anyhow. That backhoe is the key to the promised land. Another five minutes and we’d have been gone. One more shot is all.

Otherwise, Charlie had sat in the window and watched the storm, trying to figure out how he was going to get back and dig again with no men. He thought about Cohen but knew it was a lost cause. He thought about recruiting from the crowd below but he figured he might as well go ahead and cut his own throat now and save them the trouble. He had worked too hard already, dug too many holes. He wouldn’t let the scavengers beat him to it.

He sat in the window and Cohen reappeared along the sidewalk, stopping here and there and talking to someone. Then moving on again. Charlie had always wondered about Cohen and he wondered about him now. Why did somebody like him who didn’t have to stay down here stayed down here? Didn’t make sense to someone like Charlie. He’d tried every time he’d seen Cohen to get him to come and work for him. If you’re gonna be down here, at least make a damn dollar, he’d tell him. At least be the king. No sense in living life with your head tucked between your legs, waiting for your own ass to get blown off. Hell, even your daddy knew how to turn a quarter into a dollar.

He was initially surprised that Cohen would turn him down, but then he came to accept it as routine. It was part of the trips below, part of Cohen driving to the spot, part of Cohen picking out what he needed, part of Cohen paying Charlie for what he took. And Cohen had been a nice tipper and that usually ended the conversation with Charlie happy and unconcerned about Cohen’s well-being. Cohen handed him a hundred-dollar bill, said keep the change, Charlie would quit bugging him about why he did what he did, and see you next time.

He always handed me a hundred-dollar bill, Charlie thought. Never wanted nothing back.

He stood from the chair and Cohen had moved out of sight, along the sidewalk underneath the window.

He always handed me a hundred-dollar bill. And then he heard Cohen making fun of the backhoe. He heard Cohen joking about the fool’s gold and treasure maps and the insanity of digging random holes in random spots underneath hurricane skies. He heard Cohen say you’d have to be insane to get your ass shot over something that ain’t there. I don’t care what nobody says, there’s no buried money along that beach or next to those casinos. And you’d be better off sticking to the day trade than ducking bullets on a backhoe. I’m telling you.

Over and over and over, Charlie thought, he said the same things and he always handed me a hundred-dollar bill. Always.

Charlie hurried down the thin staircase and out into the street. He spotted Cohen on the opposite side of the square from the café and he cut across the square to get to the café before Cohen. He went in the door and asked the cook if Big Jim was around and she said he just walked in the door.

“Where?” Charlie asked.

She pointed to the swinging door that led into the storeroom in the back. Charlie moved quickly around the tables and he went through the swinging door and Big Jim was sitting in a chair opening a wide rectangular box with a box cutter. The cut-off pool cue was on the floor next to the chair.

Big Jim looked up and said, “Where you been, Charlie?”

“I ain’t got time for that. That boy Cohen. What’d he pay you with?”

“Money,” Big Jim answered and he opened the box flaps and began to take out sleeves of plastic cups.

“Hundred-dollar bills?”

Big Jim nodded.

“Let me see them,” Charlie said.

“I ain’t letting you see them. I already spent them, anyway.”

“You ain’t spent it. I know you got them stuck somewhere and I need to see them.”

“I ain’t showing you that money or where I put it.”

“I bet you will,” Charlie said. “You will or I’m done ever running anything down here for you, making any delivery, taking anybody or anything anywhere. You show it to me or the Charlie train don’t stop here no more.”

Big Jim huffed. Tossed down the plastic cups and got up. “I don’t know what damn difference it makes, but come on.”

Charlie followed Big Jim around boxes and short shelves to the back of the storeroom. Big Jim slid a stack of boxes to the side and knelt down and pulled up a square piece of floor. Underneath was a small rectangular safe. Big Jim spun the knob a couple of times and opened the door. He reached in and pulled out a ragged envelope, and from the envelope he took out a stack of fifties and hundreds. He handed two from the top of the stack to Charlie.

Charlie smoothed them out flat in his hand. The two bills were wavy from having been wet, but otherwise they were awfully straight and clean.

“That son of a bitch,” Charlie said.

42

CHARLIE STOOD ON THE SIDEWALK and looked around and saw Cohen walking in his direction. Charlie took out a cigarette and lit it. Cohen waved and walked on to him.

“You’re just the man I need to see,” Cohen said.

“Yeah? I was about to say the same thing,” Charlie said. “Let’s go in there.” He pointed at the café. They walked in the door and Mariposa had come down and she sat at a booth alone. They walked over and Cohen sat down next to her. Charlie stood.

“She with you now?” Charlie asked.

Cohen nodded.

“You sure?” Charlie asked.

“Would you sit down?”

Charlie slid into the other side of the booth.

“I need some gas,” Cohen said. “You got some?”

Charlie looked around the café and put the cigarette in his mouth.

“Charlie?”

He took a long drag and then stared at Cohen with an expression of knowing. “I got news,” he said.

Cohen looked at Mariposa, then back at Charlie. “About what?”

“About this witch hunt I been on since forever.”

“You mean treasure hunt?”

“Whatever you wanna call it.”

“Let me take a guess,” Cohen said and he grinned. “You know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.”

“Better than that,” Charlie said. He smoked again and then he smirked at Cohen. “I know the guy.”

Cohen asked Charlie for a cigarette. He lit it and he looked out of the window and then back to Charlie.

“I think you know him, too,” Charlie said.

“How would I know him?”

“You know him. I’ve known him since he was a boy. Used to be buds with his daddy. Watched him ride horses. Watched him play ball. Even gave him a few Santa Claus toys way back when. You’d think knowing somebody like that would make you friends with him. But evidently it don’t.”

Cohen laughed a little. “That’s some theory.”

“It ain’t a theory. Are we gonna play the game or get to it ’cause I’m all outta patience.”

“What makes you think I know where the pretend money is buried?”

“I don’t think you know where it’s buried, ’cause it ain’t buried no more. I think you know where to touch it.”

“What I think is this rain is making you crazy.”

Charlie finished his cigarette and dropped it in the metal ashtray next to the ketchup bottle. He then leaned to the side and pulled out his pistol and showed it to Cohen and Mariposa. “Put your hands on the table,” he said.

“Charlie.”

“Put. Your hands. On the table.”

Cohen did as asked.

“You too, honey.”

Mariposa set her hands on the table.

“I told you I ain’t playing around, Cohen,” Charlie said and he moved the pistol beneath the table. His eyes were scattered and wild. “I want you to look around. See where you are. There ain’t nobody in this café or outside this café that don’t need something from me. There ain’t nobody around here who wants my truck to stop showing up. There’s no law worth mentioning. You’re sitting in one of Charlie’s towns. I can buy anybody out there for a pint of tequila. So what I’m gonna do is count to five. When I hit five, she’s gonna catch a bullet where she don’t wanna catch it. In between one and five, you decide if there’s something you want to say to me.”

“Charlie, come on,” Cohen said.

“One.”

“Me and you can talk, just put it away.”

“Two.”

“Cohen,” Mariposa said in a shaky voice.

“Three.”

“I have it,” Cohen said.

Charlie opened up his coat and took out a flask and handed it to Cohen. Cohen unscrewed the cap and drank and handed it back. Charlie drank and set it on the table. Outside the rain drummed against the awning and more people filed onto the sidewalks. Cohen looked around the café as if there were an answer to his predicament written across the wall.

“How long you had it?” Charlie asked.

“Had what?” Mariposa said.

Charlie laughed. “Hell, you ain’t even told your girlfriend? I don’t feel so bad now.”

Cohen sat still and stared.

“How long you had it?” Charlie asked again.

“Pretty long.”

“You little shit. All those goddamn times you knew I was out there and you knew all these crazy assholes were down there digging and shooting and sometimes just shooting and you let me keep on. I oughta blow your kneecaps off right now and make you crawl to it.” His jaw was clenched as he spoke and it seemed the pistol might fire at any second.

Mariposa said, “Cohen?”

“Don’t say nothing else,” Charlie ordered her. He then licked his lips, scratched at his cheek. “You’re a curious son of a bitch, Cohen. I’ll give you that. Besides being a fucking liar, you’re sitting on Fort Knox and living out there all alone like the rest of all those waterlogged weirdos when you could be any damn place you wanted. All because of what? ’Cause of Elisa? Gimme a goddamn break. I wish your daddy was here right now so he could slap your dumb ass for being so stupid.”

“Don’t say her name again,” Cohen said.

“Don’t start crying.”

“And I didn’t lie to you.”

“Call it what you want but we both know what it is and that shit don’t matter right now anyway because we got real business to get into. The long and short of the real business is that you’re about to get up and take me to it. You and her both.”

“She don’t have nothing to do with this.”

“We’ll call it collateral.”

Cohen shook his head. “I can’t go right to it ’cause I don’t have it.”

Charlie leaned his head back and shook it in disbelief. “Oh God,” he said. “We really gonna keep on like this. Really?”

“I know where it is.”

“Hell yes, you do. And we’re going.”

“It’s down there.”

“That’s bullshit. Ain’t no way you’re up here and it’s down there.”

“It ain’t bullshit. I already told you the other day we had to run out of there when them others showed up and that’s where it is. In the Jeep where I left it when we took out.”

Despite what he felt about Cohen now, Charlie thought that he was telling the truth. He was too smart to keep lying with a pistol aimed between his legs.

“How much is it?” Charlie asked.

“I never counted it.”

“Holy shit. More money than you can count. Always hear people say that but I never heard anybody say it that meant it.”

Cohen leaned back. He looked at Mariposa. She stared at him as if unsure who he was.

“What you driving?” Charlie asked.

“Truck. Still need gas.”

“I got that.”

“But we need to wait, Charlie. It’s brutal out there right now.”

“It’s been brutal.”

“Hasn’t stopped for weeks. We barely figured out how to get up here.”

“I know it’s bad and it’s getting badder with every drop that hits the ground. Won’t be no better time than this minute.”

Charlie drank from the flask again. Paused and thought. “She’s gonna ride with me in the U-Haul and you’ll follow.”

“No, hell no,” Cohen said.

“Hell yes. If you think I’m piling you two up next to me and driving through this mess then you’re the crazy one. First time I look off you’ll be on me. She rides with me and you follow. U-Haul’s heavy anyhow and we’re gonna need that.”

“I wanna know what’s going on,” Mariposa said.

Charlie picked up his cigarettes and took one from the pack and said, “You tell her.”

Cohen rubbed his hand at the back of his neck and then looked at her. “In the Jeep I have a lot of money. Money Charlie and everybody else has been looking for. We’re going to get it.”

“I don’t wanna go get it,” she said.

“Me, neither.”

“I didn’t want all my men shot dead, neither,” Charlie said. “And I didn’t wanna spend the last two years of my life dodging shotguns and hurricanes digging for a pot of gold when your boy here knew where it was. But at this juncture you are both sitting in the world of have to. Hell, I wouldn’t worry about it. The way I see it, Momma Nature knows us. She’ll take care of it.”

He lit the cigarette and stuck the flask back in his pocket, then knocked the pistol three times underneath the tabletop and told Cohen to stand up. When Cohen stood, Charlie checked his coat and pants for a gun. He found the bowie knife and he took if off Cohen’s belt and stuck it on his own.

“You can have this back when you deliver,” Charlie said and then he waved the pistol at Mariposa. “Now move your ass. I’m ready to go.”

“Not yet,” Cohen said. “You gotta let me do something first.”

“I know that one, son.”

“No, I mean it. We got two others with us. You saw them yesterday in here. A boy and his little brother and they’re upstairs. I can’t run off on them without saying something.”

“They’ll be all right.”

“They’ll be all right if we’re all right, but what if we’re not? It won’t take but a second, Charlie. They’re boys.”

Charlie looked around. Told Cohen to stand still right next to this table. Then he walked to the doorway of the café and looked out along the sidewalk, his head turning back and forth and on his tiptoes some. He saw familiar men standing half a block to the left and he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled and then waved. A moment later two men approached and Charlie talked to them, the pistol in his hand waving in the direction of Cohen and Mariposa. The two men listened carefully and Charlie reached in his front pocket and handed them some money. Then he turned and came inside and the men followed him over to Cohen.

“What are they for?” Cohen asked. The men were young but worn, one a head taller than the other. They were dressed in layers of mismatched coats and smelled and looked like wet dogs. One of them had a nervous shake in his hand and the other had a brown birthmark the size of a dime above his right eye.

“They’re gonna keep watch,” Charlie said.

“Hell no,” Cohen said. “You’re already making Mariposa go.”

“They ain’t gonna do nothing but sit outside the door and wait for us to get back. When we do everybody is free and clear. But I ain’t taking no chances.”

“And what if we don’t get back?” Mariposa asked.

“Then I guess they’ll work it out amongst themselves. You ain’t making the rules anyhow. Now show me where your boys are, ’cause we got business to get on with.”

COHEN AND MARIPOSA WENT UP the staircase first, followed by charlie and then the two men. Cohen opened the room door slowly and looked in at Evan and Brisco, who hadn’t moved from the bed. Brisco slept with a blanket pulled to his chin and Evan remained locked on the television.

“Evan,” Cohen said.

“Open the damn door and go on in,” Charlie ordered and he pushed him a little.

Cohen and Mariposa entered the room and Cohen walked to the television and turned it off. He told Evan to sit up and when Evan saw the old man come in behind them and the pistol in his hand, he sat up quick and swung his legs off the bed and to the floor.

“Don’t get up,” Charlie told him. The watchmen moved into the room behind Charlie. “Say what you gotta say, Cohen.”

Cohen moved toward Evan and in the dim light of the room, Evan saw the concern on his face. Mariposa moved next to Cohen.

“You got ten seconds,” Charlie said.

“We gotta go back down tonight,” Cohen said. “Me and Mariposa are going with Charlie to get the Jeep and then we’ll be back.” He reached into his coat pocket and held what was left of the money. He turned around to Charlie and the men and said, “He better have every damn thing he’s got right now when I get back.”

“He’s gonna,” Charlie said.

“Tell them.”

Charlie turned to the men and said, “Everything stays as is or you don’t get another dime.” They nodded. As Charlie spoke to them, Cohen leaned over to Evan, tucked the money under his leg, and whispered, “Twenty-four hours and then do what you gotta do.” Evan nodded.

Mariposa walked around the edge of the bed and brushed Brisco’s hair away from his face. She tucked his blanket around his small body and then she and Evan looked at one another. An uncertain, concerned, wordless exchange and she thought of telling him goodbye but didn’t like what it suggested.

“Time’s up,” Charlie said.

Cohen mouthed twenty-four hours to Evan and then he and Mariposa walked out the door, where Charlie stood waving the pistol like an usher escorting guests to their seats. Cohen and Mariposa started down the stairs and Charlie pulled the door shut, told the men to stay put and that the boys don’t leave unless the building catches on fire which ain’t gonna happen. When the three of them were downstairs, Charlie stuck the pistol in Cohen’s back and led him and Mariposa out of the café door and into the night, telling Cohen, “Don’t get fancy. It’ll be my way or it’ll be a bad way.”

43

THE LINE HAD BEEN OFFICIAL for six months and the two-year mark for Elisa’s death was approaching. Cohen had been trying to keep busy. Trying to fend off thinking of her death as an anniversary. One morning he had been outside looking under the hood of the Jeep when he saw the horse standing in the back field. She was brown and her wet coat shined and she wore a saddle but no rider. He put down the socket wrench and wiped his hands. Stood still as the horse looked unsure and he didn’t want her to bolt. She lowered her head and grazed, then she looked around, looked in the direction of Cohen, and she made a few steps in the direction of the house.

He walked across the backyard, moving patiently. He stepped over a barbed-wire fence and out into the field. The horse moved again, stopping along a fallen oak tree, her coat the same color as the mound of dirt wrapping the massive roots of the old tree. Cohen stopped. She remained unsure but curious. He whistled and she looked at him. Moved several steps in his direction. He whistled again and held his hands out by his sides, showing his palms. He moved a little closer and so did she and in another careful minute he was an arm’s length from her.

He looked her over without touching her. He spoke in a calm voice as he moved around her backside, making sure she wasn’t wounded in some way. Water dripped from her tail and mane and she was muddy but didn’t appear injured. She wore a saddlebag along with the saddle and her name was engraved on each of them. Habana.

She snorted. Shook her wet mane. He held out his hand to her nostrils and she craned her neck forward. He held his hand there and talked to her and then he reached out and touched her and she accepted it. He rubbed her nose. Ran his hand along her neck. Patted her some. He turned and began to walk back toward the house and he told her to come on but she didn’t follow.

“Come on,” he said again and whistled. “Let’s get your saddle off. Come on. I’m safe.”

She turned and looked back in the direction she had come from, to the jagged tree line along the back field.

“Come on, girl.”

She didn’t follow. Instead she started walking back the other way.

Now Cohen was the curious one. He wasn’t wearing his coat and he didn’t have the sawed-off shotgun nearby and he felt like if he went back for either, she would be gone. He wore his rain boots and he thought that was good enough, so he followed her.

She took him back into the trees, moving over or under or around what was left of the cottonwoods and oaks and pines. He stayed seven or eight steps behind her, and she frequently turned to look and see if he was still there. For half an hour they walked and Cohen thought several times of trying to turn her back but she seemed to know where she was going.

It wasn’t five minutes when they came upon the body. Habana stopped and leaned over and nudged it with her nose but the body didn’t move. On his back were three dark red blotches and three small holes in his shirt. He was laying facedown in the leaves and mud. One arm under him and the other stretched out and his legs crossed. Cohen knelt and felt the man’s back pockets but there was nothing in them. He then rolled the man to his side and felt the front pockets and he pulled out a set of keys and a silver Zippo. He stood up and looked around on the ground for a pistol or shotgun or anything that might come in handy but there was nothing. Habana nudged the man again and Cohen patted her and apologized. He thought that was it, that she would go with him now, but she nudged the man a final time and only then did she continue on.

The day was overcast and windy and there were probably three hours of light remaining. His instincts told him not to, but he followed her anyway.

Eventually the trees thinned and they came to a clearing and he figured they were at least four or five miles from his place. The land was marshlike and Habana stopped to drink the muddy water, then she looked around for him and kept walking. She didn’t walk out into the clearing but kept to the tree line, sloshing through the mud and rainwater and in no hurry. He had no idea how long this would continue and he was beginning to regret letting it go this far, but then the tree line extended around to the east and when they moved around the bend, Cohen saw a far-reaching white wooden fence. Some of it stood and some of it didn’t but it stretched on and he didn’t see the end of it right away. Habana walked toward it and when they were closer, Cohen saw the house.

He wanted her to stop and called for her to stop but she didn’t stop. He moved from out in the open and back into the tree line. But she walked casually and Cohen was able to get a good look at the place. It was a two-story Spanish-style house, terra-cotta-colored with arched windows and doorways. A balcony reached around the entire second floor and the ceramic roof tiles seemed intact but for one missing here and there like a lost tooth. A patio stretched out of the back of the house and there was a pool. The house appeared to sit in the middle of the fenced-off property as the white fence lined all sides but was at least a hundred yards away from the house in all directions. A horse trailer and truck were parked in the field to the west side of the house. Cohen wondered why he had never seen this place but he didn’t think about it long as two SUVs drove around the side of the house. He grabbed Habana’s reins and held her. He whispered to her and she let him lead her back into the trees.

The SUVs drove out toward the horse trailer and truck but continued past and didn’t stop until they came to the fence. At the fence line, five men piled out of each vehicle. The back doors of the SUVs were opened and each man took a shovel from the back. Each man put on a pair of gloves, each man went to a fence post, and each man started to dig.

Cohen stroked Habana’s neck and watched. He watched for an hour as the men dug in a spot, then moved on and dug in another, working their way from fence post to fence post in an orderly fashion. There wasn’t much light remaining in the day and Habana was getting restless. Cohen saw the men were occupied and he and the horse were far off and in the trees, so he felt safe moving. He held Habana’s reins and led her and she went with him this time without hesitation.

After walking for a mile back along the tree line and into the woods, as the last of the day disappeared, he stopped and told Habana that this might go a little better if we do it the old-fashioned way. She seemed calm, so he put his foot in the saddle and mounted her and led her home.

THE NEXT MORNING, AT FIRST light, they returned.

This time Cohen had the shotgun and a shovel and gloves. When they came to the house, the SUVs and truck were not there. The horse trailer sat in the field.

Cohen waited against the tree line and when he felt certain that no one was there, they rode out to the part of the fence where he had last seen the men digging. What he discovered as he rode along the fence were holes at every post along almost the entire south section of the fence. The holes were a yard wide and a yard deep.

He got down from Habana, tied her to a standing piece of the wooden fence, and then he didn’t know why, but he started digging. He added five holes to the long line and then he stopped. His back ached and his hands were sore and it was midmorning. The feeling that the men in the SUVs would be back told him to quit, so he quit.

The next morning he came back before daylight. At the fence line, he noticed that the holes now made the entire length of the south side and there were another ten stretching up the west portion of the fence.

He got off, tied Habana, and went to work. He dug through dawn and then it started to rain and he quit. Riding back to his place, he explained to Habana that he didn’t know what the hell was going on but that he was done. My damn back is killing me.

The next morning he was back again. A light rain fell and made him nervous as he dug because he couldn’t hear as well if the SUVs returned. Habana seemed unhappy standing in the rain, moving around more than usual and picking up her feet and smacking them down in the wet ground. An hour past dawn, he was wet and hurting and felt a little stupid.

And then the shovel hit something. He was about two feet down and whatever he hit was strong and solid, and as if he had been plugged in, he began to dig at double speed, his imagination and adrenaline both racing, and in a matter of minutes he had uncovered all sides of the trunk. It was wide and broad, larger than any of the holes that had been dug. He didn’t bother trying to dig it out but instead he removed the dirt from the top and from around its sides. When he was done, he lay down on top and it was as long as he was, and he stretched out and grabbed the sides with his arms straight. He got up and stood on top, thought quickly about what to do. The trunk latch was padlocked and he didn’t want to fire the shotgun and risk making a big noise, but he had to. He fired and the lock and latch busted and Habana reared and whinnied. Cohen tossed the shotgun aside, stepped off the top of the trunk, and knelt at the edge of the hole. He reached down and tugged at the top and pulled it open.

He was unsure what to think. He looked around as if it were a joke on one of those hidden-camera shows where the jokesters were waiting to leap out and point at him and cackle hysterically. There were stacks and stacks and stacks. Pretty and clean. Crisp and straight. So perfect, they seemed fake.

He took Habana’s saddlebag and stuffed in as much as he could. Then he shoved stacks into his coat pockets and down into his pants and into his boots and anywhere else he could shove them. He mounted Habana and ran her across the field, hurried her through the jigsaw of the fallen trees and limbs, and ran her to the house. He hopped off, took the saddlebag inside and unloaded, then hurried back out, mounted, and ran. He was able to make two more trips and it took until midday. The rain fell steady and Habana seemed to be getting tired but he didn’t have half of what was in the trunk.

“One more trip,” he told her and they took off again.

This time when they came around the bend of the tree line, the SUVs were there. And the men were there. They were pointing and yelling at one another and he didn’t wait to see what they were going to do.

He turned Habana and disappeared.

44

EVAN REALIZED THAT NO MATTER what the old man had said, no matter what had been agreed upon, and no matter what had exchanged hands to make the agreement, it wouldn’t be long before the two men outside the door decided to come in and see what they could find. It was a simple message that was delivered by both common sense and by Cohen’s twenty-four-hour whisper.

In less than a minute, the world had changed again. One moment he was lying on the bed watching television, with Brisco safe and dreaming next to him. The next moment a man with a gun had pushed Cohen and Mariposa into the room and Cohen had told him they had to go back down and those two will stand outside your door and make sure you don’t leave until we get back. Brisco never woke through the exchange and Evan was glad he didn’t. But Evan paced the room now, looking at his little brother, looking out of the window, walking in and out of the bathroom, replaying Cohen’s words in his head, wondering what the hell.

Twenty-four hours and then do what you gotta do.

A lamp on the bedside table provided low light in the room and the wind had picked up outside and drove the rain into the windows and walls of the buildings on the square. Evan heard the men talking outside the bedroom door but couldn’t make out anything they said. Only muffled words in a muffled night but he didn’t need the details to know what they were talking about. They were talking about the same thing that damn near every other human being he’d ever known talked about—how much can I get and what’s the best way to get it.

He reached between the mattress and took out the pistol that Cohen had given him. He tucked it into the back of his pants and knew he needed to find the other one. He walked through the bathroom into the other bedroom and went to the dresser. The top drawer was the last place he had seen Cohen put it and he opened the drawer but it wasn’t there. He wondered if Cohen had somehow managed to have it with him but didn’t figure Charlie was the kind of man to make that sort of mistake. The room was a mess, with clothes on the floor and laid across chairs and the bed-sheets and blanket twisted and half hanging off the bed. Evan lifted sheets and picked up and tossed aside clothes, opened the nightstand drawer and the other dresser drawers, looked on the closet shelf and looked between the mattresses, but he couldn’t find it. He knelt and looked under the bed at the rifles and shotgun and thought it would take the men about fourteen seconds to find them, and then what would happen?

He went to the window and looked down. They were on the second floor and the awning was not ten feet below the window but Evan was almost certain it wouldn’t hold and if it splintered or collapsed then the fall could be much worse. He tried to open the window to get a better look but it was nailed shut. The window would have to be broken and with the sound of the storm it might be possible to get away with that. But then he would have to handle Brisco out of a jagged window onto a rickety awning in a driving storm. The entire scenario kept getting worse and worse.

He walked back into the room where Brisco slept and he looked at the small digital clock on the bedside table. An hour had passed and he didn’t believe it would be much longer before they came in. He walked gently over to the door and put his ear against it. They had stopped talking. Evan waited for them to start again.

Nothing. Only the beating of the rain and force of the wind.

He moved his ear from the door and looked down at the doorknob. Above the doorknob he noticed that the latch on the door was unlocked. He turned the lock and it clicked shut.

And then from the other side of the door, a voice said, “That ain’t gonna do you no good.”

Evan eased back from the door and over to the bed. He took out his pistol and then he sat on the bed, his back against the wooden headboard. Brisco turned in his sleep and grunted some but didn’t wake. Evan held the pistol in his lap and watched the door.

45

COHEN COULDN’T STAND BEING ALONE. After burying himself, after becoming what he wanted to be—alone with his memories and ghosts of a life—after everything he had done to be alone and remain alone, he couldn’t stand being alone now as he drove the truck behind the U-Haul. For two hours they had been moving back toward the coast, the hurricane forceful and gathering strength and the endless black night and the pounding of the rain and the wind and the twisting and turning across the beaten land and all he could think about was how alone he felt and it hurt like a broken bone.

During this solitary time he thought of everything. His life with Elisa and the early days when they were new and how he would quit work early and pick her up and they would drive up and down the coast, drinking beer and talking about all the things they were going to do, and at twilight they would find a pier to sit on where they could eat and drink some more beer and then at dark, before taking her back home, find a quiet strip of beach and lay out towels and lie naked under the empty sky, and when it was all done, kiss good night, anxious for tomorrow and the chance to do it all again.

He thought of the positive pregnancy test he danced around the living room with, holding high like a trophy, and her laughing and saying I peed on that, I peed on that, but him only dancing and twisting and turning like a madman. He thought of the many times he should have cut loose and taken her and gotten out of there, sold the house, sold the land, started over somewhere else and if he would have done that, how she would be alive now and he would be lying in bed with his daughter reading a bedtime story instead of caught in the middle of this impossible night in this impossible land.

He thought of the man he had left to bleed to death when the man was begging him to end his misery and he thought of slitting the stomach of the pregnant woman with the knife his grandfather had passed on to him and he thought of the two he had shot and killed back at the compound and he knew all those things made him something different now. He thought of Aggie and his twisted ideology and he thought of standing in the rain and trying to frame a child’s room and he thought of Habana and where she might be and he thought about the shoe box and how the things in it were probably scattered all across Gulfport. He thought of Mariposa and what must be going through her mind and how he hadn’t gotten to assure her of anything and did it matter anyway. Would any of it matter and would they even survive the night. He drove closely behind the U-Haul and being alone in the truck chewed at his heart and his mind and he seemed to relive his entire life in those hours and he wondered how in the hell the roads of his life could have led him to this moment. It seemed impossible.

Charlie was taking him places he had never been and if set free Cohen wondered if he could even find his way out of this hurricane. In almost every direction the ditches overflowed the road and the creeks ran the heights of bridges and there were great spaces of water everywhere but Charlie seemed to somehow find a way around. Cohen smoked without cease and the truck headlights and windshield wipers were ill-prepared for such intense combat. The winds rocked the back of the U-Haul and several times Charlie stopped and waited and then went on again but it never seemed to make sense to Cohen because there was only the fierce velocity of the wind and rain and never any ease.

He didn’t have a damn clue where they were. He wasn’t even certain whether they were driving north or south. Or east or west. In his angst he knocked his head against the steering wheel, against the door window. He pulled at his beard, at his hair. He squeezed at his chest and he smoked and he smoked and he felt so alone. Once when Charlie momentarily stopped, Cohen let his head fall down on the steering wheel and he began to cry and he wished that he had lived a better life so that he could call out for the hand of providence to guide him and half expect a response. He had expected sometime in the night for the lull to come and ease their journey but there wasn’t going to be a lull. There was no such thing anymore.

Mariposa had told him that in her dreams he left and didn’t come back. He had scoffed at the notion in the dry room but now he felt the possibility of not being there. And he thought of Evan and Brisco and the predicament he had left them in and he wondered how soon it would be before the boys were doing things out of desperation or if they were already. He thought that he should have sent them off with the black Hummer and the women and the baby. But hell no, he couldn’t have thought of that then.

He wanted to know anything. What time it was. Where they were. How much strength was left in the storm. Would the Jeep still be there or had someone found it and for some reason found the latches underneath the backseat and opened them and lifted the seat and hit jackpot. Would the night ever end. Would they be blown away. Would they drown. Would they be shot. All he had were questions.

He smoked his last cigarette. The night raged on. They continued like patient water beasts migrating toward their violent ocean home. Another hour of Charlie making turn after turn. Another hour of going nowhere. All around was black and floating countryside and they were on a road that was not much wider than the U-Haul. The brake lights of the U-Haul shined and it came to a stop and Cohen knew it was another dead end. The hazard lights began to blink and this was the sign for Cohen to come get in the U-Haul so they could figure out what to do next.

Cohen fought his way to the U-Haul cab, fought the door open, and Mariposa grabbed and pulled him in and he fell across her lap. He sat up and she slid into the middle of the bench seat between the men.

“Told you we’d make it,” Charlie said.

“You okay?” Mariposa asked and she held on to his arm.

“There’s no way in hell to do this, Charlie,” Cohen said, catching his breath and sitting up straight. “You can’t hardly stand out there.”

“It’ll be all right,” Charlie said. He held the pistol in one hand and the flask with the other.

“Shit. You been drinking all this time?”

“All this time,” Mariposa said.

“This is all so damn insane.”

“Not yet it ain’t,” Charlie said. “We got a little ways to go.”

There was a gust and the U-Haul swayed and Mariposa squeezed Cohen’s arm with both hands.

“We’re gonna have to wait on this wind,” Cohen said.

The rain pelted the windshield and the headlights gave little notice and something big smacked against the side of the U-Haul and they all jumped.

“All we gotta do is get right over there and it’s home free,” Charlie said. “About a mile up is one left turn and then another two or three miles to 49.” He pointed out in front with the flask. At the end of the headlight beams there was a bridge that was being washed over by an overflowing creek. The water rushed across the bridge and tree limbs and mounds of leaves and chunks of earth moved along with the strong current. The bridge rails were low and they leaned and wobbled with the flow, beaten nearly to death.

“No way,” Cohen said. “That thing’s about to go. You can’t even see it.”

“You can’t see it but it’s there. I been over this one before.”

“Then why’d it take so long to get to it?”

“ ’Cause it ain’t my first choice.”

“We can’t go over that,” Mariposa said.

“Can and are.”

Cohen put his hand on hers. Squeezed a little. “You just remember, Charlie, if we get washed away, you don’t get the money.”

Charlie drank from the flask. Thought about it.

The U-Haul rocked constantly in the wind. The creek seemed to rise even farther as they watched and no one could see the bridge or the other side of it.

“We got to wait,” Cohen said. “It’s a goddamn river.”

“Please,” Mariposa said.

“Just hold on,” Charlie answered.

“Hold on, hell,” Cohen said. “Back the hell up and let’s either sit or go another way.”

“It’s fine.”

“Goddamn it ain’t fine,” Cohen yelled and reached across Mariposa and shoved the old man. Charlie dropped the flask and shoved back and they began to wrestle with Mariposa in the middle and she yelled at them to stop and she yelled at the fierce night. They grabbed and pulled at one another and then Charlie stuck the pistol against Cohen’s ear.

“Don’t do it again, Cohen. I swear to God,” Charlie said.

Cohen didn’t move. Mariposa went quiet.

“Now settle down. Everything’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Mariposa said.

“Shut the hell up.”

She wrapped her arms and rocked back and forth and watched the water run across the bridge and the road.

“Put it down,” Cohen said, the tip of the pistol touching his earlobe.

“I’m gonna put it down,” Charlie said. “And no more shit. You got it? We’re gonna sit. Watch. And then we’re going across that bridge.”

He removed the pistol from Cohen’s ear and Cohen sat back. Mariposa leaned over on Cohen and dropped her head in his chest. She began to talk, “God get us out God get us out God get us out.”

“Don’t do it,” Cohen said with a tight jaw and Charlie ignored him.

Cohen lowered his head and leaned on her. His forehead resting on the back of hers. His teeth clenched in frustration. Another swoon and the U-Haul seemed to want to give way and Cohen realized he had done it again. He was going to lose another one in a place where she shouldn’t be.

One side of the bridge railing bent way back, then broke free and disappeared into the current. Charlie turned to him and in the dim glow of the dash light his drunk, crooked grin seemed like something out of the underworld. He raised his pistol to remind Cohen that he hadn’t put it down.

Cohen shook his head slowly.

Charlie said, “Hang on.” He shifted the U-Haul into drive and stomped on the gas.

The truck plunged into the current and they felt the surge immediately. “Goddamn,” Charlie said, surprised by its strength and he dropped the flask and gripped the steering wheel tightly and the truck pushed to the left and toward the missing rail. Charlie stayed on the gas and the engine made a gurgling noise and then the bridge buckled underneath them and the back of the U-Haul dropped and the three passengers were suddenly reclined and looking up, as if someone had pulled a chair out from under them. Mariposa screamed and Charlie kept turning the steering wheel as if that somehow mattered. The back end swung around but the front end was caught on something and kept the truck from taking off downstream. Water poured into the floorboard and the headlights looked up into the vicious sky and Cohen shoved Mariposa back and leaned across and shattered Charlie’s nose with his right fist. Charlie roared like a wounded bear and he dropped the pistol onto the floorboard. Cohen went for it but then the U-Haul bed broke loose from the cab and flipped on its side and was gone with the current.

The cab fell to the driver’s side and Mariposa and Cohen were on top of Charlie, their bodies frantic and tangled and fighting at one another and Charlie’s nose bleeding freely. The pistol was there somewhere but Cohen went for Charlie instead and in the frantic mass he got his hands around the old man’s throat and he squeezed and Charlie’s arms were pinned by Mariposa’s body on top of him and Cohen’s body on top of hers. Cohen squeezed and tried to hold on as the cab dislodged and floated downstream and then it crashed into something and they all banged against the windshield and dashboard. Cohen’s hands came off Charlie’s neck but Charlie was hurt and spitting and coughing. The rushing water rocked the U-Haul and Mariposa and Cohen fought to get their bodies turned and their heads up and Charlie stayed pinned against the door. Mariposa got her feet on Charlie and stood on him and was down and grabbing at him again when the pistol fired. Cohen reared and expected to feel a burn somewhere but he didn’t and then he grabbed at Mariposa and expected her to tumble but she didn’t. Cohen got on his knees and he reached for Charlie but Charlie’s body had gone limp and he wasn’t fighting anymore. Cohen grabbed Charlie’s wrist and found the pistol in his hand and a bleeding hole underneath his chin. He took the pistol from Charlie’s dead hand and the water rushed into the cab and by the time he and Mariposa pulled themselves together and realized what was going on, the cab was half filled with water.

Cohen set his feet on the steering wheel and he held Mariposa around the waist. She was panicked and crying and he said be quiet, be quiet, just be quiet. Their heads were at the passenger door and the water was to their waists and rising and Cohen pushed at the door but it wouldn’t open. He said help me and they pushed together, grunting and crying out, but they couldn’t get it open and the water was at their chests now.

He told her to stop and put her head down and he fired the pistol twice and shattered the window and glass exploded and fell around them and so did the rain.

“Get out,” he told her and he lifted her by the legs and she climbed up and out of the window. The wind nearly pushed her off and into the surge but she held on. Cohen dropped the pistol and reached down in the water for Charlie. He felt around and pushed open his coat and got his hands on Charlie’s belt and he found the bowie knife. He jerked it from Charlie’s belt and raised up and stuck it into his coat and then he pulled himself up and out. They lay flat across the door, and Cohen realized that the cab was stuck against a fallen tree. Somehow the headlights still shined and he saw that the tree might stretch across to the bank. The water rose around the U-Haul and the rain came like bullets. Mariposa slipped and screamed and was nearly gone and he reached out and grabbed her by her long, beautiful black hair. He held on to the truck door through the broken window and pulled her hair and her legs were in the current and he fought to hold on and she got her hands up and grabbed his wrist and they managed to get her back up onto the cab door. They put their heads down and hooked their arms inside the door and held on like hell.

Cohen screamed, “Get on the tree! Crawl across!”

The truck swayed and seemed like it might be ready to go again and he helped Mariposa get to her feet and she fell forward and onto the broad tree trunk. Cohen got to his knees and got up and did the same. That way, he screamed and she turned and wrapped her arms and legs around the tree trunk and began to nudge along. Cohen was right behind her and they kept on, little by little, until they saw the tree roots and the ground out behind them. Jump! Cohen yelled and Mariposa went as far as she could along the trunk and then she got on her knees, on her feet, and dove over the edge of the clump of roots and disappeared. Cohen followed her over and they were not out of the water but they were out of the flood and they helped each other to their feet and they trudged through the knee-deep water. When they came to the end of it, they collapsed, lying on their stomachs, their faces buried in folded arms, waiting for someone or something to show them mercy.

46

UNDERNEATH EVAN’S WINDOW WAS WHERE the awning first came loose and with a loud crack and then a metal groan it ripped from the brick building facade and twisted away in the night. The stragglers outside had run for cover and the wind howled through the square and piece by piece the awning was torn away and it slammed against buildings or flew through windows or shot off into the dark. As if signaled by the rise in the storm, Charlie’s men kicked the door and splintered the frame and came into the bedroom.

In the passing hours, Evan had sensed the storm gaining strength and he had awakened Brisco. Brisco whined and moaned about it but Evan told him he had to get dressed. Get your shoes and your coat and hat. Don’t argue with me just do it. When the men came into the room, Evan and Brisco sat on the bed, Brisco crouched close to his brother, scared of the storm and scared that Evan had told him they might have to get out of here and scared that Evan couldn’t say where they would go if they had to get out of here. Evan wore his coat and he held his hand inside, gripping the pistol.

“You ain’t got to get up,” said the man with the birthmark. The other one came in behind him and went looking in the closets and dressers, digging into the pile of clothes in the corner and disgusted to find nothing. He checked the other room while the man with the birthmark stood at the foot of the bed and stared at Evan. He had the stare of the sleepless and his upper lip quivered.

“Holy hell,” the other man yelled from Cohen’s room. “Hit the damn jackpot.”

“What you got?”

“Got rifles and lo and behold a sawed-off shotgun. Holy hell.”

“Bring them on in here.”

“Hell, just found a pistol, too.”

The short man came into Evan’s room holding the rifles and shotgun and several boxes of ammunition across his arms. Cohen’s pistol was stuck in the front of his pants.

“I damn well knew you had some shit in here,” the man said as he took a Remington and a handful of cartridges and loaded it. Then he held it on Evan.

Evan hugged at Brisco and said, “Don’t point that thing at him or me. You got what you want now go on.”

“We ain’t got it all,” said the man with the birthmark. Outside a piece of the awning smacked against the building and busted out a window in Cohen’s room. Brisco shouted and they all jumped.

Evan sat up and yelled, “Hell you don’t. Go on.”

“He’s right. Let’s get on,” said the short man and he moved toward the door. The other man grabbed him and said, “We ain’t going nowhere.”

“You ain’t staying here,” Evan said.

The rain and wind rushed through the broken window and the man said, “Not going out there for damn sure. Besides you got something else. I saw your boy slide a little something to you. Where’s it at?”

“I don’t have nothing.”

Brisco yelled, “He don’t have nothing.”

“Shut up.”

“Let’s just get,” said the short man.

“Where is it? A few dollar bills?” the man said and he shoved the rifle toward Evan. The wind howled through the broken window.

“You damn coward,” Evan said.

The man with the birthmark looked at Evan surprised, then looked at his partner and laughed. He turned back to Evan and said, “What’d you say?”

“You ain’t shit without that gun.”

“Don’t matter what I am without it, ’cause I got it.”

“Come on, dammit,” the short man said.

“I ain’t coming on. You got any money?”

“Charlie’s gonna give us some more.”

“You and me ain’t never gonna see Charlie again. This boy’s got a wad and I’m getting it,” he said and he aimed the rifle above Evan’s head and fired, a spattering of plaster raining down on Evan as he ducked across Brisco. “Where is it?” the man said.

Evan stayed across Brisco. Didn’t move or answer.

The man lowered the rifle closer to Evan and fired again and this time the shot pierced the wall not a foot above Evan’s head. “Jesus Christ,” the short man yelled.

“Shut up,” the man said. “I don’t wanna shoot your ass with your boy here but I ain’t asking but one more time then I’ll find it on your dead body. Where’s it at?”

“Okay. Okay,” Evan said. “Just don’t shoot no more.” He lifted his head off Brisco, who was crying now with his face down in the pillow and his hands pressed over his ears. Evan looked at the short man with his arms out like a rack, holding the other guns. The man with the birthmark lowered the rifle a little and the wind howled through the square. Evan sat up and looked down inside his coat and said, “Here, you can have it all.” He then pulled out the pistol and shot the man with the rifle in the shoulder and he fell back out of the doorway, and then he fired on the other man, who was dropping his armload and reaching for Cohen’s pistol. Evan hit him in the rib cage and he went down. Evan was out of the bed and on his feet and the man with the birthmark was trying to get back up and fire again but Evan hit him again in the chest and he went back flat and motionless. Brisco screamed with each shot and tried to burrow into the mattress and the short man got to his knees and was pulling the pistol when Evan shot him again and he fell back with flailing arms.

Brisco screamed and the storm raged. Evan’s hands shook as he held the pistol on the men. He moved closer and nudged the short man with his foot. He didn’t move. Cohen’s pistol was on the floor next to him and Evan nervously bent down and picked it up. Then he stepped out of the doorway and nudged the man with the birthmark and he was dead, too. Evan put both pistols in his coat pocket and he was shaking and light-headed. He knelt down to pick up the other rifles but he couldn’t calm down, so he tucked his hands under his arms as if to force them to be still. He squeezed his eyes shut and took heavy breaths and hurried to gather himself so he could get to Brisco.

He only gave himself seconds, and then he pulled out his hands and for some reason blew on them. Then he grabbed the Remington and the other rifles and Cohen’s shotgun and took them into the other room. He set them on the bed and the rain was blowing in the window and glass was scattered across the floor. He went back to Brisco and he sat down on the bed and pulled the boy to him and held on. It’s all right. It’s over. It’s over. It’s all right.

Then he heard footsteps above. Big, pounding footsteps. Then he heard a door open and the footsteps move to the top of the staircase. A voice yelled, “I don’t give a damn who’s down there but I’m coming and shooting first and asking second!”

“Don’t shoot!” Evan yelled back. “It’s over!”

“I’ll decide it,” Big Jim called. He came down the staircase, careful seconds between each step. When he was down on the second floor, he stepped across the men and the slow spread of blood in the doorway and then he looked at Evan and Brisco. Big Jim wore overalls with no shirt underneath and only one shoulder strapped. He held a shotgun pointed from his hip, but he let it down when he saw the boys. He shook his head.

Brisco sat up. His face was red and he wiped at it with the bed-sheet. Evan started to speak but an explosion-like crash sounded below as the storm hurled something through the large café windows. Big Jim jerked with the big noise and disappeared down the staircase.

“Stay here, Brisco,” Evan said as he went to get up to go with Big Jim. But Brisco held on to his coat and was pulled across the bed. “Don’t leave me!” he yelled.

Evan grabbed his little brother, lifted him to his feet, and stood him on the bed. “You got to stop crying. Okay? I ain’t going nowhere I swear it. You got to stop crying and yelling. It ain’t easy but we got to.” He wiped the boy’s face with his hands as Brisco huffed and tried to suck it in. “Don’t look at nothing, Brisco. Just look at me. Look at me.”

Brisco put his eyes on his brother and Evan told him to count. Start counting and see how high you can go and look at me. Brisco nodded and said, “One.” Then he stopped.

“Keep going. How high can you get? Count and calm down. Come on.”

The boy started over with one, then moved to two, three, and he continued. Evan held him by the arms, waited until Brisco had reached seventeen, eighteen, and then let go of him and backed away, over to the dead men.

“Look up,” Evan said. “Watch the ceiling and keep going. I bet you can’t go to fifty.”

As Brisco looked up and counted, Evan grabbed the man with the birthmark by the ankles and dragged him through the bathroom and into the other bedroom, leaving a trail of red as if the room had been crossed by a bloody mop.

“Keep going. Eyes up,” he called out to Brisco as he returned to the doorway. Brisco was somewhere in the thirties and back to the twenties, confused but trying to make it work. The other man was heavier and Evan had to wrestle him around to get turned where he could drag the body, but he managed and laid him next to the other one in a sloppy, bloody mess. He took a blanket from the bed and covered them and then gunshots sounded out across the square.

In the other room, Brisco lost count and screamed, “I can’t do it no more.”

47

THEY LAY IN THE MUD, still and submissive. Mariposa moved underneath Cohen and he lay mostly on top of her, their faces down, their heads rested on folded arms. The headlights from the U-Haul had gone out and all was black. The rain beat them, the wind swooshed through the remaining trees along the creek bank, and they could only hope that nothing came crashing down on them. It was as if they were being returned to the earth, driven into the ground by the force of the storm, their stiff bodies less skin and bone and more mud and root with each passing moment. Mariposa tried to think of colors, of reds and oranges and yellows and greens or anything that would strike against the black canvas of the world that she saw when she closed her eyes or opened them. The colors came and went and she tried to imagine brilliant stars and a crescent moon but nothing would stay.

In a couple of hours, the black world weakened. Cohen got off her, got to his knees, and helped her do the same. They climbed to their feet holding on to one another.

In the morning gray, they headed back toward the collapsed bridge. The flooded creek raged on and the truck cab had become dislodged from the tree sometime during the night. The trees thinned and disappeared and the wind blew at their backs and they walked methodically with hunched, depleted bodies and rain-soaked souls. Sometimes they stopped and knelt and then encouraged one another and then rose and walked again. They had been washed along in the cab much farther than it seemed and once or twice they wondered if they were going the right way. They had been flipped and tossed and turned and spun and it would have been easy to lose sense of direction. Cohen said, “Let’s give it another minute or two and if we don’t see the road and the other truck, we’ll turn around.”

The storm had not passed on but had relented some. The rain had eased with the dawn and the winds had also given way and no longer threatened to push them to the ground. They helped one another along another quarter mile and then Cohen said, “There it is.” At first sight, Mariposa buckled and dropped to her knees. Cohen went down with her, telling her, “It’s right there. It’s right there.” She nodded and knew it was right there but it seemed to her that the sight of the truck was simply a prolonging of the end of things.

“I can’t,” she said.

He understood but it didn’t slow him. He stood and moved behind her and lifted her underneath her arms. Her rag-doll legs wouldn’t take her weight and Cohen yelled, “Come on, goddammit. We ain’t doing this shit right here.”

He shook her and she planted her feet and twisted from his grasp.

Cohen pointed and said, “Let’s go. You can cry in the truck.”

“I ain’t crying in the truck.”

“You’re not crying here, either.”

“I know it,” she said and she stood taller and moved again, walking faster. Cohen followed and her energy rose as they splashed across the flooded fields with high knees, fueled by the disgust of having to keep on.

When they made it to the truck, Cohen helped Mariposa in the passenger side and then he went around and got behind the wheel. They sat and slumped. The adrenaline gone. The hunger and thirst and weariness and disgust still there.

Cohen looked at his hands. The skin was tender from so much water. Hers were the same. Mariposa stared blankly at the windshield, her arms dropped at her sides. Trails of water from their clothes and bodies ran across the bench seat of the truck, down their legs, and across the floorboard. It was as if they were melting. They sat and the water ran from them and their bodies seemed incapable of movement. Their minds incapable of thinking about anything other than rain and thunder and wind.

They sat with the earliest, dullest light of day. Cohen moved first. He opened the truck door and stood outside and peeled off his jacket. He tossed it in the back of the truck and got in. Mariposa sat up and leaned forward and he helped her get her coat off and he dropped it on the floorboard. She fell over then and lay across the bench seat with her hands folded in prayer and her head resting on them. Cohen leaned on the door with his head against the window. They were both out within seconds.

THE STORM HAD RAVAGED WHAT was left of the town. Storefronts were blown out and the awning had been torn from the square buildings and landed in trees and in upstairs windows. Water had stopped draining and was pooling shin-deep across the square and across the sidewalks, and trash and tree limbs and liquor bottles and clothes and dead animals and God knows what floated in the water. The water had crept into the buildings and covered floors and was slowly rising as the rain kept on.

Evan and Brisco had spent the storm in the storage room of the café, sitting underneath a stainless-steel table with thick legs. Big Jim had sat along the back wall of the café, shotgun pointed where the windows used to be, waiting on them to come as soon as there was the slightest break.

The slightest break came with daylight. A stiff wind and the heavy rain continued but it wasn’t the part of the storm that scared anyone. Heads began to poke out of windows and out from behind doorways and around the edges of alleys and what they discovered was access. Soon there were packs of them going into buildings and coming out with whatever they could carry. Furniture and picture frames and toilet seats and boxes they hadn’t even opened to see what was inside. The looting came with howls of victory, as if the discoveries were of priceless treasure that could dictate fate and not worthless remnants of a once normal life.

Some of them carried ax handles or bedposts and those who were armed finished off the shards of windows or busted out the windows that remained. Doors were knocked open and the crowds filed into the buildings and up onto the second and third floors and they threw chairs and tables out of the upper windows and they smashed and they took what they wanted and they fought one another and everyone seemed to have given up except Big Jim, who sat with his shotgun and fired over their heads if they took as much as a step toward the café.

But then he changed his mind. He called for Evan, and Evan and Brisco came out of the storage room. “Get on over here,” Big Jim said and waved them to stand behind him.

A man with a bleeding forehead peeked around the café door and Big Jim fired and the man splashed down onto the sidewalk and scurried away.

“I’m done,” Big Jim said. “They can have it. I got a safe back there in the storage room and I’m going to it then I’m the hell outta here. You two can come along if you ain’t got nothing better.”

Evan looked out of the windows at the craziness. He looked down at Brisco. “I’m supposed to be waiting on them to get back,” he said.

“Get back from where?”

“Down there. They went back down late last night.”

“Holy shit,” Big Jim said. “If they ain’t floating somewhere they might get back but how long you supposed to wait?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

Big Jim huffed. “I ain’t waiting that long. I don’t have enough shells.”

“I got some upstairs,” Evan said. “Some rifles, too.”

“I don’t plan on being here at dark. I’ve had it. This place has been waiting to sink into the ground for a while and it just might before night. It’d be God’s own grace if it did.”

Evan sat in a chair and put his head down. Brisco sat beside him. Evan rubbed at his eyes and tried to believe that Cohen was alive and coming back for them. He lifted his head and said, “Where you going?”

Big Jim shrugged. “I’ll know when I get there.”

“What if we leave and they come back looking for me and him?”

“It won’t take but about a minute to look around and figure you made a run for it.”

Evan dropped his head again. “Shit,” he said.

“Shit,” Brisco said.

“Your call,” said Big Jim and he fired again out the window just for the hell of it. “I’m running upstairs and getting shoes and then I’m in and out of the safe and then I’m gone. You got a minute to think on it.”

He handed the shotgun to Evan and Evan took it by the barrel and then Big Jim lumbered up the stairs. Brisco reached out for the shotgun but Evan moved it away and said, “I told you not to touch these things.”

“You’re touching it.”

“It’s different, Brisco.”

“It ain’t fair,” Brisco said and he folded his arms.

Evan leaned back in the chair. Stared at the yellowed ceiling. You’re right, he thought. It ain’t fair.

He was hungry. He knew that Brisco was hungry. At least there was food in the café and that was the beginning and end of his pros-and-cons list. There was no way to know anything but he had to decide. Out in the middle of the square, out in the rain and the wind, three men chased another man who had a bag of some sort tucked under his arm. They surrounded him and he wouldn’t give it up and then they were on him, splashing and yelling and hitting and kicking and the man went down. The bag was jerked away from him but the hitting and kicking didn’t stop until he was motionless in the water. All around the square they swarmed in and out of buildings like starving rodents.

Evan leaned the shotgun against the wall and then he looked at Brisco, wishing that his little brother could tell him what to do.

COHEN WOKE FIRST TO A roll of thunder. He wiped his face and looked out at the drowning land. He figured they had been out for an hour, maybe two. But he didn’t know for sure. He touched Mariposa’s shoulder and shook her some. She woke and pushed herself up on the seat. She looked around like she was confused, but then it seemed to come back to her and she rubbed her eyes and moved her hair away from her face.

“We have to go,” Cohen said.

He cranked the truck. He carefully backed up and went forward several times to get turned around without moving off the narrow road. As he put the truck in drive and moved along the road, Mariposa said, “What about the money?”

He tapped the brakes and stopped. “What do you mean?”

She sniffed. Ran her shirtsleeve across her nose. Without looking at him, she said, “You know what I mean.”

He put the truck in park and took his foot from the brake. They stared out in front.

“Is it far?” she asked.

“I don’t think. But I don’t know how to get to it any other way than what we already did all last night.”

“You think Evan and Brisco are okay?”

Cohen shrugged. “Don’t see how they could be.”

Mariposa shifted in the seat. Pressed her hands on her knees. “Maybe we give it one try and then go,” she said. “The wind and rain let up some.”

“I don’t know which way to go. I ain’t even sure I know which way to get out of here and back to them.”

Mariposa looked at him. “I know. I don’t know what I’m talking about but it sounded like there’s a whole lot of it. Is there?”

Cohen nodded. Smacked his lips. “Yep. A whole lot. It’d go a long way.”

“So?”

“So what if we get to looking around down here and something happens? What about the boys?”

“I know,” she said.

“It was a bad, bad one. Bad like they warned it was gonna be. Didn’t think it could get worse but it damn sure felt like it and I’d bet them two Charlie put at the door weren’t real good company.”

“I know.”

“So we can’t take any more chances. Right?”

She wiped at her face again and said, “I know. You’re right.”

They sat for a moment, waited for the other to say something that would kill the thoughts of the money. The thoughts of how far the money could take them. The thoughts of the absence of worry that the money could provide. Mariposa lay her head back on the seat and wanted to say, All I want is an end to this, some kind of promise that we won’t keep spinning around in the storms and the filth and the chaos. She hadn’t thought of money hardly ever in her life but now it seemed to stand in front of her and scream, You need me, drowning out the voices of Evan and Brisco.

Cohen put the truck in drive and said, “One loop back around. I got one idea and that’s it.”

“Cohen,” she said.

“What?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Just hurry.”

He backtracked several miles to a crossroads. Half an oak blocked the road to the east and water blew across the asphalt. He turned left and the road seemed to shrink, the wild growth bunched along the roadside and trees pushed over but not uprooted, and the truck was able to slide underneath them, the branches screeching across the hood and top and doors. He manipulated the clustered road for ten slow miles and then he arrived at the left turn he had been anticipating.

“I think there’s another bridge down this way. Bigger than that other one.”

“Where was it last night?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Didn’t he say anything when we were right about here?”

“He said crazy shit all night. I quit listening.”

Cohen turned left and the road was lined by pastures. In several low places the water had risen across the road but nothing to keep them from continuing. In a few miles, there was a four-way stop, the signs all twisted and leaning in different directions. Cohen continued straight. They passed through a small community. A gas station and a few hollow houses and a one-room brick building that had VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT stenciled on the side in white paint. Another couple of miles and they came to the bridge that Cohen was looking for.

The bridge was there. But so was the flood that had washed them away last night. The push of the water had not broken the bridge or its rails but it was at least two feet over the road. Cohen drove the truck right up to the edge of the muddy, rushing water and stopped. On the other side of the bridge was a sign that read 49 JUNCTION AHEAD.

“That’s it,” Mariposa said.

“That’s it,” Cohen answered. He killed the ignition. He got out of the truck and took a gas can from the truck bed and emptied it into the truck. Then he walked around to the front and out into the water. Up on the land, the current wasn’t as strong so he tested it, walked closer to the bridge until the water rose knee-deep and pushed him and caused him to stretch out his arms to catch his balance. He was another six or seven steps from the bridge and the water surged confidently. Cohen backed out of the water and stood in the rain at the front of the truck. He stood with his hands on his hips and he looked up and down the small, strong river.

He turned and walked back to the truck and got in and he found Mariposa bent over and crying. He reached for her but she shoved his hand away and rose and cried out, “Evan. Evan and Brisco. Jesus, Cohen.”

They had both been wrong but she was right now and he hoped to God it wasn’t too late, that they hadn’t wasted too much time and that the boys weren’t being hurt. He hoped to God that the extra minutes and the extra miles wouldn’t cost them and he felt like one of them, like one of those who only searched for a moment’s weakness and took what mattered right then without the thought of another man. He felt like one of those he had been fighting against. Like one of those he hated. He hoped to God this didn’t cost them.

He put the truck in reverse and spun around, then shifted into drive and they were moving as fast as they could move through the infinite storm. Mariposa kept calling out for Evan, telling him they were sorry. Telling him that they didn’t mean it. Telling him they were coming. Please hold on.

48

THE POWER OF THE STORM was evident as they tried to get back to Ellisville. Newly fallen trees and freshly flooded roads kept them backtracking and twisting and winding. With each blocked pathway and wasted mile, their anxiety grew stronger. And so did the storm. What little relenting there had been was gone and now the back end came on with a recognizable power.

They had been in the truck for almost three hours as they approached and drove toward the town square and the bedlam showed itself. Somehow black smoke wafted in the air amid the rain and wind. Road signs and big branches and other debris were scattered across the water-covered streets. Cohen drove the truck to the back of the café and the back door was open and through the doorway he and Mariposa saw people inside, fighting over boxes of hamburger buns and bags of potato chips and hitting at one another with giant spoons.

“Oh my God,” Mariposa said.

Cohen didn’t stop but stomped on the gas, splashing through the standing water, and at the end of the buildings he turned onto the square. They saw the missing awning and the broken windows and the busted doorways and the people running about without regard for the storm and the black smoke coming out of the top floor of a corner building. Cohen drove to the front of the café and slammed on the brakes and the café was filled with scavengers. The square was filled with scavengers. Several bodies lay in the water up and down the sidewalk.

Cohen grabbed the door handle and Mariposa grabbed him and said, “Don’t, Cohen.”

“Hell, I have to. What the hell else are we gonna do?”

“I don’t know,” she said and she was scared and he was scared and worse, he didn’t have a gun or a bat or even a big stick.

“He can’t be up there. Can he?” Cohen said. He looked all around. Slammed his fists on the steering wheel and said goddammit goddammit. The rain beat like a thousand drums and amplified the desperation.

From the sidewalk a cluster of men stopped what they were doing and stared at the truck. Then one of them pointed.

“Cohen,” Mariposa said and the men began to run toward them and Cohen put the truck in reverse and spun around, hitting the curb he couldn’t see under the water on the opposite side of the street. The truck bounced and Mariposa and Cohen bounced. Her head smacked against the window and Cohen fumbled to get it into drive as they came quick and surrounded the vehicle. They realized Cohen didn’t have a gun or he would have used it by now. Ragged, limp clothes and ragged, limp faces and arms held out as if the truck were a crazed animal that needed to be calmed before being caged. Cohen reached over and opened the glove box though he knew nothing was there and then he did the same underneath the seat and Mariposa locked her door as if that would matter. Cohen got hold of a tire iron and he waved it at them ineffectually. But then a series of shots were fired from somewhere and one of the men grabbed the back of his leg and went down and the others turned and scattered.

“Get down,” Cohen yelled but Mariposa was looking and spotted the gunman in the second-floor window above the café.

“It’s Evan,” she yelled and pointed. Evan sat in the window with the barrel of the rifle aimed down at the street. The glass was gone from the window and he knelt on the floor with his elbows on the window ledge. Evan waved them toward the building as Brisco stood behind him with his hands on his brother’s shoulders.

Evan leaned out and fired several more shots to ward off any others and Cohen put the truck in drive and jetted across the street. The crowd split as it bounced onto the sidewalk and its front end hit the storefront as it slid to a stop.

“Get Brisco,” Cohen told Mariposa as they grabbed at the door handles and hurried out.

Cohen pumped the tire iron at the café as he moved underneath the window and someone called out, “That ain’t shit!” There were maybe twenty of them bunched in the café and twice that many along the sidewalk and they immediately began to creep toward the truck.

“Throw me something!” Cohen said and flung away the tire iron. Evan dropped the sawed-off shotgun out of the window just as Mariposa screamed as two women had come up behind her and snatched the back of her coat. Cohen turned and fired into a piece of twisted metal awning that was lodged in the café window. The women let go and dove back into the café. He waved the shotgun at the rest of them and they held still.

“I got the doors jammed up with everything up here and we can’t get out,” Evan yelled down.

“Jump on the top of the truck,” Cohen yelled back.

Mariposa climbed onto the hood and then on top of the cab and held out her arms for Brisco. No no no, he called out, but his feet appeared out the window and then there he came and he fell right into Mariposa. She lost her balance and they slid down the windshield and landed on the hood. She grabbed Brisco around the waist and got them down off the hood and into the truck and then there came the thwack thwack of bullet holes into the tailgate of the truck.

“Back there,” Evan yelled and Cohen turned to see a handful of men coming at him around the truck bed. Evan fired three quick shots and one of the men went down and another grabbed his arm and the rest covered their heads and ran. But it seemed like in every direction the crowd was gathering to rush Cohen and in the roar of the rain it was damn near impossible to see who was coming from where. Another thwack and Cohen ducked in front of the truck.

“Corner building,” Evan called and he fired across the square at the building where he had seen the white flashes. Cohen’s back pressed against the truck grille and he pointed the shotgun at the café.

From inside the truck, Mariposa and Brisco yelled for them to come on, come on. The rain came hard and the others crept closer and the gunshots sprayed.

“Right now, Evan,” Cohen screamed. “We gotta go now.”

“He’s gonna get us,” Evan yelled back.

“No, he ain’t. Right now.”

Evan fired several more quick shots and then he jumped out of the window, rifle in hand, and he crashed on top of the truck cab. He fumbled the rifle into the bed and scrambled after it as shots from across the square pelted around him. He lay flat in the bed and counted to three and he jumped out and raced into the cab with Mariposa and Brisco.

Cohen rose and fired his last shot into the café ceiling and they shrank away. Mariposa pushed open the truck door and he sneaked around the front end and then darted to the door and one more shot sliced through the storm and it caught Cohen and he buckled and fell against the side of the truck.

“Cohen!” Mariposa screamed. Evan climbed out and ran around and tried to get Cohen to his feet. More shots missed them and smacked the truck and dropped people coming out of the café toward the truck. Evan got Cohen’s arm around his neck and raised him and Cohen held his hand to his side and half-crawled, half-walked with the boy. The shotgun was left behind and Cohen called for it but Evan didn’t stop. He dragged Cohen to the passenger side and Mariposa pulled him in the cab. Evan slammed the door and ran around and got behind the wheel. The crowd waited no more and came running at them out of the café and from up and down the sidewalk, several more being dropped by the hidden gunman but the crowd without fear now and intent on getting that truck.

Evan shifted into drive as they pounded on the hood and sides, savage rain-drenched faces and bony fists and mouths open and screaming. He went hard on the gas and some of them fell away but others clung to door handles and the tailgate and another had managed to get one leg into the truck bed and was dragged along as the truck cut through the flooded street.

“Evan!” Mariposa yelled as she turned and saw the man trying to claw his way into the truck bed and the other hands and heads at the tailgate. At the end of the street, Evan cut hard left and slammed the gas again and the man was thrown from the bed and the heads disappeared from the back, but four clinging hands remained on the edge of the tailgate. When the others saw Evan turn, they began to splash across the square, trying to catch up and hopeful the truck would turn again. Evan did turn again, another hard left, and now the hands were gone and the bodies rolled. Mariposa said, “That’s it, don’t stop. Don’t stop, Evan, keep straight and don’t stop.”

He stayed straight and got away from the square, away from the chasing crowd and the scattered bullets. Brisco had curled himself on the floorboard and though they had shaken free, Mariposa looked around frantically to make sure there was no one else attached. Cohen had collapsed against the door, his cheek against the window. They drove on and left the square and the crowd behind and now there was only the rain and they needed much more than that.

Cohen leaned forward and doubled over and Mariposa pulled at his coat and said, “Where is it? Where is it?”

“Holy goddamn,” he said and he couldn’t catch his breath and he moved his hands from his side. She pulled Brisco up from the floorboard and put him next to Evan and she helped Cohen off with his coat and the bullet hole was just above his stomach. He lifted his shirt and the blood ran from the nickel-sized hole like water.

“Oh Jesus,” Mariposa said and in a panic she looked around for what to do but she didn’t find any answers.

“What?” Evan asked and he started to pull over.

“You can’t stop,” Mariposa screamed.

“Goddamn,” Cohen said again.

“What!” Evan yelled.

“What do you think?” Mariposa yelled back. “His stomach. Gimme something.”

“Give you what?”

“Drive,” Cohen said and he bent over and vomited a little on the floorboard. He held his hands over the hole and his fingers and hands and stomach and everything was turning red. Mariposa got out of her jacket and took off her top shirt. She wadded it and helped him back against the seat and she pressed the shirt against the hole.

“What the hell?” Evan yelled.

“Drive,” Cohen said again. “And don’t stop.”

“Where? I don’t know where.”

“Jesus, Jesus,” Mariposa said.

“Tell me something,” Evan said.

“Just go as fast as you can,” Mariposa said and she was pressing the shirt on the wound.

“Fucking where?” Evan said and Brisco repeated his brother and the child reached his small hand around Mariposa and put his hand on Cohen’s leg. Evan drove as fast as he could, which wasn’t fast in the strength of the rain and wind and the water-covered road.

“God,” Cohen said and sweat gathered on his lip.

Mariposa smacked his cheek and said, “Come on! Come on!” She pressed the shirt and her hands were bloody. Cohen’s head fell back against the seat and he smacked his lips. She began to plead with him to sit up, look at me, hold my hand, think about the sunshine, don’t be a quitter, look at me Cohen I said look at me, we’ll get somewhere, don’t think about it, I know it hurts but it won’t forever we’ll get somewhere so hold on.

He lifted his head and stared at her blankly.

Evan cussed and drove and beat at the steering wheel and the storm wouldn’t stop. Mariposa moved one hand away from the shirt and wiped the rain and sweat from Cohen’s face with the back of her hand.

He stared at her and they drove the impossible highway. Blood filled his pants and his strength began to leak away. A half hour passed and they kept north and Cohen tried not to slump, tried not to show what he was feeling, but he knew he was slipping. His forehead against the door window and his eyes wide open and his hands on top of Mariposa’s hands which pressed the shirt against the bleeding hole. He stared out the window and he heard Mariposa pleading and he heard Evan and he heard the rain and the thunder and the rush of the water under the tires. He heard it all, felt it all. He stared out at the suffering land and then there she was.

She walked along the stone street on the clearest day in Venice. The men turned and watched her long stride. The women outside the shops noticed her as she passed. She walked toward him and sat down at the table for two outside the café. The sun cut across the alley and she moved from the light into the shadow and looked at him and said I don’t want to go. On the table was a mask he had bought for her at a kiosk on the Rialto Bridge, purple and black around the eyes and a teardrop on its left cheek and burgundy around the mouth and trailing up in a devilish smile. She picked up the mask and covered her face and her eyes danced and she said I’m getting used to this place. Like I belong here. And he could see that she might belong somewhere like this but he didn’t care where she was or where she belonged as long as he was there.

I don’t want to leave, she said again and she removed the mask and her face fell, the insinuation of something going away.

“Cohen,” Mariposa said and she touched his cheek. “Head up. Come on. Head up. Jesus Christ, come on.”

His eyelids were heavy but open and he saw the waiter come out of the café and he brought them espresso. Elisa watched the people along the street and he watched her, the Venice air filled with the chatter of another language and the tink of espresso cups and saucers and somewhere an old man singing. It’s weird, she said without looking at him. Me and you have been at the water our whole lives but it feels different here. You are surrounded by the water. She pressed her lips together and he asked her if that was good or bad and she said good. You’d get used to it, he said. And she shook her head and turned to him and smiled and he felt the peace in her.

I will bring you back one day, he told her and he reached for her hand.

“Stay here,” Mariposa screamed and she had his face in her hands and was shaking his head back and forth. He looked at her but didn’t look at her. “Stay here, Cohen. Stay here, come on and stay here. Come on!”

“What is it?” Evan yelled. “What’s happening?”

“Look at me. Look at us. We’re getting there. It’s all behind now, Cohen. It’s all behind,” Mariposa said, her voice wavering and his face in her hands and the rain and sweat and blood in tiny rivers down her fingers and wrists and she could see that he was somewhere else. “Cohen. Look at me. Please come on. It’s all behind I swear it.”

Maybe next time we’ll have a stroller with us for you-know-who, Elisa said and he smiled and asked her who she was talking about. It’s coming and you know it’s coming. We can wait a little while longer but you know that, right? And you might as well get ready but you’ll be good at it. Her eyes changed again, from peaceful to confident and excited for the years before them. She grinned and said don’t be scared.

I’m not scared. Those things are little and I’m pretty sure I could win in a fight.

A young girl in sandals and a long white skirt came along the street holding an armful of roses. She stopped and held them toward Cohen, said something, nodded at Elisa. He held up two fingers and the girl pulled two from the bundle and gave them to Cohen. He paid her and she nodded and moved on and Cohen held the two roses out to Elisa.

One for the Venice water, he said. And one for the Mississippi water.

She took them, smelled them. Touched her fingertips to the petals.

From a distance, he heard someone calling him but he wasn’t sure who it was or where it was coming from and he didn’t try to answer.

The sun moved and their shadow had disappeared. The Venetian sunlight brushed the side of Elisa’s face, her arm, her leg. She seemed to him like something made of marble, her beauty perfectly sculpted and preserved.

49

MARIPOSA SAT IN A BUS station in Asheville, North Carolina. The bus station was a twenty-minute walk from the shelter that they had called home for months and she sat in the same spot where she sat each time she waited. Her legs were folded and her bag was next to her on the wooden bench and the ceiling fans clicked as they circled overhead. She thumbed through the pages of a newsmagazine, fanning the pages, enjoying the fluttering sound that they made. A woman with glasses sat behind the ticket counter and talked on the telephone and two men who looked like brothers sat on the other side of the small waiting room. One of them flipped a coin until the other guessed heads or tails correctly and then they swapped and the record was four misses in a row. Outside Evan and Brisco picked up rocks and tried to hit a garbage can they had moved out into the empty parking lot.

A denim jacket lay across the bag and Mariposa wore a sleeveless shirt with ruffles around the neck. The late spring was muggy and windy and there was little need for a jacket during the day but the nights remained cool. She uncrossed her legs and set the magazine on the bench. The magazine cover was a photograph of a man in a suit standing on a sun-soaked podium, red, white, and blue flags flapping in the wind behind him. He made a fist with his right hand, seemed to speak with indignation. She picked up the magazine and turned it over and slid it to the end of the bench.

She looked at the round clock on the wall behind the counter and there was another ten minutes to wait if the bus was on time but no one was certain of the chances of that happening.

She moved her jacket from the bag and opened it. She took out a folded sheet of paper and counted the places she had been. Huntsville, Birmingham, Roswell, Augusta, Athens. The names of thirteen more towns and the addresses of thirteen more shelters remained on the list and she was making her way east for the first time, heading for Winston-Salem. The shelters on her list held thousands of people and stretched from Alabama across to North Carolina, up into Kentucky and Virginia. There were more across on the other side of the Floodlands, over into Texas and Arkansas, but that would have to wait and hopefully she wouldn’t need to get across. The shelters functioned out of high school gymnasiums or National Guard armories and served as a way of living for most. Children went to school at these shelters, job training was provided at these shelters, mail was delivered to these shelters. And she was going to go to each one on her list until she found someone that she knew. Somewhere she had a mother and cousins and aunts and she was ready to find them.

She looked out of the glass doors at Evan and Brisco. Thought of the place where they had buried Cohen, somewhere off the road in northeast Mississippi, after they had driven almost three hours with him dead against the door, nobody in the truck wanting to let him go. The rain had eased the farther north they had gone, and they turned off the highway and drove along a side road where there were no lights and they went out into a field.

In the truck bed, Evan found a shovel and he used it to dig a grave while Mariposa sat on the ground with Cohen lying across her lap. Brisco stood strangely quiet and watched his brother dig. When Evan was done, with the truck lights shining on them, they lifted and carried Cohen to the grave and set him down gently. Then they stood there in silence until Mariposa turned and walked away and Evan and Brisco covered him with the dirt. After Cohen was buried, Evan turned to look for Mariposa but she had walked out into the dark and he let her be. He sat with Brisco on the tailgate and they were chilled by the wind but it felt different than the chilled wind of down below. He and Brisco talked and Evan heard her crying out there in the dark but when Brisco asked is that Mariposa, Evan said no. It’s only the wind.

After an hour she returned from the dark and they began again.

They had driven east until noon and wound up in Asheville at a shelter that occupied an old department store. A group of women were standing outside the front doors smoking when the three of them got out of the truck. Filthy, exhausted, hungry, skinny. Bullet holes and dents in the truck. Bloodstained clothes. The fragile gait of the weary. One woman had dropped her cigarette at the sight of them. Another said what in God’s name is this.

Mariposa folded the paper with the list of towns and stuck it back in her bag.

She rested her hands on her stomach and hoped for a kick. The little kicks helped the day go by and kept her spirit alive and she pushed some to see if that would get them going and it did. A handful of kicks and she talked to him as they came and went, and then he settled again.

The woman at the counter hung up the telephone and she announced to Mariposa and the two men that, believe it or not, the bus would arrive any second.

Mariposa got up from the wooden bench and as she rose the baby kicked again and made her oooh. Her eyes got big and she put her hands on the sides of her stomach and said, “Easy, little man.” She took a deep breath and walked to the glass doors and went outside. Brisco and Evan were arguing over the score of whatever game it was they were playing.

There was another kick and she thought of Cohen and the dream that she had in Ellisville about him leaving and not coming back. Thought of the way that he assured her that it wasn’t going to happen. I’m not going to leave you, and you have to promise not to leave me.

It was the only dream left to focus on as she had stopped having them altogether, her subconscious nights replaced by sleeplessness, lying on her back, staring at the exposed metal beams of the shelter ceiling, trying to figure out what had been real. She had conjured up his life based on the remnants of it—the trinkets and tokens and letters and his expressions when he was forced to talk about it. But then the illusion she had created succumbed to the intensity of the real man. She had talked with the real man and slept with him and bled with him and she wondered how far he had come toward her. All the way?

She couldn’t decide.

Mariposa arched her back and felt the breeze. She was ready for the bus. Ready to go and look again. She folded her arms across her stomach and looked into the passive sky, tangled between all that had been lost and all that had been found.