Burial Ground Page 7

And, I thought, we would be leaving David to whatever had happened to him. But there was nothing to be done; two lost people couldn’t help a third.

  For a moment longer I watched the leafy curtain across the creek, and then I scrambled backward on hands and knees until I was completely in shadow and got slowly to my feet, P. E. following.

  She pulled out the map tube, which she’d had slung across her back on a cord. “Here’s where I think we are,” she said. “The hills should end the other side of this ridge, and then a quarter-mile and we’re on the island.”

  I nodded. “And once we get there, there’s a trail running down the middle.”

  “Right.” She stowed the map and we started toward the edge of the ridge.

  The side sloped at about forty degrees and I started down on my seat, sliding and skidding until I hit the bottom and came up on my feet. P. E. wasn’t so lucky and rolled into an untidy heap. When I stretched out a hand to help her she ignored it and dragged herself upright.

  “I think the island’s that way,” she said, pointing ahead of us.

  We lurched through a stand of palmetto and I felt our feet sinking into the mud. We were out of the hills now and into the coastal plain. This had been an old course of the Mississippi, at a time when the first white men were taking this land from the Tunica and their kinsmen, and that was why no one really believed there was still a Tunica village to be found: The irresistible waters would have torn it away well over a century ago.

  I stole a look at my watch. It was just after ten. We’d been in the woods for an hour and the heat was suffocating.

  P. E. Courtney unslung her little backpack, reached into it, and withdrew a plastic water bottle.

  I watched, incredulous, as she took a long swallow, then offered it to me.

  “Water?” she asked sweetly.

  “I’ll go a little longer, thanks,” I said, and then kicked myself mentally.

  Just ahead of us was a bottom area, studded with jutting cypress knees. The surface was green with duckweed and I wondered if we dared try to cross. But before I could say anything, she was sloshing forward into the swamp, arms outstretched for balance. I started to call after her and realized it would do no good.

  I saw the water reach her calves, then her thighs.

  Grudgingly, I admitted I’d been wrong in my assessment of her ability do to fieldwork. All I could do now was follow.

  I tried to hurry, but the mud sucked at my feet and I felt like a man in a dream.

  Twenty feet ahead of me, she was hauling herself up out of the water, though it looked like she’d found a briar patch for her landfall.

  I wondered if she had a collapsible machete in her pack.

  Somehow she found her way out of the briars and I followed, leaving bits and pieces of myself on the thorns. She waited, standing atop a tree stump, and took a reading with her compass.

  “Straight ahead,” she pronounced.

  Who was I to argue?

  The undergrowth grew thinner, and I saw with relief that the surface we walked on was becoming sandy. The smell of the river was heavy now, and I listened for the sound of waves or boats passing, but as yet there was nothing.

  “Look,” P. E. called, pointing. There was a lighter area ahead, where more sun fell through the trees, and I knew it had to be the path that ran from one end of the island to the other. A few seconds later I emerged onto the trail. It had been made by the jeeps and ATVs going to hunting stands. I would have given several portions of my anatomy for an ATV just now.

  We reexamined the topographic sheet. The easiest way off the island was to follow the trail right, toward the tip, and then take what appeared to be a small bridge back across the bayou. If we did this, we would have a trek of half a mile across the floodplain and another mile or so through the hills on a winding track, before we hit the paved road, a mile north of where our cars were parked.

  “Are you sure you don’t want some water?” she asked.

  This time I swallowed my pride and said yes.

  I took a couple of gulps and forced myself to stop.

  “Thanks.” I handed the bottle back to her. The trees were thinner ahead of us and as we started toward them I saw a brightness that I knew was glare from the river. I made a straight line through the brush for the water, and emerged into the open. Below me erosion had etched gullies into the sand, from the bluff top to the water’s edge. The water itself was brown, and here and there tiny mirrors of sunlight sparkled on the waves. The opposite bank, nearly a mile away, was a low tree line, riding a white belt of sand. I thought about the escaped convicts and how desperate Angola had made them that they were willing to brave thirty miles of river. They’d beached near here, according to the guards, and then, being creatures of dry land, had headed inland and away from the river with its mysterious depths and devilish currents.

  I let myself down slowly onto the sand, and touched something eroding from the soil.

  “What do you have, a cartridge case?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Brass.”

  “I’ve seen lots of it. This place must be a shooting gallery during hunting season.”

  “Must be,” I agreed.

  She peered down at me. “Say, are you going to make it? You look tired.”

  I started to tell her I’d dance at her funeral, but held my tongue. “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” She pulled the water bottle out of her pack: “Here. Take some. I don’t want you having heat stroke.”

  I was still staring at the water bottle when the brush crackled behind her. She let the bottle fall from her hand and it went rolling down the slope toward the river. Suddenly dogs were baying and there was a din of men’s voices and the crackle of radios. A man in camouflage green stepped from the trees, rifle in hand.

  “What the hell are you people doing here?” he demanded in a gravelly voice.

  EIGHT

  I pulled myself to my feet.

  Other armed men materialized from the trees. Most wore camouflage, but some were dressed in the dark blue with red trim that identified them as members of the prison guard force. A couple of bloodhounds strained at their leashes and the man holding them looked as if it wouldn’t take much to let them loose.

  “I asked you a question,” the man with the gravelly voice said. “Who are you people and what are you doing here?”

  “We’re looking—” We started to answer together and then stopped. P. E. glanced at me and I began over.

  “We’re looking for a friend who disappeared yesterday. We went to Absalom Moon’s place and found his car. It looked like he went into the woods.”

  The team leader cast a scornful look at my mud-spattered clothes. He was a wiry man with a baseball cap and sunglasses over a jutting jaw, and there were places on his cheek that his razor had missed.

  “And you came back here dressed like that?” He nodded at P. E. “Hell, she’s better dressed for the woods than you are.”

  P. E. managed a demure smile. “I don’t think he always dresses like this in the field,” she said sweetly, and I restrained myself from grabbing her neck.

  “Listen,” I said. “We’ve got to find my friend. There’s somebody back here in the woods who tried to kill us.”

  The leader gave the man with the hounds a sideways look as if to confirm my insanity.

  “What’s your friend’s name?” the first man asked.

  “David Goldman,” I said.

  “Got his description?”

  I tried to keep my temper. “He’s thin, about thirty-five, dark hair, five-ten. Look, Mr.—”

  But the man ignored me. Instead he unclipped a small radio from his belt and spoke into it. I didn’t hear what he said because the hounds started baying. When they stopped the team leader was replacing his radio.

  “Your friend’s okay. He’s at my old man’s house, up on the road.”

  “Your old man?”

  “Marcus Briney. They brought your buddy out an hour
ago. He’s okay except for a broke leg.”

  I heard the whinny of a horse and a man in uniform emerged from the woods, riding a chestnut mare. The mare did a little dance for us and the man pulled the reins, bringing her to a stop.

  “Goodeau’s gonna be pissed,” he declared. “They was supposed to be on the nuclear plant grounds.”

  “Screw Goodeau,” young Briney spat. “If he’d of been the kind of warden he was supposed to be they wouldn’t of got out to start with.”

  “The escapees are in this area?” I asked.

  Briney gave me a dark look. “Don’t you worry none where those inmates are. If we hadn’t been sidetracked with finding civilians we might of had ’em by now.”

  P. E. Courtney put her hands on her hips: “We have every right to be on our client’s property.”

  I thought Briney was going to explode but before he could respond there was the distant thrum of helicopter rotors.

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  The horse started to do her dance again, as the helicopter sound grew louder, and the hounds started to protest.

  “That son-of-a-bitch,” Briney cried, and I had the feeling he wasn’t talking about either of us.

  The chopper emerged over the trees now, coming from the direction of the hills. It hovered over our heads for a few seconds, the draft from the blades whipping sand into our faces and making the horse rear up. Then it moved down the beach to a flatter spot and slowly settled. A few seconds later a short man in khakis popped out of the passenger side and ran toward us, hunched over.

  The warden, Levi Goodeau.

  “I heard you found tracks at the edge of the hills,” he said. “You seen anything else since then?”

  Briney shook his head. “No, sir. We were too busy rescuing civilians.”

  Goodeau squinted up at me. “I know you, don’t I?”

  I nodded and explained how we’d ended up here.

  He shook his head. “Pretty risky, I’d say. I’ll take you both back in the chopper. Your friend’s okay.” He turned to Briney. “I’ve asked for help from the State Police.”

  The younger man glowered. “Warden, we don’t need no help from the State Police. We got six chasers on horses and four teams of hounds. I’ll guarantee we run ’em down before dark. You know how it is in there: All we got to do is put on the pressure. After a while they’ll give out and just wait for us to come.”

  Goodeau shook his head. “I think we’d better have the State Police,” he said. “We can’t take any more chances.”

  Briney started to protest, then turned away angrily. “Come on,” he said to the others. We watched them disappear into the foliage.

  “Old ways die hard,” the warden observed. “Young Jack Briney’s a good man, but they’re still playing cowboys at Angola. It’s hard to change.” He smiled then, like a man pleased with himself. “But we’re working on it.”

  We followed him back to the helicopter and he waited politely while we climbed in, P. E. first and then me. The warden followed, shutting the door, and when we’d strapped in, the engine roared and we began to rise. In a few incredible seconds the island took shape below us as a bumpy green mat with a brown band of river on one side and steep hills on the other. I caught the reflection of P. E.’s face in the Plexiglas and knew what she was thinking: That in the last hour and a half we’d blundered our way across that terrain and sunk up to our hips in swamp, but now, in a few short seconds, we were jumping over it.

  She pointed then, and when I looked I saw the little creek where we’d been pursued. And once more I knew we were thinking the same thing: Who could have been trying to frighten us away? Not the convicts, because all they cared about was getting away. There was no reason for them to try to frighten away hikers who’d never even seen them. That only drew attention to themselves. No, it had to be someone else, someone who didn’t want us there. But who? Marcus Briney? He’d hardly had time to put on field clothes and come after us, and I hadn’t heard any steps following us into the brush.

  Without thinking I let my hand reach down and touch the piece of brass in my pocket.

  It had to be Absalom Moon. He hadn’t seemed like a violent man, but you could never tell. He was protecting terrain he considered his, protecting what was there. That was the only conclusion I could draw.

  As we reached the last rise, I looked over the sea of trees and saw the nuclear plant, tall stacks gleaming in the sun, parking lot dotted with cars. They’d thought the two convicts were on the grounds, somewhere inside the chain-link fence. Now they were saying the men had doubled back to the river. I filed the fact away for future reference. Below us, I saw Absalom’s house, a tiny box on a brown scab of yard. Our cars had been joined by a couple of others, and as we settled downward I saw bodies milling about like black beetles. Down the road, at the house of Marcus Briney, there were even more vehicles, and I recognized an ambulance. My heart jumped: They’d said David only had a broken leg.

  Two cars moved out of the yard then, one to block the road near Greenbriar and the other a quarter-mile north of Absalom’s, and I realized they were preparing for the chopper to land on the tar top.

  Heat from the black surface radiated up at us and the telephone wires trembled with the breath of our descent. A second later there was a bump and the warden swung open his door and hopped down. We followed, keeping our heads low, and when we were clear the rotor revved again and the big machine started to rise, hovering for a second over the roadway and then grinding west, toward the river.

  There were a couple of deputies and a man in guard uniform in the front yard, and I saw that a pair of paramedics technicians were sliding a stretcher into the ambulance. There was someone on the stretcher, and as I approached I recognized David.

  “It’s about time,” he said, smiling, when he saw me. His eyes went from me to the woman. He gave a little frown and I knew he was wondering how she’d managed to be here.

  “What happened?” I asked, resting a hand on his shoulder. His clothes were torn and his face was a map of scratches. He gave a weak little shrug.

  “I don’t know, Alan. I came to see Absalom and for a few minutes it was going well. We talked about the Bible and the Book of Kings and I was even sitting on the front porch with him. But when I started asking him about the artifacts he jumped like I’d shot him.”

  The stretcher bumped going into the rear of the vehicle and David winced.

  One of the paramedics, a big man with a handlebar mustache, started to close the ambulance door.

  “We need to get him to the hospital. You can talk to him there. Any preference?”

  “The Lake,” I said. The paramedic nodded and I watched him get in and start to back out of the yard. They’d take him to Our Lady of the Lake, the Catholic Hospital in Baton Rouge. I knew that David, the ex-rabbinical student, would enjoy the irony.

  The ambulance roared off and I saw that Warden Goodeau had struck up a conversation with Marcus Briney. As I approached, I heard Briney say, “The boy’s always had cement in his head, Levi. I never could tell him a damn thing.”

  Goodeau stared down at the ground, abashed.

  “I think it’ll work out,” he mumbled.

  “Well,” Briney opined, “it will or it won’t. I’ll tell you like Boss Ross used to tell me, ‘Either I’m the warden or you are. There ain’t two.’ That boy of mine’s got to make up his mind. If he can’t, then you gotta do what’s right.”

  “It’ll work,” Goodeau said and turned around, embarrassed, when he saw I was listening. “Looks like your friend’ll be all right,” he said quickly.

  “We’d still like to know what happened to him,” P. E. said from my elbow. “Because whatever it was almost happened to us.”

  “Oh?” The two men, joined by a sheriff’s deputy, were staring at us now.

  A warning bell in my unconscious sounded. There were too many uncertainties to give out everything we knew…

  “She means with convicts out there,
” I said. “They might’ve gotten us. I guess it was the convicts that did that to David, right?” From the corner of my eye I saw P. E. frown and I gave her a stern look, hoping it would silence her.

  “Don’t know,” the warden said. “All I heard was that he got hurt. A fall, I think. But why he was out there is something else again.”

  Briney turned to the warden: “Anyway, I expect they’ll run ’em to ground by nightfall. Always happens. Unless they take to the river again.”

  Levi Goodeau shook his head. “I hope they don’t do that, Marcus. I don’t think either one of ’em can fight those currents.”

  Briney’s expression turned pensive. “That’s true, Levi, but there’s another way to look at it. When you take away a man’s freedom, send him to work in the fields, and the rest of the world out there acts like he’s dead…” Briney shrugged. “Sometimes he’s better off.”

  Goodeau started to protest but the old man raised a hand:

  “I spent forty years up there, Levi. I’m telling you, no matter how much you try to change things, sometimes the river is a mercy.”

  NINE

  It took four hours to finish the X-rays, set David’s leg, and move him to a room. Meanwhile, I’d called Elizabeth and she’d come to the hospital to wait with us. I also called the office and let Marilyn know what had happened. To her credit, P. E. Courtney had refused to budge from the chair in the emergency waiting room, except when I insisted that we go to the cafeteria. People gave us odd looks, with our mud-spattered clothes, but she might as well have been wearing a Dior gown, for all the difference it seemed to make to her.

  At just before three they called us to go up to his room. We let Elizabeth go first and trailed in after she’d embraced him and made the proper consoling chitchat. Then she stepped aside and David saw P. E. and me:

  “I think the wrong person’s in this bed,” he said.

  I managed a weak smile. “I feel like it.”

  He looked over at P. E. Courtney and gave a curt nod.

  “P. E. and I sort of ran into each other up there,” I explained. “When we couldn’t find Absalom, we followed the trail into the brush and found your pencil on the ground. We thought you’d be nearby.”