Butcher

an endearment that broke through the crackle. Her voice was suddenly loud and clear. “What kind of weasel are you, Ray?'

“What got under your saddle?” he asked, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.

“I'm getting goddamn sick of hearin’ about this bitch from Kansas City you're running around all over town with, and you and I are gonna get one goddamn thing straight and I mean—” She was really shrieking at him. It was like a series of poisoned darts entering his left ear, and he was afraid they'd poke through and meet the nail hole, and what little remained of his gray matter would leak out once and for all, so he pulled the phone straight out of the wall.

Rosemary James, A T & T, Sprint, Western Electric, Whatever Sweepstakes, General Electric, Ma Bell, siding salesmen, the nice lady at the bank, the weather girl, teleconferencing boiler rooms, and at least half the assholes working for the phone companies, the Army Corps of Engineers, Rancho Uranus, the Department of Agriculture, the VA, Doug Siefer—he threw the whole taco about a hundred yards out into the field.

Verify that.

49

1-55

Shoney's was fairly crowded. A busload of folks on the way to either the Opry or Branson were lined up at the food bar loading plates, and the tables and booths were abuzz with eating sounds.

The waitress named Sherri looked up and saw a nightmarish vision, the stink of him warning her first, but not preparing her for the sight. A vastly fat, humongously big man waddled toward her in stained T-shirt and filthy battle fatigues, oblivious to the folks around him. One poor fellow, who didn't see the human parade float behind him, was almost knocked headlong into the food bar.

It stopped in front of Sherri and sound rumbled from its innards.

“You got pancakes or waffles?'

“Yes, sir,” she said, fighting to smile in the poisonous proximity of his stench. “We have pancakes.'

“Got blueberry?'

“No, just plain. They're scratch-made, though. Real good,” she said.

“How many in an order?'

“Two in the short stack. That's $2.39. Or we have the tall stack, that's three,” she said brightly, figuring him for a tall stack.

“Three?” he sneered. “Three pancakes?” He couldn't believe it.

“Yes, sir.'

“I'll take a tall stack. No, bring me two tall stacks on the same plate.” He'd been ready to order thirty, as an appetizer, but he, too, smelled something. Heat. Probably a plainclothes dick or undercover heat. His vibes were never wrong.

The waitress brought the two tall stacks in due time and he put all the butter pats on the six pancakes, pouring approximately half the jar of syrup onto them one by one as he built a layer. It would do as an appetizer. He stood, wadding up the dripping food, turning to survey the watchers. He'd felt out his audience the way an intuitive actor will. A smile split his face as the shark's mouth opened and accepted the stack of pancakes, butter, and syrup. There was no chewing. He merely swallowed, inhaling the food. Every eye was glued to him, but one man in particular was looking at him funny. The gaze was steadier. Perhaps this was the cop.

Chaingang, his left hand dripping from the pancake snack, smiled at the man and approached his table. People fought back revulsion as his aroma wafted across their plates. He maneuvered himself so that he was to the right of the seated man, leaned over, beaming and friendly, and asked, “Aren't you Ted Goldberg from frannus's?'

“Huh? No,” the man said, turning, backing up slightly as the befouled leviathan breathed toxic waste into his face. The thing's massive left paw was patting his shoulder in a warm gesture.

“Oh! I'm sorry,” the beast rumbled. “You look like Ted, from the American Legion cremmer. You got a twin,” he boomed, waving good-bye. Friendly chap. Big smile. You sure couldn't judge a book by its cover.

Chaingang waddled to the cash register, leaving behind his blinding odor, the image of a two-legged beast- man, and an immense sticky handprint of maple syrup on the back of the man's new polyester jacket.

50

New Levee Barrow and Route W

Ferris and Donnie Meuller and Donnie's oldest boy Scott were in Donnie's big silver V-boat. They'd played out the catfish around Stocker's Store and were letting the current take them back, fishing their way back in the fast- moving floodwaters, letting the current scrieve the boat, propelling them downstream.

A man could get into the big, heavyweight outlaw cat real good if he knew where to fish. Hit ‘em about half an hour before dawn, go back around five and catch another fine mess before suppertime. They were hitting livers the way the rich gobble caviar—they couldn't get enough of it.

The water gushing through Lyman Hole Lateral sluiced into the St. Petersburg Ditch and overflowed the banks, moving out over 221 and the tree-clogged drain canals where the big boys liked to hang out and feed. From the bottom of the canal, which was Lateral Three on the maps, the St. Pete Ditch carried about eight and a half feet of moving river water, and as the drainage ditches continued to overflow into this fast-moving stream it became a rushing nine-foot-tall wall of water that buried everything in its path.

At the outskirts of Bayou City the nine-foot moving wall, with the power of the Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee rivers behind it, smashed across the fifty-four-inch drainage culvert, flooding the banks of the ditches adjacent to the already full Bayou City sewer lagoon, moving out across 218 and the highway bypass that was now the bottom of a swiftly moving lake.

An ever-building, merging, growing wave of water overflowed the Cedar Isle Slough, Old Route 17, Catch- basin Ditch, and the set-back levee itself, joining the backwaters of the Cumberland, Platte, Missouri, and God- only-knows how many overflowing tributaries. This entire mass with a life all its own now swirled, flowed, and intermixed, becoming an unstoppable force of nature, spreading, moving, inching inland over what was no longer dry land, the water seeking its own level, moving higher and higher, putting everything it touched beneath it.

“Oh, shit!' Ferris screamed.

'Lookout!' Donnie screamed at Scott, and the three of them tried to strike out at the black thing suddenly looming in the pathway of the V-boat. The first to hit it was Ferris, who caught a good shot on the blade of the oar, catching it against the unyielding steel. The oar splintered as it smacked back into Scott's paddle, knocking it into the water, then smashing him down into the boat as the broken oar whacked him in the nose. Donnie got a halfway good stance but the oar slid over the slick metal as their prow collided with what was later discovered to be the left front fender of a Mercury Marquis. The boat took a hit, shooting Donnie Meuller out into the water, where he plunged over his head, beginning to panic as he could not move in the coat that now felt as if it weighed two hundred pounds, caught in a current too strong to swim against, and only a lucky probe with the broken oar saved him from drowning.

51

Bayou City

Two hours later Scott was having his nose taped, the men had changed clothes, and Sharon Kamen was in the back seat of one of Jimmie Randall's cop cars, on the way to the station.

“Has Chief Randall learned something, do you know—about my father?'

“They just told me to bring you to the office,” the uniformed driver, a female cop, said in a flat, noncommittal tone.

The building was a bustling beehive of activity, and she was immediately taken into the chief of police's