Butcher

New Madrid Levee

Daniel had experienced it all during his hellish life, always on either the giving or taking side of pain. He'd been beaten, burnt, taunted, tortured, squashed, stomped, struck, steamrollered, jumped, jacklit, spat on, suffocated, sledgehammered, and damn near snuffed, but this was something else.

The enormous beast had come to believe that yes, though he could be hurt, he would always bounce back. Not so this time. The human battle cruiser had sunk.

The aftermath of something all-powerful, like an exostosis of impacted bone spur working its way out of the root of a rotten tooth, broken during amateur extraction, tried to make it to the surface of his battered awareness. No dice. He'd been freight-trained, he knew that now. His brain had quit on him.

It had to be the beating. It was the only thing in his experience that approached the level of his present condition, as best as he could assess it. It had convinced him that when it comes to mortality, one could forget size, heft, strength, muscle, resolve, grit, race, religion, or sex. When it came down to it everybody bled. Everybody cried.

The remembered pain of the beating warmed him with encouragement, as it was the first thing that came back with any degree of detail. He'd brought it on himself, coming back from the doctor's office, or on his way, fully jacketed, shackled, restrained, black boxed, cuffed, and locked to steel bars. He could vividly picture the guard.

“Lookee here,” Spanish had whispered near the biter, which was a kind of helmet and fencing-mask-type contraption, “the Goodyear blimp's back on its tether. You gonna get a taste now, you ugly mountain of shit.” He struck at the sore ankle but Chaingang managed to move just enough to deflect the worst of it. He said something and the guard froze. It had all been calculated, right down to the hour and minute, everything but the suffering.

'What the fuck did you say?” he said, lips curled into a drooling snarl. Chaingang whispered something again and the man flew into the predicted rage, whipping the baton across the head of the bound man again and again, trying his best to kill him.

Blackness again.

13

Bayou Ridge

Raymond Meara came back from the woods with maybe a half a rack of chainsawed oak, and broke his second sweat of the day unloading it, throwing the ash and gum off to one side. It was cold and the perspiration hurt the bad side of his face a little, so he turned and worked with his back more to the wind.

He split it all down into quarters, using a plain wedge and sledge, and then he took a maul and did the smaller pieces. He took a very sharp double-bitted axe out of the pickup and made a stack of kindling, and carried an armload into the house, hearing the phone make a ping as it quit ringing. It rang a second time while he was finishing up stoking the wood stove and he picked it up on the fourth ring.

“Yeah.'

“Ray?'

“Hello.” It was Rosemary.

“I called a couple times before but I guess you was out.'

“Yeah. I just came in.'

“We gonna do somethin’ tonight?” she asked.

“I gotta go to the spillway meeting. You wanna go with me?'

“Sure. I reckon so.'

“Then we'll come on out here when they finish,” he told her, unnecessarily. It was all they ever did beside go out to eat once in a while.

“All right. You gonna pick me up?'

“I'll be by about seven-thirty.'

“What should I wear?'

“Clothes,” he said, hanging up. Rosemary was pretty. Divorced, with three small children, bleached blond hair, and a tight little shape lots of guys around Bayou City liked the looks of. Meara promised her nothing, and she didn't ask for much more. As long as they kept it that way he figured he'd enjoy her company. He picked her up in the driveway of the ramshackle trailer court where she had a mobile home.

“Hi,” she said excitedly, sliding in beside him. She seemed small and proud under her beauty-parlor hair.

“This'll bore the pants off ya,” he told her.

“Promises, promises.” Her mouth had a lot of mileage on it but she gave a smile easily. It was just that her eyes stayed in neutral.

“Atta way,” he said, reaching over and patting her leg. He felt pretty good. His back and face were acting up some but that wasn't anything. It smelled good in the pickup with the heat on, a mixture of soap scents, Rosemary's perfume, and truck smells. He didn't feel like getting out when they pulled up to the meeting hall.

By the time the meeting was over, Raymond wished he'd stayed in the truck. Some of the troubleshooters for the Clearwater Trench project tried to defuse and/or deflect every question with big, long-winded spiels about “hypothetical flooding scenario number thirteen,” and a lot of technical stuff about “reservoir gauging” and “overflow dispersement.” Nobody knew what the hell they were talking about. Finally he'd had enough and he stood up and they recognized him.

“My name's Meara. I got a farm right there in the spillway. You blow that levee, I'm wiped out. So are a bunch of other farmers in there. But look here: Clearwater Trench is dead bang over the New Madrid fault line. You're gonna’ set off a massive explosion right on top of the fault? How do you know you're not gonna’ trigger one of the worst earthquakes in history?'

“Come on,” the man chuckled patronizingly, “it's not like we were dropping a hydrogen bomb on it. We're just talking about cutting the levee.'

“By cutting you mean blowing, and I know something about demolition. You people wanna’ pop the caps on three hundred tons of DBA-105P, some of the most powerful slurry-type explosive made. The truth is you really don't know what the reaction's going to be when you explode that much right on top of the fault line.

“What about scour? What about blue holes? Have you thought about that? What if the Mississippi diverts right through the hole you blow and here comes all that water, is the set-back levee gonna’ hold the entire force of the river? You have plans to evacuate all of Bayou City? You got that many helicopters and pontoon craft standing by? Any idea how fast that water's gonna’ come slammin’ in on top of these folks? Ever been in a real bad flash flood? That's nothing to what it'll be like. You got a lousy deal here.” Meara sat back down, red faced, his scar aglow like a white brand.

“I understand your concerns. And, no offense, you aren't exactly without a vested interest, considering the location of your farmland. However, all of these factors you mention are being looked at. We are going to study on all of this. Next?'

Ray felt helpless and trapped in the flow of something as certain and unavoidable as the tide.

“Rosemary James,” a man's voice said as they walked outside after the meeting. “I do declare, child. You're getting so pretty I can hardly stand it, you know that?” It was Milas Kehoe, a wealthy rancher and landowner. Meara's companion smiled and kept moving toward the truck, but Kehoe stepped in front of Meara and said softly, “Ray?'

“Yeah.'

“What do you think?'

“I can't really say, man.'

“Kinda’ makes that offer of mine look a little on the high side, now, don't it?” He doubled over and started roaring with laughter as if he'd told the funniest joke of all time. Meara just walked around him and went over to the pickup and climbed in beside Rosemary.

“What was all that about?” she asked.

He repeated the one-liner.

“Kehoe tried to buy the farm a couple of times. I guess that's his idea of humor, rubbing it in that the ground