“What did you say?” she asked.
“Nothing. I just talk to myself sometimes. It goes with the seventh-inning stretch.”
“You’re too much,” she said.
Later, a shower passed over the swamp, then the air turned cool and the sky brightened and we went back down the levee for supper at a restaurant that was built over the water. It had been a fine day, even though we had caught no fish, and we began straightening up the camp, washing and putting away the dishes, locking all the windows. Out on the bay, behind a distant line of trees, the sun seemed to be sliding off the watery rim of the world. A determined fisherman in a straw hat had dropped anchor in the willow islands, inside the clouds of mosquitoes that always gathered in the trees just before sunset and usually brought the sac-a-lait up just before dark. He kept wiping mosquitoes out of his face and jigging his pole, like an agitated man trying to impose magic on a fruitless pursuit. Then his line snagged in a tree and he stopped long enough to hose himself down with insect repellent before starting in again.
“Give me the truck keys, Dave, and I’ll bring the trailer around,” Alafair said.
“How about a piece of pecan pie before we go?” Molly said.
“I’d really like to get a little done on my novel tonight,” Alafair replied.
I gave her the keys and through the back window watched her start the truck and drive toward the crushed brick ramp where we always put the boat in, the empty trailer bouncing behind her. I poured the last of the coffee from a pot on the stove, added a teaspoon of sugar, and drank from it. Through the front window I could see Alafair back the trailer down the ramp until the wheels were hubcap-deep and the taillights submerged. Then she put on a pair of rubber boots she had taken from the truck bed and began wading into the shallows.
I had thought she would wait for me. Normally when we loaded the boat back onto the trailer, one of us backed the trailer into the water while the other cranked up the outboard and powered the boat onto the rollers, allowing the driver to hook the winch onto the bow and hand-crank the boat snug.
Out among the flooded willows, I saw the solitary fisherman lean down in his boat and pick up something from the bottom. He knocked his hat off his head to give himself better vision and raised the rifle to his shoulder. I could not make out the features of his face, but the moon had started to rise and I saw the light gleam on his bald head inside the shadows.
I was already out the screen door and running down the slope when he let off the first round.
Chapter 28
PERHAPS A GUST of wind buffeted his boat or the sound of my bursting out the screen door startled him, but the bullet went wide by perhaps two inches and whanged off the housing on my outboard motor. The rifle looked to be a semi-automatic carbine, maybe a.223, with a suppressor on the muzzle. The second and third shots came out of the barrel with a flash and made the same sound as the first round, like someone spitting a dry object from his mouth. Alafair had run in a crouch on the near side of the boat, then had thrown herself to the ground behind the truck. The back half of the truck was parked deep enough in the water so that the shooter could not fire under it.
The shooter took one shot at me just as I ran for the inside of the cabin. The bullet notched a bright slice of wood out of the doorjamb and broke glass somewhere in the bedroom. I landed on the floor, on my face, and could see Molly crouching below the drain board, working her way toward me.
“Did he hit Alafair?” she said.
“No, she’s behind the truck. He can’t get to her unless he moves his boat.”
Two more rounds blew glass and a potted plant out of the kitchen window, powdering Molly’s head and shoulders.
I crawled on my hands and knees into the bedroom, where my rucksack lay in the corner. I reached inside the flap and felt my hand clasp the checkered grips of my.45. I unsnapped the holster strap and slung the holster aside, then found the extra magazine I kept in the rucksack and shoved it in my back pocket. I pulled back the slide and fed a brass-jacketed 230-grain hollow-point into the chamber.
I crawled back into the kitchen. Molly was crouched at the edge of the front door, trying to see where Alafair was, her cell phone in her hand. “I called the St. Martin Sheriff’s Department. Is it Bledsoe?” she said.
“It must be. Look, the nine-one-one response time out here might be fifteen minutes. I’m going outside. Stay on the floor.”
“I’m going out there with her.”
“No, no, no,” I said. “Don’t do that. Please, stay here. Please don’t argue about it.”
“No, I’m not going to leave her there.”
I started to speak, but I knew my words would be wasted and that I couldn’t afford to lose any more time. Just then, the shooter opened up again, pocking holes in the truck and flattening a tire and drilling two holes in the icebox. I went out the door in a run, crouching low, my right arm extended in front of me, firing at the willow island.
I saw the flash of the shooter’s muzzle again and realized the shooter had changed his angle of fire. I suspected he was using an auxiliary electric motor and had moved the boat closer to the edge of the willows so he would have easier access to the bay. I dropped to my knees next to Alafair.
Her face was cut under one eye, her clothes and forearms streaked with mud.
“Are you hurt, Alf?” I said.
“No, a piece of aluminum hit me, I think,” she said. “I saw him. He’s got a semi-automatic rifle.”
“Is it Bledsoe?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“I’m going to get this guy. Molly already put in the nine-one-one. Stay here until the St. Martin Parish guys arrive. Don’t try to go to the cabin. There’s no way the guy can get on land.”
Hardly were the words out of my mouth when Molly ran from the cabin to the truck, bending low, her cell phone in one hand, a small first-aid kit in the other. She blew her hair out of her eyes and looked at me, her cheeks red. She placed her hand against the side of her neck and examined it. Then she touched her neck with the ends of her fingers. There was a stripe across the side of it, like a rope burn that had started to bleed.
I wanted to be mad at her for leaving the cabin and exposing herself to greater danger, but how do you become angry at someone who will risk her life to bring a first-aid kit to her loved ones?
I worked my way to the front of the truck and fired three more rounds at the shadowy outline of the willows, the ejected shells tinkling on the crushed brick. I heard one round knock into wood, another blow water into the air, and another bite into metal. My slide locked open on an empty chamber.
I let the magazine drop loose from the butt of the.45 and pulled the loaded magazine from my back pocket and jammed it into the butt. I released the slide, feeding a shell into the chamber. But before I could get off a shot, the shooter cranked his outboard and spun the hull of his boat into open water, plowing a trough across the bay.
I pushed my boat off the trailer, climbed in over the bow, and started the engine. My boat was only sixteen feet long and was utilitarian in construction and unremarkable in appearance. But the 115-horsepower Yamaha mounted on its stern gave it thrust and capability that were far beyond the expectations for a humble bass boat. I twisted the throttle open and mud and dead vegetation boiled under the propeller. The bow rose into the air and the bottom swerved sideways as I slid between two willow islands. In seconds the hull was slapping across the bay as fast as a speedboat.
Less than one hundred yards away, I could see the shooter heading for a grove of dead cypress by the levee. He was hunched low in the stern, glancing back over his shoulder as he entered a cove of dead water coated with algae. He swerved around a log, scraping against fluted cypress trunks, and went deeper into the cove, looking back again, his propeller probably miring in nests of hyacinth roots. He disappeared inside the cypress, but I could hear his engine whining, like a skill saw biting into a nail.
Above the cove, on the levee, I saw the lights of a vehicle go on and off and then remain off.
I went straight into the cove, sliding across the tops of downed trees, clanging against the hollow trunk of a tupelo gum. Up ahead, on the far side of the cypress, I could see the grassy slope of the levee and, on top, the
