Fever Dream

silent, everyone's attention turning to the bar.

Ventura slid off his stool and sauntered into the middle of the bar, his cowboy boots thumping on the worn boards.

'Yo Mike!' someone yelled, and there was some drunken clapping and whistling. Ventura took no notice. He was a well-known personage, former county sheriff, a man of means but never uppity. On the other hand, he'd always made a point not to mix too much with the crackers and rednecks, kept up a certain formality. They respected that.

He hooked his thumbs into his belt and gave a slow look around the place. Everyone was waiting. It wasn't every day that Mike Ventura spoke to the people. Amazing how the place had quieted down. It gave him a certain satisfaction, a feeling that he had reached a point in his life of respect and accomplishment.

'We got a problem,' he said. He let that sink in for a few seconds, then went on. 'A problem in the shape of two people. Environmentalists. They're coming down here undercover to take a gander at this end of Black Brake. Looking to expand that wilderness area over the rest of Black Brake and the Lake End.'

He glared around at the crowd. There were murmurs, hisses, inarticulate shouts of disapproval. 'The Lake End?' someone shouted, 'the hell with that!'

'That's right. No more bass fishing. No more hunting. Nothing. Just a wilderness area so those Wilderness Society sons of bitches can come down here with their kayaks looking at the birds.' He spat the words out.

A loud chorus of boos and catcalls, and Ventura held up his hand for silence. 'First they took the logging. Then they took half the Brake. Now they're talking about taking the rest, along with the lake. There won't be nothing left. You remember last time, when we did things their way? We went to the hearings, we protested, we wrote letters? Remember all that? What happened?'

Another clamor of disapproval.

'That's right. They bent us over and you know what!'

A roar. People were up off their stools. Ventura held up his hands again. 'Now, listen up. They're gonna be here tomorrow. Not sure when, but probably early. A tall, skinny fellow in a black suit--and a woman. They're going into the swamp on a reconnaissance.'

'Reconnay-sance?' somebody echoed.

'A look-see. Real scientific-like. Just the two of them. But they're coming undercover--those cowardly sons of bitches know they don't dare show their real faces around here.'

This time there was an ugly silence.

'That's right. I don't know about you folks, but I'm done writing letters. I'm done going to hearings. I'm done listening to those Yankee peckerwoods tell me what to do with my own fish and timber and land.'

A sudden, fresh crescendo of shouts. They could see where he was going. Ventura dipped into his back pocket, pulled out a wad of money, and shook it. 'I don't never expect nobody to work for free.' He slapped the wad on a greasy table. 'Here's a down payment, and there'll be more where that came from. Y'all know the saying: what sinks in the swamp never rises. I want y'all to solve this problem. Do it for yourselves. Because if you don't, nobody else will, and you might as well kiss what's left of Malfourche good-bye, sell your guns, give your houses away, pack your Chevys, and move in with the faggots in Boston and San Francisco. Is that what you want?'

A roar of disapproval, more people lurching to their feet. A table crashed to the floor.

'You be ready for those environmentalists, hear? You take care of them. Take care of them good. What sinks in the swamp never rises.' He glared around, then held up a hand, bowing his head. 'Thank you, my friends, and good night.'

The place erupted in a fury, just as Ventura knew it would. He ignored it, striding to the door, banging through it, and walking out into the humid night onto the dock. He could hear the pandemonium inside, the angry voices, the cursing, the sound of the music coming back up. He knew that, by the time those two arrived, at least some of the boys would have sobered up enough to do what needed doing. Tiny would see to it.

He flipped open his cell phone and dialed. 'Judson? I just solved our little problem.'

63

HAYWARD EMERGED INTO THE BRIGHT SUN and stepped onto the motel balcony to see Pendergast below in the courtyard, loading his suitcase into the trunk of the Rolls. It was unreasonably hot for the beginning of March, the sun like a heat lamp on the back of her neck, and Hayward wondered if all those years living in the North had made her soft. She lugged her overnight bag down the concrete steps and threw it into the trunk beside Pendergast's.

The interior of the Rolls was cool and fresh, the creamy leather chilly. Malfourche lay ten more miles down the road, but there were no motels left in the dying town; this had been the closest one.

'I've done some research into the Black Brake swamp,' Pendergast said as he pulled out onto the narrow highway. 'It's one of the largest and wildest swamps in the South. It covers almost seventy thousand acres, and is bounded by a lake to the east known as Lake End and a series of bayous and channels to the west.'

Hayward found it hard to pay attention. She already knew more about the swamp than she wanted to, and the horrors of the previous evening clouded her mind.

'Our destination, Malfourche, lies on the eastern side on a small peninsula. Malfourche means 'Bad Fork' in French, after the bayou it sits on: a dead-end slackwater branch-lake that to early French settlers looked like the mouth of a river. The swamp once contained one of the largest cypress forests in the country. About sixty percent of it was timbered before 1975, when the western half of the swamp was declared a wildlife refuge and, later, a wilderness area, in which no motorized boats are allowed.'

'Where did you pick up all this?' Hayward asked.

'I find it remarkable that even the worst motels have Wi-Fi these days.'