The Heavens Rise

smell from the float trucks mingled with the scent of spilled beer to make an odor as acrid and overpowering and suggestive of sex as the one that blanketed the shores of Lake Pontchartrain.

Ben didn’t trust memory. He respected its seductive power, but he didn’t trust it. Early on, Marissa had hammered into him how unreliable eyewitness accounts could be, how many gaps people filled in with their imagination and their biases. Multiple accounts were the basis of solid journalism. So didn’t it follow that all memories, the good ones and the bad ones, were just fanciful re-creations of what a person had either wished for or feared in a given moment? To be accurate, and to remain accurate over a period of years, a memory required its possessor to have an almost impossible degree of awareness of each passing second, each smell, each touch, each sound. Waking dreams: that was a better description of what people called memories. And he didn’t care for them.

But a small, persistent voice kept urging him to question these intellectualizations. Why? Because they were always prompted by a flash, an echo, the tail edge of a nightmare about Niquette Delongpre. And he feared that the righteousness with which he had repudiated the efficacy of memory over the past few years was driven not by maturity, but by his contempt for his own grief. A man who doesn’t trust his memories cannot be easily haunted.

“You’d tell me if you thought she was alive, right?”

“She’s not alive, A-Team.”

“Most days, I’m sure. But you . . . Every day you’re sure. How the hell you manage that shit, Benny?”

“Because I know she loved you too much to walk away.”

“You too, Benny. She loved you too.”

“It was different.”

“Different, maybe. But not . . . less.”

It wasn’t like Anthem to be this charitable, not when he’d danced with the bottle right into the path of law enforcement or firearms. He had maybe another night or two in the drunk tank before someone at the New Orleans–Baton Rouge Steamship Pilots Association decided to look past his family connections and ask whether or not it was a good idea to let him pilot giant ships full of dangerous chemicals up and down one of the most populated stretches of the Mississippi River.

But tonight, something was different, and Ben wasn’t quite sure how. Anthem reached inside his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. There wasn’t much of a moon, so Ben took out his iPhone and used his flashlight app to read it by.

There were three words written on the paper in the draftsmanlike block-printing in which Anthem wrote most everything except his signature.

I AM DONE.

For a while Ben stared at the note, until a gust of hot wind made it almost impossible to hold on to, and Anthem plucked it from his grip to keep it from blowing away. Ben was no stranger to the man’s drunken theatrics, but this one he couldn’t figure out. For starters, Anthem didn’t seem that drunk, and then there’d been the text message. What had his closing line been? Bring sanity.

“Guy took a shot at me at Fat Harry’s ’cause I wouldn’t give up the video poker machine,” Anthem finally said.

“I heard. But he missed.”

“Yep. Shot his own foot.”

“Both his own feet.”

“Yeah. Guess he was drunker than I was. So I left, my evening being ruined and all, and I remember getting home, remember popping a bottle of Crown Royal. A little 7-Up. Next thing I know, I’m staring at this”—he shook the note in one hand—“and every bottle of liquor in my house has been emptied out the sink and the bottles are all smashed up in a pile on my kitchen floor.”

Don’t say anything, Ben told himself. If this is real, if this is going to be . . . an actual thing, just keep your mouth shut.

“You believe in God, Benny?”

“A couple of ’em, yeah.”

Anthem cackled, then he reached through the darkness, pinched one of Ben’s cheeks and gave it a little slap. “You’re so clever, Benny. You’ve always been so damn clever.”

“Yeah, well, I try.”

“You don’t have to. It’s in your blood. It’s in your brain.”

“Sure . . .”

Anthem seemed to forget him altogether suddenly, his attention fixed on the old push boat and the warren of shadows within. “Hand of God wrote that note, Benny.” He turns his flask over in his hands. “Don’t know how. Don’t know why. But I’m gonna listen to it. I’m gonna be done.”

Without warning, he hurled the silver-plated flask into the air. It vanished into darkness, and then Ben was amazed to hear the thing impact the side of the push boat yards away with a resounding, metallic gong. The same flask Anthem had drunk from, to nauseating effect, as they’d driven the state eight years earlier, putting up flyers of the Delongpres. The same flask he’d snuck in his jacket pocket to both his high school and college graduations.

“That’s okay,” Anthem finally said. “I wouldn’t believe me either.”

Anthem turned and clapped a hand on Ben’s shoulder, shaking him with enough force to jostle Ben’s ankles where he stood. Then he took him into a full embrace and lifted his feet off the ground.

“Guess I’ll just have to prove it to you, you little shit.”

“No,” Ben wheezed. “I believe you. I promise.” And maybe his words, despite being squeezed out of him by Anthem’s childish aggression, were more true than he’d realized; he was blinking back tears as he said them.

15

NEW ORLEANS

Do you believe him?” Marissa asked. It was the Monday after Anthem’s alleged run-in with the hand of God, and Ben had arrived in Marissa’s office at nine o’clock on the dot, just as she’d requested. He was well rested and well caffeinated, but he’d also been possessed by a strange, energizing optimism in the wake of Anthem’s declaration. Maybe Anthem’s bottle-smashing God gave me a little nudge too. What can I give up? Worrying half to death?

Leave it to Marissa to question his faith in his friend so bluntly. “I’m not sure I’d bet the house on it,” Ben said. “But you know . . . fingers crossed.”

“AA?”

“I doubt it. He’s not exactly a team player.”

“Yeah, well, speaking of his team. We’re doing an investigation of the pilot’s associations. All three of ’em. It’s going to be a whopper. Months of investigation, probably across several issues. Huge exposure . . . if you take it, that is.”

“You’re only putting one reporter on it?”

“Yes. And I’m offering it to you.”

“What sort of investigation?”

“The usual allegations. That the admissions process is driven by nepotism. That they’ve got too much lobbying power in Baton Rouge. That the pilots are overpaid and don’t have—”

“They’re not overpaid.”

“Three hundred thousand dollars a year. A lot of people would beg to differ, Ben. Including me.”

“They pilot tankers full of deadly chemicals through one of the most populated and dangerous stretches of river in the country. One wrong move and the foot of Canal Street is gone.”

“Ben—”

“They’re not overpaid, Marissa.”

“Well, that’s a point of view worth exploring if you take the story.”