The Heavens Rise

But it’s the first vivid dream I’ve had since what happened on Highway 22 that night, and it reminded me that I am not dead, that my life is not a nightmare on pause. But I’m going to need a reminder every day, and that’s what this journal is about. I’ve gone days without speaking, and I probably will again, but if I talk to these pages, maybe all of those days won’t end with the same lost, hollowed-out feeling. It’s either that, or start cutting myself.

I am alive. I am real. I still dream, and I still wake up.

My name is Niquette Delongpre and on the night before her 47th birthday I killed my mother.

24

DESTREHAN

The crew boat pulled up out of the darkness, spitting a trail of bright froth. The black river behind it was a thicket of tug boats and idling container ships. Presiding over this scene was the monolithic Luling–Destrehan Bridge, with matching tuning fork–shaped towers of steel that rose into the night sky, crowned with blinking red lights.

“Hey,” Marshall whispered.

Anthem gave him a steady look. He was still a bit glassy-eyed but a couple cans of Diet Coke had given him some edge. Not his blood, though, Marshall thought. The alcohol level in his blood is still plenty high, and that’s all that will matter once this ride is over with.

“Do me a favor and don’t throw my name around out there,” Marshall said. “There’s just some bullshit with the estate, now that I’m alive again and all. And you know, it’s a small town and I don’t want people to—”

“Yeah, yeah. Sure,” Anthem answered. “Who should I say you are?”

“Cousin?”

“Sure. I got plenty of cousins.”

Once they were standing together on the open back deck of the crew boat, charging across the obsidian vein of the Mississippi toward the towering black hulk that was their destination, Anthem shouted, “She’s a grain ship. A Panamax, the largest they have. But she’s empty so she’s running real fast on the water. She was supposed to load up north of here but the crew found a leak inside one of her dry bulk containers right after she passed under the Luling–Destrehan Bridge. Other pilot and those tugs got her turned around. Now it’s my job to get her as far as Chalmette, so they can send her to Houston for repairs. Greek crew. Registry, Singapore. Do you even care about this shit or should I just let you—”

“No, no. I care!” Marshall shouted back over the wind. The railing he held was attached to a narrow metal staircase that went up ten steps to a platform atop the crew boat’s wheelhouse. The entire boat was rolling so much in the chop that Marshall was forced to hold on with both hands. And he was praying the gun tucked inside the waistband of his jeans didn’t fly out into the river. That would really screw everything up.

But the worst part was how the giant ship had almost no definition at all as they barreled toward it. It gave Marshall the nauseating sense that they were heading straight for a looming black void, a realm of hallucinatory nightmares ready to swallow them both. But the grain ship wasn’t all ghostly darkness. Floating a hundred feet above the water, the bridge was a bright halo of light tucked at the very back of the vessel: electrified, human, real.

“All right, look,” Anthem said, voice raised over the wind. “I’m not gonna lie to you. This part is dangerous, okay? But it’s quick and you’re gonna have people helping you. How’s your movement?”

“My movement?”

“Your muscle coordination. Your reflexes. You were out for a long time so I’m—”

“I’m good. I can move.”

“Good. Okay, so ship’s crew’s gonna throw down a ladder. It’s short and you just go straight up. I’ll help you from behind, and some crew’ll pull you up from on deck. Sound good?”

Marshall nodded. The crew boat pulled parallel to the grain ship’s enormous black hull, and about fifteen feet overhead, a hatch popped open, piercing a rectangle of bright fluorescent light in the ship’s flank. An unfamiliar, stinging heat speared up through his chest, raking the back of his throat. Fear. He hadn’t felt much of it since he’d awakened six months ago, not since almost killing himself at Beau Chene that afternoon. Now, here it was again, as fresh and overwhelming, as full of hot pulsating life as it had been when he was a pimply teenager.

One of Anthem’s powerful hands came down on Marshall’s shoulder and gave him a tight, paternal squeeze.

“Steady and ready, podnah. That’s what my dad said to me first time I ever did this. When we’re done, we’ll put it on a T-shirt for yah. How’s that sound?”

“Why’s it so dangerous?”

“?’Cause neither boat’s gonna stop moving. Also, the river’s so high now they had to ballast down the stern so we can get under the Huey P., which means the ship’s gonna be angled . . . kinda.”

“Kinda?”

So we’ll fall in the water. What’s so bad about that?

Well, you could get crushed in between both boats on your way down. Or you could make it to the water alive and then get torn apart by one of the giant propellers right below the surface.

Of course Anthem didn’t mention any of these facts specifically. Because he was such a gentleman. A hero.

This was too ambitious, braving the elements with Anthem like this. He could have done something to the guy on dry land, for Christ’s sake, something that would have disgraced him as effectively as what he was planning out here. It was people he could control; not ships, not currents. And he still hadn’t figured out why Anthem’s frequencies seemed to all resonate at Mach 10 when he’d tried to hook him. But maybe he was reading too much into that to begin with. Maybe it was just performance anxiety, this whole need to murder Anthem Landry in the most spectacularly perfect way.

He’d been provided with a wonderful opportunity the minute the phone had rung in Anthem’s apartment. How ungrateful it would have been for him to turn it down.

“You don’t have to do this, man!” Anthem shouted.

High above them, two crew members tossed a rope ladder out of the open hatch. The rungs were metal, heavy enough to keep the ladder weighted and to the side of the ship. “I can have the crew boat take you back and we can meet—”

“No, no, no!” Marshall shouted back. “It’s fine, it’s fine. Really.”

“You sure?”

Why don’t you go first, you patronizing piece of shit? You go first, then I’ll make sure you slip and fall and turn into mincemeat in the muddy Missusip?

But he couldn’t have that. An accident would never do. Yes, it might be enough to bring Nikki out of hiding, but from the moment he read all those groveling comments in response to Anthem’s missive, Marshall knew disgrace was the only option. And for that he needed the river. And for that he needed to stop being such a goddamn pussy and climb the fucking ladder.

It was over in a few minutes.

The worst part was mounting the platform on the crew boat, those few nauseating minutes of being trapped on a tiny platform swaying with the vessel’s every movement ten feet above the churning river. But the climb was mercifully brief, only a second or two of weightlessness between the moment when Anthem couldn’t push anymore and the crew members overhead started pulling on his shoulders. Then his feet were planted on a solid metal floor and a sickly, sweet stench plugged his nose and throat. Empty or fully loaded, the grain smell was still overwhelming, like loaves of bread that had been left in the sun for days.

Behind him, the crew members hoisted Anthem through the hatch. And the guy had a shit-eating grin on his face even before his feet came to rest on steel. Pride. He was proud of Marshall. Genuinely, stupidly proud of his new friend. Marshall managed his best sheepish grin in return, but he had to look away because all he could think