THIRTY-SEVEN
The damage to stock, &c. was unknown. I heard of only two dwelling houses, a granary, and smoke house, being sunk. One of the dwelling houses was sunk twelve feet below the surface of the earth; the other the top was even with the surface. The granary and smoke house were entirely out of sight; we suppose sunk and the earth closed over them. The buildings through the country are much damaged. We heard of no lives being lost, except seven Indians, who were shaken into the Mississippi. —This we learned from one who escaped.
Narrative of James Fletcher, Nashville, January 21
The President watched on television as Jessica Frazetta and the people who had been occupying the Carnegie Library in Shelburne City left the building, stepped into school buses escorted by Humvees filled with Army Rangers, and drove to the field near Clarendon where helicopters waited. He watched as the helicopters rose into the Louisiana sky, then descended onto grassy Mississippi soil near Vicksburg. The President watched as the refugees stumbled out of their doors of the Hueys and ran across the downdraft-beaten grass to be reunited with the families. He watched the weeping, the embraces, the celebration, the cries of joy.
He turned to Stan Burdett and his two principal speechwriters. “You boys better write me a hell of a speech,” he said.
“Yes, Mr. President,” one of the speechwriters mumbled.
They and the President sat on couches in the Oval Office, and watched the news on a console television carefully disguised as an antique piece of furniture.
“I want drama,” the President said. He waved his hands in the air. “I want compassion. I want a promise of punishment for the guilty along with protection for the helpless. I want to call for reconciliation. I want to appeal to the angels of our better nature. When I go to Mississippi, I want to deliver the best speech heard on this continent since Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. I want this to go down in history as the Vicksburg Address.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Now get busy.”
“Sir.”
The speechwriters left. The days in which a President scrawled out a speech on the back of an envelope and kept it in his hat were long gone.
Stan Burdett stared for a long moment at the scene on the television. “I can’t believe this happened,” he said.
“I believe it,” the President said. He shrugged and reached for his cup of coffee. “What does it take to make evil come into the world?” he asked. “A can of beer and a cheap handgun. That’s all. In this case, we had a psychopathic sheriff who was in a position to enforce his orders through martial law. He was a weak and malevolent man put into a position of power during a period in which the normal checks on his power ceased to exist. His actions don’t surprise me in the least.”
The President shook his head. “Where Paxton seems to have been naive is that he apparently thought he could do it without anyone finding out. That was absurd of him— we have a whole class of people in this country who do nothing but hunt out the things that people want to hide.”
He shook his head. “You’d better have Bill Marcus contact Jessica Frazetta real soon,” he said. “She showed good political instincts here. We need to get her on the campaign trail soon, and run on our ticket. Oh— look at this.” He pointed at the television. “This guy’s priceless.”
The Grand Wizard had appeared on the television, gazing firmly at the camera through glinting spectacles. “Omar Paxton was a great American,” he said. “He was a hero. Whatever he did, I’m sure it was for the safety of the good people of Spottswood Parish. But now the liberal media are blowing everything out of proportion and trying to make it seem like Omar was some kind of crazed killer! Well, who got killed, that’s what I want to know. Omar Paxton got killed, and his deputies! They got massacred! Cut down in performance of their duty! The liberal media can say anything they want about the dead, I guess, ’cause the dead can’t defend themselves against slander, but I know in my heart that Omar Paxton was right.”
The news program switched to a commentator, one of the legion of pompous talking heads who provide instant analysis for the media. The President reached for his remote and switched off the set.
“How’s that Grand Wizard for spin?” the President asked. “How’s that for the new party line?”
“That’s vile,” Stan said. “That’s beyond putrid.”
“I bet the Klan gets a thousand recruits in the next week,” the President said. He sipped his coffee. It had gone cold, and he put the cup down.
Stan looked at him. “People say I’m cynical,” he said.
“Human evil is bottomless,” the President said. “I suppose we can hope that the same can be said of good, but in my job I don’t deal with good very often.” He looked at Stan, and amusement tugged at his lips. “Do you think if I went to Purgatory Parish, or whatever the place is called, and made a speech eulogizing Omar Paxton and calling for race war, that I couldn’t get a war started?”
Stan looked horrified. “Sir!” he said. “You can’t be serious!”
“No point in it.” The President shrugged. “The experiment’s already been tried, in Bosnia and Rwanda.” He looked at Stan again. “It wouldn’t be hard, though. Plenty of people in rural areas would listen. Their way of life’s been destroyed, and not just by the earthquake. Fifty years ago the U.S. government decided there were too many farmers on the land. Programs were put into place. Congress passed laws. And rural America was wiped out! The farmers— the backbone of the nation, we used to call them, salt of the earth, the yeoman that Thomas Jefferson hoped would guarantee the independence and virtue of the republic— they were all nudged off their own land. Now almost all American agriculture is controlled by a few companies, and folks who work on the land are tenant farmers plowing the land their fathers once owned.
“Why shouldn’t they be angry?” the President asked. “Why shouldn’t they look for someone to blame?” He pointed at the blank television screen. “Sheriff Paxton and that Reverend Dingdong Frankland there, they’re the only people helping the rural poor understand what’s happened to them. Their answers are violent and insane and based on a delusional understanding of how the world works, but at least they have answers. The only answer the government has for those people is, ‘Hey, you’re redundant, you should have abandoned the land and gone to work in a factory years ago.’ No wonder those people start joining apocalyptic cults. To them, the end of the world isn’t a strange idea. The Apocalypse already happened to them! Their whole world was destroyed.”
The President laughed. “And now those poor countryfied bastards have been hit again. Agribusiness won’t be hurt by the quakes, not for long— Congress will make sure that almost all the relief money will go to the big agricultural conglomerates, just the way they’ve done for fifty years— but all the small businesses, and the family farmers, and the small entrepreneurs will be kept living under canvas for months, and when they come out they’ll find out that all their dreams will have been repossessed. Then the next generation of Franklands and Paxtons will tell them who to blame, and then we’ll have a heavily armed rural proletariat— the backbone of the nation, we used to call them, salt of the earth— all lynching all the wrong people, the way they’ve always done.”
The President fell silent. Stan looked at him for a long moment. The President shrugged. “Don’t blame me, Stan,” he said. “I didn’t do it. It all happened practically before I was born.”
“Yes, sir,” Stan said.
The President looked at his friend. “It’s the American way,” he said. “We don’t respect our fathers, we don’t overthrow them, we don’t bury them. We just forget. It’s not like there was a hidden conspiracy to destroy rural America— it was all in the open. All the documents, all the policies, all the legislation ... it was all public. People could have read all about it if they’d wanted. But they forgot. The earthquakes of 1811 weren’t a secret, either— people could have read about them if they’d wanted to. But they didn’t know the history. They forgot their fathers. That’s what Americans do— we think about the present, and often about the future, but never about the past. Our fathers have always been dead to us. We just forget.”
The President rose, put his hand on Stan’s shoulder. “Our job is to help them. That’s why I have to go to Vicksburg and make a speech that will help everyone put all this to bed ... to help them forget. If no one remembers Omar Paxton in twenty years, then we’ll have done our job.”
He straightened, then walked to his chair behind Rutherford B. Hayes’s desk. “Better get busy, Stan,” he said. “And don’t forget to have Marcus call General Jessica, get her political career started.”
Stan rose slowly from the sofa, took a few steps, then hesitated. “I can’t decide,” he said.
The President took his seat behind the massive desk. “Decide what, Stan?” he said.
Stan looked at him blankly. “I can’t decide if you’re crazy or not,” he said.
The President gazed at the papers in front of him. “I’m doing my job, Stan. And if I stop doing my job, I have lots of bright young folks like you to tell me.”
Stan licked his lips. “Yes, Mr. President.”
“It’s much easier when you don’t care. Really it is.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You should try it sometime.”
Stan left the Oval Office in silence. The President frowned at his paperwork for a moment, and then his glance rose to the photograph of the First Lady that sat on a corner of the broad desk. A knife of grief suddenly twisted in his heart, a pain so pure and exquisite that it took his breath away. For a moment tears spilled down his face.
Then the moment passed, and all was tranquil again. It was much better this way, the President thought as he wiped his face. Much, much better.
*
Jason could breathe again. This was the good news.
The bad news was that his journey was over. When he left the Army-run refugee camp near Vicksburg, it would be to join his family, his father in California or his aunt in New York State. He would return to a human environment that was in its essence intact, that nestled in comfortable dominion over Nature, a world that had not been destroyed and ravaged and remade, like the Mississippi Delta. Like himself.
The world to which he would be called seemed alien and strange, its comforts false, its reassurance suspect. It seemed to him that the life of the refugee was somehow more genuine than any other form of existence. It seemed to him now that, whether he knew it or not, he had always been a refugee, thrown like a chip into the Mississippi, carried by accident and destiny down its broad, brown expanse.
It seemed to him that everyone was a refugee, if they only knew it.
The deputy’s bullet had broken three ribs and burrowed a long, erratic path along the large muscles of his back. Neither the bullet nor the broken ribs had punctured a lung— his breathlessness was a result of a wrecked rib cage and trauma, not internal hemorrhage. Once he’d had his ribs strapped he was able to breathe again— strange how a tight bandage permitted breath rather than restricted it. Drugs had eased the pain and swelling of his torn back muscles.
The presence of Arlette had healed him faster than any drug. The breath he drew from her lips was sweeter than any air he had known. With his ribs strapped, he could walk with Arlette about the encampment, along the lanes between the ruler-straight Army tents where refugees lived with their families.
Now that the journey was over, Arlette wore her birthday presents all the time. Diamonds glittered in her ears, in the little golden lily in the hollow of her throat. And in her pocket she carried her grandfather’s watch.
Jason knew he had at most only a few days to enjoy his time with Arlette before he was shipped out. The Mississippi had relinquished control of his life, but that did not mean he was free. It meant he was now controlled by adults, adults whose decrees, so far as he was concerned, were as arbitrary and implacable as those of Nature.
Bright green wings flashed overhead, and Jason looked up to see a parrot perch on a nearby awning. In the chaos of the earthquakes and evacuations, the parrot had been set free. It had been living in the vicinity of the refugee camp for as long as Jason had been there. Some of the refugees had tried to catch the bird, but thus far it had evaded them.
“What will you do now?” Jason asked. “You and your mom, I mean.” His throat was still swollen, and he still needed to tilt his head to speak without pain.
“I don’t know,” Arlette said. “I don’t think she knows, yet. The house in Toussaint is all right, so far as we can tell, but the country is still flooded, and will be flooded for weeks, and there isn’t any way to get there unless we can use a helicopter.” She touched the pocket where her Gros-Papa’s watch rested. “And— well, it’s not nice there right now.”
Jason took her hand and squeezed it. “I wish we could stay together. Maybe I can talk to my dad, to Aunt Stacy, to someone ...” He looked up. “Oh, my gosh,” he said.
His father was walking toward him, striding down the lanes between tents. He wore khakis and a Dodgers cap and a button-down shirt with a sky-blue tie, which was his idea of casual dress. But Frank Adams wasn’t alone: a whole mob trailed behind him, at least two television cameramen, a pair of skinny bearded men with microphones on long booms, a blond-helmeted reporter picking her way in high heels and short skirt past the refugees and their clutter.
Jason was stunned. He stood rooted to the spot while his father came close to him and threw his arms around him. “Careful!” Arlette yelped, wary of his broken ribs. But Frank didn’t put much strength into his hug.
“Hello, son,” Frank said. “Surprised to see me?”
Jason looked at the cameras. He could see the lenses focusing on him, zooming in for the closeup. “Who are these people?” he asked. Pain knifed through his throat, and he winced.
The blond reporter quickly explained that they were from a television news program— Jason recognized the name, a tabloid show so consistently sordid that his mother automatically shifted stations to avoid it— and they had flown his father into the camp on their helicopter so that he and Jason could be reunited.
Jason tilted his head to speak. “Great,” Jason said.
The reporter asked him how he felt now that he and his father were together.
“Great,” said Jason.
Jason saw out of the corner of his eye that the camera crew were jostling Arlette away, and he reached for her arm and pulled her closer.
“Dad,” he said, “this is my girlfriend, Arlette.”
Frank seemed a little taken aback— not because Arlette was black, Jason assumed, since a man married to a half-Chinese scarcely had any room to object— more likely Arlette’s existence was a complication he’d never suspected. After a moment’s hesitation, he shook Arlette’s hand.
“Nice to meet you, Arlette,” he said.
“Sir,” said Arlette.
The reporter asked if Jason and Arlette had met in the camp.
“The camp in Rails Bluff,” Jason said.
The reporter asked more questions, starting from Rails Bluff and going on from there. Jason answered the questions in as few words as possible. He had spoken to reporters before— the camp was infested with them— and this interview was much like the others. He had the impression that his answers didn’t matter, that the reporter had decided in advance what his answers were going to be, and asked questions calculated to get the answers she wanted.
The reporter asked Jason if he thought of himself as a hero.
“No,” he said.
Then the reporter asked Arlette if Jason was a hero.
“Yes,” Arlette said, and a rocket of pleasure soared up Jason’s spine.
The reporter asked Jason what he wanted to be when he grew up. “An astronomer.” he said, which got a surprised look from Frank.
Jason didn’t know whether he wanted to be an astronomer or not, not really. But he knew he still had a few issues with the cosmos, and thought maybe astronomy would help him think about them.
“Excuse me,” Jason said. “But I’ve got to go to the infirmary. The doctors wanted to see me about my—” His hands made scratching motions near his waist. “About my broken ribs.”
Jason made his escape to the infirmary tent, where he had a cot and where reporters weren’t allowed. Frank and Arlette followed. Jason turned to his father.
“Why did you bring those people?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry, Jase,” Frank said. “But it was the only way I could get here. The government isn’t letting people fly into the earthquake zone, not unless they’re aid workers. I would have had to fly into Meridian, then rent a four-by-four and try to get here on my own. And even then I might have run into roadblocks. But the tabloids have their own helicopters, and fly in whenever they want, so I thought—” He hesitated. “Well, I sold our reunion story for twenty thousand dollars, and that will help pay for your college.”
Jason stared at his father. “I don’t believe this,” he said.
Frank looked at Arlette. “Honey,” he said, “can you excuse us for a little while? It’s nice to meet you, but I’d like to talk to my son.”
Jason snagged Arlette’s arm and kissed her good-bye before she made her dutiful exit. It was one of the last kisses he was likely to get, he figured.
He led his father to his own cot, and they sat down. The infirmary tent was large and smelled of canvas and antiseptic. It was light and airy, since the canvas sides were rolled up, but the mosquito netting was down and kept out the bugs. None of the people in the tent were hurt very seriously— the critically injured were kept elsewhere, in the field hospital. Half the cots in the tent were empty, because refugees were constantly being evacuated inland, where the water was safe and the quake damage much less severe.
“We’ll be leaving on the helicopter before dinner,” Frank said. “We’ll fly to Houston, stay overnight, then get on a plane to Los Angeles.”
Jason looked up at him. “I’m going to L.A., then? Not to Aunt Stacy?”
Frank sighed. “I guess you won that argument, Jase.”
Sadness crept through Jason’s thoughts. Once he had wanted nothing so much as to fly to Los Angeles. Now he wanted nothing so much as to stay.
“Can Arlette come with?” he asked. He knew perfectly well the question was hopeless, but he also knew this was a question that had to be asked.
“Jase,” Frank said, “there’s hardly enough room in our apartment for you.”
“Yes,” Jason said. “I know.” A fragment of hope lodged in his heart. “Can I visit her later? Spend some of that money to fly out here, and—”
“We’ll see,” Frank said, in the tone that said, See how I humor my child?
“There’s something else I need to tell you,” Frank said. “This money from the tabloids— that could be just a beginning. Your story is getting out to the media now. There’s some real interest. I’ve been talking to some of the intellectual property people at the firm, and they’re very excited. We’re thinking of contacting some literary agents and publishers, some people at the studios. You could be famous.” He grinned and slapped his knees. “What do you think of that?”
Jason shrugged.
“All you’d have to do is cooperate,” Frank said. “Just tell the writers, or whoever, exactly what happened. And they’ll write it down, and it’ll be a book or a movie.”
“I can be famous,” Jason said, “but I can’t see my girlfriend.”
“I said we’ll see.” Irritation was beginning to creep into Frank’s voice. “The point is,” he went on, “there is some real money here. It will go into trust for you, and pay for your education. This is a terrific break for you.”
“Great,” Jason said.
Frank looked at him severely. “I thought you’d be more excited,” he said. “Don’t you understand how colossal this is?”
“I’ve been shot,” Jason said, “I’ve been beat up, and I’ve come hundreds of miles in a little boat with the whole world trying to kill me. I’ve fallen in love with a beautiful girl. Movies and books just aren’t very exciting right now. I’m sorry.”
Frank looked at him for a moment. Then his lips tightened. “It’s that Nick Ruford’s fault,” he said. “He put you through this. I’m going to talk to some of the litigators at the firm. We’ll sue him naked.”
Jason looked at his father. “If you do that,” he said. “I’m testifying for Nick.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Frank said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Jason rose from the bed. “I’m going to go say good-bye to my friends,” he said. “I’ll see you at the helicopter later.” He reached under his cot, pulled out the Astroscan. “This is all I’ve got,” he said. “Could you hold onto it for me?”
Frank looked at the battered red telescope in surprise. “What is it?” he said.
“It’s the birthday present Una sent me,” Jason said. “But don’t worry,” he added as Frank turned pale, “she signed your name.”
*
“So,” Jessica said as she looked, with her one good eye, at the message from Bill Marcus, the President’s political consultant, “you think I should call him back?”
“That depends on whether you want to run for office,” said Pat. He was reclined as far as possible in a chair by Jessica’s bed, and he picked repeatedly at a mandolin as he twisted at the tuning pegs.
“Do I want to run for office?” Jessica asked.
“If you think,” Pat said, “that I’m going to play folksy tunes at your rallies and otherwise behave like a buffoon, you can think again.”
Jessica frowned and touched the bandage over her left eye. She’d had an operation that morning, a much more elaborate procedure than she’d undergone with the laser. Instead of cooking the interior of her eye with a laser, this time her eye had played host to a freezing probe that had chilled her eye tissue and, it was hoped, returned it to its normal position.
She was now at home in a semi-darkened room. She had been told to lie with her head on two pillows and avoid straining at bowel movements for at least six months.
She planned to be back at her desk in the morning. Perhaps she would wear a dashing Moshe Dayan eye patch.
Army troops were firmly in control of Spottswood Parish. The place had also been flooded by Justice Department investigators, all now in the process of mortally offending the locals with their earnest Yankee tactlessness.
It was beginning to look as if those responsible for the Spottswood Parish massacres were truly dead. Even David Paxton, the sheriff’s son, who according to some of the chronologies might have set off the whole thing. He had got across the bayou and was walking south, but he’d run into the main body of the A.M.E. evacuees, who had also crossed the bayou at night and were heading in the same direction. David had been shot dead on the spot, and there were about ten people who claimed the honor of killing him.
The person Jessica most wanted to talk to was the swamp hermit known as Cudjo. But that strange man hadn’t been evacuated with the others: as the helicopters came in to carry the others away, Cudjo had faded back into the bayous and swamps that were his home. Perhaps he was just shy, but there was a story that a warrant was out for the man in another part of the state, and that he’d slipped away from the law. In any case, Jessica doubted that Spottswood Parish would ever see him again.
Jessica looked at Bill Marcus’s message again, then sighed and held out the piece of paper to Pat.
“Dial it for me, will you, sweetie?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She looked at the ceiling and sighed. “I have but one eye to give for my country,” she said.
*
Jason heard the sound of bells chiming “Claire de Lune,” and he followed the sound to Arlette sitting cross-legged beneath an awning near the infirmary tent. Sorrow brushed her face as she held the watch in both hands and gazed down at it. He crouched down next to her, touched her arm.
“You okay?” he asked.
She closed the watch, gave him a sad little smile. “I miss my grandfather,” she said.
“I know.”
“How’s your dad?”
“He’s planning on becoming some kind of media tycoon,” Jason said. She looked at him in surprise.
“He thinks he can make a lot of money off my story.” Jason shook his head. “I always wondered what it would take to get him to pay attention to me. Now I know.”
Arlette leaned forward, kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“All his plans depend on my cooperation, though,” Jason said. “And if he wants me to cooperate, there are things I will want him to agree to.” He looked at Arlette. “Things involving you, maybe.” He rose from his crouch. “Let’s go find Nick and your mom,” Jason said. “I want to tell them goodbye.”