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  His aunt didn’t come back with her usual fast words.

  “Alan, I just saw on TV—Julie’s boy drowned.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Alan looped his tie around his neck and tied it, using his elbows to guide his Jeep along the narrow blacktop passing in front of a mixture of old and new houses backed up against the Pascagoula River. Julie and Barry’s home, an older one-story brick, was near the end of the street, next to a newer two-story stucco contemporary. Two Jackson County Sheriff’s Department cruisers and a yellow Toyota with an empty boat trailer behind it sat off the side of the road. Alan parked behind the trailer, lifted his sports coat from the seat beside him, and walked toward the house.

  An older woman answered the front door.

  “I’m Alan Freeman, a friend of Barry and Julie.”

  “They’re down at the riverbank, Mr. Freeman. They haven’t found the bodies yet.”

  * * *

  The place where the boys had gone into the water was along a wooded stretch of river where no houses backed up to the bank. Out in the center of the channel the Sheriff’s Department’s Flotilla Search and Rescue Team pulled grappling hooks behind an eighteen-foot aluminum boat. The Biloxi Fire Department’s Marine Unit had come from Harrison County to join in the search with their seventeen-foot Mako. A young couple Alan guessed to be the parents of the boy who had been with Dustin stood near the water, their arms around each other as they stared toward the boats. Farther up the bank, a dozen people who lived along the river silently watched the search. He spotted Julie’s long blond hair. She and Barry stood close together back in the trees. Julie was shaking her head and crying softly while Barry, his face ashen, tried to comfort her. Standing next to them was a tanned brunette wearing a short-sleeved pullover and loose-fitting shorts; her bare legs were tight and very feminine. Alan thought there was something familiar about her. As he drew closer, she looked at him, holding her stare for a moment, then looked back at Julie and Barry.

  Then Barry’s eyes met his. Dressed in the blue trousers and gray shirt of the Mississippi Highway Patrol, where he had served for fifteen years, Barry was a lean, strong man with chiseled features and swept-back blond hair, a man normally commanding respect by his very appearance, but who now looked suddenly frail. As Alan stopped next to him, Julie, tears running down her cheeks, shook her head slowly back and forth. “We’ve lost Dustin, Alan,” she said. Her hands came up clasped and trembling in front of her chest.

  Feeling a great sadness for her, Alan took her gently into his arms. She laid the side of her face against his chest. “What are we going to do now?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing how hollow the words sounded, but not knowing what else to say. He could feel her hands moving against his shirt. The brunette looked at him. Then at a murmur rising from the onlookers, she turned her face toward the river.

  The rope trailing the Mako had tightened. The fireman at the rear of the boat started pulling it in as the other man in the craft leaned over him to help. Julie turned toward Barry’s arms. The deputies in the aluminum boat stared toward the Mako.

  In seconds, the boat had been pulled backward where the rope ran straight down into the water. The fireman continued to pull it in.

  A greenish black shape …

  And a slime-coated Christmas tree broke the surface.

  Julie started sobbing loudly.

  * * *

  By that night, still nothing, though a pair of divers had been down and two more rescue craft had joined the search. Spaced a few feet apart, the four boats moved in slow formation along the center of the channel pulling ropes disappearing into the water behind their sterns. Occasionally, a man at the bow of one of the boats would flash a light through the tall marsh grass along the far side of the river. A small aluminum boat coming up the river slowed and moved to the far side of the channel to give the boats pulling the grappling hooks plenty of room.

  Eddie Fuller, his squat body hunched at the bow of the small boat, tugged at the neck of his coveralls and shook his head.

  “Somebody’s not coming home no more,” he said.

  The thinner man holding the outboard motor’s steering arm said, “Makes you want to sit closer to the middle of the boat, don’t it?”

  They moved slowly past the other craft.

  * * *

  As the small boat cleared the dragging area and resumed its speed, Alan, sipping from a cup of coffee as he looked out a window at the rear of Barry and Julie’s living room, turned his eyes back toward the deputies and firemen. He sensed the brunette stop beside him.

  She had changed into a skirt and blouse. “Barry asked me to thank you for helping get Julie back here,” she said. She glanced past a group of highway patrolmen talking at the center of the room to the hall leading to the bedrooms. “She’s doing better now, but she doesn’t want him to leave her alone.”

  Her face came back to his. “I’m sorry, I’m Carolyn Haines.”

  “Alan Freeman.”

  She nodded. “I’ve seen you on WLOX talking about aquaculture. My father’s the one who coaches the younger members of the boxing team. The ones who came by today.”

  He now realized that what had looked familiar to him was her father’s face in hers: her high cheekbones, the shape of her chin widening back smoothly toward her hair, even her dark eyes.

  “Julie told me you two used to date,” she said.

  He nodded. “I’ve known her since high school.” He raised the cup of coffee toward his mouth, but stopped it before it reached his lips. Using the cup as a pointer, he gestured toward the kitchen. “They just brewed a fresh pot, if you would like me to get you a cup.”

  She shook her head. “No, thank you. I’m going to have to leave. I need to check on Paul. My son,” she added.

  Alan had already heard the boy’s name from the older woman in the kitchen. Paul had been with the boys when they went into the river. Carolyn, living four houses up the street, had heard Paul’s dog barking and came down to the water. She had called 911 and then came here. The older woman had seen her as she stood at the front door, hesitating, her hands at the sides of her face as she tried to gain the courage to ring the doorbell. She had sent Paul to his grandmother’s house so he wouldn’t be present when the bodies were carried from the river.

  Now Carolyn glanced at the patrolmen again.

  “They have you blocked in?” Alan asked.

  “They’re about ready to leave, I think.” She looked toward the window. Seeming to speak to herself as much as to him she said, “With them still lying there under the water … I’d be in worse shape than Julie.”

  When she looked back at him, she forced a polite smile. “I’m glad to have met you. I know Daddy really appreciated your letting the boys come by.” Then, without waiting for him to respond, she turned toward the patrolmen. As she neared them, Barry stepped into the entrance to the hallway and called her name, and she changed directions, angling across the carpet toward him.

  Alan watched them until they disappeared down the hallway, then turned back to the window.

  A thick cloud had moved across the moon, casting the river in dim shadow. The boats were out of sight, but an occasional flash of light reflected off the water and came through the trees to his right.

  Back to his left, the river ran into complete darkness.

  TWO MILES FARTHER UP THE PASCAGOULA RIVER—10:00 P.M.

  The outboard motor cut off and the small aluminum boat glided though the dark toward the wide gap in the beaver dam. Eddie Fuller shook his head in dismay. “Some son of a bitch blew it,” he said. It made him mad as hell. The fish that had been trapped in the slough behind the dam had first eaten up all the little bugs and decaying matter, then had eaten up each other until there was nothing left in the slough but some of the biggest fish he had ever caught. “And now some son of a bitch do that,” he repeated. “Who was the dam bothering anyway but the fish this far back on the river?”

  At E
ddie’s words, Luke scratched at the gray stubble on his protruding chin and pushed his bill cap back on his head. “Sure enough. Jes’ my luck. ’Course if it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have none a’tall.”

  Eddie leaned his wide body forward, caught a grip on the dam, and pulled them closer to the gap. In a moment he had wrapped the boat’s bow rope around a protruding branch and they came up onto the structure of small logs and limbs cemented together with mud. Luke tucked his rod and reel under his arm and pulled a half-eaten Snickers bar from the pocket of his overalls. Taking a step as he unwrapped the bar, he slipped and fell to his knee, nearly dumping his minnow bucket.

  Eddie smiled out of a corner of his mouth. “You’re gettin’ clumsy in your old age,” he said. Eddie raised his arms out to his sides and, a cane fishing pole held in one hand and his minnow bucket in the other, mimicked moving along the top of the dam like a man on a tight wire.

  “Did you fart?” Luke asked.

  “Not in the last little bit.”

  “What’s that smell then?”

  “Somethin’ dead, I’d say.” His wide hips swaying, his arms still raised out to his sides as if for balance, Eddie continued on the tiptoes of his boots toward the thick trees growing in the darkness at the end of the dam.

  Luke looked back at the water between the ends of the break. “I think I’ll just park myself here and try to catch me a big’un when they come through from the river.”

  “Better chance they’re already feeding at the mouth of the creek,” Eddie said across his shoulder.

  “Then I’ll catch me one when you scare ’em this way,” Luke said.

  “Wanna bet who comes out with the most tonight, Mr. Silence?”

  “A dollar.”

  “Don’t be such a big spender, Luke.”

  Luke didn’t hesitate. “Two dollars.”

  “You’re on,” Eddie said as he stepped down to the soft ground at the end of the dam. He continued on with his arms raised, this time doing his balancing act alongside the slough, angled in a gentle arc toward the mouth of the small creek, a couple of hundred feet in the distance.

  When a warm gust of air came through the trees, bringing with it a stronger smell of the terrible stench, he dropped his arms to his side, glanced once into the darkness between the tree trunks, and continued on toward the creek, leaving the prints of his wide boots behind him in the soil.

  * * *

  Carolyn’s mother, a diminutive woman with graying brown hair, quietly opened the door. Her husband’s large frame came around her into the room. Paul lay on his back, his breathing quiet and slow. The flattened pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint had fallen out of his hand and lay on the sheet.

  Mr. Herald picked it up, placed it on the night table, and retraced his quiet steps to the door. Mrs. Herald closed it behind him.

  In the living room she looked at her husband.

  “It’s a normal reaction,” he said, “not wanting to let go of something Dustin gave him just before he went into the water.”

  The telephone rang and he reached to the coffee table to answer it.

  “Fred Herald,” he said, and then, “Hi, baby.” He mouthed silently to his wife, It’s Carolyn. “He’s asleep,” he said into the phone. He listened a moment and said, “It seemed like it took forever to get my bunch back home. If Dr. Hsiao hadn’t delivered half of them for me, I don’t believe I could have stood the time it took. I kept thinking how Paul was needing a man to talk to.”

  Mrs. Herald shook her head at her husband’s words. “She’s wanting to hear he’s okay,” she said.

  Her husband nodded. “He’s going to be fine,” he said into the receiver.

  * * *

  Alan sipped his coffee and glanced through the window once again. Then he looked toward Carolyn, speaking on the telephone at the bookcase across the living room.

  “What, Daddy?” she said. With her question, her voice rose a little from the soft tone she had been using. “What did he say about it?” she asked.

  She listened a moment. “I know, Daddy, but what did Paul say?”

  As she listened this time, Alan saw her eyes turn toward his. She held her gaze on his for a moment, then turned back to the phone as she said, “In the morning, Mother and I’ll take him somewhere he likes—try to get his mind on something else for a little while anyway.” She smiled a little. “The bumper cars—he can drive them better than I can.”

  A moment later she said, “’Bye. Love you.”

  As she replaced the receiver, she caught her lip in her teeth. She looked across the living room as the doctor Barry had called stepped inside the house. He spoke to one of the highway patrolmen and followed him toward the hallway. As they disappeared toward the bedrooms, she kept staring in their direction. Then she caught her lip in her teeth again and looked toward the front door. Alan walked toward her.

  “If you need to go on,” he said, “you should.”

  “Julie said she wanted me to stay here for awhile.”

  “She wants all of us to stay here,” he said. “She doesn’t want anything to change. But it already has.”

  Carolyn looked directly into his eyes now. He thought she was going to ask him something, but she didn’t. “Paul’s already asleep,” she said. “I’ll see him in the morning.”

  Then, almost as if the words flowed out of her without her meaning them to, she said, “Dr. Freeman, I feel guilty worrying about my own son. I should be thanking God he’s okay. But I keep wondering how this might affect a six-year-old’s mind. He thought of both of them almost like brothers. Dustin was at the house nearly every day and now he’s not going to be there any…” She took an audible breath. “I’m sorry. A mother worrying about—”

  “That’s normal,” he said.

  She looked strangely at him. “That’s what Daddy said.”

  She stared at him a moment longer and then said, “Dustin gave Paul a pack of gum just before he went into the water. Daddy saw it when Paul took it out of his jeans before he climbed in bed—he went to sleep holding it.”

  She waited now. Waiting for him to respond to her worry, as if she had nobody else to talk to. He looked at her wedding ring. He wondered where her husband was.

  She still stared.

  “He’ll be okay,” he said.

  * * *

  Eddie Fuller stared at his cork floating in the water, turning dark as a cloud passed across the face of the moon. He turned his face toward the beaver dam a couple of hundred feet around the curving arc of the slough. A tendril of steam curled off the water nearest the dam. The light grew dimmer. He had watched the late movies on TV the night before. Bertha had warned him what that did to his mind. He remembered the character in Friday the 13th slinking through the trees. He didn’t want to, but nobody was around to see him, so he glanced back across his shoulder into the dark trees behind him. Then he looked toward the dam again. His tongue washed his upper lip.

  “Hey, Luke, caught any big’uns yet?”

  He waited a few seconds, then raised his voice higher. “Hey, Luke, buddy, caught anything yet?”

  Seconds passing and still no answer.

  “Luke, you deaf or something?”

  Still no answer.

  “Luke, damn it. Quit fooling around.”

  He brought his hand up to scratch the side of his face.

  A moment later he stuck the butt of his pole in the soft soil and started around the curve of the slough toward the dam.

  Nearing the rough structure, he caught the stench again. He had been upwind from it while he fished. He looked into the trees, then back to the dam. Luke must be sitting down. The moon was bright enough to see him standing.

  “Hey, Luke, ole buddy?”

  Eddie climbed up on the dam. A puzzled look crossed his face, then he frowned. “Hey, Luke, I’m not in the mood for no games.”

  He walked a little way along the structure. The break in the thick tangle of branches and logs was easy to see now. The only
place Luke could be and not be seen was sitting down over the edge of the break by the water. Or taking a dump, Eddie thought.

  He glanced toward the trees on the far side of the slough. But Luke would’ve had to go through the water to get there. If he had come back this way, I’d have already passed him.

  “Luke, now damn it, you know I scare easy.” He was close to the break now, steeling himself for Luke suddenly springing up and growling at him.

  He noticed something at the edge of the break.

  Luke’s rod and reel.

  He walked to it—and spotted Luke’s cap floating in the still water at the bottom of the break. His stomach tightened. Luke’s chest had been bothering him lately.

  His brow now deeply creased, Eddie worked his way around the protruding branches and limbs to the bottom of the break and reached for Luke’s cap.

  He didn’t know why, and he never had time to think it out, but, suddenly, he felt a cold sensation run down his back to thud at the bottom of his stomach.

  Its great jaws agape, its cavernous maw red, the creature’s wide head thrust up through the surface in an explosion of water and seized him, lifting him off the edge of the break much as an alligator might snatch a rabbit off a floating log.

  Eddie’s arm stuck out of the great, partly closed mouth. His hand opened, then closed, as the giant fish sank beneath the surface. The water boiled. Bubbles rose to the surface.

  In a moment, the water was quiet again.

  The small aluminum boat, its bow rope pulled loose from the dam by the buffeting of the water, drifted slowly out toward the middle of the channel, the rope trailing along the surface behind the craft.

  * * *

  Alan drove slowly along Interstate 10 on his way back into Biloxi. Across the median the eastbound lanes were crowded with traffic, vacationers on their way to Florida.

  That’s where his parents had been going, he thought. He remembered his aunt shaking him awake with the news they had been killed in a car accident. He had been nine.

  He remembered the terrible grief and instant loneliness, the men patting him on the head, some of the women hugging him, everybody saying how sorry they were. But he also remembered nobody thinking to ask a nine-year-old if he had any questions. Mixed in with his grief had been his wondering who but his parents loved him enough to take care of him with them gone, even such simple things as who was going to take him to school each morning—was he even going to be allowed to keep attending school? Thoughts that wouldn’t occur to an adult, but questions very important to him at that time. But he couldn’t ask anybody what he wondered—how could he be so selfish as to be worrying about himself when his parents had been the ones to suffer, he remembered thinking at the time.