Page 7 of Rowe

By the time Gator eased the flat-bottom boat into the dead center of the bayou, the sun had climbed high enough to turn the mist the color of old dishwater. Two concrete slabs were visible above the water on poorly reinforced steel supports, several hundred yards apart over the deepest part of the channel. The nearer slab was still flat, as before the storm. The distant slab leaned on its side.

Beneath them were the chains, the rusted anchors, and whatever the storms had not carried away. Cowboy sat on the gunwale with his fins hanging from one hand and stared at the bubbles rising off the port side.

“I’d like it entered into the record,” he said, “that I voted for breakfast.”

Christopher checked the seal on his mask for the third time.

“You voted for pancakes. That’s not the same as breakfast.” Christopher glared at the man, now hungry thanks to his suggestion.

“Pancakes are the Constitution of breakfast,” said Cowboy.

Patrick leaned over the engine well and tightened the strap on his knife.

“If you two are done writing amendments, we’ve got a job.”

Gator kept one hand on the throttle and the other near the shotgun lying along the bench. He did not look at them. He was watching the cypress line, the broken reeds, and the places where the water moved without wind.

“Job’s under there,” he said. “Complaining’s up here. Get it all out before you go down, because nobody wants to hear Cowboy narrate through a regulator.”

Cowboy slipped into his buoyancy vest.

“My underwater voice is distinguished.”

“Your regular voice is a workplace accident,” Patrick said.

The humor landed thin. All four men knew what had already been found in the water beneath the first two slabs: several women chained by the ankle to lengths of rebar driven into the bayou floor where the channel dropped deepest. The recovery teams had removed them.

The rain had started before sunset and pounded the parish through the night, swelling the bayou, breaking branches, and filling the water with mud, roofing nails, plastic drums, and pieces of people’s lives. No engineer had signed off on the slabs. No one could say what kept the overhead concrete from collapsing except low-grade steel and blind luck.

Several hundred yards away, the second slab had tilted onto its side and now stood upright above the water like a door left open in a dark room. One lower corner touched the surface. The rest hung from a cage of exposed steel rods, each one bent and orange with rust. Every few seconds the wind and the current worried at its supports, and the concrete answered with a low vibration they could feel through the hull.

Christopher looked toward it.

“That thing moves, we’re not pulling you out. We’re mailing what’s left.”

“To where?” Cowboy asked.

“Somewhere with a liberal return policy.”

Patrick lifted his mask to his face, then lowered it again.

“We stay outside the collapse line. We don’t crawl under anything we can’t see around. One tug means stop. Two means back out. Closed fist means freeze. Flat hand means slab.”

“And one finger?” Cowboy asked.

Patrick gave him one.

“Excellent. Universal language survives another crisis.”

Gator killed the engine. Silence spread until the ticking exhaust and soft slap of water against aluminum sounded too loud. He dropped a weighted marker line over the side. The rope slipped down, paused, and then angled east with the current.

“Visibility?” Christopher asked.

“Yesterday, eighteen inches,” Gator said. “After last night? Put your hand in front of your face and enjoy the mystery.”

Cowboy pulled on his mask.

“If I get eaten, tell people it was a shark.”