Dirty South

“Yeah, Teddy,” Christian said. “Good boy.”

I held my place on a backseat, rolling and rocking with the boat. My entire body smeared with my own blood and vomit. Dark maroon stains across my palms.

“Teddy, you remember that time you won the Atlanta game? You scooped up the ball and ran in for a touchdown. We went down to that bar in the Quarter and later on you danced on a table with that midget. You remember that? Man, we had a good time.”

I smiled up at him.

He tilted his head at me. His eyes narrowing. “You ain’t nothin’.”

“I’m your friend. It’s Nick.”

“Nick?”

He smiled for a moment, eyes softening.

His shape darkened as we headed for the long train bridge – Christian squeezing through the narrow opening – sewing our way under two more long bridges of the old highway and then the interstate twisting north. He smiled as the day softened all pink and gold all the way to the Gulf. Christian running us close to the shore and cursing God for only finding marsh.

We slowed to a chug as he looked for solid ground.

I held out my hand to Teddy.

The smile shut off.

“It’s all gone too far,” he said.

We were on the far edge of Orleans Parish, the edge of the Bayou Sauvage.

I could smell the foulness of the bayou rot as we moved away from the lake and deeper into the high grass. I’d hunted around here sometime back with JoJo, a place called Blind Lagoon.

I heard the scream of a nutria in the slate-gray-and-pink morning. The swamp rat’s bloated body swimming in the high grass, slabs of yellow and brown teeth like a prehistoric animal. Red eyes watching us in the fresh light.

Dawn was here.

Dead cypress silhouetted the landscape like amputated appendages.

As Christian slowly moved into the marsh, engine revving and stopping, revving and stopping, I saw an eagle turn in the sky and hang there for a moment, just riding in the wind that moved him.

72

“AIN’T NOBODY GOING to get through that mess,” JoJo say, lookin’ into that smelly-ass swamp. Cash keep the boat back a ways from where Teddy stand on the Scarab. You once wanted that boat but now you want to drill holes in it and watch it sink way down deep into all that brown-green ooze you passin’ through.

You hear the crack of a gun. A bullet spiderwebs the window on Cash’s boat.

JoJo pushes you down. Cash yells.

“He’s dead,” he says. “I should’ve killed that fat son of a bitch when I got the chance. Goddamn. Shootin’ my boat. Man.”

He reaches for a big-ass.44 he got kept in a little cover by the steering wheel. “Yeah, that’s right.” He revs the motor and drifts closer. “Come on, motherfucker. Cash here to play.”

Bronco inches down on the side of the boat, his gun aimin’ right toward the Scarab.

Y’all drift.

The sound of the cars on the bridges fade away. All you see now is high grass and these tall things that look like bamboo. Ducks. Big funny-lookin’ pelicans and shit. The high grass parts and you see an alligator.

You fall down on your face tryin’ to get to a corner. It’s green and scaly with a knotty back swimmin’ away from the boat.

JoJo look at you and kind of laugh. “Bronco? Guess Tavarius don’t like gators any better than you.”

“I make that motherfucker into a pair of boots.”

Cash squeeze off a couple shots and you hear Teddy’s boat shoot out, engine revvin’ real hard. Cash slam down that throttle and y’all ride, beatin’ through the tall grass and sendin’ up muck, like some kind of green-ass milk shake, splatterin’ behind you.