Before the inevitable journey,
no one becomes wiser in thought than he,
who by need, wonders, before going there,
what good and evil within his soul,
will after his day of death, be judged.
The Venerable Bede’s Death Song
CHAPTER 11 DEEP RIVER
Wind smashed rain into the pick-up. Bruce could hardly hear his parents. He looked out behind, over the load. Their TV and furniture. Plastic bags of food and clothes. All their worldly goods.
“We should of left yesterday!” shouted Mama “I told you! I begged you!”
“Well it’s too damn late now!” shouted Daddy. Why the hell was she starting this? It was no time to argue. “Just hold the fucking hood up!”
“I should drop it on your stupid drunken head!”
“Then I’d never dry the damn wires, would I?, And the damn truck wouldn’t ever damn well go! And then we’d be stuck in all this!”
“If you didn’t have a damn hangover we’d have been out of here at dawn! We’d have been gone yesterday! We’d be in Texarkana!”
“OK! With your God damned sister! And her damned boy friend!” Daddy was giving in. getting tired. He’d stop arguing and go very quiet. Sulking. Giving up. He always did. Soon he’d get to feeling the miseries, and start looking for a bottle.
Daddy had tied the rope down hard. The plastic tarp over the back was hardly moving. It just flapped really fast. Vibrating and buzzing in the wind. Normally you could see for miles. Flat rice fields clear to the horizon. But in this rain you could hardly see the road signs bending and twisting and snapping back and forth in the wind. Things whipped by. Dim grey shapes, distorted by water moving sideways over the windows.
And a light. Two headlights and a flashing red one. A car growing solid, taking on shape and colour. Dark blue with a white door. Wipers whacking back and forth over the glass.
“Look!” shouted Mama.
“Oh for Chrisesake!” Muttered Daddy “What the fuck does he want.”
Mama saw “Saint Thomas Parish Sheriffs Department” written across a map of Louisiana on the door. A man, with a high vis yellow jacket over his uniform, forced open the door against the wind and let it slam shut. Then he leant against the wind, staggered, held onto his billowing jacket and walked towards them. “Officer Lestrade, you’re getting very wet!” Shouted Mama
“Sure am!” He winced into the wind “But we all going to be a lot wetter if we all don’t get out of here.”
“Soon’s I get the truck started we’ll be gone!” Shouted Daddy
“I can give y’all a ride in the patrol car!”
“No need!” shouted Daddy “She’ll start now!”
“OK folks! Y’all get in and try!” Constable Lioncourt Lestrade watched them pull the truck doors open and sit inside with their little son in the middle. He couldn’t hear the truck, but it obviously did start. Its wipers went and the driver gave a wave and set off slowly down the road.
“Waters getting deeper. Coming up to the road level,” said Mama “Can you see to go in all this?”
“I can see 'bout the same as you can.”
The black top was covered in water, the same grey as the sky. The same grey as everything. Bruce got faded glimpses of trees and phone poles thrusting from waves on either side.
“What does that say?” asked Daddy
“It says welcome to
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