Cameron Sanders was born in Jasper, Indiana. He graduated from Indiana University with a BFA in creative writing. Shortly after graduating, he published his first short story, “Billowing Down the Bayou,” in The Greensboro Review. Sanders currently lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he is working on editing his first full-length novel. He can be contacted at cameronsandersauthor@gmail.com.
Mama always says you can’t outswim the bayou, not since The Billows came a billowing. She says the dust brewing up North meant mud clumping down South and before she knew it the rivers in these parts started looking like landslides. Unless you’re a catfish, Mama says you won’t be swimming long under these waters.
Mama says she ain’t the smartest of mamas, but she knows an awful lot more than me, and she knew life before The Billows, so she could probably be one of them doctors she talks about—the ones she said could chop off your leg and keep you upright walking. She taught me everything I know, and she still got stuff up there that I haven’t even heard of. Mama’s got an answer for anything, but she don’t much like to talk about life before The Billows. She says things were just as bad before the clouds started turning to dust, but at least now she’s got her little duckling girl to watch over.
Mama says a night like tonight would’ve looked heavenly back then. We’re only supposed to use that word for things that remind you of the Bible, something only God could make. Can you believe that the frogs used to go ribbet? Just like that too: ribbet ribbet ribbet. Loud enough to block out the crickets, Mama says. But them tongues of theirs must’ve stuck to too much dirt and packed them full of mud because all they’re doing now is coughing like Mama does when she forgets to cover her mouth before heading outside.
The moon’s doing its best to light up the night but even then the water doesn’t quite do it justice no more. The water looks thick enough to walk on, but Mama says only Jesus can do that sort of stuff and that I’m not allowed to try it. She’s just looking out for her Lil Duckling, and I know that. But even Jesus had a group of friends, and I ask Mama every day if I can have a little baby sister or a little baby brother and all she says is that “there aren’t no more Daddies ’round here no more.” Mama says too many people went swimming, and she tried to stop them, but nobody would listen. Even my Daddy must’ve gone swimming because I ain’t ever seen him. The waters don’t remember much of all it’s eaten, else I’d ask if Daddy is down there swimming. Mama says nobody’s down there, and if there were, the crocs would’ve eaten them up by now. When Mama gets real mad she says she’s gonna throw me in too. Mama don’t look that strong, but I know she could if she wanted. Sometimes I get to wondering if Mama threw them all over. She says they never were nice to her and that’s why she don’t want no more neighbors. Mama does what’s right, so if God said to do it, I know she would. I bet I would too if God went around talking to me.
I think the Lord must’ve been listening to my prayers every night. Don’t tell Mama, but I prayed for a little baby every night before bed—even wished on a star and Mama says only witches wish, but I figured God made the stars so wishing was his work too. And that’s when it happened. On a night much like tonight, I saw it coming toward us—a little basket rocking back and forth across the bayou. It was bobbing in and out of the trees, and I swore it was one of my swimming neighbors finally coming up for a breath of fresh air. But no siree, that there was little baby Moe. Mama says that in the Bible the princess of Egypt found baby Moe on the river, so that must mean me and Mama are princesses. Royalty, she says—something so special that God would send down a little baby of our own.
I knew it must have been my baby brother the moment I saw him. I ain’t ever heard a baby cry before then, but I heard his goo goo and his bawling, and I swear he was trying to say, “Hey Big Duck, come and pick me up!” Mama wouldn’t let me hold him. She says only mamas can hold babies and that I’m only six and that’s too young to be a mama. But I think she forgot how old I am because she keeps saying I’m six every year, and I remember I started counting on two hands a while ago, so I must be at least eight. And eight is plenty big; big enough to hold baby Moe. He’s a little bread loaf and Mama has me carry those around all the time.
Even though I can’t carry him around even now, I still sneak a peek at him whenever I can—when he’s not locked up in Mama’s room. She don’t like it when I call him my brother. She don’t like it when I call him anything. Baby Moe’s got big blue eyes, the kind of blue I think Mama talks about when she says the sky was blue before The Billows came. He’s a pale little thing though: Mama says he’s sick and that’s why he’s not like us. She says The Billows in the North must have rubbed him dry until his skin just started falling off. Moe don’t look very sick. He smiles and laughs whenever I make faces at him, and when Mama takes our little boat out across the waters, I try to tell him stories. He never once cries whenever I tell him stories. Whenever I tell him about the neighbors under the bayou, he’s really listening, straight-faced and all. I betcha he could tell you those same stories if he could talk, that’s how well he was listening. I could even see his shriveled lips moving to match mine. He probably saw our neighbors on his way floating over here. Probably was waving to all the little fishes and the old neighbors, and I bet he learned from them what really happened. Mama says all the neighbors went swimming and never came up, but I bet Moe knows the truth. If that boy could start talking I know what he’d say. He’d say, “Hey Big Duck, your Mama went and dunked them all because she was scared they’d make things go back to normal.” There’s no way that boy was sick.
Mama wouldn’t listen though, so I said, “Mama, baby Moe is just fine. He ain’t coughing or crying, he’s just a little pale baby.” But she says that she’s seen pale babies before and they never turn out right. That’s when Mama showed me her back. She stripped down naked, and I thought she was gonna go take a bath, but she told me, “Let me see your hand. You feel that, those bumps? What’s that feel like to you, huh Duck?” Now I didn’t know what to say. I’d seen these lines every time Mama took a bath and I’d always try to play tic-tac-toe with my fingers, so I didn’t know what else Mama wanted me to say. But she said, “This right here was a pale baby all grown up, and they don’t do much but hurt you.”
Mama almost started crying when she said it too. Mama never talks about the times before The Billows. She always says things were worse back then, and she’s always acting scared that I’ll learn what the world was like. She’s just trying to keep her Lil Duckling safe. “This right here is what happens when you aren’t doing what your Mama says, you hear me, Duck?” And I heard her. She only got the switch out when I wasn’t doing what I was told or when I’d try and push the boat out all by myself. Mama never liked that; she said I wasn’t strong enough, but I knew I was. I’d practiced on the dock and had my own little pushing stick and all. I’d stab it deep into the mud and jump, just high enough that my feet were off the ground like I was flying, and I’d fall back down on the dock. But she still wouldn’t let me, and when she caught me practicing, she spanked me harder than I ever had been spanked before. I swear I must’ve been bleeding for a day. That’s when Mama told me all about the doctors and how they could chop off your leg and you wouldn’t feel a thing. Mama wasn’t no doctor. I felt everything.
The first time I heard Mama call the baby, Moe, was when she told me that she knew a way to fix him up. She still swore he was sick, but if The Billows had rubbed his skin pale and dry then The Billows could put it all back together again. It was God’s plan she kept saying, God’s plan. She picked up Moe, carried him off into our little rowboat, and had me follow along behind her. I didn’t get to leave our dock often—it was my little island. The sway the boat made whenever I stepped in never got old. It makes my belly do somersaults even just thinking about it. Every time I stepped foot on that boat I saw something I never had before: a new star, a new tree, a new dock that was long forgotten. How far did Mama have to go before she found our food? She says when I’m older I’ll be allowed to go out and visit the world. There’s a city downriver that Mama says has all the food in the world, yet she only ever brings back scraps enough for the two of us. A pale baby all grown up did this. Mama thinks everything is too dangerous for me. I think Mama thinks I’m dumb. Maybe I am, but she’s taught me everything I know, so I can’t say for sure.
For the first time ever, I got to hold Moe on that boat ride. Mama says I got to make sure the winds stay out of his face and that he is sick enough as is. I love it when I get to wear the goggles Mama got me because I only put them on for special occasions like going out on the boat. Mama says the dust isn’t bad enough around our house to need them, the trees blocking out as much as they can, but on the water, the sky can open up.
The night was getting too dark to see, or maybe it was still morning and Mama had woken me up to head out on the water before the sun had risen. The thing about the moon is that it never has as much of a glare as the sun does. It meant I could see out my goggles just fine. I was supposed to be covering up Moe’s eyes too, but I couldn’t help but keep that pale face of his uncovered to see those blue eyes. It got me thinking: how come Mama knew pale babies before The Billows if The Billows were what made them pale? Now that just don’t make no sense to me. And you could tell Moe was studying my face just as hard, trying to figure out who I was now that I had these big honking circles protecting my eyes from The Billows. I probably looked like a swamp ghoul to him, but all he did was reach up and try and pry them off my face. Instead, he managed to grab a fistful of my curls and tried his best to pull me down to him. My little brother was tough. I bet he could push the boat way before I could. I could feel his lips moving underneath my hand, the one that was keeping the dust out. His muffled cooing didn’t make much sense to Mama, but that’s because his words were only for me. “Big Duck, I ain’t sick. Don’t let our Mama do this.”
“Mama, why we taking Moe this far out?” Mama didn’t quite like it when I talked out of turn like that. She said it meant I was trying to boss her around. I only gotta speak when she speaks to me.
“Hmm, what you mean, Duck? Trust your Mama, will ya? I’m just doing what the Lord thinks is right.” Mama was leaning over the boat to take those huge pushes she does with her stick to move us a bit faster. Back before The Billows, Mama says she could use a paddle to row the boat. Now she’s stuck to pushing us around. Mama says they do it like this in some big ol’ fancy cities, where they have tiny boats filled with mamas and daddies kissing on the water. When I was a kid, she’d kiss me on the forehead telling me stuff like that. Only the best for her Lil Duckling.
“I trust you Mama, but why we out like this at night? You told me the sun keeps the bad guys away. Mama, I can’t hardly see nothing out here. What if we run into some of those bad guys?”
“When has your Mama ever let you get hurt?”
She was the only person who was ever there to hurt me.
“You ain’t gonna hurt baby Moe, are you?” Moe kept his mouth moving under my hand like he was whispering secrets into my palm. Moe knows that something is wrong. He won’t stop talking about it.
“We are going to fix the baby, Lil Duckling. You have to trust me.”
“Mama, you ain’t gonna hurt my little brother, are you?” The chirping crickets held their breath waiting for a response.
“Duckling, please don’t you start your crying.”
“Tell me you ain’t gonna hurt him.”
“Remember what your Mama said about doing what you’re told? Remember your Mama’s back? You remember that, Duck?” Mama was stabbing at the mud now more than she was pushing.
“Mama, Moe ain’t sick.”
“You’ve never seen a pale boy like that. You don’t know what sick is, Duck. Look at your own skin and tell me whether that’s pale or not.”
“Mama, you’re wrong!”
“What did you just say to me?” She wasn’t pushing the boat anymore.
“You’re wrong! My little brother ain’t sick!”
“That thing is not your brother. Give him to your Mama now.” Mama was hobbling across the boat toward me, rocking it side to side as she moved. Her eyes and teeth were the only things visible against the moonlight.
I shrugged away from her, diving against the floor of the rowboat, Moe tucked under my chest.
“You listen to me now, Duck. Give me that thing. Else your back will look worse than mine, you hear me little girl?” Mama was pulling at my hair, trying to raise my body off the baby. The boat was swaying as much as it could atop the muddy bayou. Thick waves rolled over the sides of the boat, like dirty fingers reaching in along the edges.
“Mama, please …” She was hurting me. I felt strands of my hair being ripped from my scalp, one by one, as Mama’s grip got tighter. The strap of my goggles was the only thing keeping her from wrenching my head back.
“Listen to your mother!”
I couldn’t hold her back much longer. Tears were running down my face and my goggles were fogging from my own breath. Moe was screaming and crying for help; I know he was. Mama pounced on top of me, turning me over. For a moment I thought she’d rip Moe in half if I didn’t give in to her pulling.
Mama clenched the baby in her hands. Moe was still crying as she held him an arm’s length away from her, dangling him over the water.
“Lil Duckling, you have to understand. The pale baby is sick. The Billows brushed him of all his color. Let the bayou wash it all back over him. He’ll be right back, dear. Just a quick dip. Like in the Bible, Duck. Don’t you remember John? Your brother will be right back, brand new and fixed. Trust your mother.”
Moe was right. There was something wrong. Something wrong with this night and every night. There was something wrong with Mama.
I didn’t mean to hit her as hard as I did. I was only trying to make her turn around, to get her attention. She turned around all right, as if she was stumbling back around to catch her balance. Moe fell from her hands and plopped onto the floor of the boat. He was screaming, but I knew he was cheering me on, not crying.
Mama took one last look into my eyes before her heel hit the side of the boat and she started looking straight up at the stars. She hung there long enough to count all of them. And then she was crashing into the waters. The waves weren’t as big as I had imagined they’d be. The mud must have contained them. Mama was shouting the best she could, but all I could think about was how the frogs used to go ribbet. Just like frogs, I couldn’t hear her over the crickets. I was holding Moe now, rocking him back and forth, doing my best to soothe his screams. There was a bump on his head from the fall. If only we had one of those doctors Mama talked about. Maybe the town knows.
Mama had taught me everything I knew.
Most were lies.
But she was right about one thing: unless you’re a catfish, you won’t be swimming long under these waters. Nobody outswims The Billowed bayou.
*I first started creating the Billows universe as an anthology for my university writing assignments. I loved the interconnectivity of a singular world because it was what most resembled a novel—which has always been my true aspiration. The Billows revolves around an alternate-history United States, in which an apocalyptic dust bowl interrupts the Civil War and turns most of the nation blind. I have always been fascinated by the voodoo culture that sprung out of New Orleans and wanted to find a way to blend it with the Billows in this aptly named short story, “Billowing Down the Bayou.” This is my first story published, and I am honored to have it included among the stories of such incredibly talented authors.