It was night and the moon was high, and Avery sat on a log in the clearing while Tereau took the coffeepot off the fire. Tereau was three parts Negro, one part Chitimacha Indian, and he made the best moonshine in southern Louisiana. No one knew how old he was, not even Tereau, but a Negro must live very long before his hair turns white. He had fought sheriffs and federal tax agents to keep his still, and some people said that he carried a double-edged knife made from a file in his boot.
Tereau poured coffee in their cups and added a shot of whiskey from the pint bottle he carried in his coat pocket. They were waiting for the bootleggers who were to slip through the marsh in an outboard and meet them. The mules and the wagon were off to the side of the clearing by the trees, with the heavy kegs of whiskey loaded on the bed. Avery took another shot in his cup.
Tonight ain’t a good time to be drinking too much corn,” Tereau said.
“What happened to the bootleggers?”
They’ll be along. There’s a lot of moonlight. They got to be careful.”
“Do the state police ever catch any of them?”
“Sometimes, but they usually get rid of the whiskey before they’re caught. It don’t take long to dump them barrels overboard.”
Tereau rolled a cigarette and handed the package of rough-cut string tobacco to Avery.
“Them bootleggers don’t take much chance,” Tereau said. “They’re always moving and they got nobody except the state police to look out for. I got to worry about federal tax agents. They never give up looking for my still. Every month there’s a couple of them wandering around in the marsh trying to find it.”
Avery laughed.
“They almost got me once,” Tereau said. “When I leave the still I run a ball of string around it in a big circle, about a inch off the ground. One day I come back and the string was slack on the ground. I snuck around to the other side and seen one of them tax people hid behind my boiler. I went and got my brother and two cousins and we brung the wagon up close to the still, then I sent my brother down to the tax fellow’s car. It was parked about a mile away on a side road. My brother stuck a match in the horn button to keep the horn blowing, and the tax fellow took off to see what the matter was, and while he was stumbling through the briars we took the still to pieces and loaded it on the wagon and moved the whole outfit to the other side of the marsh.”
“You crazy old man,” Avery said.
“I don’t see no old men around here.” Tereau puffed on the cigarette and flicked it into the fire.
“Why’d you want to come with me, Avery? You ain’t never been one to break the law,” he said.
“Since they took the farm I got nothing else to do. Breaking the law seems like a good enough way to pass the time.”
“If you don’t end up busting rocks on a work gang.”
“They never caught you.”
“That’s because I been at it a long time. My grand-daddy taught me all the tricks when I was a little boy. When he was a young man he sold moon to both the Confederate and Federal army, except he might have added some lye or fertilizer when he sold it to the Yankees. I hope you ain’t planning on making this your life’s work.”
“You’d put me out of business.”
There was a rustle in the bushes, and two men came into the clearing. They were bootleggers who picked up Tereau’s whiskey to run it through the marsh downriver to Morgan City, and eventually to New Orleans and the dry counties in Mississippi. The whiskey was sold for four dollars a gallon at the still and twelve dollars a gallon at the retailers. It was clear and tasted like Scotch, and sometimes coloring was added and the whiskey was sold with a bonded Kentucky label, although its maker had never been out of Louisiana. The bootleggers were sunburned, rawboned men; their hands and faces were smeared with mud and handkerchiefs were tied around their necks to protect them from the mosquitoes; they were dressed in heavy work trousers and denim shirts with battered sweat-soaked straw hats. They were from the Atchafalaya basin, where there is nothing but lowlands, swamps, mud-choked bayous, scrubby timber so thick it is almost impassable in places, and swarming clouds of mosquitoes that can put a man to bed with a fever.
The bootleggers came into the light of the fire. Their names were LeBlanc and Gerard. LeBlanc was the taller of the two, with an old army .45-caliber revolver stuck down in his belt. He was dark and slender, and his eyes were bright in the light. Gerard was thick-necked, unshaved, with heavy shoulders that were slightly stooped; he had long muscular arms and a crablike walk. He cut a slice off his tobacco plug and dropped it into his mouth.
“You all are late tonight,” Tereau said.
“We had to take the long way,” LeBlanc said. “State police is on the river.”
“We’re going to have to change our pickup night. They got it figured when we move our stuff,” Gerard said.
LeBlanc looked at Avery.
“Who’s the boy?” he said.
“He’s all right,” Tereau said.
“What’s your name?”
“Avery Broussard.”
“I reckon Tereau told you it ain’t good to talk about what you see in the marsh at night,” he said.
“He told me.”
“Tereau says he’s all right,” Gerard said.
“Sure he’s all right,” LeBlanc said. “I’m just making sure he understands how we do things down here.”
“He knows,” Tereau said. “Where’s the boat?”
“Down in the willows. We got it covered up good,” Gerard said.
Avery looked at the wild stare in LeBlanc’s eyes.
“There’s too much moonlight. You can see us for a half mile on the river. We had to come down the bayou,” LeBlanc said.
Tereau went to the wagon to get tin cups for their coffee. “I got some rabbit. You want to eat?” he said.
“We ain’t got time. It’s about four hours till dawn. We got to reach Morgan City before daylight,” LeBlanc said.
They sat down on the log while Tereau filled their cups. LeBlanc stretched out his legs and removed the pistol from his belt and placed it on the log.
“Do you use that thing?” Avery said.
“They ain’t nobody around to say I have,” he said. He picked it up and rolled the cylinder across his palm. “I got it in the army.” He snapped the cylinder open into a loading position and snapped it back again. His eyes were hard and distant as he looked into the fire. “They teach you how to shoot real good in the army. I was a B.A.R. man. I could knock down nips at a thousand yards with a Browning.”
Gerard stood up and threw the rest of his coffee into the fire. “We better get moving,” he said. LeBlanc continued to stare ahead with the pistol in his hand. Gerard nudged him with his foot. “Come on, we better move. We still got to load the boat.”
LeBlanc rubbed the oil off the pistol barrel on his trouser leg. He put the gun on half cock and slid it back in his belt. He still had that same hard, distant look in his eyes. He finished his coffee in one swallow and got up and went over to the wagon to count the kegs of whiskey with Tereau.
“Don’t get him talking about the army no more,” Gerard said to Avery. “He ain’t been right since he come back from the war.”
“Did he ever use that gun on anybody?”
“I don’t ask him no questions. He knows his job, and what else he does ain’t my business. The only time I got to watch him is when we have a scrape with the law. Soon as he thinks they’re around he takes out his pistol and puts it on full cock. His eyes get like two pieces of fire when he sees a uniform.”
Avery looked over to the wagon. Tereau was fastening the tailgate after LeBlanc had climbed down from the bed. The mules shuffled in their harness.
“What happened to him in the army?” Avery said.
“He was in the South Pacific about a year. He even got decorated once. Then one day he tried to shoot his commanding officer and deserted. They found him about a month later and put him in the stockade. He went kind of crazy in there. They sent him to a hospital for a while, but it didn’t do no good. They finally give him a medical discharge because there wasn’t nothing else they could do with him.”
Gerard took the coffeepot off the iron stake and poured the coffee over the fire. The coals hissed and spit as the fire died and the clearing darkened except for the light of the moon. He pulled the iron stake out of the ground and kicked dirt over the faintly glowing embers.
“Don’t let LeBlanc worry you,” he said, and went over to the wagon in his slow, crablike walk, his shoulders slightly rounded, with the iron stake and coffeepot in each hand. Avery followed.
“Twenty-five kegs,” LeBlanc said.
“I reckon you want some money,” Gerard said to Tereau.
“I reckon you’re correct, Mister whiskey runner,” Tereau said.
Gerard loosened his shirt and unstrapped a money belt from his waist. He propped one foot on the hub of the wagon wheel and counted out the money on his thigh. He put the bills in a stack and handed them to Tereau and strapped the belt around his waist again.
“When you going to start putting my name on the labels?” Tereau said.
“Soon as you start paying federal taxes and we both go out of business,” Gerard said.
“I hear something out there,” LeBlanc said.
They listened for a moment.
“I don’t hear nothing,” Gerard said.
“It’s out on the river somewheres,” LeBlanc said.
“There ain’t nothing out there. We got rid of the police three miles back.”
LeBlanc moved his hand to the pistol and looked off into the darkness. “There’s something wrong,” he said. “Everything is going wrong tonight. I can feel it. There’s too much moonlight, and there’s somebody out on the river.”
“There ain’t nobody out there.”
“I heard it I tell you.”
Gerard looked at Tereau.
“Maybe he did hear something. Let’s go to the boat and don’t take no chances,” Tereau said.
Gerard threw the coffeepot and iron stake into the back of the wagon. Tereau got up on the seat and wrapped the reins around his fist. He drove the wagon around the edge of the clearing through a narrow break in the trees that opened onto a wheel-rutted road leading between the levee and a deep gully. They could hear the nutrias calling to each other in the swamp, a high-pitched cry like the scream of a hysterical woman. The oak trees stood at uneven intervals along the rim of the gully, and the moonlight fell through the branches, spotting the ground with pale areas of light against the dark green of the jungle. Tereau sat forward with the reins through his fingers. He looked back at Avery and Gerard, who were following, as the wagon banged over the ruts. LeBlanc walked ahead of the mules, straining his eyes against the darkness. He stopped and without turning put one hand in the air.
“What’s the matter?” Gerard said.
“There it is again. It’s a boat laying out on the river. I can hear the water breaking against its sides,” LeBlanc said.
“How in the hell can you tell it’s a boat?” Gerard said.
“I know it’s a boat.”
“I can’t hear nothing,” Tereau said.
“I’m going ahead to take a look,” LeBlanc said.
“You stay here. Me and the boy will go,” Gerard said.
“I reckon I don’t need nobody to tell me what to do.”
“We need the gun here,” Gerard said.
“Tereau’s got a rifle in the wagon.”
“I ain’t carrying it this time,” Tereau said.
Gerard touched Avery on the arm and they moved up the road past LeBlanc.
“I don’t like nobody telling me what to do,” LeBlanc said.
“I ain’t telling you nothing,” Gerard said. “I’m just asking you to watch the wagon.”
They walked on out of sight. The road continued in a straight line between the gully and the levee. Directly ahead was the cove where their boat was moored in the willows. The cove was about fifty yards wide, but the entrance was a bottleneck formed by sandbars, deep enough for small craft to enter and too shallow for anything larger. The river was swollen from the rains, flowing swiftly down to the Gulf. Avery and Gerard left the road before they got to the landing, and worked their way around the edge of the cove to where it met the river. From there they could see the willow trees, the cove, and the river without being seen. They went through the brush until they reached the river’s edge where the backwater rippled over the sandbar that formed one side of the bottleneck of the cove. They squatted in the sand and looked out through the reeds.
“There ain’t nothing here,” Gerard said.
“Look over yonder.”
“Where?”
“Just out from the sandbar. It’s an oil slick,” Avery said.
“It could have come from upriver.”
“It’s not spread out enough. A boat has been here in the last hour.”
Gerard spit a stream of tobacco juice into the sand. “Let’s get further downriver. Maybe we can see something.”
They worked back along the shore away from the cove. They kept in the shelter of the trees and didn’t speak. The frogs and crickets were loud in the marsh. Gerard walked ahead, not making any sound. They arrived at a small inlet that washed back through the trees. They waded into the water until it was around their thighs. Gerard stood with his hand on a tree trunk, looking out over the river.
“I can’t see a goddamn thing,” he said.
“Maybe they went on past us,” Avery said.
“Let’s go back to the other side of the cove. If there ain’t nothing there, we’ll load the boat and get out of here.”
“There’s another slick.”
Gerard looked at the metallic blue oil deposit floating on the water. He raised his eyes and studied the opposite bank.
“Sonsofbitches,” he said. “They’re hid back in the shadow against the bank. They must have cut their engine and floated downstream to wait for us.”
“What do you want to do?” Avery said.
“There ain’t no way to get my boat out as long as they’re sitting there.”
“Sink your boat and go back on foot.”
“They’d find it sooner or later and get my registration number.” Gerard spit into the water and waded to the bank. “We got to get rid of them. Let’s go get the others.”
They started towards the cove.
“What’s the sentence for running whiskey?” Avery said.
“One to three years.”
“Do you have a drink on you?”
“I never touch it.”
They went through the underbrush to the cove where the sandbar jutted away from the shore. They could just see the hard-packed crest beneath the surface in the moonlight. Gerard stopped for a moment in silence and looked out over the water at the sandbar, and then followed Avery back through the trees towards the road. They passed the clump of willows and turned along the gully. They could see the outline of the wagon and the kegs on its bed in the shadows. LeBlanc was sitting up on the seat with Tereau.
“What did you see?” Tereau said.
“They’re there,” Gerard said.
“Bastards,” LeBlanc said.
“I think I got a way for us to get out,” Gerard said. “We’ll have to load the whiskey first.”
“You can’t outrun them with a boatload of them kegs,” Tereau said.
“They ain’t going to chase us. They’re going to be piled up on the sandbar. Take the wagon up to the boat and we’ll get loaded.”
Tereau slapped the reins against the mules’ backs. The kegs lumbered from side to side as the wagon creaked forward. LeBlanc sat beside the Negro with his hand on the butt of his revolver.
“You ain’t going to need the gun,” Tereau said.
“I’m the judge of that.”
“We never had no shooting. We don’t shoot and they don’t shoot.”
LeBlanc looked grimly ahead. Gerard and Avery took the mules by their harness and turned them around so the tailgate would face the boat. Tereau tied the reins to the brake, and climbed down and went to the rear of the wagon. He pulled the metal pins from their fastenings and eased the gate down.
“It ain’t too late,” he said. “I’ll give you your money back and take the whiskey to the still.”
“We’ll make it,” Gerard said.
“It’s your three years,” Tereau said, and took the first keg off the bed onto his shoulder.
Avery got up on the bed and handed the kegs down. In a quarter hour the boat was loaded.
“Now what?” Tereau said.
“You better get ready to move,” Gerard said.
“It ain’t smart what you’re doing.”
“I never had to ditch a load yet.”
LeBlanc got into the long flat outboard and climbed over the kegs to the bow. Gerard got in and sat on the board plank in front of the motor. He took a flashlight from under the seat and placed it beside him. He wrapped the rope around the starter, put the motor in neutral and opened the throttle; he yanked hard on the rope. It caught the first time, and he increased the gas feed and raced the motor wide open in neutral. They heard the two Evinrude seventy-five-horsepower engines of the police boat kick over across the river.
Gerard took up the flashlight and shone it through the willows so it would be visible from the river. The throbbing of the police boat’s engines became nearer, then they saw it come around the river bend full speed towards the mouth of the cove, the water breaking white in front of the bow, the flat churning wake behind and the spray flying back over the uptilted cabin. Someone on board must have seen the sandbar, because the boat swerved to port just before it struck the crest. The bow lurched in the air, and the engines, still driving, spun the boat around on its keel until it came to rest with part of the stern out of the water and the starboard propeller churning in the sand.
LeBlanc stood up in the outboard and shouted at the police boat.
“Sit down!” Gerard said. “I got to get us out of here.” He threw the motor into gear and shot forward through the willows. The police boat’s searchlight went on, and the trees were flooded with a hard electric brilliance. “Bastards,” LeBlanc shouted. He stood up again and took aim with the pistol. The glass broke with the first shot, but the lamp still burned. He fired twice more, and the searchlight went out.
Avery and Tereau ran for the wagon. They climbed into the seat, and Tereau slashed the reins down on the mules. The mules jumped against their harness, and the wagon banged over the ruts, pitching back and forth, so that Avery had to hold on to the brake to keep from being thrown from the seat. He looked behind him and saw LeBlanc’s pistol flash three times in the dark. Tereau whipped the mules to a faster pace until the boat was out of sight. They could still hear LeBlanc cursing.
“He’s done it,” Tereau said. “We never had no shooting, but we’re going to have it now.”
“Where we going?”
“To the still. I’m going to move out everything I can. The swamp will be full of police before morning.”
The wagon swayed against a tree and careened back on the road. “My God,” Avery said.
“Got no time to waste.” Tereau whipped the mules harder.
“You think he hit anybody?” Avery said.
“It ain’t our doing.”
“We were with them.”
“When they got in the boat they were on their own,” Tereau said.
“Look out!”
The left front wheel of the wagon struck a large oak root that grew across the road. The rim of the wheel cracked in two, and the spokes shattered like matchsticks as the wagon went down on its axle, skidding across the road to the edge of the gully; it turned on its side and balanced for a second, then toppled over the brink, pulling the mules down with it. Avery was thrown free and landed on his stomach in the middle of the road. The breath went out of him in one lung-aching, air-sucking rush, and the earth shifted sideways and rolled beneath him, and a pattern of color drifted before his eyes; then he could see pieces of dirt and blades of grass close to his face, and his chest and stomach stopped contracting, and slowly he felt the pressure go out of his lungs as he pulled the air down inside him. He turned over on his back and sat up. He looked for the wagon. There was a scar of plowed dirt where the axle had skidded across the road. He stood up and walked to the brink of the gully.
“Get down here and pull it off me,” Tereau said.
Avery could see the top portion of the Negro’s body lying among the splintered boards. The wagon had come to rest upside down, pinning Tereau’s legs under it. The mules lay at the front, twitching and jerking in the fouled harness. The kegs had broken open and there was a strong smell of whiskey in the air. The broken slats (their insides burned to charcoal for aging the whiskey) and the copper hoops were scattered on the ground. Avery slid down the bank and tried to lift the wagon with his hands. It came a couple of inches off the ground and he had to release it. He moved to the front of the wagon and tried to raise it by the axle. It wouldn’t move. He stooped and got his shoulder under the axle and tried again. He pushed upwards with all his strength until he went weak with strain.
“Find something for a wedge,” Tereau said.
Avery hunted along the gully for a stout fallen limb. He found several thick branches, but they were rotted from the weather. He searched in the grass and saw a railroad tie that had been discarded by one of the pipeline companies that worked in the marsh. The tie was embedded in the dirt. Avery pried it up with his fingers and saw the worms and slugs in the soft mold beneath. He carried it back to the wagon.
“I’ll slip it under close to your legs,” he said. “When I lift up you pull out.”
“I’m waiting on you,” Tereau said.
Avery fitted the wedge under the side wall of the wagon and lifted.
“Hurry up and get out. I can’t hold it up long.”
“I don’t feel nothing in my legs. The blood’s cut off.”
“I got to drop it.”
Tereau reached under the wagon and grabbed his legs under the knees and pulled.
“I’m out. Let it go,” he said.
Avery released the tie and let the wagon drop.
“Is anything broken?” he said.
“I don’t know. Hep me up.”
He put Tereau’s arm over his shoulder and lifted him to his feet.
“They ain’t broke, but I can’t go nowheres.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“We ain’t getting out of the marsh this way.”
“I’ll help you. Can you walk if I help you?”
“I ain’t going far.”
“Let’s get away from the wagon. They can probably smell the whiskey out on the river.”
“There’s something you got to do first.”
“What?”
“Them mules is suffering,” Tereau said. He took the long double-edged knife from his boot. The blade shone like blue ice in the moonlight. “Put it under the neck. They won’t feel no pain that way.” He handed the knife to Avery.
Tereau leaned against a tree while Avery went over to the mules. The knife cut deeply and quick. He cleaned the blade on the grass and came back.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
Farther down the gully there was a rainwash that had eroded a depression in the bank. It was dry now and overgrown with vines and small bushes. Avery was able to get Tereau up the wash to the road. They crossed to the other side and entered the thicket and headed towards the opposite end of the marsh where the still was. Tereau could take only a few steps at a time. For the next hour they worked their way through the undergrowth. Tereau was breathing hard and had to rest often. The vines scratched their faces and necks. In some areas the mosquitoes were very bad and swarmed around them and got inside their clothes. It took all Avery’s strength to keep the Negro on his feet. Tereau took his arm from Avery’s shoulder and sat on the ground.
“Go on and let me be,” he said.
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Go on. You don’t belong down here nohow.”
“You’re not helping anything. You’re making things harder,” Avery said.
“My legs are gone. You’d have to carry me.”
“You ain’t talking good sense.”
“I’ll get somebody to help. Will you be all right if I hide you here?”
“I’ll get along.”
Avery put him in the bushes and cut some branches from the trees to cover him.
“Leave me the knife,” Tereau said. “What for?”
“I need it.”
“No.”
“Give me my knife and get away from here.”
“I’m not going to give it to you. Stay put till I get back.” He put the knife in his belt.
“I’m too old a man to go to prison.”
“Stop talking like that.”
“Ain’t you got any sense at all? You won’t be back in time, and I ain’t going to no jailhouse.”
“Don’t talk so loud.”
“I don’t know why I ever took a young boy with me in the first place.”
“I’m going to Jean Landry’s houseboat. We’ll come back in his pirogue.”
Avery left him in the thicket and splashed into the knee-deep water of the swamp. It would take him a half hour to get to Landry’s, and about half that time to come back in the pirogue. The bottom of the swamp was mud and sand. His feet sank in to his ankles. He thought he heard the police in the distance. The branches of the trees overhead grew into one another, and there was almost no light in the swamp. He had trouble finding the direction to the houseboat. He believed that old man Landry would help them, since he disliked any type of authority and had moved out in the swamp years ago to avoid paying taxes and obeying the law. Unconsciously Avery felt at his side for the knife. It was gone. He thought he would have heard it splash if it had fallen in the water. It must have slipped out of his belt before he left Tereau. He headed back towards the shore, breaking through the overhanging vines with his forearms. A water moccasin slithered across the water in front of him. Avery’s foot caught on a tree root and he went under. He struggled to free himself and plunged through the reeds onto the bank.
The cut branches were still in place over the bushes where Tereau was hidden. Avery ripped the branches away. The Negro was sitting upright, just as he had left him, with the knife on the ground by his side.
“You ain’t forgot nothing, have you?” Tereau said.
“Take off. You ain’t got much time. I heard the police on the road a few minutes ago.”
“Let’s get moving, then.”
“It ain’t no use. There’s a big tree out in the water I can hide in. Leave me there and Landry’ll find me in the morning when he picks up his nets. You can go through the grass flats to the other levee and get back to town. There ain’t nobody going to follow you through there.”
“I have to take the knife with me.”
“You’ll probably cut yourself with it.”
Avery picked up the knife and threw it through the air into the water. They heard it splash in the dark.
“Ain’t that a foolish thing to do.”
“Let’s go,” Avery said. He helped Tereau to his feet and picked him up over his shoulder in a cross-carry. He moved out of the thicket and waded into the water. Away from the bank there was a great cypress tree with one side split open and blackened and hollowed out where it had been struck by lightning. He slid the Negro off his back into the hollow. Tereau adjusted his position with his hands so that he could sit upright fairly comfortably, and pulled his feet out of the water inside the tree. He took off his boots and wrung out his socks.
“I reckon you’ll let me alone now,” he said.
Tereau took the pint bottle of whiskey from his pocket and pulled the cork out.
“Would the young gentleman care for a drink?” he said.
“You crazy old man.”
Avery and Tereau each took a swallow from the bottle. Avery waded back to shore and made his way through the thicket, walked down the gully and across the road and over the side of the levee, and began circling behind the police. He hoped the police would be searching the road so he could get to the big expanse of alligator grass without being seen and cross to the opposite end of the marsh. He could hear voices ahead. He crawled up the side of the embankment and looked down the road. Several flashlights shone through the trees opposite the gully. Two officers with Springfield rifles stood with a third man between them. The man’s hands were handcuffed behind him. He turned his face in the beam of one of the flashlights. His clothes were wet, he had lost his hat, and his black hair fell over his ears. His skin looked white in the flashlight beam. A captain and another state policeman climbed out of the gully onto the road.
“Why don’t you tell us where they headed for, and we can all go home,” the captain said.
LeBlanc glared at him in silence.
“We’re going to get the others whether you help us or not,” the captain said. “Your friend probably drowned trying to swim the river, and the ones in the wagon aren’t going far after the crackup they had. It’ll make it easier if you cooperate.”
“You go to hell,” LeBlanc said.
The captain motioned for the other men to continue down the road. Avery crawled back down the levee into the brush and started towards the grass flats. The glow of the flashlights shone above the levee He entered the wide field of alligator grass where there were bogs of silt and quicksand. The quicksand wasn’t deep enough to be dangerous, but usually a man was helpless in it if he didn’t have somebody to pull him out. The bogs looked like solid ground because they were covered with dead leaves and grass. He traveled slowly as he went deeper into the field, his head held down, watching the ground carefully. The sharp-edged grass cut his face. He saw a bog ahead and went around the side of it. The sand was wet and cold and came over his shoes. There was a dead nutria, half submerged, out in the middle of the bog. The buzzards would have gotten it if it had died anyplace else, but they couldn’t stand on the sand to feed. Avery looked up at the hard ivory brightness of the waning moon. It would be morning in a few hours, and old man Landry would get Tereau out of the tree. Avery went on for another mile and came out on the far end of the marsh. He walked through the sand and water and reeds onto the bank. He sat down exhausted. Someone on top of the levee shone a flashlight down at him. Avery whirled and started to his feet. It was a state policeman. He could see the campaign hat and the leather holster and the dust-brown uniform. The policeman had a revolver in his hand, the moonlight blue on the barrel.
“Stay still. You got nowhere to go,” he said.