Many Rivers to Cross

5

5 7 he shotgun's report echoed in the heavy air. Smoke coiled from the barreL The man on the rooftop pumped another shell into the chamber and Hodge could hear the spent casing clatter down the shingles. "What the hell are y'all doing with that man?" the shooter said. "Leave him alone and get on away from here!" Hodge felt a familiar tightening in his chest. Sometimes he WOlldered if those two stents were enough. "We're gonna secure this gent to that tree over there so he won't float away," he said, nodding at the tall sturdy pine rising like a pole out of the watet: "Why don't you put down the shotgun?" Duval was fumbling with the pull string ofthe duffel bag, cursing and trying to untie the knot, but Hodge smacked his hands with the paddle and dragged the bag out of his reach. He didn't want that young hothead to pull out the AS and start slinging lead. He knew that the man on the roof could have killed them both by now if he wanted to, but he'd fired a warning shot instead. "What are y'all doing in this neighborhood?" His voice was brittle and strained. "You don't look like you belong here." He was dressed in creased slacks and a button-down shirt with a collar, his dark wavy hair cut in one of those classy hairstyles that white men paid eighty bucks for. Hodge figured him for a businessman or lawyer who worked in an office building downtown, the kind who went on a weeklong duck hunt every season with his buddies in the country club. Which is why he owned that spanking new Remington twelve-gauge he was pointing at them. Hodge tried his best to smile. "My name is Hodges Grant," he said, "and we just drove down from Opelousas. My daughter and her 33 34 two children are holed up in Gentilly, and we're headed that way. Do you know who this gentleman is? Somebody ought to tell his family." The man squinted down the barrel of the shotgun for an uncomfortably long time, then pulled back the weapon and propped it against his shoulder. His eyes were puffy and there was a look of terror on his face. He'd ridden out the hurricane all night and his halfmillion -dollar home was full of water, everything he owned in ruin, maybe his wife and kids huddled in the attic. Hodge could envision this man snapping if things didn't go right in the next sixty seconds. "That's Mr. Schulte," the man said. "He lived there by himself. Poor guy was scheduled to have bypass surgery in a couple of weeks. I didn't know he was still here. His church friends were supposed to come pick him up yesterday." Hodge stared at the body tethered at the end of the rope. A year ago he could have been this man if he hadn't found the strength to get up out of that recliner and drive himself to the emergency room. The doctors said that sooner or later he would need a new heart valve. "I heard him calling for help early this morning but I couldn't do anything about it," the man said. He sat down on his pitched roof and rested the shotgun across his lap. "The wind was blowing a hundred miles an hour and all hell was breaking loose. A power line fell in my backyard and sparks were flying everywhere. I thought my house was going to bum down." He dropped his chin, brought his knees to his chest, and curled into a balL The posture looked like something they taught you to do in a health safety class to circulate the blood to your brain. Hodge waited for him to speak again. He thought the man might be hurt or exhausted-or possibly ooth. "You okay up there?" Hodge asked, finally. The man raised his weary eyes and gazed down at them. "I don't know," he said. "Thank God my wife and boys are with her sister in Memphis." He looked out at the floodwater that surrounded them in every direction. "It's still rising, you know. This is far from ovec" Duval slumped on the front bench of the johnboat, facing Hodge, his head down, buried in the...