“Thank you for your trouble. We should be back in a few days.”
“I hear y'all is goin' up to the canal them Chinks built.”
Pitt nodded. “Word travels.”
“Y'all got charts of the river?” asked Wheeler.
“I was hoping you might supply them.”
Wheeler turned and checked the labels taped on a slotted cabinet hanging on the wall containing rolled nautical charts of the local waterways and topographical maps of the surrounding marshlands. He pulled out several and spread them on the counter. “Here's a chart showing depths of the river and a few topo maps of the Atchafalaya Valley. One of them shows the area around the canal.”
“You're a great help, Mr. Wheeler,” said Pitt sincerely. “Thank you.”
“I guess y'all know the Chinks won't let you on the canal. They've got it chained off.”
“Is there another way in?” asked Pitt.
“Sure, at least two of them.” Wheeler took a pencil and began marking the maps. “You can take either Hooker's or Mortimer's bayous. Both run parallel to the canal and empty into it about eight miles from the Atchafalaya. Y'all'll find Hooker's to be the easiest to navigate the shanty boat.”
“Does Qin Shang Maritime own the property around Hooker's Bayou, too?”
Wheeler shook his head. “Their borders only run a hundred yards on either side of the canal.”
“What happens if you cross the barrier?”
“Local fishermen and hunters sneak in sometimes. More often than not, they're caught and thrown out by an armed boatload of automatic rifle-to tin' Chinks who patrol the canal.”
“Then security is tight,” said Pitt.
“Not so much at night. Y'all could probably get in, see what y'all want to see, since we're havin' a quarter moon for the next two nights before it wanes, and get out before they know y'all been there.”
“Has anyone reported seeing anything strange in and around the canal?”
“Nothin' worth writin' home about. Nobody can figure why the fuss to keep people out of a ditch through a swamp.”
“Any barge or boat traffic in and out?”
Wheeler shook his head. “None. The chain barrier is fixed in place and can't be opened unless ya blast it with TNT.”
“Does the canal have a name?”
“Use to be known as Mystic Bayou,” Wheeler said wistfully. “And a pretty bayou it was, too, before it was dug all to hell. Lots of deer, ducks and alligator to hunt. Catfish, bream and bass to fish. Mystic Bayou was a sportsman's paradise. Now it's all gone, and what's left is off limits.”
“Hopefully my friend and I will have some answers in the next forty-eight hours,” said Pitt as he loaded the groceries in an empty cardboard box offered by Wheeler.
The boat-landing owner penciled several numbers on the corner of a map. “Y'all get into trouble, call my cell-phone number. Y'all hear? I'll see that you get help real quick.”
Pitt was touched by the amiable and intelligent people in southern Louisiana who had offered their advice and assistance. They were contacts to be treasured. He thanked Wheeler and carried the groceries down the dock to the shantyboat. As he stepped on board the veranda, Giordino stood in the doorway shaking his head in wonderment.
“You're not going to believe what you see in here,” he said.
“It's worse than you thought?”
“Not at all. The ulterior is clean and Spartan. It's the engine and our passenger that boggle the mind.”
“What passenger?”
Giordino handed Pitt a note he'd found pinned to the door. It read,
Mr. Pitt and Mr. Giordino. I thought that since you wanted to look like locals on a fishing trip, you should have a companion. So I loaned you Romberg to embellish your image as rivermen. He'II eat any kind offish you throw at him.
Luck, The Bayou Kid
“Who's Romberg?” asked Pitt.
Giordino stepped out of the doorway and without comment pointed inside at a bloodhound lying on his back with his paws in the air, big floppy ears splayed to the sides, his tongue half hanging out.
“Is he dead?”
“He might as well be, for all the enthusiasm he's shown at my presence,” said Giordino. “He hasn't twitched or blinked an eye since I came on board.”
“What is so unusual about the engine?”
“You've got to see this.” Giordino led the way through the one room that composed the living room, bedroom, and kitchen of the shantyboat to a trapdoor in the floor. He lifted the cover and pointed below into the compact engine room in the hull. “A Ford 427-cubic-inch V-8 with dual quad carburetors. An oldie but goodie. It's got to have at least four hundred horsepower.”
“Probably closer to four hundred twenty-five,” said Pitt, admiring the powerful engine that appeared in immaculate condition. “How the old man must have laughed after I asked him if the engine could move the boat against the river current.”
“As big as this floating shack is,” said Giordino, “I'd guess we could make close to twenty-five miles an hour if we had to.”
“Keep it slow and easy. We don't want to look like we're in a hurry.”
“How far is the canal?”
“I haven't measured the distance, but it looks to be close to sixty miles.”
“We'll want to get there sometime before sunset,” said Giordino, mentally calculating a leisurely cruising speed.
“I'll cast off. You take the helm and head her into the channel while I store the groceries.”
Giordino needed no coaxing. He couldn't wait to start the big 427 Ford and feel its torque. He hit the starter and it rumbled into life with a mean and nasty growl. He let it idle for a few moments, savoring the sound. It did not turn over smoothly, but loped. It was too good to believe, Giordino thought to himself. The engine was not stock. It was modified and tuned for racing. “My God,” he murmured to himself. “It's far more powerful than we thought.”
Knowing without a shade of doubt Giordino would soon get carried away and push the engine throttle to its stop, Pitt secured the groceries so they wouldn't end up on the deck. Then he stepped over the sleeping Romberg, went out onto the forward veranda and relaxed in a lawn chair, but not before bracing his feet against the bulwark and wrapping his arm around the railing.
Giordino waited until the Atchafalaya River was clear and there were no boats in sight. He laid out the nautical chart of the river provided by Doug Wheeler and studied the river depths ahead. Then, true to form, he increased the speed of the old shantyboat until the flat nose bow was a good foot above the water and the stern was burrowed, cutting a wide groove across the surface. To see such an ungainly craft barreling upriver at better than thirty-five miles an hour was an extraordinary and incongruous sight. On the forward veranda, the wind resistance and the raised angle of the bow pressed Pitt back against the wall of the house with such force he felt constrained and barely able to move.
Finally, after about two miles of spreading a three-foot-high wash behind the shantyboat that swept into the marshlands and splayed the unbroken green mat of water hyacinth that spread from the river channel, Giordino observed two small fishing boats approaching on their way to Morgan City. He eased back the throttle and brought the shantyboat to a crawl. The water hyacinth is a pretty plant but is a disaster to inland waterways, growing at a prolific rate and choking off streams and bayous. They are kept afloat by their stems full of air bladders. The hyacinth sprouts beautiful lavender-pink flowers, but unlike most other flowering plants, it smells like a fertilizer factory when pulled from the water.
Feeling as if he had survived a roller-coaster ride, Pitt returned inside, retrieved the topographical map and began studying the twists and turns in the river as well as familiarizing himself with the network of swampy bayous and lakes between Wheeler's Landing and the canal dug by Qin Shang Maritime. He traced and compared the landmarks and river bends with those on the map. It was refreshing to sit comfortably in the shade of the veranda overhang and experience the pleasant sensation of traveling smoothly over timeless waters that only a boat can provide. Riverbank vegetation varied from mile to mile. Thick forests with willows, cotton-woods and cypresses interspersed with berry bushes, and wild grapevines slowly gave way to a moist, primeval swamp, a prairie of soaring reeds swaying under a light breeze that swept off to the horizon. A lone cypress rose majestically out of the grass like a frigate on the sea. He saw herons walking on their long, sticklike legs along the fringe of water, their necks bent into an S shape as they pecked for food in the mud.