There was the hoot of a boat, somewhere out on the river.
“You know, my dear wife didn’t care much for whiskey, Mr. Hawke,” the senator said, with a tinkle of ice cubes and looking over at Hawke with a smile.
“I think a lot of women don’t, Senator.”
“I agree,” the senator said, “but Sarah, well, she had convictions about it. None of ’em very favorable, I might add, sir.”
“Well,” Hawke said, rocking back in his chair, “I’ve got convictions about those little tiny watercress sandwiches some ladies seem to favor.”
“Now, that’s damn well said.”
They were silent for a few moments, savoring the whiskey and the companionship of the dusky hour, and then the senator again turned toward Alex with a happy grin on his face.
“You know, I used to say that trying to sneak a second whiskey past my Sarah was like trying to sneak dawn past a rooster!”
Alex laughed and raised his glass, clinking it against the senator’s.
“That’s quite good,” Alex said. “Another quotation.”
“Son…you ever seen a bona fide Parker Sweet Sixteen?”
He picked up a double-barreled shotgun that had been leaning against one of the massive fluted columns beside his rocking chair.
“No, sir, I don’t believe I—”
“Finest upland bird gun a man could ever…” The senator stopped, overcome by emotion. “Good God almighty, Mr. Hawke, I don’t want to talk about any damn guns. What I been trying to say to you, what I been meaning to do since the minute I laid eyes on you, is to thank you, sir, from the bottom of my heart, from the very bottom of my heart, for what you did.”
Alex saw there were tears welling in the old man’s eyes.
“Well, I—”
“No, no, I don’t want to hear any of your self-deprecating nonsense. No. You found my little girl and you brought her home, just like you said you would, only—”
The senator had to stop and pull his handkerchief from the breast pocket of his old hunting jacket. He rubbed it roughly across his face and stuffed it back inside the pocket.
“Only she’s sitting out there right now in the top of that old oak tree of hers writing her new book instead of…instead of buried beneath—” The old man bent down and scratched one of his dogs behind the ears. He couldn’t continue.
“What’s her new book about?” Alex asked, trying to help the old fellow through the moment.
“Pirates, I think,” he replied, not looking up.
“Does she still not know I’m here?” Alex asked after a few moments had passed.
“ ’Course she don’t know!” the senator exclaimed. “She hasn’t got the foggiest notion I called you either. But, well, she’s been down here with me for over a month now. Not a lot to do around here and I could see on her face she was pinin’ away for you. Plain as day.”
“Did she talk about what happened, Senator?” Hawke asked.
“Well, she told me a little. I didn’t push her. She was funny. Said it was like some ride at Disney World, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean with Live Ammunition,’ she said. But she was pretty shaky when I picked her up at the airport down in N’Orleans. I still don’t know how those damn Cubans abducted her in the first place.”
“I’m still trying to put it all together, sir. She’d gone to a club the night before our picnic. She told me she spoke to a Russian at the bar that night. She’d suffered a mild concussion, you know, and she doesn’t really remember, but she may have unwittingly told him our plans for the next day. I don’t know. At any rate, the Cuban submarine I was tracking was in those waters at the time. And the Cubans at that point were trying to use Vicky to get to me. Suddenly, there was an opportunity for a kidnapping.”
“I still don’t understand how they managed to get hold of her,” the senator said. “Out in the water.”
“My guess is that they did know our plans that day. They hid in the trees on the small island just across the cut from the one I’d chosen for the picnic. They probably had us under optical surveillance, waiting for an opportunity. And when Vicky went swimming alone, they had it.”
“But you would have seen them, right, Mr. Hawke?”
“Normally, yes, but she was taken from below. Vicky was grabbed by the ankles and pulled underwater by two Cuban thugs wearing scuba gear. Apparently they called themselves Julio and Iglesias. They’re the ones she overheard bragging about the bomb being hidden in the teddy bear. Anyway, they dragged her ashore, hid her in the pines, and they were all picked up by the Cubans’ submarine later that night.”
“Did they hurt her, Mr. Hawke? Tell me the truth. Did those people harm my little girl?”
“No, sir, they did not. She was smart and brave and used her wits to stay alive. But I would say we arrived pretty much in the nick of time.”
The senator just nodded his head and took a sip of his drink. In the silver ice bucket at his elbow, there was a lovely sound as ice melted and shifted.
“Needless to say, I’m forever in your debt, sir,” he said finally, turning away.
The crickets had come alive now, and great billowing flocks of blackbirds filled the flaming skies above the oaks and elms and pecan trees.
“Times like this, I sometimes think of Tom and Huck and Jim out there on the river, Mr. Hawke. Poling their raft along the bank, looking for somewhere to tuck in safe for the night.”
“Yes,” Hawke agreed, for the first time realizing that this really was it. The real McCoy, his mother had called it. The mighty, the muddy, the one and only.
M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i.
“My mother was an American,” Hawke said, gazing out at the river. “She grew up on the Mississippi, Senator. Somewhere south of here. Near New Orleans. I’ve never been here before. But I’d like to stay a few days. Maybe Vicky and I could wander down the River Road, try to find her old place. Then, maybe, spend the afternoon in New Orleans.”
“I’m sure Vicky would love that, sir.”
“Laissez les bon temps roulez,” Hawke said.
“You speak French, Mr. Hawke?”
“Let the good times roll. It was my mother’s favorite expression. She was teaching me French. Creole patois, I guess. And then—”
“I know all about it, son.”
“Mr. Senator?” A screen door swung open and an ancient fellow in a beautiful green felt jacket with brass buttons stepped onto the verandah.
“Say hello to Horace Spain, Mr. Hawke. He’s been running the joint for the last seventy or eighty years.”
“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Hawke,” the old fellow said, stepping out through the pools of yellow light spilling from the windows. “I believe we spoke on the telephone late one evenin’. That shore was a sad time in this old place, suh.”
“Yes, I’m sure it was,” Hawke said, shaking his hand. “A very sad time.”
“Mr. Senator? What time we fixin’ to have supper this evenin’? Miss Vicky run off without saying nothing to nobody, and Cook, she fit to be tied what with us havin’ company coming in all the way from England and all.”
“You getting hungry?” the senator asked Alex. “I hope you like honey-fried chicken, black-eyed peas, dirty rice, and hush puppies.”
“Senator, I’m so hungry right now I could eat a watercress sandwich.”
“Now that’s hungry, sir, that’s mighty hungry.”
The senator picked up his silver-headed cane and rose slowly to his feet. He stood for a moment or two, gazing out beyond the long row of trees to the river. There was a big oak tree atop the levee, with three huge branches starkly silhouetted against the evening sky.
It was, Hawke knew, the Trinity Oak. The place where Vicky felt closest to God.
“Well, hell, son,” he said. “What do you say we mosey on down to the river and fetch that little gal home to supper? What do you say about that?”