There was a soft knock on one of the cookhouse doors. “Nick?” Manon’s voice. “You in there?”
“Yes.”
“Can I come in?”
“I’ll come out. Just a minute.”
He finished packing explosive into a coffee can, then rose and switched off the light. Blinking dazzled eyes, he groped for the door knob. He opened it carefully, then slid out of the cookhouse and closed the door behind him.
Fresh air. He took in a few deep, grateful breaths. He couldn’t see Manon in the starlight, but he felt his flesh prickle as he sensed her nearness.
“Nick, I’m worried about the children,” Manon said. “I haven’t seen Arlette since nightfall.”
“Where can she go?” Nick said.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she whispered. “What if that boy’s talked her into going over the fence?” Nick breathed in the fresh air and considered this. “We haven’t heard shots, right?” he said. “So if they’ve gone, they’ve got clean away. We should be grateful they won’t be here for what will happen tomorrow.”
“Damn it, Nick!” Manon flared. “I want you to help me look! This is your family—this isn’t an army, this isn’t some soldier you’ve sent away on a mission; this is our baby we’re talking about.” Nick looked at her. “If they’ve escaped, it’s a good thing. Jason knows enough about survival and the river to get away if he can find a boat. If he can get to the authorities, he may be able to save our lives.” Nick’s eyes were adjusting slowly to the darkness. He saw Manon outlined before him, her tall, proud figure standing by the corner of the cookhouse. “And what if they haven’t tried their escape yet? What if they didn’t try to escape?” Manon demanded. “What if they’re together somewhere? Off in the night doing what they shouldn’t?”
Nick took in a breath of night air. “Good,” he decided.
“Good? Good? Is that what I heard you say?”
Nick licked his lips. “I wouldn’t want either of them to die without knowing love.” There was a moment of silence, and then Manon moaned. “Oh, my God.” He could hear the keen-edged grief suddenly enter her voice. “Oh, my God, that you would say they will die.” Nick’s head swam. “I’ll do my best to see that they don’t,” he said. He was tired, far too tired, to offer any degree of false reassurance.
“You’re blaming me. I know you are.”
Nick looked at Manon in surprise. “Why would I do that?” he asked.
“I know it’s true.”
“Daddy! Daddy!” Arlette’s urgent whisper cut through the night. “We found someone! Someone from the outside!”
Nick looked up in surprise as Arlette and Jason came out of the darkness followed by a strange figure, a bizarre bearded apparition, as if a scarecrow dressed in second-hand clothes had come suddenly to life. To his astonishment, Nick saw that the scarecrow was carrying a gun over one shoulder.
“Bonsoir,” the man said. “I am Cudgel, me. I come see how you get along.” Nick took Cudgel to the Escape Committee, and they set out to round up as many of the absent members as possible, along with any from the Camp Committee who could be found. Rumor spread swiftly, and a small crowd gathered, murmuring in the darkness as speculation spread among them. Cudgel seemed taken aback by all the sensation. Nick urgently whispered for everyone who didn’t have business here to get away, that such a crowd would only attract attention and, maybe, bullets. Reluctantly, the crowd melted into the darkness. Jason and Arlette remained, and Nick saw a defiant look in Jason’s eye. Nick decided he might as well let them stay. They’d found the man, after all, or he’d found them.
Manon stayed as well. Nick suspected that he would have a hard time prying her away from Arlette tonight, even if he were willing to try.
Cudgel sat down amid the remaining people, slid the rifle off his shoulder into his lap. He wore a bartered wide-brimmed hat decorated with feathers, and his long hair was so tangled that it hung down his back like a wiry horsehair mat. His beard, spread over his chest, looked like Spanish moss, and his eyes glimmered yellow in the night. He smelled as if he’d been wrapped in newspaper and buried for twenty years.
“How’d you get here?” someone on the committee asked. “How’d you get past the guards?”
“I move quiet, me,” Cudgel said. For all his outlandish appearance, his voice was soft, and he seemed a little intimidated by the presence of all these curious people. “You go hunting, you, you want nice goose pour le diner, you sho-nuff creep that goose. You no let that bull-goose see you, that goose, so you creep him goose.”
There was a moment of bewildered silence. It took Nick a moment to work out that “creeping the goose” was some-thing done while hunting, slipping past the sentinel geese to get within shooting distance of the flock.
“I’ve been in your house!” Jason said suddenly. “Down in the floodway, that treehouse!” Cudgel looked at him. “I live there sometime, mais oui. In spring I go for crawfish, me, in fall for shooting.” He smiled, yellow teeth flashing in the starlight. “Plenty birds there, come autumn.”
“Can you take some others out?” Nick asked. “Can you take some of the children to safety? Or some messengers who can try to find help?”
Cudgel thought about this for a long moment. “I consider that could be hard, me,” he said. “You got a man can creep the goose for true?”
That looked like to set off an argument about who in the camp was qualified, and who not, and since Nick doubted that anyone in the camp had ever crept a goose or was likely to try, he wanted to cut the discussion before it got started.
“Why did you come here, Mr. Cudgel?” he asked.
Cudgel frowned. “I see them kill, them trash,” Cudgel said. “Down Cattrall’s old cotton field, la has, by where I go fish sometime in bateau, that sixty acres down by the bayou. They line them up, them black boys, and—” He raised a hand, mimed a finger squeezing a trigger. Made a sound, psssh, like a shot being fired.
There was a horrified cry from Manon. Stifled groans from the others.
“C’est vrai,” Cudgel said. “So I think, why for them do that, them. Saw the Paxton boy, son of the High Sheriff, that Paxton boy, so I knew them be Kluxers. So I come the camp here, me, see what I find.” He smiled again. “Creep the goose, me. Talk you fellas.”
“We need help,” said a woman on the Camp Committee. “Can you help us? You’ve seen what they do. Can you tell someone?”
Cudgel looked thoughtful. “I pretty grand fella, me, down Plaquemines Parish. Everybody know Cudgel there. But here—” He shook his head. “Nobody know Cudgel. I don’t got but ten cents, me. Ain’t nobody listen Cudgel up here.”
The woman persisted. “Can you take someone out to speak to the locals? Or phone for help?”
“No phone here, no,” Cudgel said. “Not since the earthshake. But someone come out, some fella, come out the camp, I take him where you say, me.”
“The A.M.E. people used to come here, bring food and look after us. Brother Morris and his family, other people from the community. Then they stopped coming. And the—the hateful things—began to happen. Can you get word to Brother Morris?”