Page 2

Chapter 2

Dead in the Morning

The beautiful woman leapt to her feet. “Come on, Pretty Boy. We ain’t through dancin’.”

Gator threw up both hands. “Oh, yes, we are. At least for now. You don’t get to drop a bombshell like that and just dance away. What bodies are you talking about?”

She waved a dismissive hand. “There’ll be time for that tomorrow. Tonight, we’re having a party.”

I sat, silently trying to imagine how I would’ve reacted back when I was young, na?ve, and impatient like Gator. Watching him deal with the surprises that inevitably fill the lives of covert operators like us was like watching old game tape of how I used to play.

He patted the bench. “Sit back down, and tell me what bodies you’re talking about.”

She reached for his hand and pulled it against her body. She straightened his index finger and made a fist with the rest of his fingers. Then, she waved Gator’s pointed finger around the yard.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She said, “Making you point at all the boys I’m gonna dance with if you don’t get off your cute little tush and take me for a spin.”

My protégé looked at me as if begging for help, and I shooed him away with the back of my hand. “Take your cute little tush, and go dance with that pretty girl. Whoever the bodies are, they’ll still be dead in the morning.”

I peeled a few boiled shrimp and deposited the shells on Gator’s mudbug plate. Thinking back over the life I’d lived, I was never less than astonished at how the son of missionaries from Georgia ended up in the situations and places in which I’d been. While watching two dozen people dance, laugh, and sing somewhere in a swamp they called a bayou, under a brilliant moon that would be full in forty-eight hours, I thanked God for the first time in my life that I wasn’t a major league ballplayer.

“What be goin’ on in dat head o’ yours, you?”

I spun to see Mr. LePine claiming the bench across the table from me. “I was just being thankful for the fact that life never turns out the way we expect.”

He raised a bottle. “Ain’t that da troof? When I’s a comin’ up, I figured me to be one of dem rich mens wiff fine tings and shiny cars, but all I gots is dis right here, me.”

I watched the dancers and listened to the band’s melody as the warm, humid air brushed against my face. “I don’t know, Mr. LePine. From where I’m sitting, you look like the richest man in the world.”

He smiled, exposing the few teeth he had. “You’d be right ’bout dat, you. I see Cecilia done gots her hooks in dat boy o’ yours. He best be careful or dat girl’l break his big ol’ heart, she will.”

“Cecilia?” I asked.

He pointed toward Gator and the Cajun girl. “Yes, sir. Dat be Cecilia Lachaussee. She be my great-niece, I guess she be. Dat girl dun runt off up to LSU and gots her one of dem fancy paper degrees. She don’t want nobody to know ’bout it, dough. I bets she don’t even tell you she can speaks your English, do she?”

“It’s slipped out,” I said, “but that’s not all she let slip.”

He set his beer on the table and tapped a finger in time with the music. “What she said, her?”

“She said there are dead bodies.”

“She don’t always knows when to keeps her educated mouf shuts, her.”

“Is that why we’re here?” I asked.

He spat between his bare feet. “You be here so I can looks in your eyes and shake your hand. Ain’t no two other tings on dis Earf dat says more ’bout a man den his lookin’ in your eyes and shakin’ your hand.”

I stood, extended my hand, and never broke eye contact.

He looked up at me and then back down at the bench. “We done did dat, Chase. Ole Kennef done knows what kinda man you is. Me believe maybe dey done gived the wrong name to da wrong man. Maybe you is the Gator for reals, ’cause you is da kind o’ man what chomps down on sompin’ and don’t never lets it go—just like dem big ol’ hungry gators out in da bayou.”

I did my best Cajun accent. “Tells ol’ Chase ’bout dem bodies, you.”

He cackled until I thought another tooth might fall out. When he opened his mouth again, he spoke in the clearest voice I’d heard until that moment. “I can speak English, too, but I have to think about it awfully hard.”

“Stop stalling,” I said. “Let’s hear about the bodies.”

He watched the moon staring back at him for a long moment. “It prolly ain’t none of my business, but I make my livin’ out der in dem bayous.”

“You catch alligators for a living?”

He shook his head. “No, I just hunt dem gators for to eat and ’cause it’s fun. I sell a few, but I’m in the loggin’ trade.”

“The logging trade?” I asked. “I didn’t know there was a logging industry down here.”

He said, “It prolly ain’t the kind of loggin’ trade you be tinking ’bout. Dem good logs—dem ones what have been under da water for long as you been on dis Earf—dem is the ones I make a livin’ on.”

It wasn’t his accent that confused me at that moment. “I’m not following. How do you make a living with trees that are underwater?”

He made a fist and tapped it to his mouth several times. “Do you know how to breathe tru one of dem scuba tings?”

“Yes, sir. I’m a diver, but I’ve not seen any water down here that I was excited to get into.”

“Tomorrow’s da day, Chase. How ’bout dat Gator boy? Do he know how?”

“Yes, sir. He’s an excellent diver.”

“Good. Den, tomorrow, we goin’ divin’.”

He reclaimed his beer and stood. “Get youself some sleep. We be goin’ ’fore dat ol’ sun make it hot out der.”

Gator staggered away from the horde of dancers and planted himself back on the bench.

“You look like you had quite the workout. Where’s your new girlfriend?”

He wiped his brow. “She said she had to work early in the morning, so she handed me off to a pair of her friends. You’ve got to get me out of here. These girls are going to kill me.”

“What a way to go,” I said. “Did you learn anything about the bodies?”

He swallowed half a beer. “No. Every time I brought it up, she danced around the subject…literally.”

“I got the same treatment from Mr. LePine, but he’s taking us diving in the morning ’fore dat ol’ sun make it hot out der.”

He shook his head. “Please don’t ever do that again. Where are we going diving?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea, but we’re apparently going early.”

* * *

The shower in the camper Mr. LePine provided for us was apparently built for horse jockeys. I banged my elbows, knees, and head on every surface, but I managed to get mostly clean before crawling into the bed that was at least a foot shorter than me.

Sleep came, but it was brief. Mr. Lepine woke us at 4:30 the next morning by banging on the camper and yelling something neither of us understood. We rolled out of our racks and stumbled our way to the truck. He threw a pair of brown paper bags toward us, and we managed to catch them. Upon opening them, we discovered sandwiches of meat and eggs.

“You bellies gonna need dat, boys. Eat up.”

We obeyed and scarfed down the sandwiches while drinking the strongest coffee on the planet out of paper cups.

“Thank you for breakfast,” Gator said. “What was it?”

“Dat der be nutria and eggs.”

Gator leaned toward me and whispered, “What’s nutria?”

“Trust me. You don’t want to know.”

We rode for almost an hour as the morning sky lightened to the east.

After we pulled into a parking area at a boat launch, Gator asked, “Did we forget the boat?”

Mr. LePine motioned toward the dock, where a strange-looking machine rested, bobbing on the water. “Dats my boat and driver right der. Let’s go, boys. You don’t wanna keep her waitin’. She charges by da hour.”

We climbed from the truck and followed the old Cajun to the dock. The boat was empty except for piles of chain, line, lift bags, and scuba gear. We climbed aboard, and Mr. Lepine pressed the starter switches. The machine roared to life and sounded a little like the Merlin under the cowling of the P-51 Mustang back in our hangar at Bonaventure.

“Those things sound like monsters,” I said.

He grinned. “Just wait, you. You ain’t never seen nothin’ like dis here. You best hold on to you’s toes.”

“I’ve never feared losing my toes on a boat, but I’ll take your advice. Where’s the captain you mentioned?”

He pointed toward the tree line. “Der she come. She prolly been peein’ on a stump.”

When the captain arrived on the dock, she smiled down at her dance partner from the previous night. “Good to see I didn’t wear you out last night, Boogaloo.”

Gator offered a hand, and Cecilia took it and jumped aboard. My partner enjoyed watching her walk to the cockpit a little more than he should have, but I couldn’t blame him. As beautiful as she was dancing under the moon eight hours earlier, there’s something undeniably sexy about a woman at the controls of a boat.

I cast off the lines, and she shoved the throttles forward. The bow of the metal boat leapt into the air, blocking our view, but only for seconds. As the hull planed on top of the water, the bow sank, and we settled onto the surface at what had to be fifty knots.

Mr. LePine turned his hat backward and yelled, “I told you! Where dem toes at now, huh?”

We raced across the body of water that was only slightly less murky than the bayou on the previous day’s gator-hunting adventure. As the sun broke over the horizon, I admired the endlessly flat terrain dotted by tree lines in every direction.

“We gotta get us one of these,” Gator yelled.

I leaned close to his ear. “Are you talking about the boat or the captain?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Both.”

Cecilia eased the throttles back, and the boat settled into the water. She brought the sonar online and slowly trolled a course parallel to the gently sloping bank fifty yards away. She and Mr. LePine stared at the small screen as we progressed to the northeast with the boat barely moving across the water.

Kenneth said, “There they go! Right there!”

Cecilia tossed a buoy overboard with a spring-loaded reel and lead weight attached to the base. When the contraption hit the water, the weight sank to the bottom while the spring kept tension on the thin line. We continued moving slowly forward until the sonar screen changed dramatically, and Cecilia tossed a second buoy overboard.

We anchored in thirteen feet of water about ten feet off the line between the two buoys, and she shut down the engines.

“Uncle Ken tells me you’re both divers.”

We nodded, and Gator said, “We’re both combat diver qualified from the Army’s school in Key West.”

She nodded, but Gator’s attempt to impress her crashed and burned.

She cocked her head. “They got gators at that school?”

My Gator shook his head.

After we donned our dive gear, still unimpressed, Cecilia asked, “How about the four Fs? Did they teach you those at the Army school?” Gator sighed, and she said, “We’re going to find ’em, flag ’em, free ’em, and float ’em. That’s the four Fs. The visibility is less than zero down there, so everything will be by feel. Which one of you wants to go first?”

Gator looked at me with something akin to terror in his eyes, and I volunteered. Cecilia and I stepped over the stern and sank into the black water. She held my hand, and I wondered just how much Gator would enjoy that part of the adventure. She led me to the bottom, and we swam toward the first buoy. When we arrived, she guided my hand to a log that must’ve been four feet in diameter. She tacked a piece of surveyor’s flagging to the end, and we swam the length of the log. She repeated the process of flagging the distant end of the log and drew a pair of small, folding shovels from our gear before demonstrating the technique of freeing the log from the muddy bottom with the blade of the shovel. We worked on opposite sides of the log until we reached the end where we’d begun.

Next, she drew a massive lift bag from her gear and rigged the line around the log, and then we rigged four more lift bags along the length of the log. After tugging on the rigging to ensure it was secure, Cecilia inflated each of the bags to half capacity. With that done, we surfaced, and Mr. LePine tossed a jumbled collection of chain and straps at us. We caught the mess, and the weight of the rigging pulled me beneath the water. I inflated my buoyancy compensator and returned to the surface.

She said, “We’re going to rig this about two feet from each end of the log.”

I nodded my understanding, and Mr. LePine extended a massive steel structure over the back of the boat with a cable extending from the end of the boom. Cecilia connected the cable to the cradle, and we headed back for the bottom.

With the cradle connected, we began the slow process of filling each lift bag with air until the log separated from the muddy bottom and began its slow rise. After double-checking the rigging, we surfaced again, and she gave the thumbs-up.

Mr. LePine cranked the engines and backed the stern of the boat almost directly above the log. The homemade crane brought the cable taut and slowly lifted the log from the bottom. When it broke the surface, he stopped the crane, leaving the log resting with the top half of its diameter above the water. He handed a wire brush to Cecilia, and she scrubbed the surface of the log in one spot for several minutes. When she backed away, Mr. Lepine produced a nozzle that must’ve been attached to a pressure washer somewhere in the boat. In seconds, the exposed wood shined almost white in the early morning sun.

“Dat’s a goodun der, girl. How many mores?”

She said, “Maybe a dozen. It’s going to be a long day.”

We swam away from the boat, and the crane’s work began again. It took it several minutes, but the log was finally resting on the gunwales of the boat and hanging over each side. When it was securely chained to the craft, Cecilia said, “Okay, Pretty Boy. It’s time. Let’s see if you learn as well as your boss.”

Gator stepped over the transom and descended beneath the surface, hand-in-hand with Cecilia.

“I reckon dat boy be sweet on my gran’-niece, don’t you?”

“Who wouldn’t be?” I asked.

He rubbed a hand across the log. “Ain’t she somethin’?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know anything about timber. To me, it just looks like a huge, muddy log.”

I’d come to love Kenneth LePine’s laughter. The whole world should get to laugh like that a dozen times a day. Although I didn’t envy the physical demands of his life, I began to envy him living in that uncomplicated world. He didn’t have a cell phone, a watch, or any need for dental floss.

After the second successful lift of the day, Gator and Cecilia climbed back aboard, and she studied the two logs carefully.

“Are they cypress?” Gator asked.

I was impressed.

Cecilia still was not. “No, they’re Nyssa aquatica, the water tupelo, but cypress wasn’t a bad guess. Some people call them black gum tupelo. That’s not technically correct, though. These have probably been down there for seventy-five years or more.”

Gator shook like a dog shedding water. “How do you know so much about logs?”

She said, “I may not have graduated from that fancy Army diving school of yours, but I do have a master’s degree in agronomy from LSU.”

Gator chuckled. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

She plucked a glob of mud from his hair. “Don’t worry, Pretty Boy. Sooner or later, you’ll do something to impress me.”

Once Gator was fully trained on the underwater operation, the three of us found, flagged, freed, and floated sixteen logs that day. The boat was only capable of carrying four at a time, so we made several trips to the timber yard, where the logs were measured and graded. Each visit to the yard landed a thicker wad of cash in Mr. LePine’s hand, and when the day was finally over, he threw an arm around me and said, “I guess it be time to tell y’all ’bout dem dead bodies.”