Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

The tide was coming in, flowing like a river through the pilings under our feet. The grasses along the edges of the channel had turned yellow and, in some areas, brown and could be torn loose from their root systems in the sediment like handfuls of human hair. That’s an unpleasant simile to use, but to me it seems appropriate. The tupelo cypress and willow and gum trees and cattails and bamboo were being killed slowly through their root systems, the leaves in old-growth trees dying first. Ironically, the saline was reconfiguring the very channels that carried the salt water into the swamp. One of the first channels we had cut was no longer a straight line. Its banks had eroded and collapsed in places, and it had taken on the shape of a huge sulfurous-colored slug that a giant had stepped on.

The damage wasn’t confined to saltwater intrusion. Our bulldozing and dredging operations had dammed up streams and caused stagnation in ponds that were now coated with mosquitoes and a thick bacterial film as thick as paint dried on top of a bucket; you could pick it up like a tattered, soggy garment on the end of a stick.

It wasn’t good to brood upon the excesses of the Industrial Age, I told myself. Give unto Caesar. That was the latitude given to us by Our Lord. The earth abideth forever, said the writer in Ecclesiastes. Who was I to argue with Scripture? Unfortunately, my debates with myself on these matters were becoming more and more frequent.

“There’s Hershel,” Rosita said.

He was walking down the right-of-way toward the platform, wearing a slouch hat and khakis and a navy blue corduroy shirt and his old field jacket. I had no idea why he had come down to Grand Isle. My puzzlement wasn’t lost on him.

“I had to get out of Houston. I guess I’m just not good at big cities,” he said. “Let’s go up to the café and have some étouffée.”

But Hershel was a poor actor. During lunch, he seemed to catch about half of what either Rosita or I said. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “My father isn’t doing well. I thought I might go up to the farm and spend a couple of days with him.”

“That’d be fine, Hershel,” I said. “Everything is on track at both offices.”

“He wants to go squirrel and bird hunting,” he said.

“Pardon?” I asked.

“My father. He wants to get out his twenty-gauge and make a squirrel-and-robin stew and shell pecans and make a pie. It’s funny how old people retreat into the past, like it can bring back their youth. I think this might be his last Christmas.”

I nodded as though in sympathy, but in reality I believed Hershel was talking about himself, not his father. Then I asked a question I should have left unsaid. “How is Linda Gail?”

He looked at me like a man trapped under an airless glass bell. “Did she call?”

“No,” I replied. “I thought she was about to start work on a new film. It’s about the French Underground, isn’t it?”

“She hasn’t told me a lot,” he said. “I know what I read in the papers.”

Rosita set down her knife and fork. “It’s nice to have you here, Hershel,” she said.

Her words could have been snowflakes sliding down window glass.

THAT EVENING HERSHEL rented a room at the same motor court we were using, way up the two-lane, surrounded by cypress and oak trees hung with Spanish moss. The clouds were lit from behind by the moon, the bamboo that grew along the flooded roadside clattering as loudly as broomsticks. I never knew a more haunted land or one that was more beautiful. I tapped on Hershel’s door.

“It’s open,” he said from inside.

When I opened the door, he was removing his clothes from his suitcase and laying them out on his bed, his back to me. He didn’t bother to turn around. On top of his neatly folded shirts was a 1911-model army-issue .45 automatic.

“When did you start carrying a gun?” I asked.

“Recently,” he replied.

“What for?”

“You never know.”

“Never know what?”

“When you might need one.”

“Did you come here to talk about something, Hershel?”

“She wants to build a house in Santa Monica. I told her we don’t have that kind of money. She said our house in River Oaks looks like a filling station. She doesn’t like our snooty neighbors, either. She says they’re too stupid to know what it means to have a contract at Warner Brothers.”

“Maybe she’s got a point. I mean about your neighbors. It might not be a bad idea to own a home in Southern California. A lot of people say that’s the place to be.”

“You think so?”