It seemed hardly fair.
“DON’T GO BACK by that lighted house, man. Go back the way we come,” Bertrand said from the bow of the boat.
“No, man, we’re hauling ass. We ain’t bothered them people. They ain’t gonna bother us,” Eddy said, sitting sideways in the stern, opening up the throttle.
“You just don’t listen, man,” Bertrand said, his words lost in the roar of the engine.
The boat swerved through clumps of broken tree limbs in the street and raked on the curbing along the neutral ground. Andre was laughing, sticking his hand down in the vinyl bag to feel the tightly packed bundles of cash there, his nephew eating one of the candy bars he’d found in the Rite Aid. The wind had cleared the smoke off the street, and the water was black, stained with a rainbow slick, a busted main pumping a geyser in the air like a fountain in the park. If Bertrand got out of this with his share of the score intact, he was leaving New Orleans forever, starting over in a new place, maybe out on the West Coast, where people lived in regular neighborhoods, with parks and beaches and nice supermarkets close by. Yeah, a place where it was always seventy-five degrees and he could open a restaurant or a car wash with the money from the score and tool down palm-lined avenues in a brand-new convertible, Three 6 Mafia blaring from the speakers.
Yeah, that was the way it was going to be.
The motor coughed once, sputtered, and died. The boat rose on its wake and glided into a fallen oak limb, the branches scratching loudly against the aluminum sides. Bertrand could feel his skin shrink on his face, his ears popping in the silence. “I don’t believe it,” he said.
“It’s out of gas. It ain’t my fault,” Eddy said.
“You never looked at the gauge?” Bertrand said.
“You didn’t look at it, either, man. Get off my case,” Eddy said.
“Maybe the line just got something in it,” Andre said.
“It’s empty, man,” Eddy said.
Andre stood up clumsily, rocking the boat. He tugged at the gas can and slammed it back down. “What we gonna do?”
“You gonna shut up. You gonna stop making all that noise,” Bertrand said.
“I’m just trying to help, man. We can tow it,” Andre said.
“There’s water out there that’s six feet deep,” Bertrand said.
Andre started to speak again.
“Just let me think,” Bertrand said.
The four of them sat silently in the darkness, the branches of the downed oak limb sticking them in the eyes and the backs of their necks each time the wind blew against the boat.
Bertrand stepped over the side into the water. “Y’all wait here. Don’t do nothing. Don’t talk. Don’t make no noise. Don’t be playing wit’ the money in the bag. Keep your ass in the boat and your mout’ shut. Y’all got that?”
“What you gonna do?” Eddy said.
“Hear that sound? The man over there got generators in his garage. That means he got gas cans in his garage.”
“Why you walking bent over, wit’ your hand on your stomach?” Andre asked.
“’Cause y’all give me ulcers,” Bertrand replied.
“I ain’t meant nothing by it. You a smart man,” Andre said.
No, just not as dumb as y’all, Bertrand thought to himself.
He waded across the neutral ground and approached the driveway of the lighted house. A bulb burned on the front gallery and another inside the porte cochere. A light in the kitchen fell through the windows on part of the driveway and the backyard. His heart was hammering against his rib cage, his pulse jumping in his neck. He tripped on a curbstone and almost fell headlong into the water. In the darkness he thought he saw eyes looking at him from the tangles of brush and tree limbs in the yard. He wondered if he was losing his mind. He stopped and stared into the yard, then realized wood rabbits had sought refuge from the floodwater and had climbed into the downed limbs and were perched there like birds, their fur sparkling with moisture.
Bertrand worked his way around the far side of the porte cochere, avoiding the light. He crossed between two huge camellia bushes, the leaves brushing back wetly against his arms, and entered the parking area by what uptown white people called “the carriage house.” Why did they call it a carriage house when they didn’t own no carriages? He asked himself. ’Cause that’s a way of telling everybody Robert E. Lee took a dump in their commode in 1865?
He could hear at least two generators puttering beyond the half-opened door of the “carriage house.” Then he detoured through the backyard and crossed into the neighbor’s property, looked around, and removed an object from under his shirt. He bent over briefly, then retraced his steps back into Otis Baylor’s yard, his ulcers digging their roots deeper into his stomach lining. He stepped inside the carriage house and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Five jerry cans of gasoline were lined against the wall. He hefted up one in each hand and headed for the street, the St. Augustine grass by the porte cochere squishing under his shoes, the weight of the gas swinging in the cans. He had pulled it off. Right on, Bertrand. Stomp ass and take names, my brother, a voice said inside him.
Then he was past the apron of electrical light that shone into the yard, back into the safety of the street and the warmth of the floodwater that covered his ankles and rose up the calves of his legs like an old friend. Soon he would split from Eddy and the Rochons and be home free and free at last, loaded with money for good doctors and the good life. It would be Adios, all you stupid motherfuckers, Bertrand Melancon is California-bound.