"If we don't show up by midnight, call the cops."

"Call the cops," she repeats. "Why do you need Hugh?"

"He knows the river."

"He knows the river."

"See you later."

"Sure," she says absently.

3. THERE'S A DIRT TRACK atop the levee beyond the chain link fence. You can't see the river through the willows of the batture. There's another fence in the willows. The morning sun is already warm. A south wind from the gulf is already pushing up a dark, flat-headed cloud. It is like late summer. My nose has stopped running. Walking the levee in flatlands has the pleasant feel of traveling a level track between earth and sky.

There is no horse patrol in sight, only guard towers on the prison farm, but I'd as soon get off the levee and into the willows. The batture here has been cleared down to the fence. I quicken my stride. The smudge ahead under the cloud must be the loess hills. And here's the crossing fence, crossing the levee and squaring off the two fences running on each side. Beyond the fence a shell road angles up one side of the levee and down the other. The fence is maybe eight feet high, but it is not a good idea to climb it. I'm still in clear view of the near tower. Elmo mentioned the downriver corner. I see why. There's a washout just upriver from the corner, grown up in weeds, but a washout nonetheless, a space gullied under the fence. It is not hard to see. It can only mean that the fence is symbolic and the detainees have no reason to escape, or that the guards, both mounted and in the towers, keep them in sight. Or both.

I make my turn, look back toward Angola, see no one, widen the turn to carry over the brow of the levee to its shoulder, moseying along, hands in pockets like the bored ex-President of Guatemala, down and out of sight of the guard tower. The grass is ankle high, but the footing is good and it is easy to angle down the levee. On the steeper shoulder of the levee at the washout I roll down and under the fence the way you roll down the levee when you're a boy, elbows held in tight, hands over your face.

The willows of the batture are thick. It is good to be in the willows and out of sight. I figure to hit the shell road, which angles away from me, by keeping parallel to the river. The going is heavy, but after a hundred yards or so I hit not shells but a dirt track, hardly wider than a path. This must be Elmo's jeep trail. The soft dirt has three tire tracks, which puzzle me until I remember that deer hunters hereabouts use three-wheelers more than jeeps.

The trail angles toward the river. The batture is dropping away. The dirt is quiet underfoot, but presently there is a roaring. The top of a poplar moves fitfully as if it were being jerked by a human hand. It must be the river, high now and ripping through the batture.

I break out into a junkyard of rusty steel hawsers with caches of trapped driftwood cemented by dried whitened mud, chunks of Styrofoam, tires, Clorox bottles. A rusting hulk of a barge fitted with a crane conveyor is toppled and half sunk. This must have been a transfer facility, no doubt a soybean depot.

The river is on the boom. It's been dry here. They must have had late summer rains in the Dakotas or the Midwest. This stretch is the Raccourci Chute, which goes ripping past Angola even at low water. But now it's up in the willows and a mile wide, roaring and sucking and jerking the willows and blowing a cool, foul breath. A felon might imagine that if he could get over the levee and into the willows he could make it, but no. He'd get caught in the sucks and boils. There's nothing out there but roiled, racing, sulphur-colored water flecked by dirty foam from Dakota farms, Illinois toilets, and ten million boxes of Tide. Angola could just as well be Alcatraz. Looking across toward Raccourci Island, I could swear the river swells, curved up like a watchglass by the boil of a giant spring.

Old Tunica Landing is nothing but a rotten piece of wharf. The raised walk of creosoted planks is solid enough and high enough to clear the rising water in the batture. There's nobody here and the gravel road from Tunica is grown up in weeds. I pick out a dry piling I can sit against and from which I can see up the road without being seen. The landing was used first by the Tunica Indians and then to service the indigo plantations. I came here once to see the Tunica Treasure, a graveyard which somebody dug up and then found, not gold, but glass beads which the English, my ancestors, had given them for their land two hundred years ago. It is nine-thirty.

A little upriver and a ways out is Fancy Point Towhead, an island of willows almost submerged but long enough and angled out enough to deflect the main current and make a backwater. Foam drifts under me upstream. There's another noise above the racket of the current in the batture downstream. It's a towboat pushing fifteen or twenty rafted-up barges upstream. There's not enough room inside the island for him to use the dead water. He has to buck straight up the Chute and he's having a time of it. The current is maybe eight knots, and with his diesels flat out he's maybe making twelve. He sounds like five freight engines going upgrade, drive wheels spinning.

I watch him. There is so much noise that I don't hear Vergil Bon until the plank moves under me. He's carrying a pirogue by its gunwale in one hand, two paddles in the other. The uncle is right behind him, face narrow and dark under his hunting cap. He's carrying his old double-barrel 12-gauge Purdy in the crook of his arm and ambling along in his sprung splayed walk as if he were on his way to a duck blind. They both seem serious but not displeased.

"How you doing, Vergil, Uncle Hugh Bob?" The towboat is noisy.

"Fine."

"Fine."

We shake hands. They gaze around, not at me, equably. They are Louisianians, at ease out-of-doors. The uncle nods and pops his fingers. We could be meeting here every day.

"Did you bust out of there?" asks the uncle companionably, flanking me.

"I have permission. Don't worry about it."

We watch the towboat make the bend, creep past the concrete of the Hog Point revetment, which looks like a gray quilt dropped on the far levee.

"Uncle Hugh Bob, what are you doing with that shotgun?"

"You asked him about that little Woodsman." He nods toward Vergil as if he didn't know him well. "We brought it. But I didn't know what kind of trouble you're in." He's jealous because I asked Vergil.

"We're not going to have any trouble-beyond maybe a mean dog or a snake."

"I'm not going to shoot no dog with a .22. This won't kill him." He pats the shotgun. "What we going to do?"

"We're going to drop down to Belle Ame and pick up Claude. After that you and Claude can take the pirogue on down to Pantherburn. My car is at Belle Ame. I'll bring Vergil back up here to get the truck. We'll see."

That seems to satisfy him. "I brought along my spinning tackle, right here." He pats his game pocket. "Claude can go fishing with me." Then he thinks of something. "What you doing at Angola?" He screws up a milky eye at me.

"It was a misunderstanding. Some federal officers thought I was a parole violator. I have to be back up here at two to straighten it out. Nothing to worry about."

"They not looking for you?"

"No. It's like having a pass."

He nods, not listening. But Vergil is watching me closely. He says nothing.

"Vergil, how long will it take to get down to Belle Ame?"

He answers easily, gauging the current, without changing his expression. "It's not all that far. Just past the hills and where the levee begins again. And in that current-half an hour."

"Twenty minutes," says Uncle Hugh, willing to argue about the river.

"Do they still have a landing?"

Vergil and the uncle laugh. "A landing?" says Vergil. "Doc, that's where the new Tennessee Belle and the Robert E. Lee tie up when they bring tourists up from New Orleans for the Azalea Festival and the Plantation Parade in the spring."

"Do you think that pirogue will hold the three of us out in all that?"

"It took me and my daddy and two hundred pounds of nutria."

"Not out in that," says the uncle. He's offended because I didn't ask him.

"Yes, sir, out in that," says Vergil, telling me. I wish he would pay attention to the uncle. "Right over there on Raccourci Island is where my daddy used to run his traps."

"What do you think, Uncle Hugh Bob?"

The uncle considers, breaks the breech of the Purdy, sights through it. "Well, the trash will be going with us. All we got to worry about is getting run over or hit by a wake like that." The last of the towboat's wake is slapping and sucking under us.

"I tell you what let's do, Doc, Mr. Hugh," says Vergil, appearing to muse. "Mr. Hugh knows more about the river than anybody around here. Anybody can paddle. So why don't we put Mr. Hugh in the middle so he can judge the river, look out for snags, and tell us which way to go if something big is coming down on us. You know those sapsuckers will see you and still run over you."

Thank you, Vergil, for your tact.

"They will," says the uncle, mollified. "But what's he talking about, paddling in that thing? Y'all just worry about steering, ne' mind paddling."

"How much freeboard you reckon we going to have?" I am eyeing the pirogue, still in Vergil's hand. A pirogue is designed for one Cajun in a swamp, kneeling and balancing with a load of muskrat, nutria, or alligator. It can navigate in an inch of water and slide over a hummock of wet grass. It was not designed for three men in the Mississippi River.

"Enough," says Vergil.

"Two inches," says the uncle. "That thing supposed to be in a swamp."

"Not to worry," says Vergil absently, looking on either side of the wharf for a place to launch, and as absently: "What's going on at Belle Ame, Doc?"

"Did Lucy tell you anything?"

"She just said there was some humbug over there and that was why you took Tommy and Margaret out and why we ought to get Claude out." He appears to be inspecting the river intently.

"I don't think we have to worry about Claude, but I thought it better not to take any chances. We'll go get him. I also want to get a line on Dr. Van Dorn. As you know, he's involved in that sodium shunt and maybe in something else."

Vergil says nothing, after a moment nods. "All right, then."

"Something wrong with that fellow," says the uncle.

"Who's that?"

"That Dr. Van."

"What's wrong with him?"

"He's a little on the sweet side."

"Sweet? How do you mean?"

"He's slick behind the ears."

"Let's go," says Vergil. "Over here."

It's a trick getting into the pirogue. The water's a couple of feet below the planking. Vergil has no trouble, holding it steady with one foot and letting himself down, balancing like a cat. He holds fast to the wharf while I get in. We both hold for the uncle.

It's not bad in the dead water behind the towhead. The pirogue is new-style light fiberglass with two seats like a canoe. The uncle sits comfortably on the bottom amidships, arms resting on the gunwales, back against a thwart, like an easy chair. It's a big pirogue. There are perhaps three inches of freeboard.

The going is easy in the dead water, even downriver from the towhead. But there's a noise ahead like the suck of floodwater in a storm drain.

Then it takes us, the current of the Chute. Something grabs the bow at my knee. It's like starting out from the siding in a roller coaster car and being jerked by the big cable. A sluice of brown water ships over my paddle hand and catches the uncle. "Shit!" breathes the uncle. This isn't going to work, I'm thinking. But as soon as we're airborne, caught up in the current, it's better. We could be standing still if you didn't notice the green shapes of the batture slipping by like stage scenery.

It comes down to Vergil steering from the stern and me paddling some, mainly to keep heading up. Dark shapes, logs, scraps of dunnage nuzzle up, drift off, as friendly as dolphins.

"Look out for snags, Doc," says Vergil.

"The snags are going faster than we are."

"Shit, those are not snags," says the uncle at my ear. "Those are stumps, whole trees. Don't worry about them. Do what the man says."

We're settling down. It's even quiet out here. The current carries us close to the Pointe Coupee bank. The pale quilted concrete of a revetment shoots past like railroad cars.

The river turns. Sunlight glitters in the boils and eddies of the current. We're around Tunica Bend and at the foot of Raccourci Island. The levee runs out and the Chute slams straight into the dark hills of Feliciana. We find easier water near the inside of the bend. Now we're gliding along a pencil-size strip of beach on the Pointe Coupee bank. There is a break in the treeline and, beyond, what looks like a tufted lake. It's a hummocky swamp. We're out of the Chute. The racket is behind us. Now it's as quiet here as a bayou, but we're still making good time.

"You know what that is, Mr. Hugh Bob?" asks Vergil behind me. He must be pointing with his paddle.

"I ought to," says the uncle to me. "I been there enough. That's Paul's Slough."

"That's right," says Vergil. "It's also the western end of the Tuscaloosa Trend."

"I know that," says the uncle.

"You go another ten miles west and you got to drill forty thousand feet just to hit gas. This is where the Devonian fault takes a dip."

"That's right," says the uncle to me. "And that ain't all. I'll tell you something else about that piece of water that some folks don't know. I'm talking about that steamboat. Some people don't know about, but his daddy knows about it." His voice went away behind me. He must have jerked his head toward Vergil.

Vergil doesn't answer. We've got crossways of the current and are busy heading up.

The uncle, piqued by Vergil's showing off his geological knowledge, enlists me by tapping my shoulder. He knows some stuff too. "We heard it many a time when we were running our traps. Vergil Senior, his daddy, told me he heard it when he used to spend the night over there before a duck hunt."

"Heard what?" I say, thinking about Belle Ame. "How much farther to Belle Ame, Uncle?"

"Not all that far. Well, you know right here is where the old river used to come in. Right here. You know the Raccourci Cut happened one night during a June rise just like this. All it takes is one little trickle across the neck, then another little rise, a little more water, and before you know it, here comes the whole river piling across and ain't nothing in the world is going to stop it, not the U.S. engineers, nothing. If this river wants to go, it's going to go. Look out! The old river is still over there, you know, about twenty miles of the old river still looping around Raccourci Island, right there, blocked off, right across that neck where the swamp is. You can walk across to it in ten minutes. What happened was this. The night the river decided to come down the Chute, a stern-wheeler was working up the old river. They had a river pilot of course, and he was cussing. I mean, what with the fog and the rain and him fighting the current, he couldn't see bee-idly. It was taking him all night. Then he noticed the water was getting low. He began scraping over sandbars. He'd run aground. And he'd cuss. He didn't know the river had already made the cut across the neck and he was stranded. And he'd back off and head upriver and he'd run aground again. And he cussed. He couldn't get out. He cussed the river, the boat, the captain. He swore an oath. He swore: 'I swear by Jesus Christ I hope this son-of-a-bitching boat never gets out of this goddamn river.' And he never did. What he didn't know was that he was sealed off-the river had already come busting down the Chute. He couldn't get out. But the thing is, they couldn't find the boat. So they thought it had sunk in the storm. They never did find that boat. But I'm here to tell you that there's people, people I know, who have seen that boat in the old river on a foggy night during the June rise."

"Have you seen it, Mr. Hugh?" Vergil asks him.

"I've heard it!" the uncle shouts. "And so has many another. Vergil, his daddy, and I heard it! We was camping out right over there across the slough by Moon Lake and the Old River and you could hear that sapsucker beating up the river through the fog, that old stern-wheel slapping the water like whang whang whang. Vergil Senior claimed he could even hear the pilot cursing. But we heard it!"

"I've heard that story," says Vergil behind him and talking to me past him. "It's part of the folklore of the river. You can hear the same story up and down the river wherever there's been a cutoff. In fact, I've heard the same story from Mr. Clemens."

Don't argue, Vergil.

"What I'm telling you is, I heard it," says the uncle, still talking to me. They argue through me. I half listen. Here's a switch. Here's Vergil, the scientist, skeptic, the new logical positivist, and here's the uncle, defender of old legends, ghost ships, specters.

Let it alone, Vergil.

"The thing is," says Vergil, "either that steamboat is there or it isn't. If it is there, then how come nobody has seen it in daylight or seen the wreck? If it was there and it sank, there would be some sign of it-the Old River is no more than twenty feet deep anywhere. The pilot house would be sticking out. It all reminds me a little bit of modern UFO sightings."

"I'm here to tell you I heard that sucker," cries the uncle.

"Okay. Let me ask you both something." I'm not interested in hearing them try to upstage each other and don't like Vergil patronizing the uncle by talking about Mr. Clemens. To get them off it, I ask them where New Roads is, knowing it is off to the west and that we all have relatives there.

"You see right over there, over that cypress," says Vergil, his paddle coming out of the water. "That's False River and just past it is New Roads and over there is Chevron Parlange Number One, the most famous gas well in history, twenty thousand feet, the discovery well of the whole Tuscaloosa Trend, came in August of '77, a hundred and forty thousand cubic feet per second, that's a million dollars a day. So big, in fact, it blew out."

"You talking about Miss Lucy Parlange's place," says the uncle. "And it couldn't have happened to a nicer lady."

"My auntee lives there too," says Vergil. "She still lives in the same little house on False River. But she had a piece of land over by Parlange when they hit that big well. My auntee leased her place for a hundred thousand."

"That old Parlange house been in the same family for two hundred and fifty years," says the uncle. "Through thick and thin. They never gave up."

"My auntee neither," says Vergil.

They tell stories about the big oil strike at False River, who got rich, how money ruined some.

"Blood will tell ever' time," says the uncle. "You take the Parlanges. They were aristocrats when they didn't have it, and when they got it, it made no difference."

"My auntee too," says Vergil. "She raised my daddy when his mamma got consumption and had to go to Greenwell Spring."