Blood River Page 3

  She grinned. “That sounds good.”

  When our beers arrived, I ordered a large Undertaker. Then I leaned back in the booth and took a big pull from the beer. The band was still tinkering and tuning up their instruments.

  “So, how do you know Leo?” Jess asked. “You don’t look like military.”

  “No, that person I told you that went missing. Leo and I met while I was looking for her. He helped me out. We thought that the same person who took my friend had kidnapped his sister too.”

  “Oh,” she said. “You were involved in that? I was on the Appalachian Trail when that happened, but I heard that Leo found Rhiannon’s body and was able to bury her.”

  I nodded slowly. “Yeah, we clicked. Leo and I come from different backgrounds, but we just seem to connect.”

  “I wonder where he is now,” she said.

  “With Leo, it’s best not to know,” I said.

  “He is a good guy, isn’t he? We don’t see each other anymore. It’s been almost ten years since I saw him.”

  “He is great. Part of what he and I have in common is we like justice. We both believe in right and wrong, and we don’t mind fighting for it.”

  “Maybe you should have joined the military too,” she commented.

  I shrugged. “Probably would have changed my life a lot for sure. I was pretty messed up when I got out of high school. My parents were killed. I partied and drank my way through college. The military would have been good for me, I’m sure. But my sense of right and wrong was instilled in me long before that.”

  “Your parents?”

  “Yeah, both of them were good people. My dad was a lawyer who fought injustice until he died. My mother just supported everything he did.”

  “They sound nice,” Jess said. “My parents were more geared toward the college and success path. My mom was good, but nothing we ever did measured up. She expected more. When Chad and I both rebelled against that idea, she was so angry. How dare we skip college to travel? We would amount to nothing, in her eyes.”

  “Sad. Lots of folks are that way. Think that we all have to fit a mold.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “like troops of Nazis.”

  I laughed. “I don’t know that going to college makes you a Nazi. A lemming, maybe.”

  She smiled and drank her beer. “That’s good. I could use a few of those.”

  “A few it is, then.” I drank another large swallow from the bottle as our pizza arrived.

  5

  Opening my eyes, I could tell by the sunlight beaming into the window that is was a little before eight. I had an almost vehement hatred toward mornings and alarm clocks. I rarely used them. I prefer to wake up as God intended, at a reasonable hour. If man were meant to be up before dawn, then the night would end earlier. In an effort to ensure I still got up a little closer to that reasonable time without being up with the chickens, I left the curtains cracked open. The hotel was virtually empty, so I figured the chances of a peeping Tom showing up was slim. If he did, then I hoped my snoring in the nude was enough of an excitement for him or her. I didn’t want to discriminate.

  Finding a hotel after we finished our pizza and numerous beers was relatively easy. The Osceola Inn was the closest to the pizza joint, so I ran over and checked in while Jess had another beer. I think the food and alcohol helped alleviate some of Jess’s worries. We even enjoyed the band when they started playing. They played a bluegrass rock mix, and while they were not destined for more than weekday gigs at the local pizza place, they were entertaining and lively. Still, it was fun to listen, and I bought the band a round of drinks. I’m a big fan of supporting the arts.

  When we finally walked over to our hotel, Jess was stumbling and slurring. Her tolerance wasn’t quite up to mine, as I was feeling nothing from the beers. Jess didn’t put the effort into alcohol tolerance that I had. Some people don’t understand the training and rigor of such a life.

  She was giggly, but not quite flirty. Not a surprise. She never came across as the flirtatious type. She was an introvert through and through. While she warmed up to me, she was obviously more comfortable in her own company. She was quite different from her cousin, who was so out-going that he sometimes made me uncomfortable.

  The room smelled like stale cigarette smoke, despite it being a non-smoking room. Its early days had obviously seen a smoking clientele, and the rugs and curtains seemed original to the building. Trudging to the shower, I wondered why mid-range hotels had to have showers that looked like the guy in the room before had butchered a sheep in it. At least, I hoped it was only a sheep. Luckily, while I might pass judgment, it doesn’t tend to impede me. Fifteen minutes later, I was dressed and cleaner.

  I told Jess to call the room when she woke up. However, given her condition when we got to the hotel, I guessed that she was still sleeping off the ales she drank.

  Deciding to give her a few minutes, I walked down to the lobby where a free breakfast buffet was offered with the room. The breakfast, if indeed it could be called that, was prepackaged muffins, bread for toast, little patties of eggs that looked like rubber hockey pucks, and oatmeal. Thankfully, there was coffee. I poured a cup, made a piece of toast, and returned to the room.

  My phone said it was twenty minutes after eight, and I had a few messages and notifications. Sitting on the bed, I scrolled through them. Most of my mailbox was filled with junk. Luckily, not all junk. The email from Captain Charlie caught my attention.

  “Yes, we met Chad several times. We would pass each other on the river every other port. We actually had drinks with him in Cairo. We were leaving the next morning and asked if he wanted to meet up in Memphis. We were staying a few days there before heading on south. He said that he planned to stop off around New Madrid. He mentioned exploring the Kentucky Bend by kayak if he could find a good anchorage. We never saw him in Memphis, and just assumed he got delayed along the way. We hope you find him. He’s a great guy. If we can help at all, please reach out to us. We will ask a few other Loopers as we make port.”

  I sat back on the bed. This might narrow our search greatly. Clicking the icon, I brought the map app up on my phone. Scrolling along the map, I followed the Mississippi River until I saw New Madrid, Missouri. The river goes south and then takes a sharp turn north and another sharp turn south. This left a small section of Kentucky surrounded by the Mississippi River with Missouri on the opposite side of the river at every angle and Tennessee at the southern border. It was like a little island of Kentucky several miles from the rest of the state. The satellite view showed one road going into the island from Tennessee. It had several side roads and a few houses in the area. Most of the island was either farmland or woods.

  Searching the internet for more information, I came across the Wikipedia page which detailed the Kentucky Bend. Apparently, around 1811 and 1812, the Mississippi River was disrupted by a rather large earthquake on the New Madrid fault line. The initial earthquake was so severe that it decimated the town of New Madrid, Missouri, toppled chimneys in St. Louis, rang a bell in Boston, Massachusetts, and caused the Mississippi River to flow backward. The earthquake cut a new route for the river causing the creation of Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee, just south of the Kentucky Bend, and separated the approximate 27 square miles from the rest of Kentucky.

  The Kentucky Bend was disputed for years before Tennessee dropped the claim in 1848. The fertile land became great for farming, and eventually, a small community slowly grew there as farmers began moving in to plow the fields. The history of the Bend was even recorded, or more likely exaggerated, by Mark Twain as he told of the long-standing feud between two families on the Bend in his book, Life on the Mississippi.

  My mother read me so many books by Mark Twain that my interest was piqued. Twain’s twist on the history was fascinating. I vaguely remembered the book mentioned, but it didn’t have the excitement and adventure that the stories of Tom and Huck had.

  Looking over the map, I traced the route of the river until I found the Bend. From New Madrid, the easiest route was to head south. There were several areas one could find a good anchorage, especially if the Sarai drew a shallow draft. The map appeared to show lots of little inlets that could be explored. The problem was the only road leading into the area barely covered the Bend but certainly didn’t come close enough to all access to the areas we need to explore. In fact, it was miles of wooded area. We would probably need to search for the Sarai from the water.

  Our best course would be to head north to New Madrid. Probably a 30-minute drive from here. Then, we have to figure out how to cross the river. Maybe a fisherman would be willing to ferry us over.

  Whatever we needed to do, we needed to do it soon. It was already after nine, and daylight was burning.

  I dialed Jess’s room number on the hotel phone.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “I have a lead. You might want to get up and get rolling pretty quick.”

  “’Kay,” she muttered into the phone and hung up.

  She sounded like she could use a strong cup of coffee.

  6

  We made a decision to go in prepared. By we, I mean Jess suggested it. There was a lot of shoreline to search, although the most protected anchorage was on the west side of the Bend.

  After some arguing over our procurement procedures, I talked Jess into letting me buy the stuff we needed. She has a very prideful streak that makes her want to force her independent woman status down the throat of everyone. I liked it, but she only had $250 to her name.

  The plan was simple, gear up, cross the river, and find any sign of Chad or Sarai. Step one was to gear up. We visited the one place where we could get everything, the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Caruthersville. The superstore may have put all the small town shops out of business, but it also provided a wide range of products to cover our needs. We left the store with two fishing kayaks, two small tents, and some nonperishable food we could carry with us. Basically, everything we might need for a backpacking trip into the wilds of Kentucky.

  Once loaded, we scurried up the interstate 30 miles to New Madrid, Missouri. The town was almost a ghost town. There were a few houses on the road to downtown, and a short stretch of street around downtown, which consisted of a couple of blocks of buildings that were mostly empty except for a beauty salon. Despite the thriving beauty business, this little community just looked to be gasping its death rattle. The liveliest place was at the end of the main street that dead-ended with a trail leading to a wooden deck overlooking the Mississippi River.

  We took a turn on a side road marked by a blue sign with a stick image of a boat and trailer sitting in the water. The single-lane road followed along the river, offering a beautiful view. Along the side were a number of spots where we could splash our kayaks. However, the river is somewhat treacherous and has been known to take even the most experienced people under. So we wanted to cross quickly. I started looking for the best launch site that had space for me to park.

  Jess touched my arm as we neared a small gravel pull-off.

  “I think if we go in here,” Jess said pointing at where we were on the map, “then we can use the current to help us cross here at the oxbow in the river.”

  “The river is about a mile across at all points,” I said. “If the river flows about a mile an hour, then with some paddling help, we should be across in less than that.”

  The river looked empty of traffic right now, but that could change. Barges and towboats moved downriver like it was an interstate. Besides the current, we would need to be ready to move out of the way of anything traveling downriver. Stopping or turning a collection of barges that extend the distance of a football field is virtually impossible. Our goal would be to move out of their way.

  We unloaded the truck and stored the gear on the kayaks. Jess sneered at the waterproof bags I bought, but I didn’t want to sleep in wet clothes, tent or bedding of any kind. Apparently, she thought that made me a city boy. I shrugged it off knowing I was a city boy. As it was, I wasn’t carrying an extra bottle of bourbon on the trip, I certainly wasn’t about to sleep wet and sober.

  Within thirty minutes, I had locked up the truck, and hidden a spare key nearby. That was a lesson I learned years earlier when I was in high school canoeing one of the spring-fed rivers of the Ozarks. The canoe flipped, and my keys and wallet ended up in the river. My wallet floated long enough for me to grab it, but the keys vanished to the depths. My friend and I ended up sleeping on the ground until my dad could drive up with the extra key.

  I waded into the river and launched the kayaks. Now, we were floating. The current was powerful, dragging the kayaks in what felt like multiple directions, and I spent more time trying to keep the kayak straight than moving it forward. A few fishing boats were scattered about the waterway, but we were lucky to have no barges in sight, yet. After paddling a little over an hour, we were able to get across, but the current had done a good job of moving us downriver as we crossed. The kayaks moved along the eastern shore as we explored. Eventually, we found ourselves near the mouth of an inlet protected by a sandbar that had grown over the years into a sliver of an island complete with brush and saplings. The mouth had ample room for most boats to navigate.

  Once past the sliver of land, the current vanished. The kayaks weren’t being spun and turned at the whims of the river. We glided into the calmer waters. A large bass surfaced next to my paddle, and then he vanished under the water. The main channel of the river was suddenly gone from view as we curved around the bend. The inlet was easily 75 yards wide. The banks on either side cut clean of vegetation by the river at its high water mark, leaving muddy slopes. The river had been loud with the splashing water and gasping currents, but in this stretch, it was quiet.

  Jess paddled ahead as I peered over the bank. Past the riverbanks of mud, the Bend turned quickly to the wild. The world seemed to slide back to the prehistoric. A din of buzzing filled the air. The forest loomed over us, and I imagined pits of snakes slithering among the branches. I, immediately, recalled meeting a surveyor with the Army Corps of Engineer that had the job of surveying a stretch of the river in a canoe. He told stories of snakes dropping from the trees into his boat. I told myself that he was prone to exaggeration, however, I kept glancing at the trees. I didn’t want to scream like a little girl if one did drop down. Jess might think less of me suddenly.

  I stroked three times quickly to close the gap between us.

  “Beautiful,” I said when I was within ten feet of Jess’s kayak. It was beautiful, but I still didn’t want to think about the snakes.

  “Yeah, amazing. I love to look at how the water has molded the landscape. This inlet was probably all land, and the water cut through widening it over the years.”

  “Nature’s artwork. Years of work. Would you think less of me if I break into a rendition of “Old Man River?”

  Jess smiled. Something I hadn’t see her do a lot over the last two days. But on that she did, it was so genuine. She had two teeth that were slightly crooked, and as soon as she smiled, she pulled her mouth back to hide them. A shame that she was self-conscious. The honesty of the smile was beautiful, and the teeth themselves emphasized the simplistic allure that she had. A girl who didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. Except, of course, she did.

  The sandbar island protected us for over a mile. We paddled slowly up the river. After a few minutes of being out of the river current, I noticed there was still a current here. Compared to the main waterway, it was nonexistent, but it was still strong enough to take us back downriver if we stopped paddling.

  “This seems like a perfect place to anchor,” I commented. “Protected from the river and any traffic. The current isn’t so strong that it would drag the anchor if the hold was good.”

  “Where is he then?” she asked. She didn’t display the worry much, but I could tell she carried it with her.

  “You do know it’s possible he isn’t here? Or he could be on the other side of this peninsula.” I continued, “He could have been here till this morning and pulled the hook to head south.”

  “I know. But if he was okay, then he would have called or emailed or something.”

  I stared up at the treetops. She should be warned that we were most likely going to come up empty-handed. Somehow, I didn’t think she wanted any hopes dashed, yet.

  “Look,” I pointed ahead. “There’s a fork.”

  About a quarter mile ahead of us, there was a smaller inlet that veered west into the Bend. We paddled forward until we reached it. The inlet looked to be a smaller waterway. Maybe a small river or just another cut in the land made by the Mississippi. It was wide enough to take a boat up, and at the mouth, it was at least eight feet deep. At least that’s as far as I could shove my paddle down without hitting bottom.

  “That’s even more protected,” I said.

  “Chad would have taken that one if he saw it,” she stated with stern resolution. “He would love the idea of being farther away from everyone.”

  “Let’s explore it then.”

  This cut through the land became spooky quickly. The trees and brush hung over, shielding the sunlight from the river. The filtered rays gave the river a jungle aura, and the sudden splash of something into the waters added to the feeling.

  “I love this,” Jess said. “It’s like we are in a fantasy novel. Like we are paddling through the Mirkwood.”

  “Or the start of a good horror movie. If you hear any banjos playing, we are leaving.”

  “What? Why banjos?”

  “It’s from a movie,” I said shaking my head. “A really terrible movie about some guys canoeing a river and how Ned Beatty’s agent hated him.”

  “Max,” I heard her say as I paddled behind her.

  “What?” My kayak glided up alongside hers.

  “Look,” she said and pointed at a bend in the river. Past the turn was what looked like a boat.

  We both stroked through the water quickly with our paddles and raced around the curve. In front of us was a wooden boat. The name Sarai stenciled on the stern.