going to have to gut it out.
TWO NARROW STREETS ARE all that remain of Lower’ville, the den of the demimonde who lived in the shadow of the Bienville bluff in the nineteenth century. Two hundred years ago, this infamous river landing offered flatboatmen and steamboat crews everything from gambling and fancy women to prime whiskey and rentable dueling pistols. Through Lower’ville moved a brisk trade in everything from long-staple cotton to African slaves, enriching the nabobs who lived in the glittering palaces atop the bluff and whose money flowed back into the district as payment for exclusive vices.
Today all that has changed. The relentless river has reduced Lower’ville to two parallel streets and the five short alleys that link them, most of which are lined with tourist bars and restaurants. The Sun King Gaming Company maintains a small office and transit bus stop here to serve its garish Louis Quatorze–themed casino, which stands a mile upriver. A local tour operator runs open-air buses from down here, and a whiskey distiller practices his craft in an old warehouse butted against the foot of the bluff. Everything else is overpriced shops. There are no whores, steamboat captains, knife-wielding flatboatmen, or pistol duels. The duels happen in Bucktown these days, the weapons of choice being the Glock and the AR-15. For gambling you have to shuttle upriver to the Sun King. I almost never visit this part of town, and on the rare occasion that I’m forced to meet someone in one of the river-facing restaurants, I sit with my back to the picture windows, so I don’t have to look at the big water.
Today I won’t have the luxury of avoiding my stressor. Parking my Ford Flex a few feet from the river’s edge, I spy the county rescue boat anchored in the current a quarter mile south of the landing, a hundred yards out in the river. A broken line of people stands watching the desultory action on the water. Three-quarters of a mile beyond the bobbing boat, the low shore of Louisiana hovers above the river. The sight from this angle brings on a wave of nausea, partly because of the river, but also because I’m starting to internalize the reality that Buck Ferris could have left the planet last night while I slept in my bed. I knew he might be in danger, yet wherever he went last night, he went alone.
Forcing myself to look away from the opposite shore, I walk downstream from the gawkers to get a clear line of sight to the boat. Without binoculars I can’t see much, but the two deputies on board appear to be trying to wrestle something out of the water on the far side of the boat.
There are three kinds of snags in the river, all of which could, and did, wreck many a steamboat back in the age of Mark Twain. The worst is the “planter,” which occurs when an entire tree uprooted by the river wedges itself into the bottom and becomes braced by accumulating silt. Often showing only a foot or two of wood above the water, these massive trees lever gently up and down in the current, waiting to rip deadly gashes in the hulls of boats steered by careless pilots. Given the deputies’ obvious difficulties, I figure they’re struggling to free the corpse from a half-submerged fork in a planter. Even after accomplishing this, they’ll have to deadlift his body over the gunwale of the rescue boat, which is no easy task. As I ponder their predicament, the obvious question runs through my mind: What are the odds that a man who fell into a mile-wide river would float into one of the few obstacles that could have stopped him from being washed toward the Gulf of Mexico?
While I watch the sweat-stained backs of the deputies, a whirring like a swarm of hornets passes over my head, pulling my attention from the boat. Looking up, I see a small quad-rotor drone—a DJI, I think—zoom out over the water at about a hundred feet of altitude, making for the sheriff’s department boat. The drone ascends rapidly as it approaches the craft; whoever is piloting it obviously hopes to avoid pissing off the deputies. Knowing the Tenisaw County Sheriff’s Department as I do, I doubt that pilot will have much luck.
One deputy has already noticed the drone. He waves angrily at the sky, then lifts binoculars to his face and starts panning the riverbank in search of the pilot. I follow his gaze, but all I see is a couple of city cops doing the same thing I am, scanning the line of rubberneckers for someone holding a joystick unit in their hands.
After thirty fruitless seconds of this, I decide the pilot must be guiding the drone from atop the bluff behind us. If the drone pilot is working from the bluff, which rises two hundred feet above the river, flying a low approach to the county boat was smart. That gave the deputies the feeling that he or she must be working from the low bank. Without tilting my head back, I scan the iron fence atop the bluff. It doesn’t take long to notice a slight figure 150 yards south of the landing, standing attentively at the fence with something in its hands.
While I can’t make out features or even gender at this distance, the sight gives me a ping of recognition. I know a kid with a knack for capturing newsworthy events on his aerial camera: the son of a girl I went to high school with. Though only fourteen, Denny Allman is a genius with drones, and I’ve posted some of his footage on the paper’s website. Most kids wouldn’t have a way to get to the bluff on a Tuesday morning while school is in session, but Denny is homeschooled, which means he can get away from the house if, say, he hears about a dead body on the police scanner he begged his mother to buy him last Christmas.
As I watch the figure on the bluff, the coroner’s wagon rumbles down Front Street. It’s a 1960s vintage Chevy panel truck. Rather than stop in the turnaround, as I did, the driver pulls onto the hard dirt and drives downstream along the riverbank, finally stopping about thirty yards from where I stand. Byron Ellis, the county coroner, climbs out and walks toward me, avoiding the gawkers who pepper him with questions.
You don’t have to be an M.D. to get elected coroner in Bienville, Mississippi. Byron Ellis is a former ambulance driver and paramedic who, as he approached his sixtieth birthday, decided to become the first African American to secure the position. Byron and I have gotten to know each other well over the last five months, for a tragic reason. Bienville is in the grip of a violent crime wave that’s 100 percent confined to the black community. About six months before I arrived, black teenagers began killing each other in ambushes and shoot-outs that have terrified the citizenry, both black and white. Despite the best efforts of law enforcement and dedicated intervention by church, school, and neighborhood leaders, the cycle of retribution has only escalated. Byron and I have stood alone over too many bullet-riddled children, facing the inarguable fact that our society has gone mad.
“Who’s out there, Marshall?” Byron asks as he nears me.
“I’ve heard it’s Buck Ferris. Don’t know for sure yet. I hope to hell it’s not.”
“You and me both.” Byron slaps my offered hand. “That man never hurt a fly.”
I look back at the deputies struggling in the boat. “I figured you’d beat me down here.”
“Got another kid in my wagon. Been sweating my ass off already.”
I turn to him in surprise. “I didn’t hear about any shooting last night.”
He shrugs. “Nobody reported this kid missing till his mama went in to give him his Cap’n Crunch this morning and saw he wasn’t in his bed. Convict road crew found him lying in a ditch out where Cemetery Road crosses Highway 61. He took eighteen rounds, best I could count. I pulled what looks like a .223 slug out of what was almost an exit wound in his back.”
“Goddamn, Byron. This is getting out of hand.”
“Oh, we’re way past that, brother. We in a war zone now. Drowned archaeologist seems kinda tame after that, don’t it?”
It takes all my willpower to hold a straight face. Byron has no idea that Buck Ferris was like a father to me, and there’s no point making him feel bad by telling him now. “Maybe,” I murmur. “I’ll be surprised if this was an accidental death,
