The Clearing Read Online Free PDF

around fallen trees lined with red-eared turtles and fought pulpy rafts of water lilies, once yawing into a mile-deep carpet of the plants, and stalling. The mill manager was again in the engine room, speaking with the engineer when the pilot rang a bell for more power. Minos forced the long lever into its last notch and yelled for the firemen to shake the boiler grates. “ Fil d’putain, we won’t tie up until t’ree o’clock.”
    And he was right. The steamer rounded out of a bayou into a wide bay filled with salt-smelling water. On the eastern bank was a low town of wooden store buildings and warehouses, two large sawmills anchoring the upstream and downstream points. The Newman nosed into the public dock at two minutes past three and tied up among rafting steamers and hissing propeller tugs. The air smelled of coal smoke and stinking oyster shells, and beyond the muddy dock ran a street lined with several spattered Ford trucks and two caked wagons pulled by swaybacked mules. Randolph came down the stage plank between roustabouts and shouldered through a group of merchants and clerks come out to meet the boat. He navigated across the slurry of mud and clamshells that was the main street and got up on a boardwalk, knocking his shoes clean on the edge of the planks, then walking south toward the railroad station where the agent told him the train to Poachum would leave at six o’clock in the morning.
    He looked out at the track. “I thought it left at six in the evening.”
    The agent spat a slow rill of tobacco juice into something behind the counter. “Sometimes it does. Tomorrow it leaves at six in the morning.”
    He wanted to ask what kind of railroad allowed a twelve-hour variance, but he could sense already that he had to be careful in this town.
    The agent smiled a brown smile. “You from up North, ain’t you?”
    “Yes.” Randolph told him who he was.
    “Laney,” the agent said, not offering to shake hands.
    “Is there a place where I can hire an automobile?”
    The agent’s smile expressed an amber drop from the corner of his mouth. “Yeah. But what would you do with it?”
    “Pardon?”
    “The highway’s got water over it. You might get to Poachum. You might not.”
    Randolph pulled out his watch and wound it, matching it against the station clock. “Well, where’s the livery stable?”
    The stationmaster spat again. “Mister, you’ll tear the wheels off a buggy in them ruts out that way. And if you want to ride twenty-two miles horseback through the rain and flies, that’s okay by me, but you better get a fat horse that’ll float. If you don’t break off his legs you’ll have to row him through some low spots, and when you get where you’re going they’ll be more mud on you than him.”
    He looked through the bay window at a dark sky. “Is there a phone I can use?”
    “Where you want to call?”
    “Nimbus.”
    The agent chuckled while lowering his pencil to a form. “Phone line stops at Poachum. The agent does have a local wire going down to Nimbus.” He looked up. “I’ve heard even a big owl can take ’er down.”
    “I want to call the lawman down there.”
    “What for?”
    “I know him.”
    The agent bobbed his head. “And you still want to talk to him?”
    Randolph pinched the fat under his chin and took in a long breath. “When does the mill train get to Poachum so I can ride it to Nimbus?”
    “It don’t run regular.”
    The mill manager cocked his head and arched an eyebrow.
    “Okay, I’ll raise my man down there, if you can call him that.” The agent went to a wall phone, one of three in a line, and turned its crank a set number of turns, waited, cranked again, waited, then cranked once more, sending a short burst of electricity into the eastbound wire. When no one picked up on the other end, he walked to his telegraph key and sent a call. Both men watched the sounder in its resonator box, and in a minute it began to knock letters into the air.
    The mill