The Heavens Rise

22

Patience, Marshall told himself.

He’d lost his cool in Beau Chêne and the resulting conflagration had made clear the one, unavoidable limit to his power—he could control only one person at a time. And while it was doubtful the police would find his lost ring after what he’d done to the crime scene, Marshall couldn’t afford two mistakes in one night. He had to remind himself that Ben Broyard had never been target numero uno; that title belonged to the giant shadow now standing frozen and ramrod straight, one story above Marshall’s head. Still, when the little fucker had literally floated into the middle of the crime scene, the opportunity had seemed too good for Marshall to pass up. But by giving into temptation, he’d come close to scorching himself to death and losing his shot at Anthem altogether.

Now he was here, and the connection had been made, but the visions coursing through him—the raw, unedited flashes of Anthem’s very soul—were far more vivid than anything thrown off by the other souls he’d violated over the past few weeks. Compared to Stevens, his secretary and Allen Shire, this stuff felt like a fire hose blast that might knock him into the banana leaves. The burst, as he’d nicknamed it, was usually one or two brief pulses of hallucination that gave way to silvery, distorted vision (and the power to do whatever he wanted with the person in question). But this was movie quality.

Nikki Delongpre was embracing him (embracing Anthem), and he could feel the fleece of her pullover, could smell the chemical odor coming off the Mardi Gras pearls around her neck. All around them, a press of bodies, the familiar raucousness of an Uptown parade, a dance of flambeau fire and shadow beneath a ceiling of interlocking oak branches. Bloodred plastic beads smashed to the asphalt; Marshall recognized the spear-shaped logo of the Krewe of Ares parade. And pulsing beneath every sight and smell was the endowed knowledge that he was being flooded by the happiest moment of Anthem Landry’s life. And even though Nikki was smiling at him—not just smiling, beaming—he could hear her voice in his head (in Anthem’s head): My hero, my God, my angel. A soft, intimate whisper that didn’t match the jubilant expression on her face, an expression that seemed to hold and hold and hold until it took on the appearance of a mask.

Jesus Christ, Marshall thought, is that how they really spoke to each other? In those kinds of stupid clichés? Or were these supposed words of Nikki’s more dream than memory? Then he saw that the giant figure atop the Mardi Gras float rattling past them wasn’t the typical shuddering papier-mâché rendering of some third-tier pagan god. It was a statue of Anthem Landry as Michelangelo might have realized him, impossibly flawless muscles, skin some shade between marble and flesh, and when the beautiful giant’s eyes opened and stared right at Marshall, as if sensing the presence of a spiritual interloper in the midst of this hallucinated crowd of shadows, Marshall cried out, and the great, sickening burst was over. Now it was just him and Anthem, separated by the long exterior staircase. Everything in Marshall’s vision fluoresced in the way it normally did once a hook had been established, but the pulse of it was stronger. Everything about this was different.

Stop, and it was his voice he heard now, not Nikki’s. Stop. He’s different.

But how could that be? How could Anthem Landry be the only anomaly after weeks of exercising his power on others without incident? The injustice of it was almost too much for him to bear. And the connection had been forged, hadn’t it? He could force the guy to leap from the porch right now and break his neck. But he couldn’t settle for that. A fall? That wouldn’t do at all. Not after all the work Marshall had done to get to this point. That would be a downright cheat.

Besides, this wasn’t the last game he planned to play; if there was something different about Anthem Landry, he had to find out what it was, even if it meant being forced to dispatch Anthem in some less than impressive way.

“Patience,” Anthem Landry said quietly, giving voice to Marshall’s thoughts, and the steadiness of his voice reflected the new steadiness in Marshall’s mind.

“Indeed,” Marshall answered himself.

• • •

And just like that, the leaping shadow was gone and Anthem Landry found himself still standing at the railing, the garden below him still rustling in the breeze. His heart was racing but that was probably just the result of whatever strange trick of light had convinced him a ghost was rocketing toward him from the foliage below. A train’s locomotive blared, which wasn’t a shock, given the tracks were just on the other side of the floodwall. But usually he heard the trains approaching before they got this close. Not this time, apparently. And there was someone down there in the garden, and Beignet was at the guy’s feet.

“Hello?” Anthem barked.

And when the guy stepped forward into the security light’s halo across the bottom few steps, Anthem gripped the railing in front of him to make sure he was still standing upright.

“Holy crap. You’re . . .”

“Alive?” the man said.

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“Well, it’s been interesting, to say the least.”

“Jesus Christ. I can’t even remember the last time I saw you—” Anthem started descending the steps, quickly, as if he thought the ghost of Marshall Ferriot might vanish before he reached the bottom. But Marshall kept talking, his voice sounding fairly earthbound, if Anthem said so himself.

“PE. Senior year, first semester. Neither one of us played football, so we weren’t exempt. You convinced Coach Clary to let us do badminton ’cause everyone thought it would be a breeze. And he agreed, so you were this big hero. Then he showed up the next day with an eighty-page packet on the history of badminton and told us there’s going to be a test the next week. Suddenly you weren’t such a hero anymore.”

“Right! Shit, man. Good memory.” Once they were face-to-face, Anthem clapped one of Marshall’s hands in both of his. But after a few pumps, he realized the guy seemed a little thin and weak, so he let up.

“Yeah, well, for me, it’s like it all just happened yesterday.”

“Marshall Fuckin’ Ferriot. Pardon my French, but welcome back to the land of the living, my friend!”

Anthem didn’t know the guy’s whole story; they’d never said more than a few words to each other back at Cannon. (There’d been too much other shit going on that summer for Anthem to keep tabs on some suicidal classmate-turned-vegetable.) But he knew the highlight reel; the coma, the father killed by the fall, the move to Atlanta. Kinda odd that Ben had never talked about any of it to him; he was usually all over that kind of scandal.

“You look good, man,” Anthem said.

“Do I?”

“Yeah . . .”

“I’m sorry about Nikki.” Anthem must have flinched, because when Marshall spoke again, he dropped his voice to almost a whisper. “I know it was a long time ago, but I just found out recently, given my . . . situation . . . My memory of the days before the accident, it’s not really that good. The doctors say it should improve. But it’ll take time, I guess. I just wanted to say—”

“Right. Yeah. Thanks.”

“So the police . . . they never found anything?”

“Some pieces of the car. That’s it.”

Marshall winced and shook his head. “Sorry, man,” he whispered.

“Is that why you—” Anthem looked around, as if it might be possible Marshall Ferriot was meeting someone else at this late hour, across the street from Anthem’s apartment. “You just wanted to give your condolences? Or are you here to see Tim?”

“Tim?”

“My neighbor. Lives downstairs. I don’t think he’s home though.”

“Oh, no. I’m here to see you.”

“Yeah?”

Marshall struggled with his next words, hands wedged deep in his pockets, shoulders slumped, staring at the bricks under Anthem’s feet. “I saw something,” he said finally, slowly and deliberately. “When I was under . . .”

“Under? You mean, like, in a coma?”

“Yes. I don’t know what it was, exactly. But it involved you and I felt like it would be irresponsible of me not to tell you about it.”

“You mean, like, a vision or something?”

Marshall straightened and looked him in the eye. “A message,” he whispered.

Anthem felt like he’d been doused in cold water, and it must have shown on his face because Marshall winced and looked away suddenly. “This is ridiculous. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. It’s late, and you don’t need me . . . I mean, it was years ago and it was . . . I’ll just . . .”

As Anthem watched the guy hurry toward the back gate, he found himself struggling to remember exactly how many days had separated Nikki’s disappearance and Marshall’s flying leap? A crazy, Hollywood-inspired image blazed bright and big in his too-sober mind: Nikki’s soul zipping past Marshall’s in some realm beyond this one, like those bright pulses of light at the beginning of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Angels, he remembered. Talking angels is what they were.

“Hey!” Anthem shouted.

Marshall stopped walking.

“Look, uh, we’re a dry house. But maybe I can offer you a Dr Pepper? How’s that sound?”

“Dry?”

“Yeah, I gave up the hard stuff a while back.”

“I see . . .”

“So what do you say, huh?”

“I think that sounds great.”

23

No Dr Pepper,” Anthem said. “Sorry. False advertising. How ’bout a Coke?”

“Water’s fine,” Marshall answered, distracted by a stack of papers sitting on Anthem’s kitchen counter.

“It is the source of life, after all,” Anthem said.

“You can say that again,” Marshall muttered before he thought better of it. “The River’s Response,” proclaimed the headline atop the first page. “What’s this?” he asked.

Anthem waited for Marshall to take the bottle. “Aw, Kingfisher published this article that had all kinds of bullshit in it about the pilots association. But they let me post a response on their website a few hours ago.”

“That’s nice of them.” Marshall could not have cared less about the article itself. It was the comments that got to him. Anthem had printed out every last one. (Well, one hundred as of 2:30 that afternoon, according to the time stamp on the last one. Who knew how many there were now?) With a few outraged exceptions, they all said pretty much the same thing: Anthem Landry was a bona fide hometown hero, sticking up for local workers. Sticking up for New Orleans.

My hero, my God, my angel.

The thought of anyone calling Anthem Landry a hero tempted Marshall to force the man in question to yank a meat cleaver from the block of knives right next to him and drive it once through each eye; two quick stabs just like the ones their housekeeper used to inflict on the plastic wrap around the cases of water bottles that were delivered to the house.

How does one destroy a hero? Let’s see. Let me count the ways . . . There were so many possibilities they all overwhelmed him. So many sharp edges, so many sudden drops, so many cars, so many flammable substances. Hell, the entire apartment itself was laced with one of the best weapons of all: electricity. But while all of those deaths might make for a delightfully hideous scene when the police arrived (or someone from Anthem’s family, if Marshall arranged it properly), were they a fitting fall for a hero?

“A hundred comments,” Marshall said, but he was setting the papers down on the counter as if he’d just realized they had shit stains on them.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Anthem said. Then he tapped his Diet Coke can against Marshall’s water bottle in a quick, perfunctory toast before he took a slug. “Never fancied myself much of a writer. That was always Ben’s beat. You remember Ben Broyard, right?”

“Kinda.”

The apartment wasn’t quite the pigsty Marshall had expected, or hoped for, but it was certainly threadbare. The whole building looked like it had once been a corner store, and the ceilings inside the apartment were about twelve feet high. No shades on the soaring windows, just frilly lace curtains that covered only the bottom half of each one. (Some girlfriend had probably hung them for him.) And the top half of each window offered a bleak industrial view of the loading cranes visible above the floodwall across the street.

The TV caught him off guard, just as every TV had since he’d come out of his coma. Out of all the things that looked different after eight years in purgatory, televisions had undergone the most dramatic transformation. They were flat as boards now, and hung all over like electrified paintings. The rest of the walls were mostly bare, except for a poster from the Krewe of Ares parade from 1999. It featured an expressionist rendering of the parade’s lead float, a towering plaster statue of the god of war himself, multiplated armor sitting astride his insanely large muscles, giant head covered by a massive Spartan helmet replete with the typical Mohawk and plunging cheek guards that revealed a glimpse of his apelike jaw. It wasn’t the dreamlike statue that had rattled through the perpetual Mardi Gras parade in Anthem’s soul, but the resemblance was close enough that Marshall had to look away quickly to avert a twinge of nausea.

“How long you on call for?” Marshall asked.

“Till nine a.m.”

“Do you love it?”

“Being a pilot?” Anthem asked.

Marshall nodded, trying to hide the fact that he was studying Anthem’s every move. The way he was tapping the edge of the Diet Coke against the counter ever so slightly, shifting his weight back and forth between each foot. A dry house, indeed. Maybe giving up the hard stuff had been harder than he let on.

“There’s usually a moment . . .” Anthem said, straightening. “So I’ll pick up a ship anywhere from Baton Rouge to Chalmette. But my favorite route’s southbound in the morning. Especially when I hit Audubon Park and it’s sunny and the oak trees are all spread out, and you can just see Holy Name Cathedral above the tree line, watchin’ over it all. It’s like . . . I feel connected to the past.”

“Awesome,” Marshall said. “I’ve always wanted to go out on the river. Can you see Cannon?”

“Nah. It’s not tall enough. Most of what you can see of Uptown’s just trees.”

“And the Fly, right? You used to hang out at the Fly a lot.”

Don’t lie to me, shithead. I followed you and Nikki there after you got back together. I watched you kissing on the stairs of rocks that lead down to the water’s edge. If I’d known what I was capable of then, I would have made you drown her.

“Some,” he said. “Who didn’t, right? A few Coronas. A little weed, maybe. Blast some Cowboy Mouth. Same shit I’d do today if I didn’t have a job.”

Anthem gave him a big toothy grin, and Marshall tried to return it.

“The morning sun beats down upon me like the Devil’s smile,” he said slowly and quietly.

“I’d rather be anywhere else but here,” Anthem sang back at him, straightened, eyes brightening. “Was it a blinding lack of subtlety or just a lack of styyyyle, responding to the ways and means of fear?” With that, Anthem skipped past Marshall toward the stereo. “Take me back to New Orleans, and drop me at my door. ’Cause I might love you—” He yanked his iPod from its charging cradle. “I’ve got it here, just a sec.”

“The message . . .”

Anthem slumped over his stereo suddenly, and when he went to set the iPod back in its cradle his movements were sluggish and unfocused.

“Yeah . . . listen, man, I’m not sure I really—” But before he could finish his own sentence, he flounced down onto the sofa as if he’d been placed in time-out. The sofa was too small for the living room and it was too small for him; the cushion crumpled so much under his weight, Marshall wouldn’t have been surprised if it spit out from under him like an inner tube on a water slide.

“So you think Nikki gave you some kind of message?” he finally asked.

“Not Nikki. Her mother.”

Anthem Landry’s eyes were saucer-wide, his lips pursed, his giant frame preternaturally still as he braced himself for a blow from another dimension of existence. He’d stopped nervously rubbing his thighs and now his hands gripped both kneecaps as if they’d been glued to them.

The connection between them was as pure as the one Marshall had forged just moments earlier by using his power, only this had come from quick thinking. Quick thinking, patience and the time-honored tradition of turning a disadvantage into an opportunity. Yes, Anthem’s soul had seemed different, more vivid and overpowering, but it also given Marshall plenty he could use.

“It started as a vision, really.” Marshall let his focus shift to the hardwood floor between them. “A Mardi Gras parade. I think it was Ares, the one that used to roll on Friday.” Anthem flinched and glanced back in the direction of the poster hanging on his nearby wall. “I didn’t know her all that well, but I kept seeing Nikki. She had a pair of Mardi Gras pearls around her neck and she was wearing this fleecy pullover and she was beaming and she had her arms around a man. And after a while, I realized that man was you. And she was whispering the same words to you, over and over again . . .”

Anthem’s lips had parted and his chest was rising and falling and when he went to close his eyes, several tears slipped from them; rather than wipe them away with one hand, he chewed his lower lip and let out a desperate wheeze.

“Are you sure you want me to—”

“Keep going.”

“I mean, it gets kind of—”

“Keep going.”

“My hero, my God, my angel. That’s what she kept whispering.”

It was as if the giant’s strings has been cut, and six words alone had done it. Had they been a private incantation Nikki had whispered only while in the throes of passion, or the creation of Anthem’s own longing and grief? Either way, they were the key. He slouched back against the sofa, his face twisting with the first contortion of a sob. Then his giant hands went to his face, forming a protective shield, and Marshall advanced several steps toward him, trying his best to prevent the sound of the sexual excitement flickering within his belly from lighting up his voice. “Then I saw her mother. I didn’t know who she was at first, ’cause I’d never met her. But she told me who she was, and she told me who you were. And she said if I ever came back, if I ever joined the living again, I would have to set you free. I would have to tell you the truth about what happened that night so that you could move on.”

Anthem dropped his hands from his face, which was now a snotty, tear-streaked mess. “Wh—what ha—”

“She was driving that night. Nikki. She was the one behind the wheel, but she had been drinking and she didn’t tell her parents and they got into an accident . . .”

“An accident? Did she—”

“Millie was killed, and Nikki and her father, they covered it up. And they ran.”

Marshall could see the disbelief fighting a losing battle inside the man a few feet away from him, and he wondered if he’d chosen the right tack. He’d thought of adding in some bullshit detail about Nikki drinking that night because she’d found out Anthem had knocked her up. But it was too far.

“You need to go, dude.”

“She told me you had to know the truth so that you could finally let her go. So that you could stop drinking so much . . .”

Anthem was on his feet, pointing toward the door. “All right, man. That’s enough. I’ve got a long night ahead of me and this is just a little— I mean, for fuck’s sake, you’re asking me to believe—”

“I’m not asking you to believe anything. It was just . . . I felt like it was my duty to tell you.”

“She just walked away? Is that it? From all of us? She just walked away. All these years and not one word because she was drunk? Because she killed her own—”

“It could be a metaphor, for all I know.”

“A metaphor for what?”

Marshall gave the man his best grimace, shook his head as if the very idea of metaphors in general filled him with despair. The more he tried to deny that his supposed vision had been the truth, the more the stupid Neanderthal across from him believed that it was.

“I appreciate you comin’ and I don’t mean to be rude. But I need to—”

Anthem rushed into his bedroom, but he was in such a desperate hurry that he didn’t bother to shut the door behind him, so Marshall followed.

Anthem found it on the top shelf of his bedroom closet, just where he’d left it months ago. Silver-plated, gleaming in the harsh light from the overhead bulb, looking as new and full of untapped promise as it had the day his brother Merit gave it to him as a graduation present. He’d stashed it there because of the words of an old girlfriend from college, who’d assured him the only way she’d been able to quit smoking was by carrying an unopened pack of Marlboro Lights with her everywhere she went. I needed to feel like my little friends had left me completely, she’d told him.

He uncapped it and drank. There was no burn. Just a warm rush of inevitability, and already the rationalizations were tumbling through him right behind the firewater. Sometimes he didn’t get called at all. Some guys would go whole shifts without getting called up once.

Floorboards creaked behind him, and there was Marshall Ferriot, standing in his bedroom door, and Anthem in the closet with a flask like some desperate gutter trash.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Seriously, dude. I need you to—”

“You shouldn’t be alone right now, Anthem.”

The phone rang, and Marshall seemed more startled by it than Anthem was. Anthem brushed past him and yanked the portable from its cradle next to the bed. The woman on the other end had already started speaking to him by the time Anthem realized he was still holding the flask in his left hand. From the weight of it, it felt like he’d downed half the thing in thirty seconds.

“Hey, Landry. Driver’s gonna be at your place in about thirty. We got a grain ship hatched a leak in one of its dry bulk containers and they’re turnin’ it around and sending it to Houston for repairs.”

“Don’t send the driver,” Anthem responded, the smell of the bourbon on his breath dilating his nostrils as he spoke.

“You’re pickin’ up this baby in Destrehan, A-Team. You gonna drive yourself?”

“Just . . . I’m good. I’ll get myself there.”

“All right. Suit yourself. These guys want to turn this ship around yesterday. Sounds like they’re losing a fortune by the hour.”

He hung up on the dispatcher before he might slip up and allow her to hear any intensifying slur in his speech. Some base instinct drove him to put the flask to his mouth and empty the rest of it down his throat. Then he hurled it at the wall so hard it sounded like the thing had dented before it clunked to the floor.

And there was Marshall Ferriot, studying him with a piteous expression.

“It was almost empty. I . . . I couldn’t just let it go waste. Had to finish the . . .” Anthem sank down onto the foot of his bed. Six months gone in an instant because of, what? One sick kid’s deranged coma dream, brought on by medications and brain injuries and God knows what else? Six months, down the drain. Down his throat.

My hero, my God, my angel. The very words she used to whisper into his ear after he’d finished bringing her to the edge of pure bliss out at the old push boat in Madisonville. Same damn words he’d hear every time he went there to add beads to the little altar he kept for her in the pilothouse. No one knew those words.

“Do you still want me to go?” Marshall asked.

“No. No, I don’t.”

“Okay . . .”

“Can you drive me to Destrehan? Aw, fuck that. I need you to stay with me. Make sure I don’t do anything stupid. Half the fucking Russian captains pop open a bottle of vodka to welcome me onto their damn ship, and I’ll— I just need you to watch me. Okay. Make sure I don’t do anything stupid now that I’ve . . .”

“You want me to come on the ship with you?”

“Well, it’s only fair, right? Now that you’ve done your duty and shared your little message with me, it’s only fair you stick around for the consequences, isn’t it?” His voice was boiling with anger, and when he saw the wounded expression on Marshall’s face, he felt a stab of regret. Then he felt the bourbon, sloshing in his stomach, fiery and potent and poised to unleash its black magic into his veins.

“I’m sorry,” Anthem muttered.

“Don’t be,” Marshall whispered, but he looked crestfallen, and he was studying the floor between them. “Of course I’ll go with. The way I told you, it was all wrong—”

“Enough about that. I’m sure you saw all kinds of things while you were under”— my hero, my God, my angel—“and if it’d been me, I don’t know, I probably woulda wanted to tell people too. So just . . .” His face flushed, but he couldn’t tell if it was the booze or the threat of new tears. He gestured to the closet. “Pick out a jacket. It’s gonna be cold out there. Then we gotta hit the road.”