Page 42 of Rowe

“Well, don't do that.” Theo left before the rooster could offer directions.

That night, teams converged at a roadside diner after discovering independently that none of them knew where they were. The waitress called everybody baby, including a man named Knuckles who had broken three noses for Victor. She filled coffee cups without being asked and listened while the men tried to compare maps.

One map had Belle Fleur circled south of a wildlife refuge. Another had it north of a sugar mill. A third placed it on an island no one could locate. Sal's receipt map had become damp, and the smiling alligator had bled into something resembling Victor Rossi. Knuckles jabbed a finger at the papers.

“Somebody is lying to us.” The waitress set down a plate of pie.

“Probably.” Every man looked up.

“You know something?” Theo asked. She shrugged.

“I know y'all been driving in circles since yesterday.”

“How?”

“My cousin called from Houma. Her cousin heard from a fellow over by Larose. Then my aunt texted.” Sal looked offended.

“Everybody knows we're here?” The waitress topped off his coffee.

“Baby, everybody knew before you did.” The men exchanged looks.

Until that moment, they had treated the bayou like emptiness between roads. Now they understood the emptiness had eyes, phones, cousins, boats, radios, porches, tackle shops, church kitchens, and an information network faster than anything Victor owned.

Theo lowered his voice.

“Where is Mara?” The waitress smiled.

“If I knew, why would I tell forty men who can't find a hospital?” Knuckles pushed back his chair. The restaurant changed.

Nothing obvious happened. The cook remained behind the counter. Two trappers kept eating. A mother continued cutting pancakes for a child. Yet every person in the room seemed suddenly aware of Knuckles's hands.

Theo grabbed his arm.

“Sit down.” Knuckles looked around, understood, and sat. The waitress placed his pie in front of him.

“Good choice, baby.” By morning, the search became stranger.

A team near a marsh road found its route blocked by an alligator stretched across the pavement. It was not an especially large alligator, but it possessed the calm of an animal that had never attended a meeting with Victor Rossi and therefore feared nothing.

The men waited. The alligator waited better. One man suggested nudging it with the vehicle. No one volunteered to drive.

Another suggested going around. The shoulder was mud and black water. A local boy arrived on a bicycle, looked at the alligator, and laughed.

“He'll move.”

“When?”

“When he wants.”

“We don't have time.” The boy nodded gravely.

“Tell him.” They offered the boy twenty dollars to help.

He accepted, rode away, and returned ten minutes later with his grandmother. She approached the road with a broom.

“Alphonse!” The alligator raised its head. “Get!” She slapped the pavement twice with the broom. Alphonse slid into the ditch. The Rossi men stared. The grandmother held out her hand.

“Twenty.” They paid. Then she looked at Mara's photograph.