Bootlegger’s Errand

Bert had not finished a round of levee inspections in three years, managing to drum up an excuse to skip the upper stretches some days and the lower stretches other days. Sometimes, he merely drove slowly down the levee just to put the requisite miles on the truck. He had to log miles every time he drove for inspections and needed to record 44 miles, more or less, to avoid questions. Most days, the water levels he recorded were just approximations he made in the cab of the truck atop the levee.

The only creatures that ever took note of Bert’s derelictions on the levee were a mixed herd of grazing Simmentals and Herefords, an occasional possum, a lonely coon, or a bounding deer. On some days, a few buzzards lazily drifted overhead and watched his truck making its slow journey down the levee road. Today, however, not a single creature was nearby to witness to the unfolding events. All four-footed and fine-feathered animals were absent, as if instructed by memorandum to stay away.

He parked just above The Bend, lit a Pall Mall, and thought about Charlene.

He was in the process of turning the truck — a ‘59 Chevy with a cracked windshield, four balding tires, county plates, and a faded county government sticker — when the urge to pee came over him. He stopped. Bert struck quite a profile with a skinny cigarette wisping smoke upward and a skinny pecker issuing pee downward, with his right hand struggling to keep britches up and his left hand struggling to keep his shirttail out of the way of the pee. He managed to finish peeing with no mishaps, and silently congratulated himself on what was easily his biggest accomplishment of the morning.

He zipped his britches, started the truck, and was taking the last drag from his smoke when he just happened to look down and something caught his eye down the landward embankment. He ordinarily would have kept on driving, but this was just upstream from Bonaparte’s Bend, which had been described as “the most vulnerable portion of manmade berm on the Mississippi River between Cairo, Illinois and Tallulah, Louisiana.” That was the only thing Bert recalled from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers film he’d been required to watch when he took the job. He had slept through much of that incredibly dull training film, but the reputation of The Bend stuck.

Bert stopped the truck and got out. He eased down the rain-soaked levee in a zigzag fashion to get a better look. What he saw was not a little seepage. He had seen that before. He knew what a little seepage looked like. This was different and piqued his curiosity.

He saw a steady bubbling of mud six steps downhill from where he now stood. He ventured just a few more steps down the embankment to get a closer look, which turned out to be at least one step too many. The ground was deceptively soft, and his boots sunk down and instantly filled with mud. He felt very heavy and unstable on the sharp incline. Bert slipped and fell on his back, clawing at the mud while desperately trying to turn onto his stomach. But the mud made him only heavier and clumsier. He thought about taking off his boots and bear crawling up the bank, but the boots were Red Wings and barely a year old. These boots are store bought! I don’t want to risk losing them, he thought. The moment he used for that thought cost Bert a moment he really, really needed.

The mud bubbling below him changed to a slow boil. He felt a rising panic in his throat and started thrashing about in a four-limbed crawl that looked more like the efforts of an alligator than a man. By some small miracle his right foot hit on something solid – perhaps gravel or rip-rap. Whatever it was, he was able to gain some leverage and make a few feet of headway up the bank.

“Got to get to the truck! The truck. The truck!! Got to … get there. The truck!”