River of Escape

Dom pushed his pirogue away from the levee and decided it would be the last time. Making his way past creosote pilings of a shipping wharf, he observed a dirty, medium-sized cargo ship coming toward the pier to take on a load of sulphur. The dock crew, standing at the ready, returned his wave. Dom watched the ship tie up.

From the storage yard on shore, where freshly mined sulphur lay in large yellow chunks, a pair of immense bucket-like tongs suspended from a steel girder moved back and forth, scooping up piles of the mineral and dropping them onto a conveyer belt. The yellow mounds traveled through corrugated housing to the docked ship where they fell from the belt into the cargo hold.

A yellow, acrid dust enveloped the yard and ship. Sometimes fires ignited in the yard and were extinguished with large hoses spouting gallons of water. At one time, Dom watched for those fires, sounded the alarm and directed the hose operator to hot spots. In twenty years, there had never been an uncontrolled fire on Dom’s shift.

Workmen at the yard and the ship’s crew wore goggles to keep their eyes from burning. They breathed in the dust without concern since there was little sensation of burning in their throats or lungs. Eventually, Dom could no longer breathe deeply without discomfort. Crashing headaches came on suddenly. The company sent him to doctors in New Orleans.

“We can find nothing wrong,” the doctors said, while writing out another prescription for pain.

“Bellyachin’ Cajun,” said Dom’s wife, Jolie.

Sometimes he felt better, but then he collapsed and was unable to work for days. Finally, the company retired him with a monthly disability check.

“Now, you jus like dem other lazy Cajuns,” said Jolie. “I never expect dis.” She soon found work cleaning houses.

Though he tried, Dom wasn’t able to hold other jobs, menial and low-paying, for any length of time. He lost consciousness because of the pain in his chest, and the blinding headaches kept him in bed for days at a time. Finally, he gave up. With the small check he received from the company and Jolie’s modest income, they were able to keep their humble home behind the levee on the west bank of the river. Dom fished and hunted to supplement the groceries and discovered his green thumb in a small, bountiful garden.

After a couple of years, he thought Jolie was beginning to understand the truth of his disability because she hadn’t lashed out at him in a long time. Dom said to her that morning, “You know, chère, when I’m out fishing or hunting, dat pain she goes away.”

“Nuttin wrong wit you, Dom,” his wife said. “You just got yourself a way to hunt and fish when you please.” Dom’s stomach churned. He wanted to grab her and slap her smart mouth. Show her a thing or two. But, he didn’t. Jolie was as tall as he and now she was stronger. She would have knocked the crap out of him or called the sheriff. Or both, he thought. She curled her lip and slammed the door when she left the house.

 

Dom spit tobacco juice into the murky water as he dug his paddle deeper. Soon the pirogue hit the main current of the river where he rested the paddle and drifted. The river was almost a mile wide and there was no sign of human habitation on the east bank. Marsh grass and stunted trees grew, constantly abraded by the river’s salty tide because there was no levee.

When Dom got to a certain point and saw the low narrow wharf, he turned the small craft eastward. Strong currents challenged him, and he dodged several eddies but was finally able to cut a straight course for the east bank. He loved maneuvering the pirogue he had carved out so many years ago.

Dom constructed a crude wharf from varied widths and lengths of wood. The idea came to him one day when he was out on the river and an ocean liner cruised toward the Gulf of Mexico. Dom saw the ship coming and knew he couldn’t get back to the levee, but he made it out of the liner’s path, though rolling waves in the ship’s wake spun and pitched the pirogue precariously. Dom skillfully kept it from overturning, but the turbulent water tossed him and his craft up onto the grass-covered east bank. Passengers on the decks recognized his expert handling of the pirogue and waved when they saw him safely beached. Dom waved back. Pride brought a smile to his face.

“Some tings dis ole Cajun can still do.”

The liner’s wake continued to wash up on him and the pirogue, sending scraps of lumber onto the grass beside him. Dom looked around and saw more pieces lying on the bank. He cached them far from the water and on his return the next day brought tools to build the wharf. On another trip, he toted boards he’d scavenged around town. Pieces of scrap lumber continued to wash up.

One day, Dom looked up at the clear sky and grinned. “Hey, God, is dis some of dat manna I hear about?”

Before long, Dom had a wharf about four feet wide, extending twenty feet into the grass and bushes. He didn’t put up handrails because he didn’t want it to be visible from the west side of the river. Don’t need no company, he thought.

Dom wasn’t sure why he wanted to build a wharf, but it felt good. He liked to stretch out on a sunny day, take a nap. Some days he sat and waved to the ships. His chest hadn’t bothered him at any time during the construction nor had he suffered any headaches. Maybe I build me a shack, he thought, and den Jolie, she can worry when I don’t show up ever night. He never built the shack.

Today, when he reached the wharf, he was still wounded by Jolie’s sarcasm and callousness. Dat woman got no feelins except fo herself, he thought. She don’t care if I never come back.

Dom got out of the pirogue but instead of tying it to the wharf, he turned it out toward the river, paused for a moment and gave it a hard shove. It drifted close to the bank for a while and then, as he expected, the craft hit an eddy that spun it around and out into the current. The pirogue bounced along, smaller and smaller.

“Too bad I haf to let you go. But I got no mo use fo a pirogue.”

Dom turned toward the wharf with tears in his eyes. He took the hunting knife from his belt scabbard and began to hack at the boards. Dom continued his savage attack and the planks started to give. Soon the wharf was again a collection of odd lumber that he threw out into the river with what strength he had left. Eddies caught the scraps and eventually they either sank or bobbled in the current. He threw his knife after them.

Dom sobbed and gasped for breath, his chest burning as though a fiery ball ricocheted from one wall to the other. His head throbbed and his sight blurred. Dom stepped into the river, brought a dripping hand to his forehead and continued to make the sign of the cross before he swam out to join the gulf bound current.