Page 22 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

He piloted them out, and out, until Felix could smell the salt of the ocean as strongly as he could smell the muck of home. Down narrower and narrower inlets and causeways and canals. He pointed out the ruins of what had never been anyone’s stone house. And as they emerged onto the lake, the sunset flared vivid as a forest fire through the lower rungs of the trees.

Felix gasped.

The world was alive with birds.

The egrets and herons stood in thick clusters on the banks of the lake, necks stretched as they called and trilled to one another. Others flew from the lake to the island at its center, and on the island itself, the trees were decorated more ornately than any Christmas spruce, draped in garlands of snowy egrets, and blue herons, and shrieking gulls, and swooping kingfishers. The baby sandhill cranes, downy gray, still unable to fly, were making a swim for it. As Felix watched, he saw one disappear, snatched beneath the water.

The noise. It was chaos, and it was music, and Felix could feel it in his chest.

“This,” Remy said, arm squeezing tighter around him once he killed the engine, “is the rookery. This is where all the birds come to roost for the night.”

“Wow.”

“They’re safer together. It’s where they have their nests. When their chicks hatch, up in those trees, nothing can get to them. But…” He breathed a quiet laugh. “Did you see that one go under?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s safe for any bird that can fly. But anything that swims…”

“Gators?”

“There’s more gators under us right now than you could shake a stick at. The birdsong, it calls to them.”

Felix said a sad, silent prayer for the stolen chick. But his fascination was too great to mourn it; that was life, that was nature – and never had he seen nature so noisily, unexpectedly resplendent.

“See that sandbar there?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where you’ll see them in the daylight. Sunning themselves.”

“All of them?”

“No.” Remy snorted a laugh. “Just a few at a time.”

“How many do you think there are? Total?”

“Oh, who’s to say? Not me. Hundreds, probably.”

“Well,” Felix said, as his pulse leaped. “It’s a pretty big lake.”

Remy chuckled. “It sure is, son.”

~*~

The boat was still – as still as a boat could get without dropping anchor. It bobbed gently, water lapping against the hull with a sound that was embedded in Mercy’s bones. A sound his imagination conjured in the wee hours when he woke from a nightmare, rolled over to bury his face in Ava’s hair, and willedhimself back to sleep. The sunlight on the water was blinding, and he squinted against it, peering up at the mostly-empty trees.

“That’s lovely,” Devin said, and sounded sincere. “But, no offense, son, we’re not going to wait here until the birds come to roost, are we?” His tone, at the end, suggested he thought that Mercy might have cracked.

Maybe he had.

He didn’tfeellike he had.

“Nah. Gray. Hand me that cooler.”

He did so, and Mercy popped off the lid to reveal the chicken drumsticks they’d bought at a dockside bait shop on their way out. He’d forgone ice, and left the lid only partially closed, and the meat had begun to thaw, and warm, andsmell. Perfect.

“When I used to live down here, this place wasn’t zoned for hunting. I don’t see any bait lines or tags, so I guess it still isn’t.”

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