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The warrant-men, save for Earl, trickled back inside.
They ate at the riverside. "Lots of bad blood gets built up in this business," Price said. He posted himself downwind of Valentine and Duvalier, but it didn't help much.
After some head bobbing and a mutual dental exam, the two Grogs sat down next to each other. Ahn-Kha ate a few bites of his stew, then passed her the bowl.
"She speaks northern slope dialect," Ahn-Kha said. "I only know a few words."
Duvalier was already mopping up her remains with a biscuit. Valentine marveled at her appetite. "You really taking us on, or was that just show?" she asked Price.
"I'm taking you."
"Not through Chattanooga, I hope," Valentine said.
"That was just in case Earl gets the second big idea of his life and goes to the authorities, such as they are."
"What changed your mind?" Valentine asked.
"I got to thinking that I don't have too many more years in me to pay Everready back. If I have to step off, I'll do it clean. Plus Bee got a look at your big friend when he came down to the river to hit the shitter. She got excited. Bee gets lonely for her own, I think."
"I've had my mating," Ahn-Kha said. "She is dead. Besides, we are not dogs. Our strains do not mix."
"But you share some customs, looks like," Price said.
"I've been among her kind. Do not misunderstand me. She is well formed and agreeable." Ahn-Kha broke a biscuit in half and gave it to her. "I just could no more be a male to her than you could."
"I want to put a few miles on across the river before dark," Price said. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth three times. "I have a mule. Bee and I will go load him up."
Valentine kept the food close to his nose as he ate his stew. "Is there a chance that you'll take a bath before we set out?"
"What, and spoil my camouflage?"
Duvalier looked up. "You're hoping to pass as a feral hog, perhaps?"
"No. Everready explained it to me years ago. I never could hide lifesign for shit. All the critters interfere with the Hoods. I don't read as human at any kind of distance." He walked up to the back doorstep and returned his plate.
"You want your other biscuit, Val?" Duvalier asked as Price disappeared into the stable.
"You got used to him faster than I did," Valentine said. "How did you keep your dinner down?"
"Greta in there gave me a bottle of clove oil. It's good for more than mosquito bites. A dab'll do you-provided you put it under your nostrils."
ennessee Valley, August: Six former states lay claim to the Tennessee River, and benefit from the electricity it generates. Its tributaries are fed by the eighty inches or so of rain that drop on the Appalachian foothills, swelling the lakes behind the nine still-intact dams. Its total shoreline, utilized by man, bear, wildcat, ducks, geese, and wading birds, exceeds that of the entire Pacific and Gulf Coasts of the former United States.
The residents in the settlements around it pull pike, catfish, sauger, bass, and crappiefrom its waters, both to pan-fry and to plant alongside their seedcorn, a form of phosphate fertilization used by the Native Americans of the area three hundred years ago.
But there are still long stretches of river uninhabited and returned to the thickly forested banks of earlier times. The reason for the human flight: the skeeters.
Tennessee Valley mosquitoes are legendary for their numbers and virulence. With some stretches of the river overrunning flood control, swamps have formed, and the mosquitoes fly so thickly above the still water that they can resemble a buzzing fog. With them come malaria, bird flu, and some mutated strains of ravies-Alessa Duvalier could describe a bout with one strain in nauseating detail-so humans keep clear of certain stretches to safeguard their children and livestock.
There's still some river traffic in corn, soy, and grains (often concealing casks of white lightning and other illicit medications), and of course the quinine-gulping, citrus-candle-burning power plant workers and locksmen at the dams must be there. But the areas around the riverbanks and swamps belong to a few hardy individualists, fugitives, and those who hunt them-"mad dogs and warrant men" in the vernacular of the Tennessee Valley.
David Valentine encountered both in the summer of 72 at the Goat Shack in south-central Tennessee.
* * * *
The heat reminded Valentine of Haiti, which is about as much as could be said of any hot day, then and for the rest of his life. Even in the shade he sweated, the humidity about him like a sticky cocoon, turning his armpits and crotch into a swamp as moist as either of the bottoms flanking the peninsula of land projecting like a claw into the lower Tennessee.
Everready's map had been accurate, right down to the "friendly" homes along the way where they could trade news and a few bullets for food, a hayloft hammock, and washsoap. But the Old Black Cat's knowledge of the area ended at the dipping loops of the Tennessee. From there they'd need another guide to get them to Ohio. And he only trusted one.
