Valentine's Exile by E.E. Knight

Author:E.E. Knight
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Tennessee 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 crappie from 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.

“Trains are no good. There are checkpoints at all the major rivers,” Everready said as they talked routes on the top deck of a defunct casino. “You’ll have to go overland. Only man who knows the ground I know of is Hoffman Price. This time of year you’ll find him at the Goat Shack on the Tennessee. He can’t bear to hunt in August.”

The name, but not the man, sounded vaguely familiar to Valentine, but he couldn’t place it.

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