Free The Elephant Mountains by Scott Ely Page A

painted the house and replaced the windows broken by their brushes with the hurricanes.
    â€œWe’ve decided there aren’t going to be any more hurricanes,” Holly said.
    Fred laughed.
    â€œI hope so,” he said. “We’re out of glass.”
    Stephen imagined his father would have been pleased with their setup.
    â€œHoney, you can get yourself a shower,” Holly said to Angela.
    Angela started to cry. Holly put her arm around her, and they walked off into the house together. Angela still had the rifle slung over her shoulder.
    He told Fred how Angela and he came to be on the airboat together. Fred had not heard anything of what was going on in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. There was dry land and access to the highway far upstream, but he cautioned Stephen that it was too dangerous to go up there.
    â€œBunch of drunks with automatic rifles,” he said. “I watched ’em through field glasses. They never knew I was there.”
    â€œAren’t you worried they’ll come down here?” Stephen asked.
    â€œToo much fallen timber in the creek. If you go through the swamp, you have to know the way. We’re safe here.”
    â€œI hope so.”
    â€œYou can depend on it.”
    Fred thought it would be some time before the army started restoring order.
    The creek flowed into the Mississippi. They were well north of I-10 and west of I-55. There had been many breaks and overtoppings of the levee, flooding the flat cropland and swamps. They had seen dead bodies of both people and animals in the creek.
    â€œYou might could get to Baton Rouge,” he said. “But who knows what you’re gonna find there. We’d be pleased for you to stay with us until the water goes down. The army will be back in here, and people will have to do right.”
    Stephen wanted to tell him he was lucky no one had showed up to kill them both and take their water and food. But he said nothing. Fred was a grown man, perhaps thirty or thirty-five years old, and he was just a boy. He would not be eager to listen to a boy’s opinions.
    â€œI’ll stay for a while,” he said. “I don’t know about the girl.”
    â€œYou do what you want,” he said. “I know you want to find your mother.”
    He did want to find her but not necessarily live with her. He just wanted to make sure she was all right.
    Holly and Angela came out on the deck. Angela’s hair was still wet. She was dressed in some of Holly’s clothes.
    â€œI thought she was going to take a shower with that rifle,” Holly said.
    â€œYou’re safe here,” Fred said.
    Angela looked like she was going to start crying again. He imagined she was thinking of her parents. He supposed he would do the same if he thought too hard about his father. But he also believed he had done all his crying.
    He went off to take a shower, leaving the Saiga on deck. He showered with his clothes on before stripping them off and wringing them out. None of Fred’s clothes were going to fit him, all of them way too big. He lingered in the shower, feeling the pleasant drum of the hot water against his skin. He began to think of how his father would have been proud of the way he had conducted himself. Even his father could not have prevented Byron from killing the family. Then he found himself thinking of his father lying there on the sand, and he began to weep. He sat down on the floor of the shower and sobbed, his whole body shaking.
    Then he tried to focus not on his father’s body on the sand but on the grave, colorful fish darting about over it. He seized on this image. Gradually, as he concentrated, he grew calm.
    He put on a bathrobe and went back out onto the deck. As he walked through the house, he took a close look at it for the first time. One whole wall was mostly windows, stained-glass ones scattered among the clear panes. There were skylights in the ceiling. It had the feeling of being