100 Fathoms Below

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

When Oran returned to the galley, Lieutenant Abrams, seeing how distraught he was over his brother’s illness, offered to give him the rest of the day off. Oran refused. “I want to work, suh. Cookin’s what I do, and cookin’s what’ll take my mind off things. If I got nothin’ to do, I’m liable to drive myself crazy with worry. So unless that’s a direct order, suh, I’d like to stay.”

Abrams nodded. “Very well, Guidry. But if it’s too much…”

“Thank you, suh,” he said, tying on his apron. “I’ll be jus’ fine once I’m back to it, suh.”

He lost himself in the work, in the familiar heat and noise of the galley. Each vegetable he chopped, each bowl he stirred, each mix he poured took his mind off LeMon—but only for so long. He had never seen his brother so sick before, and with the same fever that had resulted in two sailors’ deaths. What was he going to do? What could he do? He had always protected his little brother, but how could he protect him against this?

LeMon always hated it when Oran tried to protect him. He thought it was his older brother’s way of saying he was weak or helpless, but nothing could be further from the truth. Oran protected LeMon because you were supposed to protect your loved ones. That was just the way it was.

LeMon didn’t see it that way. When he was in sixth grade, he had gotten in a fight with some other kids in their parish. One afternoon, in the dry grass of the schoolyard, those kids surrounded LeMon and started throwing punches. Oran didn’t remember what the fight was about—probably nothing all that important, but when you were that young everything, no matter how small, was a big deal. The kids had LeMon outnumbered, but he put up a good fight. Gave at least one of them a black eye, as Oran recalled, and was handing out fat lips like Mardi Gras beads. But the numbers weren’t on his side, and soon they overpowered him. They took him down to the ground and pounded on him. That was when Oran found them.

Spotting Monje in trouble, Oran hadn’t even hesitated. He jumped into the fray and started throwing elbows and knees into the other kids. He managed to make his way through the pile of squirming bodies, tossing them aside until he reached LeMon. His little brother was swollen around the eyes, and his nose and lip were bleeding. Oran helped him to his feet, then turned to the other kids with an angry war cry. They turned tail and ran, unwilling to take on both Guidry brothers.

Oran had expected at least a thank-you, but LeMon was furious. He could have handled them, he said, and he didn’t need his older brother fighting his battles for him. Oran was perplexed at the time. Even now, so many years later, he remembered LeMon’s righteous indignation as he scolded Oran for helping him, while the blood and tears were still streaming down his face.

“I jus’ wanted to help,” Oran had said in his own defense. “And look, they ran away. They gone.”

“They gone now, but I still have to see ’em in school tomorrow,” LeMon pointed out. “What you think they’ll say then, Oran? That I’m a couillon who needs his older brother to fight for him, that’s what! You can’t be there to protect me all the time. You have to let me protect myself.”

Oran knew that his brother was right, but that never stopped him. In the years that followed, Oran got into a lot of scrapes, about half of them in LeMon’s behalf.

“Even now, we grown men and you can’t stop thinkin’ of me as a little brother you got to protect, can you?” LeMon had said after Oran flattened some trucker in a parking lot.

He was right. Monje would always be his little brother, and it was still an older brother’s duty to protect a younger brother. But how could he protect LeMon against an illness? You couldn’t whip the fire out of a fever. You couldn’t bloody its nose and send it packing. He had never felt this helpless before. His little brother needed him, and there was nothing he could do.

Oran worked through lunch and then supper, and then, when the cooks and bakers came to relieve him, he insisted on staying and helping the incoming staff with preparations for midrats. It went against navy custom for someone to work two sections in a row except in an emergency, but Abrams took pity on him and let him stay.

Oran was standing at the counter, chopping carrots with a chef’s knife, when he heard Lieutenant Abrams say, “Hey, Guidry, look who’s here!”

Oran turned toward the galley doorway, and there was LeMon, good as new, walking into the galley as if nothing had happened.

“Monje?” Oran said, rushing over to him. “Monje, you’re okay! I knew Matson could fix you. I knew it!”

He touched LeMon’s arm, and LeMon turned to look at him, squinting against the bright lights. Oran backed away in horror. Those eyes. Those weren’t Monje’s eyes.

“No,” Oran murmured. “No.”

“What’s the matter with you?” Abrams demanded.

Oran continued backing away, refusing to tear his gaze from the impostor in the galley. He bumped into a crewman washing dishes, who growled, “Watch it, Guidry,” but Oran wasn’t listening. The other two enlisted men in the galley stopped their work and stared at him in confusion.

“I thought you’d be happy to see LeMon back so soon,” Abrams said. “You’ve been so worried about him.”

“Suh,” Oran said softly, “that ain’t Monje.”

“What are you talking about?” Abrams said.

“I know my brother, suh,” Oran insisted. “That’s not Monje. His eyes. Somethin’ wrong with his eyes.”

Abrams looked at LeMon, who stood still as a statue, glaring past the galley staff as if they didn’t exist, focusing on Oran.

“Rougarou,” Oran said in barely a whisper.

Abrams turned back to him. “What did you say?”

Oran looked down at his hand. He was still holding the chef’s knife. He knew what he had to do. Gathering his courage, he walked back to the thing that wore his brother’s face and drove the knife into his gut. He stabbed him just above the waistline and drove the blade upward.

“Oran, no!” Abrams cried, rushing forward. “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ!”

He grabbed Oran and pulled him away from LeMon. Oran struggled against him, but Abrams had him in a strong bear hug from behind.

LeMon looked down curiously at the knife protruding from his gut. Then he crumpled silently to the floor, falling on his side.

“Rougarou!” Oran yelled. “Rougarou!”

He continued to struggle, but Abrams refused to let him go. Oran stared at the creature on the floor of the galley. It was pretending to be dead, but he knew full well that it wasn’t. It refused to move, refused to show Gordon and the others what it really was.

“Rougarou!” Oran continued to yell until four men from the galley staff piled on him and brought him to the deck.