The Silent Swamp

Just one chapter from my pending book. Just looking for your critique on the story

The sun set below the tree line creating a luminous glow over the swamp lands. It was the first Wednesday of September and alligator hunting season had just begun. The sound of airboats vibrated the murky, algae filled waters of the Atchafalaya river. With each vibration the water would ripple, and the enormous bald cypress trees swayed their branches into the sediment riddled waters. As the boat’s propellers came to a stop the swamp became quiet and it was only broken with the occasional gator call. In the middle of the swamp a tourist boat sat, and two tour guides faced their audience welcoming them to the swamplands. Both tour guides wore camouflage from head to toe, one with a gray wiry bear stood up, giving his speech in a thick creole accent, “ Welcume to Cajun Pride Tours. Tuday we will be showen ya the swamp lands of Louisana. This here is Nolan and he’ll be fipinn us around to fin us sume gator”. The beared man sat down letting, Nolan speed the boat around towards a thick portion of the cypress trees. The airboat made its way through the thick branches coasting away letting the branches swing behind them. Behind the curtain of branches an area surrounded by large tree trunks shot up out of the water. The bark of the trunks peeled showing the different shades of brown. Inside the canopy the weather had cooled drastically, and the humidity seemed to dissipate from the air. High in the trees hanging down were hundreds of green and blue colored bottles.The hint of sunlight that beamed through the canopy penetrated the colored glasses shining beautiful colored light all around the enclosed space. The tourist were in awe of the bottles and began clicking away at their cameras. There clicking away was interrupted by the tour guide with the white wiry beard, “Oh, these are called bottle trees. How they work is you trap your enemies in the bottle and then hang them from the trees so the sun can destroy them. Although people beleve they are fun and games…”. His sentence was interrupted by the drop of one of the bottles, startling the tourists. A voice from the trees came down and recited,

“Some amongst we

The evil will take over

They done forgot what the ancestors taught we

We hang the bottles for a trap the evil spirits that threaten us

To keep we people strong

This here who we be

This sacred tree can protect we

If we protect one another

It be the ancestor way

Be we way

It gwana be the children way”

The voice stopped and another one of the bottles hit the water. The two tour guides looked at each other with wide eyes, under their breath they both began to recite the Lord’s prayer in creole French. Nolan tried to turn the engine on the boat, but it came to a stall. He said voice still shaking “It ain’t workin, the boat”.He continued to try to turn the engine on with every time resulting in failure. As he continued, the voice became louder and the chant became faster, and multiple bottles began to drop down into the murky water splashing the tourist and the tour guides in the boat with muddy water. PLOP PLOP PLOP!!! With the splashing of the water then boat moved forward towards the portion of land directly in front. The slow movement of the boat swayed with the waters own organic movement and the sound of the bottles plopping into the water slowed. The tourist and their guides, all waited in terror for the boat to hit the land, but this never happened. The boat was trying to move forward but was tugged back by something underneath. Every time the boat tried to move it would jerk back to its original position, simulating a rubber band effect. Both the tour guides got out of the boat looking for the trunk or branch that had been preventing them from moving onto the land. They moved the boat backwards trying to release the boat. They kept pushing both still reciting The Lord’s Prayer in their native tongue. With three big pushes the boat moved backwards and unveiled the cause of its sudden stop. A light brown colored object was floating. The men moved closer toward the object now with more curiosity on their faces than fear. There bodies immune to the cold swamp water and dodging falling bottles as they moved closer to the object. The man with the wiry beard was holding a bang gun, normally used for hunting gators. As they approached the object the bearded man poked it with his bang gun. The object rolled over revealing a white colored bloated body. The men let out an “AAARH” sound and began to swim towards the boat. The tourist was confused too far away to see the body of the old wrinkly pale bloated lady in the water. Then men swam back and lifted themselves onto the boat. The boat turned on suddenly and Nolan reached for the gears, and they drove off into the dark sky, towards the dock interrupting the silence of the swamp.

© 2020 SARAH ASHLEY HOWISON

Author's Note

Any Constructive critism helps.

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emipoemi

The descriptive narrative in the first half of this chapter, as you call it, is stunning. There are some technical errors in the grammar (eg. comma splices and missing hyphens), and some other spelling errors ("bearded" is the word you're looking for; and also you use "tourist" a lot when it should be plural), but the way the story moved was stupendous. By the time the dialogue starts, however, it just falls flat, and the narrative kind of can't weave in the same way. If this chapter were to all be that beautifully constructed descriptive narrative, it would be much better, and the clunky tourist dialogue, which doesn't add anything (and we're led to question how we're supposed to understand that the guides are reciting the Lord's Prayer "in their own language" if it's a different language). The finding of the body was great and added something, but the progression from there just didn't have the same effect as the first half and didn't do that story beat any justice (for also, Nolan said he couldn't get the boat to start, so how suddenly could he start the boat after they find the body?). Things weren't falling in their places like the first half pre-dialogue. Set things up a little better, because what made the first half so good was that it felt immersive, and afterwards it just felt like being fed seemingly useless information. But you have a great start. I do mean what I say that your choice in narrative is fantastic. You just have a few kinks to sort out.