Mile marker nineteen

Remy Guidry started walking at dusk, the way the old inspectors had taught him, because sand boils were easier to see when the light went flat and the water on the land side stopped reflecting sky. He carried a flashlight, a clipboard in a plastic bag and a can of orange paint for marking soft ground. The river was high for April, brown and quick, and it made a sound against the batture like somebody breathing through their teeth.

At mile marker nineteen he found a boot in the grass. It was a white shrimp boot, the kind every man below Violet wore, and it was laced up tight, standing upright on the slope with the toe pointed toward the crown of the levee. There was no mud on it. There was no foot in it either, which he checked, because you check.

He wrote it down. Boot, white, size eleven, upright. He did not know what else to write. He sprayed a small orange circle on the grass beside it, the way you would mark a soft spot, and kept walking with the river breathing beside him.