Acts of Nature (18 page)

I scrambled over to the hole and plunged my legs through, landing waist-deep in the water. I yanked my boots out of the bottom mud and then, forgetting the hatch and leaving it wide open, I bumped my head three times before making it out from under the camp foundation. Out in the open I twisted around in the direction of the motor noise. Sherry, I thought. Got to let her know what’s happening.

Her eyes were at half-mast when I got to her side. I put my palm on her brow, still hot, but hotter than before? I couldn’t guess. She turned her head to me.

“Swimming, Max?”

She still had some strength.

“We’ve got company,” I said. “An airboat just pulled up nearby. We’re on our way out, girl.”

She let out a sigh of relief, or maybe just loosening that built-in determination of hers, that reservoir of strength she was holding in abeyance for what was to come.

“Who, Max?”

“I don’t know yet. I just heard the engine outside. They’ve got to be coming to check on the place.” I put the half-filled bottle of water I’d recovered from the dead refrigerator to her lips. “Here. I’m going to go lead them in.”

“OK”

Maybe she was thinking more clearly than I. Maybe she was just more of a cynic, still being a working cop. Maybe she was just more intuitive. As I got up and started out the door she said: “Max. Be careful.” And I did not give the warning a second thought until I got out on the deck and saw a kid standing on the trunk of a downed tree, staring at me from twenty yards away.

TWENTY-ONE

The kid was skinny and awkward looking in a coltish way and his baseball cap was turned around backward on his head. His legs looked like sticks in a couple of denim bags and the long- sleeved shirt he was wearing draped on his shoulders as if on a hanger, the cuffs flapping down to his fingertips. He did not say a word. No “Howdy stranger.” No “Yo, what up?” No “Wow, somebody survived.” Nothing. Just a stare.

I stepped out toward the edge of the plank foundation and started to say something when a voice called out from my immediate left and the sound of another person’s words caused an uncharacteristic startle that made my neck snap in the direction of the sound.

“Hey, mister. How you doin’?”

It was another young man, dressed the same as the other but missing the hat. He may have been older, his neck more filled out, shoulders carrying some meat. His hair was buzz cut and instantly reminded me of police trainee academy, or maybe one of those juvenile detention camps.

I started to say, “Hey, are we glad to see you,” but I held my tongue, some taste of wariness stopping me. It did not take me more than a couple of seconds to realize that by their positions, I was being flanked.

“Well, guys, I could be better,” I said instead and stopped my forward motion. In fact, I took a step back, not an obvious retreat, but at a slightly angled step so that it was not as difficult to see both of them at the same time with my peripheral vision. I want the move to come off as polite, not tactical.

“That was your airboat I heard,” I said, not a question, a statement. A question can put you in a subservient position, like you want something, like you don’t know as much as they know, like you’re not in charge. A street cop does not ever want to be in a subservient position to people he does not know. I learned this years ago, dealing with pimps and pushers and just plain assholes on my beat sector of South Philly. They are lessons best not forgotten and suddenly they were boiling up in the back of my head like the prickly sensation on my neck.

“No. That would be my airboat you heard, friend.”

The voice came from my right and behind, more disconcerting because I was more vulnerable and because the deep sound of it was older, more mature, more confident. I hid my startle this time and turned with, I hope, a normal, easygoing attitude.

This visitor was not wary. He planted his big palms on the deck, swung a leg up, and mounted the platform like a rodeo cowboy mounting a horse. He was athletic. His forearms were cabled with muscle. He was not as tall as my own six- foot-three, but he was easily fifteen years younger, and even more disconcerting than his boys, he was smiling. A smiling stranger in the middle of the Glades after a major hurricane trashed the area. I did not trust any inch of him.

I turned my head to check any movement by the others and noted that they’d held their positions. The smiling man took one step closer and offered his hand, reaching out as though respecting my space. He was acting friendly. He was being careful.

“Bob Morris,” he said in introduction and I reached out, holding my own spot, and took his hand.

“Max Freeman.”

“Pleasure, Mr. Freeman,” the man said, then looked out past me. “Come on in, boys, don’t be rude. This here is Mr. Freeman.”

I was checking the man’s eyes. They were a gray so pale that they were almost colorless, and unflinching. His shirt was canvas and washed too many times. When he took my hand I noted that his own was soiled in cracks and under the fingernails and now I saw the smudges of dirt along the hard muscle of his neck tendons. He had been out for some time in this swamp, handling dirty things. The other two scrambled up onto the deck with less grace but still the kind of lithe comfort that you see in farm boys, or in this part of the country, young boat hands.

“We was kinda surprised when you came out, Mr. Freeman. Didn’t expect to find nobody out here after that ’cane blew through,” the man who called himself Morris said.

I offered nothing. Let him tell it. Let me get a sense of it. Sometimes silence encouraged them.

“We, uh, own our own camp just up the way to the northwest there toward Immokolee and were just out to see the damage and, you know, she was hit pretty bad,” he continued.

I nodded knowingly. “It was one hell of a storm.”

“Yep, she was.”

Morris looked at the boys and they all nodded their heads in agreement that a hurricane that ripped down walls and sailed roofs away and flattened hundreds of acres of tough sawgrass was indeed a hell of a storm.

“So how’d you make out?” I said, matching the simplicity of their language, maybe leveling some playing ground here, trying to come off as nonthreatening. The boys cut their eyes to Morris.

“Oh, well, we got hit pretty good up there,” he said. “Most we could do was a bit of salvaging, you know, a few things we probably shouldn’t have left out there in the first place.

“So, you know. We figured since we was out, maybe we should stop on our way back south and see if any of our neighbors needed help. You’re the first person we run in to. So, you OK, Mr. Freeman? Is there anything we can do?”

I thought of Sherry on the cot in the room behind me. Yeah, these guys seemed a little hinky. Their approach, seemingly surreptitious and planned, put me on edge. Their appearance, like a band of salvagers at sea, was not altogether unrealistic out here in the Glades. I’d spent time with some far-flung Gladesmen and to call them a rough bunch could be considered a kindness. When the Morris guy had turned to point where they’d left their airboat, I had studied the swing of his loose shirt and seen no lump or catch to indicate he was hiding a weapon in his waistband. And out here those willing to use a firearm were more proud to show them than to be sneaky about it. I checked each of their eyes one more time, not that I had a choice.

“Yeah, you could,” I finally said to Morris. “I’ve got a friend inside who is badly hurt. She’s got to get medical help as soon as possible.”

They filed into the room behind me and I wasn’t sure what look was on my face when Sherry watched me lead them in. She had forced herself up onto one elbow. Maybe she had been listening. Maybe she’d heard my reticent voice. She was faking alertness, I knew, because the glossiness in her eyes did not match the relative strength of her posture.

“This is Sherry Richards,” I said. “We got knocked around quite a bit by the storm and she’s broken her leg. It’s a bad fracture and I’m not sure how much blood she’s lost but we’re going to have to get her to a hospital.

“Do you guys have a way to call in a rescue helicopter? They could probably get out here before it gets too dark.”

Morris touched the bill of his baseball cap and stepped forward. “I am really sorry to see your pain, ma’am. We will surely do whatever we can do.”

Morris could see behind Sherry’s front of strained focus. He could tell she was hurting and stepped forward again, not enough to be pushy or in a way that could be taken as impolite, but seemingly out of concern. He let his eyes move from her face down to the heavily bandaged leg.

“Y’all think you’d be able to move, ma’am? If we could get to the boat, I mean. She’s a bit of distance through the hardwood yonder.”

Sherry was watching the man’s eyes, just like I had, just like any cop, assessing, with whatever lucidity she had left.

“I’ll do whatever I need to do, Mr., uh, Morris, was it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said and men turned to me. “You see, Mr. Freeman, we done lost a lot of equipment over to our place. All our radio stuff was dunked wet and lost. And the only cell phone we got, we ain’t had much luck with. Figure that the towers and all were probably knocked down by the storm.”

He was looking past me at the boys when he said this, as if for confirmation. When I turned to see their reaction I caught one of them, the thicker one, looking at the metal door to
the
other half of the cabin. He could not have missed the electronic locking mechanism next to the frame and was perhaps puzzled by it.

“Well, sir. We do have some fresh water on board we could bring in and we can take a look for anything we might use for some kind of a stretcher or something,” Morris said. “Is there anything inside the other room there that you figure might help us on that account, Mr. Freeman?”

I hesitated, and then lied, not knowing for sure whether a guy like Morris was perceptive enough to recognize the hesitation.

“The door is locked up,” I said, nodding to the obvious mechanism that none of them had missed by now. “So I’m not sure what’s in there. And to be honest, with your boat we could probably be to the state park ramp in just over an hour so I’m not sure we’re going to need anything more, Mr. Morris.”

The man looked again straight into my eyes, a practice that by now was a little unnerving, and when he smiled that little faux-friendly, backwoods smile again I felt my fingers start to flex. The testosterone of fight or flight was leaking down into my fist from somewhere back in my brain.

“OK, then. Why don’t we just go see what we can get from the airboat to see how we might get the missus out of here,” Morris said pleasantly.

When all three of them moved toward the door, my first thought was that they would leave us. In a few minutes we would hear the engine start and they would pull out to continue on their way. They don’t need us, we need them.

“How about if one of you stays to help me break down this other bed,” I said. “You know, maybe we can use the frame as a gurney and all four of us could lift her through the trees.”

They all stopped, the boys looking at Morris.

“Now there’s some thinking, Mr. Freeman. Sure. Wayne, stay here and help with that idea. We’ll go get some tools and whatnot from the boat and plan out a path. That just might work.”

Again the smile, which also stopped the beginning of a protest from the one called Wayne.

“We’ll be back directly,” Morris said and then he and the other boy walked out. I heard them splash as they jumped down from the deck and all I could do was hope that they wouldn’t look carefully under the foundation and notice the opening left by the trapdoor that I’d forgotten to close under the next room. As the sounds of their movement faded, I watched the sullen look on the kid’s face deepen. He might have been wondering if he too was being left behind.

“So, Wayne,” I said, reminding him that the older guy had already let his name out, a betrayal to some degree. “Let’s see about using this bed as a trauma cot.”

He looked over as I pulled the other bed frame out away from the wall.

“I tried to break it down some already,” I said, pointing to the metal strapping where I’d removed my impromptu pry bar. “Maybe you can figure a better way. You look like you might be the mechanical one of your brothers.”

“They ain’t my brothers,” Wayne said, bending to pull at one corner of the frame with his left hand.

“So, your name isn’t Morris?”

“No. It ain’t.”

“You kind of look alike,” I said, interviewing, and hoping it was not too obvious.

“No, we don’t,” the kid said.

I was guessing that he might be fifteen or sixteen, but on closer inspection, the barely discernable mustache he was trying to grow made me think he was possibly older, just a little behind in maturity. A follower? A simple ride-along? When I was still a cop in Philadelphia, I’d shot and killed a twelve- year-old tag-along who had joined one of his buddies for a late-night convenience store robbery. I’d been responding to an alarm and when the first guy out of the store took a shot at me, splitting the muscle and tendon in my neck, I returned fire and hit the second person out, a child who took the 9mm slug in the middle of the back. Just a boy, dead at the scene. It was the event that led to my resignation for medical reasons. It was the reason I’d come to South Florida to escape my inner-city dreams. Maybe it was part of the reason I was standing here, stuck to some natural destiny.

“Let’s flip it over,” I instructed. “It might be easier to disassemble these legs. It will be a lot easier to move that way.” I started to turn my end and the movement forced the kid to expose his left hand for the first time. I’d noted his reluctance from the moment I’d seen him standing in the open, his shirtsleeves hanging down past his fingertips, his hand held slightly behind his hip. At first I’d thought—weapon. A handgun or even a knife. Now as he reached to twist the metal frame of the bed, I saw that he was missing his thumb. The scar told me it wasn’t something that happened at birth. It was a definite injury and one he was careful about showing. I thought of the round, quarter-size scar of white tissue on my own neck where the bullet on the street had burrowed through. I had not caught myself reaching for it in quite some time. I’d lost the habit, if not the memory of killing a child.