Ten Thousand Islands (17 page)

“
Grave robbing?
” The girl pulled the net off, showing her flushed cheeks, eyebrows and ears slotted with rings, already sobbing. Her voice had the same irritating whine that it had when she was angry. “I didn’t rob no graves, mister, I don’t got nothin’ to do with what these guys did. I haven’t done nothin’ wrong, I swear to Jesus, honest. They’re like, ‘Hey, Tisha, let’s go for a boat ride. We’ll show you this cool island.’ And I’m like, ‘Why not, I got nothin’ better to do.’ So, yeah, I go with them on the boat, but I don’t got a damn thing to do with diggin’ shit up. That’s all their idea.”

I’m like, they’re like—Tomlinson says the uneducated must now speak in the third-person present tense because their only reality is a television screen or a computer screen. Their brains can convert images but not ideas.

I said, “Really, Tisha? You’re just an innocent bystander.”

“Yeah, really. You got to believe me. But already, you’re like, hey, I’m guilty just being here, but I’m not, so please don’t put me in jail, mister. I’m not even eighteen yet; I still got to finish high school, so please don’t take me in.”

I’ve known worthless teenagers who grew to be first-rate adults. As of now, though, this was a sad and unattractive little girl who was on the fast track to an empty future.

Time once again for my bemused smile. “You weren’t helping them dig? Then how’d you know they were looking for something?”

“Shut your fucking mouth, Tisha! Both of you, shut
up, don’t say another word!” Tony was losing it: knees wagging as if he needed to urinate; fingers snapping; tongue moving, wetting his lower lip as if to cover the lip ring while showing the silver stud in his tongue. He seemed to be on sensory overload, and probably for good reason. Daddy’s equipment had been ruined and, very soon, he’d have to ask Daddy to bail him out of jail. Or so he thought.

Push any living thing into a corner, get too close, and sooner or later it will fight.

It was time for me to back off just a tad, return them to their comfort zone.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance.

Tony was still talking. “What’s your point, mister? You wanna arrest us, arrest us. But I’m tellin’ ya right now, lotta important people know my dad and he’s gonna go fucking ape shit when he finds out what you did to his equipment. So you’re in trouble, too, dude. I don’t care if you’re a cop or not; you had no right to ruin all that expensive shit.”

Nora had remained an effective background prop, stern and official-looking in her military BDUs. Arms folded, staring at them through blue mirrored sunglasses, she did a good job of playing my loyal backup. But then Tony looked at her and said, “Hey, if you two are cops, where’s your guns? And how ’bout you show us some identification.”

Nora said, “We’ve got guns, dumbass. Don’t you worry about that.”

“Yeah? Where?”

“We keep them locked on the patrol boat.”

I watched the expression in Tony’s face change very, very slowly. Cartoons use a lightbulb to illustrate sudden
understanding. I saw a light appear in Tony’s eyes. He was a big lanky guy with ropy muscles, not used to being bullied. “Really? Cops who leave their guns behind. Know what, lady? I think you’re full of shit.”

Now he was considering me, considering the odds; gauging what his best move would be. The women canceled each other. But there were two of him and only one of me. It put a thin smile on his face. He actually seemed to swell up as he stood a little straighter. Then he made direct, glaring eye contact and I listened to him say, “Then fuck you, dude. Some asshole with glasses and GI Jane. You two wrecked my dad’s gear. Then you stand there like hot shits, giving us orders?” He gave a little chuckle of relief. “Some people, they are like so fucking stupid. Seriously. Couple of hicks, I think that’s what we got here.”

Now he was moving slowly to my right. He glanced over his shoulder at Derrick, communicating something.

Derrick seemed to understand instinctively and began to move slowly to our left.

Like elements of submissive behavior, aggressive behavior is just as telling. This slow dividing of pack members and changing of angles was typical. They were moving into attack formation.

I took a step back, shielding Nora. I said to her softly, “From now on, just follow my lead.”

She still didn’t get it. “What’s that supposed to mean? These people have no right to accuse us. After what they’ve done?”

Tony had one of the shovels in his hands now, looking at it, testing the heft of it.

I said to her, “You watch too many movies.”

•    •    •

The best approach in any conflict is find a way to win without fighting. I tried. I offered Tony and his little friends logical, conciliatory options, even implying we’d pay for the damage, Nora and me backing away a little bit at a time, until he said, “Fuck you, four-eyes. Mister big shot back at the chick’s grave. So look at you now, big shot. Begging.”

When he mentioned “grave,” something happened.

It was the word, or maybe his flippant tone, I’m not sure which, but hearing it changed something in me. It brought the pale image of a sleeping girl into my mind once more. That powerful image was accompanied by a low-pitched roaring in my ears. The sound is not unknown to me. It was an occasional visitor from a dark, dark room.

I said softly to Tony, very softly, feeling the words of a stranger flow out with my breath: “Begging? I’m
begging?
”

“Yeah, dude. You can’t hear yourself? Then you must be deaf, man.”

I have my own rule when it comes to dealing with more than one attacker, and it has nothing to do with deception. The rule is simple: do your damnedest to eliminate the weakest attackers first.

Do it quickly, brutally, and you will not have to deal with that attacker ever again. It allows you to give full attention to the man who can do you the most harm.

I watched Tony lift the shovel in both hands and rest it on his shoulder as he walked slowly toward us. He had a nasty little smile on his face; he looked like some freaky laborer on his way to work.

By moving in opposite directions, they’d reached an angle of separation where I had to face Tony or I had to
face Derrick. I knew that the man at my back would be the first to charge, so I faced Tony. He was still coming toward us, but now I was paying less attention to what I saw than what I heard.

Derrick, a big, doughy man, was behind me. I listened to his careful steps. He’d gotten into some of that black muck. I could hear it sucking at his boots.

Good, he’d be a little less agile. He didn’t look particularly agile to begin with. Probably in his early twenties, but lots of baby fat.

“What’s the matter there, dude? Don’t want to beg no more? Big ol’ nerd like you, you ought to be on your knees right now.”

I gave Tony a very different kind of smile. “It’s those pretty earrings of yours. I don’t know whether to beg or flirt.”

I half expected Tony to come lunging, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Momentarily, his eyes bulged. Nothing more. He was probably waiting for the same thing I was anticipating—Derrick to make his move.

Derrick was back there now, clumping along, trying to work up his courage. At least, I hoped he was. I kept waiting and waiting as Tony drew closer.

Tony was about three shovel-lengths away, but moving more slowly. Yep, he wasn’t going to do a damn thing until Derrick attacked.

There are active cowards and passive cowards. Neither are decisive. They almost always need a visual stimulant to act.

I decided to give Derrick an opening he couldn’t refuse.

Nora was to my right. She was still holding her dumb little club, a fierce expression on her face. Not at all like
the chubby girl who now stood watching from the perimeter. I could hear her siren voice yelling, “Kill ’em, you guys! Beat the shit out of ’em. Kick that mouthy bitch!”

Desperation has a tone and so does fear. I tried to imitate both when I said loudly, “Okay, okay, enough. We don’t want any trouble, we quit, we give up. We’ll do whatever you want us to do.”

Nora rebuked me with a swift turn of the head, eyes furious with disappointment. “
What?
Don’t speak for me, buster.”

Now I held my hands up in the most primitive gesture of surrender: palms face-high and turned outward. “I mean it. We’ll do anything you want. Just please tell that girl to shut up about killing us because there’s no reason for anyone to get hurt,” which is when I heard the brush crash behind me as Derrick came charging from behind …

I didn’t want Nora within reach of Tony’s shovel, so I swung her hard to my left, catapulting her toward the blustering Tisha. I ducked as I threw her, allowing the momentum to carry me around so that my eyes were belt-high as Derrick plowed toward me.

He’d found a club. I’d expected him to have something. It was wood, about the width of a broom handle but not as long.

When he swung at me, he gave a grunt of effort, put all his considerable weight into it, which threw him off-balance. I leaned away from the club; even so, I took a bruising shot against the ribs. It nearly knocked the wind out of me; created a whistling noise in my lungs, but I locked my elbow down when he hit me and caught the club under my arm. At the same time, I drove up hard and
hit him in the crotch with a full right fist. I put all my weight and the strength of my thighs into it, so it drove him a couple of feet into the air.

I heard him scream as his legs collapsed beneath him, but I didn’t let him fall. I caught him under the throat with my left hand, forcing him to stand.

I held him there like a fresh shield, me behind him, looking at Tony, who was marching toward me, shovel held overhead like a workman with a sledgehammer who was about to drive a stake into very hard ground.

I stuck my thumb into Derrick’s right ear, dug my fingers hard in behind it. I had a pretty good grip on the thing.

People don’t realize how tenuously the human ear is attached to the head. I gave Derrick a painful demonstration. Early white settlers who were scalped by Indians but managed to survive described the terrible, deafening sound their skin made when it was ripped away from the bone.

I suspect Derrick’s ear made a similar sound as I tore it away from his temple. I didn’t pull it completely off. No. But I broke the skin and popped enough tissue to send a message: it was mine if I wanted it.

The sound of Derrick’s scream froze Tony in midstride, shovel overhead.

I locked my eyes into Tony’s as I spoke into Derrick’s ruined ear, “Leave. If you come back, I’ll make you eat this. You’ll be listening to music through your asshole. Nod if you understand.”

Derrick moved his head up and down carefully.

Still holding the guy by the throat, I pushed him toward the mangroves. I didn’t bother to look at him as he scrambled off into the bushes. Then I stooped and picked
up the limb he’d dropped. I stared into Tony’s troubled face and grinned. The color of his cheeks had changed. They were splotched with white.

“Look, mister. Maybe you were right. Maybe we can talk this over. You pay for what you did to my dad’s shit, sure, fair enough. Just like you offered.”

I was still grinning, walking toward him, the broom-thick stick in my hand. Said, “That offer was for a limited time only.”

A
long time ago, in a different hemisphere, they made us take martial arts instruction. One of the weeklong evolutions was an introduction to
kendo
and
kenjutsu
, Japanese stick fighting and sword fighting, two very serious disciplines.

The martial arts were useful in that they taught pressure points and power points—unexpected places on the body where it is painful or dangerous as hell to hit or get hit. To this day, I cannot see a man wearing an open-collared shirt without looking at the third button down and thinking
solar plexus
.

They drove us hard, drilled us so incessantly that we learned to react without thinking.

Some of it stuck. Most of it did not.

I took away from those evolutions two memorable lessons. I learned that, nine times out of ten, a mediocre wrestler can beat a martial arts “expert” senseless, because all fights, if they last beyond the first series of
blows, end up on the ground. The second important lesson I learned is that I have absolutely no talent as a swordsman or stick fighter. Zero. My peripheral eyesight is not good to begin with, and I’m at a marked disadvantage if I lose my glasses.

But even a talentless stick fighter such as myself knew more about it than Tony.

As I walked toward him, I noticed that he shortened his grip on the shovel. Unknowingly, he’d just told me something very important. He’d gone from a defensive posture to an attack posture.

Had he recovered from his fright? Seemed so. He looked not just ready to fight but eager. Lots of nervous movement. Probably because his chubby girlfriend was still watching, urging him on, yelling, “Kill ‘im, Tony! See what he did to Derrick? Knock his head off, man!”

I approached him carefully. He was big enough, plus he had that look of fast-twitch quickness. A more compelling reason was that Tomlinson’s paranoid assessment was probably accurate: the kid had the pinched manner of someone who enjoyed cruelty. It is a hyena furtiveness; a snap-at-the-heels, eat-them-when-they’re-down demeanor that is subtle but unmistakable.

If Tony got me on the ground, he wouldn’t stop. That was my guess. He’d damage me and enjoy it. Maybe even kill me if he allowed it to go too far. He would probably enjoy that, too. What I had to do was find a way to hurt him badly enough so he’d no longer pose a threat to me and Nora.

At least, that’s what I told myself. When emotion takes control, when the roaring comes into my ears, it is difficult to say what is true and what is justification for my behavior.

I listened to him say, “Dude, let’s drop the sticks. You got the balls for that? Just you and me, using our hands.”

I stopped as if considering. Let him see me relax for a moment, which is when he swung the shovel hard at my face.