Part 4 (1/2)

”Old what?” Buck said, quiet like, almost a hiss, as if his voice was under pressure. Both boys were looking down into the pile of money on the table, neither willing to look up and meet Buck's gaze. The air stayed silent for a full minute.

”Sorry,” Wayne finally said, no twitch of smarta.s.s in it, no possibility of even a flicker of grin at the corners of either boy's mouth.

”G.o.dd.a.m.n right you're sorry.”

Nate Brown was a second generation denizen of the Ten Thousand Islands. He was born on a feather-stuffed mattress in his parents' bed in their tar-paper shack in Chokoloskee somewhere between eighty and one hundred years ago. No one knew the exact year. In his time as the son of one of the original white families that moved to southwest Florida in the late 1800s, he had taken on a nearly mystical aura. He'd practically been born with a rifle in his hands. He knew every turn and twist and mangrove-covered trail from the middle keys to Lake Okeechobee. He was a gator hunter, a stone crabber, a net and hook fisherman beyond compare, a whiskey still operator, and a pot runner. He'd been to Germany in World War II, had worked behind the lines as a mountain soldier, and had a Medal of Honor to prove it. He'd gone to prison when he was sixty years old with the rest of the men in town rather than say a word about the infamous marijuana smuggling ring. Buck's father had told a thousand legendary stories of the old man and how he'd taught the younger generation of Gladesmen how to sear spit-fired curlew birds and hand- caught mullet, how to kill and skin a ten-foot gator in minutes under cover from the game warden's eye, how to outrun the high-powered Coast Guard patrols in a simple outboard flat-boat by using the sandbars and switchback water trails. How to survive in a place called the Everglades where few people chose to survive any longer.

The man was practically a G.o.d to the old timers, and to Buck. And you don't call a man's G.o.d an ”old fart” to his face. It wasn't until Buck finally raised his beer to his mouth and drained it that Wayne saw an opportunity to move without putting himself in danger and got up and fetched the man a new Budweiser. Outside, the wind kept up a low, steady bellow, like a fat man blowing across the mouth of a big clay jug. On occasion the tone would rise with the velocity of a gust. But mostly it hummed, still some distance away, out at sea, warming up to the task, preparing for its scream to come.

TEN.

”She'll hold together,” I said, like a mantra now, but I was wrong. The wind had increased fourfold in strength over the last hour. Sherry and I were now deep into the night. We'd lost the electricity from the generator long ago. In blackness the low hum had grown an octave higher, singing a song of nature p.i.s.sed off. Then the east-side window of the room, behind where Sherry and I were huddled, suddenly blew out with an explosive sound of shattering gla.s.s. I covered both of our faces to s.h.i.+eld us from the fragments, but when nothing came I turned a flashlight beam onto the back window and saw that every shred of gla.s.s and most of the window frame was simply gone, sucked out into the storm.

The change of pressure in the room and the instant exposure to the wind created a vortex of shredding papers and sailing books and dishes. Flapping fabric and smas.h.i.+ng gla.s.s joined with the pitch of the wind to create a din that made me lose even my sense of direction. I thought of trying to somehow muscle one of the couch mattresses up to cover the exposed hole where the window had been and was still contemplating how I would manage it in the dark when the entire structure shuddered again and even the floor seemed to s.h.i.+ft. I knew we were anch.o.r.ed into the substrata of the Glades on several foundation posts, but I still had the feeling of being on a s.h.i.+p floating on water and caught in a typhoon that would surely roll and sink us. The kitchen area window was the next to go, this one coming apart with a splitting sound, but the shards of gla.s.s this time seemed to follow a direct line through the room to the opening at the opposite side. The fractured gla.s.s was immediately followed by a rush of wind-driven water that now had a path into the building.

”Are we going to drown, Max? d.a.m.n, I'd hate to drown,” Sherry said over the howl. Her voice was not panicky or defeated but marvelously cynical for our situation. I didn't want to repeat my lie that the building would hold together, but we were in the middle of the swamp, not on the coast. Since the depth of the water below us was barely three feet I figure as long as we could stay behind something to give us leeward shelter and keep the wind-born water out of our throats we certainly wouldn't drown.

”We're not going to drown,” I yelled, but not with full conviction. I had botched this situation so badly I wouldn't blame her if she never trusted me again.

It had been late afternoon when the first bands of wind from the storm we'd watched forming in the west reached us. I misread it as a single pa.s.sing front. After it cleared we actually thought about cooking a dinner out on the deck. Then the second band washed through, much stronger and wetter than the first and we retreated into the main building of the camp.

”A second front?” Sherry had chided me.

”Series of thunderstorms,” I answered, smiling, but unconvinced myself.

”I think maybe I'll try to get some kind of weather report on the Snows' radio.”

A shower of wind and rain quickly pelted the east side wall.

”I have a better idea, Max. Why don't I do the radio while you tie down that canoe since it's our only way out of here,” Sherry said.

I had on my boat shoes and a T-s.h.i.+rt but the wood planking was slick with rain when I stepped outside and the drops themselves stung when they hit my legs at a hard, wind-driven angle. I moved the Adirondack chairs into the storage building, then, thinking ahead, filled the generator to the top with fuel so we'd have electricity through the night, and then latched down all of the doors. The wind kept growing, the rain more horizontal. I made a decision to not just lash the canoe down, but to actually wrestle it indoors. The main room could accommodate its length and I was losing confidence that this was just going to be a temporary blow. I propped open the side door and dragged the boat in, but Sherry did not turn to ask me what the h.e.l.l I was doing or even look up from her study of the controls on the radio.

”I've been through the AM band twice and only got static and some kind of Spanish salsa music from a rogue station out of Miami,” she said. ”Maybe everyone has relinquished the airwaves to Howard Stern and Radio Marti.”

I only half smiled and she kept turning the tuning dial. Three more times through the width of the band and she gave up.

”Maybe there's an antenna down someplace,” I said.

I have sometimes been accused of being a proud man, but not to the point of stupidity. I went looking for my waterproof bag to retrieve my cell phone. I'd call Billy and find out what the deal was with the storm. He'd probably have a couple of his computer screens on and could pull up a radar scan in a few seconds.

”Sherry, have you seen my bag? The one with my knife and books and the cell phone?” I said, looking next to the couch and along the baseboard.

”Yeah. You had it in the canoe the other day when we rolled, remember? I put it in the bunkhouse bathroom because all the stuff inside was soaking wet. I laid everything out so the books would dry,” she said and then caught herself. ”But I didn't turn it on, Max. It was wet like everything else, but I didn't think about checking it.”

If there was a flicker of worry in her voice I couldn't pick it up, but when I again started out the door into the rain I turned to wink at her, and she turned her chin just so and raised an eyebrow that somehow seemed to say: I hope the thing works.

Outside, I had to lean into the wind and could feel the rain stinging the side of my face. The twenty feet of deck to the bunkhouse door was slick and I felt like I skated across it. I had to push the door closed behind me with my shoulder and looked around to see my bag pulled inside out and hanging up on one of the bunkbed posts and the contents laid out on the top blanket. The Kooser poetry book was turned open at the middle, the pages still moist and stained black from where the water had caused the cover dye to run. The first aid kit and the knife, the reasons I took the bag out fis.h.i.+ng to begin with, were fine. I picked up the cell phone and pressed the on b.u.t.ton and waited for that ridiculous little tin jingle that tells you the network is on. I believe I stared at the small screen for too many seconds, hoping, before I pushed the on and off b.u.t.ton three more times. No light. No jingle. We had our privacy now, I thought. No one but us out here.

Back in the main cabin, with the walls quivering and the wind humming, we made a cold dinner of sandwiches and beer. When the electricity went out, I considered going out to the generator building but probably made the first smart decision of the week and stayed put. In the Snows' cupboard Sherry found one of those big floatable flashlights that boaters use and we finished eating by battery light.

”I remember the first time I went to Girl Scout summer camp and was scared when they told ghost stories around the campfire and then I had to sleep in the dark with kids I didn't really know that well,” Sherry said, and then she'd shown the flashlight up under her chin and went: ”Boooooooo.”

”I can't see you scared, deputy. Certainly you'd kick the boogeyman's a.s.s and flex-cuff him.”

”Yeah, well. You learn in the academy not to show fear if you remember right, Officer Freeman. It's only a tactic.”

But this was different. There was no one to fight, no one to outwit, no one to strategize against. When your attacker is powerful enough to throw the ocean itself a mile inland, rip cinder blocks apart with its fingers, shred metal like tissue paper in its teeth, you simply cower before it and pray.

After the windows went I wrapped my arms around Sherry, my chest pressed into her back, the tops of my thighs against her hamstrings, and I could feel a vibration from deep inside of her. I turned once at a sound that screamed of metal and wrenching wood and I flipped on the flashlight and panned high. The light caught an opening between the roofline and the top of the opposite wall, beams lifting, an entire section of the roof flapping like a rug being shaken off the back porch and then all holy h.e.l.l broke loose as the section peeled away and the floor seemed to buckle and I felt my head take a shot from something heavy with a squared-off edge and there was a sudden coolness on my chest because I'd lost my grip on Sherry's warm body, and then blackness.

ELEVEN.

Maybe it was fifteen minutes, maybe an hour. My sense of time was gone with the wind. But when my head finally started to clear it was still in the pewter haze of a washed-out sunrise. There was a dim grayness all around us and when I focused my eyes, I realized I was staring out onto an open horizon. The back and side walls of the room were gone, simply obliterated or just picked up by the wind and sailed far away. I panicked, jerked against what I was leaning into, and Sherry groaned deep in her throat. We were up against the remains of the kitchen sink cabinet, wedged partially between it and the still-standing refrigerator. I moved my legs, turned on one hip and looked into Sherry's face. She was conscious, her breathing shallow but steady, her eyes at half-mast, almost like she was simply taking a lolling rest after one of her long-distance runs.

”You OK?” I asked stupidly. ”I mean, s.h.i.+t, how long have I been out?”

She didn't respond at first and seemed to be looking out past me into the gray light.

”OK,” she finally whispered and then focused on my eyes. ”I'm OK, I didn't know what to do, Max. No place to go.”

I moved my arm, aimed my hand, found the side of her temple with my fingertips and stroked the side of her face.

”Jesus, Sherry. You OK?”

Maybe she was smiling at my denseness, but the corners of her mouth turned up, just a fraction.

”h.e.l.l of a night,” she said. ”It's morning, but I can't get up.”

She reached down with her left hand but only got to her hip and stopped. She had a rag tied around her thigh, tight from the look of it. The torn piece of sheet and the fabric of her sweatpants were stained a rust color. I sat up, felt a spin in my head like I was a kid on the tilt-a-whirl for a second, and then moved down without too much pain to Sherry's leg.

”Puncture?” I ask, probably hoping for something minor.

”No. It's broken.”

”Compound?”

”Yeah,” she said. ”Thigh bone came right through the skin on the interior side. I thought my muscles were stronger than that, that they would've kept it in.”

She was a cop. We'd both spent a lot of time at accident scenes gabbing with paramedics, picking up their medical cant.