Acts Of Nature Part 3

"That's probably true," I said.

She had no comeback and instead went quiet again, to gather a recollection.

"Jimmy was a terrible marksman," she said and I could tell from her eyes she was seeing her dead husband. "He was always asking for pointers, ways to pa.s.s the next qualifier without practicing. I don't think he ever drew his weapon out on the streets in his entire career."

I let her think her own thoughts for a second, knowing there was another beat just behind her lips.

"But?" I finally said.

"I always knew he would protect me," she said, her eyes coming back to mine. "You know what I mean? Not just back- to-the-wall, guns drawn protection. But protect me. Then he died and I think I actually felt betrayed by that, like it was his fault. So I hardened up, Max. I decided I could take care of myself and say to h.e.l.l with the rest of the world."

She rolled over onto her back, her naked body completely exposed to the sky and the sun. I rolled to one elbow and stared at her, the bridge of her nose, the new sun freckles on her shoulder, and I found something missing. The necklace from her husband that she never took off was gone. I could have been presumptuous, could have hoped for the meaning of its absence. Instead I asked.

"Do you know your necklace is missing?"

Her eyes remained closed. She did not reach to her throat, or show surprise.

"Yes."

I reached over to lace my fingers through hers and rolled to my back.

"You want me to protect you, Sherry?" I said.

"Yes."

"Then I will."

"And love me?"

"That," I said, squeezing her fingers between mine, "goes without saying."

I saw her smile from the corner of my eye.

"No, Max, it doesn't go without saying. Not with me."

I turned my head to look at her profile. Her smile stayed, like she'd caught me at something.

"I love you, Sherry," I said.

This time she turned her head and looked into my face.

Again there were those brow lines like she wasn't sure where the unusual words had come from. Then she smiled.

"You know something, Max?" she said. "I believe you do."

For another couple of hours we lay there, she on her back, and I finally rolled over onto a towel and watched the western sky, studying the cloud pattern that was building out there on the horizon. It was not a typical Everglades weather construction. During the summer months the heat of the day causes millions of gallons of water from the surface of the exposed Glades to evaporate and rise and start to build a wall of towering cloud in the sky above it. But I could tell from the lessons of Billy Manchester-my attorney friend and his sometimes annoying habit of knowing everything-that the cloud I was watching in the distance was blowing in much too high for that weather pattern. These were the kind that came from elsewhere, pushed by forces that were not homegrown. But I was watching pa.s.sively, a.s.sessing nothing. I was also listening to nothing, literally. Our surroundings had gone silent. No chirruping of the midday insects that fed in the heat. No bird call. In fact, the owl that had made it a practice to come out of its roof hole and had afforded us such viewing pleasure for the past two days seemed to be absent. I rolled onto my side again and looked out to the east where Wally the gator would normally have been sunning himself on the low mound of flattened sawgra.s.s. He too was missing. I also made a mental note that I had not heard a distant engine of an airboat during the entire morning. But I only contemplated the absence of sound for a short few moments and then reminded myself how odd and luxurious such an occurrence was for people like us to enjoy. Sherry seemed to be asleep. We seemed totally alone.

EIGHT.

Buck was sitting sideways on a bar stool at the Miccosukee Resort and Gaming casino, intermittently watching the storm coverage on television, his boys over near the blackjack tables having their fist-tapping jive finger-twisting bulls.h.i.t conversation with their so-called contact, and the bright flicker-flash of the chrome bottle opener riding tight and warm in the slick leather back pocket of the bartender. The girl was most pleasing to him, but he couldn't say for sure which one of his focal points might bring him the most trouble.

Even with the television sound off Buck could tell what was going on with the storm. Some guy at the other end of the bar had asked the girl to change the channel from some meaningless Marlins baseball game. Her manager would be p.i.s.sed when and if he noticed. It probably wasn't good policy to bring reality into a casino, especially the kind that would tell some folks to go home and start buying plywood instead of gambling chips. The meteorologists had given the storm a name a few days ago and it was some sort of rule this year that it had to be female so they dubbed her Simone. The weather guys had been tossing around a bunch of "Sloppy Simone" jokes until she formed up in strength and purpose and killed three people on Grand Cayman Island coming through the pa.s.sage south of Cuba. Now she was turning into a real b.i.t.c.h. She was a category three with a hundred-twenty-mile-an- hour winds and they had one of those electronic tracking maps up on the screen now and the weather girl with the tight sweater and bleached blond hair was waving her delicate fingers like she was on some kind of game show. She was pointing at the red spots where the storm had been at midnight, six this morning, and now close to three in the afternoon. Simone had wiggled around off the Yucatan coast but then took a sudden right turn to the north and started huffing. They put one of those "cone of probability" graphics up there that put the landfall possibilities anywhere from Galveston to the Big Bend of central Florida, and Buck whispered to himself: "s.h.i.t, them guys over on the roulette table got better odds than that, eh?" The screen flashed a huge banner-"Storm Alert, Tracking Simone"-and then went to some commercial selling gas- powered generators. Buck got the bartender's attention and then stared at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s while he ordered a double bourbon with a beer chaser.

"Looks like weather comin'," he said to the girl's eyes this time when she came back with his drinks, see if he could get her to stay down here. She was cute in a pale, thin kinda way.

"Can't be any worse than last year," she said. "Uh, Mr. Hall."

Buck tensed up, just a notch. The bartender had used the name on the credit card Buck had pa.s.sed to her for the first round and he was caught by surprise that she'd memorized it. Maybe that was company policy too. It had only been twenty minutes since he'd scrummed up against some older guy in a bar upstairs and lifted his wallet out of his polyester sport coat pocket. Buck had gone straight to the men's room and locked himself inside a stall and lifted out fifty-three dollars in cash and two credit cards. The American Express card had the name Richard Hall stamped on it. Member since 1982. He'd dumped the wallet in the chrome trash receptacle and come downstairs.

"We'll worry about her when she gets to Naples, sweetheart," he said to the bartender, recovering. She gave him a nondescript tip of her chin and turned away. f.u.c.king s...o...b..rd, he thought.

Buck's parents and their parents before them had watched such storms approach for a century. Like most people born and raised in southwest Florida, they didn't need some long- range predictions. h.e.l.l, these national weather forecast guys could track a fart coming off the African coast and watch it meander for three weeks across the Atlantic. Buck's father had taught him to watch the weather on the horizon, note the slope of the Gulf water swells, pay attention to the birds and the lack of feeding fish.

"The animals know what the world is doing long before we do, son."

Like most native Gladesmen, his daddy knew how to b.u.t.ton down, tie off his boat, and strap down anything else that might fly off in a hundred-mile-an-hour gust or float away on an eight-foot storm tide and then just see what came. They'd dig out after. It was the way it was. s.h.i.t, look at New Orleans. Doppler weather my a.s.s. If you could run, you ran. If you stayed, for whatever reason, you did the best you could and started again with whatever the storm left you. Survivors survived. The dead didn't.

It had been the same way in prison. You fought if you could, scammed if you could, joined up if you could, took what you could. Buck had taken the fight route just because he could. He'd chosen bra.s.s knuckles instead of becoming someone's hump. A broken eye socket, a few busted ribs, a couple of teeth in his b.l.o.o.d.y spit. He'd suffer the same any day. They ought to make a commercial: "Prison love-a beating only hurts for a while, being someone's b.i.t.c.h lasts forever."

Buck looked back over at the boys who were now feeding off each other's enthusiasm for posturing and starting to look like some video off MTV. Marcus was doing his hand thing, fingers splayed out like they were unnaturally twisted or spastic and then turning his wrists and elbows to point with his index and little digits-at what? Who knew. He was dressed in that equally perplexing style with the oversized jeans that billowed out and hung down, but mysteriously only came to his mid-calf. He had on a Hawaiian shirt that actually didn't look too bad to Buck even though it was too big and flying open to expose a T-shirt underneath with some bulls.h.i.t rap message about "gettin' drizzed, yo."

Wayne was similarly outfitted but his shirt was some impossibly long T-shirt thing that came past his knees and nearly met the low cuffs of his goofy pants. Their friend who had joined them, and was supposedly a contact for the real dude with the information and locations of the Glades camps, was in the same getup except his long shirt was a Miami Heat jersey that Shaquille O'Neal himself could have worn, but it looked like a drape on this kid. All three of them were wearing stiff-brimmed baseball hats that had never been touched by the fingertips of baseball players. The contact had his lopped over to one side like he was hiding a deformed ear. The three of them were flicking their fingers and bopping around on the b.a.l.l.s of their feet and blatantly staring at any female who walked past them and probably doing that ppssst, ppsst ppssst, ppsst sound that caused some of the younger girls to turn their heads to them but made at least one woman flip them the finger. Buck figured the costuming was just another version of kids trying to belong, cliquing up with one another in an effort to be in with something instead of having to realize we're really out here all alone in the world. He'd seen the same thing in prison, mostly split along racial lines. Buck had learned quickly that the world inside was no different than the world outside. No one else was going to jump in to save you when your ship went down. You the alone, boys. sound that caused some of the younger girls to turn their heads to them but made at least one woman flip them the finger. Buck figured the costuming was just another version of kids trying to belong, cliquing up with one another in an effort to be in with something instead of having to realize we're really out here all alone in the world. He'd seen the same thing in prison, mostly split along racial lines. Buck had learned quickly that the world inside was no different than the world outside. No one else was going to jump in to save you when your ship went down. You the alone, boys.

Buck downed the rest of his drink and was about to go over to his misfits and find out what the deal was. He was fronting this operation with two hundred dollars and all he was getting was some punk floor show. He slid off the stool but froze when a guy in a casino uniform approached the group. It made him nervous and he eased back onto the bar stool and turned his face half away but kept his peripheral vision honed on them. It took him a second to notice the dustpan in the uniformed guy's hand, a broom in the other. Minimum-wage sweeper boy. He tapped fists all around and then motioned the group back under an overhang. Smart, Buck thought. Kid probably knows where all the cameras are and knows that most of them are focused on the gaming tables and you don't want to end up on some videotape upstairs. The uniform took something from his pocket and pa.s.sed it to Wayne, who gave him a small roll of bills in return. A tap of the fists again and they went their separate ways. Wayne, who had been so instructed, looked over at Buck, put one finger to the side of his nose and flicked it. Jesus, Buck thought. Was that the kid's idea of a high sign? f.u.c.king scene from The Sting. The Sting. h.e.l.l, that film was older than the kid was. Buck signaled the bartender for his check, signed it with Mr. Hall's scribble, and headed for the parking lot. h.e.l.l, that film was older than the kid was. Buck signaled the bartender for his check, signed it with Mr. Hall's scribble, and headed for the parking lot.

"You cool?"

Wayne and Marcus looked at each other, shrugging their shoulders like they were afraid to offer up the wrong answer to Buck's simple question.

"Uh, yeah," Wayne finally said and both of them nodded their heads as they climbed into the pickup truck. Marcus took the backseat of the club cab.

Buck got behind the wheel dunking: Jesus H. I know these two haven't been smoking pot for at least a couple of hours. How did two human minds get so dense? He let it go.

"He gave us six possibles," Wayne said, taking a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolding it for Buck to see. "Here's the GPS coordinates for each one so we could use that handheld unit and he said you can get out to the first one in a couple of hours."

Buck started the truck engine and looked over at the paper. It was the lined type you used in school, the kind with the three-ring binder holes in it. The numbers made no sense to anyone unaware of global positioning systems, but most of the people in the Glades had been using the GPS to mark fishing grounds and crab trap placements for the last fifteen years. Out on the Gulf waters it had become almost essential, a quick and easy way to find your way on a sea of nothing but bare horizon once you were out beyond sight of land. Then they started miniaturizing the technology so everyone and their grandmother were using the thing now. They even started building them into high-priced cars and even cell phones so you could be a halfwit and still find your way around. It was the way of the world now, Buck thought. Easier and softer. Same with the people. That's what made them such simple prey. They got fat and comfortable. Might as well have been asking for it.

"So this sweeper guy knows these camps?"

"Yeah. His uncle is a kinda contractor and ferries the building supplies and stuff out to these places when they're building them or redoin' them all modern. Sometimes this kid goes along with his uncle to load and unload the wood and shingles and plumbing pipes an' all. They've got a big ol' airboat that lugs it," Wayne said, rushing on with as much detail as he could so that Buck wouldn't think he was just stupid and they wouldn't have just wasted two hundred dollars on the locations and that would really p.i.s.s Buck off.

Marcus sat in the back where he always did, watching the backs of the others' heads. Wayne was stealing his idea, of course, and he'd never get any credit for it if it worked out. But then he figured he also wouldn't catch all the s.h.i.t if it didn't. That was the trade-off.

Buck looked at the numbers again. He'd have to map them out to have a clue where they were. All three sat in silence for a couple of minutes until Wayne couldn't take Buck's lack of response any longer.

"Toby said this here one, at the top, is only about a half hour north off Alligator Alley on the airboat and then the others are pretty close too."

He kept looking at the paper, like you could see something there, like he was studying the numbers just like Buck appeared to be.

"OK, we'll see about that," Buck finally said. "I've got a surveyor's map back at the house. We can plot these out and see just what kind of access two hundred dollars just bought us." Buck knew the Glades could be a tricky place to navigate even in the best of times. And although the boys were oblivious to the weather Buck had been watching in the casino, he knew a coming storm could work for them as well as against them.

He looked back over his shoulder as he started the truck and said to Marcus: "This plan of yours might still have life."

NINE.

Harmon was in the back of his house in Coral Springs, a cordless electric drill in his hand, spinning tight the wing nuts that held his hurricane shutters over the rear sliding gla.s.s doors. The sun was out. He was already sweating profusely with the effort of carrying and mounting the steel panels from his garage and stacking them in front of every window and door to his home. Each one was marked with its designation: N SIDE BEDROOM, S SIDE DINING N SIDE BEDROOM, S SIDE DINING. He'd been through this many times during his years living down here and now it had become ritual. But he never went so far as to say he'd gotten used to it.

With the attachment on the drill he whizzed the nut on the W SIDE BATH W SIDE BATH and then took a break. Inside his house the lack of light created by the sealed windows was already giving him a mildly claustrophobic feel. He poured himself a gla.s.s of cold water from the refrigerator and sat at the kitchen bar, watching the local weather channel on the television. The station had not been changed for the last twenty-four hours. His wife called him obsessed but he just flitted her off with the back of his fingers, told her she was right, it was probably a waste of time and effort, go on with whatever you were doing and don't mind me. She shook her head and did just that. Harmon kept his face turned to the TV. He was scared and given who he was, the years that his wife had spent with him overseas on security details in the military, even the time he'd had to hand-strip down a couple of a.s.shole muggers on the street in Miami in front of her when they'd tried to rob them and he'd left them both with snapped bones, mewling like broken kittens on the sidewalk, he'd never showed fear. Harmon was considered an expert with a handgun. He was also good at close-quarters hand fighting, techniques he'd learned long ago that had become so ingrained that despite his age he could regain them in an instant, not unlike riding a bike or crushing a man's windpipe before he could yell out an alarm. Harmon was not a man who panicked and his wife and family had depended on that. But today he was scared and would be until the threat of this new hurricane had pa.s.sed. Harmon had seen the strength of such a storm. It was nothing you could fight, nothing you could kill, nothing you could stand up against if it decided to cross your path. It was bigger and stronger than man. And if it wanted you, all you could do was huddle down with your head between your knees and kiss your a.s.s good-bye, as Squires would say. and then took a break. Inside his house the lack of light created by the sealed windows was already giving him a mildly claustrophobic feel. He poured himself a gla.s.s of cold water from the refrigerator and sat at the kitchen bar, watching the local weather channel on the television. The station had not been changed for the last twenty-four hours. His wife called him obsessed but he just flitted her off with the back of his fingers, told her she was right, it was probably a waste of time and effort, go on with whatever you were doing and don't mind me. She shook her head and did just that. Harmon kept his face turned to the TV. He was scared and given who he was, the years that his wife had spent with him overseas on security details in the military, even the time he'd had to hand-strip down a couple of a.s.shole muggers on the street in Miami in front of her when they'd tried to rob them and he'd left them both with snapped bones, mewling like broken kittens on the sidewalk, he'd never showed fear. Harmon was considered an expert with a handgun. He was also good at close-quarters hand fighting, techniques he'd learned long ago that had become so ingrained that despite his age he could regain them in an instant, not unlike riding a bike or crushing a man's windpipe before he could yell out an alarm. Harmon was not a man who panicked and his wife and family had depended on that. But today he was scared and would be until the threat of this new hurricane had pa.s.sed. Harmon had seen the strength of such a storm. It was nothing you could fight, nothing you could kill, nothing you could stand up against if it decided to cross your path. It was bigger and stronger than man. And if it wanted you, all you could do was huddle down with your head between your knees and kiss your a.s.s good-bye, as Squires would say.

He took another deep drink of the water and refocused on the news. Hurricane Simone had swung north from the Yucatan Peninsula and then stalled for a day in the Gulf of Mexico. There it sucked up energy from the heat rising off eighty-two-degree Gulf water and ate itself into a huge category four monster. Some people likened it to spilling millions of gallons of gasoline on a forest fire, fueling a force that already couldn't be stopped from eating everything in its path. But Harmon had been in the middle of a forest fire. He had also been in the center of a hurricane and the comparison was lost on him.

On the tube the muted commentator was incessantly moving his lips while pointing out the steering currents-a high pressure system moving down from the western states and a sucking low off the southeast Atlantic-that was now bringing the storm back to Florida. The red-shaded "cone of probability" graphic was now a thinner triangle whose narrow end was just off the coast of Naples on the west side of the state and then spreading out to cover everything from the big blob of blue representing Lake Okeechobee on the northern edge down to Miami on the south.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n reversal of Andrew," Harmon said out loud.

"What, honey?" his wife called out from the laundry room. He ignored her.

They had been together in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew ripped like a freight train over their home just south of Miami on an opposite track, crossing the state from east to west. Harmon had been working security at Homestead Air Force Base as a consultant. The money had been good enough to buy a nice four-bedroom house with a pool and an acre of land shaded by two-hundred-year-old live oaks that towered like green clouds over his yards. On the sunny side of the acreage he'd planted a row of orange and grapefruit trees that never failed to blossom in spring and give fruit in summer. Eden. Even now the memories brought an interior smile.

Yeah, he'd known that one was coming. He'd been called onto the base to make sure that the hangars were secure where they'd moved the military jet fighters and lighter stuff that might get blown around. He'd tightened up a contingency plan just in case they lost off-site civilian power and had to go to their own generators. At home he'd tossed the patio furniture into the pool as a neighbor had suggested and parked his pickup truck closer to the garage so it would be on the leeward side and less likely to be pelted by loose tree branches and debris. He'd seen that some folks had put masking tape in crisscross fashion over their front windows. Christ, even he knew that old trick was bulls.h.i.t. If a wind-blown branch or a coconut or something like that hit your window head on it was going to crack the gla.s.s anyway. You were still going to have to sweep up. Sc.r.a.ping that glue from the tape off the windows after the storm was four times the work. He'd gone to bed that night without even watching the news. The wind woke him at two a.m.

Go ahead, Harmon would later tell friends from other parts of the country or the world when he traveled. Push your vehicle up to ninety or a hundred miles an hour on the expressway if you dare and then note the sound. Not the engine sound, because that won't compare with the rush of air blasting over your car hood and roof. Just listen to the sound and then stick your head out the side window and let the air rip at your face. That's a category four hurricane. That's the strength of the wind, tearing at your world. For hours.

Harmon was staring at the television, but not seeing the weather woman with her graphics and maps and little spinning red pinwheel depicting the present location of Simone. He was instead seeing the Oakwood grain of his double front door during Andrew, his face pressed up against it, his then solid two hundred thirty pounds trying to keep it closed as the wind bowed the two-inch-thick planks into the entryway. His wife was in the hallway closet, crying, huddled with their two children. But he could not hear her or anything else but the wind blowing through the rubber seal of the doorway, the air under such pressure that the sound was like Arturo Sandoval hitting a high C note on his trumpet for what seemed an eternity. He had looked around behind him at the walls lined with his books, really the most important things to him other than his family, and cursed himself for not preparing better. And then, at that moment, as he watched, the ceiling at one corner of his living room began to rise like the devil himself was gripping the house with a giant hand and then peeled away the entire roof and sent it flipping away into the night.

The house had been a total loss. They were lucky to salvage some important papers, some pictures, some heirlooms. Most of his books had been ruined by the rain that had washed unimpeded through every room. After Andrew his family relocated farther up the state. Everyone in the house had survived unscathed but for the memories that crept back.

Harmon refocused on the television, took another drink of cold water. Back to work, he thought. Only the south side shutters left. He thought about Squires, could see his partner on the beachfront somewhere, sitting out in the open, laughing into the face of the rising wind and downing yet another draft at the hurricane party thrown by the locals down at the infamous beachside tavern called the Elbo Room. He was probably toasting the fact that the company wouldn't be sending them out to the oil rigs since this one had turned east. He'd be buying shots and toasting h.e.l.l itself. Some of us took precautions, some just said f.u.c.k it, let it come. If she hit them head on, it would be difficult to argue who was the smarter.

"d.a.m.n, Chez! It's blowin' like a snarly b.i.t.c.h out there now," Wayne said as he came through the door, wind and rain swirling in behind him even though he'd only opened it far enough to squeeze through. "Old man Brown's coconut tree is bent over like to touch its head on the ground and the water's already up to the fourth step over to Smallwood Store."

He shook himself like a dog that had just come out of the lake, the water flying off his slicker onto the linoleum floor and the nearby refrigerator. Buck and Marcus were again sitting in the kitchen, each with a hand of cards spread out in their fingers, a small pile of quarters and crumpled bills lay in the middle of the table.

"Hey, bring us a beer there, Stumpy," Marcus said without looking up from his hand.

"f.u.c.k you," Wayne answered, peeling off the yellow foul- weather jacket.

Buck raised his own eyes at the boy's answer and then looked at Wayne, and then at the fridge. Wayne got three cans of Budweiser out and set them on the table. One he put in front of the empty chair where he sat. He didn't distribute the others, the smallest of rebellions.

"Don't call me stumpy," he said. Marcus just grinned into his cards. Wayne had lost his left thumb two years ago, working the stone crab boats with one of his uncles. He'd bragged about being allowed to work the traplines at the beginning of the harvest season. It was a man's job. The stone crab traps, big as a large microwave oven and just as heavy, were strung out by the dozens On braided lines, sitting on the bottom of the Gulf and baited with fish heads and chicken parts. When harvest came a giant motor winch on the stern of the boat started pulling up the line at a steady speed. The boat captains timed the operation down to pure efficiency, the traps s.p.a.ced just far enough so a line man could hook the first trap as it broke the surface, yank it up with a boat hook onto the gunwale, pop open its door, snag the crabs inside, and toss them into a bucket and then rebait the trap with half-frozen bait, and shove the whole thing back overboard just in time to grab the boat hook and snag the next trap hitting the surface. It was all a delicate dance. But there was nothing delicate if your gloved hand got caught in the line or even got stuck enough to yank you into the spinning winch. Wayne's left hand had gotten caught. The line, perhaps luckily, only looped around his thumb, and with the power to drag hundreds of pounds through the warm Gulf water, it popped the digit off clean, the sound like a rifle shot, a sound many of the crewmen had heard before. Wayne was fourteen.

"Ain't no girl gonna go for a four-finger thief," Marcus had kidded him later. The comment, like the nickname itself, was something only your best friend could say. The boys had been neighbors since their toddler years. You always abuse the ones you know best.

"Yeah, you're probably right," Wayne had answered. "So what's your excuse, d.i.c.khead?"

Shortly after the accident Wayne took to holding his beers with his left hand, out in front so anyone and everyone would notice his deformity. He never hid the hand, carried it like a badge or something, maybe a chip that should have been on his shoulder. Marcus might have even been envious. It was better'n any d.a.m.n tattoo you could get in Miami.

Marcus let the lack-of-a-girlfriend insult bounce off him; old joke, he'd heard it before.

"So I'm in for three bucks and I raise you another dollar," Marcus said, peering up over his cards at Buck. The man kept his eyes down, pinching the cards. The tips of his fingernails turned white when he did this, the rest of the nail shading a darker red with the press of blood against their backs. It was a tell that Buck had tried to get rid of playing cards in prison. He'd gotten his a.s.s kicked in poker for the first nine months in prison until a new friend finally let on to the obvious sign he was flashing to the rest of the players whenever he had a good hand. But these boys weren't so tuned into the small details of gambling. He saw and raised the bet back to Marcus, who scowled. Out of the hand, Wayne was bored.

"So we gonna do these expensive-a.s.s fishing camps after the storm, right?"

No one answered. They'd been over the plan already. Buck had been twisting the images around in his head, just like when he'd lain awake all night in prison, working the details, what it was going to look like when he got out, what he was going to do, how this time he was going to be so careful there was no way he'd make the same mistakes again and get caught. Every opportunity could be the big score that would set him up.

"But what if the d.a.m.n hurricane busts stuff up? A nice fishing rig or a stereo or somethin' ain't gonna be worth much if it's busted up," Wayne said. "I mean, I know it'll be easier to get into the places like you said, Buck, make it look like nature done it and all. But suppose the good stuff gets damaged before we get there?"

Buck understood the boy was anxious; that always happened once you had a plan set and you were young and giddy, wanting to get your feet moving and your fingers on something profitable. He'd probably been the same way when he was younger, not as bad, of course, but somewhat the same.

"Son," he said, still not looking up. "You hear that howl outside, boy? Ain't a thing you can do about that 'cane coming in now. She's gonna do what she gonna do, then we'll run on out on the airboat as soon as she moves on through just like we planned. We'll hit them places and see what we can see. Those owners are gonna be busy in their regular homes for days. Their fishing camps will be the last thing on their minds. We got all the time in the world to loot through. Might be some damage, but there won't be anybody figuring what's gone until we've already sold it and have the money in our pockets.

"You got that? Right, Wayne?"

"Yes, sir," Wayne said, like he'd been put down by some teacher at the front of the cla.s.s again. "I got it."

Buck heard the twitch of humiliation, or was that anger, in the boy's voice. He knew he had to keep his merry little band together.

"You did good with getting those locations, Wayne. But this storm helps us, right? h.e.l.l, it's almost legal. Like a salvage operation. We could find something that'll make our day out there and simply walk away."

"I'll call you," Marcus suddenly said, like he hadn't heard a word of what the others had been talking about. He laid down three queens and looked up at Buck, grinning.

Buck took a long draft off the beer, nearly half of it gone in one swallow and then, one at a time, lay down a ten high straight. Marcus shoved his chair back, disgusted, and went for another beer as Buck raked in the pile. A high-pitched gust of wind rattled the wooden shutters that had been nailed shut over the kitchen window.

"Mr. Brown all tightened down out there?" Buck asked Wayne.

"Tight like a tick," Wayne said. "Even got some sandbags piled up at the back of his boathouse. Old fart must be expecting a big one."

Buck snapped his eyes up. Both boys turned their heads at the silent change of pressure in the room. Even with their stunted powers of recollection, they'd realized the mistake that had been made.