Acts Of Nature Part 4

"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 shield 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 smashing 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 shift. 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 ship 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-shirt 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 fishing 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.

"I was trying to drag you over here after the side wall ripped away," she said. "My foot must have gone right through a split in the flooring. I fell over and the bone just snapped."

I was staring at her face, trying to comprehend what she was telling me.

"When I felt for the pain I found the bone with my fingers. But I had to move, get us over. When I pulled my leg back out of the hole, I must have pulled the bone back in because it's not exposed anymore."

"Christ, Sherry." It was the only thing that came to my lips.

"When I got us a little out of the wind I was going to use your shirt to tie it off but a bedsheet came whipping by like I'd ordered the thing from room service."

Levity, I thought. She could have been crying, instead she was cracking jokes. Her blond hair looked almost brown, drenched and stringy with shards of wind-blown sawgra.s.s stuck in it. Her face was smeared with dirt and streaks of her own blood wiped there from her hands. I was looking in her eyes for some sign of trauma or shock that just wasn't there.

"I'm OK, Max. I pa.s.sed out a couple of times but it feels kind of dead right now. I'm not sure that's going to last if I try to move, though."

Sherry's brave suggestion motivated me to roll over to my own knees and then, slowly, gain my feet. There was an uneasy shift in my brainpan, like a load of water in a tub tipped from one side to the other, but I maintained my balance and the feeling pa.s.sed.

In the dim light, I took in the shredded remains of the Snows' fishing camp. The western wall that we used for shelter and a quarter of the south wall were still standing. The two others were completely gone, like they'd been ground to mulch or simply sailed away. Glops of wet stuffing from the couch and the bed had been whirled and splattered onto anything that was still vertical: the refrigerator, the cabinet fronts bolted into the standing wall, the now pristinely empty bookcase that was equally nailed to the quarter wall. I took a couple of steps on the floorboards and heard gla.s.s crunching under my feet. Past the bookcase, into now free s.p.a.ce, I could see the outbuildings, which appeared to have been de-roofed and then simply folded over like wet cardboard boxes. The large water tank, easily four or five hundred pounds when filled, was tossed thirty yards out onto Wally's now bald island. Several planks from the extensive deck had been peeled up with no discernible pattern and the walkway looked like a broken, haphazard piano keyboard. The air smelled of dank, sopping detritus, like the earth itself had been turned by some monstrous tiller and flopped back down on top of us. Looking out toward the south I could only see fifty or sixty yards in the grayness; the plain of sawgra.s.s was flattened, as if by a steam roller. A few thicker, hardier stalks were just beginning to rise up like stubble after a mean harvest. There was civilization out there, the edges of the suburbs less than fifteen miles away. Speculating on what the hurricane might have done there was useless. But there would at least be medical response, even if they'd been hard hit. We didn't have that luxury and, despite her bravery, Sherry was going to need that sooner than later.

The thought turned me to searching the wreckage around me. My pack. My first aid kit. The canoe.

Pulled in against the remaining wall last night, the canoe was only partially intact. The ribbing and gunwales were unbroken but there was a gaping wound in the middle of the hull. The paddles were long gone. So too the small metal first aid kit. No clean bandages. No astringent or antibiotic cream. Not even a f.u.c.king aspirin.

I searched for water. The cooler we'd brought was gone and with it the water and whatever food was left. The upright refrigerator mocked me. The Snows always emptied it of perishables and shut it down when they left the place. We had not even bothered to open it. Inside I found four small bottles of store-bought water along with two jars of pickles, squeeze bottles of both mustard and ketchup, and three cans of beer. In the freezer compartment there were several empty ice cube trays and a mushy warm Ace reusable cold compress. I brought out the water, twisted open one bottle and then bent to Sherry, offering it to her lips.

"Ah, room service," she said, but could not smile at the joke this time. "Anything up there from your vantage point that looks hopeful, Max? The view looks pretty dismal from down here." She turned at the hip to take in the crushed outbuildings but winced at the effort. "At one point I thought of a signal fire but figured we could burn down everything we've got left to sit on and still not raise anybody's attention."

She wasn't just being cute. If the hurricane had done any significant damage on the coast there would be plenty of emergencies for the authorities to handle in their own backyards, never mind some idiot who went frontiering out in the Glades without so much as leaving a word behind with a destination in mind. Who would miss them? And where would they look? Maybe if the river ranger at the park went out to my cabin to check on me. Maybe if he realizes my canoe is missing. Maybe if Sherry's supervisor couldn't contact her to come in for post- hurricane duty. Lots of maybes that could take days. I looked down at the stained bandage around Sherry's leg and didn't think we had days. From what little I knew about compound fractures, the sharp edges of the broken bone could be doing even more damage on the inside with every movement. Since the bone had once been exposed, infection was not just a possibility but a certainty. I sat back down next to her.

"I don't think we can afford to stay here, Sherry."

"Yeah, I figured," she said. "No communications link. Not much in the way of pa.s.sing traffic." This time she found a way to tighten those laugh lines of hers but then turned her head to the bleak horizon.

"We walkin' or ridin'?"

"I'm going to search what's left of the utility room. There might be something we can use to patch the canoe. If we can get her floating, we're riding," I said, trying to at least match her formidable gumption.

"You're thinking maybe that last camp we pa.s.sed? That one in the trees? Might have been sheltered at least a little bit?"

"You're way ahead of me, as usual," I said and meant it.

"No, Max," she said, turning back to find my eyes. "Not ahead. Just right with you."

This time I did lean down and kiss her lightly, on the mouth.

"OK then," I said and untied the flashlight from her belt. "I'll be right back."

The bunkhouse was completely gone, as if it had been swatted off the deck by a giant hand, only a few iron post anchors left bolted to the flooring where the corners of the building used to be. The utility building was flattened but there were still gaps of s.p.a.ce under the collapsed walls, the largest made where an interior wall was still propped up off the deck by the generator. The heavy piece of machinery was bolted to the plank flooring and was close to one of the foundation posts. It had stayed put. I lifted a sheet of wood siding and shoved it aside, then sent a beam of light into the gap and start rooting around. After coming up with busted cans of paint, shattered jars of roofing nails, a completely intact box of "hurricane candles" and a single hammer, I found something useful: a silver roll of three-inch-wide duct tape. No home owner could live without it. My light also caught something chrome and shining on the floor and I was able to reach through a s.p.a.ce behind the generator and get a hand on it. With some twisting and yanking and considerable working of angles, I came up with the sheared-off shaft of what was once a Big Bertha driving wood. In memory I recalled a scene of Jeff Snow standing out on this deck, the morning sun just coming up in the east, while he wedged a tee in between the planks and took practice driving old golf b.a.l.l.s out into the distance. The environmentalists would have frowned at his depositing dozens of nonbiodegradable orbs of plastic and rubber into the pristine waters. But I had simply smiled at his morning const.i.tutional. The fat head of the golf club was now gone, but the wet leather-wrapped grip and a sharp, wicked metallic point at the end remained. I told myself it might be useful, maybe as a splint for Sherry's broken leg. But I knew there was something about its resemblance to a weapon that made me take it along with the roll of tape. If I ended up dragging a half-submerged canoe through the Everglades I didn't want to face a disoriented Wally or the rest of his ilk with just a six-inch fillet knife.

When I got back to Sherry with my meager loot she had already shifted herself on the floor and had gone through the cabinet under the sink.

There she had found a clean dishrag and an intact bottle of isopropyl alcohol.

"Maybe your friend kept it under there for cuts from cleaning fish," she said. "Whatever, it's got to help."

First things first, I used my knife to cut loose the blood- soaked sheet Sherry had used to tie off her wound and then the sweatpants fabric from around her thigh. The gash seemed less than ominous, like a half-moon slice from a pipe the diameter of a baseball bat handle. It was crusted shut with dried blood, but when I pinched the flesh on either side to open it a bit in order to pour in the alcohol, the hole opened and I could see how deep the cut went. Sherry twitched as I sloshed in the disinfectant and when I looked up at her there was a thin bright red fine of blood on her lip where she was biting against the pain.

"Sorry," I muttered stupidly.

She closed her eyes and bobbed her head, excusing me.

I then lay the clean dish towel over the wound and ripped off long pieces of the sheet and tied the bandage in place.

"We should try to keep your leg straight and immobilized. You don't know what that bone end is doing inside," I said.

"Yeah, I do," she said, her teeth now clenched together. "It's cutting, Max. I can feel it. We just gotta hope it isn't near an artery."

"You're right. But we can splint it," I said. "G.o.d knows there are enough pieces of slat wood here to do that. Maybe strap it in place with the duct tape. That'll keep it straight when we load you into the canoe."

Now she was looking more skeptical than pained.

"Got to, Sherry. Time isn't helping us any here."

"I know," she answered. "But I was just getting comfortable, you know?"

"That'a girl," I answered, again complimenting her guts and hopefully encouraging her spirit for what was going to be one h.e.l.l of an ordeal we both knew was coming.

I used the rest of the roll of tape on the hull of the canoe, first folding a piece of a Rubbermaid dish drainer from under the sink to cover the hole and then strapping it in place with the duct tape. While working on the patch I'd found three other punctures and a cracked rib toward the bow, but was sure the boat would still float. My next task was to find a replacement for the missing paddles and I discovered a long curved piece of mahogany under some debris that I recognized as once being the plaque backing for a bonefish trophy that Jeff Snow had mounted and displayed on one of the camp walls. The edges were smooth for grasping and pulling strokes. It would do.

I salvaged a plastic container that once held coffee and stuffed the last of the water bottles in. We could use it to bail water if we had to. I put it in the canoe under the stern seat along with the flashlight and then stored the headless shaft of the golf club along the boat's spine. Though I knew there had once been several flotation cushions and some lifejackets for the Snows' children here, I couldn't find a sign of one. A damp, fabric-covered couch pillow was the best we had left. I propped it in the bow. With everything set I dragged the canoe over to the west side of the remaining deck and slid it onto the water. Sherry was next and I flexed my jaw and moved over to her, clearing a trail of any sharp debris or nail heads, anything that might catch her clothes. I knew how much it was going to hurt to move her and she knew it too.

"I'm going to get you under the arms and kind of drag you to the canoe," I said. "I figure it's the best way to keep the leg from bending."

"Oooh, big cave man. How about just grabbing a hunk of hair," she said, again with the forced grin. I shook my head.

"Then I can lower you into the bow. You use that pillow for your head and prop the leg up on the seat. That'll keep it elevated and maybe reduce some of the blood flow," I said.

She nodded her head, steeled herself as I got a grip under her arms and lifted her. Only then did she begin to cry.