A huge gloved hand accepted a five-dollar bill.
“The wife thanks you, too. Say, I noticed in the back of your rig you’ve got some stout-looking bamboo. You use that on power lines? As a non-conductor, like a pole.”
A resonant growl, not thunder, was the reply.
The man walked backwards a few steps, then hurried to his trailer.
From the driver’s seat of the big white GMC diesel, Mr. Bird informed Vernon, Don’t harvest Gracie until I’ve tasted the tall one, Captain what’s-her-name.
Then, leaving the park, had to add, Rig the bamboo first, shit-for-brains. It’s better if lightning kills the old man instead of you.
17
Rain caught Gracie at the Marco exit and followed her into twilight, where a gale awaited on Route 29, a narrow road with signs that warned Panther Crossing.
She was jittery to begin with. Now this. The windshield blurred beneath a waterfall. Wipers slashed at a glare that worsened if she used her brights. Def Leppard, from the stereo, was a sustained howl. She slapped the volume lower, and concentrated. Finally, a shell road led to Barlow property, where headlights revealed oak trees and the cabin.
The girl parked, put her face in her hands, and sobbed. She’d never felt so lost and alone. It was after nine. Where was Tomlinson?
A burst of lightning confirmed his van wasn’t there. Shadows crowded into a writhing darkness while rain hammered her into a panic. Should she stay or return to the safety of lights and people? A hotel would be nice. A hotel bar, even better.
Calm down.
But how?
In her purse was an ounce of flake she’d found in Slaten’s laundry bag. Flakka was expensive. It would’ve been stupid to trash it when she was so desperate for cash. There was also a vaporizer. She didn’t smoke cigarettes, so packing the thing had been an innocent mistake.
Right.
Gracie was lying to herself and knew it. She shoved the purse aside and picked up her phone. Only one bar. She called anyway and nearly broke down at the sound of the Zen master’s voice.
“How goes the battle, young princess?”
“Where are you?”
“I fell into the Winn-Dixie trap near Homestead. You’ve got your choice: vegetarian pizza or swordfish on the grill. If there is a grill. Or that woodstove. For dessert, how does mango ice cream sound?”
“I was afraid you’d had an accident or something,” she said, and covered the phone to sniff and wipe her nose.
“Is the power on? Tootsie says it’s a problem out there sometimes. Maybe I should’ve bought charcoal. You mind checking to see if the stove works?”
“I haven’t gone inside yet. How much longer will you be?”
“Hey . . . is something wrong?”
Suddenly it seemed silly to be afraid. “It’s raining buckets here, and I don’t want to get my bandage wet. Plus, my damn allergies aren’t as bad if I sit here with the AC on.”
Tomlinson knew the problem wasn’t her allergies. “Wait in the car,” he said. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Next, he called the biologist for an update. Ford had left Key Largo an hour ago and had booked a room at the Rod & Gun Club in Everglades City.
“That’s only, what, less than an hour from the cabin?” Tomlinson said. “Why not stop by? Gracie sounds a little ragged. It would be better if we’re both there for support.”
“I might have a problem,” Ford said.
Tomlinson recognized the flat inflection. All business. “Nothing to do with fish or flora, I assume. Have you run amok with the Windsor clan? I hear they have a dry sense of humor.”
A joke. The biologist didn’t laugh. Instead, he asked, “What’re the sleeping arrangements there? The cabin only has one bedroom, right?”
“You honestly think I would . . . ? If that’s your problem, shallow up, man. Even I draw the line at seducing emotionally troubled girls. Or do you mean—”
“In Key Largo, someone was monitoring our cell phone calls.”
“Oh. No shit. How do you know?”
“A friend of the lady you just referenced told me. It was a close cover monitor.”
“Lady Gillian—my god, it’s true. You’ve got an in with the—”
“Not over the phone, damn it. Someone within a few hundred yards of the trailer park was listening in. They know where you’re headed. Check your mirror—no, never mind. You’ve probably got those bass speakers booming and wouldn’t have noticed anyway.”
“Maybe not, but I can name every Buffett song in two notes. Why would someone want to follow me?”
Ford replied, “Like I said, I might have a problem.”
The porn syndicate again.
—
With the windows open, a drizzling breeze caused lamps to flicker on a night that muted sound and fears. Gracie had never been the master of her own space. She liked the feel of the cabin already.
“Sit out there and enjoy your beer,” she told Tomlinson. He’d changed clothes in his van and was on the porch, wearing baggy white kung fu pants and a peasant shirt with long, baggy sleeves.
“Mosquitoes,” he explained. “Not that they bother me much. I’m actually glad the power went out.”
That had happened soon after their arrival.
“There’s an extra Coleman, if you want to read.”
Nope. The man didn’t need light for reading. He claimed to have a couple of books stored in his head. “Even if I didn’t, there’s more than enough lightning bugs. Being quick on your feet is the key.”
Laughter felt less foreign now that she was settling in.
Gracie busied herself in the kitchen, which was tiny, but at least the propane stove worked. While swordfish steaks marinated in lime, she made a butter sauce using what she could find and what was in the bag from Winn-Dixie. Rock salt, chives, a wedge of Spanish onion finely diced.
You couldn’t be the niece of Tootsie Barlow without learning how to prepare fish.
She set the table while potatoes sputtered in an iron pan. A towel became a tablecloth. Clunky white plates became china. A candle centerpiece added a formal touch. The rest of the cabin was a mess, so she hustled around doing what she could to make the place livable. She flipped the potatoes and put the swordfish on.
“Ten minutes,” she said through the screen door. “You’ll want to wash your hands first.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a salute.
Weird how a guy his age was so young-acting and fun.
“Smart aleck. What did you do with the ice cream? It’s not in the freezer or the grocery bags. I checked.”
“All part of my sinister plan, dearie. Play your cards right, I’ll invite you back to my place for dessert.” He was kidding.
Or was he?
Flattered, that’s how she felt, until he explained. The ice cream was in his van, which, unlike the cabin, had a working generator and a fridge. After dinner, they could sit there in comfort.
There was no need to wait for the power company to send a truck.
—
Vernon parked behind what would always be Walter’s house because he wanted to confirm the power was off in the area. Hopefully, the breaker switch on Route 29 had done the trick.
If it hadn’t . . . Oh hell.
No way did he want to mess with a primary transformer on lines that channeled between towers stretching from Immokalee south. Not on a rainy night. Not beneath cables thick as hawsers that hissed like snakes. It was an electronic field the width of a highway where ions behaved like caged drunks.
A year in Walter’s prison had provided him time to learn a trade. Wiring, installation, then advanced courses. He’d never held a job, let alone taught the subject. But Vernon could have. He wasn’t an idiot, as Walter often claimed. Not when it came to anything of schematic des
ign such as electricity. The genius in him, he believed, was the result of so many goddamn insults.
Think of lightning as a magnetic tongue. It flicks downward, rapid-fire, searching to connect with a polar opposite—streamers, the ionized channels are called. On the ground, an ionized mate, equally excited, responds with a return stroke that flows upward. It’s the return stroke that produces the bolt’s flash and thirty thousand killer amps. Voltage was nothing without amperage.
Power lines were manageable, lightning was not, which was why Vernon had stopped here first, at the place where he’d grown up. He entered through the potato cellar, an access hard to find unless you knew where to look. Up a ladder, through a hatch, was the foundry.
Coal dust, acidic pig iron—a childhood spent suffering Walter’s abuse had not dented his love for the smell of fire.
He tested a couple of switches, then followed his flashlight outside. The same secondary feed serviced the Barlow cabin. Power would be off there, too.
Excellent.
Now the question was, should he hike his three hundred pounds cross-country or drive to within easy walking distance? The big GMC diesel was a noisy sucker. There were other reasons not to drive as well. Vernon had to think about it because he dreaded walking past those damn abandoned boxcars. This, too, went back to childhood and some of the crazy shit Walter had done to them.
Them being him and Slaten, and their older brother, plus the old man’s grandsons. Or his nephews. Or possibly Walter’s other sons. What Vernon believed varied with his mood and the passage of time. What he knew for certain was, Walter would’ve screwed a woodpile on the chance there was a snake in it, so screwing his fat sister, or even his fatter half-chink daughter, was a step up, not down.
As to the truth about their mother, who gave a damn?
Not Vernon.
The abandoned railcars were another matter. Normally, he would’ve switched off his flashlight and skittered past what he didn’t want to see. Pointless in a thunderous squall. Every few yards, lightning hurled the boxcars at his eyes, along with memories.
Walter saying, “Ya’ll boys don’t go near them wrecks, ya’ hear? They padlocked for a reason.”
Walter saying, “One time, I catched me a coolie sniffin’ around them cars. Know what happened? He got his pecker cut off and stuffed down his throat. No-o-o. T’weren’t me that did it. ’Twas a demon the coolies call Mr. Bird.”
When the old man laughed, which was seldom, it was because he had told an amusing lie.
After that, his threats were prefaced with, “Mr. Bird will cut your pecker off” or “You know he’ll be watching”—which was scary to a six-year-old boy even if it was bullshit.
And it was.
Or so Vernon believed until a night when the moon was full. He was twelve and bored stupid. The oldest, Walter Jr., had already been sent to the loony bin, and Slaten, the scrawny shit, was eight and did as he was told—usually, but not this time.
“The demon’ll catch us, man.”
“Fuck the demon, and Grandpa, too. He can’t whip us any worse than he has already.”
Vernon had swiped a hacksaw from the foundry, cut the lock, and levered open the door of a railroad car that had lettering on the side:
Sawgrass Clipper
It wasn’t gold Walter had stored inside, although his eyes went just as crazy-wild when he had surprised Vernon and used one of the many ankle cuffs inside to chain him to the wall of the car.
Six days he was kept there, then finished his yearlong sentence in the foundry’s fire box among graffiti and bones.
Walter saying, “If you run, I’ll catch you.”
Walter saying, “You can either bleed to death or hold still while I use this iron.”
Walter, before his last breath, saying, “Guess where Mr. Bird lives now?” Meaning inside Vernon’s head.
Even fifteen years later, Vernon couldn’t pause to remember without losing himself in the pain of being branded. Glorious pain. It was an unfolding sensation that had satisfied beyond consciousness and left a yearning scar. The feeling could not be duplicated. Only held at bay by sharing the ecstasy with others.
It had to be fed.
Vernon felt the need to feed now.
He scrambled up an embankment to the road, leaving the abandoned railcars behind. The Barlow cabin was another sodden half mile. Worth it, when he saw candlelight within and touched his nose to a window screen. Sniff-sniff-sniff.
Gracie, the odor of her skin, was somewhere inside. He knew it even before she glided into the kitchen, a stack of dishes in hand. She wore jeans, a white blouse with buttons. A rectangle of gauze covered the artistry on her arm.
Vernon’s eyes erased it all and saw the girl as she was. Naked. Small breasts fuller, a bump of the breathing unborn beneath her ribs waiting to be enjoyed.
He wanted her . . . wanted them now, until a man’s voice spoke from the next room, some garbled comment about air-conditioning.
Gracie Yum-Yum wasn’t alone.
Vernon ducked through the bushes to the next window, looked in, and listened to Mr. Bird say, “That whore. If the hippie touches her, kill him.”
—
They were at the table, finished with the meal, when Tomlinson leaned back and said, “The AC in my van will be good for your allergies.”
Gracie’s expression asked What allergies? until she saw his face crinkle into a grin. “Sneaky bastard. Okay, I admit it, I was upset when I called. For all I knew, I’d been stood up. You’re the one who was late.” She began clearing dishes, then stopped and focused on the nearest window. “You hear that? An animal outside in the bushes, I think. Listen . . .”
Tomlinson got up and put his face to the screen. “Still raining,” he said, and that’s all because he didn’t want to scare the girl. Someone . . . something . . . was out there, watching. A tangible presence. He returned to the table, where there was a fillet knife they’d used to portion the swordfish steaks. It became a toy to play with while he again mentioned air-conditioning, then said, “All I meant was, it’s time for dessert, so the dishes can wait. Besides, that’s my job. Camp rules, dear. They’re very strict. The cook sits back with ice cream while us peons do the scrub work.”
“Not in my house.” Gracie said this with a perky little edge, and continued stacking plates. From the kitchen, added, “You know . . . this cabin really could be nice with some fixing up. Most of the furniture has to . . . Well, if Tootsie doesn’t object. And this god-awful paint. Give me . . . Give us a month, you won’t recognize the place.”
She was leading up to something. Tomlinson and the knife joined her while he grabbed a dish towel. “When I talked to your uncle about you living here, I didn’t mention Slaten. I guess you figured that out, huh? Tell me about the guy. Not the negatives, just the positives.”
“Slaten? I know you’re against him. Everyone is.”
“I’m willing to listen, if you’re willing to tell me the truth. What are his best qualities?”
“As long as you mean it, okay. He’s an artist. A real artist. And he’s . . . he’s . . . Well, for one thing, he’s the first man who ever . . .”
“Your first lover,” Tomlinson said. “We already talked about that. What else do you like about him?”
“We’re in love. What else matters? He’s the father of my”—her hand moved to her stomach—“but it’s more than that. Slaten’s smart. He knows the world’s full of bullshit rules, and he treats me . . . well, pretty good, considering how young I am. And he’ll treat me even better when we have a place to live.”
A delicate topic, and possibly dangerous after what Ford had said on the phone about someone monitoring their conversations. Tomlinson reduced the pressure by asking, “How’re these damn mosquitoes getting in?” It was an excuse to lock the screen door and close some of the curtains. Then, at the sink, he
turned the subject around. “The first one, I’m talking about first lovers, is always special—for a while anyway. In my case, it was my nanny. The way it started was—”
“Nanny?” Gracie looked up from a sink full of suds. “Like a maid, you mean? You must’ve been rich. How old were you when—?”
“Not too young to appreciate a great set of tits, or too old to forget the shitstorm that woman caused in my head later. Sonja, that was her name. She’d been screwing my father, turned out, and wanted revenge. Either that or she had a Scandinavian screw loose. Anyway, she’d slip vodka into my OJ, or give me a spoonful of brandy, and away we’d go. The details are a little fuzzy. Looking back, though . . . wow.”
“She sexually abused you,” Gracie said, grim-faced. “She victimized a child; probably got you hooked on alcohol, too. I get it—another dig at my baby’s father.” She swung a soapy plate toward him.
Tomlinson, using the towel, said, “I meant wow as in I’ve never looked at a pacifier the same way since. Why so crabby, all of a sudden?”
It was a while before the girl gave in and laughed. “You made that story up.”
“Nope. Although I am prone to exaggerate when I’m sober. By the way”—he waited for her to face him—“I’m sober now. So are you. If there was ever a time for us to talk honestly, it’s now.”
“About what, Slaten? Or the drugs everyone thinks I’m—”
“Both, and anything else,” Tomlinson said. “Come on, leave the dishes. Wait until I pull the van up close to the porch, then hop in.”
“I don’t mind a little rain.”
“Curb service,” he beamed. “It’s the way ladies should be treated.”
Gracie liked that. There was no hint of alarm in her face. He palmed the knife, started the van, and waited until she was in the passenger seat to lock the doors and drive away.
“Hey . . . where’re we going?”
“The AC takes a while if the motor’s just idling. We’ll find a quiet spot or turn around in a bit and have dessert.”
Gracie had to wonder, Is he coming on to me? A week ago, the prospect would have been laughable. Not now. After the talks they’d shared, and the man’s sweet, caring ways, she felt a pleasant glow. They were friends, for god’s sake. Nothing wrong with that.
Mangrove Lightning Page 17