Acts of Nature

by Jonathon King

  “Well, there isn’t anything worth a damn here anyway,” Marcus said. “Let’s go.”

  It was supposed to come across as a confident, half-in- charge kind of statement but Wayne looked at his friend when he caught that uncertain quiver in his voice. They’d been on dozens of these escapades and Wayne could always tell when Marcus was getting nervous.

  Buck had them help dig out the gas cans he found in what was once the generator shack of the camp. It took all three of them to lift the collapsed wall and kick away some broken studs to make enough room to remove them. Buck stepped into the space they’d made and passed out the cans to Marcus, who then ferried them over to Wayne in the boat. There were six cans in all and one had been punctured, half of its contents having leaked out onto the wood plank floor. Buck again thought of the lighter in his pocket but just whispered, “Fuck it.”

  Over at the airboat Marcus handed up the last can.

  “We find any more gas we could stay out here for a week,” Wayne said, digging at Marcus’s show of being nervous and tired of their expedition.

  “Yeah, well, the master criminal there has only one location left on the GPS list so unless he can smell it, there’s only one camp left and we can go the hell home.”

  Wayne just bent to lash the final can in, a grin on his face. Marcus was missing the way Buck had identified the gas and Wayne was getting a tiny dash of joy out of it. Marcus may have been hefting the cans across the decking, but Wayne was the one handling them and tying them in place. He had seen the waterproof marker on the bottom edge of each red plastic can that labeled each one: AB. That had to stand for AirBoat. Buck didn’t need a nose to tell that. But he sure as hell was good at puttin’ Marcus in his place.

  “Fuck you grinnin’ at, Stumpy? You want to stay out here all week too?”

  Wayne ignored him and when they were finally set, both of them climbed up into the seat behind Buck who was again checking the GPS and the list.

  “OK, fellas, let’s make this next one a jackpot,” he said and turned the ignition, and the engine erupted with that sonic frapping sound. Wayne leaned forward to feel for another bottle under the seat, and when he straightened back up Marcus was staring at him with some kind of incredulous look on his face.

  “What?” Wayne mouthed.

  Marcus reached out toward Wayne’s neck but got his hand slapped away in response.

  “What the fuck is that?” Marcus mouthed, his words wiped out by the sound of the engine.

  Wayne’s hand went without hesitation to the opal and diamond necklace that he had affixed around his own throat. The chain was a little small for him so the stones hung high and exposed above his T-shirt collar when he’d bent over. He looked directly into Marcus’s eyes with a seriousness that his friend recognized as a mood you did not cross with Wayne. “It’s mine.”

  Marcus didn’t need to hear the words. He just showed his palms, rubbed them together and showed them again, just like the blackjack dealer does after shuffling the cards to prove to the players he has nothing up his sleeve.

  “Whatever,” he mouthed back into those eyes.

  TWENTY

  With stale air tumbling down on me, I pushed the hatch door up and heard it clank on its hinges like a submarine portal. I aimed the flashlight up into blackness and could only see the white circle of my beam on a plain ceiling. I had to reach up and put the light over the edge and then do a pull-up on the hatchway until my face cleared the opening. The scene made me think of that famous World War II and Korean War cartoon with the eyes and big floppy nose just visible above a bullet-pocked wall. “Kilroy was here.”

  From this vantage point my flashlight was now drawing a circle around some kind of metal cabinet or panel with knobs showing in shadowed relief. I hoisted myself the rest of the way up, swung my hips onto the ledge, and sat there with my legs hanging through the porthole, pant legs and shoes dripping a patter of droplets into the glades below. I moved the light beam in a slow sweep, illuminating unblinking eyes of yellow and blue and red all around me. The single room was an electronic bat cave. Monitor lights, all dead from the lack of electricity, were in rows on the fronts of panels that had to house computers, sensors, calibrators of a kind I would not be familiar with. I thought of Billy, the lawyer and brains of our partnership, who would be able to make at least a knowledgeable guess at what I’d found. I could hear him saying: “My, my, Max. What do we have here out in the middle of godforsaken swampland and what the hell is it out here for?”

  I had the same question, but more immediate problems. First I climbed up out of the hole and started working the walls. The stacks of electronics seemed to bunch on the western side, rising to just above eye level and shining in a metallic sheen like brushed steel. On the northern wall stood a low desk and countertop, two roll-away chairs, and room for spreading out paperwork or diagrams or something. In one corner was some kind of a printer but it was loaded with graph paper and had one of those wire styluses you’d see on old lie detectors. I was thinking seismic sensors, the kind that measure Richter scales. But earthquakes don’t happen in Florida. I was thinking measurements in the earth under the Glades, but to what purpose? I was thinking too damn much. The eastern wall was empty but for the door that led to the rest of the cabin and a punch-code lock that matched the one on the other side.

  On the south wall was what I took to be the generator, housed in a floor-to-ceiling booth with air vents at top and bottom and a power lever that was pulled down in the OFF position. There was a keyed handle to the cabinet door that gave access to the inside. When I inspected the sides near the floor I could see the cable—the same color as the one feeding the refrigerator in the other room—running from the generator down into a hole in the floorboards. I was thinking of the crowbar, if it might be sufficient to pry the cabinet open, get some electricity flowing, toss a wet towel in the fridge, chill it and then wrap Sherry’s head, bring down the fever, do something to help her.

  I swept next along a table on the wall. Three-plug jacks for some kind of electronics and three corresponding connectors for phones or Internet. And near the end, an empty power recharge plug for three handheld mobile phones. On the end of the table was a Bose five-disc CD changer with the speakers built in. A real home-away-from-home for some trio of computer nerd hackers or pirate radio stoners or who the hell knows what, and I realized I was getting increasingly pissed at the uselessness of it all until my light caught the red cross of another first aid kit on the wall and the twin of the other refrigerator in the corner.

  First I checked the kit and saw that the plastic tie that acted as a seal was unbroken, which meant it must be full. Then I crouched to the refrigerator door and as I went to pull the handle my hand was stopped by the growing sound of an airboat engine. The noise was coming up through the open hatch, the only way it seemed to be able to penetrate the walls, and I scrambled over to listen and make sure I wasn’t just delirious. No, the thrumming sound revved and then cut back, the throttle of the engine in someone’s hand. Rescue. Civilization had arrived.

  I scrambled over to the hole and plunged my legs through, landing waist-deep in the water. I yanked my boots out of the bottom mud and then, forgetting the hatch and leaving it wide open, I bumped my head three times before making it out from under the camp foundation. Out in the open I twisted around in the direction of the motor noise. Sherry, I thought. Got to let her know what’s happening.

  Her eyes were at half-mast when I got to her side. I put my palm on her brow, still hot, but hotter than before? I couldn’t guess. She turned her head to me.

  “Swimming, Max?”

  She still had some strength.

  “We’ve got company,” I said. “An airboat just pulled up nearby. We’re on our way out, girl.”

  She let out a sigh of relief, or maybe just loosening that built-in determination of hers, that reservoir of strength she was holding in abeyance for what was to come.

  “Who, Max?”

  “
I don’t know yet. I just heard the engine outside. They’ve got to be coming to check on the place.” I put the half-filled bottle of water I’d recovered from the dead refrigerator to her lips. “Here. I’m going to go lead them in.”

  “OK”

  Maybe she was thinking more clearly than I. Maybe she was just more of a cynic, still being a working cop. Maybe she was just more intuitive. As I got up and started out the door she said: “Max. Be careful.” And I did not give the warning a second thought until I got out on the deck and saw a kid standing on the trunk of a downed tree, staring at me from twenty yards away.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The kid was skinny and awkward looking in a coltish way and his baseball cap was turned around backward on his head. His legs looked like sticks in a couple of denim bags and the long- sleeved shirt he was wearing draped on his shoulders as if on a hanger, the cuffs flapping down to his fingertips. He did not say a word. No “Howdy stranger.” No “Yo, what up?” No “Wow, somebody survived.” Nothing. Just a stare.

  I stepped out toward the edge of the plank foundation and started to say something when a voice called out from my immediate left and the sound of another person’s words caused an uncharacteristic startle that made my neck snap in the direction of the sound.

  “Hey, mister. How you doin’?”

  It was another young man, dressed the same as the other but missing the hat. He may have been older, his neck more filled out, shoulders carrying some meat. His hair was buzz cut and instantly reminded me of police trainee academy, or maybe one of those juvenile detention camps.

  I started to say, “Hey, are we glad to see you,” but I held my tongue, some taste of wariness stopping me. It did not take me more than a couple of seconds to realize that by their positions, I was being flanked.

  “Well, guys, I could be better,” I said instead and stopped my forward motion. In fact, I took a step back, not an obvious retreat, but at a slightly angled step so that it was not as difficult to see both of them at the same time with my peripheral vision. I want the move to come off as polite, not tactical.

  “That was your airboat I heard,” I said, not a question, a statement. A question can put you in a subservient position, like you want something, like you don’t know as much as they know, like you’re not in charge. A street cop does not ever want to be in a subservient position to people he does not know. I learned this years ago, dealing with pimps and pushers and just plain assholes on my beat sector of South Philly. They are lessons best not forgotten and suddenly they were boiling up in the back of my head like the prickly sensation on my neck.

  “No. That would be my airboat you heard, friend.”

  The voice came from my right and behind, more disconcerting because I was more vulnerable and because the deep sound of it was older, more mature, more confident. I hid my startle this time and turned with, I hope, a normal, easygoing attitude.

  This visitor was not wary. He planted his big palms on the deck, swung a leg up, and mounted the platform like a rodeo cowboy mounting a horse. He was athletic. His forearms were cabled with muscle. He was not as tall as my own six- foot-three, but he was easily fifteen years younger, and even more disconcerting than his boys, he was smiling. A smiling stranger in the middle of the Glades after a major hurricane trashed the area. I did not trust any inch of him.

  I turned my head to check any movement by the others and noted that they’d held their positions. The smiling man took one step closer and offered his hand, reaching out as though respecting my space. He was acting friendly. He was being careful.

  “Bob Morris,” he said in introduction and I reached out, holding my own spot, and took his hand.

  “Max Freeman.”

  “Pleasure, Mr. Freeman,” the man said, then looked out past me. “Come on in, boys, don’t be rude. This here is Mr. Freeman.”

  I was checking the man’s eyes. They were a gray so pale that they were almost colorless, and unflinching. His shirt was canvas and washed too many times. When he took my hand I noted that his own was soiled in cracks and under the fingernails and now I saw the smudges of dirt along the hard muscle of his neck tendons. He had been out for some time in this swamp, handling dirty things. The other two scrambled up onto the deck with less grace but still the kind of lithe comfort that you see in farm boys, or in this part of the country, young boat hands.

  “We was kinda surprised when you came out, Mr. Freeman. Didn’t expect to find nobody out here after that ’cane blew through,” the man who called himself Morris said.

  I offered nothing. Let him tell it. Let me get a sense of it. Sometimes silence encouraged them.

  “We, uh, own our own camp just up the way to the northwest there toward Immokolee and were just out to see the damage and, you know, she was hit pretty bad,” he continued.

  I nodded knowingly. “It was one hell of a storm.”

  “Yep, she was.”

  Morris looked at the boys and they all nodded their heads in agreement that a hurricane that ripped down walls and sailed roofs away and flattened hundreds of acres of tough sawgrass was indeed a hell of a storm.

  “So how’d you make out?” I said, matching the simplicity of their language, maybe leveling some playing ground here, trying to come off as nonthreatening. The boys cut their eyes to Morris.

  “Oh, well, we got hit pretty good up there,” he said. “Most we could do was a bit of salvaging, you know, a few things we probably shouldn’t have left out there in the first place.

  “So, you know. We figured since we was out, maybe we should stop on our way back south and see if any of our neighbors needed help. You’re the first person we run in to. So, you OK, Mr. Freeman? Is there anything we can do?”

  I thought of Sherry on the cot in the room behind me. Yeah, these guys seemed a little hinky. Their approach, seemingly surreptitious and planned, put me on edge. Their appearance, like a band of salvagers at sea, was not altogether unrealistic out here in the Glades. I’d spent time with some far-flung Gladesmen and to call them a rough bunch could be considered a kindness. When the Morris guy had turned to point where they’d left their airboat, I had studied the swing of his loose shirt and seen no lump or catch to indicate he was hiding a weapon in his waistband. And out here those willing to use a firearm were more proud to show them than to be sneaky about it. I checked each of their eyes one more time, not that I had a choice.

  “Yeah, you could,” I finally said to Morris. “I’ve got a friend inside who is badly hurt. She’s got to get medical help as soon as possible.”

  They filed into the room behind me and I wasn’t sure what look was on my face when Sherry watched me lead them in. She had forced herself up onto one elbow. Maybe she had been listening. Maybe she’d heard my reticent voice. She was faking alertness, I knew, because the glossiness in her eyes did not match the relative strength of her posture.

  “This is Sherry Richards,” I said. “We got knocked around quite a bit by the storm and she’s broken her leg. It’s a bad fracture and I’m not sure how much blood she’s lost but we’re going to have to get her to a hospital.

  “Do you guys have a way to call in a rescue helicopter? They could probably get out here before it gets too dark.”

  Morris touched the bill of his baseball cap and stepped forward. “I am really sorry to see your pain, ma’am. We will surely do whatever we can do.”

  Morris could see behind Sherry’s front of strained focus. He could tell she was hurting and stepped forward again, not enough to be pushy or in a way that could be taken as impolite, but seemingly out of concern. He let his eyes move from her face down to the heavily bandaged leg.

  “Y’all think you’d be able to move, ma’am? If we could get to the boat, I mean. She’s a bit of distance through the hardwood yonder.”

  Sherry was watching the man’s eyes, just like I had, just like any cop, assessing, with whatever lucidity she had left.

  “I’ll do whatever I need to do, Mr., uh, Morris, was it?”r />
  “Yes, ma’am,” he said and men turned to me. “You see, Mr. Freeman, we done lost a lot of equipment over to our place. All our radio stuff was dunked wet and lost. And the only cell phone we got, we ain’t had much luck with. Figure that the towers and all were probably knocked down by the storm.”

  He was looking past me at the boys when he said this, as if for confirmation. When I turned to see their reaction I caught one of them, the thicker one, looking at the metal door to the other half of the cabin. He could not have missed the electronic locking mechanism next to the frame and was perhaps puzzled by it.

  “Well, sir. We do have some fresh water on board we could bring in and we can take a look for anything we might use for some kind of a stretcher or something,” Morris said. “Is there anything inside the other room there that you figure might help us on that account, Mr. Freeman?”

  I hesitated, and then lied, not knowing for sure whether a guy like Morris was perceptive enough to recognize the hesitation.

  “The door is locked up,” I said, nodding to the obvious mechanism that none of them had missed by now. “So I’m not sure what’s in there. And to be honest, with your boat we could probably be to the state park ramp in just over an hour so I’m not sure we’re going to need anything more, Mr. Morris.”

  The man looked again straight into my eyes, a practice that by now was a little unnerving, and when he smiled that little faux-friendly, backwoods smile again I felt my fingers start to flex. The testosterone of fight or flight was leaking down into my fist from somewhere back in my brain.

  “OK, then. Why don’t we just go see what we can get from the airboat to see how we might get the missus out of here,” Morris said pleasantly.

  When all three of them moved toward the door, my first thought was that they would leave us. In a few minutes we would hear the engine start and they would pull out to continue on their way. They don’t need us, we need them.