Rising Water

by Wayne Stinnett

  The gumbo limbo that stood next to the deck was now leaning against it, its branches mostly nude. The upper branches now occupied the space where my roof used to be.

  “Doesn’t look good,” I said, as the anchor chain rattled across the rollers. “Have DJ tie off to us and then you two bring the canoe over. I’m gonna swim ashore.”

  “What about Finn?”

  “Bring him. But put a leash on him. There’s bound to be dangerous debris lying around.”

  Once I was sure the anchor was holding and we had enough scope out, I shut down the engines and stripped out of my T-shirt before climbing down to the cockpit and stepping out onto the swim platform.

  Finn was anxious to get to shore, but I told him to stay put, then slid off the swim platform into the water. Diving in would have been foolhardy after such a storm. I might have dived right into my roof or something, though I felt pretty certain the roof was somewhere north of here.

  I swam slowly—a modified breast-stroke—keeping my head above water. There was no telling what might be lurking just below the surface. When I reached the pier, I carefully climbed up, in case anything was loose.

  A couple of planks were missing from the pier, but it looked solid. Those boards had been screwed down with ten three-inch-long brass screws, two into each beam. I couldn’t imagine the force required to tear one up.

  It was then that I noticed something wrong, besides the devastation. A dock line was tied off to one of the cleats and the bow rail of a boat was just sticking out of the water a few inches. Somebody had been here.

  Somebody could still be here.

  I moved cautiously to the cleat the sunken boat was tied to, and without looking down, I squatted and grabbed it. With my head on a swivel, I stood and pulled on the line until the boat rose a few feet off the bottom. I glanced down and recognized the bright orange hull of The Other Jack’s flats skiff.

  Sunna.

  I doubted there’d be much fight left in her if she was still alive. She’d obviously arrived before the storm. Surviving this carnage, and then another day and night on my island without a fire or shelter would be difficult. At best, she’d be injured or in shock. At worst, armed and dangerous.

  Retracing my steps, I whistled loudly to get Jimmy’s attention. He and DJ were about to launch the canoe. When he looked my way, I mimed a gun with my hand, and pointed toward the end of the pier.

  Jimmy went to the gear locker and came up with the binoculars we kept there, training them on me. Again, I pretended to hold a gun, and pointed toward the house. He moved the binoculars and must have seen what I meant. He quickly disappeared into the salon.

  A moment later, DJ and Jimmy were paddling toward me, with Finn in the middle of the canoe. Normally, Finn would be excited, his tail thumping the side of the boat. But he seemed to pick up on Jimmy and DJ’s vibe, and was instead standing with his head and ears up, looking and listening intently.

  I took my Sig from Jimmy, noticing that he had another one tucked into his shorts. I didn’t have to ask if DJ was armed.

  “That’s The Other Jack’s boat,” I said. “It’s sunk in the channel.”

  “The woman from Norman Island?” DJ asked, scanning the shoreline.

  “I think so,” I said, nodding at him and then turning to Jimmy. “You two go around to the east side and beach there. Jimmy, I want you to keep Finn with you, and watch that side of the island while I check the other side.” Then I turned back to DJ. “Deej, see if the back steps of the house are intact and go up and check there.”

  They both nodded and paddled away. Jimmy wasn’t trained for this, but I knew he’d be insulted if I didn’t give him something to do.

  When I reached the stairs, they were mostly gone. The runners were still intact, but the wind had ripped away nearly all of the treads. Below the stairs, the side door to the berthing area was open.

  Cautiously, I poked my head inside. The back wall had been almost completely blown out by the wind coming through the large, mangled door.

  I was now armed, and Rusty had told me that The Other Jack had been shot, so I had to assume my adversary was armed. But so were my friends. If she was here and still alive, we’d take her captive and I’d contact Lettsome and the sheriff’s department.

  I had to step down into the water where the pier normally ended. The shoreline had been washed away for a good four or five feet. I went along the edge of the house toward the back corner, my Sig leading the way. I paused there and surveyed the scene, taking it all in at a glance. The rear steps were still intact. Nothing moved.

  My roof was leaning against the eastern bunkhouse—Kim and Marty’s house—partially wrapped around the side of it. Jimmy’s house was also missing most of its roof, and the western bunkhouse, where Chyrel sometimes stayed, was mostly gone. The floor remained, but the walls and roof were in shambles.

  The aquaponics garden was in ruins, two tanks split open, probably by the impact of the roof or wall of my house. All the water had drained out. Not that it mattered. I could tell by the stain on the wall that the rising water had reached to within three feet of the floor of my house.

  The storm surge hadn’t been predicted to exceed seven feet. I looked back toward the pier. The water between the islands to the south of me stretched for miles. During the peak of the storm, the winds must have been channeled between them, creating a localized storm surge that was much higher.

  All over my island, the grass that we’d spent the last two years trying to grow was gone. Or more likely covered up with sand.

  The hand of God, I heard Jimmy’s voice echo in my head.

  Jimmy and DJ came through the trees to my right. I signaled for Jimmy to stay put while DJ checked my house.

  I headed toward the west side, staying close to the toppled trees and circling toward Jimmy’s house, as DJ moved cautiously up the steps.

  Just before I started the turn along the west side, I heard a twig snap behind me, and the unmistakable sound of a hammer being cocked.

  Where had she been hiding?

  “Drop your gun and turn around,” a woman’s voice behind me said. I recognized the lightly-accented voice.

  She must have been behind the door when I looked into the boat house. How could she have survived the water swirling across the whole island?

  I tossed my Sig aside, and turned slowly, keeping my hands out and away from my body.

  I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when I turned around. Sunna Johannsdottir, all five-feet-nothing of her, stood at the corner of my house, pointing a semiautomatic handgun at me. Her clothes were in tatters, barely covering her body, and not covering parts of it at all. Her knees, elbows, and forearms were scraped raw, covered with crusted blood and dirt. She had a gash on the side of her head and her right eye was nearly swollen shut.

  She took a couple of hesitant steps toward me, pointing her weapon at the center of my chest. “You said I was nothing more than a common drug dealer.”

  “No,” I replied, loud enough for DJ to hear me. “I said you were nothing but a drug maker.”

  “Because of you, we have lost everything. Now it is time for you to pay us back. With your life.”

  I heard him before I saw him. The huffing, menacing snarl of my dog running flat out to protect me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Finn’s paws churning up the sand between him and the woman. Finn was close to ten years old but could still outrun the wind. He probably outweighed the woman by ten pounds and was moving at full speed, teeth and claws ready to rip her to shreds for her transgression.

  Sunna quickly turned and started to point her weapon at Finn.

  That was strike three. Her first was simply that she was a lowlife turd fondler, and her second was that she was crazy enough to come out here during a hurricane.

  Two shots were fired, nearly on top of one another, and Sunna fell on her back
onto the littered ground, dropping her weapon.

  Finn yelped, but not because he’d been hit. Sunna never got the chance. DJ stood on the deck above, his weapon pointing down at her, and Jimmy was standing on the other side of the clearing, pointing one of my Sigs at her, as well.

  Finn turned and ran toward me, seeing that the woman was no longer a threat. Together we approached her, lying on the ground with blood pulsing from a wound in her side and another in her upper shoulder.

  She wasn’t dead, but she was knocking on death’s door. She tried to get to her weapon, but I kicked it away from her.

  She looked up at me, her breath coming in short rasps.

  “Rassgat,” she muttered, pink foam trickling from her lips, a sure sign that the shoulder wound had been from DJ firing downward, and his bullet had ripped through her lung.

  Her head fell back and her eyes glazed over. I wasn’t sure about Icelandic customs, but I was fairly certain Valkyries weren’t carrying her off to meet with Odin in Valhalla.

  “Are you okay?” DJ shouted from the deck.

  I knelt and checked Finn out before calling back, “Yeah, we’re fine.”

  As DJ moved to the steps, Jimmy shuffled toward me, nearly stumbling over a tree branch. His face was drained of color and there was dread in his eyes. I moved quickly to my friend.

  “Is she…?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, taking my Sig from his hand.

  “She was gonna shoot Finn, man. Why would she do that?”

  I put my arm around his shoulder, turning him away from the grim scene. “There’s a measure of desperation when you are fighting for your life, Jimmy. Or for the life of a friend. She gave you no option, man. The onus is completely on her. I know it’s no consolation, but your shot didn’t kill her.”

  Finn whined at Jimmy’s side, nudging his hand with his muzzle. Jimmy absently passed his hand along Finn’s head and neck, then dropped to his knees, hugging Finn tightly as he sobbed.

  DJ came down the steps as quickly as his prosthetic leg would carry him. He took one look at the woman and slid his weapon into a holster behind his back. When he saw Jimmy, he stopped and looked at me.

  “Is that the ice queen from Norman Island?”

  “Yeah,” I said, taking another look around my island. A single tear slowly fell down my cheek. It wasn’t for the damage caused by the storm, and it damned sure wasn’t for the dead woman. Though beautiful on the outside, she was as rotten as month-old garbage on the inside.

  I felt bad for my friend and first mate. Though Jimmy was a Navy vet and had been part of the support during the First Gulf War, he was a machinist’s mate and electronics tech. The closest he’d ever come to killing anything was fishing and lobstering, and he did that quickly and humanely.

  “There’s nothing to do here,” I mumbled, wiping the back of my hand across my cheek. “Let’s get the fuck down to Marathon, where we can help.”

  The first few days after the storm were surreal. The Middle Keys had been hit harder than any storm Rusty could remember, and he’d seen them all. When we’d arrived at the Anchor in the early evening the day after the storm, locals had already started to work. With the Anchor serving as a base of operations, much as it had for three generations, they used boats to get around.

  I made two calls as soon as we arrived. I contacted Jack Armstrong, and told him I’d be unavailable for a while, and then I called Detective Lettsome to let him know that his escaped prisoner was dead. They’d been hit just as hard, or worse, on Tortola. But he’d promised to contact the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office the next day to apprise them and let them know that Sunna was wanted for capital murder in the BVI.

  Some people were dazed, lacking any sort of guidance or focus, as they stumbled out of their wrecked homes. It was strange; some houses had been leveled, or knocked completely off their foundations, while others just next door were relatively undamaged. One house on Big Pine had ended up in the middle of US-1, a twenty-four-foot center-console, standing on its transom, leaning against it.

  The first thing I did was rent dock space from Rusty, paying in advance for six months. It’d take at least that long to rebuild my island. He knew there was more to it than a place to stay. The Middle and Lower Keys were cut off, and what was going to be sorely needed was a huge influx of cash.

  I immediately hired anyone whose work had been interrupted by Irma, and there were many. Businesses didn’t fare any better than homes; it would be months before many could reopen and quite a few never would. We put people to work, paying them with food, water, and cash. I always kept bundles of Benjamins stashed on the Revenge.

  The worst damage was on Big Pine, Ramrod, and Saddlebunch. Irma had made landfall just beyond there on Cudjoe Key.

  The sheriff himself called me the next day, said he was sending deputies out to my island, and asked me to join them. I’d agreed and then told Jimmy and DJ. Jimmy was still in a funk but agreed to go along. DJ had rented dock space behind the Revenge and planned to stay over for a few weeks to help out. He’d said that he had no problem going back up to my island.

  When we got there the next morning, Sunna’s body had been baking in the sun for two days. It was bloated and barely recognizable as human. Crabs had gotten to it.

  The lead deputy took our statements, and the new doctor from the medical examiner’s office took the body back with them. We spent the rest of the day salvaging what we could, which didn’t amount to much.

  Back at Rusty’s, during the first week, we concentrated on our own immediate area, as other communities worked in theirs. I put The Beast into service, and, armed with chains and chainsaws, we drove out into the neighborhoods, cutting up anything in the way and dragging it to the side of the road—or where we guessed the side of the road should be. Sand had covered it over in many places.

  I remembered again how I’d done the same thing with Pap all those years ago; using his powerful Dodge 4x4 to move trees in our neighborhood after a hurricane.

  As I was pulling a fallen palm tree out of the way, Jimmy directing me, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I hadn’t even known cell service had been restored.

  Jimmy’d waved me to a stop and I’d pulled forward a little to take the tension off the chain so he could unhook it. I was about to get out of the truck and just ignore the call but instead, I’d pulled my phone out and saw that it was Savannah.

  “Hi,” I’d said, after pressing the Accept button.

  “It’s Savannah. Can you talk for a minute?”

  “Yeah,” I’d replied, waving Jimmy off as he approached The Beast.

  “Is it bad there?”

  “We’re digging out.” I don’t know why, but I’d felt nervous.

  “Then this week isn’t a good time?”

  “To meet? Yeah, sure. When and where?”

  “How did your island take it?”

  I’d paused a moment. Probably too long

  “Jesse?”

  “It’s destroyed,” I’d told her. “Total loss. But I got the boats out.”

  “Then we should wait,” Savannah had said firmly, taking the wind from my sails. “At least until things start to open up again.”

  She’d been right. I had a ton of work to do, and it would be a while before I could even start cleaning up my own place.

  “I really do want to meet her and acknowledge our relationship,” I’d said. “Have you told her yet?”

  “Yes, I did. We’re coming to the Keys, but it’s going to be a few weeks. Look, I’ll call you next Saturday. Maybe you and Flo can talk a while.”

  I’d looked down at my phone then and saw that the call had ended. I’d just have to wait for that next call.

  A few weeks? I’d thought. They must be a long way from the Keys.

  The Corps of Engineers had surveyed the Seven Mile Bridge and deemed it safe for tr
avel, but no traffic was coming. The road itself was washed out in some places up island, particularly at the foot of the many bridges connecting the islands. Wave action had undermined and washed out the transition from road to bridge in many places.

  It didn’t take long for help to arrive, though. Military vehicles at first; the National Guard out of Homestead. They followed right behind the road crews, who filled in and patched the road so the Guard could get across. They brought in the essential items first; food, water, and clothing.

  We were cut off from the mainland for over a week. Unless you could show proof of residence, nobody was allowed to travel into Monroe County. But slowly, more help started pouring in. Rented trucks began to arrive by the hundreds, carrying donated plywood and shingles, along with all kinds of building materials, and more food and water. The outpouring of goodwill restored my faith in humanity.

  The Rusty Anchor and Rusty’s house sustained very little damage. They were built by strong hands and backs, in a time when early settlers in the Keys had to get by on their own all the time. He was open for business two days after the storm, just as quick as we could get the fallen trees out of the way. People ate and he tallied a single dollar per meal against their tab.

  Rufus’s grills and ovens ran on propane and Rusty had laid in a good supply. Local fishermen went out, ignored quotas and limits, and brought in lots of fish, lobster, and crab. Word spread quickly through the coconut telegraph, and people poured in at mealtimes.

  Rusty could have raised his menu prices and made a killing. But that’s not the way the man was put together. He, Sidney, Naomi, and Rufus served thousands of meals and the cash register never rang once.

  Kim and Marty were temporarily assigned to Big Pine Key to help with the cleanup. I drove over there on the fifth day after the storm and found Kim at the school, handing out clothes with the National Guard. I took her aside and told her about her and Marty’s little house.

  She’d simply looked around at all the people who were coming in empty-handed and leaving with food and clothing, then looked up at me and smiled. “It’s just stuff, Dad,” she’d said. “We’ll rebuild it, right?”