A Second Chance in Paradise (16 page)

Julie
and I each grabbed a limp ankle and dragged Buster, inches at a time, out of the maze of roots and branches. We had to stop and catch our breaths a few times, but we managed to get him alongside the van. As Julie dropped to her knees beside him, weeping as if she were at his funeral, I hurriedly searched my pockets for my keys.

“
Oh God!” Julie cried out. She was panting hard, trying to catch her breath while holding Buster’s heavy head and pushing his hair back from his slack face. “Hurry, Sonny!”

I rushed to
the back of the van, unlocked the doors and opened them wide as they would go. I don’t know how I did it, let alone Julie, but by grasping Buster under his massive arms we managed to lift his bulk high enough so that his upper body rested on the van’s carpeted floor. I then vaulted inside and pulled while Julie lifted his legs. When we finally did get him inside, Julie climbed in back next to Buster saying, “I’ll stay here with him.”

I
tore out of there like right now. Speeding recklessly, I ran every stop sign and red light until we skidded to a stop in front of the emergency entrance of the hospital.

“I’ll be right back!” I told Julie without turning around. “And open those doors!”

Not taking time to close my own door behind me, I bolted for the glass entryway.

In no time
at all two men who were dressed like doctors but really weren’t, wheeled Buster’s lifeless body inside on an aluminum gurney. I helped push the thing as well, but I did not like feeling the chill of the metal rail in my hands. Sure, I well knew it was cold because of the hospital’s super-cool air-conditioning, but it put me to mind of the gurneys they used in another very cold place.

Once we got Buster inside, a
n ER nurse immediately fitted him with an oxygen mask and they whisked him away. As soon as he was out of sight Julie asked a nurse if she could use a telephone.

“Do you want me to call Pa?” I asked as we stood at the end of the admission counter.

“No,” she said, shaking her head vigorously as she dialed Barnacle Bell’s number.

“
Hello Pa,” she said, looking at me for strength. “Yes, we found him, but he’s hurt pretty bad. He’s  ...  well, he’s unconscious, but we’re at the hospital on Stock Island. They just wheeled him away  ...  Okay, we’ll see you when you get here. Please, Pa, be careful driving. They’re going to do everything they can. The main thing is that we got him here  ...  Okay, bye.”

“
He’s coming right down,” Julie said, pushing aside a strand of black hair from her face.

Seeing her so frazzled with worry tore at me inside. I wanted to put my arms around her, hold her close and come up with something assuring to say, but I didn’t. I just couldn’t. As great as we had been getting along again, there was still a voice in my head saying, “Hold back! Don’t set her up for another letdown. You know damn well you could never overlook her  ...  her handicap.”

The best I could do was gently take her by the elbow, nod at the rows of blue plastic chairs in the waiting area, and say, “Come on, Julie. Let’s sit over there.”

The place reeked of antiseptic. The PA squawked
out codes and called the names of doctors. RNs and LPNs dashed back and forth, orderlies pushed metal carts along the white tiled floor. It was a busy night. Everything moved quickly – everything except the time it took for Pa to get there. All Julie and I did was sit and worry. We didn’t talk much. The few times we did exchange a few words there was always a long lull in the conversation afterwards. Deep as we both dug into our minds during those silent periods, neither of us could come up with a single optimistic thing to say. No part of this horrible mess looked good. Buster; Pa, my and Julie’s future together, the future of Flagler’s Key, the reoccurring vision of my naked wife on my thirty-ninth birthday – all of it was weighing heavy on me.

Finally, after about a half hour, Pa came through the entrance with Jackie and Fred.

“What do you know?” Pa asked, desperately searching Julie’s eyes then mine.

“
He doesn’t look good. We haven’t heard anything yet,” was all Julie could come up with.

She looked like she was going to break out in tears any second so I explained, “
We went to a trailer park here on Stock Island because Cap Forest said Blackburn lived in one. We were driving through it and found Buster’s pickup at the end of a road, next to a canal. We found him way back in a bunch of thick mangroves. He was  ...  he was barely breathing, Pa.”

The scared look on the old seaman’s face intensified. I swear I could feel the
cold, dark chill over his spirit thickening. Nobody said anything for a moment. I just looked down at my feet.

“Obviously you didn’t have time to look for
Blackburn,” Jackie said, as if he were asking me a question.

“
No, but he had to have been there. Both of the truck’s doors were open.”

“
And, the passenger seat was  ...  it was all bloody,” Julie added.

“
I think Blackburn thought Buster was finished,” I chimed in. “He drove over there to dump him in the canal. But Buster must have come to, and even though he was hurting, he managed to get himself out of the water. He probably thought he’d take cover in the mangroves in case Blackburn came back.”

“S
ounds logical,” Fred Sampson said.

“
I want to talk to that nurse over there,” Pa said. “Be right back.”

“
Be careful, she’s a witch!  I already had it out with her,” I said.

We all
watched as Pa spoke to the nurse at the counter. He looked ten years older than when Julie and I had spoken to him at the bar just a few hours earlier. For the first time since I met him he wasn’t standing tall and strong. Even though he had his back to us now I could see his shoulders were hunched forward and his head was slung real low. The way he had both hands flat on the mica counter, I thought he might have needed the extra support to hold himself up.

When Pa turned around and walked back over to us he
looked as though he’d been drained of all his blood.

“
He’s very critical,” he said, and a tear fell onto the white-tiled floor. Julie put her arms around him and held him as he went on, “His skull’s fractured. He’s got some broken ribs too  ...  one of ’em punctured a lung, and he’s got contusions all over his body. It, it doesn’t look good. He’s in a coma. Excuse me.” 

Gently he
withdrew himself from Julie’s arms. With his head still hanging low, he walked directly outside to the parking lot. Tears were streaming his worried face.

“
Let’s give him some space,” Jackie said, “I’ve seen a lot of grieving relatives react to trauma when I was on the job in Brooklyn. Pa’s got to let the initial shock and emotion drain itself, then he’ll start to regain strength and hope. It’s gotta run its course.”

“
He’s strong, but he’s also old,” Julie said. Her eyes were all welled up too. “What would he do if Buster d ... if something happened to him?”

“
For starters, let’s just hope for the best,” I said. “If, God forbid, the worst were to happen we’ll deal with it then. In the meantime, Buster’s still alive. And he’s where he needs to be.”

“You’re
right,” Fred added. “Let’s try not to put ourselves through any additional emotional burdens before they’re necessary.”

Julie
had been glancing back and forth at those glass doors. Now, quickly dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex, she said, “Here comes Pa. Let’s be strong for him.”

“
Sit here, Pa,” I said when he rejoined us. “How about I run out and try to find some fresh coffee?”

Pa did sit down. Then t
he old conch looked up at me through glazed, red eyes and said, “Thanks anyway, why don’t you all get back to Wreckers and get some sleep instead?  I’m gonna stay here the night.”

No
ne of us challenged his wishes. We looked at each other, nodding in agreement, and then Julie said, “O.k., Pa. Sure. But you call me later if you change your mind, I’ll come right back down and get you. Otherwise, I’ll be back in the morning.”

Pa agreed, and
we all shuffled outside into the lighted parking lot. With our voices echoing in the still night air, we stood by Jackie’s van as he boarded the wheelchair lift. When the platform began to elevate him he said, “You need to go to the police, Sonny. You know more about the bastard who’s responsible for this than any of us.”

“
I know ... I’ve got to do
something
.”

Julie
didn’t like the way I said that. After searching my eyes for a short moment, she slowly pronounced and spaced each word when she said, “What-do-you-mean-by-that?”

“
Nothing!” I snapped. Then I said with finality, “I just want to get back to my trailer and try to get some rest. I’ve got to get up early for work tomorrow.” I blamed myself for what had happened to Buster. My only hope for a semblance of self-redemption was to somehow fix this mess.

“
Don’t get any crazy ideas,” Julie said, coming off a little angry now.

“Good n
ight, guys,” I said, putting an end to the discussion. Then I put my palm on Julie’s lower back and led her to my van.

“
Good night Jackie, Fred,” Julie said, looking back at them and then at the hospital one last time.

As we drove
back to Wrecker’s beneath a wide, black dome splattered with stars, we didn’t have a whole lot to say to each other. And that was fine with me. With all the toxic thoughts I had circulating in my head, I sure as hell didn’t need Julie laying more pressure on me. But it was inevitable. I knew she’d want answers. Right after we passed through Cudjoe Key and were crossing the dark bridge over Kemp Channel, she turned to me and asked, “What’s going on in there, Sonny?  Please tell me what you think you’re going to do about this.”

“
Nothing,” I said, then, just as quickly in attempt to undo my lie I added, “I mean I don’t want to talk about it right now. It’s been a long night and I just want to get some sleep.”

Not long later I pulled the
van in between our two trailers. The headlights illuminated the woods in back startling an armadillo. It bolted as quickly as armadillos can into the palmettos, and I shut off the engine and had to tap the gas pedal twice again. I started to climb out but then stopped. Julie was just sitting there, looking at me.

“
What?” I asked, quizzically.

She didn’t say anything for a moment. Even with my door open it was dead quiet. She just looked across the dark van at me then finally she raised her hand, put it on my shoulder and massaged it. “
Don’t go looking for this psycho, Sonny! Please, I’m groveling here, just turn it over to the sheriff’s department.”

“
Julie, I don’t know which end is up right now, okay?  I’ve got thoughts and ideas buzzing in and out of my head so fast that I can’t make sense out of any of them. My mind’s been like that a lot lately. Nothing stays in there long enough to figure any of it out.”

“Okay, I understand.
Get some sleep, but please  ...  consider turning it over to the police.”

I could tell she wanted to put her arms around me and kiss me. That much I can read from the look in a woman’s eyes. But she didn’t. She
just and then got out of the van.

“
Do me a favor, “I said to her back, “Call me at the shop tomorrow and let me know how Buster’s doing.”

She stopped for a second, turned around
, said, “Sure. Good night,” then turned back around and stepped into her porch.

Chapter 17

The next morning I got two personal phone calls while working at the tackle shop. The first was ten minutes after I’d opened up. It was Cap Forest. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since the night at Mugs and Jugs, so I told him how Julie and I found Buster on Stock Island and what ensued afterwards. After filling him in on everything, he said he wanted to tell me a little more about Brock Blackburn. He said there hadn’t been enough time at the strip joint and he hadn’t been in any condition to think straight that night anyway. After that, he told me that he had known an inmate at Raiford who seemed to know quite a bit about Brock Blackburn. Then Cap told me everything he knew.

He said the killer’s
long, coarse black hair somehow seemed artificial and that it framed his hard face like a cheap wig. It was a face that hid some horrible stories in its teardrops. There was a horseshoe shaped scar on his right cheek, his nose was crooked at the bridge, and there were always deep, angry creases between his eyebrows. Below those thick black brows were two vacant, forbidding eyes – dead eyes – eyes that conveyed his unnerving ruthlessness.

Cap also went on to tell me that w
hen Blackburn was a kid, his old man often came home drunk to their dilapidated house and liked to give the oldest of his six sons a good pounding. The youngest two boys, none of which bore any resemblance to each other, used to walk unsupervised around the old house either bare-assed naked or in filthy underpants. It seemed there was never any money left for clothes because of the family patriarch’s drinking habit and the payments he made on his new Mercury. As for Blackburn’s mother and older sister, they were no help either. Just like the old man, they were hardly ever home. Most nights they’d be out
together
, soliciting their bodies. Cap said that although he didn’t know if it were true, there had been a rumor circulating in prison that many nights the mother and daughter would service the same John – together. It seemed they were a tag-team of sorts.