Authors: Chris Jordan
Roof pauses, looks around, carefully places his hand over Roy Whittle’s right wrist. The boy feels about as weak as a fresh-drowned kitten.
Roof gives him a little squeeze.
“Figure with your esophagus all swole up you’d have a hard time screaming,” says Roof, keeping his voice friendly in tone and barely above a murmur. “Nothing wrong with your hearing though, is there? My concern ain’t you, because you I can have arrested anytime. My concern is that brother of yurn who likes to torture creatures. He run away practically soon’s he dropped you off. So my question is, where’d he go? Is he off huntin’ the one did this to you? Huh? And where’d that be, exactly? Best tell me, son. Best tell old Roof everything you know.”
Poor boy wants to scream but he can’t.
13. Say Your Prayers
Never before has Kelly Garner dreaded the sunrise. Not that she’s usually up that early but still, when it does happen her heart always stirs with warmth, even if her eyes are bleary from an all-nighter. Probably because it triggers memories of childhood confinements at various treatment centers. There were a few bad nights, nurses and doctors hovering, when the prospect of witnessing another dawn seemed unlikely. So she’s keenly aware, despite what her mom may think, that each new day is a precious gift.
Kelly knows the monster man is close. Hasn’t dared rise up for a look lately, but her sixteen-year-old ears register everything. The squish of a heavy foot coming up from the damp grass. The faintest clink of something metallic—a knife or gun?
He’s out there, waiting patiently. Waiting for her to make a mistake, give herself away. Waiting for the sun to rise, when it will be easier to find them.
Seth remains feverish, quaking uncontrollably, but he’s not yet delirious. He understands the consequences of making a sound, and has kept silent, communicating, as best he can, by touch. They cling together, not daring to so much as slap away a mosquito. Kelly wondering if it’s possible to be bitten to death, to actually be bled dry by mosquitoes. They’re both so swollen with bite marks that the bugs are having trouble finding fresh spots.
Kelly takes great care not to put any pressure on Seth’s swollen arm. There’s a limit to how much pain he can stand without crying out.
Best thing, she decides, go somewhere far away in her head. Somewhere that gives her hope, makes her feel strong. For Kelly that somewhere is in the left-hand seat of Seth’s brand-new Cessna Skylane. Seth in the co-pilot’s seat, letting her have the controls for the first time. He’s still a bit uneasy about taking on the responsibility of instructing a teenage girl, one who has been badgering him unmercifully by e-mail. He’s made it clear he’s not interested in some whimsical impulse to get a free ride in a small plane. She will have to prove herself, and quickly.
Seth Manning, for all his boyish good looks, is the most serious man she’s ever met. For him flying is a vocation, not a hobby or job. He’s been flying since he was fourteen—he soloed at fifteen, long before he could legally drive—so he knows that some teens are capable of serious commitment. She knows what he must be thinking: this skinny girl in the pilot seat has made all the right noises, but the fact is she’s never even been in a small aircraft, let alone taken the yoke.
For all he knows, she might be a puker. Lots of steady,
serious people can’t fly because of motion sickness. Others can’t learn because they don’t listen.
Kelly doesn’t puke. She’s a sponge, soaking up instruction and repeating it back to him word for word, if necessary. Her attention is fully engaged, firmly concentrated, and when he tells her to place her feet on the rudder pedals, find the balance between them, she does so with the confidence of someone who trusts her own physical instincts. Then she has the yoke and she’s flying the aircraft, banking firmly to the right as she follows his instructions, gradually coming back to level, finding the horizon, checking the instruments.
Flying.
The moment is, for Kelly, transcendent. For the first time in her life she’s in control of her own destiny, flying free above the earth. Her heart tells her that so long as she can fly, she’ll live forever. She can see not just her own small life, but the shape of the world below. Joy comes off her like waves of heat, and Seth knows what she’s experiencing. She can feel him studying her, judging her ability, and when she risks a quick glance the first thing that registers is the kindness in his eyes. He wants her to succeed.
“You’re a natural pilot,” he tells her that day, as if slightly disappointed.
“That’s good, right?”
“It can be. But it means you have to be extra careful, especially during the first few hours of instruction, as you develop discipline. Naturals tend to fly by the seat of their pants because they have an instinctive understanding of how the aircraft moves through the air. They concentrate on the feeling part and tend to ignore the instruments. That’s what gets them into trouble. When a plane stalls into a tailspin, there’s no ‘feel’ about it. You have to trust your instruments
and your instruction, not your instincts. Most of being a good pilot is in your head, not your hands.”
“But my hands are okay?”
“Your hands are fine. If it’s any consolation, I was a natural, too. But I forced myself to become a very boring, by-the-numbers pilot.”
“By-the-numbers isn’t boring,” Kelly tells him. “By-the-numbers means staying alive.”
It was exactly the right thing to say. Once they were back on the ground—no, he wouldn’t allow her to attempt a landing the very first day—he seemed as excited about her continuing instruction as she did. He bought her a coffee at the airport’s little café and they talked for hours. He told her how he became obsessed with the notion of flying shortly after his mom died, when the idea of lifting into the air seemed like a way to escape grief, and later became something altogether different, a place where he felt whole and in control and completely alive. His mom died of cancer, he told her, and for the first time in her life Kelly found herself willingly recounting what it had been like to be a child stricken with leukemia, facing the very real possibility of death at an age when most kids’ biggest fear was invisible monsters under the bed.
They bonded big time.
Seth was different. Not like a potential boyfriend or a teacher, more like the perfect older sibling—or that’s how she, an only child, imagines it might be to have an older brother.
She can’t, she won’t, let him die.
That’s why, when the first shotgun blast explodes through the mangroves, followed by the flat bang of the discharge, Kelly Garner covers Seth Manning’s body with her own.
“Come on out, little pig,” says the monster man.
So close he might as well be whispering in her ear.
“Ain’t got all day. Quit humping your fag boyfriend.”
Kelly stays where she is, not moving. The next shot blows apart a branch not an inch from her head, spitting shredded mangrove leaves into her tightly clenched eyes.
“Two ways we can do this,” says monster man. “Crawl out and beg, or be killed where you’re at. Thing is, I need fag boy alive, so I’ll have to wing you and let you bleed to death, then drag you off him.”
He kicks at the mangroves. Kelly decides she doesn’t want to die with her eyes closed. She opens her eyes, squints up through the tangle of mangrove branches.
Monster man is no more than ten yards away.
“Make up your mind,” he says. “I ain’t got all night.”
Beneath her Seth struggles. “Leave her alone,” he says, voice muffled. “I’m the one you want!”
Feverish and weak though he is, Kelly can’t stop him from crawling out from under. Clenching his teeth, groaning in agony as his swollen arm thrashes through the branches. Finally staggers to his feet, finds himself up to his knees in the dark water surrounding the stand of mangroves. A faint blush of first light just now showing along the horizon.
“I surrender,” Seth says, straightening up, his feverish body shivering. “You got what you want. Take me and just leave her there.”
“Oh, I aim to,” says the monster man, chuckling.
He swings the shotgun from Seth to the mangroves where Kelly still lies entangled in the branches, barely able to move.
“Say your prayers, little pig,” he says.
A shotgun fires.
And part of monster man’s head turns to dark mist.
He collapses backward into the water and does not rise.
Standing behind him, a different monster. One wearing night-vision goggles and aiming a large, odd-looking shotgun.
“Get in the boat,” says Ricky Lang, yanking on the rope to an aluminum skiff. “We’re going to a party and you’re both invited.”
14. Three Shots At Sunrise
Leo Fish is beginning to grow on me. For the first hour or two in our company, he parted with very few words, but the coming dawn has warmed him up. Or maybe years of rarely speaking have left him with a lot of pent-up verbal pressure. Whatever, every stroke of the push-pole seems to bring forth another anecdote or observation.
“When I was a boy, say about seven, my daddy come upon hard times. Had a house in Glade City but lost it to the bank. So he moved us out to the shell mounds—them are the little islands made by the Calusa Indians—and we camped out for a year, living off the land. Dint have a proper tent to start out, just a piece of canvas strung over a limb. Skeeters were bad, but the fishing and the trapping was good. Daddy gimme a little.22 rifle and I become a good shot. Yessum, best year of my life, out on the mounds.”
Part of me is aware that he’s purposefully distracting me from our present situation and I’m grateful for the effort. Shane, a hulking presence in the little boat because of his size, remains mostly quiet, staring off at the dark horizon as if willing the sun to rise, and the search to resume.
“For a whole year we dint eat nothing much that wasn’t protected species nowadays. White ibis—what they call Chokoloskee chicken—and night heron and egret and such.
It was that or starve. Today they might say we was homeless, but we dint think of it that way. Once Daddy got together a few gator hides, he was able to trade for staples like cornmeal and flour and beans and cooking oil. Life was hard but good. When you work yur butt off from sun comes up till sun goes down, cleaning and salting hides, you better believe Mama’s cornbread in the iron skillet smelled like heaven.
“Funny enough, we never ate gator. Just skinned ‘em and threw away the rest. They say it tastes like chicken. I say chicken tastes like alligator,” he says, chuckling at his own joke.
“How far, Mr. Fish?”
“Just Fish, or Leo if you druther. Mister makes me nervous. Not too far, missy. Around the bend a short ways. We’ll get there, don’t you worry.”
“You think we’ll find her?”
“Gonna do our very best for you, missy. Ain’t that right, Mr. Shane?”
“Just Shane,” says Shane. “For the same reason. And yes, absolutely, we’ll find Kelly.”
Can’t help notice he doesn’t specify on finding her alive.
Around the bend arrives, and Fish puts us ashore on a tidy little island he calls a hardwood hammock. Tall trees, mostly tamarind, acacia, and something called gumbo-limbo, are thick around the outside, like the walls of a fortress, the interior being mostly ferns and low-growing shade plants. Much of this has been cleared because he sometimes used it as a camp. The deep canopy of fronds and leaves makes it feel almost like a roof over our heads.
Fish looks around, smiling with contentment, and says, “Always sleep like a baby in here. I woke up once ‘cause a whitetail fawn was licking my face. Must have been the salt. Which makes me an old salt lick, I guess.”
Setting us at our ease as he unpacks a rifle from his little boat.
“What’s going on?” Shane wants to know.
His plan is to leave us here for a bit while he checks out one of Ricky Lang’s camps. Shane naturally wants to accompany him, but Fish insists on going alone.
“On my lonesome I can do it in twenty minutes,” he says, tying little bits of rope around his trouser cuffs. “With you along it’d be an hour. Plus you’ll be tough to hide on open ground. So rest yourself down on the nice soft ferns. We’re gettin’ where we need to be, even if it don’t seem so at the moment.”
Shane reluctantly agrees to let him go it alone.
“Those ropes around your pant legs, what’s that for?” I want to know.
“Keep out the leeches, missy. Don’t mind a leech or two on my ankles, but up higher they give me the willywaws, if you know what I mean.”
Moments later he’s waist deep in the dark water, holding the rifle clear, and before long I lose sight of his cowboy hat as he blends into the swamp. Leaving me with a lump in my throat and nothing to do but wait.
Shane, sensing my despair, plops himself down next to me, hugging his knees.
“I feel good about Fish,” he says.
“He knows the way,” I say, without much enthusiasm.
“Yes, he does. And in about twenty minutes the sun will come up and the search will resume. Today’s the day, Mrs. Garner.”
“Me Jane,” I respond laconically. “You Shane.”
He actually giggles. Which sounds weird coming from such a big guy. When he realizes I’m not going to join in, he clears his throat and says, “A while ago you asked me why I
resigned from the FBI. I said I’d tell you about it later. Now seems like as good a time as any. You still want to hear my story?”
He, like Fish before him, seems intent on distracting me from the more immediate crisis. Obviously he’s trying to help, so I go, “Sure. Why not?” more out of politeness than interest.
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he adds, not quite kidding about it.
“You go first,” I suggest. “The Randall Shane story. But make it quick, because Fish’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
“Won’t take me five,” he promises. “It starts, like a lot of good stories, with a beautiful wife and a beautiful child. Jean and Amy. Jean was my wife, Amy was our daughter. We had this nice little place in New Rochelle, I think I mentioned that part already, and I worked out of the New York office, mostly testifying in fingerprint cases. We’d had to reorganize the fingerprint division after a scandal—the previous expert never saw a print, any print, that he couldn’t connect to a criminal case—and I’d become the new and improved resident expert, basically reorganizing the way we identify prints. Computer stuff. Boring guy with a boring job, but I loved it.