Only we remained.
Sixty feet above me towered Reed’s Bluff. It’s a sand dune that, for no apparent reason, rises straight up out of the water and runs east and west for nearly a mile. At the top, it might be five feet in width and the backside falls off as fast as the front rises. It’s dotted with scrub oaks and enough wiregrass to hold the sand together. It’s steep, but once at the top, you can see for miles. More important, you can see St. Marys. I needed to show Abbie. She needed to know we were close.
I cradled her and threw her arms around my neck. Her arms fell. “Hold on to me.” She made no response.
I dug my toes into the sand, pulled on the wiregrass and crawled up. Every few feet, the sand gave way, spilling away beneath us and forcing me to dig in further and pull harder. Climbing up took several minutes. Finally, I laid her on the narrow ridge, caught my breath, sat her up and let her lean against me. “Honey, look.” I held her arm out and pointed her index finger. “St. Marys. Just five miles. That’s all.” She couldn’t breathe through her nose without coughing.
“Hey…” I was reaching. Grasping. “When we get there, I’ll call the folks at M. D. Anderson. Maybe something’s opened up. We could have dinner tonight at Sterlings and fly out tomorrow.”
Her eyes cracked. She leaned toward me and patted my chest. “Doss…” Her whisper was faint and gurgled with fluid. “I’m dying. Not stupid.”
“You know about that, too?”
She nodded and spat. “Uh-huh.” Cracking a smile, she said, “You’re not a very good liar.” She locked her arms around me, kissed my cheek and whispered, “No scars.”
I stared out across the expanse. The wind blew in two directions, meeting in the middle. In front of us, the wind blew in from the northwest, rolling across the marsh grass that ran for several miles out in front of us. It blew southeast, bending the grass and tress toward us. Behind us, the wind rose up over the bluff from the southwest and moved northeast, pulling the limbs, branches, wiregrass and spanish moss, laying them out across the water like hair. We sat in the middle, looking out upon a world that had come to pay its final respects.
“Abbie…look. Everything is…” The world was bowing down, but she never saw it.
Her eyes were rolling back and her tongue grew thick and white. I checked her pulse and it was faint. Barely there. I slid back down the bluff and scoured the bank for the Pelican case, but it was nowhere. I ran up and down the bank, looking. How hard can it be to spot a yellow plastic case? I ran a quarter mile down the bank to where a tree had fallen from the bluff into the water. The current stripped it of its foliage but left the thin twigs: They poked into the water like fingers, slowing the flow. Tangled in the middle, floated a yellow box.
I dove in.
When I surfaced, I grabbed the box and fought the current back to the bank. I anchored a hand in the soft sand, pulled and spiked the other hand. Three pulls and I’d freed myself from the current that sought to wash me out to sea. I ran back up the bank, clawed and scrambled back up the bluff and dropped next to Abbie. I flipped open the case, cracked the seal on the last of the dopamine and shot it into the inside of her thigh—into her femoral artery. Then I cracked the dexamethasone and slid the syringe into her arm. “Abbie, please come back. Don’t go. Not yet.” Finally, I dug around through the discarded syringes and found one last Actiq. I read the label, 800 mcg.
I pulled off the wrapper and placed it just inside her cheek. The three medications went to work quickly.
She stirred. “Have you ever broken a promise to me?”
I stared off down the river. She traced the lines of my face, breathing as deeply as she could. “Then don’t start now.” I cradled her on my lap and we slid tandem down the sand. When we reached the bank, I laid her down and scrambled through the debris, looking for anything that would float. A piece of plastic, an old cooler, a chunk of Styrofoam. If I could keep her afloat, I could swim alongside and we’d make it. We could still make it.
I thought about a makeshift raft, but a raft would never make the turn at Devil’s Elbow. I ran a half mile one way, then a half mile in the other. I rummaged through every piece of trash and fallen limb along the beach. That’s when I found it.
Rammed into the sand on the south side of the bluff lay a squared log. It looked weathered, was tunneled along one side by worms, was rough hewn—maybe even by hand—and looked about twelve feet long. Most important, it was bobbing.
It was heavy, which would be needed in about six miles, so I ran back to Abbie, picked her up and carried all that I held dear back down the beach. We reached the log and I laid her onto it, draping an arm around each side, and we shoved off. I latched on to the front and kicked us into the current. It picked us up, straightened us and led us out.
From the front, I could steady the log, keep Abbie afloat and make minute changes to our direction. It also allowed me to look at Abbie. We’d been in the water a few minutes when she stirred. Blood dripped off her face and trickled onto the log where it mixed with the water and trailed behind us.
The river had overflowed on every side. The volume was unlike anything I’d ever imagined. As was its speed. Even without a paddle and with me dragging in the water, we were making five to six miles an hour. In normal tides, dragging like this would pull me across the top of razor-sharp oyster beds, slicing my legs and back to shreds. But the volume had changed that. The only problem with our speed was Devil’s Elbow.
The current and weight of the log kept us in the middle. Actually, we didn’t have much of a choice. The further we flowed, the more whitecaps we encountered. Soon, they were rolling over the top of Abbie. The good news was that they couldn’t swamp us. The bad news was they were nearly drowning me. I clung to the front and kicked with little effect. The waves crashed across us, tearing at my hands.
We floated a mile, then two, made the wide southward turn at Rose’s Bluff and, finally, headed due east into the last straight stretch before Devil’s Elbow. Around us, the bank was a feeding frenzy of redfish and tarpon. On each side, the water had covered up the pluff mud and driven the fiddler crabs from their holes. Some clung to the wiregrass with their one large claw while others floated helplessly along the water’s surface.
I heard it long before I saw it.
Devil’s Elbow is the last bend before you reach St. Marys. When the waters collide, the river makes a muted roaring sound like rapids. The waves grow two to four feet and foam with whitecaps—enough to swamp any canoe. When I was guiding, we learned to skirt the elbow by paddling wide south and slingshotting around it. The problem with the log I was currently holding on to was control. I couldn’t paddle wide and we’d miss the slingshot.
The sound woke Abbie. She grabbed my hand and continued to straddle the log with her legs. The water swept us up, pushing us through the center of the elbow. Water rolled over the top of us, crashed down on the center of us and pulled at me from all sides. I hugged the log, trying to keep it upright, but I’m afraid I had little effect. Fortunately for us, the log was so long and heavy, it rode through the elbow as much as over it. I gripped the log and felt finger grooves on the far side. I moved to the side, threw an arm around Abbie, dug my fingers into the grooves and hung on. We passed through the chop, turned left or northeast and for the first time, saw St. Marys in the distance. All the buildings were white and the masts of nearly a hundred moored sailboats soared into the air. I swam to the other side of the log and that’s when it hit me. The timber. The grooves were actually letters—carved into the wood. I looked a second time at the log, finally recognizing it. Even pirates need God. I retraced the grooves, finishing the sentence. “…I will be with you.”
I kicked and pulled on the log, steering us toward the Florida side and pulling us wide of St. Marys. In the distance, news trucks with telescoping satellite antennaes sat parked along the dock. News personalities and their cameramen were set up on the dock, aiming out across the water. Mixed in with the debris, we floated some half mi
le away, relatively camouflaged. We drifted along the Florida bank, Abbie’s fingers locked into mine. It was dusk, and the sun had long since fallen.
Abbie lay her head on the timber and stared at the far bank. “Look at all those people.”
“Yeah.”
She coughed. “I think we caused some trouble.”
“It was no trouble.”
ST. MARYS SLIPPED BY. Seagulls strutted along the docks and pelicans perched on rooftops waiting for the shrimp boats to return and empty their nets. Cedar Point appeared on our left, so I kicked into the current, cut us across the water and slid us across the top of the marsh grass and through the schools of mullet that had gathered there. They, too, were seeking safety. The water nudged us inward, gently lodging our one-log raft onto shore.
We’d done it. All the way from Moniac.
I lifted Abbie, walked up on the beach and knelt, laying her head gently on the sand. Rising above us stood thirty or so sunflowers, some eight feet tall and in full bloom. They had followed the sun as it had fallen behind the trees, and now they were aimed down at us.
Abbie pushed her feet down into the sand, her toes resting in the water. She took a deep breath and her face relaxed—telling me that she remembered. “Honey…Abbie?” A helicopter sounded in the distance. “Honey…Abbie…” Her eyes fluttered. “We’re here.” I could hear men running toward us in the marsh. Her father’s voice in the background.
She turned toward me and wrapped her arms about my waist. I wiped her face with the scarf but the bleeding soaked through. I cradled her head. Words came hard. “Abbie…?”
She pulled my hand to her face, placing my index finger just above her ear and closed her eyes.
A few minutes later, she was gone.
49
THE FIRST DAY
The sun broke through the bars of my cell and landed on my face, warming my skin but little else. It was the same sun that we’d woken to yesterday morning. Bright, lonely and now hollow. The kid next to me chewed on what was left of one of his fingernails while both his legs bounced like popcorn.
A dozen or so men crowded the cell where they held me until my hearing with the judge. Given that it was Sunday, I imagine the judge wouldn’t be too happy about it. Strike one. The kid leaned in. “What ’choo in fo’?”
I hadn’t slept in four or five days, so I pushed the words around my mouth before getting them out. He was skinny, and his eyes never seemed to land any one place. Where do I start? “Uh…umm…murder.”
His eyes lit. “You bust a cop?” The walls around me were littered with graffiti, but I don’t know where they got a pencil given the cavity search they had given me before they walked me in here. I shook my head. He spat a nail sliver. “Who?”
A man next to me stood, walked to the wall urinal and peed everywhere but in the urinal. It ran down the wall and trickled into a drain on the floor. “My wife.”
He quit chewing on his finger, his eyes settled on me and then grew wide. “You da dude dey been talkin’ ’bout on TV. You da one done kilt the sen’tor’s daughter. That model.” He snapped his fingers. “The one on all the magazine covers. What her name?”
Most of the faces in the cell turned toward me. I whispered, “Abbie.”
“Yeah, da’s it. You da dude that kill Abbie.” He shouted across the room, “Hey…dis da honkey that shot the swimsuit model.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
He shrugged, legs bouncing again. “Well, she dead.”
I shook my head. A large, smelly man lying in the corner lifted his head off his arm and said, “Nervy! Shut the hell up.”
The kid sat quiet a minute and nodded at the big man. He whispered, “He call me Nervy cuz he say I got nervous legs.” A minute passed. “And if he tell you to shut up, you better do as he say. He big.” Another minute passed. “You shoot her?” I shook my head. “But dey say dey foun’ a gun. A fo’ty-fi’.” I tried to translate but couldn’t. He whispered more slowly. “A forty-five.” I nodded. “Wuz you gunna?” I looked at him and frowned. “Well, CNN say you want the family money.” I made no response.
The big man climbed off the floor, swayed back and forth, took three steps and grabbed my nervous friend, lifting his head to the ceiling, his shoes four feet off the floor. He banged his head twice against the bars, then carried him to the urinal, where he submerged his head against the porcelain and pulled the flush handle. The kid sputtered and whined, which caught the dutiful attention of the napping guard down the hall. He banged his stick against the bars and said, “Hey, shut up!”
Swaying man returned to his bed on the floor while the kid sat next to me. This time closer. Dripping, he leaned in. “Wuz it the money?”
I looked at the man on the ground and then the kid, wondering if he’d lost his mind. His eyes narrowed. “Look, man, you da one been on the news for two weeks. You crazy. Not me.” He had a point. He held his hands out, palms up. “So?” I shook my head. He turned his slightly. “It wadn’t da money? You tell me wher’ dey hid it?”
“No.”
“Shi…” He trailed off. “You dumb as a bag of hammers. You shudda took the money and runned off.” He waved his hand through the air like a kid hanging his arm out the window of a car on the highway. “Skee-daddle.”
Despite the fact that my friend next to me was murdering the English language, he did get his point across. Most of the heads in the cell were pointed at me. My eyes were heavy with sleep. My shorts had dried, as had Abbie’s blood on my shirt and hands. The Superglue stitching above my left eye was itchy and infected. He pointed. “She do that?”
The walls were cold, concrete, trimmed with steel and rivet—rising up out of a world bordered by razor wire and the possibility of speeding lead projectiles. The hard part is not this. I’d only been here a few hours but prison seemed like paradise compared to the possibilities. To hurt, to know punishment, you must be living and I am only half alive. Given that, the pain in my head hurts half as much. Pain in the heart is another matter.
I looked at my hands. The palms were bright red, badly blistered, and knuckles had been rubbed skinless. He pointed. “Shi…dat hurt?”
I turned them over. “I don’t know.”
“Well, it look like it hurt like hell.”
Hell. There’s a thought.
He asked again, “She do that, too?”
The big man on the floor didn’t move, but I kept quiet and shook my head. “Who den?” His face had broken out in ten or fifteen sores and many of his teeth had rotted out. Based on the maggot-breath coming out of his mouth, I’d imagine rotting was an ongoing process. I’m no drug expert, but he looked like the pictures that I’d seen of folks who were hooked on crystal meth.
“Some men we met…on the river.”
“You shoot dem, too?”
“No, and I didn’t shoot my wife either.”
“Da’s wha’ dey all say.”
A few of the other men in the cell laughed, and one of them slapped his leg and said, “Dat’s what I be talking ’bout.” Three seats down, a graying man with a two-day beard, wearing a dirty blue suit, sat leaning against the wall. One eye was purple, swollen shut, and he reeked of alcohol and vomit. His shirt was half untucked, the front of his pants was wet and he was missing a shoe, but oddly, his Windsor knot was snug against his neck. I doubted it would help.
The guard unlocked our cell and began leading us one by one to a table where two other guards cuffed our wrists and ankles. The twelve of us paraded down three flights of stairs to courtroom number 4. My scabby-faced friend whispered up at me, “Dis ain’t good. No good at all. Da’s Judge Fergy’s bench and dey’s a nor’easter comin’ in.”
“So?”
“Dat means da surfin’ be good and he be stuck here wit’ us.” He nodded toward the bench. “Bettuh get yo’ story skrait.”
The bailiff stood and said, “All rise.” We did, the sound of hungover grunts and uncomfortable chains echoed across the chamber. A balding
man with a dark tan and draped in a black robe walked through a door in the back. He sat quickly, tapping his foot, reading through a stack of papers. He nodded to the bailiff. “The court calls…” He looked down and shook his head. His eyes narrowed on Nervy. “Ellswood Maxwell Lamont Augustus the Third.”
Nervy stood up. The judge dropped the papers in front of him and folded his hands across his desk. “Nervy, I thought I told you I didn’t want to ever see you in my courtroom again.”
Nervy smiled. “I missed yo’ comp’ny, Yo’ Honuh.”
Judge Ferguson looked down at his desk, then back at the kid. “Looks like you’re still cooking in your backyard.”
Nervy shook his head. “No suh.” He pointed at the large man who’d flushed his head in the urinal. “He be.”
The judge frowned. “Then what’s that crap on your face.”
Nervy shrugged. “Skin cancer?”
“You’re trying to tell me that those leper-looking sores on your face were caused by the sun?” Nervy nodded enthusiastically.
The judge sat back. “And let me guess. You’re innocent.”
Nervy smiled. “Abso-frickin-one-hunrid-percen-lutely.”
“Is that your plea?”
He pointed at the big man. “He guilty. Not me. I was minding my own bit’ness. Watching TV. American Idol. Thinkin’ ’bout trying out, when—”
“Nervy, have you been to the city morgue lately?”
Urinal man to my left whispered beneath his breath in a voice that rivaled James Earl Jones, “No, but he keep dis up and he be going real soon.”
Nervy’s eyes grew wide. “Judge, um…Yo’ Honor, he be threatenin’ me.”
Judge Ferguson leaned across his bench. “It’s full of kids just like you. My patience has run out.” The judge rolled his eyes and turned to the bailiff. “Set a date, get him an attorney. Bail is set at twenty thousand.”
Nervy sat down, nodded his head and smirked. “He in a good mood.”