Stormy Weather (2 page)

Webo Drake glanced worriedly at his frat brother. Jack Fleming said, “Now what?”

A bearded man pulled himself up from a piling beneath the bridge. He was tall, with coarse silvery hair that hung in matted tangles to his shoulders. His bare chest was striped with thin pink abrasions. The man carried several coils of dirty rope under one arm. He wore camouflage trousers and old brown military boots with no laces. In his right hand was a crushed Coors can and a dead squirrel.

Jack Fleming said, “You a Cuban?”

Webo Drake was horrified.

Dropping his voice, Jack said: “No joke. I bet he’s a rafter.”

It made sense. This was where the refugees usually landed, in the Keys. Jack spoke loudly to the man with the rope:
“Usted Cubano?”

The man brandished the beer can and said: “Usted un asshole?”

His voice was a rumble that fit his size. “Where do you dipshits get off,” he said over the wind, “throwing your goddamn garbage in the water?” The man stepped forward and kicked out a rear passenger window of Jack’s father’s Lexus. He threw the empty beer can and the dead squirrel in the back seat. Then he grabbed Webo Drake by the belt of his jeans. “Your trousers dry?” the man asked.

Passengers in the Greyhound bus pressed their faces to the glass to see what was happening. Behind the Lexus, a family in a rented minivan could be observed locking the doors, a speedy drill they had obviously practiced before leaving the Miami airport.

Webo Drake said yes, his jeans were dry. The stranger said, “Then hold my eye.” With an index finger he calmly removed a glass orb from his left socket and placed it carefully in one of Webo’s pants pockets. “It loosed up on me,” the stranger explained, “in all this spray.”

Failing to perceive the gravity of the moment, Jack Fleming pointed at the shattered window of his father’s luxury sedan. “Why the hell’d you do that?”

Webo, shaking: “Jack, it’s all right.”

The one-eyed man turned toward Jack Fleming. “I count thirteen fucking beer cans in the water and only one hole in your car. I’d say you got off easy.”

“Forget about it,” offered Webo Drake.

The stranger said, “I’m giving you boys a break because you’re exceptionally young and stupid.”

Ahead of them, the Greyhound bus wheezed, lurched and finally began to inch northward. The man with the rope opened the rear door of the Lexus and brushed the broken glass off the seat. “I need a lift up the road,” he said.

Jack Fleming and Webo Drake said certainly, sir, that would be no trouble at all. It took forty-five minutes on the highway before they summoned the nerve to ask the one-eyed man what he was doing under the Seven Mile Bridge.

Waiting, the man replied.

For what? Webo asked.

Turn on the radio, the man said. If you don’t mind.

News of the hurricane was on every station. The latest forecast put the storm heading due east across the Bahamas, toward a landfall somewhere between Key Largo and Miami Beach.

“Just as I thought,” said the one-eyed man. “I was too far south. I could tell by the sky.”

He had covered his head with a flowered shower cap; Jack Fleming noticed it in the rearview mirror, but withheld comment. The young man was more concerned about what to tell his father regarding the busted window, and also about the stubborn stain a dead squirrel might leave on fine leather upholstery.

Webo Drake asked the one-eyed man: “What’s the rope for?”

“Good question,” he said, but gave no explanation.

An hour later the road spread to four lanes and the traffic began to move at a better clip. Almost no cars were heading south. The highway split at North Key Largo, and the stranger instructed Jack Fleming to bear right on County Road 905.

“It says there’s a toll,” Jack said.

“Yeah?”

“Look, we’re out of money.”

A soggy ten-dollar bill landed on the front seat between Jack Fleming and Webo Drake. Again the earthquake voice: “Stop when we reach the bridge.”

Twenty minutes later they approached the Card Sound Bridge, which crosses from North Key Largo to the mainland. Jack Fleming tapped the brakes and steered to the shoulder. “Not here,” said the stranger. “All the way to the top.”

“The top of the bridge?”

“Are you deaf, junior.”

Jack Fleming drove up the slope cautiously. The wind was ungodly, jostling the Lexus on its springs. At the crest of the span, Jack pulled over as far as he dared. The one-eyed man retrieved his glass eye from Webo Drake and got out of the car. He yanked the plastic cap off his head and jammed it into the waistband of his trousers.

“Come here,” the stranger told the two young men. “Tie me.” He popped the eye into its socket and cleaned it in a polishing motion with the corner of a bandanna. Then he climbed over the rail and inserted his legs back under the gap, so he was kneeling on the precipice.

Other hurricane evacuees slowed their cars to observe the lunatic scene, but none dared to stop; the man being lashed to the bridge looked wild enough to deserve it. Jack Fleming and Webo Drake worked as swiftly as possible, given the force of the gusts and the rapidity
with which their Key West hangovers were advancing. The stranger gave explicit instructions about how he was to be trussed, and the fraternity boys did what they were told. They knotted one end of the rope around the man’s thick ankles and ran the other end over the concrete rail. After looping it four times around his chest, they cinched until he grunted. Then they threaded the rope under the rail and back to the ankles for the final knotting.

The product was a sturdy harness that allowed the stranger’s arms to wave free. Webo Drake tested the knots and pronounced them tight. “Can we go now?” he asked the one-eyed man.

“By all means.”

“What about the squirrel, sir?”

“It’s all yours,” the stranger said. “Enjoy.”

Jack Fleming coasted the car downhill. At the foot of the bridge, he veered off the pavement to get clear of the traffic. Webo Drake found a rusty curtain rod in a pile of trash, and Jack used it to hoist the animal carcass out of his father’s Lexus. Webo stood back, trying to light a cigaret.

Back on the bridge, under a murderous dark sky, the kneeling stranger raised both arms to the pulsing gray clouds. Bursts of hot wind made the man’s hair stand up like a halo of silver sparks.

“Crazy fucker,” Jack Fleming rasped. He stepped over the dead squirrel and threw the curtain rod into the mangroves. “You think he had a gun? Because that’s what I’m telling my old man: Some nut with a gun kicked out the car window.”

Webo Drake pointed with the cigaret and said, “Jack, you know what he’s waiting for? That crazy idiot, he’s waiting on the hurricane.”

Although the young men stood two hundred yards away, they could see the one-eyed stranger grinning madly into the teeth of the rising wind. He wore a smile that blazed.

“Brother,” Jack said to Webo, “let’s get the hell out of here.” The tollbooth was unmanned, so they blew through at fifty miles an hour, skidded into the parking lot of Alabama Jack’s. There they used the one-eyed man’s ten-dollar bill to purchase four cold cans of Cherry Coke, which they drank on the trip up Card Sound Road. When they were finished, they did not toss the empties from the car.

•  •  •

A noise awakened Bonnie Lamb. It was Max, snapping open a suitcase. She asked what in the world he was doing, fully dressed and packing his clothes at four in the morning. He said he wanted to surprise her.

“You’re leaving me?” she asked. “After two nights.”

Max Lamb smiled and came to the bed. “I’m packing for both of us.”

He tried to stroke Bonnie’s cheek, but she buried her face in the pillow, to block out the light. The rain was coming harder now, slapping horizontally against the windows of the high-rise hotel. She was glad her husband had come to his senses. They could do Epcot some other time.

She peered out of the pillow and said, “Honey, is the airport open?”

“I don’t honestly know.”

“Shouldn’t you call first?”

“Why?” Max Lamb patted the blanket where it followed the curve of his wife’s hips.

“We’re flying home, aren’t we?” Bonnie Lamb sat up. “That’s why you’re packing.”

Her husband said no, we’re not flying home. “We’re going on an adventure.”

“I see. Where, Max?”

“Miami.”

“That’s the surprise?”

“That’s it.” He tugged the covers away from her. “Come on, we’ve got a long drive—”

Bonnie Lamb didn’t move. “You’re serious.”

“—and I want to teach you how to use the video camera.”

She said, “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we stay here and make love for the next three days. Dawn to dusk, OK? Tear the room to pieces. I mean, if it’s adventure you want.”

Max Lamb was up again, stuffing the suitcases. “You don’t understand. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”

Right, Bonnie said, a chance to drown on our honeymoon. “I’d rather stay where it’s warm and dry. I’ll even watch
Emmanuelle VI
on the Spectravision, like you wanted last night.” This she regarded as a significant concession.

“By the time we get to Miami,” said Max, “the dangerous part will be over. In fact, it’s probably over already.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“You’ll see.”

“Max, I don’t want to do this. Please.”

He gave her a stiff, fatherly hug. She knew he was about to speak to her as if she were six years old. “Bonnie,” Max Lamb said to his new wife. “My beautiful little Bonnie, now listen. Disney World we can do anytime. Anytime we want. But how often does a hurricane hit? You heard the weatherman, honey. ‘The Storm of the Century,’ he called it. How often does a person get to see something like that!”

Bonnie Lamb couldn’t stand her husband’s lordly tone. She couldn’t stand it so much that she’d have done anything to shut him up.

“All right, Max. Bring me my robe.”

He kissed her noisily on the forehead. “Thatta girl.”

Snapper and Edie Marsh got two rooms at the Best Western in Pembroke Pines, thirty miles north of where the storm was predicted to come ashore. Snapper told the motel clerk that one room would be enough, but Edie said not on your damn life. The relationship had always been strictly business, Snapper being an occasional fence of women’s wear and Edie being an occasional thief of same. Their new venture was to be another entrepreneurial partnership, more ambitious but not more intimate. Up front Edie alerted Snapper that she couldn’t imagine a situation in which she’d have sex with him, even once. He did not seem poleaxed by the news.

She went to bed covering her ears, trying to shut out the hellish moan of the storm. It was more than she could bear alone. During the brief calm of the eye, she pounded on the door to Snapper’s room and said she was scared half to death. Snapper said come on in, we’re having ourselves a time.

Somewhere in the midst of a hurricane, he’d found a hooker. Edie was impressed. The woman clutched a half-empty bottle of Barbancourt between her breasts. Snapper had devoted himself to vodka; he wore a Marlins cap and red Jockey shorts, inside out. Candles gave the motel room a soft, religious lighting. The electricity had been out for two hours.

Edie Marsh introduced herself to the prostitute, whom Snapper had procured through a telephone escort service. Here was a dedicated employee! thought Edie.

The back side of the storm came up, a roar so unbearable that the three of them huddled like orphans on the floor. The candles flickered madly as the wind sucked at the windows. Edie could see the walls breathing—Christ, what a lousy idea this was! A large painting
of a pelican fell, grazing one of the hooker’s ankles. She cried out softly and gnawed at her artificial fingernails. Snapper kept to the vodka. Occasionally his free hand would turn up like a spider on Edie’s thigh. She smashed it, but Snapper merely sighed.

By dawn the storm had crossed inland, and the high water was falling fast. Edie Marsh put on a conservative blue dress and dark nylons, and pinned her long brown hair in a bun. Snapper wore the only suit he owned, a slate pinstripe he’d purchased two years earlier for an ex-cellmate’s funeral; the cuffed trousers stopped an inch shy of his shoetops. Edie chuckled and said that was perfect.

They dropped the prostitute at a Denny’s restaurant and took the Turnpike south to see what the hurricane had done. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper lunacy, fire engines and cop cars and ambulances everywhere. The radio said Homestead had been blown off the map. The governor was sending the National Guard.

Snapper headed east on 152nd Street but immediately got disoriented. All traffic signals and street signs were down; Snapper couldn’t find Sugar Palm Hammocks. Edie Marsh became agitated. She kept repeating the address aloud: 14275 Noriega Parkway. One-four-two-seven-five. Tan house, brown shutters, swimming pool, two-car garage. Avila had guessed it was worth $185,000.

“If we don’t hurry,” Edie told Snapper, “if we don’t get there soon—”

Snapper instructed her to shut the holy fuck up.

“Wasn’t there a Dairy Queen?” Edie went on. “I remember him turning at a Dairy Queen or something.”

Snapper said, “The Dairy Queen is gone.
Every
goddamn thing is gone, case you didn’t notice. We’re flying blind out here.”

Edie had never seen such destruction; it looked like Castro had nuked the place. Houses without roofs, walls, windows. Trailers and cars crumpled like foil. Trees in the swimming pools. People weeping, Sweet Jesus, and everywhere the plonking of hammers and the growling of chain saws.

Snapper said they could do another house. “There’s only about ten thousand to choose from.”

“I suppose.”

“What’s so special about 1-4-2-7-5?”

“It had personality,” Edie Marsh said.

Snapper drummed his knuckles on the steering wheel. “They all look the same. All these places, exactly the same.”

His gun lay on the seat between them.

“Fine,” said Edie, unsettled by the change of plans, the chaos, the grim dripping skies. “Fine, we’ll find another one.”

Max and Bonnie Lamb arrived in Dade County soon after daybreak. The roads were slick and gridlocked. The gray sky was growling with TV helicopters. The radio said two hundred thousand homes were seriously damaged or destroyed. Meanwhile the Red Cross was pleading for donations of food, water and clothing.