Acts of Nature - By Jonathon King Page 0,27
On braided lines, sitting on the bottom of the Gulf and baited with fish heads and chicken parts. When harvest came a giant motor winch on the stern of the boat started pulling up the line at a steady speed. The boat captains timed the operation down to pure efficiency, the traps spaced just far enough so a line man could hook the first trap as it broke the surface, yank it up with a boat hook onto the gunwale, pop open its door, snag the crabs inside, and toss them into a bucket and then rebait the trap with half-frozen bait, and shove the whole thing back overboard just in time to grab the boat hook and snag the next trap hitting the surface. It was all a delicate dance. But there was nothing delicate if your gloved hand got caught in the line or even got stuck enough to yank you into the spinning winch. Wayne’s left hand had gotten caught. The line, perhaps luckily, only looped around his thumb, and with the power to drag hundreds of pounds through the warm Gulf water, it popped the digit off clean, the sound like a rifle shot, a sound many of the crewmen had heard before. Wayne was fourteen.
“Ain’t no girl gonna go for a four-finger thief,” Marcus had kidded him later. The comment, like the nickname itself, was something only your best friend could say. The boys had been neighbors since their toddler years. You always abuse the ones you know best.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Wayne had answered. “So what’s your excuse, dickhead?”
Shortly after the accident Wayne took to holding his beers with his left hand, out in front so anyone and everyone would notice his deformity. He never hid the hand, carried it like a badge or something, maybe a chip that should have been on his shoulder. Marcus might have even been envious. It was better’n any damn tattoo you could get in Miami.
Marcus let the lack-of-a-girlfriend insult bounce off him; old joke, he’d heard it before.
“So I’m in for three bucks and I raise you another dollar,” Marcus said, peering up over his cards at Buck. The man kept his eyes down, pinching the cards. The tips of his fingernails turned white when he did this, the rest of the nail shading a darker red with the press of blood against their backs. It was a tell that Buck had tried to get rid of playing cards in prison. He’d gotten his ass kicked in poker for the first nine months in prison until a new friend finally let on to the obvious sign he was flashing to the rest of the players whenever he had a good hand. But these boys weren’t so tuned into the small details of gambling. He saw and raised the bet back to Marcus, who scowled. Out of the hand, Wayne was bored.
“So we gonna do these expensive-ass fishing camps after the storm, right?”
No one answered. They’d been over the plan already. Buck had been twisting the images around in his head, just like when he’d lain awake all night in prison, working the details, what it was going to look like when he got out, what he was going to do, how this time he was going to be so careful there was no way he’d make the same mistakes again and get caught. Every opportunity could be the big score that would set him up.
“But what if the damn hurricane busts stuff up? A nice fishing rig or a stereo or somethin’ ain’t gonna be worth much if it’s busted up,” Wayne said. “I mean, I know it’ll be easier to get into the places like you said, Buck, make it look like nature done it and all. But suppose the good stuff gets damaged before we get there?”
Buck understood the boy was anxious; that always happened once you had a plan set and you were young and giddy, wanting to get your feet moving and your fingers on something profitable. He’d probably been the same way when he was younger, not as bad, of course, but somewhat the same.
“Son,” he said, still not looking up. “You hear that howl outside, boy? Ain’t a thing you can do about that ’cane coming in now. She’s gonna do what she gonna do, then we’ll run on out on the airboat as soon as she moves on through just like we planned. We’ll hit them places and see what