Acts of Nature - By Jonathon King Page 0,63
Morris.”
The man looked again straight into my eyes, a practice that by now was a little unnerving, and when he smiled that little faux-friendly, backwoods smile again I felt my fingers start to flex. The testosterone of fight or flight was leaking down into my fist from somewhere back in my brain.
“OK, then. Why don’t we just go see what we can get from the airboat to see how we might get the missus out of here,” Morris said pleasantly.
When all three of them moved toward the door, my first thought was that they would leave us. In a few minutes we would hear the engine start and they would pull out to continue on their way. They don’t need us, we need them.
“How about if one of you stays to help me break down this other bed,” I said. “You know, maybe we can use the frame as a gurney and all four of us could lift her through the trees.”
They all stopped, the boys looking at Morris.
“Now there’s some thinking, Mr. Freeman. Sure. Wayne, stay here and help with that idea. We’ll go get some tools and whatnot from the boat and plan out a path. That just might work.”
Again the smile, which also stopped the beginning of a protest from the one called Wayne.
“We’ll be back directly,” Morris said and then he and the other boy walked out. I heard them splash as they jumped down from the deck and all I could do was hope that they wouldn’t look carefully under the foundation and notice the opening left by the trapdoor that I’d forgotten to close under the next room. As the sounds of their movement faded, I watched the sullen look on the kid’s face deepen. He might have been wondering if he too was being left behind.
“So, Wayne,” I said, reminding him that the older guy had already let his name out, a betrayal to some degree. “Let’s see about using this bed as a trauma cot.”
He looked over as I pulled the other bed frame out away from the wall.
“I tried to break it down some already,” I said, pointing to the metal strapping where I’d removed my impromptu pry bar. “Maybe you can figure a better way. You look like you might be the mechanical one of your brothers.”
“They ain’t my brothers,” Wayne said, bending to pull at one corner of the frame with his left hand.
“So, your name isn’t Morris?”
“No. It ain’t.”
“You kind of look alike,” I said, interviewing, and hoping it was not too obvious.
“No, we don’t,” the kid said.
I was guessing that he might be fifteen or sixteen, but on closer inspection, the barely discernable mustache he was trying to grow made me think he was possibly older, just a little behind in maturity. A follower? A simple ride-along? When I was still a cop in Philadelphia, I’d shot and killed a twelve- year-old tag-along who had joined one of his buddies for a late-night convenience store robbery. I’d been responding to an alarm and when the first guy out of the store took a shot at me, splitting the muscle and tendon in my neck, I returned fire and hit the second person out, a child who took the 9mm slug in the middle of the back. Just a boy, dead at the scene. It was the event that led to my resignation for medical reasons. It was the reason I’d come to South Florida to escape my inner-city dreams. Maybe it was part of the reason I was standing here, stuck to some natural destiny.
“Let’s flip it over,” I instructed. “It might be easier to disassemble these legs. It will be a lot easier to move that way.” I started to turn my end and the movement forced the kid to expose his left hand for the first time. I’d noted his reluctance from the moment I’d seen him standing in the open, his shirtsleeves hanging down past his fingertips, his hand held slightly behind his hip. At first I’d thought—weapon. A handgun or even a knife. Now as he reached to twist the metal frame of the bed, I saw that he was missing his thumb. The scar told me it wasn’t something that happened at birth. It was a definite injury and one he was careful about showing. I thought of the round, quarter-size scar of white tissue on my own neck where the bullet on the street had burrowed through. I had not caught