sheets in Billy’s guest room. I sat up and swung my feet to the floor and rubbed my face and knew there would be no more sleeping this night. On the patio the ocean was black and murmuring against the beach and I sat waiting for the first soft light of dawn to tinge the horizon.
I needed to get my truck. Needed to get back in my own vehicle, drive at my own pace. Feel like I had some control over something instead of depending on others and spinning whichever way they determined I should be yanked.
I took a cab to the ranger’s station, over Billy’s protestations, and got there about ten o’clock, just as Mike Stanton was loading up the Whaler for a run out on the river. My truck was parked in the visitor’s lot under a light pole. The kid saw me get out of the taxi and pay the driver, but turned back to his work.
I walked to the truck, gave it a once-over and opened the driver’s door. A cab full of heat and stale air spilled out. I tossed my bags in and walked across the lot to the boat ramp.
“Nice job on the scratch, Mike. How much do I owe you?”
“About fifty dollars, Mr. Freeman,” he said, finally looking up at me. “My friends and I did it ourselves.”
“She run all right for you?”
“Yeah, fine. ’Cept I have never been pulled over so many times in my life,” he said.
I raised as much innocence into my face as I could.
“Four times in two days by cops asking all kinds of questions about who I was and where the owner of the truck was and had you left the state. It wasn’t worth it so I just parked it.”
“I’m sorry for the trouble,” I said, handing the kid five twenties from my wallet. He took all five without comment.
“Oh, and Mr. Freeman,” he said as I started to turn away. “Cleve said to tell you to use his canoe ’round the side there if you wanted. Said yours got busted up?”
“Thanks,” I said without elaboration.
I walked back to my truck feeling guilty, knowing the kid must be just shaking his head.
The noon traffic was no different from any other part of the working day, but this time sanity sat behind the wheel. No blue light, no horn, total adherence to the laws of the state. It took me more than an hour to get to the hospital, and when I asked for the room of Fred Gunther, the elderly woman at the information desk gave me a visitor’s badge and directed me to follow the blue stripe on the hallway floor.
I thought I had sworn off hospitals two years ago when I . was wheelchaired out of Jefferson in Philadelphia with a bullethole in my neck and an appointment for a follow-up with a psychiatrist, neither of which I had asked for. Now I was on my second visit in five days. I hated hospitals, had watched my mother die in a hospital, eaten from the inside by cancer, refusing to end her pain with medication. Her knurled and leathery hand closed tight around my fingers, whispering a Catholic prayer with her final breath. I shook the vision. I hated hospitals. I moved through the hallways with pastel wallpaper, dodging staff dressed in blue and pink and green. It was a color-coordinated world with no place for black.
When I reached Gunther’s room the door was open and he was alone. The media swirl had moved on to the next exclusive of the day. The big man was lying in bed, his eyes closed and his huge hands folded over his chest, fingers stacked in a pile. I scanned the length of the bedclothes and saw two lumps where both feet were covered. When I shifted my eyes back to his face, he was awake.
“How you doin’?” I said, covering some embarrassment.
“I’ve been better.”
His voice was raspy and tired. I let him come full awake and watched him shift his weight using his powerful shoulders and arms.
“How much longer they going to keep you?”
“A while. They say I’ll be able to keep the leg.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Thanks to you.”
I let that sit. Avoiding a trite response. We’d quickly run out of polite things to say.
“Could you close that door, Mr. Freeman?”
I shut the heavy door and when I came back the listlessness had left his face.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think,” he