Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,119
the heart, I think! Check him, Luke, check him!” Then a boyish howl: “YES!”
Sound of footsteps . . . a red bead of light was leading a man’s silhouette toward me, then over me, the man wary, taking his time, as if approaching a snake. The red light blinking with mechanical precision as my brain linked the image with events and I realized Bambi was approaching, Luke Smith, a camera around his neck.
Jesus Christ . . . the lunatics are making a video.
Yes, they were. Bambi on the Sony while Deano, out on bail, but now standing in water, awaited a damage report from his coproducer. Something else: Deano had another spear in his hand, ready, while his cameraman kept rolling, getting it all down. Deano impatient, too, demanding, “Where’d I hit ’em, goddamn it? Close to the heart? Knocked him right off the damn dock, you see it!”
Bambi, with his Boston accent, telling him, “Hold your horses!” Then asking me, “Are you okay?” without taking the camera away from his face.
Stupid question! Something, a sliver of bone, I guessed, was protruding from my sternum—embarrassing—so I covered the boney stub with my hands, safe from the lens, while I sucked in air so hot it burned my teeth.
“Help . . . me . . . up!” I managed to say. It was the voice of a stranger, but my lungs were gradually filling, my brain was eager to clear—if I could just get to my feet, I’d be okay!
No deal, not just yet, Bambi was busy. Zoom in tight on the fallen quarry: Marion D. Ford, the biologist who had damaged their failed careers. Focus . . . zoom closer, hold the camera steady. Night optics blur so easily! Suddenly, though, Bambi didn’t like what he was seeing. Camera was lowered, allowed to hang from a neck strap, while he said, “Jesus Christ, Deano, he’s bleeding.”
“No shit. But did I get him in the heart?”
Bambi began to back away. “I mean, he’s really bleeding. You didn’t use a blunt tip? Goddamn it, you promised you’d use rubber!”
“No! I said I wouldn’t use metal!”
“He’s hurt bad, Dean. Shit, man, the point’s sticking out of his fucking chest!”
“It was a clean hit and I didn’t use metal!”
“His fucking chest, you hear me! I never agreed to this bullshit.”
Bambi was ready to run, but I knew I couldn’t let that happen. Leave me alone with the crazy spear hunter before I was able to move? My lungs were starting to function, my brain was rebooting, assembling details faster and faster, but that all had to remain a secret and hiding secrets is something else I’m good at. So I did my best to appear calm when I wheezed, “It was an . . . accident. I’ll be okay.”
Was that true? I believed I’d recover even if Bambi didn’t. The sliver buried in my sternum couldn’t have gone very deep, but if it had I was screwed. My heart lay against that boney plate. My lungs there, too, which explained the burning sensation. Or was I in shock, lying to myself?—minimizing the damage, which badly wounded men sometimes do? I’d witnessed that reaction on the other side of the Earth. Central America, South America, too. Men who’d groaned “We’ll joke about this one day” while their life’s blood was sumped into the jungle.
Bambi wanted to believe me, though, and he stopped backing away. Good. At least one of them had sense enough to know he would have to explain to police. Which he proved by explaining to me, “Seriously, Dr. Ford, I didn’t think he’d pull a stunt like this! It’s what we’re calling a Challenge Coup—a way to create drama between opponents. This wasn’t supposed to happen, I swear!”
I reached a hand toward him. “I . . . believe you. Help me up.”
Deano didn’t like that. “No you don’t, goddamn it! Get back on the camera, I’m not done.”
Bambi had started toward me but stopped. “Probably shouldn’t move you. You have any friends around? Someone should call an ambulance, I think.” Then added in a rush, “Or I can do it. I’ve got my cell right here.”
“The hell you will!” The slosh of a big man wading through water is a sound I know well. Deano, the Zulu pretender, was coming in for the kill. Allow him to get close enough, he’d put the other spear in me.
Fear . . . we all process it differently. In me, panic arrives as a neural