Blackwater Sound

by James W. Hall

  The woman looked out and saw the child’s arm and let go of the delicate woman and leaned over to grab the elbow. She swung forward, then drew back with the arm in her hand. A bloody stump severed at the shoulder. She held it up for Thorn to see, then dropped it back in the poisoned water.

  On that first pass, he filled the skiff with nine adults and two children and a small white poodle before he swung around and poled the sluggish boat over to the beach of the mangrove island. There was a nurse in that first group, and although her left arm was badly broken, she took the first-aid kit and was already bandaging the most badly hurt as Thorn headed back to the crash site through the last golden moments of twilight.

  Thorn was hauling an elderly man aboard when the first Coast Guard helicopter arrived, followed almost immediately by a news chopper. Their searchlights held on him for a moment. Holding the man by his armpits, Thorn stared up into the brightness. The choppers moved on, sending a ghastly halo over the scene and illuminating another boat he hadn’t noticed earlier.

  It was only thirty or forty yards away, idling near a half-submerged engine pod. At the helm of the twenty-foot Maverick was a woman with short black hair, and flanking her were two men. One was tall and lanky and wore a cowboy hat. The other man was stocky and short. As Thorn poled through the bloody waters searching for survivors, the Maverick shifted its position, inching along the perimeter of the wreckage. They were making no effort to save the injured, but seemed to be angling for the best view of the proceedings.

  Thorn worked for another hour as helicopters filled the sky and the Coast Guard and marine patrol boats finally arrived. He brought four loads of passengers to the beach. Most were badly mangled, gibbering and torn, bones exposed, faces blackened with soot, flesh lacerated and scorched. Some were weeping, moaning, others struck dumb. On his last trip a young man in a blue track suit went into spasms on the foredeck. A middle-aged black woman scooped him into her arms and the young man stiffened, then went slack. The black woman continued to hold him, rocking him gently and crooning what sounded like a lullaby. The deck of his skiff sloshed with blood. Through the darkness, he watched the sharks move in, snatching down the easy meat, and he saw the gleaming snout of an alligator gliding through the wreckage.

  Twice more he noticed the Maverick moving in and out of the shadows. And an hour later he saw the boat again, the three passengers at the docks at Flamingo. The men were straining to lift a large cooler from the boat up to the dock. Out in the large parking area dozens of medevac helicopters were landing and taking off, and the television cameras were set up. By then he was woozy with exhaustion, as numb and shaky as if he’d gone without sleep for a month.

  He tied up his skiff near the tackle shop and came ashore. A few minutes later as he wandered amid the confusion, he caught sight of Casey staggering across the parking lot, supported by a man in a blue paramedic’s jumpsuit. He jogged over to her and called her name and she swung around and watched him approach. Her mouth was rigid, eyes unlocked from the moment.

  “Your boat’s in the marina,” she said in a dead voice. “Slip eighteen.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “No, I’m not all right. I’m not all right at all.”

  Thorn looked at the paramedic. He had his arm around Casey’s waist.

  “This is José,” she said. “He’s looking after me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Thorn said.

  She reached out and smoothed a hand across his cheek, then cocked it back and gave him a sharp slap.

  “You’re a goddamn magnet, Thorn. You attract this shit. You’re the baddest luck I’ve ever known.”

  He watched her limp away, then he turned and went back to the docks. His daze had hardened into a cold shock that felt like it was rooted so deep in his tissues it might be with him forever. The sky was a black whirling mass overhead, and the earth rocked and wobbled beneath his feet. The roar of the choppers and sirens and the crowd was setting up a deep hum in his skull. Someone handed him a beer and he drained it and dropped the can on the sandy soil. A man in a fishing hat handed him another, and he meandered through the hallucinatory throng of reporters and medics and wild-eyed relatives of the passengers. A woman with a blond helmet of hair and perfect teeth, followed by a cameraman, jabbed a microphone in his face, and he shoved it away and kept on walking.

  Gulping the beer, he followed the brightest lights to the pavilion near the boat ramps. Beside the pavilion were four concrete fish-cleaning tables the media were using as the local-color backdrop for their live shots.

  He nudged into the crowd and jostled to the front. The woman from the Maverick was being interviewed. Her black hair gleamed in the lights and her blue eyes were achingly pale. She wore a long-sleeved white fishing shirt and khaki shorts. Her legs were sleek and deeply tanned and she stood with the gawky elegance Thorn associated with high-fashion models, back straight, hips and shoulders canted in slightly different directions as if to catch the most flattering light. There was a single spatter of blood on her right sleeve, but otherwise she seemed as cool and unruffled as if she’d just stepped from her dressing room.

  “Bonefishing,” she was saying. “Johnny and I were out on the flats when it came down. Maybe a mile or two away.”

  “And what did you hear, Miss Braswell? Were the engines running? We’ve heard reports that they were shut down.”

  Her eyes roamed the crowd, then returned to the reporter.

  “Yes, I believe the engines were silent. It was all very eerie.”

  The reporter thanked her and turned back to the camera. He was excited, working a major story, a career boost. He sounded almost elated as he told the TV viewers that so far sixty survivors had been pulled from those remote waters. And that none other than Morgan Braswell, prominent local businesswoman, had been an eyewitness to these tragic events. According to Ms. Braswell, the plane’s engines were shut down at the time of the crash.

  As the reporter continued to speak, the woman peered beyond the lights. Her eyes catching on Thorn’s and holding. After a moment, she reached out and put a hand on the reporter’s sleeve, silencing him mid-sentence.

  “There’s the man you want to interview.” She lifted a slender hand and pointed him out. “Right there. He saved dozens of lives. Far more than we managed to. He’s the hero of the hour.”

  The cameraman swung around and spotlights glared in Thorn’s eyes.

  The reporter took a step his way, lifting his mike.

  “Sir?” he said. “Could we have a minute?”

  Behind him the dark-haired woman motioned to someone in the crowd. And when she brought her pale blue eyes back to Thorn, a faint smile formed on her lips as if Thorn’s uneasiness amused her.

  “Sir? Sir?”

  Thorn turned from the reporter and ducked into the shifting crowd.

  As he emerged from the rear of the pack, a chunky man with stringy, shoulder-length blond hair blocked his way and pressed a cold can of Budweiser into his hand. Chubby cheeks, small gray eyes. He was in his mid-twenties and had on a fresh blue workshirt and white baggies and boat sandals. His flesh was stained the deep chestnut of someone who labored in the tropical sun.

  “Beer’s been at the bottom of the cooler all afternoon. Nice and icy.”

  Thorn squinted out at the parking lot where the fire rescue vans were screaming away into the night. He fumbled with the tab on the beer can, got it at the wrong angle, and broke it off. He looked at the kid. A toothy grin flickered on the boy’s lips as if he were trying to decide whether to laugh or take a bite from Thorn’s neck.

  “That was you on the Maverick.”

  “Yeah? What if it was?”

  The kid’s grin grew blurry. The whole goddamn night had turned blurry. Though not yet blurry enough.

  “And what’s your name?”

  The kid thought about it for a moment.

  “ ‘Don’t your nose get sore, sticking it all the time in other people’s business?’ ” The young man gri
nned. “That’s George Raft, from Nocturne, 1946. With Virginia Huston and Myrna Dell.”

  Thorn peered at the kid for a moment, then shrugged and brought his attention back to the beer can. He tried prying at the broken tab with his thumbnail, but got nowhere.

  The kid reached in the pocket of his shorts and came out with a knife and flicked out the blade. He took the can from Thorn’s hand, dug the blade into the tab, and popped it open. The knife had holes in the grip and a blade that looked heavy enough to gut a moose.

  “You admiring my shiv?”

  “Not really.”

  On the kid’s thumb was a bandage with blood seeping through the gauze.

  Thorn took a slow pull on the beer. The kid held the knife at his side.

  “So how long were you out there?” the kid said. “Before the crash.”

  “Why?”

  “Me and my sister were fishing over behind that island. We didn’t see you. You just kind of popped up out of nowhere.”

  “I didn’t see you either. Not till after the crash.”

  The kid smirked as if he’d tricked some vital detail out of Thorn.

  “The three of you didn’t seem to be getting your hands real dirty.”

  “Two of us,” the kid said. “Me and my sister.”

  “I saw three,” Thorn said. “You and her and a guy in a cowboy hat.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess you’re mistaken, crabcake.” The kid looked back toward the TV lights. “And we pulled in a few survivors. Maybe not as many as you, but who’s counting?”

  “That’s not how it looked from my seat.”

  “What’re you, the head Eagle Scout? Handing out the merit badges.”

  “Your cooler looked pretty full. Must’ve caught a ton of fish.”

  “We caught our share.”

  “But you still got the creases in your shirt.”

  “So?”

  “So you weren’t out there fishing. You weren’t out there doing anything. You haven’t broken a sweat.”

  The boy’s smile went sour. He peered into Thorn’s eyes and his knife rose in what looked like a reflexive gesture. As if his first instinct was to slash the throat of anyone who called his bluff.

  Then he halted and took a quick look around at all the potential witnesses and he lowered the blade. He stepped back and raked Thorn with a look.

  “If you weren’t fishing,” Thorn said, “maybe you were bird-watching.”

  A breeze drifted in off the bay, heavy with the sickening fumes. The kid snapped his knife shut and slid it into his pocket. He glanced toward the TV lights, then turned back to Thorn. His fingers toyed with the lump in his pocket.

  “You know what you need, asshole?”

  “A better haircut?” Thorn said.

  “You need a little negative reinforcement, that’s what. Like maybe somebody should drop a tombstone on your head.”

  The kid flashed Thorn an ugly sneer, then swung around and sauntered away into the bedlam.

  Thorn drifted back to the docks and watched the Coast Guard and marine patrol bringing in the bodies on stretchers. Most of the living were already on their way to hospitals, and now it was time for the dead. The men worked quietly, with the grim efficiency of those who trained for just such disasters. For the next half hour Thorn nursed his beer and stayed in the shadows, watching the boats unload the charred and mangled remains. Getting glimpses of bodies so twisted and broken they might have been trampled by a stampede of buffalo.

  When he could stomach it no more, he located the Heart Pounder, brought the skiff over, and lashed it to the cleats. He started the engine and headed out into the dark, staying away from the searchlights and rescue boats. He headed across the black bay, and when he was a half mile beyond the crash site, he opened up the engine, rising onto the smooth sea. Around him the moonlight coated the bay like a crisp film of ice.

  With his running lights shut off, Thorn steered his phantom ship south, plowing across that murky void. A cold shiver whispered beneath his shirt. He took a last look behind him, north across the Everglades where the black sky pulsed with lightning. Then he turned his back on the mainland, gripped the wheel, and put his face in the wind, standing stiff and empty, blinded by starlight.

  Three

  Thorn made it home by two that morning. Totally wiped out, but too wired to sleep, he sat out on the porch of his stilt-house and watched Blackwater Sound twinkle and listened to the distant rumbles of thunder. At dawn he went inside and took a shower. He got dressed and stood out on the porch for a while watching the water brighten. The mourning doves that roosted in the tamarind tree were coming and going in twos and threes, resettling briefly, then exploding from their perches in a panicked flailing of wings. A small boat muttered by and he watched the ripples work toward his coral and limestone dock.

  He went back into the house, stared at his face in the bathroom mirror for a while, then stripped off his shorts and T-shirt and took another shower, scrubbing harder this time. His back muscles were sore. His fingers and arms ached. He toweled off, chose a fresh pair of shorts and another T-shirt, and put them on. Still, his skin felt strange. Too tight, too clammy.

  At nine he was waiting outside the Key Largo Library when June Marcus, the tall, dark-haired librarian, unlocked the front door. She looked at him for a second or two as if she didn’t recognize him, then said an uncertain hello and stepped back out of his way.

  “You were at the crash,” she said. “The airplane that went down.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Saw you on the news this morning,” she said. “You were pulling somebody out of the water. An old man.”

  He nodded.

  “It must’ve been awful out there. I can’t even imagine. All that carnage.”

  In the reference section, June showed him how to run a computer search. It took only a minute or two. Morgan Braswell was on the cover of several magazines from a few years back. The library had hard copies of several of them. Business monthlies. Long articles. A couple of newspaper stories. Big turnaround at her father’s company. She flashed a variety of smiles, arms crossed beneath her breasts, looking satisfied, in control, a woman full of bold confidence. From Tragedy to Triumph. That was the theme. After the heartbreaking loss of her older brother in a boating accident, the family business floundered, disintegrated, but with courage and a maturity beyond her years, Morgan managed to pick up the pieces and rebuild her father’s company into a major player in the technology sector.

  June Marcus photocopied the articles and didn’t ask why he wanted them. She patted him on the shoulder as he walked out of the library.

  He took them back to his house and sat out at the picnic table. It was a hot morning, the breeze off the Atlantic shaving away a few degrees. Northeast above Miami, dark blue clouds hovered in the sky. The cold front was going nowhere. He read the articles, looked at Morgan Braswell’s pictures. Read them again.

  At noon he nagged his Volkswagen Beetle to life and drove out to US 1 and headed up the eighteen-mile strip to Miami. Thirty minutes later, at Cutler Ridge, the rain started and didn’t let up till he was in Palm Beach. It was after three o’clock when he found the Braswells’ neighborhood. They lived in a two-story Mediterranean villa three blocks from the ocean. Oak trees lined their street. Fancy lamps on brass poles were planted along the sidewalk. He drove past the house and parked half a block away. He sat for a while staring down the street toward the Atlantic. There was a pleasant lift to the breeze rushing in off the sea, cool and sweet, seasoned by money.

  No traffic. No pedestrians on the sidewalk. Most of the wealthy snowbirds had already fled north to avoid the first upticks of the thermometer. A snowy egret stood on the snipped lawn next to his car and regarded him haughtily. Thorn wasn’t sure why he’d driven all this way, wasted the day, fought I-95 traffic. The photocopies lay in the passenger seat. He picked them up, glanced through them, and dropped them back. These people weren’t any of his business. He had thing
s to do. Bonefish flies to tie, lunkers to catch. He didn’t need this. He’d saved a bunch of people’s lives. He should be feeling good this morning. He should be rejoicing. Not feeling so numb, so crazy.

  He started the car and made a U-turn and drove back past the Braswells’ house. Pink and purple bougainvillea climbed a trellis in the side yard. The cross-hatched wood had pulled loose from its posts and was sagging toward the house next door. The Braswells’ grass was scraggy with yellow patches and weeds. Flakes of white paint curled off the window frames. In an upstairs window a broken pane was covered with what looked like a square of sandwich wrap. The mail slot in the front door was rimmed with rust. Somebody hadn’t been paying much attention to maintenance.

  He drove west beyond I-95 into the golf communities. Heron Glen, Willow Walk, The Banyans. Miles of red tile roofs and guardhouses and endlessly repeating franchise strips. He kept going till he was beyond the turnpike, beyond the last stucco wall, the last rigid row of royal palms. The land was scrubby and wet and of no use to anyone except alligators and woodstorks. Only an occasional straggling 7-Eleven and a couple of industrial parks marked the desolate landscape.

  Seven miles beyond the turnpike, Thorn pulled into a complex of low, windowless buildings. At the guardhouse a young woman with a yellow buzz cut stepped out with a clipboard in her hand. She wore a sidearm in a glossy leather holster and a tailored gray uniform that showed off her bulky shoulders and cinched waist. There were spikes in the road, tilted forward to rip the tread off tires. A yellow steel crossing arm striped with red closed off the entrance.

  She bent to his open window and didn’t smile. Didn’t say a word. She looked at him, looked at the passenger seat, peered into the back.

  “Am I in the right place?”

  “I doubt it,” she said.

  “MicroDyne?” said Thorn. “Morgan Braswell.”

  She shifted the clipboard to her left hand, freeing up her right to pump him full of lead.

  “Is this MicroDyne?”