At Dewitt's End

by Doc Henderson

  Published by:

  BookBaby Publishing

  Pennsauken, New Jersey

  USA

  Copyright 2018 Doc Henderson

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-54393-515-8

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-54393-516-5

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgment

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgment

  I am most grateful to my friend Wendy Smith in England

  for her excellent suggestions and superb editing.

  INTRODUCTION

  Well, I don’t quite remember when he said it all began really. It was at least a couple of decades ago. I do know it was a time when the world was caught up in a lot of turmoil. Sort of like today, I suppose.

  My so-called free weekend turned out to have bad weather, unreliable electric power and a TV antenna that fell off the roof one more time than we could jerry-rig it back up, so we just gave up and started drinking more beer and putting more logs on a pretty good fire.

  Anyway, my buddy Carl started telling this story and, even though he swore he wasn’t the Carl actually in the story, today I’m not so certain. And for damn sure I couldn’t tell if these characters, Willie and T. P., and Mr. Big – or even David and Dewitt – were real or just in his mind. Hmmm. But I do know that it’s not so much a story of the earlier accident, or the kidnapping, or the Indian reservation. Or about those dumb-ass Gofers and Governor Dill, or even David’s disastrous Thanksgiving dinner. No, it pretty much transcends all of that, at least to me.

  It’s really, well, a story about what happens when small courages combine with crazy events and some pretty interesting individuals are thrown together like a polyester suit in a hot clothes dryer along with a Stetson. You know there’s no way anything will fit anymore, and you’ll never wear the damn things, but it’s the wrinkles that make you look at everything more closely, shake your head, and in some way see the beauty of it all and admire it anyway.

  PROLOGUE

  This is WKWF-AM, transmitting to you from beautiful Key West, Florida. And it’s another sunny afternoon here, as usual, where we expect a beautiful evening on Mallory Square as hundreds, nay, thousands of springtime revelers will be watching for that ever-elusive “green flash” just as the sun goes down... Bill, I’ve seen it... Yeah, Kerri, but only when you’ve been drinking absinthe... I swear, Bill...

  “Turn off that station, Brother, or give me some recognizable pop – not some snap, crackle and pop!”

  Jesse was determined: Dewitt was not going to drive him insane trying to listen to every quarter-note of music he could find on the radio or in every bar he came across once they reached Key West. Not on this vacation. No sir. Even if this was Dewitt’s spring break from his internship. It was Jesse’s vacation, too.

  “Ah, man, we’re getting close enough to make out the words!” lamented Dewitt. But he dutifully turned off the station anyway.

  The bottom of the sun was touching the horizon to the west of the causeway, while just above the sea gray squalls were gathering. Jesse continued south, crossing the Seven Mile Bridge near Marathon, thinking of Key West’s pleasures. All was quiet except for the occasional clink of a scuba tank against the wheel well in the cavernous back of his old Checker.

  Jesse turned on the truck’s headlights and, smiling and shaking his head, looked over at Dewitt, who had dozed off, still occasionally muttering some half-line of yet another country song.

  Suddenly, Jesse felt with a sixth sense something amiss. Far, far down the highway he could make out too many brake lights and realized that the usual steady flow of traffic passing on the other side of the causeway had ceased for the last couple of minutes.

  Putting on his brights, Jesse began to make out the outlines of a disaster. It looked like a multi-car pileup, with several vehicles on the edge of the roadway and one down the embankment, half submerged in the gulf.

  In addition to rising black smoke and flames coming from a couple of RV’s, there was an ominous, almost ghost-like, cloud cover, looking like a Salvador Dali arrangement of large circus tents, that encompassed both sides of the causeway and ended only at the water’s edge.

  Several folks were standing by their vehicles, in front of the cloud, immobilized.

  This was bad.

  More troubling, Jesse looked beyond them and could not see one soul running from out of the tent-like disaster.

  This was real bad.

  “Dewitt! Wake up! Quick! Wake up! Remember that Warren Zevon song?”

  Dewitt opened his eyes as he felt the Checker slow and began to hear a cacophony of noise and screams as Jesse rolled down his car window. Jesse maneuvered the Checker toward the first of the stopped cars as Dewitt quickly looked around and let out a low whistle.

  “Yeah. Send Lawyers, Guns and Money: The shit has hit the fan.”

  Opening their respective doors simultaneously, the boys jumped out and ran up to the first car. An older man was clutching his wife, who was sobbing. He was almost incoherent.

  “Tanker truck went by... Going too fast... It had some chemical signs on it... Next thing I hear is a big explosion. We stopped in time.”

  The old man looked ahead.

  “About more eight cars and a couple of RV’s... ” His voice trailed off.

  Jesse and Dewitt edged away from the couple and toward the smoke and flames. They could hear screams coming from within. There seemed no way to pierce this death-like canvas. The brothers looked at each other. Jesse yelled out:

  “Dewitt, get the scuba gear! We’ll need the goggles, too!”

  Dewitt ran for the truck, calling back over his shoulder, “Somebody get a bucket. Let’s douse ourselves with water!”

  In what seemed like an eternity but was less than half a minute, both Dewitt and Jesse stood in front of the fog-like smoke, wearing their scuba goggles. They each breathed from a hand-held scuba tank. A young man had come up from nowhere and doused a couple of buckets of water over them.

  Dewitt tried to yell to Jesse but the roar of the fire and horns sounding from the mayhem drowned him out. He tapped on Jesse’s tank with his fish knife and motioned: You go left. I’ll go right. He then dipped his hand and turned it out toward the west: Stay low and let’s meet down by the water’s edge. Jesse nodded. It looked relatively safe down there – if they could make it.

  Dewitt watc
hed as Jesse disappeared into the tragic maelstrom. Then, he plunged in, too.

  The first vehicle was an old cream-colored Chevy sedan. Both front doors were open but Dewitt could see that the two occupants, an older couple, lay dead inside the car although they didn’t appear to be physically injured. Dewitt figured there was probably a toxic fume interspersed with the smoke. It was unlikely anyone was alive even further in. But he continued forward.

  There was about two feet of air below the smoke and chemical cloud. Instinctively, even though he was wearing goggles and breathing from his tank, Dewitt hunched over. He made his way forward.

  Two cars had T-boned. Both drivers were slumped over their steering wheels. Dewitt checked each one for signs of life, but they were dead. One car’s horn, which had been blasting away, stopped when Dewitt pulled back on the body. Now, he heard only one horn, further in.

  “This is hopeless,” thought Dewitt. Then he saw an RV, turned on its side. The light in the back cabin was on.

  Maybe.

  Peering into the back window of the RV, Dewitt couldn’t see anyone. But, on the lowest side panel, which now lay next to the roadway, was a small smashed fish tank. A single goldfish, lying just outside its own little puddle of water, squirmed. Something was alive! At least near the ground.

  Maybe!

  A moan. Just ahead. Dewitt hoped it was someone from the RV, but when he got to the front of the vehicle, its sole occupant was dead, contorted, but again not looking physically injured. Where had that moan come from?

  Peering ahead as far as he could, Dewitt could make out the outline of the big tanker truck. He rushed forward. There was a steady hissing sound coming from somewhere on the body of the tanker and Dewitt could see several big skull-and-crossbones at the rear.

  “Damn! Poison! Damn it!”

  He inched his way toward the cab, on the side away from the leaking fumes.

  Another moan! On the ground by the truck’s cabin lay a man, rolling his head back and forth on the concrete surface of the roadway. He kept groping into the air with one hand, but seemed out of it. Two feet above his head lay a white gaseous fume, which would become a deadly suffocating pillow to anyone who remained in it for long. Dewitt, on his knees, crawled up to the man. He called out.

  “Fellow! Fellow! Can you hear me? I’m here to help you!”

  The guy just kept shaking his head back and forth. He had blood on the back of his head. Probably a concussion, thought Dewitt. Otherwise, the driver looked okay, except for his wild eyes, which had dilated pupils and red streaks along the whites of them.

  “Probably on speed. Gotta help him get out of here,” thought Dewitt. He shook the guy and called out again.

  “Hey, you! Driver! Can you hear me?”

  The driver of the big rig seemed to awaken with Dewitt’s shaking and yelling. He stared at Dewitt. Still lying close to the ground, the driver looked around. Suddenly, without warning, he lashed out at Dewitt and tried to stand, but the cloud just above them made him gasp and cough and he immediately dropped back to the ground.

  Dewitt raised his goggles and removed the breathing apparatus from his mouth. He held out his hands, the precious oxygen just inches from the driver’s face.

  “Hey, take this! Just let me get you out of here,” he implored.

  But the trucker was having none of it. He reached out his arms and tried to grasp the mouthpiece. Dewitt could see a huge tattoo of an anchor on the man’s right bulging forearm. Dewitt retained the mouthpiece, but only barely, as the driver pushed him away.

  “Ain’t gonna get me!” he yelled. “Couldn’t help it!”

  Rolling away from Dewitt on the smut-laden tarmac, the driver reached into his untucked flannel shirt. He fumbled about but then, out of the blue, he brandished a small silver-plated revolver and aimed it straight at Dewitt’s chest.

  “Oh, great!” thought Dewitt. “Jesse’s the damn spook and I end up with a gun pointed at me!”

  He tried to remember how Jesse had shown him the way to take away a gun at close range, but figured it was useless.

  “Give me... Give me... ” The driver paused. “That air. Give it to me now!” He waved the pistol at the scuba tank.

  Dewitt was startled. He thought, “If I give him it, I may never get off this roadway.” But, he had little choice. “Gotta think – and quick!”

  Dewitt looked around. He had to be well over a hundred yards into this mess. And the gaseous fog lay thick everywhere apart from the little hollow he and this burly trucker were in. He looked again at the trucker’s panicked eyes. He had to come up with something fast, before this guy put a couple of holes in him!

  Then Dewitt spied the big curved cutting knife dangling from the scuba tank. “The knife,” he thought. “That’s it! At least it’s a chance.” He had his plan.

  “Let me have my knife,” Dewitt said to the trucker. “It’s, it’s... a favorite of mine.”

  Until then, it was just a diving knife. But, it would be far more useful than that if the plan worked. And if the plan didn’t work? Well, Dewitt didn’t want to think about that right now!

  The trucker’s hands were shaking. He hesitated but then he flicked the gun as if to say, okay, keep your precious knife. Dewitt unsnapped the scabbard and pulled the big knife out. Immediately the driver grabbed the tank and, backing away with the business end of the pistol still pointed at Dewitt, he took a breath from the regulator and disappeared toward the rear of the tractor-trailer, like a ghost ship into a fog.

  Dewitt didn’t hesitate. He could see lightning flashes off to his right and remembered they were coming in from the Gulf.

  “That’s the way out. I hope!” he whispered.

  Taking a deep breath Dewitt plunged forward into the deadly fog. Within seconds, he found himself at the rear of an overturned sedan. The wheels were several feet off the ground, almost lost in the poisonous cloud, but Dewitt knew what he had to do if his plan to get out alive was to work: He lifted the knife toward a tire and, finding the air-valve stem, cut into it!

  The fog around the tire blew away as the loud hissing air escaped. Dewitt positioned his face near the valve and took a deep breath. Stale, rubbery smelling air filled his lungs, causing him to cough and nearly gag. But this air was more precious than any vapor he had ever inhaled. He took another deep breath and then strove on, determined to make his way to the lower shoreline. Spying another smashed up auto, Dewitt repeated his valve-slashing effort and was rewarded with another gulp of life-sustaining oxygen.

  “Give us your tired, your hungry... ” Dewitt deadpanned to himself. He hoped Lady Liberty was looking with kindness on this desperate gesture today!

  A few cars and tires later, he reached the shore and rolled down its bank to the very edge of the lapping waves. Thunder and lightning exploded around him and heavy rain started to pour from the heavens. Dewitt looked back. The rain dissipated the death-grip of the cloud. He could see a dozen vehicles, some still burning, and realized that, against all odds, he had escaped from a veritable hell. Now the air was filled with sirens and the whirling of an overhead helicopter, its searchlight beaming down across the Florida Keys highway.

  “A news chopper,” thought Dewitt. “What a way to end a perfectly good internship and holiday.”

  Exhausted, Dewitt was totally unprepared for the next event in this harrowing escapade, one that would change the course of his life forever.

  Deep into the other side of the inferno, Jesse had been valiantly trying to find someone to save, to no avail. He was close to exhausted. Maybe it was time to head toward the Gulf side, to try and find Dewitt and get from under this cloud.

  Jesse cut perpendicular to the roadway and made his way to a guardrail. He was so tired that he simply dropped his scuba tank and rolled down the grass to the water’s edge. The sea spray and strong breeze felt wonderful against his reddened face, wh
ich had been singed by the fumes.

  Jesse could faintly make out a sound. What was it? He looked north, along the coastline. Helicopter? Yes, sounded like a Sikorsky. But – there was another noise. What was it? Peering out to sea, Jesse could just make out the outline of a boat. A commercial shrimp boat, pitching and rolling mightily against the ever-increasing waves, was headed straight into the shoreline. It was closing fast, too fast!

  As he looked along the coastline, Jesse now saw a sight that made him shudder. Dewitt was lying at the water’s edge – right in line with the approaching shrimper!

  Rising and crawling toward Dewitt with inner strength, Jesse began to shout:

  “Dewitt, move! Dewitt, get up! Brother! The boat!”

  But it was too late. The shrimp boat, in trying to arrive as quickly as possible, had angled too sharply toward the shore. The rain shower had become a squall and, in the dark and wind, all it took was for one large wave to hit the boat on its starboard side and send it crashing into the shore where Dewitt lay exhausted.

  Jesse could do nothing but watch as he witnessed Dewitt’s lower body hit forcefully by the boat. As he reached his younger brother’s side and saw the agony on his face and his shattered lower limbs, he knew that this was bad, real bad.

  Dewitt groaned but sat up instinctively.

  “Gotta stay awake,” he told himself. “Gotta apply a couple of tourniquets.”

  Jesse held his brother’s head. He kept telling Dewitt that things would be all right.

  Dewitt looked back at the wreckage and carnage, his deepest instincts coming to the surface, and Jesse didn’t have to guess what he meant when, knowing the two had risked everything to try and help, Dewitt simply said:

  “At least we saved one, Bro.”

  With that, Dewitt collapsed. Jesse heard the sound of an ambulance, as overhead the searchlight of the news chopper pointed the way for the ambulance to reach them. Jesse held his brother tightly and, gently, rocked him back and forth.

  Chapter One

  David Collins was on a roll. Talking. He was good at it, too. He’d managed to keep the attention of the matronly woman sitting next to him on the Delta flight from Miami, even as the flight attendants began retrieving the drink cans and plastic cups in preparation for landing in Atlanta.