Wrecked

by Mary Anna Evans

  Joe thought this statement sounded pretty innocuous, but Nate reacted like a man whose father had pushed his last button.

  “I wrote the story for your all-important newspaper, Dad. You know the one. It went viral. As for who needs to be taking your pictures, I’ve done all your sports photography since I was in high school. You know what? I think I’ll buy a drone myself, and I’ll bring you front-page-quality shots within a week. Guaranteed.”

  Ray slid his eyes back to his phone, and Nate swiveled his stool toward Joe and away from his father.

  Around them, the bar and grill was buzzing with gossip. Joe usually enjoyed eavesdropping on the conversations around him, but not so much on a day like today when people were antsy over whether they could afford the cheap burgers in front of them. The financial reality of the hurricane was starting to set in.

  Some of these people had been eating out for more than a week because their kitchens were torn up, and those restaurant meals were eating holes in their budgets. Some of them were missing work to clean up their property, so their paychecks were going to be short. Some of them worked for businesses that were closed for cleanup, and enforced time off without pay was going to sting. Worst of all, some businesses were closed for good. Those paychecks were never coming back.

  People were paying out of pocket for tarps to keep their homes dry, for propane to cook their food while they waited for electricity, for the cost of hauling away debris. They might get some relief from their insurance companies or the government, but it was laughable to think that they would ever be made whole. With every day that passed, Joe could feel the worry mounting for nearly everyone around him.

  The two men at the table behind Joe looked particularly stressed. One of them, forty-ish and stocky with rabbit eyes, said, “You know, the insurance companies have only got thirty days to pay or deny. The clock’s ticking, but I can’t hardly afford the gas for my generator till then. Nine or ten gallons a day and that’s not running it all the time, but I’ve gotta keep it on so my brother’s oxygen machine can charge. And he can’t get around unless I charge his wheelchair, too.”

  “Don’t count on getting a cent,” said his gray-haired companion. “My insurance company sent somebody out to look at my house. She had the guts to say that the repair costs won’t even meet my deductible. If that’s so, then I won’t collect a dime. My family can’t keep living in that house, not in the condition it’s in, and I can’t afford to fix it.”

  A woman from another table leaned over and asked, “You ever hear of anybody getting anything out of FEMA except the shaft?”

  The laughter spread outward from those two tables until half the room was chuckling at something that really wasn’t funny.

  Ray spoke to his son, but he never stopped tapping on his phone. “I heard tell that there’s been some break-ins west of here.”

  Nate didn’t give him any eye contact, either, just whipped out his own phone to take notes. “Anybody see the robbers? Were they armed? Anybody hurt?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. But people are wondering about those two folks that have been missing since the storm. Their house was destroyed. Her husband says he hasn’t seen them since the roof came off. Their neighbor waded out into the floodwaters to try to save them, or so he says, but couldn’t manage it. I say that the neighbor’s story smells, because how did he know they were out there? He claims that he was standing at his window when they got washed away, but I don’t buy it. Maybe the husband ran off and left his wife and kid to deal with the storm all by themselves.”

  “I’ll get on it.”

  Joe liked seeing Nate in reporter mode. He had a reputation as a spoiled rich boy. To be honest, he’d earned that reputation and a lot of people didn’t like him the way Joe did. Even Joe had to admit that Nate was a lot more appealing as a crusader for truth than as a man whose father paid his bills.

  Joe saw the sheriff walk in and he wished Lieutenant Baker was walking in with him. He was long past being bored, but he also nurtured a dream that Ossie would rise up in the air and find the captain’s boat right away. Finding that boat would be a first step toward setting the world right. It would be the first step toward justice for the captain.

  Joe wanted to ask the sheriff if he knew where Baker was, but the man was focused on ordering his veggie omelet. Well, almost. He was obviously eavesdropping while he ate. Somebody hollered, “What does FEMA stand for?” and the sheriff raised his head, waiting for the joke’s punchline.

  When Ray bellowed back, “That’s easy! It means Frowing Everybody’s Money Away!”, the sheriff laughed like the local that he was. Still laughing, he beckoned to Ray, who brushed piecrust crumbs off his expensive and tomato-red golf shirt before standing up. He grabbed his pie and coffee and went to sit with the sheriff.

  Nate looked relieved to see his dad go, taking his dumb jokes and his boring dad-style clothes with him. He leaned over Joe’s shoulder to get a look at his phone. “Got any more gorgeous pictures to show me? I’m counting on you to help me learn how to use the extremely expensive drone that I’m about to buy with Dad’s credit card.”

  Joe answered with his mouth full. “Been a little busy. Ossie’s getting antsy for me to get her back up in the sky, though. Like I tweeted, I’m getting ready to send her up. Just waiting on somebody who wants to be there when I do it. She’s late.”

  “Well, I want to be there when you do it. Got a few minutes to show me how she works before your friend gets here? Maybe take a few pictures while we’re at it, so we can put a piece in the paper that shows what a week’s worth of cleanup looks like?”

  “It don’t look like much. I can tell you that,” said the gray-haired man at the table behind Joe. “There’s only so much that people can do with their chain saws and pickup trucks. We need heavy equipment like the government can send, but they ain’t done it yet.”

  “Well, then,” said Nate. “I’ll show people. That’s what newspapers are for.”

  “Ossie can help. Let’s go put her in the air,” Joe said. “But we’ll need to be quick about it, before—”

  Joe tried to be quiet about law enforcement matters, but he was way too honest to be comfortable with that. He finished his sentence with an awkward “—before my friend gets here.” He swallowed the last part of what he wanted to say, which was, “Because I’ve gotta help the sheriff’s lieutenant look for the captain’s boat.” He was very proud of himself for not spilling his guts about law enforcement secrets.

  * * *

  Joe watched Ossie rise in the air as Nate grinned and said, “Would you look at that?”

  They’d chosen a grassy spot that Manny used for overflow parking, right at the water’s edge. This location gave them a clear view over the Gulf, and a decently unobstructed view of the rest of the sky.

  It was easy to tell that Nate was a reporter and the son of a reporter, because he’d asked a truckload of questions since they left the marina’s restaurant.

  Nate wanted to know how much Ossie had cost, which Joe didn’t know since she’d been a gift. He couldn’t shut up about buying one for the newspaper. “I’ve been telling the old man we needed one, but he’s been too damn cheap.”

  Since Nate was a newspaper guy, he was really interested in how the drone’s photos were stored and transferred. Joe was not so into computers, so he’d described his bare-bones method as best he could. “Ossie has a memory card, and I just bring her back to me when it gets full. I’ve got a card reader I use to transfer stuff from her card onto my computer at home. I take a lot more photos than videos, mostly because I like them better but also because they don’t take up as much space on the card.”

  “Even so, that computer’s hard drive is gonna fill up if you keep taking pictures. You could store them in the cloud, you know.”

  “The cloud makes me nervous. It’s invisible and I like to be able to hold my files and pictures
in my hand. I’m saving for an external drive.”

  “They’re not that expensive. You should get one before you lose something you wish you hadn’t,” Nate said with the confidence of a man who had never wanted something that he didn’t have enough money to buy right that minute.

  Joe could tell that Nate particularly admired the way the controller used Joe’s cell phone as a visual display. He let Nate watch over his shoulder while he put Ossie through her paces. Nate was champing at the bit to fly her, so Joe handed him the controller and showed him how it worked.

  “The left joystick moves it away from the ground and back down, like this.” Joe pushed the stick forward and Ossie went up. He pulled it back and she moved lower. “If you push the same joystick left or right, she’ll spin in that direction.”

  Then he showed Nate how to turn the drone. “The right joystick moves her forward or back or spins her right and left. If you grew up playing video games, and I bet you did—”

  Nate laughed out loud. “If video games handed out college credit, I’d have a PhD.”

  “I ain’t much of a gamer,” Joe admitted, “so it took me longer to get comfortable with the controls than it should’ve. But somebody like you? You’ll be able to make her fly anywhere, and on your first try. No problem at all. She’s got a ton of safety features, so you pretty much can’t crash her.”

  He held the controller out, and Nate took it. For a few moments, Ossie moved around in the air close to where they stood, up and down and side to side, while Nate tried out the controls. Then he made her spin in place and she looked for all the world to Joe like a prop from an old science fiction movie that Faye had made him watch.

  Joe half-expected Ossie to say, “I come in peace. Take me to your leader,” and that made him think about how the best possible upgrade for Ossie would be making her talk. Or, even better, what if somebody figured out how to train her like a real falcon? If he could fly her with just a vocal command or whistle, like a living bird. Faye might never get him to come indoors again.

  Nate couldn’t take his eyes off the hovering drone, and he couldn’t stop grinning. Joe was pretty sure that’s what he himself looked like when he was flying Ossie. He was really glad his friend enjoyed putting the little drone through her paces.

  “Hey, Nate. Want to take your own front-page picture? Send her straight up and you’ll be able to get a real good shot right here where we stand. If you keep coming up with news photos that your old man likes, you know he’ll buy you a drone. You won’t have to piss him off by just slapping one on his credit card.”

  “I’d settle for hearing him say that I’m good at what I do.”

  Joe didn’t ever want to be the kind of father who made his children wonder where they stood with him. “You’re gonna take pictures that are so good that he’ll send somebody else to cover all those high school basketball games. He’ll have you doing all the important stories. I promise.”

  Joe had never heard such a bitter laugh from Nate.

  “I’ll need to take her really high to get the shot I need for the front page. And I need to send her out a ways, so I can point the camera back toward shore and get the longest possible stretch of shoreline. Like you did for that picture Dad printed on the front page. Can I do that? I mean really take her out for a spin?”

  “You’ll lose a lot of detail, but you bet. Take her up there. I’ll help you get her positioned just right.”

  As Ossie rose high above their heads, Joe watched the controller’s display over Nate’s shoulder. He could see the tops of their heads, so he looked up toward the little drone and watched the display out of the corner of his eye to get a glimpse of his upturned face. Then Nate nudged both joysticks and she began to rise and move toward the marina.

  Joe could see the familiar irregular contour of the coastline, broken by the broad creek. Beside it, the straight lines of the marina’s docks and seawalls and boat slips were obvious. He could see the cut in the seawall where the marina’s boat ramp sloped into the creek.

  Nearby was the sprawling, tin-roofed building where Manny’s bar and grill and his convenience store were housed. Beyond that building were the smaller outbuildings that Manny needed to run his business, clustered around the big barn that held a boat maintenance shop and rack after rack of stored boats.

  Now Nate brought Ossie over their heads, leaving Manny’s Marina behind and rising above a stretch of trees in front of them. The trees ran along the edge of a cypress swamp that marked the far side of the clearing where they stood. Far beyond that was Joyeuse Island, waiting quietly for Joe and his wife to return. And, on the gulf side of Joyeuse Island, there was a mysterious place that Faye had named The Cold Spot.

  Joe knew that Ossie could see these things as she moved farther and farther away, but he couldn’t see a lot because it was awkward trying to look over Nate’s shoulder as he manipulated the controls. The drone was just barely visible in the eastern distance when Joe said, “You’re supposed to keep her within your line of sight. It’s a rule.”

  Nate answered, “Sure thing,” and jiggled the right joystick, but he jiggled it the wrong way and Ossie moved a little farther away from them.

  “Sorry!” he said. “Sorry, I’m not very good at this yet. I’ll just bring her home.”

  He fiddled with the left joystick and managed to get the drone to turn toward them, but not quite enough. She swung inland, losing altitude fast.

  “Here, let me handle it,” Joe said, grasping the controller, but Nate didn’t relinquish it.

  “No, I can do it. I just need to practice a little more,” he insisted, but the drone was still losing altitude and the safety features hadn’t kicked in yet.

  Joe had both hands on the controller and was opening his mouth to demand that Nate hand it over when a tremendous noise, loud as a nearby thunderclap, struck his ears. Since Joe’s hearing were sensitive enough to hear the wind change at dawn, this sound was painfully loud. He let the controller go and clapped both hands over his ears.

  Spinning in place, he searched for Ossie. When he found her, she was falling from the cloudless blue sky like a stricken bird. A second shot rang out, and Ossie exploded into a million pieces, right before Joe’s eyes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ossie wasn’t a bird. She wasn’t even a butterfly or a dragonfly. She wasn’t alive, and Joe absolutely knew that. Perhaps it was shock that made him act like he’d just seen a beloved living creature shot dead and falling to the ground.

  Nate looked as startled as Joe was. He stood at the water’s edge, shouting, “Joe, wait! Where are you going?”

  Joe heard him, but he couldn’t answer and he couldn’t keep himself from running along the shoreline toward the unseen spot where Ossie had fallen.

  Nate still hadn’t moved. “Joe, what are you doing? Somebody’s standing over there with a gun and they’re mean enough to shoot a flying toy. You can’t—Joe, are you nuts?”

  Joe heard his friend’s voice but not his words. Or perhaps his ears heard the words but they didn’t register in his mind. He was already nearing the thicket of trees where the person who shot Ossie must be hiding when he heard Nate holler, “Dammit, Joe. I’m not gonna let you do this,” as he took off running after him.

  Joe had the long, lean legs of a distance runner. Nate wasn’t quite as tall as Joe, so his legs weren’t as long, but he was almost as fit. Under some circumstances, Nate might have been able to win a footrace between them, but Joe had a head start. And also, Nate was a native Floridian and thus he was wearing flip-flops.

  Joe looked back and saw Nate shuck the shoes and take off running in his bare feet, so he ran faster to keep ahead of Nate. Joe’s work boots weren’t exactly made for running, but they were better than running shoeless, especially as he neared the swamp where foot-bruising cypress knees protruded from the ground. Even without proper shoes, Nate was able to close the g
ap between them slightly before Joe reached the trees.

  “Joe, what are you thinking?” he called out. “You’ve got a family. That person has a gun. Are you trying to get yourself killed? Think about your kids. Think about Faye.”

  Joe had been able to ignore everything else Nate had said, but he heard these words. The mention of his family penetrated the haze of anger that was driving him, and he stopped so short that he stumbled and nearly fell. When Nate reached him, Joe was crouched with both hands on his thighs, shaking his head as if the motion would make the world make sense.

  Nate clapped a hand on his back. “Glad you decided to stop being stupid.”

  “You ran after me. That wasn’t a little bit stupid?”

  “You’re my friend. I couldn’t let you die of being stupid. Well, I could, but I wouldn’t.” He used the hand on Joe’s back to turn him around. “I would ordinarily buy you a drink to calm your nerves, but you’ve got a lot of water to travel before you get home. Let’s go back to the marina, and I’ll buy you some coffee instead.”

  Joe wasn’t actually stupid, although he occasionally acted that way, so he knew exactly why Nate had a firm hand between his shoulder blades. If there was indeed somebody with a gun hiding in those trees, they were not safe where they were. Nate was frog-marching him toward safety, and he was doing it with some speed. He pushed Joe straight across the clearing, rather than along the curving shoreline, taking the straightest route back to the marina, and their pace was more of a sprint than a march. Joe understood the reason for this, so he let Nate set the speed.

  This didn’t mean that Joe stopped talking. “Why would somebody shoot Ossie?”

  “Could’ve been a kid that wanted to try skeet shooting.”

  This was true.

  “Also could’ve been a psychopath, who only shot your drone because there weren’t any people handy.”

  This was also true.