Night Vision df-18

by Randy Wayne White

  The water temperature of the pond felt warmer than the injured man’s flesh. It stunk of sulfur and garbage, and as Tomlinson and I began sidestroking toward shore my fingers noted the water’s protoplasmic density. The density was created by microbes and muck held in suspension.

  It was a brackish water mangrove lake, not much larger than a baseball field, surrounded by a trailer population that probably used the place to dump all kinds of refuse-natural, man-made and chemical. It caused me to wonder why a quarter-ton alligator would choose such a stagnant, public place to live.

  The probability was, the animal didn’t live here. More likely, the gator had been traveling cross-country-they often do during the spring mating season. My guess was, the thing had only recently arrived, stopping for a few nights to feed. If a gator that size had been a permanent resident, someone at the trailer park would have reported it to Florida Wildlife cops and demanded that the thing be removed.

  Or would they?

  I thought about it as we swam sidestroke, Tomlinson on one side of the injured man, me on the other.

  Maybe not, I decided. I remembered Tomlinson telling me that the only thing park residents feared more than law enforcement was their own landlord.

  That made sense, combined with what I knew about the people who lived in places like Red Citrus. I had spent enough time in Central America, and had lived long enough in Florida, to learn not to underestimate the tenacity of the descendants of the Maya and Aztec. They could endure just about anything with a stoic calm that was all but impossible to read, and just as impossible not to respect.

  People like this could live their lives, day by day, next door to an aggressive gator, or next door to a crazed neighbor, and never say a word in protest. Living under the radar meant surviving quietly no matter what.

  We were drawing close to shore. The injured man had stopped fighting, but the muscles of his arms remained contracted, his breathing was rapid. To Tomlinson I said, “When we get to the bank, don’t try to stand. The bottom’s like quicksand.”

  He asked me, “Do you have shoes on?”

  I said, “I was just thinking the same thing. There’s probably broken bottles and all kinds of crap on the bottom. We’re going to need some help.”

  To the injured man I said, “What’s your name? Can you talk?”

  The man groaned, and said again, “Please tell me I’m dreaming this. What happened to my legs? I can’t feel my legs.”

  I thought, Uh-oh, and squeezed his arm to reassure him as I looked toward shore. I could see shapes and shadows of several dozen people watching us. But I couldn’t see clearly because my glasses were hanging around my neck on fishing line, and also because the spotlight was blinding me again.

  In Spanish I yelled, “Take the light away from that person, I can’t see! Shine it on the ground. We need some help. Four or five people, hold hands and make a chain so we can pull this man out. But don’t come in the water. Stay out of the water!”

  I could see people moving toward the bank, including the man who was carrying the spotlight, a huge silhouette capped by blond curls and shoulders in a muscle T-shirt.

  It was the landlord. Had to be.

  I called to him in English, “Get that goddamn light out of my eyes! I’m not going to tell you again.”

  In reply, I heard a surly Southern twang shout, “What’d you just say to me, asshole?”

  The drawl was unmistakably redneck Florida.

  Trying to keep it reasonable, I told him, “You’re blinding me. We’ve got an injured man here!”

  I saw the man quicken his pace and heard him bellow, “You don’t give the orders around here, you do-gooder son of a bitch! I give the orders! Now, get your ass out of my goddamn lake. You’re trespassing! What the hell you doin’, trespassing in my lake?”

  I glanced at Tomlinson. His face was orchid white in the harsh light, and he rolled his eyes. “The landlord,” he replied. “He’s the jerk I told you about. Something Squires. He’s a mama’s boy. She’s the one with all the property.”

  Tomlinson had described the guy as all grits and redneck bullshit, plus a full helping of steroids. It matched with what I was hearing.

  The water was so shallow now that I was using my left hand to crab us over the bottom, the muck gelatinous between my fingers. It was frustrating. I had no idea how badly that man was hurt, but I knew we couldn’t waste time getting him out of the water and treating his wounds. It was impossible to hurry, though. Try to stand, we’d sink to our waists in slime.

  “Did you call nine-one-one?” I asked Tomlinson. I couldn’t look directly into the spotlight, the thing was too bright, so I was using peripheral vision to keep track of Squires as he descended on us, pushing people out of the way. I noticed that the men who had been attempting to form a human chain scattered from his path.

  “We should be hearing sirens by now,” Tomlinson replied, “or maybe not. It was only about five minutes ago that I called. But they’ll be here.” Then he surprised me by calling out in a cheery voice, “Hey! Hey, Tulo, it’s me! Tell some of the men we need help getting out of here. We need about five people!”

  Tomlinson used the masculine form of the name, but I realized he was yelling to the teenage girl he had mentioned, the girl we had come to help. Tula Choimha.

  I saw a slim, luminous figure appear, backlit by the spotlight. The girl had a flashlight, which was pointed at her sandals, and something else in her hand. A bottle, it looked like.

  To Tomlinson I said, “Watch the guy’s head-he might have a spinal injury.”

  My pal replied, “Then maybe I should stay in the water with him until the paramedics arrive.”

  I was thinking about the killer microbes, not the alligator, when I replied, “No, we’ve got to get him out of here. You, too.”

  “Dude,” Tomlinson muttered, “I don’t even want to ask what that tone of yours means.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You think the gator might come back?”

  I said, “I’ll climb up the bank, and we’ll try to pull him out without moving his head. These people aren’t going to help, they’re afraid. Oh… and for God’s sake, don’t even try talking to that landlord. You’ll just make him madder. Let me do the talking.”

  Tomlinson’s attention remained on the girl, mine on Squires, who was still shouting threats at us and not slowing as he lumbered toward the water. I knew we had to hurry, but it would be worse to misjudge the situation. Steroid drunks, like pit bulls, are an unpredictable demographic. If the guy was as furious as he sounded, anything could happen.

  I laced my fingers into the knee-high weeds that grew along the bank and pulled myself out of the water, hand over hand, trying to time it right. Friends sometimes chide me about my obsessive attention to detail and my hyperawareness of my surroundings-particularly if the environment is populated with strangers.

  Sometimes, I am tempted to reply, “I’m still alive, aren’t I?” but never do.

  Fortunately, my hyperwariness paid off. Again.

  Just as I was getting to my feet, blue jeans muddy, a slimy mess, Squires appeared. He took a quick jump step, grabbed me by the left arm and stabbed the huge light into my face as I stood. He was screaming, “Can you see any better now, you son of a bitch! Who do you think you are, coming ’round here, giving orders!”

  I pushed the light-a military Golight, I realized-out of my eyes and tried to back away, but the man’s hand was like a vise. In an easy voice, I said to him, “Calm down, Squires. We have a guy who needs medical attention.”

  It didn’t help. “Screw you!” the man yelled, his breath hot in my face. “Who the hell died and made you boss, you goddamn do-gooder prick? You’re giving me orders?”

  I kept my voice even. “When the police arrive, what are they going to think when I tell them you tried to stop us from saving this man’s life?”

  Squires was trembling, he was so mad. He roared, “You’re not telling the cops nothin’, asshole! How you gonna talk to an
ybody after I snap your damn head off and use it to feed my gator?”

  His gator? It was an unexpected thing to hear, but it told me something.

  I was gauging the man’s size and his balance. He was about sixfive, six-six, probably two-eighty, but weight-room muscle is among the most common cloaks of male insecurity. To test his balance, I rolled my left arm free of his grip. At the same time, I gave him a push with the fingers of my right hand. It wasn’t an obvious push. It was more of a blocking gesture, but he didn’t handle it well.

  Clumsy people have a difficult time with simultaneous hand movements, and this guy was clumsy. The little push turned his entire body a few wobbly degrees to the left. It was all the opening I needed, but I didn’t take it.

  Now was not the time for a brawl. Besides, Tomlinson and I needed this guy’s cooperation if we were going to save the injured man. The illegals who lived in the park weren’t going to risk helping us-not if their blustering bully of a landlord disapproved. And I couldn’t blame them. They had to live here. I didn’t.

  I squared my body to Squires’s, and said, “This is my last try to be reasonable. We’ve got an injured man and we intend to help him. Get out of our way and behave like an adult.”

  That’s all it took. Squires screamed at me, “Or you’ll do what?” and he jammed the light toward my face again.

  I had no choice, I ducked under the light and then drop-stepped beneath the landlord’s extended right arm. From the sound of surprise he made, the move was the equivalent of a disappearing act. Where had I gone?

  I had disappeared behind him, that’s where. Years ago, in an overheated wrestling room, I had practiced hand control and simple duck unders day after day, week after week, year after year. I had practiced the craft of grappling so relentlessly that I had pleased even our relentless perfectionist of a coach, a man named Gary Fries. Fries was a wrestling giant, all five feet seven inches of him, and he would not tolerate mediocrity.

  Thanks to that coach, I’ve never been in any physical confrontation in my life where I didn’t feel confident I was in control of the outcome. That doesn’t mean I have always won. I certainly have not. But I’ve always felt as if I could win if I picked my shots and made the right moves.

  Like now, as I came up behind Squires, saying into his ear, “You’ve got a big mouth, fat boy,” because now his anger could be used to my advantage. I wanted him so mad that he lost control. When the big man tried to pivot, I laddered my hands up his ribs to control his body position and leaned my head close to his shoulder blades so he couldn’t knock me cold with a wild elbow.

  When Squires realized he couldn’t maneuver free, he stuttered, “Hey… get your hands off me, asshole!” and tried, once again, to face me.

  I was ready because that’s exactly what I wanted him to do. I let Squires make half a turn and then stopped his momentum by ramming my head into his back as I grapevined my left ankle around his left shin. An instant later, I locked my hands around his waist and moved with him as he tried to wrestle free.

  Our backs were to the mangrove pond. With a quick glance, I confirmed that Tomlinson and the injured man weren’t directly behind us-it was a dangerous place to be if things went the way I planned. Then I used my legs to drive Squires away from the water. Instinctively, the man’s feet dug in, then his legs pumped as he tried to drive us both backward. Squires was taller, heavier and stronger than I. His energized mass soon overpowered my own.

  The timing was important. I waited a microsecond… waited until I felt the subtle transition of momentum.

  When it felt right, I dropped my grip a few inches lower on the big man’s waist. I relocked my hands, bent my knees and then maximized Squires’s own momentum by lifting as I arched my back.

  I waited another microsecond… and then I heaved with all my strength as we tumbled backward.

  In wrestling jargon, the move I’d executed was a suplex. As I arched backward, I used a two-handed throwing technique, not unlike a Scottish gamesman throwing a fifty-pound rock over a bar. In this case, though, the weight was closer to three hundred pounds. Squires had amassed considerable momentum, and it was his own momentum-not my strength-that sent him flying.

  I guessed he would land near the pond’s edge, which is why I had checked behind me before setting up the suplex. I couldn’t have guessed, however, that a man Squires’s size would sail beyond the bank and land on his shoulders in a massive explosion of water.

  I got to my feet, cleaning my hands on my jeans. I found the spotlight and aimed it at Squires’s face when he surfaced. He was disoriented and floundering. I watched him splash to vertical, as he spit water and swore. Mostly, he swore at me, ordering that I get that goddamn light out of his eyes.

  I told him, “Come up here and say that, fat boy,” and watched the man jam his feet toward the bottom, which is precisely what I hoped he would do.

  It was his second mistake of the night.

  For a few seconds, Squires stood tall in waist-deep water, as he struggled to find footing. Then he began to sink. The more he struggled, the more suction he created and the deeper he went into the muck.

  Squires wasn’t a wrestler, and he wasn’t much of a swimmer, either. He couldn’t manage the delicate hand strokes necessary to sustain positive buoyancy. Soon the man was so deeply mired in mud that he couldn’t move his legs. Water was rising toward his shoulders, and it scared him.

  “Goddamn it!” he shouted to the migrants watching. “Help me. Get a rope! Somebody go get a rope and pull me out of here.”

  Drowning was terrifying enough, but then another thought came into Squires’s mind. I could tell because of the wild look in his eyes as he glanced over his shoulder, yelling, “Hurry up, before that gator comes back! Does anybody have a gun? Someone break the window of my truck and grab the gun from the glove box. Shit! Hurry up!”

  Automatically, my right hand touched my sodden pocket to confirm the Kahr 9mm was still there. It was.

  No one moved except for a frail, luminous figure that I recognized. It was the teenage girl Tomlinson had been calling to, Tula. I watched her step free of the crowd, then walk toward me, her eyes indicating Squires as she said in English, “Do you think he might drown?”

  I replied, “That’s up to him. If he keeps air in his lungs, he’ll stop sinking.”

  I watched the girl, impressed by her articulate English, but more impressed by the way she carried herself and the respect park residents accorded her. When she spoke, even the men watching her went silent.

  “Will the animal come back?” she asked me. “Did you kill it?”

  I was moving toward the injured man and Tomlinson as I told her, “I wounded it, maybe. I don’t know,” and was tempted to ask, Why are you worried about that jerk?

  I listened to the girl tell me, “I used your telephone to call the emergency number. Or maybe it was his.”

  She glanced at Tomlinson, who was on his knees in the water, cradling the injured man, and then explained, “The angry propietario told the emergency police not to come. But they are coming now.”

  The angry propietario was Squires. Apparently, the girl had heard him cancel Tomlinson’s 911 call. How else could she have known?

  In Spanish, I said to people milling in the shadows, “We need three or four men to help get the injured man out of the water. I think his spine is hurt. We have to take care not to move his head. We need towels and ice and disinfectant… and a board of some type for him to lie on. Plywood would work.”

  As I spoke, I had to raise my voice to be heard above Squires, who was now raging, “Why aren’t you people moving? Goddamn it, I need a rope! And one of you bastards fetch my gun! How’d you little shits like to be homeless again? I’ll call the feds on your sorry asses if you don’t move now!”

  The man was panicking in his rage, his attention focused on shadows behind him where the gator might be lurking. As long as he kept his lungs inflated, the muck wouldn’t overpower his own buoyancy. But now
, I guessed, Squires was hyperventilating, and in real danger. I was considering going in after him myself when the girl called in loud Spanish, “Do what the landlord says. Get a rope, but not his gun! Help him! Would God want you to allow a helpless man to drown?”

  God allowed helpless men to drown daily, but her words got people moving. A couple of guys went jogging toward the trailers, while others moved toward Tomlinson, awaiting instructions. As I approached the bank, I told the men to stay close, we’d need them soon. I was also searching the ground, looking for my shirt, because I wanted to clean my glasses.

  Beside me, Tula said, “Use this,” and handed me a towel, which she pulled from the back of her jeans. “He’s my friend,” she added, indicating the injured man. “His name is Carlson, and he has a good heart. When you get him out of the water, I will pray. Will you help me pray to heal his wounds?”

  The girl’s syntax was odd, I noticed, whether she spoke in English or Spanish. It was formal in an old-fashioned way, which made no sense for someone her age.

  Carlson was listening from only a few feet away. He was semiconscious, looking up at the girl, a sleepy, dazed smile on his face.

  I said, “My friend will be glad to help you pray. Won’t you, Tomlinson?” and handed the towel back to the girl before I told one of the men to hang on to my feet when I gave him the word. Then I got down on my hands and knees and crawled to the water.

  It wasn’t difficult to lift Carlson ashore. He was all bone and skin, couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and forty pounds. Once we had him on the slick grass, we maneuvered a piece of plywood under him, then sledded him to higher ground.

  Through the entire process, I held the man’s head steady. From the way he’d described the cracking sound “deep inside him,” I guessed the gator had broken his spine. I didn’t want to turn a paraplegic into a quadriplegic.