Flashback

by Nevada Barr

  No more. Hiding in that twisting round of slate and stone I was acutely aware that life is the only gift God gives us that we cannot earn, find, build or bake for ourselves.

  When I had recovered--a matter of minutes really, though they passed a thousand times faster than in the guardroom--I felt my way to the second tier. Whereas the utter dark of the passage to the dungeon had unnerved me, this darkness was my friend, indicating I was alone. I was sorry to leave it when I reached the top of the stairs and had to walk in the open for half a dozen yards before I could again hide myself, this time in the passageway behind the enclosed casemates.

  I had stolen the key, I had reached my destination, yet I stood before the door and did nothing. It wasn't fear of Sam Arnold that held me there. Foolish as it looks in retrospect, I had no fear that Mr. Arnold would do me harm. My fear was for whom I would become in the eyes of my neighbor, of my husband, when it was known I had gone alone in the middle of the night to call on a man. As I stood feeling terrible shame, as if every woman in the fort already gossiped about me and every man made bawdy jokes when my name came up, I couldn't but think of the times Tilly had come without me. Young and foolish and wrong as she was, Tilly had not hesitated to do what she believed was just. She was taught, as are all girls, what involving herself in scandal could do to her reputation and her future, yet she did it anyway.

  Could I do less?

  I unlocked the door and stepped inside. The darkness here was different. Little air came into the casemate. Without the cooling ocean breeze to clear away the heat and the inevitable stink of occupation, it was a darkness that not only lay heavy on my eyelids but thick and choking in my throat.

  Mr. Arnold had shared the back casemate with Dr. Mudd, Joel using the first one inside the door. I hoped, though Joel and the doctor were gone, Mr. Arnold would have kept to the same bed out of habit. If Mr. Arnold was still in residence. It had not occurred to me until that moment that Sam Arnold might have been moved as well; that new tenants might be sleeping around my feet at that very moment. The quaking fear that had beset me in the stairwell threatened to return. Before it could cripple me or send me crashing blindly for the door, I began speaking.

  "Mr. Arnold? Mr. Arnold. It's Mrs. Coleman. I'm sorry to call so late." Calling indeed. It has been years since I have used calling cards, and this was not a place with a silver salver in the entrance hall to receive them.

  At last a light was struck in the far room and I fairly rushed toward it. Mr. Arnold, candle in hand, was propped up on his bed of bricks and boards wearing nothing but the corner of a thin blanket. Stopping in the doorway to the room he now had to himself, I wanted to explain myself but no words came.

  For the longest time he stared at me and I felt myself growing smaller by the moment. Finally he spoke: "What do you want, boy?"

  The success of my disguise reassured me for some reason, and my vocabulary returned. "It's Mrs. Coleman. I need to speak with you."

  "Does anybody know you are here?"

  Before I could think better of it, I told him no.

  27

  The storm brought darkness early. As the electric cart slipped noiselessly through the sally port, Anna could see welcoming gold light in the windows of the Shaws' house across the parade ground and the window of Daniel's casemate apartment to the left. Mack stopped the cart in front of the administrative offices. With the switching off of the electric motor there came a metallic crunching sound as if a giant spoon had fallen into a monster garbage disposal. As one, every light in the compound went dark.

  "That's it then," Mack said.

  Perry and Butch leapt from the cart and, automatic rifles under their arms, ran across the parade ground, one toward Daniel's apartment and one toward the Shaws'.

  "The generators," Anna said. "You sabotaged them."

  "Nobody's to radio out," Mack said.

  Without at least one of the six generators up and running the fort was dead: no lights, no water pumped, no radio or phone contact with the mainland.

  "It's not going to work, Mack. You don't have enough men. You don't have enough men with Rick wounded. The Shaws, Daniel, somebody will radio a boat in the harbor, and they'll call the coast guard.

  "We've got enough," Mack said. "All we need is a couple of hours."

  "The storm will have held your boats up," Anna predicted. Mack said nothing. Paulo was holding a pistol he'd been given by Butch in place of the Uzi Anna'd thrown overboard. It was a .44 Magnum, a huge gun and one Anna hadn't seen since Clint Eastwood quit making the Dirty Harry movies. Paulo stood aside as Mack opened the office door, then returned to the cart to help Rick. Paulo followed Anna inside.

  She started to sit at Teddy's desk by phone, computer and Mrs. Shaw's radio sitting in its charger. "There," Paulo said, indicating a lonely chair in the corner by the coffeepot. "They won't work without the generators," she said. "Why not let me be comfortable?"

  Paulo took the portable radio and stuck it in the hip pocket of his shorts. Mack came in and settled Rick in the chair Anna'd been denied. "Keep her away from the radios. She could raise a shrimp boat from one," he said and left.

  He would be going to the third tier to destroy the microwave dish, Anna guessed. It alone had the power to function without the generators, to contact the mainland. Mack was a maintenance man. He knew how the fort worked.

  "Let me help Rick," Anna said. The two young men were easy with each other. Willing to stand close together, willing to let a shoulder brush or an elbow touch. Rick and Paulo were friends, maybe even related. "I lied about Rick dying of internal bleeding," she said. "But I didn't lie about the danger of shock. Let me help him."

  Fear still pinched and grayed Rick's face. He wanted to be helped, comforted. He didn't speak for himself but looked to Paulo. Older men, in their thirties and forties, had been out in the world long enough to realize they were truly alone. For young men not long from home there was no person more reassuring than a woman their mothers' age; a safe middle-aged lady, the traditional bringer of soup and kisser of skinned knees.

  "Maybe you're lying now," Paulo said.

  "I'm not. I swear on the Virgin Mary and all the saints, I'm not lying," Anna said. Cuban boys, raised in Miami, Anna was banking on the fact that they were Catholic and her oath would not only mean something to them but suggest in some part of their minds that she was like them, one of them.

  "Okay," Paulo said. "But no funny stuff."

  "The red nose and fright wig will say in my pocket," Anna promised.

  "Whatever. But you don't try anything."

  "I'd work better with the handcuffs off," she said.

  "No."

  Anna took that calmly. She'd not wanted Paulo to mess with the cuffs and notice they were loose, but it would have been out of character not to ask.

  Her life might depend on whether or not these men took a liking to her and because Rick, despite being a kidnapper, a pirate and possibly a murderer, seemed like a good kid, Anna treated him as best she knew how. Half a pot of water for tea, not yet grown cold without electricity, remained on the warming plate.

  "How many are coming?" she asked when she'd established as homey an atmosphere as possible given a man held a gun on her.

  "Three hundred, about," Rick said proudly.

  "Don't talk to her about that," Paulo said, but there was no force behind the words, so Rick ignored them. They both wanted to talk, and Anna was just the woman to listen.

  "That's a lot of souls," she said without looking up from cleaning the blood away from the wound. It had almost stopped bleeding, and she had no intention of opening it up again with overzealous washing. She just wanted to get a better picture of the damage.

  "Why here?" Anna knew why here, but she wanted to keep the words flowing.

  "All they gotta do is put one foot on American soil and you can't turn 'em back. One foot. Out here is still America. By the time anybody gets word, all our boats will be long gone. Nobody goes to jail." Rick was sipp
ing the tea Anna poured for him. The warm liquid and the sugar were putting color back in his face and confidence back in his voice.

  "Three hundred," Paulo said. "I don't think anybody's ever done it so big."

  They were so clearly pleased with their work, Anna decided to push. "So. You two guys will get rich off the problems of your Cuban brothers and sisters." She uttered this condemnation as if it were a compliment, as if she admired their entrepreneurial spirit. "What will you rake in, two, three thousand a head? Split five ways. Let's see . . . nine hundred grand. . . . That's close to two hundred thousand a piece. Not bad for a couple days' work."

  "No!" Rick said. The cry was so full of pain Anna wasn't sure whether it had arisen from the poke at his intentions or the wound on his leg.

  "It's not for the money," Paulo said simultaneously. "You Americans, you sit over here rich and fat and you got everything when ninety miles away people got nothing and they're getting hurt and killed for what they believe, and you turn the boats back like they were garbage scows not good enough to dirty up your pretty white beaches. Money, that's all you think of."

  "Pretty much," Anna said agreeably. "We've got all this terrific stuff. You guys want some of our great stuff. You come over here and we have to share and there's less stuff for us. Capitalism, free enterprise, it's all about stuff."

  They seemed nonplussed that she neither argued nor acted offended. Quiet prevailed for a bit, the only sound, now that the ubiquitous hum of six generators had been silenced, was the tap of rain on the windows and the spastic tick of the battery-operated wall clock.

  "So," Anna said. "You guys are carrying three hundred people to American soil for free, out of the kindness of your hearts?"

  More rain. More ticking. "We had costs," Rick said.

  "Ah."

  "We did it for what it cost us," Paulo said.

  "What's water-taxi fare to the free world these days?"

  "This isn't any of your business," Paulo snapped as dear young Rick blurted: "A thousand dollars."

  "Nice round number," Anna said. "Stand up. Let me see the back of your leg."

  Rick stood obediently and turned around. The fist-sized hole in the back of Rick's leg was about half full of bloody hamburger.

  "Holy Mary--" Paulo started to whisper. Anna shot him a filthy look and he had sense enough to keep the rest of his horrors to himself.

  "What? What?" Rick was demanding, his voice sliding higher with each word.

  "Nothing I didn't expect," Anna said reassuringly. "Most bullets these days are fired with such force they go right through a human body and out the other side. That is if you're lucky and a bone doesn't get in the way. This is just the exit wound. You're in good shape. Not much bleeding. I'll dress it and put a pressure bandage on. You'll be fine."

  She stopped comforting Rick and turned to Paulo. "I want you to see something. Come here."

  "Show me from here."

  How quickly they learn to mistrust, Anna thought. And she was such a good teacher.

  "Sure." The light had grown so dim she'd been studying the wound with her nose almost on the back of Rick's knee. "I'm going to need a flashlight. There's one in the right-hand drawer of my desk. My office is straight back. The right door."

  Paulo was torn. The night that poured in under the storm wouldn't let her see his face, but Anna could see decisions fighting in the turn of his head and the twitch of his chin.

  "You get it," he said finally. Anna started to move and he yelled. "No. Stay there. I'll get it." Then, "Shit."

  "Paulo, why don't you give the gun to Rick, he can hold it on me while you get the light," Anna suggested. "I'll just sit over here in this chair." She sat back in the chair by the coffee machine. "Okay. Here I am."

  "I don't need to see anything," Paulo said.

  "You need to see this," Anna told him. "Trust me."

  "Shit," he said again, but he gave the gun to Rick and headed for the back office.

  Anna sat very still, face pleasantly neutral. Rick was still standing, the gun held in front of him at waist level. He'd been upright too long. Anna could see the growing unsteadiness, the way he blinked his eyes too often trying to clear away a fog that was not on his eyes but inside his brain. There came a moment when she might have been able to take him down, gotten the gun away from him. Instead she said gently: "Sit down, Rick. You're about to pass out."

  "The light." Paulo handed it to her and took the pistol from Rick.

  Anna asked Rick to stand again for a minute and trained the flashlight's beam on the exit wound.

  "Look at the size of that. Okay Rick, turn around and sit." She pointed the light at the bullet hole above his knee. It was closer to the size of a quarter than a dime. "Now look at the size of the entry wound."

  The boys looked but without any sudden enlightenment dawning on their faces.

  "I fired two shots blind, underwater with a nine millimeter. It's powerful but small--nine millimeters to be exact. Turns out I didn't shoot you, Rick. I tried, mind you, but today isn't my lucky day. A bigger gun with bigger bullets shot you. An Uzi maybe. Or that forty-four Paulo's been pointing at me."

  "What're you saying?" Paulo demanded. "Are you saying I shot Rick? Fuck--"

  "No," Anna cut him off before he could work himself into a righteous rage. "I'm saying I didn't. If you didn't and I didn't . . ."

  Rick took the flashlight from her and shined it on his leg. "Paulo, she's right. This is one damn big hole."

  "She's lying. We don't know how big bullet holes are."

  "Shit we don't. How many rabbits you figure you've shot? Ducks? Squirrels? Deer? Alligators? I bet we've seen more bullet holes than most people. None of 'em were big like this, big hole out the back like I got."

  "She's lying," Paulo said again, but he didn't sound so convinced this time.

  "I'm not," Anna said. "I swear by the blood Christ shed on the cross I'm telling the truth." It was entirely possible she was, too. She had a feeling that these credulous, misguided heroes might not be expected to live through their adventure; that their role, as written by the other men, was to be fall guys or corpses.

  "Perry or Butch shot you," Anna said.

  "By accident. They were shooting at you," Rick said.

  "You were forty feet away from me, Rick, and not in the line of fire. You were off to the left between Paulo on the beach and me in the water."

  Rick started to laugh. "You think Butch or Perry shot me on purpose?"

  "That's what I think."

  Rick stopped laughing.

  "Maybe three hundred grand, less whatever you're paying the boat crews, bribes to Cuban officials and Mack's cut, isn't enough for them."

  "Mack isn't taking a cut--"

  "Shut up," Paulo shouted suddenly. "We don't talk about this anymore. We don't talk to you anymore. Shut up, Rick, she's playing us."

  "It's not me who's playing you," Anna said.

  "Shut the fuck up," Paulo screamed, echoing his criminal mentor.

  The office door banged open. Anna didn't say another word.

  28

  Samuel Arnold, covered only by the blanket, and that rucked up to where little was left to the imagination, was completely collected. He surveyed my strange attire with such cool insolence that it was I who ended up blushing and stammering.

  "Out alone at night, disguised as a boy, in a prisoner's cell; do you think that's wise?" he asked me.

  "Wise doesn't enter into it," I said.

  "Apparently not."

  His clear intention to keep me off balance had the effect of settling my nerves. There's nothing like spite to give one false courage. False or not, I welcomed it. "I need to ask you some questions, Mr. Arnold. Please cover yourself." I used Molly's no-nonsense school voice, but he was impervious even to the tones that had us quaking in our seats as children.

  "You forget, Mrs. Coleman, that it is you who've forced yourself into my bedroom. I shall receive you as I am." His customary dark humor had returne
d. As I had come begging, I could not be choosing.

  "Very well," I said and seated myself on the neatly piled brick that served as the casemate's only chair. A mouse scuttled from behind it and scurried along the wall and into the shadows away from the candlelight.

  "My cellmate," Mr. Arnold said and smiled. Threat, to mockery, to charm in under a minute; he was a man of many faces. The attraction I'd occasionally felt for him turned to something else. Perhaps fear. I didn't wish to linger any longer than I had to.

  "I've spoken to Dr. Mudd," I began without preliminaries. "He says he took a photograph from you proving his innocence of conspiring to kill Mr. Lincoln. He says he gave this picture into the safekeeping of my sister and suggested that you, in your eagerness to suppress it, might have been involved in her disappearance." Dr. Mudd had not said precisely those words, but I was beyond niceties and hoped to shock, startle or shame Mr. Arnold into telling me something useful. He was proof against it.

  "Dr. Mudd used Tilly and now he's using you. I cannot condemn the man. I think he has gone mad," he said calmly, still lounging on one elbow with lower limbs exposed. He set the candle down on the bricks that served as his nightstand and pulled himself into a sitting position. "Dr. Mudd did steal from me. My sister sent me a photograph of a friend and myself in better days to cheer me. Mudd got it in his head that this photograph was somehow meaningful. He took it from my things and gave it to your sister. I have no idea what she did with it."