Wrapped in Rain(11)
If he was going on a trip, he would need something to occupy the voices, and they loved two things: chess and tying flies. He stuffed his chess set into his fanny pack next to the vise, along with seven bars of Zest, each sealed in its own airtight Ziploc bag. He lifted his bedroom window, took a last look at his room, and swung one leg out. Contractors had originally constructed the windows to set off a silent alarm at the security guard's desk when opened more than four inches. But Mutt had fixed that too about six years ago. He liked to sleep with it open at night. The smells, the sounds, the breeze-it all reminded him of home. He swung his left leg out the window and took a deep breath of air. The September sun was falling, and in an hour, an October moon would rise straight over Clark's back door.
He put his foot down and cracked the base of an azalea bush, but he hadn't liked it since they planted it there last year. It made him itch just to look at it. And it attracted bees. So with a smile on his face, he stomped it a second time and hit the ground running. Halfway across the grassy back lawn, he stopped midstride as if stricken with rigor mortis and thrust his hand in his pocket. Had he forgotten it? He searched one pocket, digging his fingers into the fuzz packed into the bottom, and the worry grew. Both back pockets and the panic came knocking. He thrust his left hand into his left front pocket and broke out in a sweat.
But there in the bottom, surrounded by dryer lint, his fingers found it: warm, smooth, and right where it had been since Miss Ella gave it to him following the first day of second grade. In the dark confines and security of his pocket, he ran his fingers across the front and traced his fingernail through the letters. Then the backside. It was smooth and oily from the years in his pocket. That settled, the fear subsided, and he started running again.
Running was something he used to do a lot, but in the last few years he had had little practice. His first year at Spiraling Oaks, his walk had looked more like that of a soldier stomping the earth-a side effect of too much Thorazine. A few days on that stuff and his mind began to doubt where the earth was. Fortunately, Gibby decreased the dosage, and his steps became more certain.
He made it across the back lawn, through the cypress trees bathed in lush green fern, and onto the sun-faded and seagull-painted dock without hearing any commotion behind him. If no one saw him leap off the dock, he might have time for a second helping.
He dove off the end of the dock and into the warm, brackish, and sweet Julington Creek. The water, tinted brown with tannic acid, wrapped around him like a blanket, bringing with it an odd thing: a happy memory. He dove farther in, pulling twelve to fifteen times down, down into the water. When he heard a jet Ski roar above, he waited a few seconds and surfaced.
Chapter 2
THE LOW FUEL LIGHT CLICKED ON AT 1:58 A.M., LIGHTing up the inside of my Dodge pickup with an orange glow and breaking my hypnotic gaze on the broken yellow line. "I see you. I see you." I could have driven another fifty miles on what remained, but home was another two hours away. Coffee sounded pretty good.
I preferred driving at night, but for the last three days, I had been up early and awake late. My work had taken me to South Florida to photograph a wiry old South Florida alligator hunter on Kodachrome for an eightpage spread in a national travel magazine. For some reason, Travel America had yet to make the jump from slides to digital-something I had mostly done about four years ago. I can shoot either, but if you press me or pick up my camera when I'm shooting for myself, you'll find Kodachrome. They're hard to hit, but I'm a slide junkie.
The long hours had caught up with me. I glanced in the rearview mirror and my eyes looked like a road map of long-forgotten, red county highways. Limp strands of shoulder-length hair that, except for the tips, had not been cut in about seven years fell below my collar. Evidence of my rebellion. One of the last times I had come home to see her, Miss Ella brushed my cheek and told me, "Child, there's too much light in that face to hide it behind all that hair. Don't go hiding your light under a bushel. You hear me?" Maybe the mirror showed that too. Maybe my light had grown dim.
A week ago, my agent, Doc Snake Oil, phoned me and said, "Tuck, it's an easy three days. You drive down, hop in this guy's airboat, watch him wrestle a couple of big lizards, down a few cold beers and a couple pounds of gator tail, and drop five grand in your bank account." Doc paused and drew on the unfiltered cigarette that never left his mouth during waking hours. The inhalation was purposeful, and he let the words "five grand" resonate through the phone.
I loved his voice but had never told him. It had that beautiful tonal resonation of a forty-year smoker. Which he was. He exhaled and said, "This is a vacation compared to where you were last month. Warmer too. And chances are good we can sell secondary rights of any unused pics and get you a second cover from this spread alone. Besides, people in Florida love it when a native cracker sticks his head in a gator's mouth."
It sounded reasonable, so I left home in Clopton, Alabama, and drove my three-quarter-ton truck to the Florida Everglades where the boisterous sixty-two-year-old Whitey Stoker shook my hand. Whitey had the biceps of a brick mason, the chin of a prizefighter, and no fear when it came to alligators-or bootleg moonshine that he sold in cases out the sides of his boat. Late into the first night, he looked at me with his spotlight bobbing atop his head, like a coal miner who'd found a vein of gold, and said, "You mind?"