"So, Wayne," I said, reminding him that the older guy had already let his name out, a betrayal to some degree. "Let's see about using this bed as a trauma cot."
He looked over as I pulled the other bed frame out away from the wall.
"I tried to break it down some already," I said, pointing to the metal strapping where I'd removed my impromptu pry bar. "Maybe you can figure a better way. You look like you might be the mechanical one of your brothers."
"They ain't my brothers," Wayne said, bending to pull at one corner of the frame with his left hand.
"So, your name isn't Morris?"
"No. It ain't."
"You kind of look alike," I said, interviewing, and hoping it was not too obvious.
"No, we don't," the kid said.
I was guessing that he might be fifteen or sixteen, but on closer inspection, the barely discernable mustache he was trying to grow made me think he was possibly older, just a little behind in maturity. A follower? A simple ride-along? When I was still a cop in Philadelphia, I'd shot and killed a twelve- year-old tag-along who had joined one of his buddies for a late-night convenience store robbery. I'd been responding to an alarm and when the first guy out of the store took a shot at me, splitting the muscle and tendon in my neck, I returned fire and hit the second person out, a child who took the 9mm slug in the middle of the back. Just a boy, dead at the scene. It was the event that led to my resignation for medical reasons. It was the reason I'd come to South Florida to escape my inner-city dreams. Maybe it was part of the reason I was standing here, stuck to some natural destiny.
"Let's flip it over," I instructed. "It might be easier to disassemble these legs. It will be a lot easier to move that way." I started to turn my end and the movement forced the kid to expose his left hand for the first time. I'd noted his reluctance from the moment I'd seen him standing in the open, his shirtsleeves hanging down past his fingertips, his hand held slightly behind his hip. At first I'd thought-weapon. A handgun or even a knife. Now as he reached to twist the metal frame of the bed, I saw that he was missing his thumb. The scar told me it wasn't something that happened at birth. It was a definite injury and one he was careful about showing. I thought of the round, quarter-size scar of white tissue on my own neck where the bullet on the street had burrowed through. I had not caught myself reaching for it in quite some time. I'd lost the habit, if not the memory of killing a child.
Wayne got down on his knees to inspect the bolt system on the legs of the cot and then looked around.
"Y'all got any tools?"
I was right about his mechanical inclination.
"I had to bend the metal of that strap to get it off, just worked it until it broke," I said.
"Yeah, I seen that," Wayne said, like I'd pulled some third- grader stunt on the thing. He got up and I watched as he walked to the sink, now disregarding me. He went through a drawer and came out with some silverware-a spoon, a couple of butter knives with blades so dull they'd have a time cutting butter. I'd passed them all over on my earlier inspection.
"So none of you guys seem to be injured from the hurricane," I said, continuing my interview. "Your place must have held up pretty well."
"Yeah," he said, giving up nothing more. Not a storyteller.
I watched the kid set to the bolts, using the straight lengths of the two knife handles to pinch the metal nuts in parallel and then turn them. The fingers of his left hand worked in an odd but efficient manner, making up for the loss of his thumb. He'd adapted. Maybe this kid had never heard of the evolution of the opposable thumb that let man crawl out of swamps like this one a million years ago. Right now I was hoping for a little less sophistication in his perceptiveness.
"Mr. Morris said your camp was up to the northwest, so are you all from Belle Glade or Clewiston or what?" I said.
"Hell, no," the kid reacted, like I'd put him in some rival high school. He started to go on but thought better of it.
"How 'bout I loosen these up and you can finger twist 'em off, sir," he said instead, looking over at me before moving on to the next leg.
"Yeah, sure."
I changed positions with him and we worked together. The kid was either naturally closed-mouthed or savvy enough not to let loose any more information about himself and his buddies than he was forced to. His could be an attitude from too many times in the backseat of a police cruiser or in the local juvenile lockup, or a simple backwoods avoidance of people unlike himself. A perceptive kid would have noticed the difference in our clothing, my speech, even in the way I moved. I'd already done the same with this trio. I was leaning toward the supposition that they were Gladesmen, or closely descended from. Easy in the water. None of them carried a sweat in the humidity, meaning their bodies were used to the climate. Their boots were old leather, the kind that was oiled and waterproofed the old-fashioned way. They were all lean, the leader with a cabled musculature that meant tough manual labor and a diet that was more local and natural than the empty calorie, fat-filled urban or suburban fare. But my eye had been a lazy one too. I'd searched the kid over, looking for clues, and missed the biggest one. Wayne took a few steps back after he loosened all the nuts and stood while I finished the job. I looked up a couple of times, continuing to ask questions that might give me more information to size his crew up, give me some clue why they were rattling my internal cop alarms. A couple of times I caught him looking down at Sherry, who had gone quiet. It was hard to read her pain now or tell how much her head was in the moment or moving deep into survival mode, concentrating only on the internal, on keeping her core together. From where I was I couldn't even see if her eyes were open.
Not for a moment did I think of the kid's eyes roving over her body, the fabric of her sweats cut away almost up to her crotch when I'd cleaned and bandaged the leg wound. Her blouse, soaking wet and transparent, stretched across her breasts. Then she said something-"water"-in a rough whisper.
The kid jumped, and then started looking around.
"Over there. The bottle by the end of her cot," I said, directing him.
He stepped over and picked up the bottle and moved to Sherry's side. She turned her hand slightly, opened her palm and he had to bend over to get the bottle to her. But instead of taking it, she motioned to her mouth with her fingers and the kid bent lower, nervous about pouring the water into this woman's open lips. I stayed on one knee, watching, but still working the other bed's legs. All I could see were the tops of both of their heads from behind and then the sudden, violent movement of Sherry's hand, clawing at the boy's throat.
"You thieving little bastard," she suddenly shrieked in a voice I had never heard before.
The kid's head started to snap back, but inexplicably stopped for a fraction of a moment, and then, suddenly loosed, reeled up away from her.
"You fucking little thief," Sherry screamed again, the rough dryness of her throat making the words come out like a shovel blade stabbing gravel. "You picked the wrong cop to fuck with this time, you little shit."
The kid's eyes were wide as saucers, eyebrows dented by fear, like he'd seen a witch come alive in his face, and I jumped up wondering if he actually had.
"Jesus, Sherry!" I shouted, and stepped over the bed frame I was working on. "What the hell?"
She was up on her elbows now, her face turned a crimson color that was such a stark contrast to the paleness it replaced that it looked devilish. She was staring at the kid, her eyes focused and hateful. Without saying a word she opened the hand that I'd seen her go at the kid's throat with. Two stones, one a diamond and the other an opal, tumbled from her palm on the end of a broken gold chain.