I had held my tongue but decided to take a chance.
"I don't disagree with you, Buck," I said, purposely using his first name, and it caused a flicker in his eyes. "I know a man, actually someone I would call a friend, who lived the same kind of life your own family did. I've heard him talk the same way many times. The name is Brown. Nate Brown. Maybe you've heard of him?"
The use of Brown's name caused all three to stop moving. They may have even stopped breathing for a second. The boys looked at each other. Buck stood stock-still, staring at the end of the crowbar.
"Go on outside," Buck finally barked. "Find a damn window to get through or somethin'." The boys picked up the tools from the floor and left.
Buck set the crowbar aside and bent down on his haunches to look me in the face, sitting on his heels in the way of farmers and country folks who work the dirt but refuse to sit in it. He adjusted the.45 in his belt, the grip exposed and handy.
"So, Mr. Freeman. You heard about the legend of Mr. Brown from some drunk fisherman or somethin' and now you say you know him and me? Is that it?"
I'd actually met Nate Brown during my first year in my shack. I had found the body of a child on my river who had been one of a string of abductions and murders of children from suburban homes. Brown had helped me to find the madman responsible and remove that stain from those he considered his people. I admired the old guy and his quiet ethics. But this man was nothing like him.
"I said I know Nate. I never said I know you, Mr. Morris. I said I'd heard Nate talk about the same things you just did but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't run into Nate Brown out here looting other people's properties after a storm just for leftovers."
Buck's eyes took on an internal look, glassed over like he was seeing something in his own head that needed to be studied. The anger I expected didn't come. Or the denial.
"If you know Nate Brown, Mr. Freeman, then you know he is a man who did what he had to do in his time. And it wasn't all legal then neither. The Gladesmen do what they have to do."
"Buck," I said, "I know Nate as a man who holds his own ethics in high esteem. I think he does the right thing, for the people he represents and their way of living out here. Maybe you've got some of that in you."
I was trying to work an angle, pry at whatever relationship this young man had with Brown and the generation of Gladesmen before him. He stayed silent.
"Maybe Nate would be salvaging. Maybe he'd be doing what he had to do to survive," I offered. "But he wouldn't be hurting innocent people. He wouldn't be turning his back on someone who needed his help."
Buck stood up and now he was looking down on me. He was still working it in his head. He was being careful. Thinking things out. But there was a tension now in the guy's eyes and I could see his hand flexing on the handle of the.45.
"Times change," he finally said, turning toward the door. "You might do some ponderin' on time, sir. 'Cause you might not have a whole lot of it left."
When he walked out the door he closed it and then, with substantial force, jammed the blade end of the crowbar into the space between the bottom of the door and the flooring planks, effectively locking it.
TWENTY-THREE
As soon as I heard Buck's footsteps leave the deck I started crawling up the wall, shoulder and head pressing hard against the panel, pushing hard off my heels to gain an angle, then working it like a big old inchworm, a foot at a time until I was able to get my feet under me, and then stand. I was breathing hard. There was no doubt a raw abrasion now on the side of my forehead and my ear burned from the scraping pressure. Tough shit. I stood in silence and now nearly in darkness. When Buck closed and locked the door the only sunlight that sneaked in was from the northside window. I listened for movement outside and was just about to move when I heard the CHUNK! sound of the axe blade against the south wall. The boys were probably trying to chop their way through a window and I knew that it would be a few minutes before they uncovered the fiberglass skin that wrapped the room next door. It would puzzle them for a bit, but I wasn't sure it would stop them. As the noise and the steady blows increased, I used the cover to jump on the ball of one foot to the refrigerator, steady myself and crouch. Twisting my wrists, I got my freed fingers around the handle and pulled the fridge door open at the same time as I rolled to the floor on one shoulder. I didn't give a damn how awkward I was. I had one goal in mind.
Scuffing back over on my hip I was able to position myself with my back to the opening and then flex my arms into it and use my fingers to search the low corner of the fridge. My trick with the tendons had given me a fraction of space under my taped wrists to work with and the effort to get over here alone had loosened it even more. It took some repositioning, some sweat running down into my eyes, but my fingers found the bottle of water and the rest of the wrapped chocolate I'd left there. The boys either missed it or didn't care enough even to check it out. Anything without value to them was considered useless. But Sherry needed water and she needed some form of energy to keep her brain synapses from shutting down further. I snagged the bottle and chocolate and cupped them in my fingers and then rolled, shoulder to shoulder, to reach her side.
"Sherry," I said. Trying to whisper, but in the empty room my voice still sounded loud. When the chopping began again I hissed hard.
"Sherry. Come on, baby. Wake up! You gotta drink, baby. You need the water."
I rolled to my knees and again, using a shoulder for leverage, I got a hip up onto the bedside and then straightened to a sitting position.
"Sherry!" This time I spoke in a full hard voice and luck was with me. At the same moment, the sound of a splitting piece of wood vibrated through the shack and then in the silence that followed whatever progress they'd made outside I heard my name next to me.
"Max," Sherry said, though I did not recognize the awful timbre of her wounded voice. "Max. Don't let him kill you too. Don't let that little bastard take you away from me."
I looked down from over my shoulder and her face was barely visible in the dark but what light there was caught the tear on her cheek. She was hallucinating, confusing one of the boys here with the teenager who killed her husband. But she'd somehow slipped me into the muddled equation.
"I won't, baby. No one's going to take me away, Sherry. But you have to eat, honey. You need to get strong."
While I talked, I used my free fingers behind me to unwrap the chocolate and then looked over my shoulder and moved it to her mouth. I rubbed it against her lips and then sighed when I felt her tug at it. The busyness outside continued but even if one of the crew came back in now I didn't care. When Sherry stopped nibbling I went down and retrieved the water bottle and tipped it onto her lips. Most of the water ran down over her chin and neck but I could hear swallows and just the sound of it made my own throat cooler. With my hands tied it took a few minutes, hell, maybe more than a few, before I heard her say, "More." Again I gave her the chocolate first, then the water, and the pull was stronger and the swallows more full.
"She dead?"
It was the first thing Buck said after someone kicked away the pry bar and all three walked in. His flashlight beam had swung first to the wall where I'd been and then to Sherry where I now crouched. I had to turn my face away from the brightness and I could tell through the open door that it had gone full dark outside. The boys were carrying a big cooler and an old Coleman lantern and set them down in front of the makeshift kitchen counter.