I can’t provide them with the kind of home they deserve.
Look at you, hon, she says and pats his hand. You’re tearing up. Someone should give you the kind of home you deserve.
They have, he says. He retrieves his hand and turns away from her. He stares manfully out the window and sees the Writer strolling down the pier toward the store. I gotta go now, he says. Here comes my ride.
Dolores nods and reaches out and takes Annie’s leash from his hand and lifts Einstein’s cage and places it on the counter. The Kid digs into his pocket and pulls out a single hundred-dollar bill and passes it to her. Then he turns and quickly walks away.
THE WRITER’S TOWN CAR APPROACHES THE Causeway from Calusa heading toward the Barrier Isles. It crosses over the concrete arch to the far side where the Writer pulls the wide vehicle onto the gravel shoulder and parks it next to the guardrail. Cars and trucks and motorcycles roar past in both directions. He cranes his neck and peers down the steep slope into the shadows beneath the six-lane bridge. He can’t see much down there — flotsam and jetsam, a jumbled mix of building materials, trash, cardboard boxes, torn sheets of polyethylene. A tidal dump.
The Writer says to the Kid, You’re not going down there, are you?
Without answering, the Kid steps from the car and retrieves his backpack and duffel from the backseat. He walks up to the passenger’s side window and the Writer lowers it. The Kid leans in and says, Thanks for the ride, man. For all the rides, I mean. Thanks for everything.
Not a problem, Kid. But I’m a little worried about you going down there. You know, to live. It looks… dangerous.
It’s not. Not for me anyhow. Listen, the Kid says, I gotta ask you not to write about this. About any of it. You know what I’m saying? Like for a magazine or something. Or for the Internet. Definitely not for the Internet. Blogs and shit. Or on Facebook.
Why not?
I dunno. It’s just sort of private. My life, I mean. And the Professor’s and even the fucking Shyster’s. In spite of the fact that we’re on the Internet and anybody who wants to can look us up and think they know all about us, it’s still our life. It’s all we got. Know what I mean?
Don’t worry, Kid, it’s not my kind of material. Besides, as long as you and I and Gloria know what really happened out there at the canal, it doesn’t matter if no one else knows.
Yeah, but we don’t. We don’t know what really happened out there.
We know what we believe, Kid. That’s all anyone gets in this life.
Yeah. Sure. The Kid gives the Writer a small wave and hefts his backpack onto his shoulders. He lifts his duffel off the ground and steps with care over the guardrail as if about to trespass. Slowly he makes his way down the steep slope and disappears from the Writer’s sight into the heavy wet shadows beneath the Causeway.
For a few moments the Writer sits in the car trying to imagine the life the Kid will lead down there. Then he gives up trying — not his kind of material — puts the Town Car in gear, makes a quick U-turn and enters the flow of traffic heading toward Calusa and drives away.
FROM THE HEAPS OF TRASH PILED BY THE water’s edge the Kid like a shipwrecked sailor scavenges a batch of two-by-fours and a sopped sheet of paint-stained polyethylene. In bright sunlight a dozen or so feet above the high-tide line he props the two-by-fours into an upside-down conical frame, ties the poles together at the top with a piece of found wire, and covers the frame with the plastic sheeting. Two hours later he’s built himself an eight-foot-tall rainproof teepee with a wide view of the Bay and the skyscrapers of downtown Calusa. Sweet.
He stashes his belongings inside his teepee, then stands outside it for a moment in the late-afternoon breeze and admires his work. Things could be worse than they are, he notes. A ragged ridge of pink-edged clouds has moved in from the east. The sunset should be awesome. He scans the concrete islet to see if there’s anything else worth salvaging — a plastic cooler or some cooking utensils, maybe a bucket to use for a toilet. Finding nothing useful he glances into the darker recesses of the Causeway for the first time and realizes that he’s being watched. Probably has been watched from the beginning. He’s not as alone on his island as he thought.
It’s Paco. Senor On-Your-Own. Still the bodybuilder, still wearing his muscle shirt and nylon gym shorts, his Harley on its kickstand parked off to one side, his old weight bench on the other, some kind of junk wood and wallboard shanty behind him. Wherever Paco fled when the hurricane hit it must have been deemed illegal once the storm passed out to sea. The dude had nowhere else to go.
By way of greeting him Paco slowly lifts and folds his ham-size arms across his chest and nods his heavy head twice. The Kid nods back. Having adjusted his sight to the darkness back there he can make out now a few more shadowy figures lurking amid what appears to be the beginnings of a resettlement, one that’s modeled on the old settlement but a lesser more dilapidated version — a collection of hovels that he initially thought was just trash and tide- and storm-tossed wreckage heaped up against the inner supports of the Causeway. It’s the squalid remnants of the old colony. And the remnants of the colonists.
Coming forward from the gloom is P.C. wearing a crooked smile of recognition although he’s not exactly welcoming the Kid with open arms and beyond P.C. stands the Greek holding a large adjustable wrench in his hand and behind him are a half-dozen other impassive men — among them red-haired Ginger, the goofball Froot Loop and finally in his navy blue lawyer’s suit and stained white shirt and loosened tie there stands the Shyster. They all regard the Kid with an expression mingling welcome with suspicion that to the Kid signifies a reluctant acceptance of his presence among them. It’s as if thanks to the chaos of the hurricane the men living under the Causeway pulled off a mass jailbreak, but then one by one each man was hunted down in most cases probably by no one other than himself, captured by himself and returned by himself to his cell. They gaze almost mournfully out of the shadows at him, as if his return is the final proof of their collective defeat. As if their last hope after the storm was that he alone of the original settlers, the last of the lost colonists and the first, the youngest and the scrappiest, had somehow permanently escaped. And now by coming back to the Causeway he’s let them down. Of all the settlers the Kid was the one thought most likely to survive above the Causeway among normal people. And if the Kid is back it’s certain that those who haven’t yet returned will soon be caught and brought back too — by the police or their parole officers or caseworkers. Or if not caught and returned by the authorities, they like the Kid will catch and bring themselves back here on their own. There’s no escape from under the Causeway.
No one steps forward to greet him; no one says anything.
Wussup, Paco, the Kid finally says.
You pitch your tent too far out in the light, man. They can see you from the highway.
P.C. says, New rules, Kid. We can’t stay here unless no one can see us. So you better take down your tent and move it and your shit all the way inside like the rest of us.
The Kid squints and looks past the group into the jumbled damp darkness that surrounds them. No way, man. You guys’re like fucking bats scared of the light living inside a wall. I ain’t moving in there.