"Damn."
To Shiner's surprise, Amber began to sing as she went at him with the fishhook:
"Smile like a princess but bite like a snake
Got ice in her veins and a heart that don't ache.
She a nut-cutting bitch and that's no lie,
'em both off with a gleam in her eye ... "
Shiner said, "You got a nice voice."
"White Rebel Brotherhood," said Amber, "the song I told you about. It's killer." As she worked on the tattoo, her face was so close he could feel the soft breath on his skin.
He said, "Maybe I'll check out the CD."
"They do it more hip-hop."
"Yeah, I figgered."
"Am I hurting you?"
"Naw," Shiner lied. "Matter a fact, I was wonderin' if mebbe you could add somethin' extry. Under the eagle."
"Such as?"
"A swatch ticker," said Shiner.
"A what?"
"You know a swatch ticker. Like the Nazis had."
Amber glanced up sharply. "Swastika, you mean."
"Yeah!" He practiced the proper pronunciation. "That'd be cool, don'tcha think?"
"I don't know how to draw one. Sorry."
Shiner mulled it over, wincing every so often at the stabs of the fishhook. "I seen some good ones at the colonel's place," he said eventually, "if I can only 'member how they went. Look here ... "
He cleared a place in the sand and, using a forefinger, drew his version of the infamous German cross.
Amber shook her head. "That's not right."
"You sure?"
"You made it look like ... like something from the Chinese alphabet."
"Now hold on," said Shiner, but he was stumped. Just then Bodean Gazzer came stomping out of the mangroves. He sat near the fire and began wiping dew from his rifle. Shiner called him over.
"Colonel, can you do a swatch ticker?"
"No problem." Bode saw an opportunity to impress Amber at the kid's expense. He put down the gun and joined them under the tarp. With a sweep of a hand he erased Shiner's chicken-scratch swastika. In broad, sure strokes he sketched his own.
Amber briefly scrutinized the design before declaring it had "too many thingies." She was referring to the tiny stems that Bode had drawn on the ends of the secondary legs.
"You're wrong, sweetheart," he told her. "That's exactly how the Nasties done it."
Amber didn't argue, but she thought: Any serious white supremacist and Jew-hater would know how to make a swastika. Bode and Shiner's confusion on the topic reaffirmed her suspicions that the White Clarion Aryans were a pretty lame operation.
"OK, you're the expert," she said to Bode, and began reheating the point of the fishhook with a cigaret lighter.
Shiner felt his stomach jump. He had a hunch Amber was right the colonel's swastika was odd-looking; too many angles, and the lines seemed to point in the wrong directions. The damn thing was either upside down or inside out, Shiner couldn't tell which.
"Where you gone put it?" Bode asked.
"Under the bird." Amber tapped the designated location on Shiner's left biceps.
Bode said, "Perfect."
Shiner didn't know what to do. He didn't want to offend his commanding officer but he sure as hell didn't want another defective tattoo. And a fucked-up swastika would be difficult to fix, Shiner knew; difficult and painful.
Amber pressed a fresh batch of ice cubes against his arm. "Let me know when you can't feel the cold."
Bode Gazzer edged closer. "I wanna watch."
Shiner fixed his gaze on the blackened barb of the fishhook and instantly became dizzy.
"Ready?" asked Amber.
Shiner sucked in a deep breath he'd made up his mind. He'd do it for the brotherhood.
"Anytime," he said thickly, and locked his eyes shut.
At first he believed the screams he heard were his own. Then, as the animal howling tapered to a stream of profanity, Shiner recognized the timbre of Chub's voice.
Then Amber saying: "Oh my God."
And Bodean Gazzer: "What the hell!"
Shiner looked up to see Chub, nude except for Amber's orange shorts, which he wore upon his head. The shorts were pulled down as snugly as a skullcap, fitted at an angle to hide Chub's eye patch.
But that's not what made the others stare.
It was fastened to the end of Chub's right arm, which hung limp and heavy at his side. Where once there was only a pair of dead crab pincers there was now a complete live crab; one of the largest crabs Amber had ever seen, outside the Seaquarium.
"What do I do?" Chub pleaded. "Jesus Willy, what the fuck do I do?" Gummy-eyed from either sleep or glue, he displayed his other hand his functional hand for them to see. The knuckles were bloody knobs, from beating on the crustacean.
Amber cast her eyes at Shiner, who had not much experience with marine life and, thus, no counterstrategy. Despite his white brother's awful predicament, he couldn't help feeling a sense of reprieve. While the others stood transfixed by the sight of Chub, Shiner discreetly scuffed his feet across the dirt until he'd obscured Bode Gazzer's dubious swastika sketch.
"The crab!" Chub was bellowing. "The crab, it's after that g-g-god-damn claw!"
Gravely Bode surmised: "It's either trying to eat it or fuck it."
In its bloated and discolored state, Chub's hand could have been mistaken by a farsighted crab for another member of its species; that was Bode's hypothesis. Amber had nothing more plausible to offer.
Shiner asked, "How come he got your pants on his head?"
"God only knows," she said with a sigh.
Chub bolted toward the water. When the others caught up, they found him madly slinging his lifeless crab arm against the stump of an ancient buttonwood.
Shiner stepped forward. "I'll take care a that goddamn thing."
Bode was alarmed to see the Beretta glinting in the kid's paw. "Oh, no you don't," he said, snatching it away. "I'll do the honors, son."
"Do what?" Amber asked.
She felt Shiner's hand on her shoulder. "Better stand back," he advised.
Although he was unaware of it, Bodean Gazzer almost hadn't made it back to camp. Tom Krome and JoLayne Lucks almost caught him alone. They'd spotted him from about a hundred yards, moving across a salt flat on the crown of the island. The flat was wide and oval-shaped, ringed by mangroves and hurricane deadfall. Normally it filled up as a lagoon during the big autumn tides, but two days of heavy winds had blown out much of the water. Assault rifle in hand, Bode had scattered groups of stilt-legged birds as he clomped through the custardlike marl.
JoLayne and Tom had emerged from the tree line no more than two minutes behind him. They couldn't risk following the same path across the flat because there was no cover. So they kept low to the ground and skirted the fringe, picking their way through the stubborn mangroves. It was slow going; Tom leading the way, holding the springy branches until JoLayne could squeeze past with the Remington. When they reached the place where the stumpy redneck had reentered the woods, they could make out his heavy-footed crackles and crunches ahead of them. They moved forward carefully, baby-stepping, so he wouldn't hear.
Then the twig-snapping stopped. JoLayne tugged Tom's sleeve and motioned him to be still. She came up beside him and whispered: "I smell wood smoke."
The sound of conversation confirmed it. They were very near the robbers' camp; possibly too near. Quietly JoLayne and Tom backed off, concealing themselves in a tangled canopy. All around them, the tree limbs were necklaced with freshly spun spiderwebs. Tom leaned back, dazzled.
"Golden-orbed weaver," JoLayne said.
"It's gorgeous."
"Sure is." She found it interesting that he was so calm, almost relaxed, as long as they were on the chase. It was doing nothing that seemed to unsettle him, the sitting and waiting.
When JoLayne mentioned it, Tom said, "That's because I'd rather be the hunter than the hunted. Wouldn't you?"
"Well, we got pretty close to the bastard."
"Yeah. You're good at this."