Which is what they were preparing to do when she confronted them at the boat after her morning swim.
"Take those ridiculous pants off your face." One hand zipping up the top of the jumpsuit, the other clenching Chub's pistol, which earlier Amber had removed from the Reel Luvand concealed in some bushes near the campfire.
"Take 'em off. You look like a pervert." Then shooting once at Chub's feet, just to find out what it felt like; a huge heavy gun going off. And also to make the rednecks understand she was serious and would not negotiate with any grown man wearing shorts over his face.
"Now, what did you guys do with Shiner?"
Nothing, they replied.
"He went off to have a piss," Bodean Gazzer said.
"Well, he's gone."
"Bull," said Chub.
"Let's go find him. Get some clothes on," Amber said.
"Not jest yet." Chub, grinning lopsidedly. "Sure you don't see some-thin' you like? Somethin' hot 'n' tasty?"
He waggled his sunburned peter, inspiring Amber to fire once again. This time the Colt nearly jumped out of her hand. The slug passed between Bode and Chub, snapping through the mangroves and splooshing in the water.
As leaves and twigs fluttered into the boat, the demon crab unaccountably dropped off Chub's ripening hand. The animal was long dead, it turned out. Chub jabbed the rancid blue husk with a bare toe and muttered, "Motherfucker."
Bode Gazzer raised his arms for Amber. "OK, sweet thing, quit with the damn gun. You made yer point."
"Tell your friend."
"Don't worry. He's on board."
Chub said, "Like hell. Not till we play some lollipop, her and me."
Bode scowled disgustedly. The man was unbelievable; no sense of priorities. No sense at all.
Amber said, "He's pushing it, Colonel."
"What can I say? Sometimes he's a complete fuckhead."
"Think I should shoot him?"
"I'd rather you didn't."
Chub was studying his infected hand like it was a busted carburetor. "I still got the damn claw, though."
"One thing at a time," Bode Gazzer told him. "Put on your clothes and let's go find the skinhead."
"Not until my darling Amber blows me."
"She's gonna blow you, awright. She's gonna blow your sorry ass to kingdom come."
Chub said, "No, I don't believe so. I believe I'm due for some good luck."
"Hell's thatmean?"
"It means Amber ain't gone shoot nobody. That's azackly what it means."
He stepped toward her; an exaggerated Hitler-style goose step. Then another. By now she was gripping the pistol with both fists.
"He's asking for it," she warned Bode.
"So I see. My opinion, it's the damn glue."
Chub clucked. "It ain't the glue, Colonel. It's true fucking love."
With a giddy warble he attacked. Amber pulled the trigger but all she heard was a flat harmless click. The gun didn't fire the cylinder turned, the hammer fell, but no slug came out.
Because there was no bullet in that particular chamber; instead, a small piece of sand-gritted paper, bleached by sweat and saltwater, and folded tightly to fit the small round hole. If she'd been able to remove the paper and examine it, Amber would have seen that it bore six numerals and the likeness of a pink flamingo, official mascot of the Florida lottery.
"I tole you!" Chub crowed.
He was naked on the ground, and waving with his undamaged arm the recaptured Colt Python. Pinned in the sand and seaweed beneath him was Amber, struggling in silence.
"I tole you, yes I did." Chub, broke into coarse, vicious laughter. "I tole you fuckers I was due for some decent luck!"
Bodean Gazzer hadn't had sex in eleven months, his excuse for celibacy being that it was against the Bible to consort with nonwhite women, and all the white women he met demanded too much money. Still, his feverish pent-up desires regarding the fragrant and available Amber were clouded by misgivings.
Her unwillingness to service the White Clarion Aryans was evident from her vigorous resistance to Chub as he ungently disrobed her. And although Bode was intoxicated by the vision of Amber's breasts spilling out of the Mossy Oak camo, he nonetheless was disturbed to be participing in the rape and that's where this was headed of a white Christian woman of European descent. In fact, Bode would've been reluctant even if she were a Negro or a Cuban, not so much for the immorality of the crime but for the legal risks. Unlike Chub, Bode Gazzer had spent enough months behind bars to know it wasn't worth knocking off a Burger King or boosting a Cadillac, or even two minutes of humping natural-blond pussy. Rape was felony time, and in Florida the rape of a white woman even by a white man could mean a long stretch in not-so-scenic Starke.
Bode also knew that Chub, in his current frame of mind, was immune to such logic. All Bode could do was hold the Colt revolver and stand there, hoping it wouldn't take long, hoping they wouldn't make much noise. The shiver of arousal sparked by Amber's nudity had already died of distraction at the heaving, pink-butted spectacle of Chub; grimy and grunting and drool-flecked. The arresting sights and smells graphically reminded Bode Gazzer of his partner's many hygienic lapses and killed any spark of temptation to join in the fun.
"Hol' still! Hol' still!" Chub kept huffing.
But the agile Amber would not.
"Hurry up," Bode said, checking over his shoulder. The skinhead Shiner would go ballistic if he saw what was happening.
"I can't get it in! Goddamn, make her hoi' still!" Chub used his weight to constrain her. Ribbons of brown turtle grass clung to his thighs.
"Use the damn gun!" he hollered at his partner.
"Shit." Bode knelt and placed the barrel to Amber's head. She stopped squirming. Behind a tangle of yellow-blond hair, her eyes narrowed with acceptance; not coldness and wild anger, like that crazy Negro woman up in Grange.
This is the way it's supposed to be, Bode mused. You see the gun, you quit trying to fight. "Be still now," he said. "It'll be over soon."
"Listen to the man." Chub seized Amber's wrists, pulling them away from her chest. "And do your lips ... all pushed out and pouty ... you know, like how Kim Basinger does."
Amber said, "OK, on one condition. Tell me your name."
"What for!"
"I can't make love to a man," she said, "unless I know his name. I just can't do it, I'd rather die."
Bode Gazzer told Chub: "Don't be a idiot."
Chub, pinning Amber's arms over her head, catching his breath. "Gillespie," he said. "Onus Gillespie."
Bode was relieved it was such a strange name, he thought his partner had made it up.
Coolly Amber said, "Pleased to meet you, Otis."
"Naw, it's Onus.O-n-u-s."
"Oh. Mine's Amber." She blinked innocently. "Amber Bernstein. That's B-e-r-n-s-t-e-i-n."
It was as if Bodean Gazzer had been mule-kicked in the gut.
"Get off!" he shrieked at Chub.
"No sir!"
"But didn't you hear? She's ... she's a Jew!"
"I don't care if she's Vietcong, I'm gone stick my weenie in."
"No! NO! Get off, and that's an order!"
Chub closed his eyes and tried to block out Bode's carping. Hilton Head,he told himself. You and Blondie are at Hilton Head, doin it on the beach. Naw, even better you're doin' it on the balcony of your brand-new condo!
But Amber's obstinate wriggling was giving him fits; it was like trying to screw an eel. Plus, in his glue-dazed condition, Chub found himself wielding something less than a world-class, diamond-cutter erection.
"No white Christian man" Bode, somber as a coroner, leaned over them "no white Christian man shall give his seed to an infidel child of Satan!"
Amber interrupted her evasions to mention that her father was a rabbi. Bode Gazzer emitted a mournful groan. Chub glared up at him. "You worry about your own damn seed. Now back off so's I kin plant mine."