“Hey!” Shreave called out. “Over here!”
The man appeared not to have heard him.
“Help!” Shreave steadied the headlamp, trying to center the light on the passing boat. “Hey, you! Come get me!” he yelled.
The man continued to look the other way. Shreave was nettled; even if the guy was unable to hear him over the motor, he surely saw the flickering from the headlamp.
“What the hell’s the matter with you!” Shreave hollered angrily. “I’m lost out here! I need help!”
The flat-bottomed craft was moving so sluggishly that Shreave wondered if it had mechanical problems. He saw no smoke when he shined the light at the engine, although he noticed two ropes leading tautly from the transom to a lumpish object dragging in the backwash. Shreave couldn’t see what the stranger was towing, and he didn’t care. The guy obviously knew his way around the islands, and Shreave desperately needed a ride out.
“Hey! Over here!” Shreave shouted again. “Are you fucking blind?”
The stranger stiffened, turned and scowled into the light. Shreave sucked in his breath.
It was Genie’s Indian. The one who’d called him a “damn litterbug” and left him to rot in the poinciana tree.
The man’s response was firm and unambiguous. He took his hand off the tiller and held it up, flush in the headlamp’s beam, extending the middle digit for Shreave’s mournful contemplation.
Shreave dimmed the light, slumped low in the canoe and waited for the sound of the motorboat to fade away. Then he picked up the paddle, cursed under his breath and went back to work.
Sister Shirelle was bent over at the waist, bracing her arms against a storm-toppled pine, when she saw the light.
“Look there!”
Brother Manuel was deeply absorbed-gripping her by the hips, thrusting from behind while breathlessly invoking a deity. His robe was undone and his chest beaded with perspiration. The other moaners were well out of earshot, dancing and spinning around the fire pit on the beach.
“Brother Manuel, there’s a man on the water!”
And indeed there was a man, pale and spectral, wading across the shallows and pulling a fruity-colored canoe. A harsh pinhead of light shone from the stranger’s brow.
“Help me!” he called out.
Brother Manuel withdrew from Sister Shirelle and hastily tucked his unholy wand.
“Is it Him?” Sister Shirelle rose upright, tugging at her undergarments. “Is it our Savior, home at last from His divine voyage?”
“Hush, child,” whispered Brother Manuel. “Compose thyself.”
The man sloshed ashore and, after removing a canvas satchel, flipped the canoe to drain the water. He was garbed in a flower-print shirt and an alarming green pouch of a swimsuit, to which Sister Shirelle’s gaze was wantonly drawn.
“Are you ailing?” Brother Manuel inquired.
“Freezin’ my cojones off,” the man said. “I’d kill for one of those bathrobes.”
“What’s your name, brother?”
“Boyd.”
“And how long have you been at sea, Brother Boyd?”
“Too damn long,” the man replied through chattering teeth.
“We’ve been waiting for you!” Sister Shirelle exclaimed.
“You have?”
“Tell him, Brother Manuel!”
The self-anointed pastor of the First Resurrectionist Maritime Assembly for God was skeptical. His sermonizing to the contrary, he’d never seriously expected to run across Christ the Almighty during a camping trip in the Everglades. However, not wishing to dampen Sister Shirelle’s spiritual fervor-which often overflowed rather lustily-Brother Manuel kept his doubts to himself.
“We’ve been faithfully awaiting a visitation,” he acknowledged to the stranger, “or any holy sign from the Father.”
“Know what? I just wanna go home. You folks got a boat?”
“The hands! Behold the man’s hands!” Sister Shirelle began to hop, her formidable and unbound breasts jouncing in tandem.
With impatience Brother Boyd directed the headlamp toward his own pudgy palms, which were raw and oozing as a result of his tumble from the tree. He failed to behold the stigmata resemblance.
“I had a fall,” he explained.
Brother Manuel nodded. “As have we all. Come.”
They led the stranger down the shore to the campfire, where the other moaners ceased their dancing and fell quietly into a half circle. The women were eyeing Brother Boyd’s bathing attire in a manner that made him uncomfortable.
“Can I borrow one of those robes?” he asked. “How about a beach towel?”
Brother Manuel steepled his long pink fingers and began: “Sister Shirelle and I were praying together in the woods, communing most strenuously, when we saw a mysterious light-like a star descending from the heavens-and then, lo, this weary mariner appeared on the water. Show them your hands, Brother Boyd.”
The moaners gasped at the sight. “It is He!” exulted one of the women.
“No, wait!” one of the others interjected. “He could be that poacher-the lawless heathen we were warned about by the visitor with the boy. He was said to have a damaged hand, remember?”
Brother Boyd looked stricken. “I’m not a poacher. I’m in telemarketing!”
Sister Shirelle hastened to his defense. “But there are wounds on both His hands, not just one. And He has arrived alone by sea, exactly as foretold by Brother Manuel, bearing a cargo of forgiveness and salvation for all worldly souls. His long, lonely crossing is over.”
Another female moaner raised an arm. “What’s up with the Speedos?”
Sensing that doubt was coiling like a serpent amid his flock, Brother Manuel sidled close to Brother Boyd and whispered, “I’ll take it from here, dog.”
“Hey, are those rib eyes on the fire?”
“Sisters, brothers, listen and be joyful!” Brother Manuel commanded. “Tonight He appears to us just as He departed this world more than two thousand years ago-nearly naked, wounded and pure of soul. Instead of thorns He is crowned with light, the symbol of hope and rebirth!”
Here Brother Manuel spread his arms to righteously welcome Brother Boyd, who appeared to the other moaners as somewhat lacking in serenity.
“What are you goony birds talkin’ about?” he demanded.
Sister Shirelle gently spun him by the shoulders, the beam of his headlamp falling upon the stark wooden cross that was planted on the dune.
Brother Boyd stared and said, “You’re shitting me.”
Sister Shirelle put her plump lips to his ear. “See? We’ve been expecting you.”
“Rejoice! It is Him!” a bearded moaner crowed.
“No, He!” corrected the woman who had earlier commented upon Brother Boyd’s swimwear.
Sister Shirelle pressed the case: “Can there be any doubt that He is our Savior? Is today not the Epiphany?”
The moaners murmured excitedly, and then one spoke up: “But wait, sister-the Epiphany was, like, last Thursday.”
“Close enough!” boomed Brother Manuel.
Whereupon a spontaneous frolic broke out, the moaners twirling and gyrating euphorically around the fire. Bottles of cabernet were passed around, and before long Brother Boyd worked up the nerve to ask Sister Shirelle if they intended to nail him to their homemade cross. She laughed volcanically and tweaked his chin and said he was an extremely cute Messiah.
“I’m in sales,” he whispered confidentially.
“And a carpenter, too, don’t forget.”
“C’mon, sis, tell me-where’s your boat?”
“As if you needed one,” she said with a wink.
His headlamp illuminated the blue stenciling on the front of her white robe. “Four Seasons, huh? Not bad,” Brother Boyd remarked. “That’s my kinda religion.”
“Are those goose pimples on your arms?”
“Duh, yeah. It’s cold as a well digger’s ass out here.”
“Well, we definitely can’t have our Savior catching pneumonia. Here-” With an operatic flourish, Sister Shirelle shed the plush hotel garment and presented it to him.