They chose Tequesta Bank because of the Indian mounds and because it was uninhabited and no one was likely to bother them. They'd built a cabin on the highest mound and they had had beer parties and brought girls and sometimes just sat looking at the stars, the two of them, talking on the high mound by a campfire which flickered in a wind that blew straight out of Cuba.
Ford ducked under a spider the size of his fist. He stopped and watched the spider longer than he normally would, impatient with the charge of nostalgia, wanting it to fade. He noted that the spider was rebuilding its web, the upper half first, and that it was a golden-silk spider, a female that had recently made a kill. Probably some kind of butterfly judging from the orange dust clinging to the hair on her legs. What was butterfly dust called? Prismatic-something . . . prismatic scales, right. He stood looking at the spider; stood in the silence of his own heartbeat, his own breathing, the whine of cicadas; stood wondering why Rafe had yet to yell some greeting; realized that something really might be wrong. Eighteen years ago it could have been the prelude to a practical joke: a surprise party with a keg of beer and half the football team stashed in the bushes. But not now. Not after the urgency in Hollins's voice. Rafe was here and he was alone and he had yet to make the first sound.
Why?
Down the mound, the path disappeared into shadows.
Ford leaned and picked up a chunk of old conch shell, discarded it, then picked up a broken limb about the size of a baseball bat. Carrying the club, he moved quietly through the brush and up the highest mound, his heart pounding.
When he got to the top, he stopped again. To the west was the bay. He could see the domino shapes of condominiums on the barrier island that fronted the Gulf of Mexico three miles away: Sandy Key, the island where Rafe said he had lived. Back in high school, Sandy Key had been an undeveloped spit of land just beyond the county line, a good place for parties because it was outside the jurisdiction of the local sheriff's department. Now there was a causeway and the steady thunk-a-thunk of heavy construction. To the east was the grove of avocado and gumbo limbo trees where they had built the cabin. Ford stepped into the shadows of the grove, surprised to see the rotted walls of the cabin still standing and at how small it seemed; surprised that someone had thrown fresh palmetto limbs over the top . . . and then he saw what he knew must be Rafe Hollins and nothing could have surprised him more than that.
The Rafe Hollins Ford remembered best was still eighteen, long, lean, with a Kirk Douglas chin on a hell-raiser's face and hands that could palm a basketball. This Rafe Hollins was not a man but a thing, a bloated creature with a huge gray head and a shrunken distended body turning slowly in the late-afternoon shadows, his arms slack, his eyes dull slits, hanging from the limb of an avocado tree with a rope around his neck.
Ford stood motionless for a time taking it all in but still not making any sense of it, thinking Come on, Rafe, come on, say something because this is one poor excuse for a joke....
The vultures not in the air were perched, looking heavy as bowling balls in the sagging trees. A black vulture with a cowl like an Egyptian priest dropped down onto Rafe's shoulder, and the rope creaked as the bird's head rotated to feed.
"Hey . . . get away!"
The vulture lifted away unconcerned as Ford ran toward it. Two more birds landed on the ground behind him, their gray heads as high as Rafe's knees. Ford whirled and threw the club just to scare them. Threw it above them, but one of the vultures tried to fly at precisely the wrong time and the club caught it across the chest. The bird spun to the ground with a guttural scream that set off the other vultures and they all flushed from the trees at once, making a noise in the leaves that sounded like rain but, Ford realized, was excrement.
He covered his head for a moment, then didn't even bother because it was useless to try. The injured bird continued to thrash, making it impossible to think about anything else, so he chased the vulture down, penned it with his foot, fought the beak and the six-foot wingspan, and snapped its neck, trying to make it quick and painless. Then he stared at the fresh gouge on his hand, thinking I survive two revolutions and a hemorrhoid operation so I can come back to Florida and die of infection from a vulture bite. Boy.
He slung the bird back into the bushes, wiped his hands on his pants, looked up. Rafe Hollins turned in the breeze to face him then turned away again, his expression like something Ford had once seen in Amazonia, Peru, a shrunken head with its lips sewn shut, that same look of humiliation, of total submission. He stared at the corpse, which had once been his best friend, wondering why he felt no grief, none, only a sense of loss like seeing something useful wasted, nothing more. Only a few weeks ago an artist friend of his, Jessica McClure, had said, You've got a cold, cold eye, Ford—her talking in that analytical, dreamy way, half prophet, half Ph.D. The way you study all the data trying to make it fit because you won't abide anything that can't be weighed or measured. Trouble is, some things don't fit, never will fit, but you still go plunking along collecting pieces, weighing the evidence, trying to neaten up a world that seems way too emotional and untidy. . . .
Half of which was probably pure invention, but the part about the cold eye Ford now wondered about. All through high school he and Rafe had been family, done everything together. They'd had one of those closer-than-brother relationships in which they were continually plotting against each other, trying to gain advantage, laughing like hell at making life into such a game. Rafe, it seemed to Ford, usually got the better of it; not that it mattered because they were like Hope and Crosby on the road, best friends trying to catch each other out. But now the lean handsome one, Rafe, had taken a really big fall, and Ford didn't feel anything inside even close to tears, just that sense of waste.
Maybe his eyes had grown cold; maybe he'd always been cold. Or maybe four years in West Africa, a year in South America, and five years in Central America had leached away most of the emotional niceties. But Ford didn't believe that, not really. After all, before yesterday, he and Rafe hadn't exchanged a word or a letter in more than eighteen years, aside from those two brief talks, so it was almost as if a stranger had gone and gotten himself killed.
Or killed himself. . . .
Suicide?
It was the first time suicide had crossed Ford's mind. At first he had just thought dead, Rafe's dead, then he thought murder, as if maybe the Indios had gotten to him. But now the thought of suicide flashed. He didn't like the idea; couldn't reconcile it with the Rafe he had talked with the previous morning, but here it was. Ford took a few steps closer, his hands at his sides like someone in an art gallery. He began to study the body with clinical interest.
First things first: Could he be positive it was Rafe?
Not much was left of the face or ears; the eyes were gone. But what was there seemed to match—the heavy jaw, the high cheeks and broad forehead beneath a plucked mange-patch of black hair. The clothes seemed about right, too. The corpse wore khaki slacks, not the cheap kind but expensive ones with cargo pockets, and a black knit shirt with a tiny tarpon over the breast. Rafe had always liked nice clothes. There was a bulge in the rear pants pocket, and Ford removed a leather billfold. Inside was an out-of-date Visa card, a photo of a seventeen-year-old Rafe Hollins in full football gear throwing a jump pass, a photo of an older Rafe Hollins holding a tiny, wide-eyed infant, and four dollars in cash. That was all. Ford used the tail of his shirt, first to wipe the billfold clean, then as a glove as he placed the billfold back into the rear pocket.