At daybreak he would start his march.
They broke a fresh trail through the hardwoods. Bonnie was worried that Snapper would be able to use it to find his way out. "Not across a lake," Skink said.
She hooked her fingers in Augustine's belt as they swam. The governor hoisted the torch, his boots and the backpack over his head, to keep them dry. Augustine was astounded that the man could swim so well with a fractured collarbone. The crossing took less than fifteen minutes, though it seemed an eternity to Bonnie. She was unable to convince herself that crocodiles shunned firelight.
Afterwards they rested on shore. Skink, struggling into his laceless boots: "If he gets out of here, he deserves to be free."
Augustine said, "But he won't."
"No, he'll go the wrong way. That's his nature."
Then Skink was moving again, an orange flame weaving through the trees ahead of them. Bonnie, hurrying to keep up: "So something'll get him. Panthers or something."
Augustine said, "Nothing so exotic, Mrs. Lamb."
"Then what?"
"Time. Time will get him."
"Exactly!" the governor boomed. "It's the arc of all life. For Lester we merely hasten the sad promenade. Tonight we are Darwin's elves."
Bonnie quickened her pace. She felt happy to be with them, out in the middle of nowhere. Ahead on the trail, Skink was singing to himself. Feeling the horns sprouting from his temples, she supposed.
Two hours later they emerged from the woods. A rip of wind braced them.
"Oh brother," Augustine said, "any second now."
With a grimace, Skink removed the backpack. "This is for your hike."
"It's not that far."
"Take it, just in case."
Bonnie said, "God, your eye."
A stalk of holly berries garnished the empty withered socket. The governor groped at himself. "Damn. I guess it fell out."
Bonnie could hardly look at him.
"It's all right," he said. "I got a whole box of extras somewhere."
She said, "Don't be foolish. Go to the mainland with us."
"No!"
A mud-gray wall of rain came hissing down the road. Bonnie shivered as it hit them. Skink leaned close to Augustine: "Give it a couple three months, at least."
"You bet."
"For what?" Bonnie asked.
"Before I try to find that place again," Augustine said.
"Why go back?"
"Science," said Augustine.
"Nostalgia," said the governor.
The squall doused the torch, which he lobbed into a stand of red mangroves. He tucked his hair under the plastic shower cap and said good-bye. Bonnie kissed him on the chin and told him to be careful. Augustine gave an affable salute.
For a while they could make out his tall shape, stalking south, under violet flashbursts of high lightning. Then he was gone. The weather covered him like a shroud.
They turned and went the other way. Augustine walked fast on the blacktop, the backpack jouncing on his bare shoulders.
"Hey, the scar is looking good," Bonnie said.
"You still like it?"
"Beauty." She could see it vividly whenever the sky lit up. "A corkscrew in the shower-you weren't kidding?"
"God, I wish," said Augustine.
They heard a car behind them. As it approached, the headlights elongated their shadows on the pavement. Augustine asked Bonnie if she wanted to hitch a ride. She said no. They stepped off the road to let the car go by.
Soon they reached the tall bridge at Card Sound. Augustine said it was time to rest. He unzipped the backpack to see what the governor had packed: a coil of rope, two knives, four bandannas, a tube of antiseptic, a waterproof box of matches, a bottle of fresh water, chlorine tablets, some oranges, a stick of bug repellent, four cans of lentil soup and a tin of unidentifiable dried meat.
Augustine and Bonnie shared the water, then started up the bridge.
Needles of rain stung Bonnie's bruises as she climbed the long slope. She tasted brine on the wind, and wasn't embarrassed to clutch Augustine's right arm-the gusts were so strong they nearly lifted her off the ground.
"Maybe it's another hurricane!"
"Not hardly," he said.
They stopped at the top. Augustine threw the pistol as far as he could. Bonnie peered over the concrete rail to watch the splash, a silent punctuation. Augustine placed his hands firmly on her waist, holding her steady. She liked the way it felt, the trust involved.
Far below, the bay was frothed and corrugated; a treacherously different place from the first time Bonnie saw it. Not a night for dolphins.
She drew Augustine closer and kissed him for a long time. Then she spun him around and groped in the backpack.
"What're you doing?" he shouted over the slap ot the rain.
"Hush."
When he turned back, her eyes were shining. In her hands was the coil of rope.
"Tie me to the bridge," she said.
EPILOGUE
The marriage of Bonnie Brooks and Max Lamb was discreetly annulled by a judge who happened to be a skiing companion of Max Lamb's father. Max returned to Rodale & Burns, pouring his energies into a new advertising campaign for Old Faithful Root Beer. Spurred by Max's simpleminded jingle, the company soon reported a 24 percent jump in domestic sales. Max was promoted to the sixth floor and put in charge of an $18 million account for a low-fat malt liquor called Steed.
By the end of the year, Max and Edie Marsh were engaged. They got an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where Edie became active in charity circles. Two years after the hurricane, while attending a Kenny G concert to benefit victims of a Colombian mud slide, Edie met the same young Kennedy she'd long ago tried so avidly to debauch. She was mildly amazed when, while greeting her, he slipped a tongue in her ear. Max said it surely was her imagination.
Brenda Rourke recovered fully from her injuries and returned to the Highway Patrol. She requested and received a transfer to northern Florida, where she and Jim Tile built a small house on the Ochlockonee River.
For Christmas he gave her an engraved gold replica of her mother's wedding ring, and two full-grown rottweilers from Stuttgart.
After being rescued in the ocean off Islamorada, Avila was taken to Miami's Krome Detention Center and processed as "Juan Gomez Duran," a rafter fleeing political oppression in Havana. He was held at Krome for nine days, until a Spanish-language radio station sponsored his release. In return, brave "Senor Gomez" agreed to share the details of high-seas escape with radio listeners, who were moved by his heart-wrenching story but puzzled by his wildly inaccurate references to Cuban geography. Afterwards Avila packed up and moved to Fort Myers, on the west coast of Florida, where he was immediately hired as a code-enforcement officer for the local building-and-zoning department. During his first four weeks on the job, Avila approved 212 new homes a record for a single inspector that stands to this day. Nineteen months after the hurricane, while preparing a sacrifice to Change on the patio of his luxurious new waterfront town house, Avila was severely bitten on the thigh by a hydrophobic rabbit. Too embarrassed to seek medical attention, he died twenty-two days later in his hot tub. In honor of his short but productive tenure as a code inspector, the Lee County Home Builders Association established the Juan Gomez Duran Scholarship Fund.