There was a rifle shot. He listened to the unmistakable echo of gunfire through the woods. Palmer rolled up his tarp and waited. Listening. Don’t move. Just wait. After a few minutes, a pine needle fell from a branch and landed between his neck and collar. Then he heard a noise. Thrashing. Something running. Something crashing though the forest. Palmer hid behind a mesh of honeysuckles.
A deer. Running. Stumbling. A young buck. He’d been shot in the shoulders and was bleeding profusely. The animal fell to its front knees, struggled and rose up. It walked a little farther and fell again. Got to put it out of its misery, Palmer thought. He held his knife and followed the deer. It tried to run, falling again.
“Hold on, boy. I know you’re hurting… hurting real bad.” The deer lay on its side, chest panting, and one large brown eye watching Palmer approach. He crouched down beside the dying animal. “I’ll help you go to sleep. You were in the wrong place, the friggin’ forest, at the wrong time, old friend. Some stupid half-ass, wannabe hunter couldn’t even do a clean shot. And here you are.” The deer’s breathing came in quick shallow bursts. Palmer held his left hand over the animal’s eye closest to him. Then he shoved the long blade in the center of the deer’s chest. Its body shuddered once and was still.
He hated the thought of gutting the deer. But to survive, he’d need the meat to eat. He traced the entrance of the bullet in the right shoulder. There was no exit wound. He cut into the animal’s stomach, within seconds he saw it — a brass bullet. He reached in the open cavity and extracted the bloody bullet, holding it in the palm of his hand. He knew the caliber of the bullet. A.30-.30.
He felt sure it came from the same gun that was used to kill the girl and her friend. Palmer stood. No longer could he butcher the carcass and eat the deer. He wiped his hands on leaves, dropped the bullet in a shirt pocket and headed in the direction where he thought he’d find the spring.
Palmer lay on his stomach and lowered his head beneath the surface. The water was cool to his parched skin. He opened his eyes and saw fish swimming in the swaying eelgrass. The underground water rose up through a large, craggy hole that was like peering into the mouth of a sapphire cave. It was the darkest blue he’d ever seen. Palmer wondered what it would be like to remove his clothes and swim for the opening, feel the rush of the spring over his body. Maybe God would see fit to christen him in water that surely must be flowing from a faraway, holy source.
THIRTY-TWO
We walked down my long, sloping yard to the dock, Max leading the way. It was about twenty minutes before sunset and the river and sun were working in splendid concert. The water was flat, moving in a slow dance through the jetties and oxbow. The sun dressed the old river in a new coat each evening. Tonight it appeared in nuggets of gold, shimmering in pools of cranberry, looking as if water danced with fire.
Elizabeth stood near the end of the dock. She held the wine glass in both hands and seemed to inhale like she hadn’t breathed in years. The evening air was kissed with the scent of honeysuckles and trumpet blossoms. A blue heron stalked the shallows, the water moving in shades of dark cherries around its legs. A hummingbird darted a few feet above the water and fed from trumpet blossoms on vines that hung from the seawall. The vines looked like a waterfall of green splattered in blooms of purple, white and pink. Three white herons flew over the river, their reflections racing below them.
“You’re right,” she said smiling and turning to me.
“About what?”
“The loss for words thing… I didn’t think places like this still existed in Florida.”
“It’ll get better as the sun says good night.”
“It has such a beautiful and primordial sense. Standing on the dock, I feel like I’m standing on some kind of time-warp platform, a place that allows me to visit as long as I don’t step off and change things.” The breeze played with her hair.
“You won’t change things because you don’t have the greed of a land developer in your blood. Too often county commissioners give them permits to rape the land, leaving Florida a shell of its former self.” I pointed across the river. “It won’t happen on that side of the St. Johns. That’s the eastern boundary of the Ocala National Forest. It’s about as primitive as land can get and still co-exist with man.”
Max paced the left side of the dock, a miniature growl stuttering in her throat. “Oh, look,” said Elizabeth, pointing toward cypress trees and the gnarled knees that protruded out of the water. “Max spotted an alligator.” A four-foot gator swam slowly out of the cypress recess on a trip to the other side of the river.
“Let’s sit and enjoy it. The show only gets better.” She sat next to me on one of the two wooden benches I’d built and installed on both sides of the dock, one facing east for sunrises, the other facing west for shows like tonight.
“This is paradise,” Elizabeth said, sipping her wine. She looked at me and smiled, the colors of the river bouncing in her eyes. “It’s good just to get away from the restaurant. I’ve been thinking of selling the business.”
“What would you do?”
“I don’t know. Molly’s graduating soon, and she’ll be gone. I haven’t traveled much in my life. I think I’d like that.”
“What’s wrong, Elizabeth?”
“What do you mean?’
“You’re still troubled. Something’s heavy on your mind. Want to talk about it?”
“Are you always that perceptive?”
“Sometimes. Years ago, when I’d question suspects, I sort of learned to read between the lies. Often people, perfectly honest folks, use similar body language when they’re trying to bury something… usually something painful.”
She laughed. “You and Sherri must have had a great marriage. I’m sure she never tried to be deceitful; bet she probably knew it’d be difficult around you.”
“We had no secrets.”
“That’s rare.”
“I miss our time together.”
“I can tell.”
“Now, can you also tell me what’s so heavy on your mind?”
“It’s Molly,” she sighed, her eyes watching the heron.
“What about Molly?”
“She’s so stubborn. She and Mark were returning to the wildlife refuge to release the atala butterflies near those coontie plants. I believe she mentioned them to you when you and Max were in our restaurant.”
“She did.”
“Anyway, she said she needed to go because she couldn’t postpone the release and risk the life cycle of the butterflies.”
“I told her I was worried, and she said there was nothing to worry about since they had that creepy Frank Soto in custody. She concluded by telling me that she and Mark never saw Soto in the forest to begin with, so in her mind, she wasn’t sure the two were even connected.”
“When is she doing the butterfly release?”
“Today, I think.”
“Have you tried calling her?”
“Three times. The last was right before I pulled in your driveway. It went to voice mail. I tried Mark’s phone, too. It did the same thing.”
I said nothing as I watched seeds from a dandelion float across the river.
“Am I just being an over-reactive mother to a college senior?”
“No, given the circumstances of late, that’s a natural reaction.”
“Maybe she’ll call tonight and, in her own animated way, tell me how grand it was to watch those dark blue butterflies start a happy new home out there somewhere.” She gestured across the river.