The burly man squatted down and sighed. “Jesus, who the hell are you? Wonder Woman?”
For a split second, I thought of how as a little girl I would sneak down to the beach in the middle of the night and let the waves wash up over my bare feet. I pretended the sea foam was magic, and if I stood there long enough, the magic would seep up my legs into my whole body. Then I’d stretch my arms out. Once my body had soaked up enough magic, I could rise off the sand and fly through the air. I’d form a picture in my mind of where I wanted to go, and then my body would take me there. I could see through walls, so I’d hover over my school and look inside all the empty classrooms, or I’d go to the firehouse and sit on the roof to watch my father inside, playing cards and dominoes with his fireman friends.
I slipped my backpack off. “No, I used to be a sheriff’s deputy.”
“Ah. That explains it.” There were beads of perspiration on his forehead, and his dress shirt was wet under the arms.
I said, “You better sit down. You look like you’re about to keel over.”
“I probably am. You nearly got us killed!”
I looked down at Baldy’s face. His eyes were closed now, and his shirt was bunched up at his neck and soaked in blood. I loosened the top buttons just in case they were restricting his breathing and then mustered up a smile for my burly accomplice. “Well, thanks for your help. I don’t think I could have gotten him out of that car by myself.”
He nodded. “You’ve got blood on your lip.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll be okay.”
“I mean, you should probably get that off.”
I knew what he was getting at. There are all kinds of nasty blood-borne diseases, and whether or not Baldy here had any of them, I certainly didn’t want his blood anywhere near my mouth.
I pulled some gauze out of my backpack. “It’s okay. My car was at the back of the pileup. I think I bit my lip when I got rear-ended.”
He stood up and stuck his hands down in his pockets. “Oh, good. I mean, it’s not good you got rear-ended, but you might want to make sure you don’t get any of this guy’s blood on that.”
“What are you? A doctor?”
A faint look of guilt flashed across his face. He extended his hand. “Dr. Philip Dunlop.”
I shook his hand. “Oh. Dixie Hemingway. Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah. I guess I better go see what the driver of that truck looks like.”
A crowd of people had formed around us, and as he made his way through them I heard him say, “Alright, people, give ’em some air,” as if we were on some kind of TV hospital drama.
I wadded the gauze up and gently dabbed it at the blood on Baldy’s head. He opened his eyes and looked around, checking out his new surroundings.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Help is on the way.”
He looked at me and frowned, and then groaned as he lifted his head off the sidewalk to see past me into the street.
I said, “Oh, no, sir, please don’t try to move.”
His frown disappeared, and again a strange smile played across his lips. I turned to see what he was looking at, but there was nothing but the row of cars stopped in the street. I could see the young girl that had rear-ended me pacing up and down the sidewalk, holding her cell phone to her ear and gesticulating wildly with her free hand, and just opposite us was the cranky old woman in the black Cadillac. She was staring at us with a look of utter disgust, as if Baldy had ruined her entire day by nearly getting himself killed.
Just then a pair of black boots stepped into my field of vision. They were almost knee height, shined to a glossy, mirrorlike finish with steel toes and thick rubber heels. I recognized them immediately. They were the same boots I’d worn every day for years—the boots of a Sarasota County sheriff’s deputy.
I looked up to find Deputy Jesse Morgan staring down at me over the frames of his mirrored sunglasses, which he’d slid partly down the bridge of his sharp nose. He had broad shoulders, a buzzed military-type haircut, and a lone diamond stud in his left ear. I knew him, not from having worked for the department—he joined the force after I left—but from several other unfortunate occasions when our paths had crossed. He’s about as fun as a bag of rats, but I respect him.
“Dixie,” he said, his lips pursed to one side.
I looked down at my cargo shorts, which were smeared with blood. There were red splotches all over my white T-shirt, my hands were covered in blood, and there were red streaks running up and down my arms and legs. I wasn’t sure what Deputy Morgan was thinking at that particular moment, but let’s just say this wasn’t the first time he’d found me kneeling over a listless, bloody body.
“Don’t look at me,” I said. “He was like this when I found him.”
2
I’ve never been a smoker. My grandfather smoked Camels, unfiltered. Sometimes he’d have several cigarettes going at the same time. He’d be sitting on the deck after dinner, listening to the waves roll in, his cigarette precariously balanced on the edge of the hand-painted clamshell ashtray I made for him in the fourth grade. He’d get up, stretch, and go inside to grab a beer. Then he’d forget what he’d gone inside for and settle down on the couch with an ice-cold Coke, light up another cigarette, and watch the Lawrence Welk show. Then he might leave that cigarette, wander into the kitchen to talk with my grandmother while she made dinner, and light up another cigarette.
It drove my grandmother bonkers, and it’s a wonder he didn’t burn the house down, but my point is I had lots and lots of opportunities to sneak a puff now and then. Only when I did, it felt like my throat was on fire and my lungs were about to explode right out of my chest. At school, all the cool girls gathered out behind the bleachers smoking cigarettes and talking about homework and boys. I desperately wanted to be part of that crowd, but I just couldn’t hack it.
Deputy Morgan had asked me to wait around a bit to answer a few more questions about the accident since the old woman in the Cadillac and the burly doctor had both gone on their merry way the first chance they’d gotten. Except for the young girl in the car behind me and the driver of the landscaping truck, who’d surprisingly come through without a scratch, I was the only witness.
I had pulled into a parking spot so the cops could get the emergency vehicles through, and now I was sitting on the hood of the Bronco and wishing I had a cigarette. My grandfather always said they calmed his nerves, and mine felt like they’d just been through an extra spin cycle at the Laundromat. Two near-miss crashes was one thing, but pulling a bloody man from a ticking time bomb was a whole other ball of fish or kettle of wax or whatever it’s called.
The firemen had doused Baldy’s convertible immediately after the explosion, and miraculously the landscaping truck hadn’t caught fire, which was a good thing for everyone involved since it would surely have exploded, too, and probably taken out half of Ocean Boulevard with it.
From my perch on the hood of the Bronco, I watched as the EMTs loaded Baldy into the ambulance while the firemen lumbered around like astronauts in their big yellow helmets and puffy protective clothing, oxygen tanks strapped to their backs.
They weren’t taking any chances with Baldy’s car. It took two of them to hold the hose steady while another directed the water all around its smoldering carcass, poking the hose inside all the wheel wells and under the cracks of the buckled hood, like a hygienist cleaning teeth at the dentist’s office.
Even though I knew my brother, Michael, was off duty, I was still keeping an eye out for him. He’s been known to go racing out of the house in the middle of the night to help his buddies kill a fire, or as Michael says, “put the wet stuff on the hot stuff.” Our father was a fireman, and so was his father before him, so when Michael joined the squad just out of college, firefighting was already programmed in his genes. He’s blond and blue-eyed like me, but with broad shoulders and muscled arms, kind of like those cover models on the romance magazines they sell at the grocery store.