Snapper went to find it. Edie Marsh said it was a lousy idea to siphon fuel from the car, since they might be needing speedy transportation. Snapper winked and told her not to worry. Off he went, ambling down the street, the garden hose coiled on his left shoulder.
Edie expropriated the pool chair. Tony Torres perked up. “Sc2>ot closer, darling.”
“Wonderful,” she said, under her breath.
The salesman fanned himself with the Miami Herald sports pages. He said, “It just now hit me: Men who steal their daughter-in-law’s mother-in-law. That’s pretty funny! He don’t look like a comedian, your partner, but that’s a good one.”
“Oh, he’s full of surprises.” Edie leaned back and closed her eyes. The sunshine felt good on her face.
The hurricane had transformed the trailer court into a sprawling aluminum junkyard. Ira Jackson found Lot 17 because of the bright yellow tape, that police had roped around the remains of the double-wide mobile home where his mother, Beatrice, had died. After identifying her body at the morgue, Ira Jackson had driven directly to Suncoast Leisure Village, to see for himself.
Not one trailer had made it through the storm.
From the debris, Ira Jackson pulled his mother’s Craftmatic adjustable bed. The mattress was curled up like a giant taco shell. Ira Jackson crawled inside and lay down.
He recalled, as if it were yesterday, the morning he and his mother met with the salesman to close the deal. The man’s name was Tony. Tony Torres. He was fat, gassy and balding, yet extremely self-assured. Beatrice Jackson had been impressed with his pitch.
“Mister Torres says it’s built to go through a hurricane.”
“I find that hard to believe, Momma.”
“Oh yes, Mister Jackson, your mother’s right. Our
prefabricated homes are made to withstand gusts up to one hundred twenty miles per hour. That’s d U.S. government regulation. Otherwise we couldn’t sell ’em!”
Ira Jackson was in Chicago, beating up some scabs for a Teamsters local, when he’d heard about the hurricane headed for South Florida. He’d phoned his mother and urged her to move to a Red Cross shelter. She said it was out of the question.
“I can’t leave Donald and Maria,” she told her son.
Donald and Maria were Mrs Jackson’s beloved miniature dachshunds. The hurricane shelter wouldn’t allow pets.
So Ira’s mother had stayed home out of loyalty to her. dogs and a misplaced confidence that the mobile-home salesman had told the truth about how safe it was. Donald and Maria survived the hurricane by squeezing under an oak credenza and sharing a rawhide chew toy to pass the long night. A neighbor had rescued them the next morning and taken them to a vet.
Beatrice Jackson was not so lucky. Moments after the hurricane stripped the north wall off her double-wide, she was killed by a flying barbecue that belonged to one of her neighbors. The imprint of the grill remained visible on her face, peaceful as it was, lying in the Dade County morgue.
Beatrice’s death had no effect whatsoever on the mood of her dachshunds, but her son was inconsolable. Ira Jackson raged at himself for letting his mother buy the trailer. It had been his idea for her to move to Florida-but that’s what guys in his line of work did for their widowed mothers; got them out of the cold weather and into the sunshine.
God help me, Ira Jackson thought, tossing restively
on the mechanical mattress. I should’ve held off another year. Waited till I could afford to put her in a condo.
That cocksucker Torres. A-hundred-twenty-mile-per-hour gusts. What kind of scum would lie to a widow?
“Excuse me!”
Ira Jackson bolted upright to see a gray-haired man in a white undershirt and baggy pants. Skin and bones. Wire-rimmed eyeglasses that made him look like a heron. In one arm he carried a brown shopping bag.
“Have you seen an urn?” he asked.
“Jesus, what?”
“A blue urn. My wife’s ashes. It’s like a bottle.”
Ira Jackson shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen it.” He rose to his feet. He noticed that the old man was shaking.
“I’m going to kill him,” he said angrily.