Three days later, with the storm bearing down on Miami, Snapper called Edie Marsh and said what the hell, let’s check it out. I got a guy, Snapper said, he knows about these things.
The guy’s name was Avila, and formerly he had worked as a building inspector for Metropolitan Dade
County. Snapper and Edie met him at a convenience store on Dixie Highway in South Miami. The rain was deceptively light, given the proximity of the hurricane, but the clouds hung ominously low, an eerie yellow gauze.
They went in Avila’s car, Snapper sitting next to Avila up front and Edie by herself in the back. They were going to a subdivision called Sugar Palm Hammocks: one hundred and sixty-four single-family homes platted sadistically on only forty acres of land. Without comment, Avila drove slowly through the streets. Many residents were outside, frantically nailing plywood to the windows of their homes.
“There’s no yards,” Snapper remarked.
Avila said, “Zero-lot lines is what we call it.”
“How cozy,” Edie Marsh said from the back seat. “What we need is a house that’ll go to pieces in the storm.”
Avila nodded confidently. “Take your pick. They’re all coming down.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah, honey, no shit.”
Snapper turned to Edie Marsh and said, “Avila ought to know. He’s the one inspected the damn things.”
“Perfect,” said Edie. She rolled down the window. “Then let’s find something nice.”
On instructions from the authorities, tourists by the thousands were bailing out of the Florida Keys. Traffic on northbound U.S. 1 was a wretched crawl, winking brake lights as far as the eye could see. Jack Fleming and Webo Drake had run out of beer at Big Pine. Now they
were stuck behind a Greyhound bus halfway across the Seven Mile Bridge. The bus had stalled with transmission trouble. Jack Fleming and Webo Drake got out of the car-Jack’s father’s car-and started throwing empty Coors cans off the bridge. The two young men were still slightly trashed from a night at the Turtle Kraals in Key West, where the idea of getting stranded in a Force Four hurricane had sounded downright adventurous, a nifty yarn to tell the guys back at the Kappa Alpha house. The problem was, Jack and Webo had awakened to find themselves out of money as well as beer, with Jack’s father expecting his almost-new Lexus to be returned … well, yesterday.
So here they were, stuck on one of the longest bridges in the world, with a monster tropical cyclone only a few hours away. The wind hummed across the Atlantic at a pitch that Jack Fleming and Webo Drake had never before heard; it rocked them on their heels when they got out of the car. Webo lobbed an empty Coors can toward the concrete rail, but the wind whipped it back hard, like a line drive. Naturally it then became a contest to see who had the best arm. In high school Jack Fleming had been a star pitcher, mainly sidearm, so his throws were not as disturbed by the gusts as those of Webo Drake, who had merely played backup quarterback for the junior varsity. Jack was leading, eight beer cans to six off the bridge, when a hand-an enormous brown hand-appeared with a wet slap on the rail.
Webo Drake glanced worriedly at his frat brother. Jack Fleming said, “Now what?”
A bearded man pulled himself up from a piling beneath the bridge. He was tall, with coarse silvery hair that hung in matted tangles to his shoulders. His bare chest was striped with thin pink abrasions. The man carried several coils of dirty rope under one arm. He wore camouflage trousers and old brown military boots with no laces. In his right hand was a crushed Coors can and a dead squirrel.
Jack Fleming said, “You a Cuban?”
Webo Drake was horrified.
Dropping his voice, Jack said: “No joke. I bet he’s a rafter.”
It made sense. This was where the refugees usually landed, in the Keys. Jack spoke loudly to the man with the rope: “listed Cubano?”
The man brandished the beer can and said: “Usted un asshole?”
His voice was a rumble that fit his size. “Where do you dipshits get off,” he said over the wind, “throwing your goddamn garbage in the water?” The man stepped forward and kicked out a rear passenger window of Jack’s father’s Lexus. He threw the empty beer can and the dead squirrel in the back seat. Then he grabbed Webo Drake by the belt of his jeans. “Your trousers dry?” the man asked.