Passengers in the Greyhound bus pressed their faces to the glass to see what was happening. Behind the Lexus, a family in a rented minivan could be observed locking the doors, a speedy drill they had obviously practiced before leaving the Miami airport.
Webo Drake said yes, his jeans were dry. The stranger said, “Then hold my eye.” With an index finger he calmly removed a glass orb from his left socket and placed it carefully in one of Webo’s pants pockets. “It loosed up on me,” the stranger explained, “in all this spray.”
Failing to perceive the gravity of the moment, Jack Fleming pointed at the shattered window of his father’s luxury sedan. “Why the hell’d you do that?”
Webo, shaking: “Jack, it’s all right.”
The one-eyed man turned toward Jack Fleming. “I count thirteen fucking beer cans in the water and only one hole in your car. I’d say you got off easy.”
“Forget about it,” offered Webo Drake.
The stranger said, “I’m giving you boys a break because you’re exceptionally young and stupid.”
Ahead of them, the Greyhound bus wheezed, lurched and finally began to inch northward. The man with the rope opened the rear door of the Lexus and brushed the broken glass off the seat. “I need a lift up the road,” he said.
Jack Fleming and Webo Drake said certainly, sir, that would be no trouble at all. It took forty-five minutes on the highway before they summoned the nerve to ask the one-eyed man what he was doing under the Seven Mile Bridge.
Waiting, the man replied.
For what? Webo asked.
Turn on the radio, the man said. If you don’t mind.
News of the hurricane was on every station. The latest forecast put the storm heading due west across the Bahamas, toward a landfall somewhere between Key Largo and Miami Beach.
“Just as I thought,” said the one-eyed man. “I was too far south. I could tell by the sky.”
He had covered his head with a flowered shower cap; Jack Fleming noticed it in the rearview mirror, but withheld comment. The young man was more concerned about what to tell his father regarding the busted window, and also about the stubborn stain a dead squirrel might leave on fine leather upholstery.
Webo Drake asked the one-eyed man: “What’s the rope for?”
“Good question,” he said, but gave no explanation.
An hour later the road spread to four lanes and the traffic began to move at a better clip. Almost no cars were heading south. The highway split at North Key Largo, and the stranger instructed Jack Fleming to bear right on County Road 905.
“It says there’s a toll,” Jack said.
“Yeah?”
“Look, we’re out of money.”
A soggy ten-dollar bill landed on the front seat between Jack Fleming and Webo Drake. Again the earthquake voice: “Stop when we reach the bridge.”
Twenty minutes later they approached the Card Sound Bridge, which crosses from North Key Largo to the mainland. Jack Fleming tapped the brakes and steered to the shoulder. “Not here,” said the stranger. “All the way to the top.”
“The top of the bridge?”
“Are you deaf, junior?”
Jack Fleming drove up the slope cautiously. The wind was ungodly, jostling the Lexus on its springs. At the crest of the span, Jack pulled over as far as he dared. The one-eyed man retrieved his glass eye from Webo Drake and got out of the car. He yanked the plastic cap off his head and jammed it into the waistband of his trousers.
“Come here,” the stranger told the two young men. “Tie me.” He popped the eye into its socket and cleaned it in a polishing motion with the corner of a bandanna.
Then he climbed over the rail and inserted his legs back under the gap, so he was kneeling on the precipice.
Other hurricane evacuees slowed their cars to observe the lunatic scene, but none dared to stop; the man being lashed to the bridge looked wild enough to deserve it. Jack Fleming and Webo Drake worked as swiftly as possible, given the force of the gusts and the rapidity with which their Key West hangovers were advancing. The stranger gave explicit instructions about how he was to be trussed, and the fraternity boys did what they were told. They knotted one end of the rope around the man’s thick ankles and ran the other end over the concrete rail. After looping it four times around his chest, they cinched until he grunted. Then they threaded the rope under the rail and back to the ankles for the final knotting.