A Second Chance in Paradise (11 page)

“
Just a damn minute,” Buster barked back over his shoulder, “I need another minute!”

He was still trying to resuscitate the fish, and it was working. The flowing water of the flood tide was bringing life-sustaining oxygen into the fish
’s respiratory system. Side by side, in the pouring rain, the four of us watched as the beats of its tail grew stronger. Finally, when the time was right, Buster released his grip on the tarpon’s lower lip. Able to keep itself upright now, it hesitated for just a moment then slowly started making its way back into the black depths of the channel. Once it was out of sight, and Buster was relieved no sharks had been lying in wait he shouted, “Okay! Kick it in gear!”

Pa didn
’t need to be told twice. He gunned it immediately and
The
Island Belle
lurched forward. All the rest of us grabbed onto the side so as not to take a tumble and crash into the stern. As we clutched the fiberglass another nasty bolt of lightning struck nearby. Only two hundred yards away, this one lit up the swimming beach on the Bahia Honda State Park shoreline. Once Pa got the boat up on plane we all made a dash for the cockpit. It surely wasn’t the safest place to be in a storm like this, but we all felt a bit more secure in there. Nobody said a word as we sped out of the channel and into the unsheltered waters of the now turbulent Atlantic.

Thrilled as I was to have caught the prize tarpon, this was no night to be cruising in a boat. Oh sure, when I was still with Wendy, back in New York, I had been in my share of rough seas. Several times, while winter fishing for cod off Montauk Point, the boat I
’d been on had to head in early because of snow and rough seas. But this was different. I was far more nervous this time. The electrical storm’s highly-charged winds were energizing the ocean’s surface into a frothy mess. Out in the darkness, all around
The
Island Belle
, legions of menacing, white-capped demons seemed to be doing some kind of angry, ritualistic dance. I’d never seen anything like it before. The waves seemed to be charging us from all directions. They were tall waves too, huge breakers and close as they were to one another, only made the situation all the more precarious. Between the waves, the rain and the ungodly wind it seemed like Mother Ocean had been possessed – like she was searching in the darkness for something to sacrifice.      

Able as the cruiser was, it was barely making it over the top of each wave. And each time it cleared one, the bow pounded back onto the water so hard my teeth chattered. I could live with that, the rain, and the wind, but there was all that lightning as well. It was now cracking all around us, sometimes two bolts at once. And the thunder, it was deafening. Every time it resonated the entire boat shivered as if it were scared to death. Even with all the beer Jackie had drunk that day, I could still see plenty of fear in his eyes as he clung to the back of Buster
’s seat.

Buster had taken over the helm for Pa, and I could hear the tenseness in his voice when he said,
“Damn! I hate lightening!” 

“
I don’t blame you,” I shouted, as the horizontal rain whipped into the cockpit. “I’ve never been in a T storm like this one.”

“’
Bout four years ago,” Buster came back, “I was standin’ on the dock behind the house and got knocked plumb on my ass by a strike.”

“
You get hurt?”

“
Nah, but when it first hit I thought it was all over. I remember smelling this ... this
sulphur
like smell – like burning matches.”

With the danger we were now in, the last thing I needed to hear about was Buster being hit
by lightning. But I was his guest and, like everybody else onboard, I was doing the best I could to hide my anxiety.

“
What was it like? What did it feel like?” I asked.

“
Felt like somebody came up from behind and whacked me square on the top of the head with a lead pipe.”

“
Yeah,” Pa then said. “I told ’im to come in off that dock.”

“
Hell, Pa, how many times I got to tell you? ’Cept for some nasty clouds just startin’ to show on the horizon the whole sky was clear.”

“
Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Pa came back again. “They were dark, nasty,
ink-blue
clouds. And I told you it wasn’t safe out there.” 

There was an uncomfortable pause in the conversation then. Obviously the father and son had been down this road before, more than once. In an attempt to lessen the tension between them, I said,
“I didn’t know that lightening from a storm that far away could hit somebody.”

“
Well it sure got me! I’m lucky as hell to still be here.”

For the next ten minutes, nobody said much of anything. Nervous eyes clicked back and forth and we all flinched every time thunder boomed overhead and lightning lit up the cockpit. Laboriously, the boat ploughed ahead until, suddenly, we were out of the storm. Quick as you could snap your fingers we passed through the outer edge of the god awful, life-threatening squall. Just like that the wind let up, the rain ceased, and the sea settled into smaller, smoother waves. The storm was still following us toward Wrecker
’s Key, but we were finally out of it and would easily beat it back to the dock.

Right away everybody except Buster stepped out onto the deck and headed straight for the beer cooler. Pa grabbed two cans and went back into the cockpit with his son. Fred and Jackie struck up a conversation about what we
’d just been through. And I looked out at the starry half of the dark Florida sky in front of us. With
The
Island Belle
quickly picking up speed now, I reached into my pocket for my cigarettes. They were soaking wet, but that was okay. All that really mattered was that we were safe now. Or so I thought.

It wasn
’t long before Buster eased back on the throttle, and we rounded the buoy leading into Wrecker’s channel. The area around the bridge was a no-wake zone so we approached it ever so slowly. The low hum of the idling engines was the only sound to be heard in the dark, Florida Keys night. That is, until we passed through the two rows of towering concrete pilings. The moment
The
Island Belle
cleared the bridge and came out the other side Jackie Beers suddenly let out a scream so loud it could probably be heard all the way down the channel to the trailer park.

“OH HELL!
LOOK! IT LOOKS LIKE THE STORE’S ON FIRE!”

Instantly, we all jerked our heads to the port side. The boat was still moving ever so slowly across the water, but we could only get one quick glimpse down the Overseas Highway before the road and store would be obscured by the surrounding trees. But that was more than enough time. We could all see small orange flames on the roof of the wooden building.

“
Sons of bitches,” Buster growled, stretching his words out in a vengeful, hateful tone. “They did it, Pa! They fucking did it!”

“
Look! There’s a car!” I blurted out. “See it? See the red tail lights? It’s pulling away from the store.”

“
I see them!” said Fred Sampson. “It’s too damn far and dark to tell what kind of a car it is. But it is definitely a car, not a truck.”

“
Yeah, the bastard’s heading south,” Buster added, as the two red lights and the store disappeared behind the tree line.

Jerking his head back toward the windshield Buster goosed the throttle and we sped straight toward the dock. Only a couple of minutes passed before he brought her down off plane, but when he did we were approaching the wooden structure too fast. Slam!
The
Island Belle
rammed into a piling. The boat jolted hard and, at the exact same moment, ear-splitting thunder boomed directly overhead, again. The storm had caught up with us. Thin streaks of erratic, white lightning scratched the clouds, but it didn’t stop Fred. Lickity-split, like a cat, he was up on the bow tying a line to the dock.

Now shifting the big engines from reverse into neutral, Buster told Pa to finish tying her up. The current was already pulling the stern away from the berth, but there was no time to dillydally with that. Buster, Fred and I leapt off the bow onto the dock, and when we hit the wooden planking Fred let out a howl.
“Ohhhh shit! That hurts!” Wearing just flip-flops he’d landed on his left ankle with all his weight. His foot had broken through the thong on the rubber sandal and two huge splinters spiked into his foot when it slid. Buster and I paused to take a look but Fred blurted, “Forget about me. Get the hell down to the store, quick!

Buster and I raced off the dock, rounded the cistern alongside the house then kept going across the lawn and into the jungle. As we dodged trees and bushes in the blackness, I felt all kinds of unknown things crunching beneath my feet. There was no stopping. We had to get to that store before the fire got totally out of hand. Then, just as we reached the curve in the shell
road, it started to rain. It poured. Big, heavy drops started beating the palmettos and trees all around us. I could smell the musky scent of the woods as a black crowned night heron protested our arrival. “Kwawk” it cried out from somewhere in the dark woods as we pushed through the heaven-sent tropical downpour. We didn’t take the road. Instead Buster said, “This way!”, and led me through a shortcut. Side by side, with rain dripping off the bill of his cap and streaming down my face, we dashed through a stand of pines, slipping and sliding on a soaking wet bed of dead pine needles.

There had been two separate fires
set at the back of the building. The first one had climbed up the wall of the convenience store; the other, thirty feet down, behind the bar. Both were started on the outside,
after
the back wall had been doused with gasoline. The good news was that it hadn’t gotten out of hand. By the time Buster and I came huffing and puffing up to the building, the windblown, pelting rain had all but extinguished the flames. And it was still coming down hard as ever.

“
Thank God!” I said as we both bent over, hands on hips, trying to catch our breath.

“
Yeah,” Buster came back. “A little longer and she would have burned clear through the wall.”

To his right, leaning against the back door, there was a mop sticking out of a bucket that had overflowed with rain water. He picked it up and started ramming the handle into the scorched areas of the wall.

“None of it burnt through,” he said. “Probably won’t have to replace any of this – just clean it up and paint it.”

“
I guess there’s no sense in calling the fire department now,” I said, as if asking a question.

“
Hell no, every time them fire inspectors come by, we pass by the skin of our teeth. Don’t want to give ’em an excuse to close us up.”

“
How old is the building?” I asked, with dripping strands of brown hair hanging over my eyes.

“
My great granddaddy built it before the Civil War,” he said, putting the mop head back into the bucket. “Was a small church back then. Folks used to come over from Big Pine by boat every Sunday for services.”

“
And, now it’s a bar.”

“
Yeah, Ma never liked the idea, her bein’ sort of religious. C’mon, let’s take a look at where the other fire was and then go inside.”

That fire was even less damaging than the first; so after spitting a stream of tobacco juice Buster unlocked the padlocked back door to the bar and we stepped inside. The place smelled like the usual barroom bouquet of cigarettes, the previous night
’s beer, and pine cleaner. Buster stepped along the back wall where some pictures and stuffed fish hung. Pushing the overlapping wooden boards with his herculean strength, nothing gave. It seemed everything was still solid.

“
Looks like that rain got here in a nick of time,” he said.

“
Yeah, everything seems okay in here!”

“
Yupper. Let’s check the store.”

Everything was shipshape in there as well. Satisfied with what we
’d seen after poking around a few minutes, Buster was locking up just as Pa came up the road. It wasn’t raining anymore. The storm had dissipated and what was left of it moved on to the south.

“
You put it all out?” Pa asked his son.

“
The rain did. Everything’s alright. Come here.”

We then stepped around to the back again and Buster showed Pa the burn marks on the wall.

As Pa assessed the damage his old face looked both sad and angry.

“
Yep,” he said, “some sumbitch started it alright. This ain’t no accident.”

“
Are you going to call the sheriff?” I asked.

“
Naw,” Pa said, standing there all glassy-eyed now. “Ain’t nothin’
they
can do. We’ll find out who did it. Then we’ll take care of it our own way.”

I didn
’t like hearing Pa talk that way. He and Buster were good people. They didn’t deserve something like this. I had no idea how they might retaliate but wasn’t about to ask. It was none of my business. Pa had said they’d take care of it their way, and I was sure he and Buster were already conjuring some ideas. That bothered me. From what Julie had told me the day before, I well knew that going up against Lionel Topper and his crowd could be very risky business.