Acts of Nature

the end of the table was a Bose five-disc CD changer with the speakers built in. A real home-away-from-home for some trio of computer nerd hackers or pirate radio stoners or who the hell knows what, and I realized I was getting increasingly pissed at the uselessness of it all until my light caught the red cross of another first aid kit on the wall and the twin of the other refrigerator in the corner.
    First I checked the kit and saw that the plastic tie that acted as a seal was unbroken, which meant it must be full. Then I crouched to the refrigerator door and as I went to pull the handle my hand was stopped by the growing sound of an airboat engine. The noise was coming up through the open hatch, the only way it seemed to be able to penetrate the walls, and I scrambled over to listen and make sure I wasn’t just delirious. No, the thrumming sound revved and then cut back, the throttle of the engine in someone’s hand. Rescue. Civilization had arrived.
    I scrambled over to the hole and plunged my legs through, landing waist-deep in the water. I yanked my boots out of the bottom mud and then, forgetting the hatch and leaving it wide open, I bumped my head three times before making it out from under the camp foundation. Out in the open I twisted around in the direction of the motor noise. Sherry, I thought. Got to let her know what’s happening.
    Her eyes were at half-mast when I got to her side. I put my palm on her brow, still hot, but hotter than before? I couldn’t guess. She turned her head to me.
    “Swimming, Max?”
    She still had some strength.
    “We’ve got company,” I said. “An airboat just pulled up nearby. We’re on our way out, girl.”
    She let out a sigh of relief, or maybe just loosening that built-in determination of hers, that reservoir of strength she was holding in abeyance for what was to come.
    “Who, Max?”
    “I don’t know yet. I just heard the engine outside. They’ve got to be coming to check on the place.” I put the half-filled bottle of water I’d recovered from the dead refrigerator to her lips. “Here. I’m going to go lead them in.”
    “OK”
    Maybe she was thinking more clearly than I. Maybe she was just more of a cynic, still being a working cop. Maybe she was just more intuitive. As I got up and started out the door she said: “Max. Be careful.” And I did not give the warning a second thought until I got out on the deck and saw a kid standing on the trunk of a downed tree, staring at me from twenty yards away.

TWENTY-ONE
    The kid was skinny and awkward looking in a coltish way and his baseball cap was turned around backward on his head. His legs looked like sticks in a couple of denim bags and the long- sleeved shirt he was wearing draped on his shoulders as if on a hanger, the cuffs flapping down to his fingertips. He did not say a word. No “Howdy stranger.” No “Yo, what up?” No “Wow, somebody survived.” Nothing. Just a stare.
    I stepped out toward the edge of the plank foundation and started to say something when a voice called out from my immediate left and the sound of another person’s words caused an uncharacteristic startle that made my neck snap in the direction of the sound.
    “Hey, mister. How you doin’?”
    It was another young man, dressed the same as the other but missing the hat. He may have been older, his neck more filled out, shoulders carrying some meat. His hair was buzz cut and instantly reminded me of police trainee academy, or maybe one of those juvenile detention camps.
    I started to say, “Hey, are we glad to see you,” but I held my tongue, some taste of wariness stopping me. It did not take me more than a couple of seconds to realize that by their positions, I was being flanked.
    “Well, guys, I could be better,” I said instead and stopped my forward motion. In fact, I took a step back, not an obvious retreat, but at a slightly angled step so that it was not as difficult to see both of them at the same time with my peripheral vision. I want the move to come off as polite, not tactical.
    “That was your airboat I heard,” I said, not a question, a statement. A question can put you in a subservient position, like you want something, like you don’t know as much as they know, like you’re not in charge. A street cop does not ever want to be in a subservient position to people he does not know. I learned this years ago, dealing with pimps and pushers and just plain assholes on my beat sector of South Philly.