Acts of Nature

They are lessons best not forgotten and suddenly they were boiling up in the back of my head like the prickly sensation on my neck.
    “No. That would be my airboat you heard, friend.”
    The voice came from my right and behind, more disconcerting because I was more vulnerable and because the deep sound of it was older, more mature, more confident. I hid my startle this time and turned with, I hope, a normal, easygoing attitude.
    This visitor was not wary. He planted his big palms on the deck, swung a leg up, and mounted the platform like a rodeo cowboy mounting a horse. He was athletic. His forearms were cabled with muscle. He was not as tall as my own six- foot-three, but he was easily fifteen years younger, and even more disconcerting than his boys, he was smiling. A smiling stranger in the middle of the Glades after a major hurricane trashed the area. I did not trust any inch of him.
    I turned my head to check any movement by the others and noted that they’d held their positions. The smiling man took one step closer and offered his hand, reaching out as though respecting my space. He was acting friendly. He was being careful.
    “Bob Morris,” he said in introduction and I reached out, holding my own spot, and took his hand.
    “Max Freeman.”
    “Pleasure, Mr. Freeman,” the man said, then looked out past me. “Come on in, boys, don’t be rude. This here is Mr. Freeman.”
    I was checking the man’s eyes. They were a gray so pale that they were almost colorless, and unflinching. His shirt was canvas and washed too many times. When he took my hand I noted that his own was soiled in cracks and under the fingernails and now I saw the smudges of dirt along the hard muscle of his neck tendons. He had been out for some time in this swamp, handling dirty things. The other two scrambled up onto the deck with less grace but still the kind of lithe comfort that you see in farm boys, or in this part of the country, young boat hands.
    “We was kinda surprised when you came out, Mr. Freeman. Didn’t expect to find nobody out here after that ’cane blew through,” the man who called himself Morris said.
    I offered nothing. Let him tell it. Let me get a sense of it. Sometimes silence encouraged them.
    “We, uh, own our own camp just up the way to the northwest there toward Immokolee and were just out to see the damage and, you know, she was hit pretty bad,” he continued.
    I nodded knowingly. “It was one hell of a storm.”
    “Yep, she was.”
    Morris looked at the boys and they all nodded their heads in agreement that a hurricane that ripped down walls and sailed roofs away and flattened hundreds of acres of tough sawgrass was indeed a hell of a storm.
    “So how’d you make out?” I said, matching the simplicity of their language, maybe leveling some playing ground here, trying to come off as nonthreatening. The boys cut their eyes to Morris.
    “Oh, well, we got hit pretty good up there,” he said. “Most we could do was a bit of salvaging, you know, a few things we probably shouldn’t have left out there in the first place.
    “So, you know. We figured since we was out, maybe we should stop on our way back south and see if any of our neighbors needed help. You’re the first person we run in to. So, you OK, Mr. Freeman? Is there anything we can do?”
    I thought of Sherry on the cot in the room behind me. Yeah, these guys seemed a little hinky. Their approach, seemingly surreptitious and planned, put me on edge. Their appearance, like a band of salvagers at sea, was not altogether unrealistic out here in the Glades. I’d spent time with some far-flung Gladesmen and to call them a rough bunch could be considered a kindness. When the Morris guy had turned to point where they’d left their airboat, I had studied the swing of his loose shirt and seen no lump or catch to indicate he was hiding a weapon in his waistband. And out here those willing to use a firearm were more proud to show them than to be sneaky about it. I checked each of their eyes one more time, not that I had a choice.
    “Yeah, you could,” I finally said to Morris. “I’ve got a friend inside who is badly hurt. She’s got to get medical help as soon as possible.”
    They filed into the room behind me and I wasn’t sure what look was on my face when Sherry watched me lead them in. She had forced herself up onto one elbow. Maybe she had been listening. Maybe she’d heard my reticent voice. She was faking alertness, I knew, because