Acts of Nature

kid would have noticed the difference in our clothing, my speech, even in the way I moved. I’d already done the same with this trio. I was leaning toward the supposition that they were Gladesmen, or closely descended from. Easy in the water. None of them carried a sweat in the humidity, meaning their bodies were used to the climate. Their boots were old leather, the kind that was oiled and waterproofed the old-fashioned way. They were all lean, the leader with a cabled musculature that meant tough manual labor and a diet that was more local and natural than the empty calorie, fat-filled urban or suburban fare. But my eye had been a lazy one too. I’d searched the kid over, looking for clues, and missed the biggest one.
    Wayne took a few steps back after he loosened all the nuts and stood while I finished the job. I looked up a couple of times, continuing to ask questions that might give me more information to size his crew up, give me some clue why they were rattling my internal cop alarms. A couple of times I caught him looking down at Sherry, who had gone quiet. It was hard to read her pain now or tell how much her head was in the moment or moving deep into survival mode, concentrating only on the internal, on keeping her core together. From where I was I couldn’t even see if her eyes were open.
    Not for a moment did I think of the kid’s eyes roving over her body, the fabric of her sweats cut away almost up to her crotch when I’d cleaned and bandaged the leg wound. Her blouse, soaking wet and transparent, stretched across her breasts. Then she said something—“water”—in a rough whisper.
    The kid jumped, and then started looking around.
    “Over there. The bottle by the end of her cot,” I said, directing him.
    He stepped over and picked up the bottle and moved to Sherry’s side. She turned her hand slightly, opened her palm and he had to bend over to get the bottle to her. But instead of taking it, she motioned to her mouth with her fingers and the kid bent lower, nervous about pouring the water into this woman’s open lips. I stayed on one knee, watching, but still working the other bed’s legs. All I could see were the tops of both of their heads from behind and then the sudden, violent movement of Sherry’s hand, clawing at the boy’s throat.
    “You thieving little bastard,” she suddenly shrieked in a voice I had never heard before.
    The kid’s head started to snap back, but inexplicably stopped for a fraction of a moment, and then, suddenly loosed, reeled up away from her.
    “You fucking little thief,” Sherry screamed again, the rough dryness of her throat making the words come out like a shovel blade stabbing gravel. “You picked the wrong cop to fuck with this time, you little shit.”
    The kid’s eyes were wide as saucers, eyebrows dented by fear, like he’d seen a witch come alive in his face, and I jumped up wondering if he actually had.
    “Jesus, Sherry!” I shouted, and stepped over the bed frame I was working on. “What the hell?”
    She was up on her elbows now, her face turned a crimson color that was such a stark contrast to the paleness it replaced that it looked devilish. She was staring at the kid, her eyes focused and hateful. Without saying a word she opened the hand that I’d seen her go at the kid’s throat with. Two stones, one a diamond and the other an opal, tumbled from her palm on the end of a broken gold chain.
    It didn’t take a second for me to recognize the necklace Sherry’s husband had given her, the one that she had finally removed before the last time we’d made love on a soft Everglades night that seemed impossibly far in the past now.
    I stepped toward the kid, not even realizing that I’d stood up from our dismantling job with one of the wooden bed frame legs in my fist.
    “Where the hell did you get that!” I started. But the words had barely left my lips when the cabin door burst open and Morris stepped in with a big .45 in his right hand, its big black nosehole pointed at me.
    “Whoa now, folks,” the man said. “How about we just settle down some, OK?”
    “They’re cops, Buck,” Wayne started shouting. “Goddamnit- all, they are cops.”
    Morris, whose name had now turned into Buck, moved his eyes from me, to the boy, to the bed frame on the floor and finally to Sherry, who was still on one elbow, but otherwise prone on the cot.
    “Now just calm it down there, boy,” he said and the kid seemed to snap his mouth shut like