Rescue

Turning it over to the front again, she said, “Just follow the streets as indicated until you see the ramp for Route 836 West. Route 836 will take you to the Florida Turnpike South and from there you’ll be fine.“
    “And until there?“
    “You have our safety tips card?“
    “Follow them as well as the directions.“
    The bright smile. “That’s what I’d do.“
    Outside, the humid air hit me like a wet rag. I walked to Row C in the parking area and found stall #9, a freshly washed convertible in it. The trunk was small and shallow, but held the suitcase easily. The license plate had green lettering on a white background with an orange cutout of the state superimposed in the middle. On my last visit to Florida, the word LEASE had been at the bottom of the plate, to let the locals know the car in front of them might do confusing things. Now there was just a county designation.
    Getting behind the wheel, I tested all the bells and whistles, making sure everything worked. I’m not nuts about air-conditioning, so I undid the roof clamps at the windshield, pushing the button at the top of the frame and ignoring the suggestion about snapping the tonneau cover in place over the lowered canvas. Rereading the directions the agent had circled, I started out, both doors automatically locking as soon as I put the convertible in gear. I wondered if that was another security device, added especially for the Florida market.
    The humid air began to feel cooler, even at slow speed. I made all the correct turns at traffic signals and street signs until Route 836. Stopped at a light before the ramp, I’d just put the directions in the glove compartment for the eventual return trip when I was bumped from behind, my head bouncing off the leather rest at the top of my seat. The unloaded revolver still in the trunk, I threw the gearshift into reverse, figuring to ram the car behind me as whoever it was got out to approach me, knock them off their feet. What I saw in the rearview mirror, though, was an elderly couple, him fat, her thin, both with their mouths open in terror and their hands up, showing me they were unarmed. I took a breath, nodded to them, and made the righthand turn for the 836 ramp.
    I went about ten miles, getting onto the Florida Turnpike South. I saw some things on the side of the road that I didn’t expect, like a broken, elaborate ceiling fan; half a refrigerator; and a highway patrol officer in a marked Mustang coupe with a rack of blue bubble lights that barely avoided overhanging the door gutters. I didn’t see some things I did expect, like speed limit signs, everybody doing sixty-five while I dawdled along ten miles an hour slower, learning the Pontiac and watching for Mustang coupes. Then I started seeing some things I expected to see but didn’t want to, the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew.
    Like everybody else, I’d caught the aerial news films and hatched the victims being interviewed, mikes thrust in their anguished faces, but nothing really prepares you for being there. Tall trees broken halfway up the trunk like matchsticks. Whole apartmentcomplexes, looking at first as though they were just under construction, until you remembered that carpentry crews don’t put the roofs on last. Single-family homes in cookie-cutter developments, some roofless, too, others with plastic or tar paper held down with concrete blocks, a lucky few just missing patches of shingles, like a fish with some kind of scale disease. There were even signs outside lumberyards advertising themselves as HOME REPLACEMENT centers. The worst, though, was the stretch just before the Turnpike ended, the entire landscape flattened, not a tree or bush over six feet high left standing, like the hand of God had just swept everything off a table many miles wide.
    Trying the radio to lighten things up, I couldn’t get the “scan“ button to work, and the local stations I found were either country western, salsa, or poor-taste DJs making fun of Canadians driving and old folks doing anything. The devastation of the landscape reappeared here and there on the two-lane road past the Turnpike, but after a few strip-city malls, the side views began looking very much like what I pictured the Everglades to be. Patchy grass islands; low, coffee-colored water in sloughs that showed no current; the nests of imposingly large birds that looked like ospreys, on the tops of utility poles overhead. Ten or so miles of that, and I passed a sign for