Chapter 12
"The Big Blow"
IT WAS RAINING LIKE HELL WHEN I WOKE UP …
"CATS & DOGS", AS THEY SAY. GAINING WHIPLASH VELOCITY AS I CAME FULLY AWAKE.
THE ENTIRE AREA AROUND THE CABIN WAS DESERTED EXCEPT FOR LEAVES AND STRAW AND BLACKENED SEAWEED AND OTHER WIND-DRIVEN DEBRIS. EVERYTHING WAS SPIRALING SKYWARD AHEAD OF THE GALE THAT PROPELLED IT ALONG THE BEACH IN THE DIRECTION OF AMOS'S BAR.
I RAISED MY HEAD AND STARED BLEARILY OUT THE DOOR IN THE DIRECTION OF THE OCEAN. WIND HAD SCRUBBED EVERYTHING CLEAN, AND WHAT VEGETATION SURVIVED INTACT LOOKED TO BE TRYING TO EXTRACT THEIR ROOTS FROM THE GROUND TO FOLLOW IN THE SAME GENERAL PATH. HOW IN HELL HAD I MANAGED TO SLEEP THROUGH THIS? THE SCREAMING OF THE WIND AROUND THE SHARP EDGES OF THE CABIN SHOULD HAVE WAKENED THE DEAD. THE WAY MY HEAD WAS POUNDING TOLD ME I HAD PROBABLY VISITED THE LAND OF THE DEPARTED WHILE SLEEPING OFF ONE HELL OF A HANGOVER. I'D HAD A GOOD TIME LAST NIGHT … IN FACT, MORE FUN THAN I COULD REMEMBER HAVING IN A LONG TIME. EXCEPT MAYBE RIGHT UP TO THE END …
AMOS AND HIS STAFF HAD PROBABLY LOCKED UP HIS PLACE; ALL TIED DOWN TIGHT. THE SAME WOULD BE THE BEST CASE SCENARIO FOR ALL THE OTHER INHABITANTS ALONG THE PATH OF THIS STORM. ALL OF US AT THE BAR LAST NIGHT KNEW IT WAS COMING BY THE SUDDEN CHANGE IN ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE. THE WINDS HAD PICKED UP AND THE RAIN BEGUN; MILD AT FIRST, BUT BUILDING QUICKLY AS THE EVENING WORE ON. BY MIDNIGHT THE PALM TREES WERE SLASHING THEIR BRANCHES THROUGH THE AIR AND WE ALL KNEW WE SHOULD HELP BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES AT THE TIKI BAR AND HEAD FOR WHEREVER 'HOME' WAS.
I WONDERED BRIEFLY ABOUT HOOLEY. HE'D DRIVEN ME BACK TO THE CABIN, ASSISTED ME INSIDE THROUGH STEADY RAIN, AND THEN SKEDADDLED. I HAD NO IDEA WHERE HE LIVED. IT WAS NONE OF MY BUSINESS; JUST A MOMENT OR TWO OF PASSING CONCERN …
THUNDEROUS, BUCKET-SIZE GLOBS HIT LIKE TIDAL WAVES ON THE CABIN'S ROOF. DROPS OF FRIGID WATER BLEW ALL THE WAY ACROSS TO MY BED, AND COLD SPLATTERS HIT ME WHERE I LAY. CHILLED WATER DROPLETS SLICED THROUGH THE MOSQUITO NETTING, WAKING ME FROM A BOOZY SLEEP.
Still only half conscious, I rolled out of bed, threw back the netting and staggered crazily toward the windows, slamming shutters against the rising wind. By the time I'd secured them all, my leg burned with pain and I had no idea what had become of my cane. If I hadn't been fully awake before, I was now. At the front door I shoved with the heel of my left hand, expecting the latch to hold and make the place secure. But that didn't happen. I had no strength to exert pressure against the wood and hold off the gale forces that pushed back. Water was still leaking in underneath the door and advancing across the floor, making the footing treacherous. The pants of my threadbare old scrubs were soaked with sea-water almost to the knees. I had one chance left to get the damn door shut before I had to swim back to the bed.
Clutching the door's edge, I strained against it with my opposite shoulder, pushing with my strong left leg until a momentary break in the wind let me slam it closed and secure the latch. Outside, the wind took hold again, forming tiny funnel clouds of whirling sand and dark particles of debris. Beautiful but deadly. Fascinated by nature's power, I watched them whirl and twirl like tiny flamenco dancers.
Bizarre!
It was as though the cabin was riding the eye of a hurricane; buttressed by pockets of turbulence all around it.
*What the hell am I thinking? This is a hurricane!*
I could not see past the front yard. Hooley's dune-buggy parking space was obliterated; heaped with sand mounds and mud, crisscrossed with small ruts and wandering pebbles and stones from further up the beach. The ocean was nearly invisible, and the front yard was transformed; almost unrecognizable.
This was the closest I had ever been to an actual hurricane. Shit … I was right in the middle of it. All around me I felt the cabin straining and fighting for stability against the wind. The roof vibrated overhead as the squall line dug powerful fingers into the spaces where the boards were secured to the studs. So far the cabin was holding … rattling and hammering like a drunk with DTs. But holding …
I was scared out of my wits and would have run out of there in fear for my life … except there was nowhere to run that the wind and rain couldn't have got me in a microsecond … and my ability to run was nonexistent. So I had to hunker down and ride it out.
Jagged spikes of lightning, punctuated with cringe-worthy peals of thunder, made the place vibrate like it was going to turn and run for the hills. Ghostly halos of light glowed eerily around the edges of the windows and the door as I stood shaking like a drowning dog. The phenomenon made the world seem like something from a bad dream. And it was. I damn near wet my pants, which were already wet.
The storm rattled everything it could possibly rattle, and shook everything it could shake. Unknown objects slammed down on the roof and hit the side of the cabin again and again. I jumped in alarm every time, and waited for something dangerous to fly through a hole in the wall and land at my feet. I kept looking around nervously, expecting dishes to start flinging themselves off the shelves.
I hobbled over to the big radio and dragged it to the middle of the room. I pulled out the plug and threw one of the few dry blankets over it. I would not lose my only source of entertainment! In a moment of terrified levity, I imagined the thing as E.T. hiding in a closet, surrounded by toys.
Berating myself in the middle of all this turbulence, I wondered why the hell I hadn't battened down the hatches when I got back to the cabin last night. The storm was already gaining strength while we raced up the beach in the dune buggy. Why hadn't Hooley given me a heads-up? Actually I knew the answer to that as soon as I asked the question. It wasn't Hooley's fault. We were both too damn hammered to put one foot in front of another without falling on our faces.
And here I was … Robinson Caruso … penned in a rickety cabin … and my man Friday had flown off down the beach. It was fuckin' funny! My nervous laughter was threaded with a tinge of hysteria …
For the rest of the afternoon I sat on the edge of the bed wrapped in a blanket, shivering; listening to the wind as it howled through every crevice. And the relentless rain. I expected that any minute I and the cabin and everything in the vicinity might be sucked into a vortex at sea, never to be seen again.
I drew myself into a ball of misery as small as possible … which wasn't very! A five-foot blanket being stretched around a six-foot body played hell with the laws of physics. Actually, I was still freezing all over and scared shitless. I reached for my pill vial, swallowed a Vicodin and waited for the pain in my leg to go away. Maybe if I took enough of them, the hurricane would go away too. I just wanted the storm to be over, to be left alone to rest and warm up a little … and quit hurting.
I drew a mental shield around myself and escaped the effects of the weather by returning to the events at the Tiki Bar the night before:
Thoughts of the conversation that took place after we adjourned to the poker table in the corner, and after I'd confided that the man I'd spotted in the shrubbery that day was about six tables away … things took a strange turn toward the inexplicable.
Hooley and Amos and I ordered more drinks and studied the four men across the crowded room. I had managed to get back into the corner by hiding my lameness behind the bodies of the other two, but my caution would be tossed to the wind if my happy companions didn't soon shut up.
If the objects of our attention weren't aware of us by that time, they were a lot drunker than we were. They would have to be dumb as doorknobs not to know that something was going on with the fools at the table in the corner. I finally slammed the flat of my hand hard on the table to get my companions' attention, and after that things quieted down.
*My god … It's not like me to act the self-righteous chaperone. To believe I might even be the voice of reason in this scenario! And we had supposed our suspects were dumb …*
Packy joined us about eleven o'clock. Above the fading noise of the Tiki Bar and the growing intensity of the wind, we heard the Piper buzz-saw onto the beach, and its engine go silent. By the time Packy joined us, there was already a Mai Tai decorating the fourth place at the table. He sat down and picked up the deck of cards, rifled them with his hands a few times and then dealt. I watched him as the cards flew gracefully from his fingers to each player, and I also watched his clean fingernails and smooth skin, and quickly decided there was more to this grizzled old pilot than met the eye. I also cringed a bit when he met my gaze, raised his eyebrows and looked me up and down with a sly grin. Made me feel that he knew I wasn't exactly what I claimed to be either …
"Okay," he finally said, placing the deck in the center of the table and picking up his hand. "Those four guys at the table across the room … is one of them the one you saw in your underbrush?" He was looking directly at me.
I nodded. "Yeah. The small one. The one with the mole on his face."
"He's called 'Pongo'," Packy said. "I don't know much about him, except that he drives an old panel truck and works as a handyman. The two big ones are brothers. Vasquez. They own a fishing boat. The fourth one I don't know. Never saw him before. Do you want to alert the police and tell 'em what you saw? At least that way they can keep watch on 'em and see if they do anything else suspicious."
We all agreed to his suggestion and Amos got up and went through the rear door of the bar. When he returned, he nodded affirmation. After that we stacked the cards, took pulls on our drinks and waited for the local constabulary to show up.
Twenty minutes later a white SUV with gold shields on the front doors pulled onto the cement patio. It had started to rain by then, and the wind picked up a little more. Two island policemen came through the bar and stopped at our table.
*Oh sweet! They park out front and walk back to where they see Packy and Amos. So much for keeping our anonymnity.*
When the two officers asked for a description of what I had seen, all four Latino gentlemen quickly flew the coop. Why the hell was I not surprised?
It seemed that our pair of deputies were both rookies assigned to night shift, and were somewhat more of an amateur cadre than we had been led to believe. The night was suddenly over … and they had learned exactly nothing. Both cops left after we told them as much as we could … like … keep a lookout for a little dude with a mole on his face. He was probably going to die of cancer one of these days if he didn't get it checked. And then the investigation would have turned into more than nothing.
When we gave up for the evening, all of us were buzzed except Packy, who decided to get his butt back to the lee side of the island and find a hole to crawl into for the night.
When I stood up from the table, my bum leg collapsed beneath me. I had sat too long. I grabbed for my cane and Hooley and Packy practically carried me from the bar to the dune buggy. We were all soaked when they got me there.
It was after one-thirty in the morning and Amos's staff was busily closing things up, lowering the wood awnings and fastening them down tight. The juke box went silent and all the customers had gone. The lights dimmed. Nothing had been settled one way or another, but at least the cops had something to go on. Lightning was splitting the sky and intensifying when the SUV pulled out and rolled down the beach. I caught glimpses of it like it was moving through a strobe light, and then it vanished, looking kind of like a white rabbit … hopping away …
There was more thunder and lightning when Hooley started the dune buggy and we got rolling. "We should hurry back to your cabin, Kyle Calloway. You must rest and I must return to help Amos close the bar. This storm will get much worse before it will get better."
Gusts of wind were already pushing horizontal rain when we worked our way up the front steps of the cabin at two in the morning. Hooley helped me inside and started to close the shutters over the windows. "I can do that," I assured him. "You should go help Amos get things buttoned down. He has a lot to do and he can use all the help he can get. Go! I'm fine."
He looked at me doubtfully, but I shooshed him away with both hands. Finally he shrugged, turned, and was gone back into the stormy night.
I fumbled around with the shutters, but the pain escalated immediately. It was the most I could do to drag my ass to the bathroom to take a looong leak and pull my wet clothes off. I got into my old scrub pants and searched for my cane. I must have left it in the other room. I left my clothes on a pile on the bathroom floor and hobbled drunkenly, shivering, to the bed to crawl beneath the covers.
I rode the thing out the rest of the day. I never did find my damn cane, and I had to get the arm canes out from under the bed. I stayed put while the storm raged on. Took myself to the head once. Nursed a headache of monstrous proportions.
At sundown, with the wind and rain finally abating, I went back to bed and passed out. The hurricane blew itself out sometime after I fell asleep from utter exhaustion.
The sun came up … at least there were cracks of brightness that sent puddles of sunlight here and there across the floor.
I staggered out of bed and leaned into it. My hair had dried flat against my head and I smelled like stale sweat from scrambling around to close off the windows and the door. I was achy all over. My stomach was rumbling, my mouth tasted like the bottom of a garbage can, and my head was pounding. I had really tied on a good one last night.
I hunched, uncomfortable and weary, listening to voices hollering down the beach. I was still shivering from the general dampness that pervaded the cabin. There was no heat in here, and I could feel the cold and the stiffness seeping into my bones. By afternoon the island's normal heat index would return in force, but for the moment I was simply miserable.
My leg throbbed with a cadence of its own and I needed to dig my Vicodin out of my jacket pocket. Both hands gravitated to the scar to calm things down. It eased for a few moments and then returned. I clenched my teeth against the jabbing that penetrated the damaged muscles and pulled up the blanket from the foot of the bed, rolling backwards into it. I let myself topple over until my head hit the pillow, curling into a ball on my left side. It was just too damn much trouble to get my meds, so I rode up and down with the ebb and flow …
I was not even aware of time as it passed.
A familiar dream finally overtook me:
*I am on my couch in my apartment at 221B Baker Street. Covered with a familiar old gray blanket. Trying to sleep. My leg is raised onto a bed pillow, but still it hurt.
Someone is in the vestibule … a succession of insistent tappings begins on the door behind me … matching the thunder in my leg …
My throat is dry. It takes some grunts and gags before I can get sound to come out of my mouth in order to answer. I am also pissed off at being disturbed.
"Use your key! I'm not getting up …"
I hear the muted sound of a key being inserted into the lock, and the door opens quietly. "House?"
I force my eyes open and gasp for breath.
"Wilson? Is that you?"*
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