It is an old disguise, but it is always effective. People see a clipboard and a tie and they see nothing else. In this case they will see Nameless Official Water Tester, and as we mosey through the predators’ camp, scanning for a red Ninja or any other sign of our prey, we will pause now and then to take water samples and scribble notes, secure in the knowledge that a clipboard provides better invisibility than Harry Potter’s cloak.
In the car we unwrap our water-testing kit and place it on top of the clipboard in the passenger seat, and then we are away, out onto Ocho and north to NE 36th Street, and then out onto the Julia Tuttle Causeway.
Traffic is thin by Miami standards and we move easily out the causeway. We drive past the predators’ colony, looking casually-carefully for any sign of Patrick and, seeing none, we pull over onto the shoulder some fifty yards past. We gather the props for our little costume drama, and then we open the door and step out into the dreadful wrongness of that bright noontime sun. We stand for a moment and blink, hoping that somehow it will grow slightly darker for our purpose, or at least that we may become slightly easier with the ceaseless blinding light that assaults us so unpleasantly.
But neither of these things happens. The sun hammers down, and we are still uneasy, and we have so very little time. So we take a deep breath, hold our clipboard firmly in our hand, and march back toward the bridge that shelters the colony.
The sun seems hotter on the walk back to the bridge and we are sweating freely by the time we step off the road and down into the shade under the bridge-sweating when we should be all icy cool control, sweating with the strangeness as well as the heat, watching with mild alarm as great hot drops roll down off our forehead, skitter down our nose, and splat onto the concrete. We are sweating, and it is daylight, and there are people all around and these things should not be, and it makes our footsteps seem a size too large as they slap the cement in their too-loud awkward off-rhythm. But we move ahead because we must, past the first tent, where a hairless middle-aged black man is weight-lifting with two one-gallon plastic milk containers filled, apparently, with water. His arms are thin, but the veins stand out as he curls his arms open and shut, open and shut. He stares at us and we nod; he looks away quickly, and we step past him to the water’s edge, where we kneel and fill our little plastic analyzer with water. We hold it up to the sun and squint at it for a moment, and then we dump it, stand, scribble on the clipboard, and move on.
On to the second tent, which is quiet and unoccupied, and then deeper into the shadow under the bridge, and seeing the day turn even three small shades darker makes us breathe a little easier; it is far from night, but it is moving in the right direction, and we move with it, staying in the shadows and easing slowly along the water’s edge, stopping twice more for our dumb show with the water and the clipboard.
We are in the heart of it now and we pause, looking around at the otherworldly sprawl of the camp. There are lean-tos made of cardboard, and some made of wood with tin roofs, and others no more than sheets of plastic stretched tight to make a tent, and a few actual tents, all mixed together as if they had been scooped up at random and then tumbled out carelessly onto the concrete under the bridge.
At my right, the concrete slopes upward to meet the surface of the road, and nestled into the junction where road and concrete meet, a woman stares down at me from a sleeping bag, lifeless eyes following me without any interest at all. We stroll on through the camp, looking for anything at all that might speak the name of our speed date, Patrick, and finally, on the far edge of the camp, right at the water’s edge, we find it.
It is a very nice-looking dome tent, somewhat battered and stained, but still quite clearly a serious, good-quality piece of outdoorsman’s equipment. There is no red motorcycle parked beside it, and no sign of Patrick himself, but we are just as sure as we can be that this is his tent, because he has decorated it as only Patrick could.
On each side of the zippered flap that serves as the tent’s only door, there is a one-gallon milk jug, the same kind used by the hairless weight lifter. These, too, are filled with water, to hold them steadily in place as they support their top-heavy burden.
A stick has been jammed into the mouth of each jug, and on top of each stick is a cat’s head.
The heads have been very neatly cut from the bodies, and they look to be freshly dead, and they stare out at us with identical expressions of openmouthed kitty horror.
Between them, propped against the tent’s door flap, is a crude hand-lettered sign. It says, THIS CUD HAPPIN 2 U, and underneath in smaller letters, STAY OUT!
The combination of poor spelling and neat cat butchery is as telling as a photograph; this is Patrick’s tent. And we feel at last the chill all-ready steady-handed glee of impending wickedness and almost see the light around us creep slowly down the spectrum past the wretched bright yellow of noon and deep into the orange, and red, and-
But red. But wait; where is the red motorcycle? We see it nowhere and we know he would keep it close-even a hillbilly like Patrick would know he could not leave it unguarded near the road.
We look around; there is no place visible where a bike could be stored, and the happy shadows bleach away from us and back into daytime dinginess. There is no motorcycle-unless it was in the tent? But it is a small tent, and the warning sign was leaning against the tent’s flap in a way that indicated he had placed it there from the outside, probably as he left, and there are no small flaps or wrinkles across the canvas to tell of movement, not even a small and sleepy breath, and we watch another fat bead of sweat roll off our nose as we come crashing back to daylight and disappointment.
Patrick is not here.
In the middle of the day, in our only small window of opportunity, Patrick has wandered away where he should not be. He has spoiled everything.
We fight down the ornery urge to give the tent a spiteful kick, and just to be completely safely thorough we move past the tent to the water, listening very carefully for any soft snoring or rumbling from inside the tent. There is nothing, no sound, and we are thinking very unhappy thoughts as we kneel down and perform our watery pantomime one more time.
Just to be very sure, we stand up and turn too fast, pretending to stumble, and giving the tent a hearty “accidental” thump. There is no response from inside.
“Sorry!” we say in a loud official voice, and we wait for an answer. “Hello? Anybody home?” Again there is no response.
It is definite. Patrick is not here.
And although we loiter for another twenty minutes, performing meaningless tricks with the clipboard, he does not return, and we finally have to admit that staying any longer would be highly suspicious, and we must pack up our toys and admit the painful obvious truth:
We have crapped out.
We thread our way back through the camp, pausing twice to scribble bad words on the clipboard, and then climb back up onto the causeway and trudge to the car in a weary, bitter, very unhappy sheen of sweat. We try very hard to think positive thoughts, to come up with some small scrap of something that will make this whole hopeless trip seem like anything other than a complete waste of time. And finally, as we thread our way through the traffic at the end of the causeway, one tiny glimmer of optimism leaks through all the cranky sludge, and we sigh and accept it as the very best we can hope for:
At least there is now time for lunch.
I had a quick lunch alone in a restaurant on Calle Ocho, a new place that had opened so recently that the waitress was still polite. The food was good. I topped it off with a cafecita and then drove slowly and thoughtfully back to the office. I wondered where Patrick had gone. He knew he could not get to Jackie in daylight. If he was keeping the schedule I thought he was, this was his sleeping time, and he should have been lounging there in his tent in peaceful repose. Of course, it was possible that he had run out of buffalo jerky and gone to a convenience store to get more. But after all my preparation, and my endless dithering about doing it quickly and in daylight, it was oddly deflating to come away from the afternoon with nothing to show for it except a small spot on my shirt from some spilled black beans.