"Halt, pilgrim," the man implored, waving a sheaf of rose-colored advertising flyers.
Squires snatched one and backed out of reach. The stranger muttered a blessing as he shuffled off into the twilight. Squires stopped beneath a streetlamp to look at the paper:
ASTOUNDING STIGMATA OF CHRIST!!!!
Come see amazing Dominick Amador,
the humbel carpenter who woke up one day
with the exactly identical crucifiction wounds of
Jesus Christ himself, Son of God!
Bleeding 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily.
Saturdays Noon to 3 p.m. (Palms only).
Visitations open to the publix. Offerings welcomed!
4834 Haydon Burns Lane (Look for The Cross in the front yard!)
And in small print at the bottom of the paper:
As feachered on Rev. Pat Robertson's "Heavenly Signs" TV show!!!
Bernard Squires crumpled the flyer and tossed it. Sickos, he thought, no matter where you go on this planet. Sickos who never learned to spell. Squires stopped at the Grab N'Go, where his request for a New York Timesdrew the blankest of stares. He settled for a USA Todayand a cup of decaf, and headed back toward the b-and-b. Somewhere he made a wrong turn and found himself on a street he didn't recognize – the chanting tipped him off.
Squires heard it from a block away: a man and a woman, vocalizing disharmoniously in some exotic tongue. The tremulous sounds drew Squires to a floodlit house. It was a plain, one-story concrete-and-stucco, typical of Florida tract developments in the 1960s and '70s. Squires stood out of sight, behind an old oak, watching.
Three figures were visible – four, counting a statue of the Virgin Mary, which a dark-haired man in coveralls was positioning and repositioning on a small illuminated platform. Two other persons – the chanters, it turned out – sat with legs outstretched in a curved trench that had been dug in the lawn and filled with water. The man in the trench was cloaked in dingy bed linens, while the woman wore a formal white gown with lacy pointed shoulders. The pair was of indeterminate age, though both had pale skin and wet hair. Bernard Squires noticed V-shaped wakes pushing here and there in the water; animals of some kind, swimming ...
Turtles?
Squires edged closer. Soon he realized he was witness to an eccentric religious rite. The couple in the trench continued to join arms and spout gibberish while scores of grape-sized reptile heads bobbed around them. (Squires recalled a cable-television documentary about a snake-handling cult in Kentucky – perhaps this was a breakaway sect of turtle worshipers!) Interestingly, the dark-haired man in coveralls took no part in the moat-wallowing ceremony. Rather, he intermittently turned from the Madonna statue to gaze upon the two chanters with what appeared to Bernard Squires as unmasked disapproval.
"Kiiikkkeeeaay kakkooo kattttkin!"the couple bayed, sending such an icy jet down Squires' spine that he crossed the street and hurried away. He was not a devout man and certainly didn't believe in omens, but he was profoundly unsettled by the turtle handlers and the stranger with blood on his palms. Grange, which initially had impressed Squires as a prototypical tourist-grubbing southern truck stop, now seemed murky and mysterious. Weird vapors tainted the parochial climate of sturdy marriages, conservatively traditional faiths and blind veneration of progress – anyprogress – that allowed slick characters such as Bernard Squires to swoop in and have their way. He returned straightaway to the bed-and-breakfast, bid an early good night to Mrs. Hendricks (taking a pass on her pork roast, squash, snap beans and pecan pie), bolted the door to his room (quietly, so as not to offend his hostess), and slipped beneath the quilt to nurse a hollow, helpless, irrational feeling that Simmons Wood was lost.
The ReelLuvsmelled of urine, salt and crab parts. How could it not?
Shiner slouched over the wheel. They were cruising at half-speed to conserve gas. Bode Gazzer's marine chart was unrolled across Amber's lap. The route to Jewfish Creek had been marked for them in ballpoint pen by the helpful Black Tide lady.
Florida Bay had a brisk chop; no rollers to make the travelers queasy. Still, Shiner's cheeks took on a greenish tinge, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
"You all right?" Amber asked.
He nodded unconvincingly. The pudge on his arms and belly jiggled with each bump. He steered gingerly; the Black Tide lady had popped his dislocated thumbs back into the sockets, but they remained painfully swollen.
"Stop the boat," Amber told him.
"I'm OK."
"Stop it. Right now." She reached across the console and levered back the throttle. Shiner didn't argue because she had the gun; Chub's Colt Python. The tip of the barrel peeked from beneath the chart.
As soon as the boat stopped moving, Shiner leaned over the side and puked up six of the eight Vienna sausages he'd wolfed down for breakfast on Pearl Key.
"I'm sorry." He wiped his mouth. "Usually I don't get seasick. Honest."
Amber said, "Maybe you're not seasick. Maybe you're just scared."
"I ain't scared!"
"Then you're a damn fool."
"Scared a what?"
"Of getting busted in a stolen boat," she said. "Or getting the shit beat out of you by my crazy jealous boyfriend back in Miami. Or maybe you're just scared of the cops."
Shiner said, "What cops?"
"The cops I ought to call the second we see a phone. To say I was kidnapped by you and nearly raped by your redneck pals."
"Oh God." Noisily Shiner launched the remainder of breakfast.
Afterwards he restarted the engines and off they went, the hull of the Reel Luvpounding like a tom-tom. Amber was still trying to sort out what had happened on the island. Shiner hadn't been much help; the more earnestly he'd tried to explain it, the nuttier it sounded.
This much she knew: The woman with the shotgun was the one the rednecks had robbed of the lottery ticket.
"How'd she find you guys all the way out here?" Amber had wondered, to which Shiner had proposed a fantastically muddled scenario involving liberals, Cubans, Democrats, commies, armed black militants, helicopters with infrared night scopes, and battalions of foreign-speaking soldiers hiding in the Bahamas. Wisely Shiner had refrained from tossing in the Jews, although he couldn't stop himself from asking Amber (in a whisper) if her last name was actually Bernstein, as Chub had raged.
"Or d'you make that up?"
"What's the difference," she'd said.
"I don't know. None, I guess."
"You'd still marry me, wouldn't you? In about ten seconds flat." Amber winking at her joke, which had caused Shiner to redden and turn away.
That was after Chub had been shot and the colonel had been knocked out and Amber had fixed herself up and put on some clean clothes. Then the black woman and the white guy had collected the militia's guns – the AR-15, the TEC-9, the Cobray, the Beretta, even Shiner's puny Marlin .22 – and heaved them one after another into the bay. The only thing that didn't get tossed was a can of pepper spray, which the black woman placed in her handbag.
Afterwards she'd told Shiner and Amber to take the stolen boat back to the mainland. The black woman (JoLayne was her name) had marked the way on the chart and had even given them bottled water and cold drinks for the journey. Then the white guy had pulled Shiner aside, into the woods, and when they'd returned Shiner was ashen. The white guy had handed Chub's Colt Python to Amber with instructions to "shoot the little creep if he tries anything funny."
Amber didn't have much faith in the big revolver since it had misfired once already, but she didn't mention that to Shiner. Besides, he looked too sick and dejected for mischief.
Which he was. The white guy, JoLayne's friend, hadn't laid a hand on him in the mangroves. Instead he'd looked the kid square in the eyes and said, "Son, if Amber doesn't get home safe and sound, I'm going straight to your momma in Grange and tell her everything you've done. And then I'm going to put your name and ugly skinheaded picture on the front page of the newspaper, and you're going to be famous in the worst possible way."