Acts of Nature by Jonathon King Page B

completely intact box of “hurricane candles” and a single hammer, I found something useful: a silver roll of three-inch-wide duct tape. No home owner could live without it. My light also caught something chrome and shining on the floor and I was able to reach through a space behind the generator and get a hand on it. With some twisting and yanking and considerable working of angles, I came up with the sheared-off shaft of what was once a Big Bertha driving wood. In memory I recalled a scene of Jeff Snow standing out on this deck, the morning sun just coming up in the east, while he wedged a tee in between the planks and took practice driving old golf balls out into the distance. The environmentalists would have frowned at his depositing dozens of nonbiodegradable orbs of plastic and rubber into the pristine waters. But I had simply smiled at his morning constitutional. The fat head of the golf club was now gone, but the wet leather-wrapped grip and a sharp, wicked metallic point at the end remained. I told myself it might be useful, maybe as a splint for Sherry’s broken leg. But I knew there was something about its resemblance to a weapon that made me take it along with the roll of tape. If I ended up dragging a half-submerged canoe through the Everglades I didn’t want to face a disoriented Wally or the rest of his ilk with just a six-inch fillet knife.
    When I got back to Sherry with my meager loot she had already shifted herself on the floor and had gone through the cabinet under the sink.
    There she had found a clean dishrag and an intact bottle of isopropyl alcohol.
    “Maybe your friend kept it under there for cuts from cleaning fish,” she said. “Whatever, it’s got to help.”
    First things first, I used my knife to cut loose the blood- soaked sheet Sherry had used to tie off her wound and then the sweatpants fabric from around her thigh. The gash seemed less than ominous, like a half-moon slice from a pipe the diameter of a baseball bat handle. It was crusted shut with dried blood, but when I pinched the flesh on either side to open it a bit in order to pour in the alcohol, the hole opened and I could see how deep the cut went. Sherry twitched as I sloshed in the disinfectant and when I looked up at her there was a thin bright red fine of blood on her lip where she was biting against the pain.
    “Sorry,” I muttered stupidly.
    She closed her eyes and bobbed her head, excusing me.
    I then lay the clean dish towel over the wound and ripped off long pieces of the sheet and tied the bandage in place.
    “We should try to keep your leg straight and immobilized. You don’t know what that bone end is doing inside,” I said.
    “Yeah, I do,” she said, her teeth now clenched together. “It’s cutting, Max. I can feel it. We just gotta hope it isn’t near an artery.”
    “You’re right. But we can splint it,” I said. “God knows there are enough pieces of slat wood here to do that. Maybe strap it in place with the duct tape. That’ll keep it straight when we load you into the canoe.”
    Now she was looking more skeptical than pained.
    “Got to, Sherry. Time isn’t helping us any here.”
    “I know,” she answered. “But I was just getting comfortable, you know?”
    “That’a girl,” I answered, again complimenting her guts and hopefully encouraging her spirit for what was going to be one hell of an ordeal we both knew was coming.
    I used the rest of the roll of tape on the hull of the canoe, first folding a piece of a Rubbermaid dish drainer from under the sink to cover the hole and then strapping it in place with the duct tape. While working on the patch I’d found three other punctures and a cracked rib toward the bow, but was sure the boat would still float. My next task was to find a replacement for the missing paddles and I discovered a long curved piece of mahogany under some debris that I recognized as once being the plaque backing for a bonefish trophy that Jeff Snow had mounted and