John Locke - Now & Then

A long, low, distant rumble served as our warning, and another chilling gust of wind hit us from the east. The saw grass around us began bending at a severe angle. Somewhere behind us, a screen door slammed against its casing, threatening to burst its hinges. I’d never seen such a powerful storm appear out of nowhere, but here she was, picking up speed, heading our way.

��Better jump in the truck!” Earl said, so we did, and just as we closed the doors all hell broke loose, and the wind made the most God-awful shrieking and howling noise I’d ever heard. It sounded almost like a child’s shrill wail, and I could have sworn I heard cursing in at least three of the four languages I speak. It was so loud we covered our ears with our hands and winced in pain. The sky was dark around us, and the rain pelted our car so hard I could barely see ten feet out the window. I thought of the fragile screen door and looked to see if it had taken flight.

I couldn’t see the ground floor of the store, because the rain was hitting the street and bouncing up several feet, making the visibility twice as poor. But something on the roof caught my eye, a shape so incongruous and absurd I hesitate to even mention it. Just to clarify, I’ve never seen anything like it before or since, and I’m not even sure I saw it then. As I said, the storm was all consuming, and visibility practically nil.

It appeared to be a young woman.

If I had to guess, the shape I saw could have been a teenage girl, with long black hair and eyes that seemed to glow yellow, with a vertical black line in the center, like a jungle cat.

Fine, I know what you’re thinking, but guess what: it gets even crazier!

She was laughing.

Right, I know. But if it was a young woman standing on the roof with her arms raised heavenward, she seemed to be looking right at me, and yes, she was laughing. Laughing or howling or wailing…and if I hadn’t known better I could have sworn the shrieking sound that I’d believed to be the wind, was actually coming from her! Okay, I’ve told you what I saw, and now you can haul me away, because when I blinked my eyes and craned my neck, trying to get a better look at her, she disappeared.

Yeah, that’s right. She disappeared into thin air.

I was about to ask the others if they’d seen her, but...

But the hail started.

My previous encounters with hail had been small pebbles that grew to larger pebbles, and then back to small as the storms came to an end. These hail storms were loud and fun and sometimes damaged a car’s paint job. Earl’s truck was several tones of rust, primer, and in a few places, actual paint, so paint damage wouldn’t have been an issue in any case.

But the St. Alban’s hail didn’t work that way. It started huge, the size of cranberries, and quickly escalated to golf balls that hit us so hard and loud it actually drowned out the sound of the shrieking. Or maybe the shrieking had stopped when the hail showed up.

Either way, the pounding was nonstop. Unyielding. The damage to Earl’s truck quickly moved beyond a simple paint job, as the windshield cracked in several places and jagged lines were spidering in all directions across the glass. The rear window was faring even worse, with numerous impact points that looked like bullet holes.

Nor was the damage confined to the windows, as hail relentlessly hammered dents into the hood of the truck. From the sound above us, I knew the roof would be even worse. The sound of hail on metal was so intense, it sounded like Blue Man Group was pounding the truck with sledge hammers during a prolonged finale.

“Holy shit!” one of the boys yelled, and the rest of us laughed.

“How you like them apples, city boy?” Earl shouted, though the hail hadn’t got quite to apple size, to my knowledge.

“It’s amazing the windows are still in tact!” I shouted.

“They won’t last much longer,” Earl yelled.

Then, as suddenly as it started, it was over.

Except for one delayed crash, where something fell from the sky and struck the truck bed so hard it shook the chassis and buckled the tires.

“The fuck was that?” Earl shouted.

The sudden silence was so strange, we all just sat there a moment. We looked out the windows, then at each other. We’d come through it, whatever it was, and the four of us had a story to tell for the rest of our days.

“Don’t get out yet,” Earl said. “Whatever that last one was, might not be the last one of ‘em.”

I agreed. “That wasn’t a hailstone,” I said.

“What then?”

I thought a minute. “Could be a meteorite, or a piece of a space satellite falling to earth.”

“In the middle of a hail storm?”

“Best guess. Of course, we could always just get out of the truck and take a look.”

“You first, then,” Earl said.

We started laughing. The sun came back out and I climbed out of the truck and the others followed. Then we looked in the back and found what had made the noise.

Not a meteorite.

Not a piece of a space satellite.

It was a cannonball.

“Someone fired a cannonball at us?” I said.

“Never know,” one of Earl’s kids said. “This used to be a pirate town. Lotta people still think of themselves as pirates.”

“Probably just got picked up by the storm, carried awhile, and dropped on the back of my truck when the wind died down,” Earl said.

“Looks ancient,” I said.

Earl took the ball from me and inspected it carefully. He removed his cap and scratched his head. “Now this here might be worth something,” he said. He placed it on the floor of his truck.

We finished loading the ballast rocks into the back of the truck and talked about the storm, comparing it to everything else we’d experienced in nature.

At four the next morning I built a huge fire in the pit and roasted the stones for more than two hours. Then Earl and his sons helped me wrap most of the pig in aluminum foil and carry it out to the pit. We removed a few of the small center stones and stuffed them inside the pig to facilitate the cooking. The hot stones created a lot of smoke and loud sizzling sounds as the pig seared from within. We wrapped the rest of the pig in foil and placed it carefully in the pit, and covered it with banana leaves and hot stones. Then I removed the ropes I’d used to cordon off the area, and raked a couple of feet of sand over the top of the pit. By the time we finished, if you didn’t know where the pig was cooking, it would be impossible to tell.

Satisfied with our effort, Earl, the boys and me went back inside and I fed them some shrimp grits and country ham biscuits with red eye gravy. We sat and talked about the storm and drank coffee.

At one point I asked them if they’d seen anything on the roof of the store.

“Like what?” Earl said.

“I don’t know, I just thought I saw something up there.”

“Like a cannon?” one of the sons said.

We all laughed and I changed the subject.

Beth came down to start putting things in order for the big Fourth of July breakfast, and I got up to help her. The men left. It felt comfortable, the two of us working together. We didn’t talk much, and didn’t feel like we needed to.

The way I figured, it would take about eleven hours for the pig to be fall off the bone perfect, which meant dinner would be ready around six o’clock. In the meantime our guests could enjoy the beach, play golf, or shop in nearby Fernandina Beach. Rachel and Tracy would serve drinks to the beach group, Beth would run a shuttle service for the others, and I’d handle an all-day food and beverage shift. The pig roast would be over by eight-thirty, at which time we’d shuttle our dozen house guests to the big fireworks display at the Fernandina Beach marina. All in all, it would be a Fourth of July to remember.

At least that’s what I planned.

Unfortunately, none of those things happened.

Except for the memorable part.

Chapter 18

IT HAD BEEN a rough couple of weeks for D’Augie.

First, he’d nearly died on a sand dune swarming with fire ants. Then he’d been saved by Donovan Creed, the man he tried to kill, a situation made no less mortifying to D’Augie after hearing that Creed and his girlfriend stripped him naked during the rescue. And of course Creed had stolen his prized knife, the only gift D’Augie had ever gotten from his father.

Then Rachel told him that Creed took a caretaker’s job at The Seaside Bed & Breakfast, where he planned to rid the attic of squirrel infestation. So D’Augie snuck out of the hospital and hid in The Seaside’s attic, hoping to catch Creed by surprise. But the surprise turned out to be on D’Augie, who broke an arm and leg after being attacked by angry attic snakes and hungry squirrels.

After dragging his broken body a quarter mile to his car, it took a super human effort to make the forty minute drive to Jackson Memorial, where ER personnel set his fractures and re-treated his festering fire ant bites.

During the course of his treatment, D’Augie had an allergic reaction to one of the antibiotics they administered, and nearly died again. He spent more than a week mildly sedated as they pumped him with steroids and pain killers. Eventually they got him back to normal, if you can call an arm and leg cast normal. Worse, both casts were on the right side, which made it impossible for D’Augie to drive a car.

But D’Augie was nothing if not determined, and he aimed to kill Creed. He’d traveled more than a thousand miles over two years to get the man who killed his father, and he wasn’t going to give up because of some plaster.

He hired a cab to pick him up at the hospital and take him to one of the airport motels. He’d wanted to stay at the Amelia Island Resort, or in Fernandina Beach, but it was Saturday, July third, and everything on the island was booked. He got a second cab to take him to Wal-Mart, where he bought a buck knife, a sharpening tool, some food, and several bottles of water. He spent most of the night putting a fine edge on his blade. Next morning he put his supplies in his shoulder bag, caught a cab to St. Alban’s and told the driver to let him out two blocks south of The Seaside Bed & Breakfast. The driver did so and D’Augie gave him a fifty and said he’d catch a ride back with a friend.

D’Augie’s arm cast was more of an inconvenience than a problem. It could actually be considered a benefit, since the sling that held it in place could be used to conceal his knife. But moving around with the leg cast was proving to be an issue. The cast ran from his ankle to the top of his thigh, and forced him to turn sideways every time he took a step with his right foot.

His right foot was bare, since the nature of the cast’s construction prevented him from wearing a shoe. He supposed he could wear a giant sock, but he didn’t happen to own any giant socks and hadn’t thought to buy one.

Now, standing on the street, watching the cab drive away, D’Augie wished he’d thought to buy a dozen socks. The thought came to him when he realized he was standing on a live cigarette. D’Augie cried out and lifted his bare foot off the pavement, hoping to get relief. But his leg cast caused him to pitch forward. In order to keep from falling face first, he had to plant his casted foot back on the street. Even though the smoldering cigarette was inches behind him at this point, the noon sun had rendered the pavement blazingly hot, a situation that worsened the wound he’d received from the cigarette. He yelled again, lifted his leg again, spun sideways and was again forced to put his casted foot back on the hot pavement to keep his balance. Unfortunately, that step burned the tender bottom of his foot even worse, and he screeched. He lifted his foot again, spun sideways again, nearly fell again, put it down again, screamed again, and kept repeating the process, over and over, like some “cast” member from Night of the Living Dead .