The Way We Die Now

1 Tiny Bock heaved his bulk from the sand chair. He stood silently in the clearing for a moment listening, but all he could hear was the whir of insects and the scuttling of a few foraging wood rats. He folded the red-and-green webbed chair, took it to the black pickup truck and threw it into the back. He opened the cab door on the passenger's side and reached for the paper sack on the seat. There were two bologna sandwiches wrapped in oil paper and two hard-boiled eggs in the sack. He unwrapped one of the sandwiches, noticed that the lunch meat had turned green on the outer edge. He rewrapped the sandwich, put it back in the sack, took one of the hard-boiled eggs. He cracked open the egg and peeled it, but when he split the egg in two he realized that the yolk had turned purple and there was a strong smell of sulphur. Twenty feet away a raccoon, also smelling the egg and the sulphur, rose on its hind legs and waved its forefeet, sniffing the air. Tiny Bock noticed the raccoon and placed the two halves of the egg on a tuft of grass. As Tiny moved to the cab of the truck the raccoon, a female, scurried forward and scooped up the two egg halves. The coon took the two halves to a muddy pool of water and rolled the egg in the water to wash it preparatory to eating. Tiny Bock, who had taken his shotgun from the cab of the truck, fired once. Eight of the twelve slugs hit the raccoon, reducing it to an unrecognizable spot of fur and blood. Bock reloaded the shotgun before replacing it on the gun rack above the seat. Listening again, Bock could hear the airplane sound of the airboat long before he saw it. Then he spotted the boat; it was returning to the hammock from a different direction than he had expected, but Chico de las Mas was heading unerringly toward Bock and the parked truck. Skimming across the wet sawgrass of the Everglades, it resembled a giant but harmless insect. Skidding the aluminum boat sideways, Chico stopped short of the dry brushy hammock. After Chico turned the engine off, and the whirling propeller had run down, Bock said, "What took you so long?" "Had a hard time finding a deep enough sinkhole. But it won't matter. When the rains come this whole area'11 be under a foot of water. You won't be able to drive out to the hammock here for another six months. I thought I heard a shotgun, but I wasn't sure." Bock grinned and pointed to what was left of the raccoon. "I shot a coon." The two men pushed the airboat into the clearing and well into the brush on the other side. Chico chained the prow of the boat to a cypress tree, and then padlocked the chain. They climbed into the cab of the truck. Chico took the wheel and drove across the dry sands, avoiding occasional puddles, toward the dirt and oolite access road, some ten minutes away. The access road had been built illegally by a group of Naples hunters almost five years ago in the Big Cypress. They had also planned to build a weekend lodge, but their plans had fallen through, so now the road, a foot above the water level, was a road to nowhere. "There's blood on the front of your shirt," Bock said. "I know." Chico took a bloody Baggie out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Bock. "What's this?" Chico laughed. "A bonus. Remember the tall one, the one they called C'est Dieu? I cut that out of his asshole." Bock removed the soggy wad of money from the Baggie, tossed the Baggie out the window. He unfolded and counted the money. "One ten, and thirty ones. Forty bucks. Did you cut the others?" "Didn't have to. I've been watching them close, and no one ever let old C'est Dieu out his sight. Always one or two with him. So I knew he was holding it for all of 'em." Bock folded the bills and put them into his back pocket. "There's a couple of bologna sandwiches left in the sack if you want 'em." "Sinking Haitians iCharles Willeford is the author of 'The Way We Die Now', published 1988 under ISBN 9780394565255 and ISBN 0394565258.