Stormy Weather

Afterwards they rested on shore. Skink, struggling into his laceless boots: "If he gets out of here, he deserves to be free."

Augustine said, "But he won't."

"No, he'll go the wrong way. That's his nature."

Then Skink was moving again, an orange flame weaving through the trees ahead of them. Bo

Augustine said, "Nothing so exotic, Mrs. Lamb."

"Then what?"

"Time. Time will get him."

"Exactly!" the governor boomed. "It's the arc of all life. For Lester we merely hasten the sad promenade. Tonight we are Darwin's elves."

Bo

Two hours later they emerged from the woods. A rip of wind braced them.

"Oh brother," Augustine said, "any second now."

With a grimace, Skink removed the backpack. "This is for your hike."

"It's not that far."

"Take it, just in case."

Bo

A stalk of holly berries garnished the empty withered socket. The governor groped at himself. "Damn. I guess it fell out."

Bo

"It's all right," he said. "I got a whole box of extras somewhere."

She said, "Don't be foolish. Go to the mainland with us."

"No!"

A mud-gray wall of rain came hissing down the road. Bo

"You bet."

"For what?" Bo

"Before I try to find that place again," Augustine said.

"Why go back?"

"Science," said Augustine.

"Nostalgia," said the governor.

The squall doused the torch, which he lobbed into a stand of red mangroves. He tucked his hair under the plastic shower cap and said good-bye. Bo

For a while they could make out his tall shape, stalking south, under violet flashbursts of high lightning. Then he was gone. The weather covered him like a shroud.

They turned and went the other way. Augustine walked fast on the blacktop, the backpack jouncing on his bare shoulders.

"Hey, the scar is looking good," Bo

"You still like it?"

"Beauty." She could see it vividly whenever the sky lit up. "A corkscrew in the shower-you weren't kidding?"

"God, I wish," said Augustine.

They heard a car behind them. As it approached, the headlights elongated their shadows on the pavement. Augustine asked Bo

Soon they reached the tall bridge at Card Sound. Augustine said it was time to rest. He unzipped the backpack to see what the governor had packed: a coil of rope, two knives, four banda

Augustine and Bo

Needles of rain stung Bo

"Maybe it's another hurricane!"

"Not hardly," he said.

They stopped at the top. Augustine threw the pistol as far as he could. Bo

Far below, the bay was frothed and corrugated; a treacherously different place from the first time Bo

She drew Augustine closer and kissed him for a long time. Then she spun him around and groped in the backpack.

"What're you doing?" he shouted over the slap ot the rain.

"Hush."

When he turned back, her eyes were shining. In her hands was the coil of rope.

"Tie me to the bridge," she said.

EPILOGUE

The marriage of Bo

By the end of the year, Max and Edie Marsh were engaged. They got an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where Edie became active in charity circles. Two years after the hurricane, while attending a Ke

Brenda Rourke recovered fully from her injuries and returned to the Highway Patrol. She requested and received a transfer to northern Florida, where she and Jim Tile built a small house on the Ochlockonee River.

For Christmas he gave her an engraved gold replica of her mother's wedding ring, and two full-grown rottweilers from Stuttgart.

After being rescued in the ocean off Islamorada, Avila was taken to Miami's Krome Detention Center and processed as "Juan Gomez Duran," a rafter fleeing political oppression in Havana. He was held at Krome for nine days, until a Spanish-language radio station sponsored his release. In return, brave "Senor Gomez" agreed to share the details of high-seas escape with radio listeners, who were moved by his heart-wrenching story but puzzled by his wildly inaccurate references to Cuban geography. Afterwards Avila packed up and moved to Fort Myers, on the west coast of Florida, where he was immediately hired as a code-enforcement officer for the local building-and-zoning department. During his first four weeks on the job, Avila approved 212 new homes– a record for a single inspector that stands to this day. Nineteen months after the hurricane, while preparing a sacrifice to Change on the patio of his luxurious new waterfront town house, Avila was severely bitten on the thigh by a hydrophobic rabbit. Too embarrassed to seek medical attention, he died twenty-two days later in his hot tub. In honor of his short but productive tenure as a code inspector, the Lee County Home Builders Association established the Juan Gomez Duran Scholarship Fund.