Scat

  "But is it him7. I can't tell." She scrunched her eyes, examining the image on the TV screen.

  Nick couldn't remember if Smoke ever wore an ammo belt to hold up his pants. Marta said the Truman dress code probably didn't allow it.

  "When are you gonna tell the police about this video?" she asked. "Or are you gonna tell 'em?"

  All day, Mrs. Starch's students had been talking about their interviews with the sheriff's deputies, and about the news that Smoke was being investigated in connection with the Black Vine Swamp fire.

  Nick told Marta that he didn't know what to do about the tape. "You can't see the guy's face-there's no way to be sure who it is."

  "Betcha five bucks it's him," she said. "I bet he snuck out there and lit that fire to get back at Mrs. Starch."

  Nick had to agree that Smoke was a likely suspect, considering his previous crimes.

  "Where does he live, anyway?" Nick asked Marta.

  "I don't know-and I don't want to know," she said. "Probably in a cave somewhere."

  As soon as Marta was gone, Nick hurried to the den and checked the computer. Nothing from his dad, not a word.

  Nick could no longer pretend that this was a normal interruption in communication. Never since his arrival in Iraq had Capt. Gregory Waters gone so long without e-mailing home. Nick felt sick and anxious-something must have happened. There could be no other explanation.

  He really didn't want to be alone with such horrible thoughts, so he dashed out the door and ran until he caught up with Marta.

  She heard his footsteps coming and turned around, surprised. "Hey, what's up?" she asked with a smile.

  Nick slowed down and started walking beside her- shoving his hands in his pockets, trying to act casual. He said, "I gotta go up to the Circle K and get some milk and stuff."

  "But that's, like, two miles."

  "No big deal. I promised my mom." It wasn't a particularly clever story, but it was the best Nick could come up with.

  "Want me to go with you?" Marta asked. " 'Kay."

  Secretly Nick was elated that Marta had offered to walk with him. He hoped she would start chattering, as she often did when she was in a good mood. Nick desperately needed something to distract him from worrying about his dad.

  Sure enough, Marta launched into a speech about her English essay. Jane Austen was the topic, and although Nick couldn't have been less interested, he let himself be dragged along in conversation. His imagination was much better off in the British countryside than in the Anbar province of Iraq.

  To reach the convenience store, Nick and Marta had to cross Green Heron Parkway, a four-lane street that connected to the interstate. The road had been open only a few months, but already it was one of the busiest in the county.

  Finally the light turned red and the traffic came to a stop. Nick was halfway across the intersection when he spotted a blue Prius like the one Mrs. Starch drove. It was three or four cars back in line, and Nick shielded his eyes from the sun so that he might see the driver. The glare was blinding.

  "Are you crazy?" Marta shouted back at him. "You're gonna get flattened like a pancake."

  Nick hurried across the road. The light turned green and the traffic began to roll.

  As the Prius motored away, Nick caught a glimpse of the driver-definitely not a woman. Nick couldn't see the guy's face, but he had wide shoulders and a dark knit hat tugged down over his ears.

  Wrong car, Nick thought.

  Then he noticed Marta standing on the curb, watching the blue Prius as it disappeared down the highway. "Weird," she said. "He had the same kind of license plate as you-know-who."

  "Seriously?" Nick hadn't noticed.

  "Everybody wants to save the poor ol' manatees," Marta remarked.

  "I guess," said Nick, pondering the coincidence.

  When they reached the store, he realized that he had only fifty-five cents in his pocket, which pretty much blew his cover story about going shopping for his mom.

  If Marta figured it out, she never let on. She loaned him a couple of bucks to buy a half-gallon of milk.

  Nick walked her back to her block, and then he headed home. Turning the corner of his street, he was surprised to see his mother's car in the driveway. She never got off work early, except for the time that she'd gotten sick after eating a bad burrito in the jail cafeteria.

  Opening the front door, Nick called out, "Hey, Mom?"

  She wasn't in the living room, or the kitchen. He put the milk in the refrigerator and went down the hall to his parents' bedroom. The door was closed.

  "Mom?" He knocked lightly. "Mom, it's me."

  "Come on in."

  She was sitting on the edge of the bed next to a wad of crumpled tissues. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she was sniffling.

  Nick felt his knees turn to rubber. "Oh no!" he said. "He's not dead, honey. But he's hurt."

  "How bad?" Nick rasped.

  His mother reached out and pulled him close. "He's on his way home."

  "How bad?" Nick asked again, with a tremble.

  His mother kissed his forehead and dabbed the tears on his cheeks.

  She said, "He's coming home. That's all that matters."

  SEVEN

  Millicent Winship was seventy-seven years old, ninety-two pounds, ridiculously rich, and as tough as a garfish. Her only daughter, Whitney, had shamed the family by abandoning her husband and son and moving to Paris, where she had opened a cheese shop. Mrs. Winship didn't care much for the fellow Whitney had married, but she felt very bad that he'd been left alone to raise her only grandchild-a burly and rebellious boy named Duane, after his father.

  So Mrs. Winship had decided that the least she could do was provide her grandson with the best possible education. Because of his poor grades and occasional behavior problems, the Truman School wasn't exactly eager to have young Duane Jr. as a student. Mrs. Winship solved that problem by sending an extremely large check.

  It wasn't often that she got to see Duane Jr. because she divided her time among five different homes in five different states-California, New York, Arizona, South Carolina, and Florida. All of Mrs. Winship's houses were located on championship golf courses; she herself didn't play the game, but she loved watching the players traipse in their colorful outfits down the emerald slopes, pausing every few steps to hack feverishly at a tiny white sphere. Mrs. Winship thought golf was the most amusing spectacle that she'd ever seen, and she would spend hours spying on passing foursomes through the special high-powered binoculars that she kept on the back windowsill at each of her fairway residences.

  Mrs. Winship spent only two weeks a year in Naples, but during these visits she always invited Duane Jr. and his father out to dinner. If they failed to respond promptly, Mrs. Winship would command her chauffeur to drive her to the Scrod household so that she could personally raise a ruckus.

  Which was her intention on this day as she rapped sharply on the screen door and barked her grandson's name over the notes of a Mozart symphony that was blaring from the stereo speakers inside.

  Before long, the music cut off and Duane Scrod Sr. shuffled to the door. He was flustered to see Mrs. Winship and made a halfhearted pass at smoothing the tangle of oily hair under his trucker's cap.

  "Afternoon, Millie," he said with false cheeriness. "What brings you here?"

  "My grandson. What do you think?" she snapped. "Where is he?"

  "Wanna come in?"

  "I certainly do not. Why aren't you answering your telephone?" Mrs. Winship demanded. "I left a message about a dinner engagement-that was two nights ago, and I've revived no reply."

  Duane Scrod Sr. sighed ruefully, and so did the large macaw on his shoulder.

  "I see you've still got that stupid bird," Mrs. Winship remarked.

  "She's not stupid. She speaks three languages."

  "Really? Pick one and have her tell me where D.J. is."

  "She doesn't know," Duane Scrod Sr. muttered, "and neither do I."

  It was an uns
atisfactory answer, as far as Mrs. Winship was concerned.

  "We're talking about your one and only child," she said, glaring, "and you don't know where he is?"

  Duane Scrod Sr. opened the door and came out on the porch. "He said he was goin' camping somewhere out in the boonies. That was a couple days ago, and I haven't seen him since."

  "But what about school?" Mrs. Winship asked. "He said he needed a break."

  "Oh, that's rich."

  Duane Scrod Sr. threw up his hands, nearly toppling the macaw from its roost on his shoulder. "What d'you want from me, Millie?" he whined. "The boy has his own agenda. I can't make him do what he doesn't want to do."

  "Oh, of course not. You're just his father," Mrs. Winship said sarcastically. "Is he in trouble again? And tell me the truth for once."

  Duane Scrod Sr. sat down in a rotting wicker chair and vigorously clawed at an insect bite on one of his bare feet.

  "A cop was here about an hour ago," he admitted. "Somebody lit a fire out by the Big Cypress, and they think it was Junior."

  Millicent Winship closed her eyes and thought: Not again.

  Duane Sr. said, "They don't have enough to bust him. They're just fishin' is all."

  "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

  Duane Sr. reached in a pocket and took out a sunflower seed, which he fed to the macaw. He said, "When D.J. gets home, I'll make sure he calls you. Maybe we can all go to that steak place again, the one up near Bonita Beach."

  "Unless he's in jail," Mrs. Winship said, "in which case we can bring him a lovely fruit basket."

  "Aw, don't be like that."

  "Are you still out of work, Duane?"

  "What do you expect? I got no wheels!" Indignantly he pointed at the Tahoe upon which he had painted BOYCOTT SMITHERS CHEVY!!!!! "They still won't give me a new transmission," he griped.

  "Perhaps it's because you torched their building-you think that might have something to do with it?"

  "Beside the point!" Duane Sr. huffed. "I paid my debt to society. I did my time."

  Mrs. Winship was more sad than angry. Despite his unattractive personality, Duane Scrod Sr. had always been a hard worker and a good provider, until Whitney had run off to France. Then he'd sort of fallen apart, losing interest in the antique piano shop that he'd owned in Naples. Within a year the place had gone bankrupt, and since then Duane Scrod Sr. hadn't been able to hold a steady job. The low point had come when he'd burned down the Chevrolet dealership.

  "Those six months you were locked up," Mrs. Winship said, "I still don't understand why you didn't have Duane Jr. call me. What were you thinking, letting that boy stay out here all alone?"

  Duane Scrod Sr. looked up from his bug-chewed foot. "Maybe I was ashamed for you to know what happened," he said in a scratchy voice. "Hey, D.J. took care of himself just fine. He never went hungry, Millie-I had some money put away."

  Money that I'd sent you, thought Mrs. Winship, so you wouldn't lose your house to the bank.

  "There was plenty for groceries," Duane Scrod Sr. went on. "He did all right, like I've told you a hundred times."

  Mrs. Winship shook a finger at him. "Nothing is all right around this place. Not you, not your son-nothing. It's time to get a grip on life, Duane. Time to move on."

  Duane Scrod Sr. rose with a squeak from the old wicker chair. "Yeah," he said.

  "Oui!" chirped the blue-and-gold macaw. "Ja!"

  Mrs. Winship rolled her eyes. "Would you kindly tell your parrot to shut up?"

  "She's not a parrot."

  "How did Duane Jr. get out to where he's camping?"

  Duane Sr. said, "He drove himself."

  "Did he now?"

  "He's got his license, Millie. He turned sixteen two months ago."

  Mrs. Winship's eyes narrowed. "I'm quite aware of that. I sent a birthday card, remember?"

  Duane Sr. looked embarrassed. "I told him to call you and say thanks for the check. I guess he forgot."

  "So you bought him a car?"

  "Naw. Fixed up a motorcycle that we found in the want ads," Duane Sr. said. "D.J. has a fondness for motorcycles."

  "Oh, terrific. Next Christmas I'll get him a helmet," Mrs. Winship said, "and some funeral insurance."

  Duane Scrod Sr. frowned. "Now, why do you always have to take that snippy tone?"

  "Why? Pourquoi? Waruml" cried the macaw.

  "Listen to me, Duane," Mrs. Winship said forcefully. "If I don't hear from my grandson soon, life will get extremely unpleasant for you. I'm not paying his tuition so that he can skip class and roast weenies in the woods. That's an insult to me, and I resent being insulted."

  Duane Scrod Sr. flinched like a puppy that had just been smacked on the butt with a newspaper. He said, "I'll do my best to find Junior."

  "Good idea, because I'm not leaving town until I see him," Mrs. Winship declared. "Now give me a straight answer- do you think he's the one who set fire to the swamp?"

  "Truly? I couldn't say."

  "Why in the world would he do such a thing?" Mrs. Winship said. "Since you're the only other arsonist I know, thought you might have some special insight."

  Duane Sr.'s eyes flashed in anger. "I never taught that boy to set fires. He knows better."

  "Then let's hope the police are wrong." She was halfway down the steps when he called her name.

  "Hey, Millie, wait! What do you hear from Whitney?"

  The question made Millicent Winship's heart sink.

  She looked up at Duane Sr. and quietly said, "She's not coming back from Paris."

  "So the cheese business is good?"

  "I'm sorry. I really am," said Mrs. Winship. "By the way, your precious bird just pooped all over your shirt."

  Duane Scrod Sr. looked down at the mess and nodded bleakly. "What else is new," he said.

  On the same Monday morning that Nick had watched Smoke eat Mrs. Starch's pencil, Capt. Gregory Waters was being evacuated from Iraq to an American military installation in Germany. From there he was flown to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., a hospital for soldiers.

  Nick and his mother flew up on Thursday morning and waited an hour in the lobby. Finally a doctor came out and introduced himself. They followed him along a maze of drab corridors teeming with nurses and orderlies and patients; Nick had never seen so many young men and women in wheelchairs.

  The doctor took Nick and his mother into a private room- Using a cross-section diagram of the human body, he explained that Captain Waters lost his right arm and most of the shoulder when something called a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG, had struck the Humvee in which he was riding.

  "We know," Nick's mother said tightly. "They phoned us from the base in Ramadi. Can we see him now?"

  "Did they also tell you that, because of the severe damage to the shoulder, we might not be able to fit your husband with a working prosthetic?"

  "Like a mechanical hook, you mean?"

  "It would be difficult," the doctor said, "but we're not giving up hope."

  "Can we see him, please?"

  The doctor led them up a flight of stairs, then down another long corridor. Every patient they saw was missing an arm or a leg-sometimes both legs. Nick tried not to stare. Before entering his father's hospital room, he paused to brace himself.

  Capt. Gregory Waters was propped upright in bed, though his eyes were closed. His chest, wrapped with gauze and heavy tape, moved up and down slightly when he breathed. Nick noticed that his dad's hair had been shaved, and that one side of his face was pink and mottled with welts. A clear tube carried amber fluid into his remaining arm from a plastic bag strung on an aluminum rack beside the bed.

  Her eyes welling, Nick's mother stood wordlessly at the foot of the bed. She looked shaky, so Nick put an arm around her waist and walked her to the only chair in the room.

  "He's still on lots of pain medication," the doctor said, "so he'll be groggy when he wakes up."

  "Could you get my mom a glass of water?" Nick ask
ed.

  After the doctor left, another long hour passed before Nick's father awoke. He smiled sleepily when he saw them. Nick's mother hugged him and stroked his face. Nick squeezed his left hand, and his father squeezed back firmly.

  Glancing at the bandaged knob where his right arm used to be, he joked, "Now I'll have to sew up the extra sleeve in all my shirts."

  Nick's mom said, "Very funny, Greg."

  "So I'll have to learn how to throw a curve left-handed. No big deal."

  Always a good athlete, Nick's father had been a pitcher in the Baltimore Orioles farm system when he'd first met Nick's mother. According to the newspaper clippings in a family scrapbook, Greg Waters' fastball had once been clocked at 94 mph.

  He never made the big leagues, so he'd gone back to college, earned a degree in business administration, and taken a desk job with a sprinkler supply company in Fort Myers. After three years of being bored out of his skull, he returned to baseball as a pitching coach for a minor-league club. He was happy, but the money wasn't great. That's one reason he'd joined the National Guard-the sign-up bonus had paid for Nick's first year at the Truman School.

  For one weekend every month, Greg Waters went to Tampa to train as an army soldier. The country was at peace, and neither he nor his family ever imagined that he'd be sent overseas to face real combat. Everything changed after the invasion of Iraq.

  "Did they say when I can go home?" Nick's father asked. "It all depends. Tomorrow you start rehab," Nick's mother said.

  "What fun." Greg Waters blinked heavily. "I'm so damn tired."

  Nick's gaze fell upon the rounded white knob of gauze and tape where his father's muscular right arm had once been. The bandages were so shiny that they looked fake, like part of a mummy costume for Halloween.

  His mom said, "Greg, you get some rest. We'll come back at dinnertime."

  "You're not gonna try to feed me like a baby, are you?"

  "No, sir. You're going to feed yourself."

  "That's my girl." Nick's father grinned. "Nicky, you holding up okay?"

  "I'm good, Dad."

  "It's a rough deal, I know, but things could be worse," he said. "I was lucky to get out of that place alive. The guy sit-ting next to me in that Humvee, he didn't make it."