Send Down the Rain(28)
He shook his head. “No. No problem at all. I’ll handle everything.”
She thanked him and we returned to my truck where we sat staring out the windshield at the spiral of black smoke still rising from the crash site. She turned toward me. The tremor in her lip was constant. “Can I ask one more—?”
“Of course.”
Her eyes followed the path of the smoke. “Would you go with me? It’s been too hot—”
16
We parked on the beach side, along the rocks. The fire trucks and troopers were gone, having left only the yellow tape surrounding the mangled remains of the trailer. What was left of the truck sat oddly perched on the rocks. Teetering like a seesaw. Allie walked around to the cab where the door, seat, dash, almost everything attached to the frame, had been blown off. Everything remaining was burnt or melted, and the primary smell was that of burnt rubber. The frame itself was strangely curved where it should have been straight. The blast was long gone, but it was still rocking the world around us.
Allie covered her mouth and the tears fell in a solid line down her face.
I put my arm around her and led her to the rocks, where she sat staring. “I thought maybe I could find something, anything, to put in the coffin.”
I sat listening. Rosco inspected the area around us, sniffing in the dunes between the road and the water. He poked his nose out of the palmettos a quarter mile south and I whistled, bringing him back. He returned with a long stick in his mouth. As he neared, I realized it was no stick.
The dog trotted up in front of us and Allie covered her mouth, trying to stifle her sobs. Rosco had found Jake Gibson’s walking cane. I took the cane from his mouth and Allie gently accepted it. Held it like a newborn baby. Or a folded flag. She then clutched it to her chest and spoke incoherently. Finally she knelt in front of Rosco and managed, “Thank you.”
We sat there for an hour, the sound of the waves washing over us. When she stood, she stared at the warped truck. “I just want to tell him I’m sorry.”
I put my arm around her. “The dead have already forgiven the living.”
She looked up at me. “How do you know?”
I stared about ten thousand miles behind me. “I’ve seen it in their faces.”
ALLIE WAS LIVING IN one of the four honeymoon cottages that were once a part of her father’s plan for “the Vacuum,” as we affectionately called the Blue Tornado. To consolidate her debt, she had mortgaged it. Given her father’s gambling, the cost of her first husband’s drug, rehab and relapse issues, upkeep on a restaurant next to the ocean, and the cost of Jake’s new Peterbilt—which cost nearly a quarter of a million dollars—not to mention a few other short term, higher interest, bridge-the-gap loans whereby she’d tried to hold it all together, her debt had been considerable. When her marriage to Jake soured and she was unable to make the payments, she folded her hands and finally let it go. While the bank had foreclosed on the restaurant, each of the cottages was separately deeded and not tied to the loan. She slept in one while the other three rotted. To make ends meet, she’d taken a job waiting tables at Billy Bob’s Beer House and Oyster Shack in Apalachicola. She’d been at the bar when Jake called.
I got her home. Her face was drawn, eyes sunken. She looked like she could sleep for a week. I told her to rest and I’d be there when she woke. She did not need convincing. She curled up in bed with the cane and was asleep before I shut the door.
She woke the following morning to Rosco licking her hand and the knowledge that today she would bury her husband. Or at least his cane.
The cemetery lay on the northern end of the island. Allie’s folks lay next to one another, and a fresh hole had been dug a few feet away. The funeral was small. Graveside only. The pastor, hired by Austin, said a few kind words, comforted Allie. He and Austin left us alone with the empty box. She laid the cane inside, I shut the lid, and we stood there staring. Behind us, two blacked-out Yukon Denalis pulled onto the coquina road. They stopped, and two black-suited bodyguards complete with earpieces and mirrored sunglasses exited the vehicle. One held the rear door open while the second surveyed the landscape.
A man stepped out, waved, and walked toward us. He had aged. Looked smaller. Gray hair. He hugged Allie, kissed her cheek, and said, “Allie, I’m so sorry. Really.”
He then turned to me and extended his hand. “Hey, Jo-Jo. It’s good to see you.”
SENATOR BOBBY BROOKS WAS a five-term icon in Washington, known to most everyone as simply B. B. He was beloved. Routinely won in landslides and had done more to strengthen the military than most of the rest of the senators combined. He was a regular advisor to the president, a regular contributor to the networks, and was constantly asked when he was going to run for president. He always declined, saying he had no interest. If there was a beloved war hawk on Capitol Hill, it was Senator Brooks.
“Bobby.” When I shook his hand, his bodyguards stepped closer. He grasped my hand with both of his. It’d been a long time.
When I released, they studied me and, apparently considering me little threat, withdrew a few steps.
Bobby put his arm around Allie and said again, “I’m terribly sorry.”
She nodded.
He turned toward her and took both of her hands in his. “I had them pull the satellite imagery.” He paused. “He didn’t suffer. It was too quick.”