Send Down the Rain(49)
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
27
At nine p.m. we crossed into Gulfport. Allie leaned over and touched my arm. “We should pick up some food. The kids’ll be hungry.”
We pulled into a small twenty-four-hour grocery store and bought groceries and some pain medicine along with some first-aid items, a pillow, a few blankets, and an inflatable pool raft long enough for a man to lie on. At the checkout counter, I said, “Chocolate. The kids like chocolate.”
Finding the rest area wasn’t difficult. We pulled in and parked, and before I could call Catalina on the phone, she had stepped out of the shadows and was bringing the kids to us. When they saw me, they ran and jumped into my arms. Gabriella was crying. Diego clung to my leg. I carried them both to the truck while Allie helped Catalina.
Manuel was a different story. They’d worked him over pretty good. He was lying on the ground, and three men sat alongside him. One of them was my friend Javier. I knelt and held Manuel’s hand. “Manuel?”
He opened his eye and tried to smile. “El Gato.”
The four of us lifted him. He was a thick, muscled man and he was in a lot of pain. It took all of us to get him to the bed of my truck.
He patted my hand. “Gracias, se?or.”
The men climbed into the truck to sit with Manuel. “If you need anything, tap the window.”
I drove back roads and avoided the interstate as much as possible. It took longer, but I figured a 45-mph wind would be gentler than a 75-mph wind. While we drove, the men in back blew up the raft, rolled Manuel onto it and covered him with a blanket. Up front, Catalina relayed the story. They’d made it to a trailer park near Hattiesburg, Mississippi. They’d only been there a few days when a truck arrived in the middle of the night and three men got out. They pulled Manuel out of the trailer and worked him over with baseball bats. Wanting to make an example.
We pulled into Cape San Blas well after midnight. Manuel had slept most of the way, which was good, but he’d stiffened up more, so moving him was not fun. We got him inside Allie’s cottage and into bed. Most every square inch of his body was bruised and swollen.
Allie called a doctor, then she helped Catalina get Gabby and Diego cleaned up and tucked in alongside each other in the small second bedroom. They were asleep before she pulled the covers up.
When the doctor, a woman in her forties, arrived, she examined Manuel and started IV fluids that included a broad spectrum antibiotic and enough pain medicine to knock out a horse. Within minutes he was sleeping soundly. Breathing better. She left us with two prescriptions. One if the pain was bad. The other if the pain was real bad.
“I can only do so much here,” she told us. “It’s been over twelve hours since the beating. If he had any substantial internal bleeding, he’d be dead by now. I can’t guarantee you that he’s out of the woods, but he’s strong and the bruise pattern suggests his ribs did what they were intended to do. The next twenty-four hours will tell you a lot.”
DAYLIGHT BROUGHT THE SMELL of coffee and somebody cooking breakfast. I walked inside to find Catalina teaching Allie how to make tortillas. Evidently they’d already been to the store. Allie poured me a cup of coffee, and I sat as Catalina produced a breakfast fit for a king.
“She really knows her way around a kitchen,” Allie said.
I crammed scrambled eggs into a tortilla and smothered it in Catalina’s homemade salsa. I spoke around a smile. “Wait till you taste her fajitas.”
We spent the day lying low and tending to Manuel, who slept peacefully. The doctor returned late in the afternoon and was not displeased with his condition. She also examined the three amigos—Javier, Peter, and Victor. Despite their silence, they had not escaped the bullets and the bat. She put ten stitches in Peter’s shoulder, where she’d extracted a piece of bullet shrapnel he’d not told us about. She also put seven stitches in the back of Victor’s head, while confirming there was a good chance he had suffered a concussion.
Feeling helpless on the second day, I disappeared for a few hours and drove to Port St. Joe and the main branch of Florida First Bank. I sat down with the branch manager, explained what I wanted to do, and he got on the phone with the regional manager. When I returned, Allie asked, “Where you been?”
A strange emotion surfaced. I had been missed, and I liked it. “Trying to help.”
She slid her hand in mine. She’d gotten more touchy-feely in the last few days, and I liked that too.
Manuel continued to improve. On the third day he sat up, and Catalina fed him some soup she’d made. Allie and I had introduced the kids to the addictive practice of looking for sharks’ teeth, and they had already half filled a Mason jar.
The two of us took a tour of the restaurant, making a list of what needed doing. And a lot needed doing. Walking through the dining room, where a roof leak had left a puddle on the floor, Allie tucked her arm inside mine. “More than you bargained for?”
“She’s in pretty bad shape.”
The three amigos were used to working sunup to sundown, and they needed an activity. Their English was not as good as Catalina’s, but they could communicate. They followed us, watching. Listening. At one point I discovered Victor looking at the electrical panel. “Can you do electrical work?” I asked.
He nodded matter-of-factly.