Endangered Species (6 page)

of her own; a rare luxury on a fire assignment ." God bless sexism," she

said to the spirits above the raked ceiling.  As crew boss, Guy had

claimed one bedroom.  He'd assigned her another as the only female.  The

remaining three crew members shared the third .

As in every crew since the first group of Cro-Magnons banded together to

stomp out the first grass fire, there was a magnificent nose, a man who

snored with the resonance of a dull chain saw cutting through hardwood.

On this crew Rick did the honors.

Through two closed doors it was dulled to a comfortable rumble.  A

little imagination could mutate it into a purr and Anna liked to pretend

Piedmont, her orange tiger cat, was curled up beside her .

Cats were such excellent soporifics.

Folding her hands behind her head, she stretched till her ankles

cracked.  She had a lot to think about.  Besides, she was too lazy to go

to sleep.  It would mean getting up and crossing seven feet of hardwood

floor to switch off the light.

How serious was the threat against her sister?  she wondered .

For Molly to mention it at all indicated some concern.  On a couple of

occasions tlicre had been those who wished Anna ill.  Oddly, before the

fear and outrage set in, her feelings were hurt; a childish sense of,

How could anyone dislike nte?  Anna had felt that from Molly.  For a

healer it must be worse.

In law enforcement, emergency response, firefighting-the things rangers

were involved with-a great deal of one's time was spent sitting around

waiting for something bad to happen.  When boredom set in, it was

inevitable that one sort of hoped something bad would happen.  No malice

intended, just something interesting to do.  A psychiatrist dedicated

her life to ameliorating the impact of those bad happenings.  It would

hurt to be the object of deadly hatred even if you knew the polysyllabic

name l'or the syndrome.

Molly would get over the insult-probably by morning.  Despite her

vocation, Anna's sister was remarkably sane.  The threats were the

tangible aspect of the greater evil of hatred and possibly madness.  How

real the actual danger was, Anna couldn't fathom.  The note and the

message were so pedestrian.  There was a hollow bureaucratic ring to

them.  Impersonal to the point of cruelty.  Anna remembered her

fifth-grade teacher, Mr.  White, telling her that hatred wasn't the

worst of emotions.  If one hated one still cared .

Indifference was the most inhuman.

Anna could picture the author of the threats calmly penciling "Kill Dr.

Pigeon" on her calendar between "Meet with client rep" and "Get facial."

Tomorrow night she would test AI Magnum's patience.  She'd call both

Molly and Frederick.  Surely sleeping with an FBI agent earned a girl

some perks.

As had every day since Anna arrived on the island, Thursday dawned hot

and humid, the overnight low scarcely dipping below eighty.  Inland the

heat was intensified by the clack of cicadas and the intermittent drone

of the drug interdiction plane making its sweep of the woodlands.  By

nine a.m.  it was ninety-three degrees.

On the shore a sea breeze made it livable.  Anna and Rick patrolled the

beach.  AI and Dijon were condemned to the suffocating interior till

they switched in midafternoon.

Shore duty pleased Anna because of the air and the everchanging patterns

of water and shell and sand.  Sky mosaics, painted by clouds, had yet to

begin for the day.  Cumberland sat beneath an inverted bowl of burnished

and burning blue.

At intervals were solitary fishermen, their folding chairs plunked down

where the last lick of surf could wash over their toes, cooler and

fishing rod in serene attendance.  Creels were set several yards from

the main encampments, an island phenomenon that had been in place for

many years.  Legend had it the alligator they called Maggie-Mary would

crawl down from the inland dunes, moving as quietly as a ghost for all

her great and scaly length, and rob them of their catch.  The creels

were set apart lest she inadvertently rob them of a leg or a hand in the

process.

Rick was happy with beach patrol because of the nude sunbathers.  It

never ceased to amaze Anna that in America naked was such a big deal. In

parks all across the country naked sunbathers, skinnydippers, and

topless hikers were warned and cited and occasionally arrested under any

statute that was handy, from Disturbing the Peace to Disorderly Conduct.

The only ticket Anna thought fit this trumped-up crime was Interfering

with Agency Functions.  It certainly interfered with Rick's and Dijon's.

Dijon, Anna forgave-maybe because she liked him, but mostly because he

was twenty-two.  Dogs bark, cats sharpen their claws, boys ogle and

pant.  Rick-in his mid-thirties, married, Baptist, and a born-again

redneck transplanted from Massachusetts to southern Mississippi-Anna was

less tolerant of.  He condemned while he leered and it was hard to tell

which activity gave him the greater thrill.

'This morning Anna was driving, Rick riding shotgun.  For the I)ast

twenty minutes he'd been working himself into a lather over abortion

rights.  Rusli LimbaLlgh and G.  Gordon Liddy were his much quoted

experts on the subject.  Anna was attempting a Zenlike state and failing

miserably.  The heat, the boredom, and Rick were a combination that

would have gotten Gandhi's loincloth in bundle.

She kept her equilibrium by a base but satisfying amusement .

Each time Rick raised his binoculars to inventory an unsuspecting

sunbather's assets, Anna steered the truck toward the nearest hillock or

water-cut in the beach.  So far she'd scored two "Fucks" and one "Dnmit,

Anna."

If I)people did harbor the inner child psychologists had brought into

vogue, hers needed a good spanking, Anna thought, as she turned the

wheel to take better advantage of a trench the retreating tide had left

behind.

,'shit," Rick growled as the binoculars banged against the soft tissue

around his eyes ." You drive like a girl." He too was bored and hot, but

if he'd hoped to get a rise out of Anna he was disappointed.

"Don't I though," she said as she adjusted her mental scoreboard: Anna

4, Rick 0.

"i'll (I rive , he said.

That suited her.  Flocks of pelicans were skimming the ocean, flying

between the chocolate-colored waves like bombers down narrow canyons.

What seabirds lacked in color, they more than made up for in grace and

complexity.  Anna never tired of watching the many ways they interacted

with the sea.  Besides, torturing Rick was beginning to pall.  He'd

never caught on to the game: fish in a barrel, no challenge.

She let the truck roll to a stop and switched off the ignition.

Rick was a big man, thick through the chest, shoulders, and head.  His

face was a perfect oval.  Clustered in the center were a dark mustache,

two close-set eyes, and a nondescript nose.  The eyes had the puffy look

of a perennial hangover, though as near as Anna could tell, he suffered

more from allergies than alcoholism.  His hair was almost black and

clipped so short that the crown of his head, where he was baking, had a

peculiar look of having been sanded.

Like every man Anna had ever known, Rick had to spend a minute or two

performing some inscrutable ritual before he could get out of a parked

vehicle.  She slid from the seat and crouched in a scrap of shade

afforded by the truck to watch the silt-laden waves break into buttery

foam.  She'd never spent much time by the sea .

Even the waters of Lake Superior had scared her.  The Atlantic both

scared and fascinated.  In its own way the shore was as harsh an

environment as the high deserts of Colorado and Texas.  The constancy of

the August heat, the sand and salt and wind-by day's end human strength

was abraded away.

The crunch of boots let her know Rick had uprooted.  Over the protest of

creaking joints she pushed herself up.  It was still early and the sun

was at her back as she walked around the truck's tailgate.  To the west

the green foliage showed dark behind shimmering white dunes.  Clouds

were just beginning to build, as they did every day, making a promise of

rain they never kept.  One of the clouds drooped, an uncharacteristic

gray.  Anna cupped her hands around the brim of her ball cap to cut the

glare.

"Hey, Rick." He walked up beside her and she pointed.

" Smoke?"

" Looks like it."

"Hallelujah!  Hazard pay!" With a cowboy's "Yee-hah!" he leaped two

yards and threw himself behind the wheel.

Anna was galvanized as well.  Lethargy, heat, the myriad aches and pains

of hours spent patrolling over rough ground in a truck with wasted

shocks were banished.

Rick laughed as he cinched down his seat belt.  Firefighters, like fire

horses, stamped and snorted at the first sniff of smoke.  Anna felt the

excitement but hers was tempered with the tragic memories of the

jackknife fire the summer before.  Like the sea, fire was elemental.  It

would be many years before she would again underestimate its power.  Or

its indifference to human life.

C K D R 0 V E like a madman, dropping from gear to gear, revving Rthe

tired engine as if more gas could give it a new lease on life .f

Bouncing like a bean in a tin cup, Anna fought to buckle her seat belt.

Between them, ricocheting from thigh to thigh across the vinyl, the

portable radio crackled for attention.  Finally secured, Anna caught it

as it skittered toward the floor, and thumbed down the mike ." This is

Pigeon.  Yes.  We see it.  We're about three quarters the way to the