Sanibel Flats

grove, surprised to see the rotted walls of the cabin still standing and at how small it seemed; surprised that someone had thrown fresh palmetto limbs over the top . . . and then he saw what he knew must be Rafe Hollins and nothing could have surprised him more than that.

The Rafe Hollins Ford remembered best was still eighteen, long, lean, with a Kirk Douglas chin on a hell- raiser's face and hands that could palm a basketball. This Rafe Hollins was not a man but a thing, a bloated creature with a huge gray head and a shrunken distended body turning slowly in the late-afternoon shadows, his arms slack, his eyes dull slits, hanging from the limb of an avocado tree with a rope around his neck.

Ford stood motionless for a time taking it all in but still not making any sense of it, thinking Come on, Rafe, come on, say something because this is one poor excuse for a joke....

The vultures not in the air were perched, looking heavy as bowling balls in the sagging trees. A black vulture with a cowl like an Egyptian priest dropped down onto Rafe's shoulder, and the rope creaked as the bird's head rotated to feed.

'Hey . . . get away!'

The vulture lifted away unconcerned as Ford ran toward it. Two more birds landed on the ground behind him, their gray heads as high as Rafe's knees. Ford whirled and threw the club just to scare them. Threw it above them, but one of the vultures tried to fly at precisely the wrong time and the club caught it across the chest. The bird spun to the ground with a guttural scream that set off the other vultures and they all flushed from the trees at once, making a noise in the leaves that sounded like rain but, Ford realized, was excrement.

He covered his head for a moment, then didn't even bother because it was useless to try. The injured bird continued to thrash, making it impossible to think about anything else, so he chased the vulture down, penned it with his foot, fought the beak and the six-foot wingspan, and snapped its neck, trying to make it quick and painless. Then he stared at the fresh gouge on his hand, thinking I survive two revolutions and a hemorrhoid operation so I can come back to Florida and die of infection from a vulture bite. Boy.

He slung the bird back into the bushes, wiped his hands on his pants, looked up. Rafe Hollins turned in the breeze to face him then turned away again, his expression like something Ford had once seen in Amazonia, Peru, a shrunken head with its lips sewn shut, that same look of humiliation, of total submission. He stared at the corpse, which had once been his best friend, wondering why he felt no grief, none, only a sense of loss like seeing something useful wasted, nothing more. Only a few weeks ago an artist friend of his, Jessica McClure, had said, You've got a cold, cold eye, Ford—her talking in that analytical, dreamy way, half prophet, half Ph.D. The way you study all the data trying to make it fit because you won't abide anything that can't be weighed or measured. Trouble is, some things don't fit, never will fit, but you still go plunking along collecting pieces, weighing the evidence, trying to neaten up a world that seems way too emotional and untidy. . . .

Half of which was probably pure invention, but the part about the cold eye Ford now wondered about. All through high school he and Rafe had been family, done everything together. They'd had one of those closer-than- brother relationships in which they were continually plotting against each other, trying to gain advantage, laughing like hell at making life into such a game. Rafe, it seemed to Ford, usually got the better of it; not that it mattered because they were like Hope and Crosby on the road, best friends trying to catch each other out. But now the lean handsome one, Rafe, had taken a really big fall, and Ford didn't feel anything inside even close to tears, just that sense of waste.

Maybe his eyes had grown cold; maybe he'd always been cold. Or maybe four years in West Africa, a year in South America, and five years in Central America had leached away most of the emotional niceties. But Ford didn't believe that, not really. After all, before yesterday, he and Rafe hadn't exchanged a word or a letter in more than eighteen years, aside from those two brief talks, so it was almost as if a stranger had gone and gotten himself killed.

Or killed himself. . . .

Suicide?

It was the first time suicide had crossed Ford's mind. At first he had just thought dead, Rafe's dead, then he thought murder, as if maybe the Indios had gotten to him. But now the thought of suicide flashed. He didn't like the idea; couldn't reconcile it with the Rafe he had talked with the previous morning, but here it was. Ford took a few steps closer, his hands at his sides like someone in an art gallery. He began to study the body with clinical interest.

First things first: Could he be positive it was Rafe?

Not much was left of the face or ears; the eyes were gone. But what was there seemed to match—the heavy jaw, the high cheeks and broad forehead beneath a plucked mange-patch of black hair. The clothes seemed about right, too. The corpse wore khaki slacks, not the cheap kind but expensive ones with cargo pockets, and a black knit shirt with a tiny tarpon over the breast. Rafe had always liked nice clothes. There was a bulge in the rear pants pocket, and Ford removed a leather billfold. Inside was an out-of-date Visa card, a photo of a seventeen-year-old Rafe Hollins in full football gear throwing a jump pass, a photo of an older Rafe Hollins holding a tiny, wide-eyed infant, and four dollars in cash. That was all. Ford used the tail of his shirt, first to wipe the billfold clean, then as a glove as he placed the billfold back into the rear pocket.

Ford stood thinking for a moment, considering the scene before him. Was it murder, or was it suicide?

On the corpse's left foot was a pale leather boat shoe, no sock. His right foot was bare, the matching shoe on the ground four feet in front of him and to the left—his feet weren't tied and he had done some kicking. A man intent on hanging himself wouldn't tie his own legs, and that was a vote for suicide. His hands weren't tied either, hanging limp beside the distended belly, and that made it look even more like suicide. Rafe had been six two, two twenty-five, maybe; a big man. There was no way he could have been forced into a noose and up onto the chunk of log that lay nearby if his hands were free, unless he was already unconscious. But if he was unconscious, could he have kicked a shoe off? Ford didn't know. Besides, the shoe might have been placed—weren't some murderers supposed to be clever?

Ford stood on his toes and studied the face more closely. The vultures had made it impossible to tell if his friend had been beaten. Ford touched the bloated right hand for a moment, turned it and looked for rope burns on the underside of the wrist. There were none. On the left wrist was a Seiko dive watch, the lens shattered and green hands stopped at 2:18. A.M. or P.M.? Probably P.M. the previous day, judging from the condition of the body. Only a few hours after Ford spoke with him on the phone. The heat and the vultures had had plenty of time to do their work.

Ford lifted the watch bracelet and studied the pale wrist skin beneath, then moved around to the back of the body and considered the noose. The knot attached to the tree limb was one of those overtied messes that formed a kind of loop so the running end could pass over the limb and through. The noose was formed by the same kind of bad slipknot, and it had cut into the corpse's neck, judging from the dried blood. These weren't Rafe's kind of knots, no way. He'd spent too many days on the water, working boats. The bad knots were a strong vote for murder; to Ford, in fact, they seemed conclusive. Rafe had made it clear he believed someone was after him.

Ford walked quickly away, took a breath. He looked back for a moment, used his shirt to clean his glasses, then began a slow search of the area. He didn't know what he was looking for—footprints maybe—but the ground was like mulch and didn't hold any. He poked his head into the cabin and waited for his eyes to adjust. The cabin was a mess, as if it had been ransacked. There were canned goods scattered, some clothes in a heap, a half bottle of Southern Comfort right in the doorway, six cans of Copenhagen snuff torn out of a cellophane tube, a snapshot of a little brown-haired boy with the words Jake Age 5 written on the back. Ford almost picked up the photograph, then caught himself. He wrapped his right hand in a towel and held the photograph to the light. The child had Rafe's cleft chin, the same high cheeks, and dark, dark eyes: a bright, innocent face, open to the world. He considered putting the photograph back as he had found it, but stuck it in his pocket instead. Still using the towel, he opened the Southern Comfort and poured a quarter of the bottle over the vulture bite, letting the alcohol sting.

Outside, he stared at the dark doorway for a time, then remembered one more place he might look. When he and Rafe built the cabin, they had found need of a place they could hide things they didn't want stolen, or didn't want to leave in plain view of their guests—high school girls, mostly. It took him a while to find it, a huge old gumbo limbo tree halfway down the back side of the mound with a hole near the base of the trunk. Ford got down on his knees, fished around inside, and pulled out a package of something—a cellophane mess, black with eighteen years of humidity, TROJAN CONDOMS barely legible on the cover. Ford threw the package into the bushes, then reached