Except for one delayed crash, where something fell from the sky and struck the truck bed so hard it shook the chassis and buckled the tires.
“The fuck was that?” Earl shouted.
The sudden silence was so strange, we all just sat there a moment. We looked out the windows, then at each other. We’d come through it, whatever it was, and the four of us had a story to tell for the rest of our days.
“Don’t get out yet,” Earl said. “Whatever that last one was, might not be the last one of ‘em.”
I agreed. “That wasn’t a hailstone,” I said.
“What then?”
I thought a minute. “Could be a meteorite, or a piece of a space satellite falling to earth.”
“In the middle of a hail storm?”
“Best guess. Of course, we could always just get out of the truck and take a look.”
“You first, then,” Earl said.
We started laughing. The sun came back out and I climbed out of the truck and the others followed. Then we looked in the back and found what had made the noise.
Not a meteorite.
Not a piece of a space satellite.
It was a cannonball.
“Someone fired a cannonball at us?” I said.
“Never know,” one of Earl’s kids said. “This used to be a pirate town. Lotta people still think of themselves as pirates.”
“Probably just got picked up by the storm, carried awhile, and dropped on the back of my truck when the wind died down,” Earl said.
“Looks ancient,” I said.
Earl took the ball from me and inspected it carefully. He removed his cap and scratched his head. “Now this here might be worth something,” he said. He placed it on the floor of his truck.
We finished loading the ballast rocks into the back of the truck and talked about the storm, comparing it to everything else we’d experienced in nature.
At four the next morning I built a huge fire in the pit and roasted the stones for more than two hours. Then Earl and his sons helped me wrap most of the pig in aluminum foil and carry it out to the pit. We removed a few of the small center stones and stuffed them inside the pig to facilitate the cooking. The hot stones created a lot of smoke and loud sizzling sounds as the pig seared from within. We wrapped the rest of the pig in foil and placed it carefully in the pit, and covered it with banana leaves and hot stones. Then I removed the ropes I’d used to cordon off the area, and raked a couple of feet of sand over the top of the pit. By the time we finished, if you didn’t know where the pig was cooking, it would be impossible to tell.
Satisfied with our effort, Earl, the boys and me went back inside and I fed them some shrimp grits and country ham biscuits with red eye gravy. We sat and talked about the storm and drank coffee.
At one point I asked them if they’d seen anything on the roof of the store.
“Like what?” Earl said.
“I don’t know, I just thought I saw something up there.”
“Like a cannon?” one of the sons said.
We all laughed and I changed the subject.
Beth came down to start putting things in order for the big Fourth of July breakfast, and I got up to help her. The men left. It felt comfortable, the two of us working together. We didn’t talk much, and didn’t feel like we needed to.
The way I figured, it would take about eleven hours for the pig to be fall off the bone perfect, which meant dinner would be ready around six o’clock. In the meantime our guests could enjoy the beach, play golf, or shop in nearby Fernandina Beach. Rachel and Tracy would serve drinks to the beach group, Beth would run a shuttle service for the others, and I’d handle an all-day food and beverage shift. The pig roast would be over by eight- thirty, at which time we’d shuttle our dozen house guests to the big fireworks display at the Fernandina Beach marina. All in all, it would be a Fourth of July to remember.
At least that’s what I planned.
Unfortunately, none of those things happened.
Except for the memorable part.
Chapter 18
IT HAD BEEN a rough couple of weeks for D’Augie.
First, he’d nearly died on a sand dune swarming with fire ants. Then he’d been saved by Donovan Creed, the man he tried to kill, a situation made no less mortifying to D’Augie after hearing that Creed and his girlfriend stripped him naked during the rescue. And of course Creed had stolen his prized knife, the only gift D’Augie had ever gotten from his father.
Then Rachel told him that Creed took a caretaker’s job at The Seaside Bed & Breakfast, where he planned to rid the attic of squirrel infestation. So D’Augie snuck out of the hospital and hid in The Seaside’s attic, hoping to catch Creed by surprise. But the surprise turned out to be on D’Augie, who broke an arm and leg after being attacked by angry attic snakes and hungry squirrels.
After dragging his broken body a quarter mile to his car, it took a super human effort to make the forty minute drive to Jackson Memorial, where ER personnel set his fractures and re-treated his festering fire ant bites.
