physical therapy had bulked his long and elegant musculature more than usual, making it all the more important for him to remain limber. His chest was big and well formed, built from bench-pressing 350 pounds. His torturers hadn't gotten to his upper body like they had his legs, so every curve remained as it should be above the thighs. From the thighs down, Sam was the work of plastic surgeons.
The sound of loud, annoying voices came from behind him. Sam pretty much stayed out of other people's trouble, but he turned to look, more curious than anything else. Seemed that an ugly-sounding man was giving the coffee girl a hard time.
'You made a deal,' he was saying in a raised voice. 'I need the money and I need it now.'
'I don't owe you nothing,' she said.
Obviously, they were discussing more than the price of the coffee. The guy was big, a black man who looked like a noseguard, and not friendly. Sam decided that his beard must have stood for something other than tolerance. The fellow had a friend who didn't look much better than a sheep turd. Long Rastafarian hair glued with mud.
'I want what I bargained for,' the black man said through gritted teeth.
'You never said you wanted that. I was selling a stereo. That's it.'
'That was no thousand-dollar stereo and you understood my meaning.'
Sam figured that people took a long time to build character and usually they didn't change overnight. Sherry, the coffee girl, was solid and fair, good-hearted-she'd feed a stray cat and pay respect to those that didn't deserve much. Sam had seen that and knew what the woman was about. She hadn't gotten that way overnight and would not behave unreasonably greedy with the stereo or money or anything else. What this man apparently wanted, Sherry would never have knowingly sold.
Sam had walked up to within three feet of them. The big fellow had a two-inch slab of belly fat that was probably undergirded by a fair portion of muscle. The arms were big and the man had obviously lifted. Maybe prison. From the shoes and the pants it was obvious the man came from the city. Maybe Seattle.
His fingers reached out to grab Sherry's upper arm.
Sam moved quickly and in a second or two his ringers were buried at the base of the man's neck, to the brachial nerve, just as he'd practiced a thousand times, and done more times than he cared to remember.
'Jeeeeeeezzz!' the man screamed.
'It's a big nerve,' Sam said. 'It wouldn't hurt if you'd quit with the girl.'
The guy started struggling, and Sam's grip tightened, and the fingers got right down on the nerve and took hold of it as if it were a cobra's neck. To control the rest of him Sam got the fingers of a hand and twisted the hand back at his side. Screaming religion in the form of cuss words, the guy tried to escape a second time. Sam let him come down to the sidewalk, as if laying his head on the concrete might bring some comfort.
'This is a quiet place, but you aren't a quiet person. Calm down.'
The guy's buddy suddenly got active, seemingly over the shock of Sam's attack, and actually took a swing at Sam's torso. Without thinking about it, Sam knew this man had no training. He blocked the punch and kicked him hard in the ass so as not to hurt him.
Not much for valor, the man held his butt and backed off, while the big guy kept screaming. Then he started begging. 'Lemme go, lemme go.' Next it was back to the colorful cursing.
'Sam, don't hurt him. He looks like he's gonna die,' Sherry said. 'Even if he is a pig.'
The man was on his knees with his nose about six inches from the pavement, and Sam knew the man couldn't think about anything but that big nerve near the base of his neck and the hand behind him that felt as if it were about to be wrenched off.
'Have we got your attention?' Sam said.
'Yes.' He'd stopped cursing at least. Sam let go. His buddy was still rubbing his butt and keeping his distance.
'I oughta kill you,' the black man began. Obviously, what had happened had not yet become a part of his reality. He was used to being the aggressor.
He took a good swing, pretty fast under the circumstances. Sam caught the fist as one might catch a fastball.
'You need to stop fighting and start-'
Before Sam could finish his sentence, the man grabbed for his throat. It was skilled, with ringers closed, and only his thumb open. Now the fellow was starting to act like he knew something about fighting. Before the man could close his grip, Sam stepped inside and delivered a moderate blow with his palm to the point of the chin. It stunned the man, and for a second the man lived in suspended animation. It was enough to force the man to relax his hands. Sam grabbed his little finger and held it as if it were a hot wing ready for the blue cheese.
'If I break the pinkie at the first knuckle, it will hurt a lot,' Sam said. 'You are not that good at pain.'
'I give up. I give up,' the man said.
Sam felt obligated to give the man a chance, though he knew that the guy's temptation to throw another punch would relapse like a disease. He dropped the pinkie and waited for the left hook. It came. Sam threw his head back, let it slide by, and then did a short strike, driving the points of three fingers right into the solar plexus. The strike hadn't even approached full power, but the man dropped and flopped like a fish.
Sam stepped back, disgusted with the whole matter. Nothing like this ordinarily happened in these islands. People were civilized and thoughtful. The old stench of unadorned aggression hung heavy over the scene. Sam reached over and tried to help the man up, but he was too badly incapacitated. Sam took off his coat and put it under the man's head. Men like this did not come to this island in winter, and Sam wondered at his wardrobe. Then another thought came to him: already today Sam had seen others like this guy, and it didn't leave him with an easy feeling.
'Who is he?' he asked Sherry.
'Just came a day or so ago. Calls himself Rafe something. Thinks I sold him my body just because he bought my stereo. I told him I didn't want to sell it. Told him it wasn't worth a thousand, but he insisted. And then after he took the stereo, he got real ugly when I wouldn't have dinner with him.'
'That other one,' she said, meaning the smaller man, who'd already disappeared, 'I guess is trying to take up pimping.'
'So he's not with the heavyweight champ here.'
'Not regular, I don't think.'
The insanity was starting to make a little more sense.
'What's this guy doing on the island?'
'I don't know, but he's got friends.'
Sam nodded.
Rafe what's-his-name was coming around. When he got up, he kept his eyes pointedly away from Sam, brushed himself off, and walked straight away.
Sam went back and resumed his reading until he felt the weight of someone else's gaze.
Without looking he knew that it was Haley, her brunette curls and eyes like bluish green silk, which were perceptive and inquisitive, and that once might have held just the proper mirth. Sam
hadn't seen that light in her eyes in a long time, not since the Fourth of July, 1994.
She had missed the 'Mud Head and Rafe Show' and that was just as well. She would have insisted on fighting.
Following his capture and torture and the death of his wife, Anna, Sam had decided on San Juan Island as the site of his convalescence. His relationship with his uncle Ben and Haley turned out to be the perfect balm. In his growing-up years, he on occasion came to visit Uncle Ben and now-deceased Aunt Helen, and quickly grew fond of them.
During the summer of his twelfth birthday, he had spent the entire three months working with Aunt Helen on the landscaping and Uncle Ben had taken time from work for a number of salmon fishing expeditions. There were various other visits and more salmon. For a time, when she was nineteen and he was twenty-nine, he and Haley had almost been an item. Over his recent months on the island, Sam had found this dormant bond with Ben was growing. Haley was more complicated.
Life had kicked Haley to the ground, but Sam admired her because she kept trying to get back up. The prestigious Sanker Corporation had thrown her out in disgrace, claiming she'd stolen the work and ideas of her fellow scientists. That was shocking because she was the adopted daughter of the eminent Dr. Ben Anderson, also
