Jonathon King - Shadow Men

They picked a moonlit night to make their escape because it was the only way. And now it was killing them. The first shot sizzled through the humid air as if it were underwater, and he heard it a millisecond before it found the muscled flesh of his son's shoulder blade and made the ugly sound of a wet, dull punch.

The boy gasped and stumbled, and his father caught him under the arm before he went down.

"Papa?" his other son said from a few steps ahead the fear in his young voice like an uncharacteristic cry. The father could see the pale glow of the younger boy's face in the moonlight and the outline of his body against the sky above the horizon, and he realized he had made targets of his sons.

"Down, Steven!" he called out. "Down in the ditch!"

All three scrambled off the piled hump of Everglades muck and limestone marl and slid down the embankment to the edge of the water below. Two of them were breathing hard; the third was bubbling wet air and blood through the new hole in his lung. They did not need to speak. They had known instantly from the sound of the report who was hunting them, and they knew the odds of surviving.

"Robert?" the father whispered, holding his seventeen-year-old son to him, now pressing his hand over the exit wound in the boy's chest to stop the ragged sound of death coming through his sweat-soaked shirt. "Oh, God Robert, forgive me for what I have brought you to."

The other boy moved across the dirt to them, his face so close he could feel his father's breath on his cheek.

"Papa? Is Robert OK, Papa?" he said and the father could feel the tears in his son's voice but could not answer. He had never lied to his children, and he did not want to break that vow this close to the end.

The father looked up to the high edge of the earthen berm they had all helped build, the foundation of the road they had all worked to create. Beyond it was a canvas of stars that had stunned them their first few nights out here in the wild Glades and then comforted them far weeks with a seeming physical closeness to God himself. But the clear crescent moon had betrayed them. The elevated roadbed was the only way back through the swamp to civilization. On a cloud-locked night it would have melded into the darkness and been impossible to follow to freedom. So they picked this night, planning to use the glint of moonlight on the canal water to guide them and the ribbon of black dirt to walk upon.

"We need to move, now, Steven," the father said. "Across the water. You are the strongest swimmer. Take your brother's good arm and I will get his belt and we will sidestroke together. If we can get to the mangroves on the other side, God will give us cover."

He could feel his son's head nod. He was the determined one, the one who thought all things possible, the one with the optimism and strength of youth. He would believe. The father took his shirt off, knotted it in the middle and put the lump of fabric over his son's exit wound then tied the ends over the entrance hole on the boy's back. His own tears were running now.

"Get ready, Steven, we have to move quietly," the father said, and then hesitated once more, feeling in his pocket for the gold watch of his own father and then slipping the thick disk deep down into his leather boot, hoping it might be protected there from the water.

They slipped into the warm water and pushed slowly out. The satchels they carried floated at first. Their underwater strokes were both smooth and strong despite the load of the older boy's weight. They caught a rhythm and began to make progress.

The second shot was from closer range and it tore through the father's satchel, causing the bundle to bob in the water. The marksman had mistaken it. They were more than halfway across, and as the other boy stroked harder, the father kicked stronger. In seconds their boots touched mud. The father's next stroke touched the slick root of a mangrove. The boy let go with a soft exultation, "We made it, Papa!" and the third shot entered the back of his neck and opened a gaping wet hole in his throat that yawned like the ragged mouth of the devil himself.

The father looked back once and saw the outline of the rifleman and the tilt of his hat against the stars. He was standing in the bow of the shallow Glades skiff he'd always used for hunting. He had tracked them by water, letting his low angle paint their moving bodies against the sky just as his was now. When he heard the familiar clack of the big Winchester's lever action, the father wrapped his arms around his boys in a final act of protection, whispering a prayer in their ears and refusing to believe he had seen the eyes of his killer glow red under the brim of his hat.

I was sitting in a chaise longue on the patio of Billy Manchester's penthouse apartment. The multihued blue of the Atlantic lay out before me. Close to shore its color today was a green-tinted turquoise, then the darker blues at the reef lines and then an almost steel blue out to the horizon. From this height the layers were sharply bordered, and the smell of the salt still carried up on the southeastern breeze.

"This is really eighty years old?"

I should have known better. Never question Billy after he has presented you with something as fact, unless you crave silence from the man.

"I mean, it's interesting stuff, but isn't it kind of incredible that no one's seen it since, what, 1923?" I said, trying to redeem myself.

"Mayes said no one had ever opened his great-grandmother's hope chest. He said he wasn't even sure anyone in the family even knew it existed," Billy answered from inside the apartment, on the other side of the threshold to his sliding glass doors.

In my hand was a computer printout of what Billy called the last letter. Mark Mayes, a college student in Atlanta, had sent it to Billy with an inquiry asking him for representation in a legal action based on a handful of originals. Mayes had found them, yellowed and nearly dried to crumbling in his great-grandmother's attic in the family home. With great care he had unfolded each letter and read it. When he was done he had a new and profound respect for his long-dead great-grandfather and the two uncles he had rarely heard mentioned. He was also convinced that they had perished in the Everglades in the summer of 1923 while working for a private company trying to build the first highway across the great swamp. It wasn't a lark. The kid had offered up a small family inheritance to pay Billy's retainer.

This had all been explained to me during my first two beers from Billy's refrigerator. I suspected my friend and attorney was loosening me up.

"Another R-Rolling R-Rock?" Billy said, stepping out onto the patio with a sweating green bottle in hand.

"So you went and took a look at the originals," I started, but caught myself, "and they're convincing. I mean, there's no way to fake something like this?" I reached out and accepted the beer, smiling. Billy only raised his eyebrows.

"I stopped at M-Mr. Mayes's family home while v-visiting an acquaintance in Atlanta," Billy said. "He's a difficult young m-man to d-disbelieve, Max. And although I'm n-no expert, if these are f-fakes, he went to a lot of t-trouble preparing them."

Billy's stutter flowed through my ears now with only the most subtle recognition. It was something I'd gotten used to. Billy is a stress stutterer. His speech is flawless when he talks to you over the phone or even from the other side of a wall. But face-to-face, even among friends, his words jam up behind his teeth, always left behind and trying to keep up with his brilliant mind.

"The original sc-script is very faded. But the d-dates are compatible. The building of the Tamiami Trail had b-been off and on b-but wasn't completed until 1926."