Stuart Kaminsky - Vengeance

THERE WERE THREE reasons I was staying a few miles over the speed limit on 301 heading toward Bradenton.

First, Sarasota is full of the very old, to whom the State of Florida will grant a driver’s license even if the person is blind or too short to see over the dashboard. Old people and tourists are treated with dignity in the Sunshine State. They have the dollars. Many of them drive not in the State of Florida, but in a state of complete oblivion, leaving accidents in their wake, driving on in the certainty that they are doing no evil. A second group of drivers in abundance is the smiling and soused teens and their parents. They are not outsiders. Their pickup trucks proudly bear decals of the Confederate flag and bumper sticks with comments like WE DON’T GIVE A SHIT HOW YOU DID IT UP NORTH and

YOU CAN HAVE MY WIFE BEFORE I’LL GIVE UP MY GUN.

These two groups seem miraculously to miss each other in the highway bumper-car game and cause only misery, mayhem and death to the majority of people who drive and live normally beneath the sun and in the wake of hurricanes.

I said there were three reasons.

The second is that my wife died in a car crash in Chicago a little over three years ago. Six months and five days more than three years. It wasn’t her fault. Someone had sideswiped her, probably an accident, sent her into a low concrete wall on Lake Shore Drive, and driven away fast. Never found. I’ve driven as little as I could since then, but sometimes I have no choice if I’m going to make a living. I drive carefully, always aware of the upcoming driveway hidden by shrubs, the white Nissan with no visible driver, the maroon Ford Futura that may or may not be weaving just a little two blocks back in my rearview mirror. Until a few months ago, I used to sweat whenever I drove, even with the automobile air conditioner dialed to high.

The third reason I was only a few miles over the speed limit letting cars, vans and trucks whip past me was that I was reasonably sure I was too late. I didn’t know if I wanted to get where I was going in time to stop a murder.

The radio was on. I seldom listened to music, I liked a voice, almost any voice, a southern Baptist preacher, G. Gordon Liddy, Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, an abusive local talk-show host on WFLA out of Tampa using words I thought were prohibited by the FCC. If I were lucky, I’d catch NPR and listen to All Things Considered or Fresh Air but really, any voice would do and I didn’t always listen to the words.

I wasn’t alone in the car. Ames McKinney sat erect, seat-belted next to me, riding shotgun. Literally. He had an old Remington M-10 twelve gauge pump-action shotgun lying across the lap of his yellow slicker. Ames seldom spoke. He had said almost all he had to say in his seventy-four years of life. Ames looked like an aged Gary Cooper with long white hair and a face of sunned leather.

He knew how to use a gun, though he was not supposed to have one. Ames had come to Sarasota three years earlier in search of his business partner, who had run off with all the money from the sale of their business back in Arizona. Ames and his partner had gone out to the white sand behind the trees on South Lido Beach and had an old-fashioned shoot-out. Ames won. The judge called it justifiable homicide and gave Ames a suspended sentence for carrying an illegal firearm. There are actually laws about dueling in Florida, but the judge wasn’t about to invoke them. The partner fired first. Actually, the partner fired four times before Ames shot him. I was there. I testified on his behalf. Ames thinks I saved him from Old Sparky.

I made a turn off the highway at Ellenton, saw the huge shopping mall I’ve never been to flash by me and headed west toward Palmetto.

Past the Gamble Mansion, preserved as it had been when slaves lived in shacks and the second floor was reached by ladders that could be pulled up in case the Seminoles attacked. Past the tomato-packing plants, tiendas and pawnshops where the migrant Hispanic laborers worked and shopped.

By the time I had made a turn and headed north on Tamiami Trail, I was sure we were going to be too late.

It began to rain. It began to rain hard. Summer was the time for rain on the Gulf Coast. But weather truths, like human ones, had begun to change here long before I arrived.

My windshield wipers worked. I was driving a newly rented white Geo Metro, which wanted to leave the road with every blast of wind.

I had an address and only a general idea of where I was going, but with a turn again I knew I was in Palmetto. Palm trees went wild in the wind. The streets began to flood. Traffic slowed to a crawl. People, all black, ran for cover or home. I drove trying to see street signs and passed the one I was looking for. I went to the next corner and turned left around a battered green Chevy that was stalled in a deep puddle. The driver was an old black woman with gray hair. I caught just a glimpse of her but I could see that she was sitting in a state of near-perfect calm. She had been through this before. She had been through much worse before. So had I. She would endure. I probably would too.

I found the house whose address I had been carrying around for three days. It was dark. The morning was almost as dark, with black, driving rain. A pickup truck with a tow winch was parked in the driveway. The house was a one-story cinder-block bunker. There was no grass on the place where a lawn should be. There was just a thin lake of rainwater with bits of debris, dirt, beer bottles and rocks peeking out.

I turned off Dr. Laura in midsentence as she told a weeping young woman to stop crying and take charge of her life. She could have been talking to me.

Ames and I got out of the car and I was soaked deep as I hurried to the front door of the house. Ames, yellow slicker protecting him, walked cradling the shotgun, right hand at the trigger. Lightning crackled and struck somewhere on the other side of the nearby Manatee River.

I knocked. Thunder above. The noise of pelting rain. My feet were getting soaked through my shoes. I knocked louder. No answer. I didn’t expect one. I tried the doorknob. Since the rain was knocking at the door too, I didn’t think any fingerprints remained on the knob. I was breaking the law. I should have called the police hours ago, but the police were not happy with me at the moment.

The door wasn’t locked.

I started in but Ames put out a long, lean arm to hold me back so he could enter first. This was the home-well, the house-of a dangerous man, a man who had… Later, I’ll talk about it later. Now, I followed Ames inside. There were no lights on, but it was still day and in spite of the storm, there was enough light so that I could see faintly.

The rain pounded on the roof demanding to be let in, demanding to carry away this concrete hell.

A sofa and unmatched cushioned chair and a metal folding chair were covered with dirty clothes, full ashtrays and empty Dr Pepper cans and amber beer bottles.

Maybe he hadn’t been here when the knock had come, even though his truck was. Maybe he was away somewhere. A friend, if he had one, had picked him up and they were out looking for trouble or for me.

“Here,” said Ames in his raspy voice as he stepped over the debris and through an open door.

I followed him into a kitchen that smelled like a Port-o-Let at a county fair. Dishes, food in the sink, an overflowing bag of garbage and a body on the floor.

I turned on the light. A large roach scurried out of the garbage bag and headed for the darkness.