Randy White - Night Vision

When it felt right, I dropped my grip a few inches lower on the big man’s waist. I relocked my hands, bent my knees and then maximized Squires’s own momentum by lifting as I arched my back.

I waited another microsecond… and then I heaved with all my strength as we tumbled backward.

In wrestling jargon, the move I’d executed was a suplex. As I arched backward, I used a two-handed throwing technique, not unlike a Scottish gamesman throwing a fifty-pound rock over a bar. In this case, though, the weight was closer to three hundred pounds. Squires had amassed considerable momentum, and it was his own momentum-not my strength-that sent him flying.

I guessed he would land near the pond’s edge, which is why I had checked behind me before setting up the suplex. I couldn’t have guessed, however, that a man Squires’s size would sail beyond the bank and land on his shoulders in a massive explosion of water.

I got to my feet, cleaning my hands on my jeans. I found the spotlight and aimed it at Squires’s face when he surfaced. He was disoriented and floundering. I watched him splash to vertical, as he spit water and swore. Mostly, he swore at me, ordering that I get that goddamn light out of his eyes.

I told him, “Come up here and say that, fat boy,” and watched the man jam his feet toward the bottom, which is precisely what I hoped he would do.

It was his second mistake of the night.

For a few seconds, Squires stood tall in waist-deep water, as he struggled to find footing. Then he began to sink. The more he struggled, the more suction he created and the deeper he went into the muck.

Squires wasn’t a wrestler, and he wasn’t much of a swimmer, either. He couldn’t manage the delicate hand strokes necessary to sustain positive buoyancy. Soon the man was so deeply mired in mud that he couldn’t move his legs. Water was rising toward his shoulders, and it scared him.

“Goddamn it!” he shouted to the migrants watching. “Help me. Get a rope! Somebody go get a rope and pull me out of here.”

Drowning was terrifying enough, but then another thought came into Squires’s mind. I could tell because of the wild look in his eyes as he glanced over his shoulder, yelling, “Hurry up, before that gator comes back! Does anybody have a gun? Someone break the window of my truck and grab the gun from the glove box. Shit! Hurry up!”

Automatically, my right hand touched my sodden pocket to confirm the Kahr 9mm was still there. It was.

No one moved except for a frail, luminous figure that I recognized. It was the teenage girl Tomlinson had been calling to, Tula. I watched her step free of the crowd, then walk toward me, her eyes indicating Squires as she said in English, “Do you think he might drown?”

I replied, “That’s up to him. If he keeps air in his lungs, he’ll stop sinking.”

I watched the girl, impressed by her articulate English, but more impressed by the way she carried herself and the respect park residents accorded her. When she spoke, even the men watching her went silent.

“Will the animal come back?” she asked me. “Did you kill it?”

I was moving toward the injured man and Tomlinson as I told her, “I wounded it, maybe. I don’t know,” and was tempted to ask, Why are you worried about that jerk?

I listened to the girl tell me, “I used your telephone to call the emergency number. Or maybe it was his.”

She glanced at Tomlinson, who was on his knees in the water, cradling the injured man, and then explained, “The angry propietario told the emergency police not to come. But they are coming now.”

The angry propietario was Squires. Apparently, the girl had heard him cancel Tomlinson’s 911 call. How else could she have known?

In Spanish, I said to people milling in the shadows, “We need three or four men to help get the injured man out of the water. I think his spine is hurt. We have to take care not to move his head. We need towels and ice and disinfectant… and a board of some type for him to lie on. Plywood would work.”

As I spoke, I had to raise my voice to be heard above Squires, who was now raging, “Why aren’t you people moving? Goddamn it, I need a rope! And one of you bastards fetch my gun! How’d you little shits like to be homeless again? I’ll call the feds on your sorry asses if you don’t move now!”

The man was panicking in his rage, his attention focused on shadows behind him where the gator might be lurking. As long as he kept his lungs inflated, the muck wouldn’t overpower his own buoyancy. But now, I guessed, Squires was hyperventilating, and in real danger. I was considering going in after him myself when the girl called in loud Spanish, “Do what the landlord says. Get a rope, but not his gun! Help him! Would God want you to allow a helpless man to drown?”

God allowed helpless men to drown daily, but her words got people moving. A couple of guys went jogging toward the trailers, while others moved toward Tomlinson, awaiting instructions. As I approached the bank, I told the men to stay close, we’d need them soon. I was also searching the ground, looking for my shirt, because I wanted to clean my glasses.

Beside me, Tula said, “Use this,” and handed me a towel, which she pulled from the back of her jeans. “He’s my friend,” she added, indicating the injured man. “His name is Carlson, and he has a good heart. When you get him out of the water, I will pray. Will you help me pray to heal his wounds?”

The girl’s syntax was odd, I noticed, whether she spoke in English or Spanish. It was formal in an old-fashioned way, which made no sense for someone her age.

Carlson was listening from only a few feet away. He was semiconscious, looking up at the girl, a sleepy, dazed smile on his face.

I said, “My friend will be glad to help you pray. Won’t you, Tomlinson?” and handed the towel back to the girl before I told one of the men to hang on to my feet when I gave him the word. Then I got down on my hands and knees and crawled to the water.

It wasn’t difficult to lift Carlson ashore. He was all bone and skin, couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and forty pounds. Once we had him on the slick grass, we maneuvered a piece of plywood under him, then sledded him to higher ground.

Through the entire process, I held the man’s head steady. From the way he’d described the cracking sound “deep inside him,” I guessed the gator had broken his spine. I didn’t want to turn a paraplegic into a quadriplegic.

Tula comforted the man as we moved him. She stroked his head, told him he would recover quickly, and also chanted what I guessed to be a prayer in her native language. I can speak only enough Quiche Maya to thank the person who brings me a beer, so I had no idea what the girl was saying.

When we had Carlson safely away from the water, I checked his injuries. His forearm showed puncture marks, as did his waist and buttocks, but the bleeding wasn’t bad.

His legs, though, had a pasty, dead look that suggested I’d been right about the broken spine. As I took note of the wounds, Tula tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I’ll hold his head while you use this.” She was holding a bottle of cheap tequila, waiting for me to take it.

Tomlinson had found his sandals and seemed to be looking for something else but stopped long enough to grab the bottle and take a long swig.

“It’s not for drinking,” the girl told him, her tone communicating disapproval. “It’s to clean your wounds.”

“That’s exactly how I’m using it,” Tomlinson replied, then took another long belt, before he said to her, “Tula, while we work on your friend, would you do me a favor? Ask around and find out who has our billfolds. I found the phones, but our billfolds are gone.”