The blue edge of midnight

Chapter 9

I might have been out ten seconds or ten minutes. Or maybe my brain just shut down with shock and I hadn’t been unconscious at all. But Gunther was.
When my sight kicked back on I could see the big man wrapped hard around the steering yoke, his head up against the windshield and leaking a string of blood that ran down through his eyebrow and onto a cheek.
I tried to reach out to him, but I was half hanging in the seat harness, all my weight pushed forward with the angle of the cockpit. We had pitched into the Glades and speared into the water and black muck. The propeller and most of the engine had disappeared, buried in front of us. The wings at either side looked like they’d simply dropped flat out of the sky and lay floating on the bent stalks of sawgrass, resting on the pile. But in the cockpit, water was settling knee high around both of our legs and when I looked down at Gunther’s leg, I could see the glisten of white bone that had ripped through his trousers at the middle of his thigh. Compound fracture, I thought. And God knows what else.
I tried to do a quick assessment of myself. I could move my feet, but when I tried to twist my shoulders a pain screeched through my lower chest. I had been punched at Frankie O’Hara’s gym with enough wicked hooks to the body to know that I’d at least bruised a few ribs but hoped I hadn’t cracked any. I took shallow breaths and after several seconds I reached out and got a good brace with the left arm on the console and pushed my weight off the harness. I fumbled with the buckle but got it loose and then got solid footing on the angled cockpit floor. I leaned back on the edge of my seat and then reached over to get my fingertips on Gunther’s neck artery. A pulse. Thready, but a pulse. The pilot had not even reached for the radio when we’d felt the first jolts from the engine. I looked at it now, folded into the crushed console and partly submerged in rising water. Useless.
I had to get myself out. I had to get him out. And we were already losing daylight. Who was ever going to find us out here? Who even knew we were out here?
One step at a time, I told myself. “Ya can’t book ’em till ya catch ’em,” Sergeant McGinnis had said in the police academy. “And can’t catch ’em till ya find ’em.”
“And can’t find ’em if they’re dead,” one of the smartass rookies would always whisper.
I used my right hand to twist down my handle and pushed loose the passenger door. Each movement sent a spike of pain up my side, but I was able to crawl up on the seat cushion and pull myself out onto the wing. I stood. My left knee was creaky. An ankle throbbed. Over the wall of sawgrass I could see the roofline of the fish camp in silhouette against the pink glow of sunset that still lightened the horizon. Gunther had brought us to within 150 yards or so. I didn’t know how I’d get him the rest of the way.
I crab walked across the fuselage to the other wing and wrenched open the pilot’s door. Gunther’s seat belt was either unhooked or had snapped. If he had a neck injury, I couldn’t help it now. We were both soaking wet. It was getting dark and even a seventy-five-degree South Florida night was going to play hell with our body temperatures. Gunther had an open fracture and was probably bleeding internally. I’d taken enough emergency medical courses as a cop to know we were in deep shit. I looked again at Gunther. He was 230 pounds and unconscious. Even if I could get him out, I’d never be able to carry him 150 yards. I got that old cop feeling of hearing shots and wanting to go the other way. Fight or flee. Self-preservation. The sky still glowed in the west. I bent over, got a grip under the pilot’s arms and started pulling.

It took another twenty minutes to get him out. My rib cage screamed. Part of me was glad the big man was out cold. At least he couldn’t consciously feel the pain of his broken femur as I jerked him out onto the wing. He groaned only once and I saw his eyes roll up. I bent my face to his mouth and felt the whisper of breath on my cheek. Still breathing. I sat, resting and trying to figure out my next move.
“OK, Fred. What’s next?” I said out loud. If I was taking him, it had to be a joint effort. If I wanted him to live, I had to convince myself he could. I knew that if I didn’t believe it, I’d give up.
I stood and took another bearing on the fading roofline of the fish camp and tried to imagine the route in my head. Once we were down in the sawgrass there’d be no sight line. The straight edge of the wing pointed just to the right of the building, about fifteen degrees off. I could use that at first.
I eased myself down at the crook of the wing and the fuselage and onto the matted sawgrass. The footing was shaky, but I sank only knee deep into water. But when I stepped away from the flattened grass I was suddenly up to my waist. The bottom felt slick and doughy and sucked at my Reeboks when I took a step. I’d never be able to drag Gunther through this. I stood there, warm water filling my jeans, staring down at the water and grinding. The grass was my enemy. Could I avoid it? No. The muck was my enemy. Could I avoid it? No. The water and Gunther’s weight were my enemy.
Float him, I thought. It was the only way.
Would a plane this size have a raft? Doubtful. And I hadn’t seen anything that resembled a life vest in the cockpit. I worked my way back to the fuselage and found the handle to the side compartment where I’d seen Gunther rummaging when I first pulled up at his hangar. The recessed handle twisted out and I popped the door and wrenched it open. Inside the space was dark and I had to reach in and start pulling out whatever I could reach: a rolled-up length of canvas tarpaulin, some fishing gear, a sleeping bag jammed deep in one corner, and a large zippered black bag with a U.S. Diver’s logo on the side.
I hesitated only a second to look at the new cream-colored canvas tarp, then pulled the bag into the opening and unzipped it. A mask and snorkel, a breathing regulator and mouthpiece, a set of huge fins, a sleeveless wetsuit top and the piece of luck I was hoping for, a buoyancy compensator.
“You’re a scuba diver, Fred,” I said aloud. Gunther probably ferried clients down the Keys, where the only living coral reefs in the continental U.S. lay just off shore.
I’d seen the guys from rescue-and-recovery use scuba equipment in Philadelphia, watched them slip down the banks of the Delaware River one morning in their slick black wetsuits and ease themselves into the water looking for the remains of a homicide victim. Strapped across their chests and attached to the air tanks were buoyancy compensators, inflatable vests that they could fill with air or empty out, to keep them afloat or let them dive.
I took the vest and wetsuit out of Fred’s bag and climbed back onto the wing.
“OK, Fred. We’re going on a hike, man. Help me out with this and I promise we’re gonna make it.”
I checked Gunther’s pulse. Maybe I was kidding myself, but it seemed stronger. I wrestled his arms into the vest and clipped it over his chest. I found a stem labeled “manual inflate” and started blowing. My ribs screeched twice with each breath, when I sucked in air and when I blew it out. Ten minutes of pain got it done.
I then took up the wetsuit jacket and slipped it under the big man’s broken thigh. Looking for something to wrap it with, I stripped off the pilot’s belt. Attached to it was a leather scabbard. I unsnapped it and took out his knife. The blade was small and oddly curved but was so sharp it sliced easily through the rubber and cloth of the wetsuit. I trimmed it and then cinched it around the leg using the belt to secure it. I was cutting the corded shoestrings from his boots to help tie the jacket when I fumbled the knife and it plunked into the water below and out of sight. I cursed its loss for no apparent reason.
“OK, Fred. Moment of truth, my friend.”
I pulled the big man to the crook of the fuselage and let his legs dangle. I got back down into the water and with both feet planted on the matted sawgrass, inched Gunther off the wing and let him slide down my chest and thighs and into the water. I laid him out. The inflated vest kept his massive chest up. Even the wrapped rubberized wetsuit seemed to float his injured leg some.
By now we’d lost most of the light. The sky had gone dusky and a few early stars had already popped. My night eyes had adjusted and the white plane held a slight glow. I took a bearing on the wing edge, fifteen degrees, and stepped deeper into the water.
“Just like a night paddle, Fred,” I said, looking at Gunther’s pale face. “Let’s muscle through.”

I don’t know how much time passed. We were in hell on earth. You can’t keep track of eternity.
Every step into the grass wall was a process. I would sweep at the high, saw-toothed blades with one arm and try to find some half-solid purchase with my forward foot. Then, with my left hand gripped on the shoulder strap of the inflatable vest, I would pull Gunther forward and try to plant another foot in the muck below. I was sweating before we started and three steps into the wall the mosquitoes began to swarm around my face and arms. I could feel them in my hair, knew that the few I splattered with a swat on my neck were instantly replaced. They were so thick I drew an occasional group into my mouth with a breath. I would flail at them with my free hand. Then sweep the grass, move the foot, yank Gunther forward eighteen inches, move the other foot, flail the insects, and begin again. Early on I stumbled and fell, going under over my head in the water and discovered it gave at least a few seconds of relief from the mosquitoes, so I took to voluntarily dunking my head every few steps. Oddly, the insects didn’t seem to light on Gunther. Maybe they could sense the odor of imminent death. Maybe the stink of my own sweat and animal oils drew them away from him.
I checked the pilot’s pulse. Still there.
“Stay with me, buddy. Work with me,” I said, then swept the grass, moved the foot, yanked him forward…
I quickly lost sight of the plane. I thought I could establish a line and then use my own created trail to keep it straight. But once we were enclosed in grass and darkness it was impossible to know if we were making headway toward the camp or skewing off to either side. Above me the first few stars had multiplied into a thousand and twice my heart jumped when a breeze momentarily split the grass and a beam of light seemed to flash through. I thought it was a search light at first, only to realize it was a low moon starting to climb the eastern sky, sending its beams flickering through the Glades. I kept moving.
The night was pulling the warmth out of the water. My legs were cold as it leached away body heat. I tried to concentrate but was losing focus. Gunther had groaned a couple of times when I yanked at the flotation vest. He was slipping in and out. At times the water was so shallow I was able to get good footing and fall forward to gain three feet. In deeper water every lunge brought us less than one. I tried counting the pulls, closing my eyes to concentrate on twenty pulls, then resting, then doing twenty more. As I weakened the moon came full into view above the grass, hanging in the air like a soiled silver dollar. The pain in my ribs became a dull mass. I could no longer feel the razor cuts on my arms and face from the sharp sawgrass. I reduced my pulls to ten at a time between resting.
I tried to think of the paddling, the rhythm and strokes of the canoe. I tried to think of running, pushing through the ache, and then cussed myself for putting in three miles this morning and how that strength could have helped me now. I tried to use the stars as some kind of guide to keep a straight course. I’d lost count of the pulls long ago.
I’d quit sweating but couldn’t remember why that was a bad thing. I’d lost any sense of the mosquitoes and then cut my pulls to five at a time and quit talking to Gunther. I thought, more than a couple of times, of leaving the pilot behind.
I was giving up when I swung my arm into the grass again and the back of my hand thunked into something solid. The pain seemed to snap a few brain cells alive.
A piling, I thought, prying my other hand from a cramp-locked grip on Gunther and then using both to feel the squared pole in front of me. I reached up and touched the wood like a blind man. There was a platform above that sloped down in the opposite direction like some sort of ramp. I yanked Gunther around. I got a step up onto solid wood and dragged his chest out of the water. Once he was secure I crawled up the planks toward the moon.
We’d hit the camp off to the south at a short boat ramp that must be used to drag up canoes or skiffs. In the moonlight the weathered wood of the structure glowed like dull bone and the surrounding horizon of sawgrass took on the color of ash. I stumbled along the dock, my legs stiff and barely holding. At the main cabin the door to one side was unlocked and it swung open on crusted hinges.
Inside it was darker, but like in my own shack, I could make out shapes of a table and bunks against one wall. I found a slick blue rain tarp folded on top of an old trunk and carried it back outside to where Gunther lay. He groaned again when I pulled him onto the flattened tarp.
“Bedtime, Fred,” I said, and then twisted two corners together and somehow dragged him up the ramp and into the cabin. Inside I pulled a mattress from one bed to the floor and after deflating the vest and prying him out of it, I rolled the pilot onto the mattress and covered him with every blanket I could reach.
I finally sat on the edge of the bunk, breathing hard and shallow as if only half of my lungs were working. I was caked with mud from the crotch down. A filmy mixture of blood and water covered my arms. My face felt swollen from the insect bites.
Moonlight was pouring through an old-style four-pane window. Gunther’s face was turned up to the ceiling. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead. I stared at the spot on his neck where a pulse would be but I could not move myself to it. I didn’t even feel myself fall back into the bed.

I could feel the helicopter blades, more than hear them, a whumping of air that rattled the wood walls around me. In my half dream I could feel the knock of boots on hardwood floors, the hard steps vibrating into my cracked ribs and curiously tickling the bone.
I could feel the words, sharp and urgent medical terms jumping out of men’s mouths, and then I was rising up out of warm water. Up out of pain. I’d spent enough time in hell. It was time to leave.