Read Online Acts of Nature by Jonathon King - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jonathon King
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nondescript tip of her chin and turned away. Fucking snowbird, he thought.
Buck’s parents and their parents before them had watched such storms approach for a century. Like most people born and raised in southwest Florida, they didn’t need some long- range predictions. Hell, these national weather forecast guys could track a fart coming off the African coast and watch it meander for three weeks across the Atlantic. Buck’s father had taught him to watch the weather on the horizon, note the slope of the Gulf water swells, pay attention to the birds and the lack of feeding fish.
“The animals know what the world is doing long before we do, son.”
Like most native Gladesmen, his daddy knew how to button down, tie off his boat, and strap down anything else that might fly off in a hundred-mile-an-hour gust or float away on an eight-foot storm tide and then just see what came. They’d dig out after. It was the way it was. Shit, look at New Orleans. Doppler weather my ass. If you could run, you ran. If you stayed, for whatever reason, you did the best you could and started again with whatever the storm left you. Survivors survived. The dead didn’t.
It had been the same way in prison. You fought if you could, scammed if you could, joined up if you could, took what you could. Buck had taken the fight route just because he could. He’d chosen brass knuckles instead of becoming someone’s hump. A broken eye socket, a few busted ribs, a couple of teeth in his bloody spit. He’d suffer the same any day. They ought to make a commercial: “Prison love—a beating only hurts for a while, being someone’s bitch lasts forever.”
Buck looked back over at the boys who were now feeding off each other’s enthusiasm for posturing and starting to look like some video off MTV. Marcus was doing his hand thing, fingers splayed out like they were unnaturally twisted or spastic and then turning his wrists and elbows to point with his index and little digits—at what? Who knew. He was dressed in that equally perplexing style with the oversized jeans that billowed out and hung down, but mysteriously only came to his mid-calf. He had on a Hawaiian shirt that actually didn’t look too bad to Buck even though it was too big and flying open to expose a T-shirt underneath with some bullshit rap message about “gettin’ drizzed, yo.”
Wayne was similarly outfitted but his shirt was some impossibly long T-shirt thing that came past his knees and nearly met the low cuffs of his goofy pants. Their friend who had joined them, and was supposedly a contact for the real dude with the information and locations of the Glades camps, was in the same getup except his long shirt was a Miami Heat jersey that Shaquille O’Neal himself could have worn, but it looked like a drape on this kid. All three of them were wearing stiff-brimmed baseball hats that had never been touched by the fingertips of baseball players. The contact had his lopped over to one side like he was hiding a deformed ear. The three of them were flicking their fingers and bopping around on the balls of their feet and blatantly staring at any female who walked past them and probably doing that ppssst, ppsst sound that caused some of the younger girls to turn their heads to them but made at least one woman flip them the finger. Buck figured the costuming was just another version of kids trying to belong, cliquing up with one another in an effort to be in with something instead of having to realize we’re really out here all alone in the world. He’d seen the same thing in prison, mostly split along racial lines. Buck had learned quickly that the world inside was no different than the world outside. No one else was going to jump in to save you when your ship went down. You the alone, boys.
Buck downed the rest of his drink and was about to go over to his misfits and find out what the deal was. He was fronting this operation with two hundred dollars and all he was getting was some
Buck’s parents and their parents before them had watched such storms approach for a century. Like most people born and raised in southwest Florida, they didn’t need some long- range predictions. Hell, these national weather forecast guys could track a fart coming off the African coast and watch it meander for three weeks across the Atlantic. Buck’s father had taught him to watch the weather on the horizon, note the slope of the Gulf water swells, pay attention to the birds and the lack of feeding fish.
“The animals know what the world is doing long before we do, son.”
Like most native Gladesmen, his daddy knew how to button down, tie off his boat, and strap down anything else that might fly off in a hundred-mile-an-hour gust or float away on an eight-foot storm tide and then just see what came. They’d dig out after. It was the way it was. Shit, look at New Orleans. Doppler weather my ass. If you could run, you ran. If you stayed, for whatever reason, you did the best you could and started again with whatever the storm left you. Survivors survived. The dead didn’t.
It had been the same way in prison. You fought if you could, scammed if you could, joined up if you could, took what you could. Buck had taken the fight route just because he could. He’d chosen brass knuckles instead of becoming someone’s hump. A broken eye socket, a few busted ribs, a couple of teeth in his bloody spit. He’d suffer the same any day. They ought to make a commercial: “Prison love—a beating only hurts for a while, being someone’s bitch lasts forever.”
Buck looked back over at the boys who were now feeding off each other’s enthusiasm for posturing and starting to look like some video off MTV. Marcus was doing his hand thing, fingers splayed out like they were unnaturally twisted or spastic and then turning his wrists and elbows to point with his index and little digits—at what? Who knew. He was dressed in that equally perplexing style with the oversized jeans that billowed out and hung down, but mysteriously only came to his mid-calf. He had on a Hawaiian shirt that actually didn’t look too bad to Buck even though it was too big and flying open to expose a T-shirt underneath with some bullshit rap message about “gettin’ drizzed, yo.”
Wayne was similarly outfitted but his shirt was some impossibly long T-shirt thing that came past his knees and nearly met the low cuffs of his goofy pants. Their friend who had joined them, and was supposedly a contact for the real dude with the information and locations of the Glades camps, was in the same getup except his long shirt was a Miami Heat jersey that Shaquille O’Neal himself could have worn, but it looked like a drape on this kid. All three of them were wearing stiff-brimmed baseball hats that had never been touched by the fingertips of baseball players. The contact had his lopped over to one side like he was hiding a deformed ear. The three of them were flicking their fingers and bopping around on the balls of their feet and blatantly staring at any female who walked past them and probably doing that ppssst, ppsst sound that caused some of the younger girls to turn their heads to them but made at least one woman flip them the finger. Buck figured the costuming was just another version of kids trying to belong, cliquing up with one another in an effort to be in with something instead of having to realize we’re really out here all alone in the world. He’d seen the same thing in prison, mostly split along racial lines. Buck had learned quickly that the world inside was no different than the world outside. No one else was going to jump in to save you when your ship went down. You the alone, boys.
Buck downed the rest of his drink and was about to go over to his misfits and find out what the deal was. He was fronting this operation with two hundred dollars and all he was getting was some
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