A False Dawn

THREE

As I rounded a bend in the road, I knew I’d see him. I’d try to drive slow enough to see if he hauled the canoe in a pickup truck. Maybe see a license plate. He was nowhere to be seen. I remembered an oyster shell road that led from the county road down to the river. The jaunt to the river was less than a hundred yards. I pulled next to the river and got out of my Jeep. No Joe Billie. No canoe. Nothing.

I looked closely at the spur road. Since last night’s rain, there were no tracks, no impressions from a car or truck anywhere in the damp mud, shell, and gravel. How did a barefoot man beat me walking a half mile to his canoe?

I watched the river for a moment. An invisible curtain of wind came up river, rippling its surface like someone playing piano keys across the water. A mob of gnats gathered in mass near the shore. The air was building in heat and humidity. I felt a drop of sweat roll down my spine. There was the hint of rain in the air.

As I started towards the Jeep, I heard a noise in the thick trees. A crashing sound of attacking wings, primeval aggression. There was a shrill protest from a bird and then silence. A bright red feather floated to the ground less than ten feet from me. A great horned owl, yellow eyes unblinking, stared down at me. The owl had captured and killed a cardinal. The twitching, dying body of the redbird was trapped in the owl’s talons. I knew these big birds occasionally hunted in the daylight but I never expected to witness it.

I watched a smaller feather from the dead cardinal float on an air current towards the river. It was then that I saw the sliver of lemon yellow that looked strangely out of place. Maybe it was a piece of trash that had washed up in the current. But trash doesn’t move by itself. As I walked closer, the sliver of yellow became the blouse of a woman who was either dead or near death.

The woman had been severely beaten. Her left eye swollen shut. I knelt down and reached for a hand that lay across her stomach. Her pulse was weak. She was young. Maybe eighteen. Lower lip split. A wound in her upper chest. Her breathing labored, a slight gurgling sound coming at each inhalation. Dried blood at the corner of her mouth and nostrils. Her blue jeans were stained with blood.

“Can you hear me?” I asked.

She opened her eyes. There was no connection. She seemed to stare at a place somewhere above my head. She was distant and dying. I gently squeezed her hand and lifted a strand of hair from her face. She gasped and pulled away.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

She started to shake. She was going into shock. Her life was compressed into minutes. I held her hand. “There is a phone in my car. I’ll call for help.”

Her lips trembled, and she whispered something in a language I didn't recognize. “Atlacatl imix cuanmiztle,” she said in a labored breath.

What did it mean? There was a slight reflex from her hand. A single tear escaped through swollen flesh and shattered blood vessels, past the slit of an eyelid, down her face, vanishing into mud and river sand. One of the bruises on her cheek resembled the letter U.

I ran to my Jeep and dialed 911. “Come on!” An answer on the third ring. I explained to the sheriff’s dispatcher that an ambulance would be too slow. The victim needed to be airlifted by helicopter to the hospital now. I took a towel out of the back seat of the Jeep and ran back to the girl.

“You’re going to be okay,” I said in the most convincing voice I could. My heart raced. “Medical help is coming! Do you hear me?” There was only the sound of air escaping her chest. I applied pressure to her wound. She was slipping away.

Where the hell are they?

She looked at me for a long moment, the clear eye seeming to connect. It was now a pleading, frightened eye, an eye too wise for its young host. From somewhere lost in history and heritage, she looked at me through the saddened eye of the elders. She wept silently. I never felt so helpless.

The wail of sirens sounded in the distance. I heard a helicopter far away. But the look in her eye was further away as it peered through time and space and found me.

I held her hand, my own eyes suddenly watering. “Stay with me! Okay? Stay with me! I’ll find the person who did this to you.”