A False Dawn

EIGHTY

I thought of Max alone in the house. I held the gun in the man’s face. “Don’t even think about lying to me. If you do, I’ll shoot you between the eyes. How’d you get this car?”

“Dude gave it to me!”

“What dude?”

“Don’t know his name. I work at Riverside Marina. Dude rented a boat today. He said he’d give me two hundred dollars to drive his car down this road at midnight and park right past that house back there. Said for me to keep the lights off, and about one o’clock he’d come meet me. I’d get another hundred, and he’d drop me back at the marina.”

“At one o’clock, you would have been dead and your body dropped right here.”

“What? The dude seemed real cool, man. Didn’t seem like no crazy sex shit.”

“His clothes, what color?”

“Lemme think…black…yeah black shirt and pants.”

I thought about the man in the boat I’d seen earlier. “Give me the keys.”

“What?”

“Give them to me.”

“No problem, man. What’s this shit all about?”

“Start walking.”

“It’s after midnight. I’m a black man walkin’ in dumb-fuck nowhere.”

“It’s the only way you will live though the night. Move! Walk the opposite direction from the house. There’s a crossroad five miles west.”

He looked at me, shook his head, and started walking west.

As I approached my home, I knew why the owl had stopped its night call. It had seen something. Something coming up from the river. I melted in the dark shadows next to the trees and crept down to my dock.

I almost didn’t see it. Tied up behind the weeping willow tree was a boat. I could tell it was a small boat. In the moonlight, I knew it was the boat I’d seen earlier.

Santana was at my home.