Isle of Dogs

Thirty-two

Macovich spotted the white minivan with the rainbow bumper sticker two cars ahead, and he recalled the rainbow sticker on Hooter's toll-booth. Just as Hooter entered his mind, he realized with surprise that she was sitting in the front passenger's seat of the minivan and turning around to talk to people in back, none of whom Macovich could see.

"Wooo, girl, what's going on here?" Macovich muttered to himself as he noted that the minivan was driving a bit erratically, slowing down and speeding up, swerving and trying to switch lanes to pass.

Macovich flipped on the specially equipped limousine's blue grill lights and got on the bumper in front of him, forcing the motorist to pull off on the shoulder. He did the same thing to the next car, and was now on the minivan's rear, his emergency lights strobing.

"What's going on?" Regina asked as she tried a few pats of the face powder Barbie had given to her.

"I'm just trying to get us through all this traffic, " Macovich said as he managed to nudge into the left lane and get parallel to the minivan.

He started waving at Hooter, trying to get her attention, and when she finally looked over and saw him, after Barbie brought him and the limousine to her attention, Hooter made a face of distress and mouthed help!

"Shit!" Macovich said, because he was not allowed to make traffic stops or get involved in incidents while he was driving the governor.

He shrugged, as if to tell Hooter there was nothing he could do. He pointed toward the back of the limousine and drew a box in the air to indicate he was carrying The Package. Hooter rolled her eyes and mouthed help! again as she pointed to the back of the minivan and held up six fingers and then wiggled two fingers to suggest six people running. Macovich frowned and wondered what she was trying to say. Six passengers in back who were running? Wooo, he thought. Didn't six inmates just break out of jail not too far from here, and if normal, innocent people were in back of the van, then why were they ducking out of sight?

Macovich got on his radio and called for backup units while he motioned for Hooter to get her ditzy-looking driver to somehow pull off the road.

Girlfriend, " Hooter said loudly to Barbie. "I is so sorry, but I got to use the lady's room, and I mean got to. "

"Forget it!" Cat's urgent voice drifted up from the floor in back. "We're not stopping until we get outta all this traffic and to some place where there ain't no police!"

"Let me tell you something, " Hooter tossed over the seat, "when a lady say she gotta stop, then she gotta stop, you understand what I'm saying? Didn't your mama raise you right, huh? Didn't she teach you nothing about ladies and their monthly spells, and how a lady can be riding along minding her own business when all a sudden, she feels her fertility waking up when it wasn't expected for two more days?"

The men on the floor in back fell silent.

"So, girlfriend, you just pull over right up there at the Hess station and I'll run in. I'll be quick, but I sure hope I ain't gonna get the cramps. Oh Lord, please don't let me get the cramps. "

Barbie was so concerned she momentarily forgot the inmates inside her minivan. Barbie had suffered terribly from cramps when she was younger, and she understood completely how unbearable and debilitating they could be. She flipped on her right turn signal and reached over to pat Hooter's arm.

"Just drive! "Trader ordered.

"Do you have any Midol?" Barbie asked Hooter.

"Uh uh, ohhhh, " Hooter replied with a groan as she held her belly. "Ohhhh! I didn't bring nothing 'cause I wasn't expecting my periot. Ohhhhhh! Lord, why this have to happen on today of all days?"

"I am very sorry, " Reverend Justice said with feeling as he inhaled a mouthful of dust from the carpeted floor and shoved Cat's foot out of his face. "I'll pray that the Good Lord deliver you from The Cramps. Dear Lord"-he sneezed twice-"please deliver this woman, your servant, from The Cramps. I claim your powers of healing in the name of Je-sus!"

"Ohhhhhh, " Hooter moaned louder as the minivan crept ahead in the barely moving gridlock of race fans, all of whom were getting out of sorts and worrying about missing the start of the race, when the pace car would roar out onto the track and Air Force F-16s would fly over in formation.

"All right, okay, all right, " Slim Jim's voice sounded, and if there was one thing he couldn't stand, it was hearing a woman with The Cramps and then having to brace himself for the rotten moods and mean-ass behavior that were sure to follow. "Pull over and you make it quick and don't talk to nobody or do nothing to 'tract attention!"

Macovich was intently watching Hooter as he drove beside her. Clearly, she had been injured and needed to be rushed to the hospital, and Macovich was beginning to panic. How did he know one of the inmates hadn't stabbed her with a shank and she was bleeding to death right before his eyes?

"Sir, excuse me, " Moses raised his voice to the governor.

"What?" the governor asked, waking up.

"That little horse's got his hoof on my foot and I can't move it, " Moses said, trying not to cause an inconvenience, but he feared his foot might be broken and he was in terrible pain.

Regina tried to remember where she'd put her list of commands and realized she had left it at the mansion. She knew there was a command for picking up a hoof, and she searched her memory. What was it?

"Closer, " she said to Trip.

Trip responded by moving a foot closer to his handler, who in this case, was the governor.

"Ahhhh!" Moses yelled when the minihorse knocked against the cast on his arm and then stepped on his other foot. "I don't mean to complain, but I'm getting as banged up back here as I was at the hospital!"

"Right!" Regina began to panic and all of the commands she had glanced at tumbled together in her head. "I'm sorry. "

Trip turned right and banged Moses's bandaged head against the window. He screamed and begged for someone to let him out of the car.

"I'll just get me a cab and go on home to bed, " he said as he tried to push the minihorse away.

"Can you pull over?" Regina yelled to Macovich as she tugged on her denim skirt, which was a bit snug and tended to creep up her enormous thighs. "Mister Custer's not feeling well and needs to go!"

"Needs to go where?" Macovich said as he crept along with the minivan.

"Back, " Regina shouted, and Trip stepped back and rested all of his weight on both of Moses's feet this time.

"Ayyyyyyy!" he shrieked.

"Ohhhhhh, " Hooter moaned as Barbie finally, at long last, turned into the Hess station, and the governor's motorcade pulled in right behind her.

Other race fans who also had decided to take advantage of a pit stop stared in amazement at the lead limousine with flashing blue lights and the other three black stretches that followed. Shiny black doors opened and the governor, a fat girl with awful hair and bizarre taste in clothes, and what looked like a hospital patient, in addition to a tiny red horse, and plainclothes drivers who had guns under their jackets, and the rest of the First Family, climbed out to get a little fresh air.

The governor grabbed Trip's harness and took a few uncertain steps as Macovich rushed toward the minivan just as Hooter climbed out and began to wave her arms and yell.

"We've been abducted by convicts!" she shouted, and immediately, every NASCAR fan who had stopped to buy beer, and relieve himself from beer already consumed, began to cheer.

Slim Jim, Stick, Cruz Morales, Trader, Cat, and the reverend boiled out from the back floor and scattered. Two of them were tackled by Bubba Loving. Macovich snatched Cruz and Stick up by the backs of their shirts, and Cat zigzagged and dodged and ran straight at the governor, whom he intended to hold hostage. Regina, remembering that she was still a police intern, decided it was up to her to control the situation and yelled at Trip, "Sic him!"

The minihorse was unfamiliar with the command and did nothing as Cat ran past, and the governor squinted about in confusion and patted for his magnifying glass. Regina, who as a child had annoyed and injured mansion staff and family by butting them in tender places, lowered her NASCOIFED helmet-head and pawed the ground with her red patent-leather high tops, building up steam as she suffered a violent atavistic throwback to her primitive programming. She rushed the inmate and butted him in the groin, knocking him off his feet and sending him sailing through the air and body-slamming into Trader. Then she pounced on both of them, sprawled across their chests, and hollered as she banged their heads together and strangled them. Hooter hurried over to assist, while cheering NASCAR fans encouraged the fat girl to slam into them again and stomp their pedals to the metal and blow their asses off the track.

Smoke continued to bump Andy's head with the pistol and threaten to kill Popeye if Andy and Hammer didn't do exactly as they were told.

"I know you got guns, so hand them back here, " Smoke ordered over his mike.

Just fly the helicopter, Andy told himself.

"Hand them back here now!" Smoke's cruel voice sounded in Andy's headset.

"I'm flying, " Andy replied. "It takes both hands and feet to fly and I'm not about to start rooting around for any alleged weapons until we're on the ground. "

"I don't have a weapon, " Hammer answered as she wondered if she dared turn around and shoot Smoke with the nine-millimeter pistol inside her Harley purse.

She supposed this was not a good idea. Nailing Smoke wasn't the problem at such close range, but if he happened to fire his gun because she'd fired hers, then Andy might be wounded or killed and it would be up to her to fly and she didn't know how. Not to mention, if her bullet passed through Smoke and penetrated the helicopter, severe damage might be the result and they could crash. She looked out at the dark waters of the James River as it opened up into the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and remembered her fear of drowning.

"Sit back and shut up, " she told Smoke in the severe tone she reserved for suspects. "We're over the bay now and the last thing you want is for us to lose control of the helicopter. If we go down, everybody drowns. You'll be trapped inside, beating on the doors, trying desperately to open them, but you won't be able to because of the vacuum. So you'll struggle in the frigid pitch dark as water fills the cabin and you'll die slowly. "

"Chill, " Cuda begged Smoke. "Just chill, man. I don't want to drown!"

Possum kept Popeye snugly wrapped in the flag and hugged her hard. Smoke sat back in the seat, playing with the syringe while Unique stared weirdly at Trooper Truth's neck, a box cutter wrapped so tightly in her delicate hand that her nails had pierced her palm and drawn blood. She felt no pain, only the blast of heat and intense frequencies and vibrations rolling up from her Darkness.

Andy checked a flight chart and entered Patuxent's frequency on the radio, and minutes later raised the military tower on the air. "Helicopter zero-one-one-Delta-Bravo, " Andy said over the radio.

"One-Delta-Bravo, " the tower came back.

"Are restricted areas six-six-oh-niner and four-zero-zero-six hot?" Andy inquired.

"Negative. "

"Permission to transition through them at one thousand, en route to Tangier Island, " Andy said.

"Permission denied. " The tower said exactly what Andy thought it would.

"Roger, " Andy said as he entered code 7500, for hijacking, into the transponder and then gave Hammer a thumbs-up.

He was going to transition through the restricted areas anyway, and now that Patuxent had him on their radar and knew his tail number and realized there were hijackers on board, the military would respond. He pulled in more torque and was grateful for a tailwind that propelled them along at a ground speed of one hundred and seventy knots, and fifteen minutes later entered Patuxent's airspace.

Andy took a deep breath and switched the 430 over to automatic pilot. Smoke had no way of realizing that Andy's hands and feet were now free, and Andy slowly reached down and slipped the pistol out of his ankle holster. Following his lead, Hammer withdrew the nine-millimeter from her bag, and both of them tucked the guns under their legs so Smoke wouldn't see what was happening should he climb back up on his seat and glare into the cockpit again.

Fonny Boy and Dr. Faux didn't know what was happening, either, when they walked along Janders Road in plain view and couldn't find a single sign of an Islander. Lights in many of the small houses were off, and not a single golf cart or bicycle rattled past in the chilly dark. The island had been deserted this way ever since Fonny Boy and Dr. Faux slipped off the mailboat after an unsuccessful attempt at bribing the captain to look for the crab pot with its yellow buoy.

"I swanny! Maybe the Rapture done come, " said Fonny Boy, who had heard about the Rapture all of his life. "And we've been left 'cause we ain't fittin' for Heaven 'cause of all wer sins!"

"That's silly, " the dentist replied in frustration.

He was hungry, cold, and tired, and he was imagining all of the watermen out in their bateaus, finding the Tory Treasure. He wondered if the Coast Guard had rounded up all of them and placed them under arrest, or if the watermen had found a way to extort cooperation from the authorities. Plain and simple, Dr. Faux didn't know what was going on, but he was spooked and wished he had never been so foolish as to pad his dental bills, lie to Medicaid, take advantage of children, and ruin people's teeth for the sake of profit.

When they eventually reached Fonny Boy's house, no one was home there, either.

"My mama, she should be in thar raisin' a fire and renching the dishes. She never goes out after dark, " Fonny Boy marveled as his fears grew. "I'm of a mind Jesus come down on His cloud and everybody's gone, save us!"

"Stop it, " the dentist insisted. "Nobody's gone up in a cloud, Fonny Boy. That's a fairy tale. Now there must be an explanation for why the island is deserted, so let's just get your family golf cart and drive around. I suggest we head over to the airport and see if anything's going on over there. "

But the golf cart's battery was dead, and this just increased Fonny Boy's feeling of foreboding and damnation.

"I guess we'll walk, " Dr. Faux decided, turning around and heading in another direction that cut through a marsh. "I will admit this is strange. If everyone's out in the bateaus looking for the treasure, then why did we see so many bateaus at the docks when we got off the mail-boat?"

"Shhhh!" Fonny Boy said with a finger over his lips. "I hear a helichopper! It must be the Guardsmen!"

The dentist strained to listen and detected the distant thud-thudding, and he heard something else, too.

"Singing, " he said. "Do you hear it, Fonny Boy?"

Both of them stopped on the footpath, the brackish air stirring their hair as they listened hard to the faint sound of gospel singing that was carried almost imperceptibly by the wind.

"It's coming from the McMann Leon Methodist Church over thar on Main Street, " Fonny Boy said with breathless excitement. "But I don't have neither notion why. The church, it don't have neither meetings on Saturday night. "

Fonny Boy and the dentist began to hurry in that direction as the sound of helicopter blades got louder and they spotted two bright moving lights high up in the star-scattered sky, coming in from the west. Fonny Boy broke into a run and didn't care if he left the dentist behind.

"Hey! Wait for me!" Dr. Faux called after him. "Well, never mind, I'm heading to the airstrip to see if I can fly the hell out of here on one of those helicopters coming in!"

Fonny Boy ran as fast as he ever had in his life, and was panting and drenched with sweat when he bounded up the church steps and threw open the door. He couldn't believe what he saw inside. Every single person on the island must have been crowded together in the church, the lights were out, and the Islanders were holding candles. They were singing "Amazing Grace" without accompaniment, and Fonny Boy stood still, staring in confusion and fear. Something terrible must have happened, he thought. Or maybe something wonderful. Or maybe they knew the Rapture was coming for sure and they were waiting for Jesus on his cloud. This was crazy, Fonny Boy silently protested. Why wasn't everybody trying to find the Tory Treasure, and didn't it concern them that helicopters were flying in? The sound of their engines was loud enough so that Fonny Boy could hear it inside the church. He pulled his harmonica out of a pocket, cupped his hands airtight around it, made a fish face, and began bending and tonguing, stomping his foot to the rhythm as he jammed the blues.

The singing instantly stopped and Reverend Crockett stepped up to the pulpit. He scanned the sea of small flickering flames.

"Who's playing the juice harp?" he asked.

"I ain't adrift nei-ther more. " Fonny Boy sang improv and bent a few notes. "I ain't prinked up in nei-ther Sunday shoes with my pockets puffed out, but a freehearted boy, he ain't never been poor!"

Gasps sounded all around him and voices called out praise Jesus and thank you, Jesus and it's a miracle! Then Fonny Boy's mother was stumbling out of a pew and clutching Fonny Boy in her arms, and next his father was lifting him up in the air, tears streaming down his weathered face. Everyone on the island figured Fonny Boy was dead when they heard about the Tory Treasure and the capture of the dentist. Since there was no mention of Fonny Boy in connection with this news, the Islanders assumed the poor young man had been pushed overboard by the greedy Dr. Faux.

"Grasp hands in a mazy dance of praise!" Reverend

Crockett proclaimed. "The Lord is dealing out grace and has blowed the breath of life back into this drownded boy!"

"Praise God!" Fonny Boy's mother cried. "He's brought wer baby back from the dead!"

"I'm a die if I was dead!" Fonny Boy said, confounded and deeply moved as it began to occur to him that the entire island had been gathering in the church, perhaps nightly, to pray for him because he was lost at sea. "The dentist, he returned me right 'fore dark. "

A rumbling stirred throughout the congregation as helicopters thundered overhead, shaking the roof of the church.

"That's it!" Reverend Crockett boomed in disapproval. "The dentist is back on Tanger?"

"No!" Fonny Boy exclaimed backward.

"Whur's he at?"

"He's follering his way to the airstrip!" Fonny Boy replied.

"That bad man from the main, he pulled ever one of my teeth!" Mrs. Pruitt said loud enough for all to hear.

"And mine. "

"And mine. "

"Yass! Mine, too. "

"He must be fixin' to escape on the helichoppers!"

Loud, outraged voices ran together into a deafening rumble before Fonny Boy could explain, and the island's entire population streamed out of the church and moved in a determined, united candlelit front toward the airstrip, which was only a five-minute walk away, because nothing on the island was far from anything else.

Soldiers dressed for combat were climbing out of two Black Hawk helicopters when they saw a cloud of small flames floating in their direction. Andy picked up the strange display of light as he thundered fifteen hundred feet overhead at the same moment Unique pushed a button and zipped open the box cutter's blade.

"What's going on down there?" Hammer said before she could restrain herself.

"You better not try anything or all of you are dead!" Smoke threatened as he looked out the window at the moving sea of lights and the big Black Hawk helicopters. "What have you done? What the fuck's happening? Tell me now!"

Possum's attention was riveted to the syringe in Smoke's hand, and he knew Smoke well enough to figure out exactly what would happen next. The instant the helicopter was safely down, Smoke was going to stab Popeye through the flag and inject her full of rat poison, then he would shoot Hammer and Trooper Truth and keep Cuda and Possum as his road dogs on this forsaken island forever. Suddenly, Possum noticed Unique twitch as if she were having a seizure as she unfastened her seat-belt.

"Bye-bye, Popeye!" Smoke said in a mean, mocking tone as he pulled the protective orange tip off the syringe.

"No, Unique!" Possum screamed, and Andy instantly remembered Possum's saying in an e-mail "It was Unique" in reference to whoever cut on Moses, and Moses talking about an angel who promised him a unique experience. Andy yelled, "Mayday!" into the mike as he slowed down, lowered the helicopter's nose, and shoved the cyclic to the right, rolling the 430. For a hair-raising second, they were upside down, then warning alarms went off and emergency lights began to flash and the helicopter suddenly flared like a rampant stallion.

"Crash position! Crash position!" Andy yelled over the intercom as he cut the throttles back to flight idle, shoved the collective all the way down and glided the helicopter with nothing but air moving up through the blades to keep the helicopter from dropping like an anvil.

There was nothing special about deliberately cutting the throttles midair. Andy practiced autorotations regularly and not only was good at them, but he loved the excitement of landing a four-ton machine without the help of its engines. Another little trick he liked was to wait until he was thirty feet off the ground before pulling in power again and flying off, which was what he did now, and suddenly the helicopter was thundering into a high performance takeoff that shot it straight up into the night. At five hundred feet, Andy cut back the throttles again and smiled at Hammer as the warning bells began screaming again and he started down in yet another autorotation. He went through this perilous routine three more times for good measure, and was not at all surprised when he finally lowered the landing gear and set down that Smoke, Cuda, and Possum were ashen and doubled over in fetal positions, and Unique was on the floor, out cold.

"I'll get Smoke, you get the girl!" Andy yelled at Hammer as they flung open the back doors while the blades turned and rotorwash gusted like a gale. "Watch her! She's our slasher!"

Andy pointed his pistol at Smoke, who was dazed and had long since lost his gun. Andy yanked the monster out of the cabin and tossed him on the tarmac like a sack of rags while Hammer grabbed Unique. The sea of candles drifted around them in a circle as soldiers rushed over to see what the hell was going on.

"Pirates!" Andy announced to the stunned Islanders as he snapped handcuffs on Smoke's wrists and Hammer Flexcuffed Unique's ankles and her hands behind her back as she drifted in and out of consciousness and drooled.

"I'm sorry, " Andy said to the soldiers. "I had to violate your restricted areas because I was being held at gunpoint as I suppose you determined from the code I squawked. If you wouldn't mind helping me by grabbing that other pirate out of the back, the one who's throwing up in a bag? But leave the smaller fellow alone. His name is Jeremiah Little and he's an innocent hostage. We'll take him back to Virginia with us. "

"I know four-thirties. Want me to shut her down for ya?" one of the soldiers asked.

"Thanks, " Andy replied as Popeye covered Hammer's face with kisses, and Dr. Faux crept near and gave Hammer an insincere, patronizing pat on her black-leather-covered back.

"I don't know what happened, exactly, but I certainly am glad your dog is all right. Isn't it amazing how pets are like children? I know how much I love my cats. If you don't mind, " Dr. Faux said to Hammer, "I think it best I ride back to Virginia with you. I assume you're leaving right away?"

"Yass, cart him away!" commanded Reverend

Crockett. "We don't want neither contact with him ever. Warrant him!"

"No!" The island's entire population talked backward in unison, their voices rising above rotorwash and the chop-chopping of slowing blades. "Return him to the main!" they began to chant.

Well, race fans, what a night!

I suppose the bad news is there was no Tory Treasure, or at least not in the spot marked by the yellow buoy, which apparently had done nothing but drift with the bay's current until the water got shallower and the crab pot finally got snagged on eel grass about a mile off the Virginia shore. But what matters is the only treasure the Islanders cared about was Fonny Boy, and way to go, Officer Reggie, for singlehandedly catching the escaped inmates!

But how about our boy Donny? Now, I'm sorry to say I was caught up on a case last night and missed the race, but I watched TV and the endless replays of his Big Move when he was running side by side with No. 4 and an accident on Turn 4 took out the No. 33 Chevy and caused a seven-lap caution with a restart on lap 94. Darned if Donny didn't take advantage of a perilous situation by making his Big Move.

That's right, sports fans. You saw him get off the gas and get on the brakes, just like he's done before, and then he just bulleted past No. 4 on the outside of the back straightaway, and he stayed with it the rest of the race.

"I just dug deep inside me, " an exuberant Donny Brett said as he took a slug of champagne. "I just tried to enjoy it again and not worry so much about losing, you know? And I want to thank that cop who took the time to talk to me in my trailer. I don't know your name, but hey, thanks, man. And I want to tell everybody out there the same thing he told me. It's not about being good, it's about knowing when to make your move. "

And now it's time for me to make my Big Move and say to you, my faithful readers, that there's a time to speak and a time to be silent. I'm going to sign off now, and this will be my last essay. Maybe I'll be back one day, but I don't know. So much has happened lately and there is a lot for me to finish up and a lot to figure out.

I will continue to welcome your e-mails and appreciate all you do to enlighten me and make the world a better place. But if I don't answer you, please don't feel bad or think I don't care. Remember the Golden Rule, and that even the smallest life and everything on this earth has a story, if only we take time to listen.

Be careful out there!