The Last One Left (58 page)

A small tired bird fluttered aboard, some kind of a warbler, and flew below and sat on a bunk with his bill agape. The women made tiny voices to him, and cooing sounds, and provided water and crumbs, but he would not touch them.

Ten minutes later a blue heron flapped out of the murk and perched on the big basket-work fish trap Selma had bought in Nassau. It was of Haitian design, and she planned to make some kind of decorative hanging thing out of it beside her pool. Howard had lashed it fast in the port transom corner, and the heron landed on the upper bulge of it which extended above the transom.

The heron had a brooding silence about it, a self-possession which seemed to match the strange overcast. His eyes were a startling savage yellow. The limited visibility made the sounds of the engines louder, as well as the sound of the bow wave. They seemed to be going faster than they were.

“Howard’s Ark,” Kip said. “We are rescuing the animals, one by one. Welcome aboard, boids.”

“A vote of confidence, dear,” said June, patting Howard’s arm.

“In about twenty minutes now, people, let’s hope we edge up to some hunk of mainland we can recognize. Pretty soon now I’ll put her on manual and slow her to a crawl.”

“Aye aye, sir. Want a lookout forward?”

“I’ll tell you when, Kip.”

When Selma went below for something she startled the small tired bird and it flew out on deck and landed on the fish trap about six inches from the heron’s talons. Howard said it would make quite a picture. The long and the short of it. June scurried and got her Instamatic and edged closer to the birds as Howard watched. Suddenly, with both slyness and a terrible indifference, the heron reached one taloned foot out to the side and clenched it on the small bird. He dropped the body and it fell down through the wide mesh of the fish trap.

“God
damn
it! God
damn
it!” Howard yelled, and without conscious impulse he hurled his half can of beer at the heron. It missed by a yard, spewing beer as it turned through the air. The heron gave a rusty gawking sound and flapped away.

“Look!” Selma called. “Hey, look right straight ahead! Isn’t that a building, a tall building?”

Howard hurried to the controls and just as he switched to manual control and dropped his speed, he saw the sea buoy about fifty yards off his port quarter.

June came and stood beside him. “Right on the nose again, honey. Old Captain Hornblower himself.”

“Sure, sure, sure,” he said, irritably.

She put her fingertips on his wrist. “I know. It made me feel lousy too. It was so cute, having the birds riding with us. But I guess it wasn’t like on purpose. You know? It’s more like kind of an instinct.”

“Maybe, if it occurs to you, you’d get some lines out?”

“Please don’t get in one of your moods. It’s been a lovely trip. It really has, sweetheart.” She patted him and went and got the lines. As she took one line forward he thought of a giant claw reaching down out of the dirty mist overhead and clenching her once and dropping the broken body over the side.

I’d throw beer cans at it, he thought. Do that to my wife, will you, you crummy buzzard.

“What’s the matter with the crew?” he roared. “Where’s the Captain’s drink? Shape up, you people!”

JOHN D. MACDONALD
was an American novelist and short story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel
The Executioners
, which was adapted into the film
Cape Fear
. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980 he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.