LITMIR.BIZ

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once in your life.’

      Thorn looked over at Lawton stretching his arms, yawning, then rearranging himself in the hammock and easing back for the rest of his nap. Lately the old man had taken to dressing in Thorn’s clothes. Today he was wearing a baggy white T-shirt and khaki fishing shorts with flap pockets in the front, the exact same outfit Thorn had on. The official uniform for Camp Thorn.

      ‘I’ve already got a house on the water, Marty. I have the piece-of-shit car I want. So why don’t you go on back to Mr Hotshot’s office and tell him to find another plantation to sack and plunder.’

      Marty peered into Thorn’s eyes for several seconds, then shook his head sadly as if about to deliver a fatal diagnosis.

      ‘I told my guy how you were. But he said to come anyway, ‘cause he believed I could talk you into selling. Man has that kind of confidence in me. Now I got to go back and tell him you blew me off. You’re going to make me look bad, Thorn. I don’t like looking bad.’

      Thorn held the saw steady against the notch.

      ‘Seems like you’d be used to it by now, Marty.’

      Overhead a warm breeze crackled through the brittle fronds. Marty’s eyes grew even droopier. He’d heard it all. Been there, pissed on that. He was too jaded to get riled by some amateur smart-ass. But all the same, Thorn could see the flush inching up his neck like the mercury on an August afternoon.

      Marty held his stare, then shifted his gaze to the saw in Thorn’s hand. His dark eyes going flat.

      ‘You’re a crazy motherfucker, aren’t you, Thorn?’

      ‘So I’ve been told.’

      ‘I believe you’d use that, wouldn’t you? That saw. Take a swipe at me, try to saw my fucking head off if you could.’

      ‘You could stick around about two more minutes and find out.’

      Thorn gave him an innocent smile.

      ‘Assholes like you, Thorn, they’re a dime a dozen in the joint. Thing is, they don’t last long with that hard-ass attitude. Sooner or later they smart off one too many times and wind up getting their fucking tongue cut out and handed to them on a clean white plate.’

      Thorn looked down at the wood slat and nudged the saw back and forth across it, the blade missing Marty’s leg by half an inch. He spoke without looking up.

      ‘You might want to go home, Marty, stand in front of the mirror, work some more on that sales technique. ‘Cause it’s not working worth a damn.’

      Marty took a few steps toward his car, then stopped and swung around.

      ‘He’s coming after you, Thorn. This guy doesn’t take no for an answer. He’s going to have this land one way or the other. That’s just fair warning.’

      ‘Bring him on,’ Thorn said. ‘Bring the fucker on.’

      Just inside the front door of Tarpon’s, Marty snagged the portable phone off the podium and headed into the bar to use it. Tying up their only line right at early bird time. The old lady hostess came over and tapped on his shoulder and held out her hand, but Marty turned his back to her until she went away. What he needed was a damn cell phone, but he hadn’t put away enough cash yet.

      He checked in with his boss, broke the bad news about Thorn, and his boss was pissed at the pigheaded asshole, but he wasn’t surprised.

      Marty’s boss thought about it for a minute, humming to himself the whole time like he might be shaving or some damn thing; then he came back on and told Marty he could redeem himself by doing another job for him, one he could probably manage on the telephone. Marty got the details and hung up and about then the hostess came back, tapped on his shoulder again, but Marty ignored her and dialed the next number, hoping he’d catch the guy before he knocked off for the day, then had to wait another five minutes while the secretary who answered carried the phone outside to the guy on his forklift.

      Marty didn’t even have to bully the forklift guy. Just used his boss’s name and offered him a foreman’s job at another marina, double what he was making, and the guy said hell, yes, he’d do fucking backflips for that kind of money. And after two more minutes on hold, listening to the background music at Morada Bay Marina, with the Tarpon’s hostess coming and going, pecking him on the shoulder to get the phone back, the forklift guy came back and said he had it. Five pages, the complete May calendar, the float plans for every boat in the marina. Marty gave him his boss’s fax number and the guy said he’d send it right over.

      ‘Fine,’ Marty said. ‘Come by on Monday morning, Paradise Boatyard, there’ll be a job with your name on it.’

      ‘Hey, thanks,’ the guy said.

      Marty said, ‘Go fax the thing. And don’t go telling anybody what the fuck you’re doing, either, or your ass is chum.’

      Two minutes later he called his boss again and the guy right away said, ‘Finally you did something right, Marty, I was beginning to wonder.’

      ‘You see anything there you can use?’ Marty ignored the put-down. He’d had enough of those for one day from Thorn.

      ‘Thursday night coming up. It’s perfect. Two birds, one stone. Thorn’s ass is mine.’

      ‘The guy’s a hardhead. I don’t know.’

      ‘I know all about this guy, Marty. I been making a little study of the asshole. And what I’ve decided, once I take this guy’s land, I’m going to cut off his balls and pickle them.’

      ‘I want to see that.’

      His boss said, ‘The guy’s got a friend, Sugarman.’

      ‘Yeah,’ Marty said. ‘Used to be a cop, now he’s some kind of half-assed private eye.’

      ‘Way I hear it, these two guys are joined at the hip. Tickle Sugarman’s nose, Thorn sneezes.’

      ‘That’s about right.’

      ‘Well, I got a way to tickle the ever-loving shit out of Sugarman’s nose.’

      ‘So Thorn sneezes.’

      ‘That’s right, Marty. So Thorn sneezes his fucking brains out.’

      A minute later when they were done Marty hung up and took the phone back over to the podium and set it down.

      ‘I believe this is yours.’

      The old lady hostess blasted him with a glare, then turned and smiled at her next party and led them to their table.

       6

      By late afternoon Thorn was almost finished with the bench. Out in the western sky a few wispy cirrus clouds sprang from the horizon like the fine sprigs of hair curling off the neck of an elegant woman. The sun was brassy red and poised only minutes from another fiery crash into the Gulf. Already the western clouds were rimmed with gold and a gloss of crimson spread across the bay as if somewhere deep below the water’s surface the Earth had opened a vein.

      While he rested his eyes on the showy sky, out of the dense woods that bordered his land a yellow Labrador puppy stumbled into the open lawn and halted beside the trunk of a giant sea grape tree. A mockingbird in the sea grape shrieked at the pup, then fluttered down and dive-bombed his head, but the Lab seemed oblivious.

      After scanning the yard, the puppy spotted Lawton sleeping with one leg looped over the edge of the hammock. He ambled over and stopped below Lawton’s bare foot, cocked his head up, eyed the pale flesh, then washed his tongue across the old man’s sole. With a whoop, Lawton jerked awake.

      Thorn smiled and picked up the handsaw and finished cutting the final slat of pine. While Lawton spoke to the puppy, Thorn carried the slat over to the bench and lined it up. When he was satisfied

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