Gwen, in Green

From the inland edge of the last remaining trees in the area to be cleared, you could see across the marsh to the high dikes of the holding basin. Flores stopped the car and pointed out the route of the canal across the marsh. With his own clear vision, he was able to follow the line of survey flags all the way. While the power company guy was gawking, he walked to the dozer and put his hand on the side of the hood. It was cold. It hadn’t even been cranked up, and it was well into the day, almost noon. Moreover, there hadn’t been anything done since the last rain. He furrowed his brow. There’d been a helluva rain on Friday. That meant Daniels and Peebles hadn’t hit a lick since sometime Friday, that they hadn’t been in to work at all on Monday or Tuesday. He’d hand-­picked them for this job and they’d let him down, but there was no real harm done. He’d been pushing construction crews long enough to know that men came and men went. Dozers could be pushed by just about any jerk with enough sense to mash pedals. He’d see to it, though, that Peebles and Daniels didn’t work for any of the big boys as long as they lived. He’d put the word out on those two cruds.

He bought dinner for the visiting official in town, dropped him back at the main office, and went out onto the site. No point in trying to get anyone over on the island until the next morning. He went into his office and checked on available men, selected one, and sent him word that he wanted to see him just before the four o’clock whistle. His guess was that Daniels and Peebles would try to clock a full week’s work. Judging from the progress they had made, they’d been going great guns out there. They had probably thought they’d be able to birddog it a little and take a few days off, get paid for them, and still come in with the job finished under the gun. Well, those two bastards had a surprise coming. He made a note to check their time cards on Friday, if he didn’t see them before then. Meanwhile, he had a million and one things on his mind. He started on them one at a time.

The dozer started up at seven on Thursday, waking Gwen. The alarm went off a few minutes later, but she was wide awake, sitting up in bed listening. She could hear the muffled roar of the engine and could feel the results. She was preoccupied during breakfast. George asked her if she felt all right. She shook her head. “Just a little draggy,” she said.

There was no peace. She stood ankle deep in wet sand, the water coming up to her calves. She swayed. The dozer clanked and growled. She wanted to scream. She wanted to move, to act. She was held back. It was too soon. There would be other opportunities for revenge, for trading death for death. Not now.

She stood in an attitude of listening, arms hanging loosely, face lifted, eyes closed. She swayed slightly. She tried to close out the pain with memories, but the magnitude of it was overpowering.

Don and Tommy Promer, brothers, aged fourteen and just under thirteen, had told all their friends about the crazy woman up on the point. “First she says, come here, then she starts screaming. A real dingaling.” They’d talked about her a lot. They kept telling each other they’d go back up there and take another look. “Had her clothes almost off,” Tommy, the younger, said. “We could see her boobs.” Actually, they’d seen only the tricot bra, but in memory it became bare flesh.

Both of them were large for their ages. Both were handsome, athletic, and blond. They lived an ideal life in the summer, with water everywhere, fish plentiful, a boat always ready for their use, and summer girls all over the strand. There just wasn’t enough time to go hiking through the woods, being eaten by yellow flies and mosquitoes, just to see a crazy woman. But Don had sliced his foot on a broken bottle, which some jerk had thrown into the sand of the dunes down on the inlet, and he couldn’t go water skiing, the fish weren’t biting, and it was too early in the day to go up to the public beach to chase girls. They rode their motor bikes to the point, left them hidden in brush, walked the road almost to the house, and then cut through the brush to come out behind the pond.

She was standing next to the water, no, in the water, with a dumb look on her face. She was wearing a bikini and, wow, she was stacked. They watched for a long, long time and she didn’t even move, except to sway from side to side a little bit. Tommy was spooked. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered.

“In a minute.” Don was taking off that bikini piece by piece. Since the pieces were small and just two in number, it wasn’t much of a job. He licked his lips and let his fancy soar.