Snowbird's Walk

Chapter 1 Cannert happened upon the auto court after the better part of a day of driving. The motel, that being what it was now called, was far off the interstates on a secondary Florida state road. It wasn't greatly different from other remodeled auto court motels he'd seen except this one seemed more valiantly kept up and appeared as if it might have been recently repainted. Martha's only card had come from Lake City, less than two hundred miles away. Cannert knew she liked two-lane roads and clean, cheap, small motels. Besides, he had a hunch about what he now was seeing, and he'd learned during his sometimes dangerous lifetime to follow and believe in his hunches. He turned off the car radio and unfolded a Florida state map from the cluttered glove compartment of the Ford. He was fairly close to Jacksonville, but still in Florida, well within half a day's driving range of Lake City. Beyond the motel, Cannert could both see and smell the Atlantic Ocean. Here, the main body of the ocean lay east of a thin, likely unpopulated barrier island that protected the land. That island made interior land less valuable because land that lay on the ocean was worth far more than bay land. Not many tourists likely came to this area. It was too far north, too deserted, and in winter too damned cold. Tourists went where other tourists went. They looked for warm rather than cold. The motel was a long, low building. When he got closer, he could see signs of age. It was, however, white roofed and not unattractive, the kind of quaint place that might have drawn his wife, Martha. Cannert counted the units. There were twenty-eight. The unit setup had once been separate, closely bunched cabins. Now they were joined together by clever carpentry. There was a black on white sign at the entrance: mom's motel. singles $35, doubles $44. Below, in smaller letters: Low Weekly Fishing Rates. A small neon Vacancy sign also glowed dimly. Cannert thought his vanished Martha would likely have noticed the sign if she'd passed this way. She had gone on to Florida to scout for a couples' retirement spot a month ago while he still lay in the hospital. Cannert now knew it had been a mistake to let her drive to Florida without him. He also believed, on bad days, that she was dead, but sometimes he awoke in the mornings and sensed her alive and lost out there in the fog and smoke. He believed, at those times, that she was alive, and he remained in love with her. It also seemed possible she'd left him, given him up as a futile job, but he didn't believe it except in the blackest hours of the nights when nothing was certain. He remembered Vietnam and the black-clad men who'd come up from their underground hideouts and killed some of his army buddies and the hill people he'd lived among. When the black clads had gone back underground, he'd followed or awaited them and killed many of them, executing every damned one he could catch with gun and mostly knife. He'd done similar things with other bad men after he came back from Nam. He was following that pattern now in looking for his Martha. He would hurt no one except those who might have hurt her and those who schemed to hurt him or injure the good world he believed in. That available list for harm was well populated in Florida. He parked the Ford in front of the office unit and slowly got out. He liked watchers to think he was less than he was. From the bay side of the motel there came a sharp fish smell. White gulls wheeled and flashed in the sun. Two people, a man and a woman, watched him as he enHensley, Joe L. is the author of 'Snowbird's Walk' with ISBN 9780312241117 and ISBN 0312241119.