Free Night Vision by Randy Wayne White

the entire process, I held the man’s head steady. From the way he’d described the cracking sound “deep inside him,” I guessed the gator had broken his spine. I didn’t want to turn a paraplegic into a quadriplegic.
    Tula comforted the man as we moved him. She stroked his head, told him he would recover quickly, and also chanted what I guessed to be a prayer in her native language. I can speak only enough Quiché Maya to thank the person who brings me a beer, so I had no idea what the girl was saying.
    When we had Carlson safely away from the water, I checked his injuries. His forearm showed puncture marks, as did his waist and buttocks, but the bleeding wasn’t bad.
    His legs, though, had a pasty, dead look that suggested I’d been right about the broken spine. As I took note of the wounds, Tula tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I’ll hold his head while you use this.” She was holding a bottle of cheap tequila, waiting for me to take it.
    Tomlinson had found his sandals and seemed to be looking for something else but stopped long enough to grab the bottle and take a long swig.
    “It’s not for drinking,” the girl told him, her tone communicating disapproval. “It’s to clean your wounds.”
    “That’s exactly how I’m using it,” Tomlinson replied, then took another long belt, before he said to her, “Tula, while we work on your friend, would you do me a favor? Ask around and find out who has our billfolds. I found the phones, but our billfolds are gone.”
    But then he told her, “Never mind,” as a man approached, billfolds in hand.
    Tomlinson thanked the man, saying, “Muchas gracias, compadre,” but I could tell that something was wrong as he opened his billfold, then mine.
    Tula stared at him for a moment before saying, “Your money is gone. I can see it in your face.”
    The girl turned toward the water, where Squires was struggling to reach a rope some men were trying to throw him. “He has your money. The propietario . No one but him would have robbed you.”
    In the peripheral glow of the Golight, I looked at the girl closely for the first time. She had a cereal-bowl haircut, and a lean angularity that didn’t mesh with the compact body type I associate with Mayan women. Yet there was nothing masculine about her. She was boyish enough to pass for a boy, but her demeanor, while commanding, was asexual. In the truck, Tomlinson had said something that sounded strange at the time but now made sense. He had said, “She’s an adolescent girl, not a female,” which described her perfectly.
    Thirteen-year-old Tula Choimha, I decided, was a child who handled herself like an adult. It was unusual, but probably less uncommon in girls than boys. Besides, the girl had spent the last few years living on her own, without family, which had no doubt contributed to her maturity.
    “They’re coming to help you,” Tula whispered into Carlson’s ear as she gauged the direction of distant sirens. She took the bottle of tequila from Tomlinson, soaked the towel with liquor, then dropped to her knees and began to wash the puncture wounds on Carlson’s arm and then his buttocks, unconcerned that I had pulled the man’s pants down to access his injuries.
    “I can’t feel my legs,” the man told her again. He had said it several times in the last minutes, his reaction ping-ponging between horror and shock.
    “Your legs are healing,” I heard the girl tell him, her right hand gripping a necklace she wore. “Your wounds are healing now. You must have faith.”
    I watched her pause, head tilted, and the rhythm of her voice changed. She told him, “Our strength comes from faith. But our faith is sometimes eaten away by little things that God hates. If we lack faith, though there be a million of us, we will be beaten back and die.”
    I exchanged looks with Tomlinson, wondering if he, too, suspected her singsong syntax suggested that the girl was reciting something she had memorized.
    My friend was