Skink--No Surrender

  My cousin had come along with us on the trip to Saint Augustine, where we were meeting my brothers. She let me put the stolen deck in her beach bag so Mom wouldn’t see it on the ride home.

  As I recounted the story, I was biting through my lower lip. Didn’t feel a thing. I told the governor the skateboard was still in my bedroom, hidden in a place my mother would never think to look.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “It’s in the box springs of your bed.”

  “How’d you know!”

  “I was your age once, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.”

  “After a couple weeks I had enough money to pay back the shop, but I never did. Guess I was too ashamed. See, the owner was friends with Dad—he came to the funeral and everything.”

  “He probably would’ve given you the board for free.”

  “Yeah.” I was an idiot, like I said.

  It’s a vintage Birdhouse board with sweet Rasta graphics. They don’t make that model anymore, and even online they’re hard to find. The one my father was riding when he crashed into the UPS truck got run over and split to pieces by the ambulance. I salvaged the wheels and trucks, which I later attached to the deck that I’d lifted from the shop.

  “You ever ride it?” Skink asked.

  “Never once.”

  “Understandable.”

  “So … now you know.” I expected him to shrug off the whole thing and say that what I’d done was no big deal, crime-wise, but that wasn’t his reaction.

  “Next time you’re in Saint Augustine, do what’s right,” he said. “Go back to that store and pay the gentleman for his merchandise. This isn’t just a piece of grandfatherly advice, Richard. It’s a moral instruction.”

  “Okay, I promise.”

  “Guilt is a bear. You’ll feel liberated afterwards,” he assured me. “Now, let’s eat while we’ve still got a fire to cook on. Go fetch the bass.”

  A soft drizzle had begun, and a storm was rumbling toward us from the south, off the Gulf. I hurried down to the river where we’d beached the canoe, only to find that the canoe had moved.

  Was still moving, actually—away from shore, nosing steadily downstream. An empty vessel departing on a straight course, as if steered by a ghost.

  Which I didn’t believe in. Still don’t.

  The most likely explanation was a tricky gust of wind or a rogue current. After pulling off my sneakers and emptying my pockets, I was ready to jump in after the runaway canoe.

  That’s when Skink appeared at my side. All he said was “My fault, son.”

  Well, that and a curse word.

  Bottom line: Don’t leave a stringer of fish dangling too long in a river, especially if the river hosts a hungry population of alligators. The one that was swimming off with our dinner—and towing our canoe—briefly revealed itself with a boiling swish of its thick armored tail.

  Definitely not a lazy golf-course gator. Immediately I scrapped my plan to dive into the water.

  Watching the canoe disappear around the bend made me feel useless and totally frustrated. It was the worst kind of luck at the worst possible time. If the alligator made a fast dive with the bass in its jaws, either the stringer would snap or the canoe would flip—possibly both.

  “What do we do now?” I said gloomily. “How will we reach Malley?”

  “I got this.” He brushed past me. “Stay here and mind the camp.”

  Leg splint and all, he hobbled straight into the Choctawhatchee.

  “Are you insane? That’s a major gator out there!” I yelled.

  “ ‘Nature never deceives us. It is always we who deceive ourselves.’ ”

  “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “It’s from a novel by Rousseau,” Skink called back, neck-deep in the flow. “He was the son of a Swiss watchmaker, swear to God. You should goggle him on your computer!”

  “It’s ‘Google.’ Now, get out of the water before you get bit!” I seriously doubted that Rousseau, whoever he was, had been writing about carnivorous river reptiles.

  “I’ll be returning shortly,” the governor declared, and with a splash he went under. A series of fat bubbles appeared, trailing down the current.

  Any moment I expected his hairy deep-lined face to pop up for air among the raindrops, but it didn’t. A jagged spear of lightning sliced the darkness, and in that ultraviolet moment I could see how completely alone I was.

  The wind began swirling as the rain fell harder. Our small fire smoldered and hissed.

  I put on my shoes. Wrapped a sleeping bag around my body, trying to stay dry. On the ground lay the governor’s lame shower cap, which looked like something my eighty-six-year-old great-aunt would wear. I picked it up and fitted it on my head.

  The downpour went on for a long, depressing time. I wasn’t hungry anymore.

  Thunder shivered the treetops. Our camp turned to puddles and red muck.

  I waited and waited. Never once shut my eyes, all night. At daybreak there was still no Skink, and still no canoe.

  Just me and the dark river, rising.

  TWELVE

  I didn’t want to give up on the man, but the awful reality of the situation was as clear as a ticking clock.

  For a distraction I took out the Rachel Carson book he’d loaned me. At first I wasn’t really into it, but then I got to a frightening account of what happened in certain towns when powerful chemicals were sprayed to kill insects like bark beetles and fire ants. Right away the wildlife began dying—squirrels, opossums, rabbits, even the neighborhood cats. Children would awake to dead-silent mornings because all the songbirds had been killed by the poison. Hawks, owls and bald eagles fell sick, too—and those that survived stopped having babies.

  All this went down a few years before my mom and dad were born, in the middle of ordinary America. Terrible but true.

  Growing up by the ocean, I’ve always taken birds for granted. How bad would it suck to grow up in a place where life was gone from the skies and the trees? I closed the book and took note of what was visible in the woods—warblers, sparrows, mockingbirds, a lone crow, redwing blackbirds, a pair of cardinals. From the water’s edge I could hear kingfishers and ospreys and a croaky blue heron. Somewhere else a northern flicker was hammering on a cypress trunk, which made me wonder how one wood-pecking species managed to survive mankind’s dumbass mistakes while others—like the poor ivorybill—didn’t make it.

  I closed the book, thinking about my own survival issues. Skink would have been back by now, if he were coming. Either the gator had nailed him or he’d drowned from exhaustion while pursuing the loose canoe. It was time for me to face facts—the man was old, half-crippled, and the swollen river was strong. The thought of him dying made me feel empty and sick-hearted, but I couldn’t hang around waiting any longer.

  He was gone. I was alone.

  And Malley was still out there, in trouble.

  The idea that I could save her all by myself was crazy, yet I had no choice but to try. There wasn’t time to find help—I didn’t know which way to run, and it might have taken a day or longer to get out of those woods.

  So the only real option was the most reckless and dangerous one. Even though the odds were ridiculous, I didn’t let myself think about failing. What I made myself think about was getting it done, period.

  Like I can just clap my hands and turn myself into a Navy SEAL, right?

  For breakfast: A peanut-butter granola bar and a slug of water from my only bottle. The others had departed on the canoe, along with Skink’s fishing rod, a fry pan, a hatchet and other gear that would have been very useful.

  Sneaking through the woods, I tried to keep close enough to the river’s edge so I could spot the houseboat where Online Talbo was holding Malley. Unfortunately, the water had risen so high that in some places I had to hike inland to stay on dry land.

  Which wasn’t that dry, thanks to the overnight deluge. Several times I sunk up to my ankles in muck. The tread on my sneakers
kept slipping on mossy old tree roots—it was a miracle I didn’t fall and break my butt. For balance I used the governor’s nine-iron, which I figured would also be good for self-defense. It felt heavier than the aluminum ball bat that my mother made me carry on turtle walks.

  I tried to creep silently, but the ninja thing wasn’t working. When I wasn’t sloshing or stumbling, even the softest step forward snapped a few twigs. Since there was no trail for me to follow, I had to make my own.

  A cherry-red bass boat went speeding up the Choctawhatchee, its wake knocking sleepy turtles off their logs. The fishermen aboard couldn’t hear my shouts over the engine noise and never turned in my direction. They probably had a cell phone, but I never got a chance to borrow it. The boat disappeared from view within seconds.

  Although the bugs were vicious, the bottle of repellant stayed zipped inside my backpack. After reading those sickening stories in Silent Spring, I felt guilty about squirting chemicals at any living thing, even a mosquito that was guzzling my blood.

  As the sun rose higher, the woods heated up and the air got sticky. There wasn’t a wisp of a breeze. I stopped to take another sip of water. Okay, two sips. Through the pines I could see I’d made it past that bend in the river, yet no houseboat was in sight. No canoe, either.

  What I didn’t want to see was a dead body floating—the governor’s body—but I braced for that sad sight. By noon I was totally whipped from the tough hike. My legs were sore, my face was splotched with insect bites and I’d torn a hole in the knee of my pants. It got so hot that I finally set my backpack on a cypress knee and waded waist-deep in the water, which felt awesome.

  I could’ve stood there for hours, the cool current streaming around my legs, but another boat appeared, heading upriver. I kept yelling to the driver until he finally saw me, and he made a wide turn toward shore. His boat was slow and low-riding, about twenty feet long with a squared-off bow. A small barge, really. It was piled with dead gars, which was weird because they aren’t any good to eat. They’re ugly fish, tough-skinned and tubular, with a flat beak of a mouth packed with needle-sharp teeth.

  “Whassup?” the man said when he got close.

  “Sir, you have a phone?”

  “Do not.”

  The man was unshaven and wore no shirt. Not to be mean, but he could have used a bra. His balding scalp looked sunburned, his chubby face flushed from heat and hard labor. He wore black wraparound sunglasses with the NASCAR logo on the frames.

  The boat stunk from the load of gars. I didn’t see any gig poles, but the fish definitely had holes in them. Dried blood streaked the man’s meaty arms, and slime-green gar scales stuck to the hair on his chest. A swarm of bottle flies was orbiting his melon-sized head.

  “Did you pass anybody on your way up the river?” I asked.

  The gar gigger just shrugged. Not the friendliest dude. I explained that I was looking for my cousin.

  “Sure you are,” he said.

  “No, seriously. She’s staying on a houseboat with a friend of hers. My canoe got away from me last night, so now I don’t have any way of reaching her.”

  “How the hell do you lose a canoe?”

  “It happened during the storm,” I said, skipping the details. “My name’s Richard. Richard Sloan.”

  When Mom married Trent she took his last name, McKenna. I kept my father’s name, and Trent was totally fine with that.

  The gar man didn’t volunteer an identity. “Didn’t see no canoe, but they’s a houseboat not far.”

  “Can you show me where?” I had like seven bucks left in my pocket, sopping wet, and I offered it to him. “To help pay for the gas,” I said.

  “O-right.”

  I stepped aboard carrying my backpack and Skink’s nine-iron. I could practically hear Mom’s frantic voice in my ear: Richard, have you lost your mind? The guy might be a serial killer!

  Normally I’d never have set foot on a boat with an unknown character, but this wasn’t a normal situation. In my mind, it was life or death. The gar man didn’t frighten me, though he didn’t look particularly dependable. My plan: One wrong move and I’d brain him with Skink’s golf club, then dive overboard.

  On deck there was no place to stand except among the dead fish, which were slippery. The gar man whisked the seven dollars from my hand. I was determined to get on his good side because I didn’t want to go up against Online Talbo one on one.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Nickel.”

  “Nice meeting you, Mr. Nickel.”

  “Ain’t my last name. It’s my first.”

  He had ridiculous B.O. I mean he reeked like a porta-potty. Mix that with the gasoline fumes and fish stink, and it was hard to take a breath aboard that boat without gagging.

  “Hold on tight,” he said, and banged the throttle forward with a bare knuckle.

  “Hey, you’re going the wrong way.”

  “Seven bucks gits you to the other side of the river, no farther. Hike down a ways, you’ll see the houseboat anchored up beside some mossy oaks.”

  “Really? You’re just going to drop me off and go?”

  “Does this look like a taxicab, boy?”

  “No, sir,” I muttered.

  “These garfish ain’t gettin’ any fresher.”

  “Whatever.” I was bummed, but I didn’t want to argue with the man. I couldn’t imagine who would buy a boat full of dead gars, or why. Not even Skink would eat one, and he’d eat just about anything.

  When we reached the opposite shore, Nickel slowed the engine and nudged the barge into a grassy cove. “Out you go,” he said.

  “Wait. How do I know you really saw the houseboat? You might just be telling me that to get my money.”

  “Whoa, you callin’ me a liar?”

  That’s when I noticed the gun propped behind the console. A .22 rifle, the stock glistening with fish slime. Nickel hadn’t gigged all those gars—he’d shot them.

  “Sorry,” I said quickly. “I believe you.”

  Insulting a stranger is never a brilliant idea, especially a stranger with a gun. Fortunately, the gar man seemed to accept my apology.

  “It’s maybe twenty-four foot, the houseboat. White with blue trim, but she’s all faded out. They’s an old Evinrude on the back, a one-fifteen. I didn’t see nobody on board when I went by, but they was clothes hung to dry.”

  “Girls’ clothes?” I asked.

  “Yeah, some.” Nickel seemed embarrassed to have noticed. “Saw a bathing suit.”

  “Was it yellow?”

  “Think so.”

  A few days before she’d run away, Malley had bought a canary-yellow swimsuit at a surf shop. I felt good about what the gar man was saying because it meant that the houseboat wasn’t moving, and that normal things, such as laundry, were getting done.

  After thanking Nickel, I stepped gingerly through the fish corpses and hopped from the bow of the barge to the bank.

  Shooing the flies from his face, he asked, “You got a gun in your bag, boy?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Huh.”

  “Dumb question—do I need a gun?” I hadn’t told the gar man about Malley’s situation.

  “You’ll wish you had one if’n them wild pigs git after you.”

  Oh great, I thought. Some vicious new beast to worry about.

  “The boars is the meanest ones. They tusks’ll rip your guts out,” Nickel said. “How ’bout you gimme a shove off?”

  “Hey, I have an idea.”

  “Naw, just shove me off.”

  “If had more than seven dollars to pay, would you consider giving me a ride downriver?” The thought had just popped into my brain. At the slow pace I’d been hiking, the houseboat carrying my cousin might be long gone by the time I got there.

  Also, I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of being gored by a crazed pig.

  “You got more cash?” Nickel asked with a twitch.

  “Way more. But not on me.”

&nbs
p; “Think I’m stupid?”

  “Up by the Road 20 bridge?”

  “Go on.”

  “There’s a shoe box buried in a secret spot,” I said.

  It wasn’t mine to give away, but the governor was gone and time was running out for Malley. I couldn’t think of a better way to keep Nickel interested.

  “What kinda secret spot?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell you where if you give me a ride to the houseboat.”

  Skink never told me how much money was left, and I hadn’t asked. However, when he had opened the shoe box to get the cash for the canoe, I’d seen several thick stacks of bills bundled with rubber bands.

  “There’s plenty in there,” I informed Nickel. “Take what you think is fair.”

  I figured he’d keep it all. Assume the worst—that was Skink’s philosophy.

  “You rob a bank, boy, or what?”

  “The money belonged to my grandfather. He was an honest man. Once I’m on the houseboat, I’ll tell you exactly where to go dig.”

  The gar man spat over the side. “I don’t like being made the fool. They’s no shoe box in the ground up there, you gonna see me again real soon. Too soon.”

  “Dude, I’m telling the truth.”

  “O-right,” he said. “Git back in the boat.”

  Being heavy, the barge couldn’t go very fast, but I didn’t mind. It beat slogging on foot through the marsh and the vines.

  “M’self, I got sixteen known cousins,” the gar man was saying, “and I wouldn’t give a dollar fifty for all of ’em put together.”

  “I only have one cousin. She’s like my best friend.”

  “Yeah, still.” He was eyeing me from behind his NASCAR shades. “You ain’t givin’ me the whole story.”

  “I don’t know the whole story, but I’m pretty sure she’s in trouble.”

  Nickel pushed the throttle wide open. The engine sounded dreadful, like marbles in a washing machine. I was afraid it might blow up.

  The gar man raised his voice. “This old whale won’t do more’n ten knots!”

  Good enough, I thought.

  He was keeping to the middle of the river. The stench followed us, and so did the bottle flies. Ahead was another bend.