Skink--No Surrender

  To myself I counted six condo towers, lined up like smokestacks.

  “Wonder when they took out the old bridge,” Skink said. He was seriously bummed.

  “Hey, we’ll just keep looking,” I told him. “There are plenty of other islands.”

  “The old snowbirds who own those condos, they don’t like waitin’ on a drawbridge. That’s why it got torn down. Don’t want to miss that early-bird special at the Macaroni Grill. Ha!”

  He kept on muttering like that until I turned up his driving mix again. Then he settled down. I even made him smile by guessing the title of an incredibly old Bob Dylan number called “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Skink asked how in the flippin’ world I knew that one. I explained that my father had loved Dylan and lots of old bands, and that the day after Dad died, I’d downloaded his whole playlist to my iPod.

  “Yeah? Then let’s hear it,” Skink said.

  So there we were, rolling along the interstate through downtown Tampa, rocking out to my dad’s music. Sometimes when I’d look over at the governor, I couldn’t believe he was seventy-two. Other times he looked about a hundred and ten. Now he was like a teenager, shaking a fist and howling the lines in a Pearl Jam song. We had the volume cranked up so loud that I didn’t hear my phone ringing.

  Later we stopped for lunch at a beachside café in Clearwater, where I got to see Skink eat a meal that didn’t have to be skinned or plucked. It was then I noticed the voice messages on my cell. The first was from Beth, asking where I was and if I’d found Malley yet.

  The second call was from a blocked number.

  “ ’Sup, Ricardo? Yours truly, checkin’ in. Everything here in paradise is just amazingly awesome. Guess what I saw way up in a tree this morning? An ivory-billed woodpecker! It sounded so lonesome, it made me sad.”

  On the message, Malley was coughing and her voice sounded rough. When I replayed it for Skink, he raised an eyebrow. “She calls you Ricardo?”

  “First time ever. Weird.”

  “She wants you to pay attention.”

  “Also, ivory-billed woodpeckers are extinct. I did a project on them for science fair in sixth grade, and Malley helped with the graphics.”

  “I know where those birds live,” Skink said.

  “You mean lived.”

  “Only one place in Florida, Ricardo, and it’s not an island.”

  “I know that.”

  “The girl’s trying to tell you where she’s at.”

  “And the ‘lonesome’ part—that means she wants to come home.”

  “Correct,” he said.

  “Maybe the fake Talbo won’t let her go.”

  “Assume the worst. That’s my motto.” With that, the governor got up and strode rapidly toward the car.

  I crammed the chili dog into my mouth and hustled after him.

  SEVEN

  Marine Corporal Talbo Chock could have been buried with full honors at the national cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, but his mother wanted him closer to home. The funeral had been held on a sticky July afternoon in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, a month before my cousin ran away.

  During the church service, somebody had crept onto the property and hot-wired a 2007 white Toyota Camry belonging to the pastor. On the front seat of the car was a printout of the pastor’s eulogy recalling the short life and brave death of Earl Talbo Chock. The pastor had meant to present the copy of his stirring words to Talbo’s parents, but instead it had ended up in the hands of a car thief, who decided to also steal the dead soldier’s name.

  This fact was relayed to me over the phone by Detective Trujillo.

  “Probably not what you want to hear,” he said, “but it’s progress. The preacher’s Toyota has a small hole in the rear windshield that matches one on the car in the security video from the Orlando airport.”

  “Where exactly on the rear window?” I asked.

  “Dead center. Preacher gave his kid a pellet gun for his eighth birthday. Not a genius move.”

  I didn’t tell the detective that I was on the road with a one-eyed former governor, searching for my cousin. We’d already counted twenty-three white Toyota Camrys, none of them carrying a couple that looked like Malley and her Online Talbo.

  When I informed Trujillo about my cousin’s last phone message, I kept the summary brief. It would have been hard to convince the detective that her mentioning a lost species of woodpecker was a coded cry for help.

  Besides, the remote area where Skink and I believed she was being held—if she was being held—called for a stealthy approach. A convoy of speeding police cars might spook the bogus Talbo Chock into doing something drastic.

  For now, at least, he didn’t realize anybody was on his trail.

  From Clearwater, Skink took Highway 19, which tracks along the Gulf side of Florida all the way to the town of Perry, where you hang a hard left into the Panhandle. That’s the route I’d mapped out on my smartphone. It was the quickest way to get where we needed to be, but very soon we got sidetracked.

  A blue SUV blew past doing eighty, the driver tossing an empty Budweiser can out the window. One lousy can, all right?

  The governor said the guy was a moron, which he undoubtedly was, and after that I didn’t think about it. For sure I didn’t look at the speedometer, which would have clued me in that Skink was accelerating to keep pace with the blue SUV. I was preoccupied with my laptop, rereading a worried email from my mother.

  When the SUV slowed down and made the westward turn toward Homosassa, we turned, too.

  “Where you going?” I asked Skink.

  The look on his face was something different—not angry, or agitated. Just cold as granite. Probably the same expression he wore when he heard the scrape of Dodge Olney’s trowel in the sand.

  I tried once more. “Governor, what are you gonna do?”

  No answer.

  “It was just a beer can. Seriously.”

  He shook his head, like he was disappointed in me.

  “Anyway, we don’t have time,” I said. “We’ve gotta hurry to catch up with Malley.”

  “Son, this won’t take long.”

  That was it, as if no explanation was necessary. He just expected me to understand.

  The sky was darkening with low storm clouds as the SUV pulled into a restaurant called Bucky’s Deluxe Dining. It looked more like a bar. Skink kept going until he found a convenience store. Fifteen minutes later we were back at Bucky’s in a driving rain.

  I won’t defend what the governor did, but it could have turned out way worse for the moron with the SUV. He could have ended up in a hospital like Dodge Olney. Instead his vehicle was the only thing that got hurt.

  You don’t need to be a trained mechanic to know that gasoline engines won’t run on water, barley malt, hops, rice and yeast, which are the basic ingredients of Budweiser beer. I Googled it while hunkered low in the Malibu.

  Skink knelt by the blue SUV and calmly poured an entire six-pack into the fuel tank. Then, just to make sure his message was received, he jammed the empties up the tailpipe. I was praying that nobody in the restaurant could see what was happening through the downpour.

  Once we were back on Highway 19, I sat upright and told the governor he was crazy. “What were you thinking? I mean it!”

  “Litterbugs are the lowest.” His clothes were sopping, his shower cap spangled with raindrops.

  “What happens if you get thrown in jail?” I was pretty upset. “Am I supposed to go save Malley all by myself?”

  “There’s some beautiful country up in this part of the state. I see some jackass trashing it, I can’t turn away.”

  The governor’s glass eye had fogged, but of course he didn’t know it. Earlier I’d asked him why he didn’t get a green one to match his real one. He said that the brown eye came from a stuffed bear (which is why it didn’t fit properly in his semi-human skull). He’d never, ever harm a bear, he said. Bears carry heavy mojo. The taxidermied specimen belonged to some fool who fancied hi
mself a big-game hunter. Skink had gone to visit the hunter on a “non-social visit.” His words.

  After calming down, I said, “What you just did back there was a crime. You totaled that dude’s engine.”

  “He might coax a mile or two out of it.”

  “What if they had security cameras in the parking lot?”

  “In Homosassa, Florida? Ha!”

  Trying to reason with him was hopeless.

  “Friend of mine,” he said, “once emptied a loaded Dumpster into a BMW convertible. Same basic scenario—driver had thrown all his Burger King bags out on the turnpike.”

  “I get why you’re mad. It makes me mad, too, but—”

  “We are who we are.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” I said.

  Beth called again. She’d gotten a text from Malley and it was, like, la-de-da, T.C. is so awesome, etc. I told Beth I was heading upstate on a hunch, and I’d check back in a few days. She kept on talking. Honestly, I didn’t really want to hear about her problems with her boyfriend, Taylor. All he cared about was baseball, she said. Plus he was a lame dancer. I hardly knew Taylor, but I had no interest in getting between him and Beth. Once she dumped him, different story.

  Skink was pretending not to listen as I worked my way out of the conversation. After the call was over, I shrugged and said, “Hey, she’s just a friend.”

  “I’ve had a few of those.” He scratched at his beard. “How’s your mother holding up?”

  I opened my laptop and read her email aloud. It was part-mom, part-lawyer:

  Dear Richard,

  I intended to say all this in a phone call, but sometimes it’s easier to sort my thoughts when I put them in writing.

  You understand why I’m not enthusiastic about this impulsive trip of yours. We’re all worried about your cousin, but my job is to worry about you. I spoke at length with the mysterious “Mr. Tile,” and in confidence he gave me the history of the gentleman with whom you’re traveling. He said that this person, despite his age, was physically capable of protecting you from any harm, and that he wouldn’t hesitate to give up his own life in your defense, if necessary.

  It would be untrue to say that I wasn’t comforted by Mr. Tile’s assurances. I did a little research of my own, which confirmed the basic biographical details about this “Skink” individual. However, I also came across accounts of certain incidents that I can only pray have been exaggerated by legend. If even half the stories are true, he clearly isn’t the most stable of companions. Please, please be careful.

  Mr. Tile has promised to stay in contact, but I’m still very apprehensive about this road trip you’ve embarked upon. Personally, I don’t believe Malley can be found if she doesn’t wish to be, or that she necessarily needs to be “rescued.” Her phone calls home have been fairly breezy and lighthearted, according to Dan and Sandy. Based on past experiences, I’m betting she’ll be back in Loggerhead Beach as soon as she gets bored with this latest escapade.

  Obviously you believe she might be in danger, and if that’s true, then you could be in danger, too. Again I’m asking you to back off and let the authorities handle this. There’s nothing you and “Skink” can do that couldn’t be done more safely by experienced law-enforcement officers. Honestly, it’s only because of Mr. Tile that I haven’t called the police myself and put out an Amber Alert for you!

  At times like this I find myself wondering what your father would do if he were here. As you know, he was always the “free spirit” in our family. He used to tell me it was healthy to let you boys cut loose and take a few chances, but I suspect that even he would be alarmed by what you’re doing.

  Please come home, honey.

  Love always,

  Mom

  I shut the computer and looked at the governor to see if he was offended by my mother’s suggestion that he might be a psycho.

  All he said was: “You’re a lucky young man.”

  “I know.”

  “You want to go home, that’s cool.”

  “It’s not like I want to. But—”

  “Something happens to you, she’ll be shattered.”

  “That’s why I quit surfing after Dad died,” I said. “My brothers—they’re just insane on the water. No fear. Mom can’t even watch.”

  “You’re the one she depends on to always be there. The steady son, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  Outside, the rain had let up. The Malibu’s windshield wipers squeaked on the glass. One of Skink’s songs was playing on the sound system. Help me, Rhonda. Help, help me, Rhonda.

  He said, “There’s an airport in Bay County. Have her call and line up a flight to Orlando. I’d put you on a Greyhound bus, but you might wind up sitting next to somebody who looks worse than me.”

  “Why can’t I just ride back with you in the car?”

  “Because I’m not going back.”

  “Oh.” At first I didn’t catch on.

  “I’m going to find your cousin,” he said.

  And that was that. With or without my help, the old man aimed to track down Malley and take her away from the Talbo Chock impostor.

  A few hours later, as the sun disappeared through a frill of fluffy pink clouds, we stood along Massalina Bayou in downtown Panama City. The Tarpon Dock drawbridge was rising for a shrimp boat coming in from the Gulf. Above its stern swirled a confetti of gulls and terns, crying hungrily. The boat captain sounded his horn.

  My shoulders were shaking, I was so amped. “This must be it! The bridge she called me from!”

  The shrimper was eyeing us from the cockpit as his boat rumbled past. Skink pulled off his shower cap and shoved it inside a pocket. The gash on his scalp was purple from iodine, and I could see a cross-hatching of black threads. He must have pulled the car over and stitched himself up while I was asleep.

  “So, what’d you tell your mom?” he asked.

  “I told her I trusted you.”

  The governor smiled. “Does that mean you don’t want a ride to the airport?”

  “No airport,” I said.

  “Outstanding.” He unknotted his snake-rattle necklace and presented it to me.

  I wish I still had it.

  EIGHT

  Scientists search for ivory-billed woodpeckers with the same fanatic determination that some people hunt for Bigfoots.

  The difference is that those woodpeckers were real. They lived in old hardwood forests throughout the southeastern United States until after the Civil War, when the timber industry moved in and started chopping down millions of trees. Eventually the birds had no more bark beetles to eat, no old dead trunks for pecking out their nest holes. Once it became known that ivorybills were disappearing, they were stalked and shot by hunters who sold the bodies to museums, so that they could be stuffed and put on display like dinosaurs. Pitiful but true.

  The woodpecker was crazy beautiful—tall and long-beaked, with pale yellow eyes and bluish-black feathers. Bright white streaks ran down each side of its neck, spreading to the wings. The bird’s most striking feature was a sharp crest on the back of its head—black for females, bright red for males. The ivorybill’s appearance was so dramatic that it was nicknamed the “Lord God Bird,” because “Lord God!” is what people supposedly exclaimed when they first saw one.

  There hasn’t been a one hundred percent documented encounter with the species in something like eighty years. Random sightings are reported, but, like Bigfoot, not a single ivorybill has been positively located and identified. What people often see (and get excited about) is really a pileated woodpecker, which also has a vivid red crest. That bird is smaller, though, with brownish feathers and a shorter beak. It also has less white on the wing markings.

  I know all this from doing my science fair project, which won an honorable mention at school. I wouldn’t call myself an ivorybill expert, but I did a ton of research. Because ivorybills vanished so long ago, no color photographs of the birds exist. Malley helped me draw a likeness on my
poster board. To be accurate, we studied century-old illustrations and also a painting of three ivorybills by John James Audubon, the famous nature artist who spent lots of time in Florida.

  Unfortunately, Audubon usually shot the species he wanted to paint, in order to examine them up close. This was back in the 1820s, when there were still plenty of ivorybills around, but I bet today he’d trade that painting for a glimpse of a live one. The last known population was wiped out in the 1930s when a Chicago lumber company clear-cut an ancient Louisiana forest. Lots of folks, even some politicians, pleaded with the loggers not to saw down those trees, but the company refused to stop.

  And with that, the ivory-billed woodpecker became a ghost. In Florida the legend lives on in the deep woods along the Choctawhatchee River, which winds down into the Panhandle from southern Alabama. Malley also worked with me on my habitat map. That’s how she was able to get on the phone and tell me where she was without alerting the fake Talbo Chock. All she had to say was that she’d heard an ivorybill. Only a bird geek like me would put two and two together.

  Not so long ago, researchers from two big-time universities published a study listing fourteen reliable sightings of the ivorybill in the Choctawhatchee basin, as well as three hundred recordings of distinct calls and bark drumming known to be made by the elusive woodpecker. However, after several years of trying, no scientist or civilian has been able to produce clear photographic evidence of a living specimen along that river—or anywhere else in the United States.

  A famous video that supposedly shows an ivorybill flying in an Arkansas swamp was rejected by top ornithologists, who said the bird was most likely a pileated woodpecker. I included a YouTube clip of that video in my science fair project, which was interactive. People could touch a button and hear a recording that compared the different hammering patterns of the pileated and the ivory-billed. I re-created the sounds myself by tapping a hollow bamboo reed against a dead palm tree.

  It would be awesome if someone actually discovered a live ivorybill, but that hasn’t happened. The bird is officially classified as extinct, and that’s what I concluded in my project. They’re all gone.