Skink--No Surrender

  “I know some excellent ophthalmologists,” offered Dr. Capps, “if you need a referral.”

  “Least of my problems,” said Skink.

  He pried out the fake eye and threw it into the river, where it disappeared with a plop. From a small soiled satchel he selected a replacement. This one had a sky-blue iris and was shaped more like half a clam than a marble. With difficulty (and a few cuss words) the governor inserted the glass piece into the pulpy crater under his brow.

  “It’s an antique,” he explained matter-of-factly, blinking away the ooze.

  Mortified, the doctor and his wife clambered into their minivan and sped off in a hail of gravel. We carried the canoe to the water and began loading our gear. Skink laughed when I asked if we should bring the gun case. He sprung the latches and took out an ancient golf club with a peeling leather grip.

  “Nine-iron,” he said, tossing it aboard the canoe. “Inside joke. Mr. Tile doesn’t trust me with firearms.”

  We buried the shoe box full of cash under a tupelo tree. Then we shoved off and paddled downriver.

  My father used to say that you live most of your life inside your own head, so make sure it’s a good space. Easier said than done.

  There’s no Off switch on my imagination, and I couldn’t stop worrying about what the bogus Talbo Chock might be doing to Malley. You see so many awful stories on the news, it’s hard not to think the worst. Maybe he was just a harmless, mixed-up guy, or maybe he was a stone criminal. The facts weren’t encouraging: He’d stolen a car, sunk it in a river and disappeared with my cousin.

  What would I do if I caught him hurting her? All the scenes I imagined had the same violent outcome: I would hurt him worse.

  In my whole life I’d never punched anybody, but now I visualized myself going totally psycho, pounding Malley’s kidnapper to a bloody pulp. It was pure crazed anger, but that’s what boiled up whenever I thought about him laying a hand on her. In reality, of course, it wasn’t me that Online Talbo had to fear if we got there before the cops. It was the governor.

  After that last phone call, when Malley had made it clear she wanted to get away, I kept wondering why she couldn’t. She was tricky—smarter than almost everybody else I knew. Maybe the dude was able to keep her prisoner because he had a gun or a knife. Possibly he’d tied her up, though during our conversation it had sounded like she was walking around.

  In my mind I pictured a basic camping situation. All she had to do was wait for a moment when he wasn’t paying attention and then take off running. Malley was super-fast, and she could go miles without stopping.

  Literally miles.

  But now, as the governor and I canoed down the Choctawhatchee, the problem with my imaginary escape scenario was obvious. On both sides of the river the forest cover was thick, the ground pitted and mucky. Once in a while we’d pass a flat dry clearing or a boat landing, but most of the terrain was dense, tangled and uneven. A person trying to dash through it would be constantly tripping on vines and stumbling over cypress knees. Malley wouldn’t have been able to run at half her cross-country speed without twisting an ankle. The chances for a clean getaway would be slim. She’d also have the disadvantage of not knowing which way through the woods led out.

  I was kneeling in the front of the canoe; Skink was in the back. At first I paddled as hard as I could, causing us to slide and zigzag—I couldn’t help myself, I was so torqued up about finding my cousin. Canoes obviously can’t go as fast as motorboats, and I was worried that Malley’s kidnapper was outpacing us.

  Skink finally jabbed me with his paddle and told me to save my energy. He said the bogus Talbo was probably looking for a quiet place to lie low along the Choctawhatchee. For a criminal the river was a safer place than the highway, he explained. Fewer people, and way fewer cops.

  So I slowed my paddling to match the timing of Skink’s stroke. When a big boat went speeding by, we made sure to aim our bow directly into the wake so the canoe wouldn’t swamp.

  As the sun climbed higher, the breeze quit. Although we kept to the shady side of the river, the air got blistering hot. Whenever we took a break I limited myself to one gulp of water, because we’d brought only four small bottles. The mosquitoes were ridiculous, so the governor located a wax myrtle and snatched two handfuls of leaves as we glided past. We mashed them up and smeared the paste on our arms and necks and faces. After that, the bugs stayed away.

  Skink’s glass eye fogged up again in the humidity while his good eye scanned the shorelines for any random motion, any sign of life. Every time we approached a bend in the waterway we’d get real quiet, in case Online Talbo and my cousin were around the turn.

  The hours passed slowly. Finally we stopped at the mouth of a creek, where Skink took out the fishing rod and tied a spinner-type lure on the line. Right away he caught a nice bass, which he attached to a stringer and trailed behind the canoe.

  “Dinner,” he said, but I couldn’t think about eating. I was prepared to paddle until my arms went numb.

  He landed two more fish, and we continued down the river. A little while later he stopped again, though not to cast for bass.

  “Look up, Richard. There it is.”

  “What?” I didn’t see anything unusual. “Look where?”

  “Hush.”

  We were drifting past a towering dead cypress that was shaped like the mast of a pirate ship. The tree was leaning slightly, and beards of Spanish moss draped its bone-colored branches.

  “That’s the tree where I saw the Lord God Bird,” Skink whispered. “April 17, 2009.”

  “Sweet,” I said, trying to be polite.

  Because, honestly? I didn’t believe he’d seen a real live ivorybill. Woodpecker holes were visible up and down the trunk of that old cypress, but probably they’d been drilled by other species. Most likely what the governor had spotted that spring morning had been an ordinary pileated.

  Like so many bird watchers, he was guilty of wishful thinking. The ivorybill was extinct, gone forever. Sad but true.

  “He was perched up at the very top, right about there.” Skink was pointing. “We watched each other for a full minute, then he squeaked three times and flew away.”

  “Could you see the underwings?”

  “Clear as day.”

  “And the trailing edges were white?”

  “What is this, a pop quiz?” he said irritably. “I know damn well what I saw, and what I saw was an ivorybill.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with the man. The only thing that mattered at that moment was Malley. Any other topic was a distraction.

  A johnboat came putt-putting around the bend ahead of us. It had a small outboard engine and one person aboard steering with a tiller. He wore a floppy straw hat and a red bandanna pulled up under the eyes, like a bank robber in the Wild West days.

  As the motorboat came closer, the driver gave a small wave.

  Skink called out, “How’s fishin’?”

  The driver turned off the engine and quacked, “What?”

  “I said, how’s the fishin’?”

  “Lousy.” It was a woman, not a man. She tugged down the bandanna and lit up a cigarette. I would have guessed her to be in her late fifties, early sixties, and not a fan of dentists.

  She pointed behind the canoe, where the bass were swirling on our stringer. “I see you fellas had some luck.”

  The governor shrugged modestly. “You want one? There’s three fish and but two of us.”

  “Naw. But thanks just the same.”

  “My name is Clint. This is my grandson, Richard.”

  “I’m Etta. Pleased to meetcha.”

  “How you fixed for water, Etta?”

  “I’m good.” She turned away to blow some smoke.

  At this point I started getting pretty annoyed. Not only was Skink wasting precious time socializing with this person, he was trying to give away our food and water.

  So I spoke up: “Gramps, we really ought to get going.”

&nb
sp; He completely ignored me.

  “Etta, did you go far downriver?”

  “Couple miles is all.”

  “Reason I ask, we’re s’posed to meet up with some folks for supper—Richard’s cousin and her new boyfriend. Only we don’t know exactly where they’re at.”

  Etta removed her hat. Her hair was cropped short and dyed the color of copper pennies. She scratched a bare spot on her scalp.

  “I ran ’crost a young couple down a ways,” she said. “Ain’t too friendly, though.”

  “Which side of the river?” the governor asked.

  “Same side we on now. They’s anchored up in some old houseboat.”

  “Must be them. How far from here?”

  “Not far t’all,” she said.

  “And they’ve got the anchor out, you say?”

  “That’s right. You might could get there by sunset but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  “Well, we’re much obliged.”

  “Like I mentioned, they ain’t real friendly. That young man, he gimme the evil eye when I waved hello. The female, she just sorta stared.”

  Skink frowned. “There’s no excuse for bad manners, is there, Richard?”

  “No, sir,” I said. Then to Etta: “Sorry about that, ma’am. I’ll have a talk with her.”

  She was eyeing the snake rattle hanging from my neck. “That’s one big ol’ diamondback.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Eighteen buttons.”

  She whistled through one of the many gaps in her teeth. “Whatchu do wit’ his skin?”

  The governor said the rattlesnake was a roadkill. “The hide got all tore up.”

  “Too bad.” Etta jerked the starter cord and the dinky outboard shook to life. “Say, where’d you catch them fish?”

  Skink told her about the good bass creek. She thanked him and continued upriver.

  As soon as I took out my cell phone, he asked, “What are you up to, son?”

  “Calling Detective Trujillo to tell him where Malley is.”

  Except I wasn’t calling anybody. My battery was dead, and obviously there was no electrical source on the canoe, no place to plug in a charger. I asked to borrow the governor’s cell, which he took from his pants pocket.

  The same pants he’d been wearing when he jumped into the river to explore the sunken Toyota.

  “You drowned your phone!” I said.

  Truly he couldn’t have cared less.

  I wasn’t real happy. “This is bad, dude. I promised my mother I’d call the police as soon as we found Malley.”

  “We haven’t found her yet.”

  “But if it’s her on that houseboat, and neither of us has a phone that works—”

  “Well, we could paddle upriver all the way back to the bridge,” Skink said, “which would give this jerk more time alone with your cousin. Or …”

  “Or we go get her ourselves. Is that Plan B?”

  “You’ve always known it was a possibility, Richard. You knew it that night when you got in the car.”

  He was right. Honestly, I wasn’t too surprised that the hunt for Malley was playing out this way, that her rescue would depend on just the two of us—a one-eyed hermit with a mangled foot, and me.

  Quite the all-star team.

  “Okay, so how do we do this?” I said.

  “On a full stomach, when we’re not bone-tired.” The governor picked up his paddle and stroked toward shore. “It’ll be dark in an hour. Let’s make camp.”

  “Right now? But we’re so close!”

  “They’ll still be there in the morning. We need to eat, and we need to rest,” he said. “We also need some rules.”

  “Really? After all this, there’s rules?”

  “Well, just one.”

  “Which is?”

  “Do whatever I tell you, whenever I tell you. No questions.”

  “But—”

  “Starting now, Richard.”

  ELEVEN

  To say my stepfather isn’t an outdoorsman is a kind understatement. If Trent hits a golf ball into the woods, he won’t go looking for it because he’s basically terrified of nature. Snakes, spiders, ants, lizards, moths, bats, squirrels, opossums—if it doesn’t wear shoes, Trent’s afraid of it. One time, on the sixteenth fairway of the golf course, the man actually ran from a crow. This I witnessed with my own eyes.

  But it’s not like he’s a total wimp. I remember the afternoon he knocked out a drunk tourist who said something crude to my mother. Trent’s a city person, that’s all. He grew up in downtown Chicago, a place where there isn’t much wildlife except for pigeons. Moving to a small beach town in rural Florida was a huge change, and he’s still adjusting. I get that.

  His Bigfoot fixation is what made me think of him while the governor and I gathered kindling for a campfire. The thick timber along the Choctawhatchee would be a perfect location for the TV Sasquatch hunters to do an episode of their reality show. One glimpse of Skink, and those goofballs would wet their pants. It would be a YouTube classic.

  When I asked Skink if he’d ever been mistaken for a Bigfoot, he said, “The only thing I get mistaken for is a nut case.”

  No comment from me.

  Soon after we got the flames going, he fell into a deep and sudden sleep. Curled up in the shape of a comma, he didn’t look much like a Sasquatch. After the sun went down I felt hungry, but I didn’t try to wake him until he started having one of those snarling nightmares. The sounds coming from his throat made the hair on my arms stand up. If Online Talbo was near enough to hear the growls, he’d think there was a rabid panther roaming the forest. Probably haul up the anchor on that houseboat and take off full-speed with Malley.

  I was afraid to stand too close, so I used the nine-iron to jostle Skink. Gradually his sounds shrank to soft cries, like a lost kitten would make. I knelt down, spoke his name firmly and shook him by the shoulders. His live eye opened as slowly as a clam.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You’re having another bad dream.”

  “Are you in it?”

  “No. I’m real.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive. It’s me—Richard. Remember?”

  He sat up, snatched the front of my shirt and yanked me closer for inspection.

  “Well, all right,” he said, and let go.

  His face and neck were dripping sweat. Hanging from his beard were a pair of june bugs, which he flicked into the shadows.

  “Let’s make dinner,” I suggested.

  “Before we move forward, one item of business.”

  “What?”

  “I want to hear your terrible secret,” he said. “This hideous crime you say you committed, the one your cousin threatens to blackmail you with.”

  Out of nowhere! The man goes from barely recognizing me to full-on interrogation mode.

  “It’s called full disclosure,” he said.

  “But there’s lots of your secrets I don’t know.”

  “You know the most important one,” Skink said. “You know who I am.”

  “I’m talking about bad stuff.”

  “You’ll feel better after you tell me.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure I’ll feel like crap.”

  “Listen up. You need to clear your head before we make our big hero move tomorrow.”

  “My head is clear. Totally.” Talking about Saint Augustine was the last thing I wanted to do. “Let me go take those fish off the stringer,” I said.

  He grabbed my ankle. “You will not.”

  The strength of his grip was unbelievable. I mean, for an old dude? He could have snapped my lower leg like a chopstick, if he’d wanted to. That’s no lie.

  “Tell me the heaviest thing you’ve ever done in your life,” I said, “and I’ll tell you what I did.”

  “Deal.”

  “You go first.”

  “All right, Richard.” He released my ankle. Using the nine-iron, he levered himself to his feet.

  “You ready?” he asked.

&n
bsp; “Anytime.”

  But I was so not ready. My jaw hung open while Skink told his story. The craziest rumors about him on Wikipedia didn’t come close to what he told me that night. I’d write it in these pages, except I promised him I’d never tell a soul.

  And I owe the man, big-time. Always will.

  “A life such as mine is a treacherous path. These were bad people, son.” That was the sum of his explanation. He wore a calm expression as he poked the blade of the golf club into the campfire, sparking embers.

  “Your turn,” he said to me.

  “Right.”

  “Enough with the drama. Let’s hear what you did.”

  “I stole something.”

  “Was it cash money?”

  “No way. But I walked into a store and took something I didn’t pay for.”

  The governor grunted. “Shoplifting? This is why you’re tormenting yourself?”

  “It wasn’t like stealing a pack of gum!”

  “So what was your big score? Diamonds? A Rolex watch?”

  “It was a skateboard,” I said. “Just the deck, not the wheels and trucks.”

  He rubbed his brow. “Basically a piece of plywood.”

  “Maple. And the price was almost two hundred bucks.”

  “Why’d you take it?” he asked.

  “Because I was being an idiot. Mom wouldn’t get it for me, even though she knew I’d pay her back.”

  At the time, I was working three afternoons a week for a guy who owned a mobile car-washing service. He stayed busy on the lower beach road. Some tourists get weird about having salty air touch the paint on their cars, and they’re happy to fork out twenty-five dollars for a wash job. My cut was eight bucks, nine for SUVs, plus tips.

  “Son, why’d you want that particular skateboard so badly?”

  “Because it was exactly like one my father had.”

  “The one he was riding the day he died.”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “An awfully painful reminder for your mother.”

  “I guess.”

  Skink was right. That’s why she wouldn’t buy the board for me—seeing it made her sad.

  “Malley was with me that day in the surf shop. She pretended like she was choking to death on a Jolly Rancher, and the guys who work there all ran over to help. I picked up the board and walked out. Nobody noticed.”