Squirm

  A few rich outlaws do it anyway, paying big bucks for their sick thrills.

  I ask Dad why he didn’t call wildlife officers when Lincoln Baxter was stalking grizzlies at Tom Miner.

  “They couldn’t make a case against him until he actually killed a bear, and I didn’t want a bear to get killed. So I dealt with Baxter my own way—wherever he went, I went there, too, like a shadow. Eventually he got mad and gave up.”

  “So now he comes all the way to Florida to shoot what?” I ask. Then it dawns on me. “Oh no, not one of those.”

  Dad’s hands curl into fists on the steering wheel. “Like I said, he’s a bad guy.”

  We stop at a fast-food joint outside of LaBelle and order cheeseburgers with fries. I’m drinking regular Coke, he’s drinking Diet. I didn’t get much sleep last night because I was worried we’d run out of stuff to talk about, living such far-apart lives, but it’s just the opposite. Dad’s got as many questions for me as I’ve got for him.

  “How are your grades in school, Billy?”

  “They’re all right.”

  “Play any sports?”

  “I don’t fit well on teams.”

  “That’s okay. Some people are joiners, some people aren’t.”

  “Besides,” I add, “we don’t live anywhere long enough for me to get too involved with school.”

  “Or friends?”

  “There’s no point. Not when you know you’ll be moving again in a year or two.” I realize it sounds like complaining, so I tell Dad I’m not. “Belinda’s the one who’s totally over the eagle-nest thing. That’s the only reason she got a boyfriend, to guilt Mom into staying here until she goes to college.”

  “What’s the boyfriend like?”

  “Hopeless,” I say.

  “Same thing’s been said about me, I’m sure.” Dad gets up to refill his soda. When he comes back to the table, I ask about the day he met Lil and Summer, on the Crow reservation.

  “Did you crash your drone into their trailer on purpose?”

  “You mean just so I could meet Lil?” he says. “I wish that were true, ’cause it would make a better story. But the reality is I’m not that clever. It was a windy afternoon, too windy for flying, and the quadcopter got away from me. Luckily, it fell where it did, and the rest is history.”

  “Why haven’t you told Lil and Summer about your inheritance from Aunt Sophie?” I’ve never had a problem being blunt. “Why do you let them think you’re some sort of government agent? Just because the lie is cooler than the truth?”

  He rocks his chair back, more surprised than angry.

  “Well, being a ‘secret agent’ definitely sounds cooler than being the lucky nephew of some rich old lady. But that’s not why I haven’t told Lil my real situation. See, she’d never, ever let me go out tracking poachers the way I do. She’d say it was crazy dangerous.”

  “Would she be right?” I ask.

  My father looks at his wristwatch. “We’re losing time, Billy. Let’s get back on the road.”

  * * *

  —

  Lincoln Baxter’s got a room at the Lonesome Rooster Motel in Immokalee, about twenty-five miles away. How Dad happens to know the poacher’s exact whereabouts is a mystery. He refuses to reveal the source of his “intel,” which he claims is rock-solid. I notice he’s driving faster now.

  We pass a crested caracara perched on a telephone pole. It’s the first one I’ve ever seen in the wild. They’ve got vivid orange faces and a bluish tip on their hooked beaks. Some people call them Mexican eagles. They’re so fierce that a single bird can scare a whole flock of buzzards away from a road kill. Dad says caracaras are common in this part of Florida. I’d like to go back for a closer look, but we’re in a major hurry.

  Or so I thought.

  I fall asleep for a while, but when I wake up we’re not in the sleepy old farm town of Immokalee. We’re in a parking lot at a busy airport.

  “Fort Myers,” my father says.

  “Change of plans?”

  “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  Dad hops out and heads for the terminal building. He’s wearing a gray T-shirt, faded jeans, thick-soled trail shoes, and a Patagonia cap. The black church suit made him look much older, and not nearly so fit.

  I step out to stretch my legs. The phone chimes—another text from Mom. That makes seven today. I text her back: “All good. Call u later.”

  Now the phone starts ringing. I press the answer key without looking at the caller ID.

  “Mom, please relax. Everything’s just fine.”

  “Wrong Mom, Billy, but it’s nice to hear your voice.”

  “Lil?”

  “You guys at the airport yet?”

  “Uh…we just got here. How’d you know?” I lean against the shot-up fender of Dad’s Chevy. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Promise you’ll check in every day. Otherwise I’ll be worried to death. I don’t need to remind you that communication isn’t your dad’s strong suit.”

  “Yeah, sure, but—”

  “This wasn’t my idea, by the way.”

  “What wasn’t your idea?”

  “I’m fishing with clients on the river now. The cell signal might drop when we float through this canyon….”

  A big jet takes off with a roar, drowning Lil’s words. By the time I can hear anything again, the phone line is dead.

  I’m wondering how much she knows about the “camping” trip, and why Dad detoured to the Fort Myers airport. Did he get a tip that Baxter’s flight was landing this afternoon?

  The heat rippling up from the pavement is brutal, and my shirt is soaked with sweat. I set out toward the terminal in search of Dennis Dickens. A refreshing rush of cool air hits me when I walk through the doors into the bustle of passengers waiting around the luggage carousels. Then somebody shouts:

  “Yo! Billy Big Stick!”

  And here comes Summer Chasing-Hawks, pulling a small plaid suitcase on rollers. My father trails a few steps behind, not looking overjoyed. When he sees me, he shrugs and raises his hands.

  “Big surprise, right?” Summer chirps as she gives me a hug.

  I pretend to be glad to see her, but the truth is I’m confused and not all that thrilled. It was supposed to be just me and Dad on this trip.

  “She called late last night,” he murmurs sideways to me. “I couldn’t say no.”

  “Okay. Wow.” I grab the handle of Summer’s travel bag, and we all head for the exit.

  “Faster, Billy,” she says. “The clock’s tickin’.”

  Once we’re in the truck, she puts on a pair of hot-pink, heart-shaped sunglasses she bought at the Atlanta airport during a layover between flights. She says she wants to look like a true Florida tourist. I tell her she looks like a true Florida dork.

  “Lighten up, Billy. The shades are a joke.”

  But she doesn’t take them off, even after we stop at a barbecue joint. Dad and I aren’t hungry but Summer says she’s starving after a long day on airplanes. “Three crummy bags of pretzels is all I ate,” she reports. The restaurant is crowded, so we keep the chatter light.

  Back in the pickup, I’m riding shotgun and Summer’s in the rear seat. She taps Dad on the shoulder, saying: “Billy Big Stick doesn’t understand why I’m here. Should I fill him in?”

  “Please do,” says Dad.

  Finally she whips off the goofy sunglasses. “I always wanted to see the Sunshine State, so I decided to take a page from your playbook, Billy. I borrowed my mom’s Visa card and bought myself a plane ticket. She was mega–ticked off, but I told her Dennis said it was okay. He didn’t really have a choice. Blackmail is a harsh word, but that’s basically what I did.”

  My father doesn’t flinch. He steers straight ahead, eyes fixed on the horizon.
>
  “See, I know all about Aunt Sophie,” Summer says. “A while back, when Dennis was away on one of his trips, a registered letter from a lawyer came to our house. It looked important, so I opened it. The very first sentence said Hubert the parrot was dead. I thought it was some kind of spy code. What a name for a bird!

  “But it wasn’t a coded message. The letter said that from now on Dennis gets a hundred percent of all the payments from something called the Sophia Dickens Trust. So what I did, I called the lawyer’s office in Nassau and pretended to be your dad’s ‘executive assistant.’ We had a real interesting talk. Aunt Sophie left half her fortune to Hubert, and the other half to her only nephew. So when Hubert died and flew off to parrot heaven, his share of the inheritance went to you-know-who.”

  “Not that I needed more money,” my father cuts in. “My aunt had been incredibly generous.”

  I don’t say anything, because I’ve already figured out what happened next.

  “When Dennis got home from his trip,” Summer continues, “we took a walk to the river and I told him what I’d learned. I was pretty mad, ’cause I thought he’d made up the part about being a government agent just so he could sneak around on my mom. Then he told me he was actually spying on wild-animal poachers—which is super-ballsy but also semi-nuts. Mom would go ballistic if she knew, so I never said a word. But when I called Dennis last night and told him I was coming to Florida, he said no way, it’s too risky. So I had to play hardball, Billy.”

  “Meaning you threatened to tell Lil the truth about Dad’s drone trips?”

  My stepsister’s response is a half-mischievous smile. “Did I cross the line, brother?”

  She’s asking the wrong person.

  “So, what does Lil think you’re doing here?” I ask.

  “Camping with you guys.” She grins. “Experiencing the Sunshine State!”

  Dad steps on the brakes. I expect him to turn around and snap at Summer, but that’s not the reason he stopped. He points to a yellow sign posted on the shoulder of the road. It features the black silhouette of a large sleek cat.

  “Panther,” Dad says. “That’s what Baxter came here to shoot.”

  Summer asks, “Aren’t they the same thing as the mountain lions out west?”

  “Different subspecies,” I explain. “Ours are almost extinct.”

  “Which is why Baxter wants to kill one,” my father adds, “before they’re all gone.”

  Summer hisses, “What a jackass,” or possibly a stronger word. “Okay, Dennis, tell us the secret-hero plan. You’ve got one, right?”

  “Not yet,” he sighs. “See, usually I work alone.”

  TWELVE

  The Crow Indians have faced many fierce enemies, including the Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Lakota, and other competing tribes. If nobody had ever bothered them, the Crow might have stayed in Ohio, of all places, where they grew crops. Their descendants ended up on horseback in Wyoming and Montana, roaming the plains and river valleys in pursuit of the great buffalo herds.

  Then the white men arrived and slaughtered almost all the buffalo. Many Crow died from smallpox, brought by the waves of strange settlers. Tribal leaders tried to maintain peace with the U.S. government, even as their lands were being taken away. Now, after more than a hundred and fifty years on a reservation, the tribe is struggling to save some of its sacred customs.

  I got this from an online search about the Crow culture. That’s also how I recognize the earrings that Summer Chasing-Hawks is wearing. They’re made from fossil seashells. It’s an ancient tribal craft.

  She says, “They belonged to my great-grandmother. She lived to be ninety-nine years old. I guess that’s a good thing.”

  I’m getting used to the idea of Summer joining the Everglades mission. She keeps the mood light, which is helpful.

  We’re staying at a motel called the Diamond Checkers. The room has only two beds, so I laid out my sleeping bag on the floor. My father walked down to the Lonesome Rooster to see if the poacher’s SUV was in the parking lot. It wasn’t. Dad says Baxter drives a jet-black Range Rover with a joke bumper sticker that says TROPHY HUSBAND.

  “How can you be sure he’s here?” I ask.

  “Reliable informant.” Dad is stretched out on one of the beds. His eyes are closed. “There aren’t many Range Rovers in this town. We’ll find him.”

  “This is the same informant who helped you in Montana?”

  “Correct,” says Dad, rolling over to face the wall.

  Summer and I turn off the lights, go outside, and sit on the tailgate of the pickup. The heat makes the damp air feel heavier. In the distant sky is a tower of violet clouds that will soon bloom into a thunderstorm. I hear the piping cries of an osprey, which means we’re near water.

  “I think I like Florida,” Summer says.

  “Wait till you see the concrete parts.”

  “You know what I can’t get over? How totally flat it is.”

  “Makes it easy for the bulldozers,” I say. “Tell me the real reason you decided to come on this trip. It wasn’t just because you wanted to see a palm tree.”

  She shrugs one shoulder. “I was pretty sure Dennis would visit you and your mom and your sister while he was here.”

  “And you were afraid he wouldn’t come back to Montana?”

  “No!” Her brown eyes flare. “Not afraid—concerned is all. Just a little.”

  So I was right. “Summer, there’s no way he’d ever leave you and Lil. You’re his family now.”

  “So were you guys, once upon a time—and he left you, didn’t he?”

  “A lot’s happened since then. Dad’s changed.”

  I’m surprised to hear myself defending him. I hope I’m not wrong.

  Summer smiles. “You got a girlfriend, Billy Big Stick?”

  “Nope.”

  She slaps a mosquito on my arm, leaving a small smear of blood. “Aren’t you going to ask if I’ve got a boyfriend?”

  “I wasn’t planning to.”

  “His name is Davey. He’s a full-blooded Crow, and he’s older than me. It’s not like we’re serious, or doing anything. All the girls like him, so I expect to be dumped. Maybe I’ll dump him first. What do you think?”

  I think I need to escape this conversation.

  “I’m thirsty,” I say, pointing to the 7-Eleven down the street. “You want something to drink?”

  Summer gets the hint. “Sounds good.”

  Inside the store we seem to be the only ones speaking English. All the other customers are migrant farm workers, sun-beaten and sweaty. Their faces are dusty and their hands are worn from picking row crops all day. It’s rough, hot work. Dad said the spring harvest is mostly over, but some fields still have new tomatoes and sweet corn.

  Summer and I order blue-raspberry Slurpees. I ask her what kind of gun Dad carries on his surveillance trips.

  “Twelve-gauge side by side,” she replies.

  “Good choice,” I say, like I actually understand what she’s talking about.

  Outside the 7-Eleven we sit on the curb to finish our Slurpees. Three short-haired hounds are watching us from the front seat of a gray kennel truck, the same kind used by Animal Control, only this one has no lettering on the side. The driver’s window is open halfway, so I walk across the parking lot to check out the dogs.

  They look like triplets, lean and long-legged. The saddled patterns on their coats are practically identical—brown, black, and white. When I reach in to pet their snouts, they wiggle their butts and whine excitedly.

  A man walking out of the store yells: “Don’t touch them dogs!”

  I step back from the truck.

  “They’ll bite your fingers off, boy.”

  I find that very hard to believe.

  The man has a cigarette in his mouth and a bag of grocer
ies in one arm. A six-pack of beer swings in his free hand. His eyes are hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. The pale hat on his head is a Stetson-style, though his rubber-soled boots are made for hiking, not horseback riding.

  “What are their names?” I ask the man.

  “Mandy, Candy, and Andy.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “You best stand clear,” he says, with zero trace of a smile.

  The dogs quiet down the moment he gets in the truck. He speeds away without waving, or even a nod.

  Summer walks up and says, “What’s his problem?”

  “He didn’t want me petting those vicious hellhounds.”

  “I thought Texans were friendly.”

  “Anyone can buy a cowboy hat.”

  “I wasn’t talkin’ about the hat,” she says. “I was talkin’ about the license plate.”

  “What made you look?”

  “It’s a Montana thing. We always check out the tags on cars and trucks to see where the tourists are coming from. One July, I counted twenty-four different states, and even Guam. That’s the only bad part about living in a beautiful place, right? The summer stampede.”

  “In Florida it’s all year round,” I say.

  The dark clouds have arrived, and it’s starting to sprinkle. We hear thunder breaking not far away.

  Summer says, “You never told me what to do about Davey, my boyfriend.”

  Just when I thought I’d dodged this subject.

  “Can he cast a fly rod?” I ask.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Then you should definitely dump him.”

  She looks surprised. “Seriously, Billy?”

  “No, not seriously. But that’s what you get for asking someone like me about relationships.”

  Back at the motel, my father is sitting on the bed, watching TV and waiting on a phone call from his informant. I tell him about the guy who owned the matching dogs with rhyming names.

  “He was one grumpy-ass Texan,” says Summer. “Last of the Marlboro men.”

  Dad bolts upright and swings his bare feet to the floor. “What’d he look like? How do you know where he’s from?”