Nature Girl

  “I’m gettin’ a complex,” she told him. “Why aren’t you trying to do me?”

  “You asked to be the hostage.”

  “So?”

  “Hostages don’t get laid.”

  “Who made up that stupid rule? Besides, I can tell you’ve been thinkin’ about it.”

  “Bull,” Sammy Tigertail said.

  She rose on her tiptoes and tried to peck him on the chin. He dodged sideways and said, “You don’t understand.”

  “About being nervous? I do so.”

  He grabbed the rifle from the crook of a tree, and nodded toward Dealey. “Keep an eye on Mr. Camera Man,” he told Gillian. “I won’t be long.”

  “What if he tries somethin’? Like, jumps me and rips off my clothes?”

  “Then shoot him. The shotgun’s over there,” the Indian said.

  “Okeydoke.”

  “But aim low, in case he turns out to be real. I don’t need to hassle with another dead body.”

  “When you say low—”

  “The legs.”

  “Gotcha,” said Gillian.

  On a rash impulse Sammy Tigertail leaned forward and kissed the top of her head, then he quickly moved into the night. The sky held enough moon that he was able to make headway without using a flashlight, though his sense of direction was as unreliable as ever. Fortunately, the island was small enough that it was difficult to stay lost. The Seminole eventually located the old oyster mound and took a position overlooking the campsite and the cistern. Embers from the fire glowed faintly, and Sammy Tigertail could make out the steepled shapes of two tents, and one bundled form on the ground.

  He crept down the midden and, except for tripping once and dropping the rifle, his approach was practically furtive. Hearing snores, he assumed that all the kayakers were asleep. Quickly he padded into the clearing and snatched up a large duffel bag.

  That’s when a head poked out from one of the tents. Sammy Tigertail saw the movement and whirled, waving the rifle. His heart hammered.

  “Easy, big guy,” the woman whispered.

  “We need water!”

  “Like we don’t?”

  “But I got the gun!” said Sammy Tigertail. “Now, shut up.”

  “Did you steal our kayaks?” The woman had a mild southern accent and light hair, but the angles of her face were obscured by a shadow. “Hold on,” she said, squirming from the sleeping bag.

  “What are you doin’?”

  “Comin’ with you.”

  “No fucking way. Not again,” the Seminole said angrily.

  The woman stood up and stepped into her shoes, some sort of rubberized Yuppie sneakers. She was a tall one.

  “You’ve got the boats, and now the last of our water—I’ll be damned if I’m stayin’ out here to die,” she said.

  A breeze stirred the mangroves and riffled the leaves of the big poinciana. The woman folded her arms against the chill and said, “Well?”

  Sammy Tigertail knew that if he left her behind, she would awaken the others, and they’d contact the authorities to report that a thieving redskin was loose on the island.

  She said, “I’ll do whatever you want. And I mean whatever.”

  The Seminole raised his eyes to the leering moon. The spirits seemed to be punishing him. He suspected it had something to do with Wilson, the dead tourist.

  “You’ll do anything?” he asked the woman.

  She nodded.

  “Then carry this bag.”

  “Yes, bwana.”

  “And be quiet,” said the Indian, “or I’ll cut off your tongue.”

  The woman stuck it out for him to see, the pearl stud burnished by the moonlight. Sammy Tigertail frowned.

  “Oh well. Some guys dig it,” she said.

  “My girlfriend had one attached somewhere else. It didn’t feel so good.”

  The Indian turned and darted into the trees. He heard the woman trailing behind him, breathing fast under the weight of the duffel. He expected her to start chattering like a crow, but she didn’t. It was a nice surprise.

  Thirty years in the seafood business combined with grossly irregular bathing habits had cloaked upon Louis Piejack a distinct and inconquerable funk. Were it cologne, the essence would have included the skin of Spanish mackerel, the roe of black mullet, the guts of gag grouper, the wrung-out brains of spiny lobster and the milky seepage of raw oysters. The musk emanated most pungently from Piejack’s neck and arms, which had acquired a greenish yellow sheen under a daily basting of gill slime and fish shit. Nothing milder than industrial lye could have cleansed the man.

  He stunk like a bucket of bait.

  Honey Santana eventually would have pinpointed the smell—and the danger—were it not for an untimely pollen allergy that kept her clogged and sniffling. No sooner had she dozed off than Louis Piejack hoisted himself, with a hellish groan, into the old cistern. Woozy with pain, the spine-covered stalker was spying through a gap in the cinder blocks when Eugenie Fonda departed stealthily with a dark-skinned young gunman. Piejack felt no curiosity about the peculiar event; Honey was his only concern.

  The person who would have been least surprised by the fishmonger’s felonious pursuit was his wife, who two decades earlier had been the object of a more subtle courtship. At the time, Louis Piejack had been smoother and more attentive to hygiene, and in the meager male talent pool of rural Collier County he’d sparkled like a gem. After the wedding he’d gone downhill fast, and when his wife had threatened to leave he torched her mother’s minivan and warned that it was only the beginning. Even when her family moved away to the Redlands, Becky Piejack remained with Louis out of sheer cold dread.

  So awful was the marriage that she hadn’t been entirely dismayed to learn she had cancer—anything to get out of the house. There were no chemotherapy facilities in Everglades City, so Becky looked forward to the twice-monthly trips to Gainesville as furloughs from her deviant and disgusting spouse. When after three years the oncologists pronounced her disease-free, Becky withheld the news from Louis and continued to travel every other week. On those long drives she often brought a young orchid collector named Armando and a box of Berlitz language tapes, with which she schooled herself in French and Portuguese. Becky Piejack was gearing up for the day when she’d gather the courage to leave her husband, which she assumed would require fleeing the continental United States. Either Paris or Rio sounded good.

  In truth, it had been a long while since Louis Piejack had thought of his wife in a criminally possessive way. Except when inconvenienced by her illness, he seldom thought of her at all. Now, shivering on the concrete slab of the cistern, Piejack went about planning a new life of passion with Honey Santana. Once they returned to the mainland, he would immediately evict Becky and her hospital bed, along with the wicker furniture that he so detested. He might allow Honey to repaint the living area but not the bedroom, which would remain black with red crown molding. For a moving-in gift he’d buy his sex angel a set of new cookware, including a kettledrum fryer for wild boar and turkey. Then he’d put her back to work at the fish market, peeling shrimp or running the cash register, so that he could keep an eye on her. As for Honey’s teenaged son, the smartass punk could go live with his old man.

  At some point in his ruminations Louis Piejack experienced a new and unfamiliar pain—a hot welter of stings on the palm of his left hand, a location he could not access without gnawing through the surgical dressing. In the darkness Piejack hadn’t seen the platoons of fire ants march the length of his aching arm and disappear through one of the ragged finger holes into the moist cocoon of dirty gauze and sticky tape. He didn’t cry out, or even whimper. Stoically he ground his molars while the little red demons tore divots in his flesh.

  He consoled himself with dream visions of his breathtaking goddess, who in real life lay snoring like a stevedore less than fifty feet away. To Louis Piejack, scorching physical agony seemed a small price to pay for the midlife companionship of a woman such as Honey S
antana. He was morbidly amused to realize that the extremity now being devoured by insects was the same one that had touched her illicitly that tumultuous day at the market.

  Go ahead and eat me, he mocked the ants. See if I give a fuck.

  Perry Skinner followed Sandfly Pass to the Gulf and slowly headed up the coast, scouting the outermost islands for signs of campers. The wind had stiffened, pushing a troublesome chop that slapped the hull of the skiff and made silent running impossible. Another problem was debris in the water; the previous summer’s hurricanes had uprooted scores of old mangroves and strewn their knobby skeletons throughout the shallow banks and creeks. To avoid an accident, Skinner was forced to use the spotlight continually, though it risked betraying their approach.

  As the skiff entered a deeper bay, the waves kicked higher, misting salt spray. From the bow Fry shouted, “Dad, you see that?”

  Skinner had already spotted it—the flicker of fire on a nearby shore. He cut the engine and dimmed the spotlight.

  “Is it them?” Fry asked anxiously.

  “Son, I don’t know.”

  The breeze and the tide were at odds, foiling his drift and nudging the boat onto the flats. Skinner tilted the engine and picked up the long graphite pole. Fry watched him scale a wobbly platform above the outboard motor and said, “You’re kidding me.”

  It took Skinner a few moments to steady himself. “The water’s only twelve inches deep. You got a better idea?”

  He planted the double-pronged foot of the pole in the mud and, with slow tentative strokes, began pushing the skiff across the bank toward the island where the campfire burned. Backcountry guides made it look easy, but Skinner felt awkward and tense, rocking on the thin wafer of molded plastic. One slip and he’d tumble into the water or, worse, fall backward and crack his skull on the propeller.

  Fry said, “You’re the one who needs a football helmet.”

  Skinner gently poked him with the dry end of the pole. “Keep your eyes peeled, ace. We don’t need a welcome party.”

  “Where’s the gun anyway?”

  “Just relax,” said Skinner.

  Fry felt like hurling, he was so anxious. He kept flashing back to the moment when Louis Piejack’s pickup had nearly run him down at the trailer park, and he wondered what he could have done to stop the guy from pursuing his mother. Fry had hated Mr. Piejack for groping her at the fish market, but he’d pegged him as just some twisted old turd—not a mad stalker.

  The boy drummed his fingers on the gunwale and thought: Relax? No way.

  “I hear somethin’,” his father said from the back of the skiff.

  Fry stopped tapping and listened. “Sounds like…like a funeral or somethin’. People cryin’.”

  “Where’s it coming from? Can you make out anything?”

  “Just shadows.” Fry balled his fists to keep from shaking.

  By now his dad had pushed the skiff close enough for them to see the orange flames dancing and to smell the woody smoke. At first the shapes around the fire had looked like small pines, bowing and shaking in the breeze. Now Fry wasn’t so certain. The moaning chorus swelled and faded, making him shudder. His father poled faster.

  “We’ll go ashore here,” Skinner announced, angling toward the beach. Four long strokes and the hull scraped up on the sand.

  Fry hopped out and was beset with dizziness. “It’s gettin’ cold,” he murmured to himself.

  His father jumped down and with both hands hauled the skiff farther up on land, so that the rising tide wouldn’t carry it away. Then he tossed Fry a sweatshirt, which the boy absentmindedly attempted to put on without removing his bulbous helmet.

  “Dad, I’m stuck,” he said sheepishly.

  Once extricated, he jogged after his father as they hurried away from the shoreline, into the trees. He felt like he was five years old again.

  Skinner said, “If I tell you to run for it, you damn well run.”

  “Yeah, but where?”

  “The other way, son. Opposite of me.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t be lookin’ back, either—I’ll come find you later.”

  “I can’t go fast with this stupid thing on my head.”

  “Pretend you’re Mercury Morris.”

  “Who?”

  “Pitiful.” Skinner pretended to kick him in the pants. “Come on, let’s do it.”

  Watchfully they moved through the scraggle and scrub, keeping parallel to the beach. The eerie keening sounds grew louder as they neared the campfire. Skinner dropped to a crouch and motioned for his son to do the same. They crossed a sandy clearing in a faint circle of moonlight and took cover in a stand of Australian pines.

  Fry counted five hooded shapes twirling and dipping around a crudely dug fire pit. They wore white robes and weren’t actually crying; it was a strident, wailing chant, with no discernible melody. A tall wooden cross had been planted on a dune overlooking the campsite.

  “It’s the Klan!” Fry whispered.

  “They’re a long way from home,” said Skinner.

  Fry saw him reach beneath his sweatshirt and adjust a gun-shaped bulge in his waistband. It was possible he clicked off the safety.

  “What’re you gonna do, Dad?”

  “Be my usual charming self.”

  Nervously Fry followed him out of the pines. Skinner walked with casual purpose as he approached the moaners, who one by one stopped dancing and fell silent.

  “Howdy,” Skinner said.

  “Who are you, brother?” It was the tallest one; a man’s voice.

  “State wildlife commission. I’m lookin’ for a man named Louis Piejack—he’s wanted for poachin’ shellfish.”

  “Don’t know the sinner,” said the tallest moaner. The others closed ranks behind him.

  “How ’bout losin’ those hoods?” Skinner asked genially.

  The hoods turned out to be part of their white robes, each of which bore a breast emblem that read FOUR SEASONS—MAUI.

  Definitely not the KKK, thought Fry with relief.

  “We’ve nothing to hide,” the tallest moaner declared. He and the others obligingly revealed their faces. There were two men and three women, all shiny-cheeked and well fed. Neither Fry nor his father recognized them from Everglades City.

  “I’m Brother Manuel,” the tall one volunteered, “of the First Resurrectionist Maritime Assembly for God. We believe that Jesus our Savior has returned and is sailing the seven seas”—he paused to acknowledge the lapping surf—“preparing to come ashore in all His glory and inspire the worldly to repent. We will welcome Him with prayer and rejoicing.”

  Skinner nodded impatiently. “Where you from, Manny?”

  “Zolfo Springs, sir, and we’re up to no mischief. We’re here upon this blessed shore to baptize our newest sister, Miss Shirelle.”

  She identified herself with a perky wave.

  “You folks been drinkin’?” Skinner inquired.

  Brother Manuel bridled. “Wine only, sir. I can show you the passage in the Scriptures.”

  “I’m certain you can. See anything strange out here tonight? We believe Mr. Louis Piejack is in the vicinity.”

  One of the female moaners asked, “How might we know this man?”

  “One of his hands is taped,” Skinner said, “like a mummy’s.”

  “Ah!”

  “Plus he stinks like dead mudfish,” Fry added, quoting his mother.

  One of the male celebrants revealed that they’d heard gunshots earlier in the evening. “From over there,” he said, pointing across the waves.

  “How many shots?” Skinner asked. He avoided eye contact with Fry, whom he knew would be alarmed. He purposely had not told his son about the shotgun that he’d seen in Piejack’s johnboat on the river.

  “Two rounds,” the man said.

  “Sure it was gunfire? Sometimes campers bring fireworks.”

  “Brother Darius is a deer hunter,” Brother Manuel explained. “God’s bounty, you understan
d.”

  Sister Shirelle, the stoutest of the moaners, asked, “May we invite you to stay for the baptism? Join us in the divine waters where our Savior sails.”

  “Some other time,” Skinner said tightly.

  Another woman called out, “Sir, may I inquire about the boy?”

  “That’s my son.”

  “I couldn’t help but take note of the headpiece. Is he afflicted in some way?”

  “Yeah, he’s afflicted with one motherfucker of a migraine. He crashed his skateboard into a truck.”

  Brother Manuel clasped his hands. “Then let us pray for the youngster’s healing. Come, brothers and sisters!”

  The moaners re-hooded and commenced a new chant, as dissonant as the others. Sister Shirelle, dauntingly braless, led the group in improvisational writhing.

  Fry jerked his father’s sleeve and whispered, “You think they really heard a gun?”

  “Vamos ahora,” Skinner said.

  They’d gone about fifty yards down the beach when Brother Manuel broke from the dance ring and barreled after them, yelling, “Friends, wait! Whoa there!”

  Away from the firelight, Fry could no longer see his father’s expression. Not that he needed to.

  “A-hole,” he heard him mutter.

  “Should we run?” the boy asked hopefully. He was aware of Skinner’s low opinion of preachers and zealots. One time his dad had turned a fire hose on a roving quartet of Jehovah’s Witnesses who’d accosted him at the crab docks.

  “See, this is the problem with religion, son. They can’t keep it among themselves, they gotta cram it down everyone else’s throat.” He’d hurried his pace, but the long-legged moaner was gaining on them. “It’s been a long time since I looked at the Bible, but I don’t recall Jesus makin’ a damn nuisance of Himself.”

  “He’s almost here, Dad.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Perry Skinner stopped and whirled around.

  Huffing and sweaty, the tall moaner advanced with the grinning, witless confidence of the self-righteous. From his purloined hotel robe he produced a folded pamphlet, which he held out to Skinner as if it were a deed to a gold mine.