Nature Girl

  She pointed upward, toward the top of the royal poinciana.

  “What if I said no?” he asked.

  “Let me guess: You’re terrified of sparrows, too.”

  “What if I just don’t feel like it?”

  “Then you can find your own damn way off this island,” Honey said, and started up the gnarled, winding trunk.

  Shreave followed reluctantly and with an ungainliness that was almost painful to observe. The man’s a born straggler, Honey thought, another lucky exception to the rules of natural selection. A million years ago he would’ve been an easy snack for a saber-toothed tiger.

  She heard his panting call: “How far up?”

  “All the way, Boyd. Otherwise there’s no point.”

  At the top of the old poinciana, forty feet off the ground, Honey selected a sturdy bough. She sat down facing east, dangling her long legs and rocking in the mild breeze. It made her feel like she was sailing.

  By the time Shreave finished the climb, he was red-faced and wheezing. “I bet I got a fever. I bet that fuckin’ mosquito was loaded.”

  Honey told him to be still, and to watch.

  She was thinking of her son, as she always did at that time of day. Dawn was when she felt the safest, the surest, the most optimistic about sending into the world a boy of Fry’s earnestness and full heart. Dawn was when her private terrors disappeared, if only briefly, and warm hope shined. The evening news made her wonder if God was dead; the morning sun made her believe He wasn’t.

  As the first shards of light appeared along the pinkish rim of the Everglades, Honey drew in her breath. To her the moment was infinitely soothing and redemptive; Boyd Shreave seemed oblivious.

  “Long way down,” he mumbled, glancing anxiously below.

  “Hush,” Honey told him.

  Fry had been born precisely at sunrise, and motherhood had crashed over her like a hurricane tide. Nothing afterward was the same, and no relationships went untested—with her husband, her family and the rest of humanity. Honey’s life had jumped orbits, and shining alone at the new center of the universe was her son.

  “I’m dyin’ to hear your plan for getting us out of here,” Shreave drawled.

  Light spilled into the cloudless sky like a blazing puddle.

  Honey said, “I’ll go see the Indian and get my kayaks. Then you and I will head back to the mainland and say our good-byes.”

  “Right. Genie’s Indian.” Shreave laughed harshly. “You’re gonna straighten his ass out, are you?”

  “Would you please shut up? Look what you’re missing.”

  The moment the sun cleared the horizon it started draining from red to amber. Simultaneously the wind died, and a crisp stillness settled upon the island.

  The vista from atop the poinciana was timeless and serene—a long string of egrets crossing the distant ’glades; a squadron of white pelicans circling a nearby bay; a pair of ospreys hovering kitelike above a tidal creek. It was a perfect picture and a perfect silence.

  And it was all wasted on Boyd Shreave.

  “I gotta take a crap,” he said.

  Honey rocked forward, clutching her head. The man was unreachable; a dry hole. For such a lunkhead there could be no awakening, no rebirth of wonderment. He was impervious to the spell of an Everglades dawn, the vastness and tranquillity of the waterscape. Nature held nothing for a person incapable of marvel; Shreave was forever destined to be underwhelmed.

  It’s hopeless, Honey told herself. The cocky telephone hustler would go home to Texas unchanged, as vapid and self-absorbed as ever. That a dolt so charmless could attract both a wife and a girlfriend was as dispiriting as it was inexplicable. Once again, Honey felt foolhardy and defeated, the queen of lost causes.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Shreave snapped. “I gotta climb down pronto and pinch a loaf.”

  Honey straightened herself on the bough and breathed in the morning. The salty cool air had cleared her sinuses. “All right, Boyd, let’s go.”

  “What is it you wanted to show me up here, anyway?”

  “You missed it, I’m afraid.”

  “Missed what?”

  Honey heroically resisted the urge to knock him out of the tree.

  “Come on,” she said, “before you soil yourself.”

  In his tenuous and trembling descent Shreave resembled nothing so much as an arthritic sloth. Twice Honey caught hold of him when he lost his grip, though it never occurred to him to say thanks.

  Upon reaching solid ground, Shreave snatched his copy of Storm Ghoul from the Orvis bag and hurried into a stand of buttonwoods. “Don’t forget to clean up your mess!” Honey called after him.

  Shreave scoffed, dropped his pants and started to read:

  All during the trial I acted strong and composed, but on the inside my heart was in shreds. The haunting truth was that I still cared for Van Bonneville, even though he was a monster. When the day came to take the witness stand, I vowed not to look at him. I kept reminding myself that what Van had done to his wife was unforgivable and wrong, even though he’d done it for me. He was a cold-blooded killer, and he deserved to be locked away.

  For the first hour or so I was fine. The prosecutor asked his questions and I answered promptly and honestly, the way I’d been coached. But as time wore on, everything blurred together and my own voice began to sound flat and unfamiliar, like a stranger was reciting my testimony. Soon my gaze wandered to the defense table…and Van. His sexy tan had faded in jail, and they’d dressed him in a cheap blue suit that barely fit. He could have split the seams just by flexing his arms!

  In his eyes I expected to see hate or at least disappointment, but I was wrong. Van was looking at me the same way he had that morning we met by the grapefruit tree in front of the Elks Lodge; the same way he looked at me that night in the cab of his truck as he unbuttoned my Lilly Pulitzer blouse. The harder I tried to vanquish these moments from my mind, the more vivid and arousing they became.

  Then I made a foolish mistake. I looked at his hands, those incredibly strong and knowing hands. His fingernails had been scrubbed for the trial, but the scars were still visible—those mysterious pale marks on his knuckles. They would never wash away, nor would my memories of the wondrous ways his hands had touched me during our many nights together. When I looked up I saw Van smiling fondly, and I knew he was thinking the same thing. My eyes brimmed with tears, so quickly I turned to the judge and begged for a recess….

  Boyd Shreave tore the page from Eugenie Fonda’s memoir and, with a contemptuous flourish, wiped his ass with it.

  Had he screwed up the courage to confront Genie, she would’ve willingly informed him that the best-selling account of her affair with the notorious wife killer had been ludicrously exaggerated to juice up the sales, and that Van Bonneville had turned in an unskilled and utterly forgettable performance the one and only time they’d had sex. Clueless as usual, Shreave believed—and suffered over—every salacious sentence in the book.

  “Boyd!” It was Honey shouting.

  “I’m not done!”

  “Boyd, hurry!”

  “Leave me alone, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Please! I need you!” Then she screamed.

  Awkwardly he shuffled out of the trees and was instantly poleaxed by the stench of dead fish. Beneath the poinciana stood Honey with a rope cinched tightly around her neck, possibly the same rope she’d used on him. He was about to say something snarky when he noticed movement behind her.

  It was a man. The end of the rope was tied around his chest and secured with a substantial knot. One hand was wrapped in dirty bandages and the other hand hefted a branch of gumbo-limbo.

  “Can I help you, fuckwad?” the intruder asked.

  It was the same voice that had hissed at Shreave from the shadows in the dead of night.

  “Boyd, for God’s sake,” Honey said. “Do something.”

  Shreave blinked.

  The stranger peered. “Darlin’, who is this noodle dic
k?”

  Humiliated, Shreave looked down at what was left of himself after a shriveling by cold fear. He was too petrified to pull up his pants.

  “Boyd, he doesn’t have a gun or even a knife. All he’s got is a stupid stick!” Honey winced as the man twisted the rope.

  She was right. There was no good reason for any young able-bodied man to stand by and let her be hauled off by some teetering, drool-flecked deviant. Obviously he was in sorry shape. His swollen face had a greenish tint, his shrunken eyes were bloodshot and he carried himself stiffly, as if riven with pain. To further advertise his sickliness, he was gnawing like a starved squirrel on a capped pill bottle.

  “Boyd, please,” Honey implored. “For once in your life.”

  “Wh-what?” Shreave thinking: You’re a tough broad. You can take this loser. “What d-do you expect m-me to do?”

  “Come on! You outweigh him by forty fucking pounds!”

  That was undeniably true. All he had to do was sit on the guy, and Honey could free herself. Still, Shreave didn’t move.

  The foul-smelling stalker seemed richly entertained by the standoff—Honey shouting at Boyd, and Boyd standing there half-naked, cupping his privates.

  “You’re bettin’ on the wrong rooster,” Louis Piejack said to Honey. “Come on now, angel. Let’s go make us some magic.”

  With a stained and lopsided grin, he yanked roughly on the rope. Honey let out a small cry as she was led away from the campsite and, ever so slowly, up the slope of the oyster midden.

  And Boyd Silvester Shreave—mouth open, eyes dull, respiration shallow—stood with his Tommy Bahama boat shorts bunched around his bug-bitten ankles, doing what he did best.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Twenty-one

  Louis Piejack had deteriorated in all aspects during the long night in the cistern. Grime-borne infection had erupted beneath his cheek-to-shin stubble of cactus needles, promoting a startling dermatological resemblance to a puffer fish. Meanwhile his moldy surgical bandages had been fully colonized by fire ants, creating a live insect hive on the terminus of his left arm. Protruding from the putrid gauze were Piejack’s skewed finger nubs, which had plumped and ripened into a parody of Greek olives. A medley of extreme pain stimuli—stinging, searing, throbbing, burning, grinding—was being transmitted in hot static bursts to Piejack’s brain stem, yet he remained benumbed by the derangement of lust.

  “Jackpot! Jackpot!” he chirped at Honey Santana as he exultantly led her across the island.

  “Louis, you’re hurting me.”

  “Then be good.”

  “The rope’s cutting into my neck.”

  “Don’t worry, angel. I’ll kiss it and make it better.”

  “What is it you want?” Honey asked, as if she didn’t know. The man looked quite ill, and she aimed to overpower him at the earliest opportunity.

  “What do you think I want?” Piejack waggled the pill bottle in his lips like the stub of a cigar.

  “There are easier ways to get laid, Louis. Call an escort service, for heaven’s sake.”

  He sneered. “Ever seen them girls? Oinky oink oink!”

  “Really,” Honey said. “And when’s the last time you were mistaken for Sean Connery?”

  “Who?”

  “You know. The old James Bond.”

  Piejack grunted. “So you’re makin’ a goddamn joke.”

  “No, I’m making a point. Think about what you’re doing, Louis. You rape me, they’ll lock you up for twenty years.”

  “Who says it’s gonna be a rape?”

  “I do.” Honey yanked on the rope, halting him in his tracks.

  Piejack spun around. “So, how come it’s gotta be that way? Why?” His eyes were twitching. “I know you want me—that’s how come you stopped over my house. So why don’tcha just roll with it?”

  Honey longed to say: Because you’re a loathsome lump of shit, Louis, and I’d rather die than let you touch me….

  But Piejack still toted the gumbo-limbo branch, so Honey’s reponse was: “Because I don’t sleep with men who treat me like this, that’s why.”

  “Treat you how?”

  “Like a dog, Louis. You’re dragging me along like a hound dog on a leash. Is this supposed to put me in a romantic mood?”

  Piejack clicked his teeth. “You’re just tryin’ to con me into takin’ off the rope. Here”—he spit the pharmacy bottle at her feet—“Twist the cap off that sucker, would ya?”

  Honey picked up the bottle, glanced at the label and opened it. “How many?” she asked.

  “Three would be nice. Four would be scrumptious.”

  She tapped the Vicodins into her palm. “Where you want ’em?”

  Piejack opened his jaws and unfurled his tongue, which resembled a scabrous brown sea slug.

  “Put that nasty thing away,” Honey told him. “Open wide.”

  Predictably, he slurped at her fingers as she dropped the pills into his mouth. She was too quick for him.

  He swallowed the painkillers dry. “How many do I got left?”

  “Just one, Louis.”

  “That’s okay. My man at the drugstore owes me a refill.”

  “So we’re going home soon?” Honey asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. The johnboat can’t be far.”

  “Can we bring my kayaks?”

  Not wishing to abandon her expensive purchases, Honey had no qualms about asking Piejack for a tow. She figured it was the least he could do after abducting her.

  “Don’t see why not,” he said, resuming the march. “But ’member, one good deed deserves an even better one. That means you gotta give up the velvet, angel.”

  Honey’s outlook on men was sinking to a point of abject revulsion. The day was new, yet already she’d been ridiculed by a soulless twit and kidnapped by a reeking pervert.

  “You might even like it.” Louis Piejack winked over his shoulder. “I never had no complaints in the bedroom department.”

  Honey no longer could stand it. “Know what? I need a potty break.”

  Piejack stopped walking. “Well, hurry it up,” he said.

  “Right here—in front of you? I can’t, Louis.”

  “Okay, I won’t peek. But I ain’t undoin’ the damn rope.”

  As soon as he turned away, Honey pretended to unzip her pants. After lowering herself into a credible squat she began searching the ground for something sharp, heavy or both.

  “I don’t hear nuthin,” Piejack grumbled suspiciously.

  Honey said, “It’s hard to do this while you’re standing there listening. Just give me a minute.”

  She found a gnarly chunk of coral the size of a mango; the weight was perfect. Clutching it in her right hand, she rose slowly and took aim at the back of Piejack’s crusty head.

  “You lied,” he was saying. “You don’t really gotta go.”

  “Louis, would you please shut up so I can concentrate?”

  “Concentrate on what? It ain’t a chess match, angel, it’s just pissin’ in the woods.”

  Honey Santana raised the piece of coral to strike him, but Piejack was already half-turned, swinging the gumbo-limbo like a boom. The blow landed flush on the left side of her face, and she heard a bone break. Then the sun exploded into a million flaming pink raindrops.

  Like flamingos, Honey thought as she fell.

  Flying home.

  Fry had been confident he could locate the clearing where his father had told him to wait, but the lay of the island looked different in the morning light. After twenty minutes of circular meandering he admitted he was lost.

  “Let’s take a time-out,” said Eugenie Fonda, whose own navigational skills were better suited to the city.

  Fry put down the metal camera case and leaned against a buttonwood. “I don’t feel so great.”

  When he told Eugenie about the skateboard accident, she said, “Your old man should’ve left you in the hospital.”

  “We were worried about Mom.”

&n
bsp; “I’ve seen her in action, bucko. She can take care of herself.”

  “What’s that shiny thing in your mouth?” Fry asked.

  Eugenie smiled self-consciously. She’d never been asked about it by a boy his age. “A pearl,” she said.

  “Is it real?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Can I see?”

  She extended her tongue in a prim and clinical way, so as not to give the kid any wild ideas. Fry adjusted the football helmet to get a better look.

  “Sweet.” He leaned close. “Did that hurt when they made the hole?”

  “Like a mother,” she said.

  “There’s this girl in eighth grade, she’s got a gold safety pin in her nose and a platinum screw through one eyebrow and an I-bolt in her right ear. They call her ‘Toolbox.’”

  Genie said, “Kids can be awful.”

  “I like your pearl.”

  “Thank you, Fry, but I believe I’ve outgrown it.” She unfastened the stud, wiped it on the front of her pullover and dropped it in the palm of his hand.

  “Ma’am, I really can’t take this,” he protested. “No way.”

  Genie closed his fingers over the pearl and said, “It’s for when you meet that certain girl. But first you gotta make me a blood promise.”

  “Like what?”

  “Don’t ever change. By that I mean don’t grow up to be a jerkoff like ninety percent of the men I meet.”

  “Mom always tells me the same thing. Except she says it’s more like ninety-five.”

  “Best advice you’ll ever get: Stay a gentleman, and you’ll never be alone. Don’t lie, don’t bullshit, don’t fuck around—Christ, I can’t believe I said ‘fuck around’ to a fourteen-year-old boy! I’m sorry.”

  Fry laughed. “I’ll be thirteen in June.”

  Genie made a gun with her fingers and cocked it to her temple.

  “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I hear worse stuff every day at school.”

  “Now you’re depressing me. Let’s get movin’.”

  Fry pocketed the pearl. Eugenie said it was her turn to be the bellhop, and reached for the Halliburton. They’d walked for only a few minutes when the boy began to lag. Eugenie went back and entwined her free arm in one of his.