“A man took her!” he shouted down hoarsely. “Took Honey!”
“What’d he look like?” the gunman demanded.
“Sick,” Shreave replied. “All fucked-up—his hand, his face…”
“Where’d they go?” the Indian asked.
Shreave pointed feverishly. “That way! He had her on a leash.”
“A leash?” The older man slowly lowered the gun.
“Yeah! Can you guys help me down?”
“What for?” The Indian crumpled the foil from Shreave’s snack bar and shoved it into his pocket. He spat in the cactus patch and said, “Damn litterbug. I hope you rot up there.”
Then he followed the gunman out of the camp.
For diversion, Honey composed in her head another letter to the newspapers. Inspired by her predicament, the topic was sexual harassment.
To the Editor:
Recently I had an altercation with an employer, Mr. Louis Piejack, who groped me in the workplace. I fought back to defend myself, and then immediately quit my job.
In retrospect I should have reported what happened to the authorities and contacted a lawyer, to deter Mr. Piejack from future misbehavior. Unfortunately, he has persisted with his unwanted advances and is presently holding me captive at gunpoint on a deserted island in the western Everglades.
The lesson to be learned from my experience is that women must aggressively discourage mental and physical intimidation at the job site—not just with a crab mallet, but with the force of law.
Most sincerely,
Honey Santana
She thought it was a darn good letter; succinct and low-key, the way the newspapers preferred them. If she’d had a pencil and paper, she would have written it down.
“You ready, angel?” Piejack asked woozily. The pain pills were working their magic.
“Ready for what, Louis?”
“A ride in my boat.”
He was sprawled beside her, befouling an otherwise-splendid morning. He hadn’t stirred in so long that the fire ants had quietly returned to their dank hideaway inside his surgical swathing. Piejack had found another bottle of water in a duffel bag but, after laboring to open it, had lost interest. Listlessly he’d watched Honey drink the whole thing. She was grateful to be free of the ropes but mindful of the sawed-off shotgun, which Piejack had wedged erect between his legs.
“Look here, I don’t need no hands!” He moved his hips to make the barrel sway.
“Adorable,” Honey said.
“You think this is a monster, wait’ll you see ol’ John Henry.”
“That’s what you named your cock?” Honey laughed. “Sorry, Louis, but that’s lame.”
He lifted his head. “You got somethin’ better? I’ll call him whatever you want.”
Honey said, “Okay. How about Charlemagne?”
Piejack snorted. “Sounds like a girl.”
“He was a king, Louis.”
“King a what?”
Now that Piejack was half-stoned, Honey had decided to make a grab for the stubby shotgun.
She said, “He was king of the Franks.”
“Then why don’t I just call my dick Frank? It’s easier to say.”
“Because Charlemagne sounds better,” Honey said. “Hotter.”
Piejack smiled. “You like that, huh?”
He pumped his pelvis twice, bobbing the gun. The weapon was small enough that Honey believed she could handle it.
“He was the master of Western Europe, Louis. Emperor of the Romans,” she said. “How about another pill?”
With his good hand, Piejack picked up the rope. His eyelids drooped and his head began to loll. “Charlie Main,” he murmured. “That ain’t so hard.”
“You want the last Vicodin or not?”
“Sure. Bottle’s in my pants,” he said. “But first I need you to take care a somethin’ else down there. See, I got this special itch I can’t scratch ’cause my fingers are messed up.”
Honey said, “Don’t even ask.”
“It’s Charlie Main’s boys.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“Aw, come on. They got a rash that won’t quit,” he said.
Honey scooted close and nearly gagged on his smell. “Be a good boy and take your medicine. Here, let me help with the bottle.”
She leaned over as if reaching toward his pockets, then locked both hands around the sawed-off. She yanked, but the barrel wouldn’t budge—Piejack had clamped his thighs on the grip. Honey was shocked by his strength, and the quickness of his reflexes.
He cursed and rolled to his right, dragging her body across his torso. The shotgun’s muzzle stuck hard in the ground, causing both of them to lose hold. As Honey tumbled she heard a muted concussion, and then a cry.
Her ears were ringing when she sat up. Piejack’s face was spattered with sand and leaf fragments blown back from the point-blank blast. He moaned dolefully and pinched his knees together, the heavy recoil having replaced his private itch with a stupendous bruising.
Honey couldn’t believe that the man was still conscious. Wobbling to his feet, Piejack retrieved the wisping gun, which looked as if it had been used to dig a grave.
“Don’t you fuckin’ move!” he rasped at Honey.
She didn’t. Her jaw was pounding again, and a sharp pain in her belly made her wince—one of Piejack’s slimy cactus needles, poking through her shirt. Honey wondered if any infection could be worse than his company.
Desolately, she asked, “What now, Louis?”
He hunched forward. “Louder!”
“I said, what now?”
In frustration he screeched, “You think this is funny? Huh, bitch?”
Honey realized that his ear holes were plugged with dirt. As a test, she said, “Louis, you’re nothing but a rancid bucket of scum.”
He squinted quizzically yet gave no indication of registering the insult.
Swell, Honey thought. Now I get to play charades with a sex fiend. She tugged at her earlobes and shook her head.
“You can’t hear nuthin neither?” Piejack asked loudly.
Honey made a rowing motion and shouted, “Where’s your boat, Louis? Let’s go find the boat!”
“The boat?”
“Bravo!” she said, clapping.
Piejack smiled crookedly.
“Mom! Dad!” A voice from the woods.
Honey went white—it sounded like Fry, but that was impossible. Fry was far away, safe at home with his father, and neither of them would’ve known where to find her. Honey told herself that she was imagining what she heard; cracking under the stress.
“Hey, Mom?”
The voice was closer now—too close. Honey didn’t answer. With all her heart she wanted to shout back, but she knew better. If it was really Fry, he’d come running. No matter what she told him to do, he’d come running to save her.
And he couldn’t possibly save her, not all by himself. He was twelve and a half years old, for heaven’s sake.
“Mom, Dad, it’s me!”
Honey already knew.
Run away, kiddo, she thought. Please, God, make him go the other way.
There was still hope, because Piejack couldn’t hear him.
“Where are you?” the boy hollered.
He was dangerously close now. Tragically close.
Honey couldn’t stop herself.
“Fry, go away!” she blurted. “Go get help!”
Piejack was momentarily preoccupied, pawing at a string of fire ants that had greedily attached themselves to his neck.
“Fry, do what I say!” Honey cried out. “Go away—”
But there he was, sprinting out of the trees as fast as he could, which was fast indeed…and wearing, of all things, a football helmet.
Honey held out her arms and blinked away hot tears. Fry practically knocked her down with a flying hug.
“You okay?” he asked breathlessly. “God, what happened to your face?”
“I’m fine. Just fine.
”
The boy stared at Louis Piejack and the stubby shotgun.
“He’s nearly deaf,” Honey said.
Piejack was glaring at both of them. “Git lost, kid!”
Fry whispered to his mother: “I heard the gun go off and I freaked. Have you seen Dad?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Dad’s tryin’ to find you. We came out here together.”
Honey thought: I’m gonna brain that man.
“I tole you to beat it!” Piejack bellowed at Fry.
“Chill out, Louis,” Honey said.
“It’s just you and me, angel, that was the deal. You and me for all time.” Piejack coldly leveled the sawed-off at Fry. “I ain’t gonna be nobody’s step-pappy. Now git movin’, boy. Go home to your old man.”
Honey firmly turned her son. “You heard him. Get outta here.”
“I’m not leaving. No way.”
“What’d you say?” Piejack tilted his head. “I can’t hear a goddamn word. You gotta speak up.”
Fry pulled free of his mother’s grasp and stepped toward Louis Piejack until the barrel of the shotgun touched the face guard of his helmet.
“I said, I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE!” the boy hollered.
Then he doubled over and puked on Piejack’s shoes.
Twenty-four
For once, Honey Santana’s head was absolutely clear. No tunes blared. No sirens whined. No trains whistled. A rare and welcome clarity prevailed.
A brutish criminal had clobbered her son, and there was only one appropriate response: Honey clamped both hands around Louis Piejack’s oily neck.
It felt right; empowering, as Oprah might say.
Honey knew that if the man shot her, she would die strangling him. Saving Fry was all that mattered.
Honey forced Piejack against a pigeon plum tree, trapping the shotgun between their bodies. The barrel lodged lengthwise in her cleavage, the dirty muzzle sticking up at her chin. Fire ants began pouring out of Piejack’s bandaged hand, which he flogged against his thigh until the surgical dressing fell off in a putrid husk.
To hinder his movements she pressed harder, though at first the lecherous fishmonger seemed to enjoy the rough frontal contact. He winked moistly and ran his spotted tongue around his lips.
When Honey squeezed harder, Piejack’s smirk faded. His yellowed eyes began to bulge and seep. Brownish spittle bubbled from the corners of his mouth, and his rank breath came in short, croupy emanations. As she dug her fingertips into his Adam’s apple, Honey regretted having trimmed her nails the week before. She nonetheless felt capable of inflicting mortal damage, and, despite his narcotic intake, the sonofabitch was definitely uncomfortable. She could tell by his gurgling.
“Watch out!” It was Fry.
To Honey’s immense relief, the boy hadn’t been hurt. Piejack’s gun butt had cracked the football helmet and knocked him flat, but Fry had sprung up quickly. Honey caught glimpses of him circling the scene, darting in to throw wild, ineffectual punches.
“I told you to get outta here!” When she opened her mouth to yell, her broken jawbone clacked like a castanet.
“No way!” Fry shouted back.
“Do—as—I—say!”
“Mom! Look!”
“Oh shit.”
From wrists to shoulders, her sleeves shimmered with fire ants. They were abandoning Piejack en masse, using Honey as a bridge. By the hundreds they streamed down her arms, but she was afraid to release her grip on Piejack to slap them away. He’d need only a moment, Honey knew, to regain control of the sawed-off.
As Fry flayed at the insects with a palmetto frond, Honey tried not to think about where the blood-red hordes might be heading. Piejack’s misshapen face was darkening due to loss of oxygen, yet he continued to grapple ferociously with good hand and bad for possession of the shotgun. So heated was the scuffle that Honey failed to notice a column of ants disappear between the top buttons of her shirt. The stings seared, like a sprinkle of hot acid, and she wondered how much she could endure.
Not enough, it turned out. Within seconds she was breathless from the pain. She let go of Piejack, tore off her shirt and flung herself down. When she stopped rolling, he stood over her panting and clutching the sawed-off. His shoes still reeked of Fry’s vomit.
Honey sat up and crossed her arms, to cover her bra. Her chest was burning along a sinuous track of tiny crimson bites.
“They’s one in your curls,” Piejack croaked.
As shaky as he was, the man had managed to hook one of his reconnected digits, possibly a pinkie, over the shotgun’s trigger. With the more nimble fingers of his good hand he was grubbing dirt from his ears.
Honey flicked the ant from her hair and thought: Where the hell is my son?
To find out if Piejack’s hearing had returned, she asked in a level tone, “What’re you going to do now, Louis?”
“What the hell d’ya think? I’m gonna shoot yer fine ass,” he said, “but first I’m gonna fuck it.”
He coughed up something, scowled at the taste and spat. Honey peered out between his knees, looking in vain for Fry.
Piejack said, “Your kid’s run off. But I’ll catch him later, don’tcha worry.”
His eyeballs rolled and he gulped slowly, like a toad. It was plain that Honey had injured him.
“Lose them pants,” he told her.
“Not a chance, Louis.”
“You know damn well I’ll shoot.”
“And that’s the only way it would ever happen between us—if I was dead,” Honey said.
“Now, that ain’t too bright.” Piejack touched the sawed-off to her forehead. “But if that’s how you want it…”
Honey expected her whole life to flash past, like people said it would, yet only a single event from her thirty-nine years replayed in fast-forward: Fry’s arrival.
She’d gone into labor on a Monday afternoon, six weeks early. Radioed Perry out on the crab boat. He raced home, carried her to the truck and sped ninety-five miles an hour across the state to Jackson Hospital in Miami. A sweet old Cuban doctor asked if she wanted an epidural, and Honey answered no because she figured the baby would be small and it wouldn’t hurt so much coming out. But it hurt plenty, and lasted way longer than she’d expected: fifteen hours and forty-one minutes. Perry stayed by her side. When there was pain he’d squeeze Honey’s hand, and when there wasn’t, he’d read to her from a book of fishing stories by Zane Grey. Honey had no interest in fishing, but it was the first time she’d heard her husband read aloud and for some reason she found it calming.
Then the cramps got fierce. Doctor told her to push. Nurses told her to push. Perry told her to push. Honey remembered biting her lip, thinking: Thank God the little guy didn’t go full term. He’d split me open like a melon! And all of a sudden there he was, wriggling on the sheets like a purple tadpole: Fry Martí Skinner, four pounds and fourteen ounces.
From the first breath he seemed uncommonly self-assured. Never cried once in the delivery room, not even when Perry snipped the cord. The nurses were freaking because the child wouldn’t make a peep, but Honey wasn’t worried. Boy was smart. Knew he was safe and loved.
Mom and Dad were the ones who’d wept when the nurses bundled Fry off to the preemie ward and wired him up like a mouse in a laboratory tank. Fluid in the lungs, the doctor said, avoiding the term pneumonia so as not to further derail Honey, who was already frantic. She refused to leave the hospital, Skinner bringing her meals and books and fresh clothes. Fifteen days later Fry was home and his mother was whole, though not unchanged.
It was natural now, with time running out, that the final thought in her head would be of her son.
Who now emerged helmetless from behind the pigeon plum tree. He was carrying a bleached and broken two-by-four.
Honey willed herself to be silent and locked her gaze upon Louis Piejack’s shotgun. Best that he kept pointing it at her, not elsewhere.
Slowly Fry crept forward.
> What colossal balls, marveled Honey, and steeled herself for the end.
Louis Piejack had never been enthralled by the great outdoors. The unsentimental commerce of seafood had drawn him to the Ten Thousand Islands. It was simple: If you were a fish peddler, you went where there were fish. Piejack couldn’t fathom why tourists and tree huggers gushed about the Everglades. He had no use for the vicious bugs and the infernal heat; his free hours were spent at home with the windows latched and the AC blasting and a case of Heinies cooling in the refrigerator.
It was into that cozy chamber of comfort that Piejack had dreamed of moving Honey Santana, but he now wondered if it was worth all the grief. Pretty as she was, her attitude remained piss-poor. She was tough and outspoken and damn near fearless—qualities which in a female did not appeal to Piejack. Plus she had a rotten temper; for squeezing her boob she’d walloped his nuts, and for clocking her bratty son she’d nearly strangled him.
Piejack preferred not to shoot her, but he was running out of fight. As the dreamy effect of the painkillers ebbed, so did his optimism for a blissful union. From the day he’d set his sights on Honey, physical affliction had been his only companion. Anesthetized by lust, he’d doggedly pursued the quest, convinced that he could melt Honey’s frigid resistance. So far he’d failed spectacularly. Even in his addled state, Piejack comprehended that this was a woman who wouldn’t settle easily into the role of obedient homemaker-slash-sex slave. He’d have to battle for every lousy feel, and she was strong enough to make him pay with blood. Piejack knew a Key West shrimper who’d gotten himself into the same sort of fix, with an Internet bride from the Philippines. Three nights into the honeymoon, the girl had pinned his scrotum to the mattress with a cocktail fork, then set fire to the motel room. Piejack shuddered at the thought.
He allowed the muzzle of the shotgun to kiss Honey’s forehead. “I don’t really wanna shoot ya, angel, and I gotta feelin’ you really don’t wanna die. So just do what Louis says and everything’s gonna be fine.”
Expressionless, she gazed up the barrel.
“Now, git yourself naked and let’s start this romance off proper,” Piejack said. “Then we’ll take the boat home and be happy ever after, just you, me and Charlie Main. As for your boy, well, he’s better off with his daddy. You can visit him maybe on Saturdays, if I don’t need you at the market. That’s the fuckin’ deal, angel, take it or leave it.”