"Nature Girl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hiaasen Carl)

Twenty

In the summary of his report for the Smithsonian Institution, the Rev. Clay MacCauley thoughtfully editorialized about future relations between the Seminoles and the white settlers who by 1880 were flooding into Florida. The ethnologist foresaw that “great and rapid change” was inevitable, and that the Seminole was “about to enter a future unlike any past he has known.” MacCauley argued for justice and fairness in dealing with the tribe, so that the young braves would be friendlier toward whites than their jaded, battle-weary elders. It was the minister’s hope that the Indians might in a climate of peaceful cooperation forget “their tragic past,” but he warned that angering them could be a costly blunder.

Now that he can no longer retreat, MacCauley wrote, now that he can no longer successfully contend, now that he is to be forced into close, unavoidable contact with men he has known only as enemies, what will he become?

A gambling tycoon like my uncle Tommy, thought Sammy Tigertail, recalling the passage. Or a fucked-up half-breed like me.

He was pondering the irony of MacCauley’s question while Gillian made love to him. It was the closest-possible contact one could have with a white person, and indeed it seemed unavoidable. Sammy Tigertail believed the pacifist preacher would have approved of what he and Gillian were doing-the conciliatory spirit of the act, if not some of the boisterously subjugating positions. It’s better than smoking a damn peace pipe, he thought.

The Indian had succumbed to the college girl’s advances because it wasn’t a surrender, or the commencement of another foolish doomed affair; it was farewell. Gillian would be departing the island the next day, whether she wanted to or not. Never would Sammy Tigertail set eyes on her again. There was no other choice-not after his stray bullet had struck Lester. A wounded white man was apt to stir up more trouble than a dead one.

Reverend MacCauley was wrong about one thing, Sammy Tigertail thought. Retreat is always an option when there are ten thousand places to hide.

Gillian rocked briskly on top of him, her eyes half-closed and the golden lick of firelight on her skin.

“I wish you’d hold me the way you hold that damn guitar,” she was saying, “like you’ll never let go.”

“Quiet,” Sammy Tigertail whispered.

“Quiet’s okay sometimes,” she said, slowing down. “Sexy, even.”

“Exactly.”

“You know who’s quite the talker? Ethan. In the sack, I mean.”

“Not now, please?”

She arched, playfully clenching a certain muscle. “What’s the matter, Thlocko, you jealous?”

Sammy Tigertail measured his response.

“Don’t worry, you got him beat by a mile.” Gillian squeezed again. Then on she went: “Ethan’s gotta talk dirty or he can’t keep it up. But at the same time he’s, like, unbelievably shy. I’m serious, he won’t even say the F word!”

Sammy Tigertail bucked his hips so forcefully that Gillian hiccuped. “You go on with this story,” he told her, “I’m gonna stuff Lester’s socks in your mouth.”

“That old trick?” She giggled. “I don’t think so.”

He weighed the pros and cons of gagging her, then decided against it. Once she was gone, a life of sublime silence awaited him.

Gillian said, “He was so shy-Ethan was-that whenever we did it, he spoke German. That’s the only way he could make himself talk dirty! Problem is, nothing sounds dirty in German the way Ethan says it. But here he goes, poundin’ away, yankin’ on my hair, tellin’ me do this, Fraulein, do that-only I haven’t got a frigging clue what he’s talkin’ about. No lie, Thlocko, it’s like he’s reading from the owner’s manual of his old man’s Mercedes. Is that wild or what?”

The Indian said, “I’ve got a question.”

“But this is only after he told me about setting free those dolphins-before then I wouldn’t go to bed with him. What is it you just said?”

“I wanted to ask you something.”

“Like?”

“Could you check and see if we’re still having sex?”

Gillian smiled. “We are,” she said. “In front of Lester, too. Does it still count if he’s unconscious?”

Sammy Tigertail began pumping at such a pace that Gillian quit gabbing and hung on with both hands. Somehow they finished together, he with a low sigh and she with a sequence of piercing, feral yelps. Afterward he gently rolled her onto a blanket, where she curled up like a kitten.

He was standing away from the campfire, struggling to turn his khakis right-side out, when a gun barrel poked him in the small of the back. His first thought was that the wounded white man had made a miraculous recovery.

But it wasn’t Lester.

“Be still,” the voice warned.

“Yes, sir.”

A pause, then: “Sammy, is that you?” The gunman spun him around and exclaimed, “I’ll be damned!”

“Hello, Mr. Skinner.”

“What happened to your head, man?”

“I fell on an oyster shell,” Sammy Tigertail lied.

Gillian drowsily looked up, tugging the blanket over her breasts. “Who’s that?”

“A friend,” the Seminole said hopefully.

He and Perry Skinner had met when Sammy Tigertail was a teenager and new to the tribe. Skinner had rolled his truck after swerving to miss an otter pup on the Tamiami Trail. Sammy Tigertail and his uncle had been the first to drive up on the scene, and they’d dragged Skinner out of the wreck moments before it caught fire. Later Sammy Tigertail learned that Skinner was an important and prosperous man in Everglades City. It was he who’d loaned the young Indian the crab boat on which Wilson’s body was ferried to Lostmans River.

Sammy Tigertail assumed that’s why Skinner had tracked him down-the cops must have sorted out what had happened, then informed Skinner that his vessel had been illegally used to transport a dead tourist.

“I can guess why you’re here,” the Seminole said.

Skinner stuck the handgun in his belt. “Excellent. Where is she?”

Sammy Tigertail was puzzled. “Who, Mr. Skinner?”

“Honey.” For Gillian’s edification he added: “My ex.”

Sammy Tigertail tried to conceal his relief that Skinner’s surprise appearance was unconnected to the Wilson fiasco.

“She’s out here somewhere, Sammy. You remember what she looks like, right?”

“It’s big country, Mr. Skinner. I haven’t seen her.”

The Indian had met Honey Santana only once, but that was enough. Every autumn since the truck accident, Skinner had given Sammy Tigertail twenty-five pounds of fresh stone-crab claws to take back to the reservation. The gift was always picked up on October 15, the first day of the trap season, when the largest crabs were caught. One year when the Seminole came to get the cooler, Honey Santana happened to be at the packing house. She was reaming out her then-husband about a cracked exhaust pipe on one of his boats, which she said was polluting the air on the river, gassing the herons and ospreys. Sammy Tigertail had never seen a woman so lovely and so possessed. She had rattled him, and he hadn’t forgotten the episode. He had also not forgotten the sight of Perry Skinner calmly slipping on a set of Remington earmuffs to block out his wife’s fulminations.

“What’s she doing out here?” Gillian asked. “Did she, like, run away?”

Skinner didn’t answer. He said, “We heard gunfire on this island.”

“That was him”-Gillian was pointing at the Seminole-“shooting him.” She turned and nodded toward the prone pudgy white man.

“I didn’t mean to, Mr. Skinner,” Sammy Tigertail said. He noticed that the sky in the east was beginning to turn lavender. The sun would be coming up soon.

Skinner bent over and studied the man with the bloody shoulder, who was breathing loudly but steadily. Skinner said he didn’t recognize him.

“We call him Lester. He’s a private eye,” Gillian volunteered.

“Sammy, listen to me,” Skinner said. “There’s a sick fucker with a taped-up hand chasing after Honey. He’s got a johnboat, and he’s also carryin’ a sawed-off. You seen him?”

Gillian started to blurt something but the Seminole silenced her with a glare.

“Sammy?” Skinner said evenly.

“No, I haven’t seen anybody like that.” Sammy Tigertail hated lying to Mr. Skinner, but he didn’t need another corpse in his life.

“Tell him the truth. You didn’t do anything wrong,” said Gillian.

The Indian watched helplessly as she wrapped herself in the blanket and hurried to the other side of the campsite. She came back holding the sawed-off shotgun for Perry Skinner to see.

“Band-Aid Man was gonna shoot Lester, so Thlocko whacked him on the head,” she said.

“You kill him?” Skinner asked.

Sammy Tigertail shrugged. “He looked pretty dead. Smelled dead, too.”

“That would be wonderful news.” Skinner came very close to smiling.

“I didn’t mean to hit the man so hard.”

“We’ll take care of it, Sammy. Don’t worry.”

“Where was your wife headed?” the Seminole asked.

“Out here somewheres. And it’s ‘ex-wife,’ Sammy. She was taking some friends on a kayak tour.”

“How many people?”

“A man and a woman from Texas,” Skinner said.

“The kayaks, were they red and yellow?”

“That’s right. I found ’em tied in the mangroves not far from here.”

Sammy Tigertail was pleased to know that soon he’d have the island all to himself. “I think I know where she’s campin’, Mr. Skinner. Sorry, but I stole their food and water.”

“The boats, too,” Gillian chimed in.

“Water was all I wanted but the munchies were stashed in the same bag,” the Seminole explained.

Perry Skinner said, “You’re gonna take me there right away.”

“Definitely.”

“First let me run back and get my boy. I left him in the woods.”

“We’ll wait here,” Gillian promised.

After Skinner had gone, she said, “You do not want to mess with that guy.”

Sammy Tigertail nodded. “His old lady, either.”

Gillian leaned back and admired at the blushing sky. “Hey, there’s the sun!”

“Yup. Another day in paradise.”

“What should we do with the shotgun?”

“Toss it,” said the Seminole.

Waiting for sunrise, Boyd Shreave flailed at a lone mosquito floating about his head and shoulders. It felt too cold for mosquitoes, and Shreave feared he was being pursued by a dangerous rogue.

Earlier Honey had insisted upon reading aloud from a paperback text devoted to the insects, which were by far the deadliest creatures on earth. Shreave knew this was true because he’d seen a show about it on the Animal Planet channel. Millions of humans perished from hideous mosquito-borne maladies, including dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever, St. Louis encephalitis and the West Nile virus. Over the centuries the flying pests had brought painful death to popes and peasants alike, and ravaged robust armies.

However, of approximately 2,500 known species, the smallish mosquito common to the salt marshes of the western Everglades carries no pathogens lethal to man. The fact would have thrilled Boyd Shreave, had he been aware of it. Desperately he continued slapping at his tiny tormentor, which he could not see in the dim pre-dawn but whose sinister presence was betrayed by a faint taunting hum. Any cessation in the buzzing sound unnerved him, for it meant that the mosquito surreptitiously had alighted somewhere-probably upon a vulnerable tract of Shreave’s flesh. Occasionally he found himself clawing at imagined bites to dislodge the toxic microbes.

As Shreave conducted his frantic duel with the hypodermic predator, Honey Santana grew weary of watching him swing clownishly at thin air or scratch madly at himself like a psoriatic baboon. Finally she rolled up her paperback and, with one deft swipe, flattened the mosquito on a button of Shreave’s flowered shirt. He aimed a flashlight at the small death splotch, the sight of which comforted him until he remembered from the Animal Planet program that mosquito blood wasn’t red. It was his own mortal nectar that had squirted from the mushed corpse; the sneaky prick had pricked him after all.

“I’m dead,” he groaned.

Honey sneezed. “Don’t be such a wuss,” she said.

Her allergies had been acting up all night. She sneezed again and said, “How about a ‘bless you’? Were you raised by wolves, or what?”

Shreave flicked away the dead bug. “Don’t these things carry the bird flu, too?”

“No, Boyd, that would be a bird.”

“How about HIV?”

“How about a Xanax?” Honey said.

Shreave worriedly examined himself for telltale bumps. “I could damn well die out here thanks to that little bastard.”

“Only the females bite,” Honey remarked.

Shreave looked up and made a sour face. “Christ, somethin’ stinks.”

Honey couldn’t smell anything because her nose was runny. She wiped it somewhat undaintily on her shirt.

“Like fish,” Shreave complained. “Smells like a ditchful of rotten fish.”

“It’s low tide, that’s all.” Honey sneezed again. She stood up and said, “Let’s go, Boyd.”

He eyed her uncertainly. “Where to?”

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 dick?”

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.