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

Eight

Sammy Tigertail was doing fine until the girl named Gillian started messing with his guitar. That’s when he stripped a palmetto frond and wove the leaves into a twine rope and tied her wrists to her ankles. Oddly, she did not resist.

“You don’t dress like an Indian,” she remarked as he cinched the knots. “Those are pretty nice threads.”

“Haven’t you heard? We’re all richer than Trump now.” He resumed packing his belongings into the stolen canoe.

“I had a boyfriend who played in a rock group. He had a Gibson, too,” Gillian said, “only not as cool as yours. His band was called the Cankers. Mostly they did covers of Bizkit and Weezer. Know what else? He got his thingamajig pierced.”

“I’m warning you,” said the Seminole.

“His scrotum. They all did-it was the bass player’s idea.”

Sammy Tigertail crouched directly in front of her. “If you go on with this story,” he said, “I’ll leave you here for the buzzards.”

Gillian squirmed. “You don’t scare me,” she said, but dropped the subject of her ex-boyfriend’s pierced privates.

“So where are you taking me?”

Sammy Tigertail didn’t answer because he didn’t know. He gagged her mouth with a balled-up pair of athletic socks and carried her to the canoe, which was wedged in some mangroves. Then he picked up the rifle and jogged back across the island.

In the moon glow he saw that Gillian’s friends were sleeping where they’d dropped, not far from the wisping campfire. Sammy Tigertail raised the gun and fired a shot over the beach. Quickly he stepped back into the tree line. As soon as he heard voices, he fired twice more.

Now the college kids were all on their feet, yelling and scrambling for their belongings. A male voice called Gillian’s name, and soon others chimed in. The Seminole squeezed off another round and the kids fell silent as they clambered into the remaining canoes.

Sammy Tigertail waited until they were out of sight and he could no longer hear their frantic paddling. He walked to the water’s edge and stood there, listening to the waves and trying to decide what to do next. Gillian had screwed up the whole plan. Her friends would go back to Chokoloskee and tell everyone that a sniper had chased them off the island, and that Gillian was missing. Airplanes and helicopters would be sent to search for the tangerine-colored canoe, which-Sammy Tigertail realized glumly-would stand out like a burning flare on the tea-brown creeks.

He hurried back to where he’d left the girl. Somehow she had gotten out of the canoe but he found her nearby, grunting and thrashing among the mangroves. He lugged her to a small clearing, where he cut off the palmetto ropes and uncorked the socks from her mouth and cleaned the scratches on her shins and arms.

“Stop crying,” he said.

“You killed my friends! I heard the shots.”

“Your friends are fine. All I did was scare ’em away.”

“What about me?” Gillian wiped her eyes with a sleeve of the sweatshirt. “They just left me here to rot?”

“I spooked ’em off with the gunfire.”

“What about Ethan? That guy I was with? I bet he just ran and never looked back.”

Sammy Tigertail said, “You remind me of my last girlfriend.”

Gillian sniffled and smiled. “Yeah?”

“It’s not a compliment. Take off that goddamn sweatshirt.”

“No way. I’m cold.”

He opened his duffel and dug out a gray fleece pullover, which he tossed to her. Grudgingly she removed the FSU sweatshirt.

“Give it here,” Sammy Tigertail said.

“I don’t see why you’re so pissy. It’s just a name,” she said, zipping up the fleece, “like the Atlanta Braves.”

He unsheathed a Buck knife and shredded the sweatshirt. Gillian sat stunned.

“It’s not just a name,” said Sammy Tigertail. “Do you have any clue what your people did to my tribe?”

Gillian said, “Chill, okay?” She didn’t take her eyes off the knife. “It wasn’t my people. My people were up in Ohio.”

“Yeah, screwing the Shawnee and the Chippewa.” Sammy Tigertail was depressed to think that this bubblehead would soon be a schoolteacher. It affirmed his view that white people were devolving with each generation.

He sheathed the knife and told her to take a seat in the canoe. “We’re outta here,” he said.

“Can’t we wait until the sun comes up? What if we flip over in the water?” Gillian was slapping haplessly at a mosquito. “Ethan said there’s sharks all over the place. He’s majoring in marine biology. My girlfriend’s engaged to his roommate. Well, practically.”

“I’m gonna count to three.”

She frowned. “You want me to shut up, I’ll shut up.”

Sammy Tigertail knew it was foolish to bring her along. If she remained on the island, the marine patrol or the Coast Guard would find her within hours after her friends reported her missing. She’d be hungry and sunburned, but unharmed…

Unless the other kids got hung up on the way back to the mainland. In that case, it might be several days before Gillian was located. By then the insects would have made a wreck of her and she’d be dangerously dehydrated, not that Sammy Tigertail should have cared.

Yet he did care-not much, but enough to unsettle him. He felt corrupted by the sentiment, which he blamed on his polluted half-white blood.

Into the night he paddled as fast as he could, the canoe gliding in a wash of moonlight. It occurred to the Indian that since he had no idea where he was going, it was technically impossible to get lost. At daybreak he’d stop at the nearest island, conceal the canoe and construct a lean-to that would be invisible from the air.

From the bow came Gillian’s voice: “What should I call you? I mean, since you won’t even tell me your name.”

“Thlocklo Tustenuggee,” he said.

It was his great-great-great-grandfather’s Seminole name.

“Thlocka what?” said Gillian.

Sammy Tigertail pronounced it again, although not as mellifluously as the first time. Since returning to the reservation, he had struggled to master the traditional Muskogee dialect.

“Never mind,” Gillian mumbled.

“Tiger Tail,” he said between strokes. “That’s my other name.”

“Cool. I like ’em both.”

The tip of the paddle struck something hard under the surface, jolting the canoe. Gillian yipped and said, “Easy, dude!”

Sammy Tigertail cursed under his breath as the hull screaked across a submerged oyster bar.

A few minutes later the girl said, “I did two semesters of crew.”

“What?”

“Rowing. We can take turns with the paddle,” she offered. “I’m serious. It’ll give me somethin’ to keep my mind off the damn bugs.”

“Why’d you ask to come with me?”

“I dunno, Thlocko. Why did you let me?” Gillian laughed. “I’m semi-drunk and totally stoned. What’s your excuse?”

“I’m weak,” Sammy said flatly. He dug harder against the tide.

“So, am I your first-ever hostage?” she asked.

He thought of Wilson, the tourist. “The first live one,” he said.

“You’re funny.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me one funny Injun.”

Honey Santana grew up in Miami, where her parents owned a jewelry store on Coral Way. She had three older sisters, each of whom married urologists and moved across the causeway to Miami Beach. Honey was different. Even as a child she’d felt suffocated and disoriented in the city. Crowds made her dizzy and traffic gave her migraines.

She inherited her father’s impatience and her mother’s lousy sense of direction, a combination that made her teen driving years exceptionally eventful. On the night of her senior prom, Honey’s date got blasted on Cuervo and passed out on top of her in the spacious backseat of his father’s Continental Mark IV. The task of navigating homeward fell to Honey, who missed the turn off Eighth Street and continued due west on the Tamiami Trail, all the way to the opposite coast of Florida. Honey’s date, who would grow up to be a heartthrob on a popular Latin soap opera, awoke to the surreal vision of Honey skipping barefoot in her ice-blue prom gown along the Naples beach.

On the return drive across the Everglades, the young man pulled over numerous times to throw up. The last of these pit stops occurred near a kidney-shaped pond in which a large alligator was wolfing down a purple gallinule. Honey got out of the car to watch, aghast but fascinated. After a while she went back to the Lincoln and found her date snoring in a splash of his own vomit. She took a long thoughtful walk around the pond, counting three more alligators and five old beer cans, which she gathered up.

From the road came the sound of squealing brakes. Honey turned and saw a westbound pickup skid to a halt, tires smoking. The man who stepped out wore a dark flannel shirt and pale dungarees and white rubber boots that came up to his knees. He walked over to Honey and asked if she was all right. Then he took the rusty beer cans from her arms and lobbed them one by one into the bed of his truck.

Immediately Honey Santana forgot about the tuxedoed nitwit passed out in the Continental.

The man in the rubber boots had broad shoulders, his hair was sun-bleached and his face was baked caramel brown. Honey thought he was uncommonly good-looking. He told her he was a commercial fisherman from Everglades City, and a volunteer firefighter. He said he was heading home from Dania, where he’d purchased two new propellers for his crab boat. He said his name was Perry Skinner.

“Perry, do you have a pen I can borrow?” Honey asked.

In the console of the truck he found a black marker that he used for numbering boxes of crab claws.

“That’ll do fine,” Honey said.

She walked over to the Lincoln and picked up the limp right arm of her date. She removed the silver cuff link and rolled up the sleeve. With the black marker she wrote out the word LOSER in fat block letters stretching from the young man’s wrist to his elbow.

Perry Skinner, who was standing behind Honey, said, “I can’t take you home. I’ve gotta work tomorrow.”

“I don’t want to go home,” she told him. “Anywhere except home would be lovely.”

“Look, I’m married,” he said.

“Liar.”

He grinned. “How’d you know?”

Honey hooked a finger in the waistband of his dungarees. “See, you missed a loop with your belt. My mom would never let my dad out of the house if he did that. No wife would-or girlfriend. I got ten bucks says you live alone.”

Skinner raised his hands in surrender. Honey let go of his pants.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

Honey told him. She was thinking about his outstanding smile.

“How old are you, Perry?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Well, I’m only eighteen and a half,” Honey said, “but if I stay in Miami ’til my next birthday, I’ll go totally fucking insane. Honest to God.”

Perry Skinner said he’d seen it happen before. He opened the passenger door of the truck and she climbed in.

“You didn’t even ask about my ridiculous dress,” she said.

“And you didn’t ask about my rubber boots.”

Three weeks later they got married.

Honey Santana was surprised to see Fry’s skateboard on the sidewalk when she parked in front of her ex-husband’s house. The screen door was half-open so she knocked lightly and let herself in. The two of them were in the kitchen, pretending to talk about something other than her. Honey wasn’t fooled.

“Don’t you have homework?” she asked her son.

“Just algebra. Quadratic equations-totally easy.”

“Get a move on.”

Fry looked to his father for a reprieve. Perry Skinner tossed him an apple and said, “See you at the track meet tomorrow.” Fry slung his book bag over one shoulder, shuffled out the door and skated away.

Honey said, “Let me guess-he thinks I need to start back with the shrink.”

“Be grateful you’ve got a kid that gives a shit,” Skinner said. “Want something to drink?”

“I’m fine, Perry.”

“How about an orange?”

“No, I mean I’m fine. As in, not loony,” Honey said. “Fry worries too much, same as you.”

Skinner went out on the porch and sat down in his rocking chair. Honey followed but remained standing.

“He said you found some decent kayaks,” Skinner said.

“I didn’t really come to talk about that.”

“Or say thanks, either, I guess.”

Honey was stung. “Knock it off,” she told him.

“I’m dying to hear more about these ecotours. Where exactly do you plan to go?”

“Back in the islands.” She waved her hand toward the river. “I’ve got the trip all charted out. Give me some credit, okay?”

Skinner took out a joint and lighted it up.

“Oh, that’s polite,” Honey said.

Skinner ignored the bite in her tone. “You got your medicine, I got mine. By the way, Fry can stay with me for as long as he wants.”

“What?”

“He said you needed his room for those friends who’re coming into town.”

“Oh. Right,” Honey said. “Thanks.”

“See, that wasn’t so painful.”

She let it slide. She was watching an osprey fly upriver with a fish wriggling in its talons. Her skull had filled up with two songs playing simultaneously. It sounded like “Bell Bottom Blues,” which she loved, and “Karma Chameleon,” which made her bowels cramp. Honey wilted under a churning wave of vertigo.

“You okay?” Skinner got up and guided her into the rocker.

She waited until the boom box in her brainpan went quiet. Then she said, “You heard what happened to Louis Piejack.”

“Sure did.”

“You hire those thugs to maul him?”

Skinner smiled. “And why would I do that, Honey? To avenge your honor?”

“Did you or didn’t you?”

“Go get your purse. I want to check your prescription bottles.”

“That’s real funny.”

Skinner took a heavy drag off the joint. “Louis owed money to lots of people, including one old dude in Hialeah who I know for a fact has a wicked sense of humor and no appetite for excuses.”

“So you’re saying it wasn’t you? You didn’t pay those guys to feed Louis’s fingers to the crabs?” Honey said.

Skinner blew smoke up at the cedar beams. “You act disappointed.” He pinched the joint and dropped it into a breast pocket. “Makes you feel better, I probably would’ve done something worse if I’d been there when he touched you.”

“Yeah, such as?”

“Gutting him from his asshole to his nose with the dirtiest blade I could find.”

Honey heard herself gulp. “You’re just saying that ’cause that’s what you think I want to hear. Don’t patronize me, Perry.”

“Unbelievable,” he said quietly.

She studied his expression for a trace of something more than the usual exasperation. He walked to the door of the porch and held it open.

Honey rose from the rocker. “Promise me one thing,” she said. “Promise you won’t have anyone over while Fry’s here-that girl who sells propane to the RV parks, and whoever else you’re sleeping with these days. Not with Fry in the house, okay?”

“I’ll try to restrain myself.”

“Oh, and the dentist wants him to floss twice a day.”

“For God’s sake, Honey.”

“He’s a teenager. Somebody’s got to be the drill sergeant.”

“Is he allowed to whack off once in a while?” Skinner asked.

Honey jabbed him in the ribs on her way out. “Only after he’s done his algebra,” she said.

Packing for Florida, Eugenie Fonda endeavored to convince herself that she truly wasn’t a desperate woman. Chronically restless maybe, but not hard up.

She expected that the trip would cause Boyd Shreave to get so carried away that he would stamp a romantic interpretation upon every casual sigh and gesture. This was common with inexperienced philanderers. Eugenie was determined not to repeat the big mistake she’d made with Van Bonneville, which was to underestimate the besotting power of routine sex. Certain men could misread the most perfunctory hand job as a pledge of lifetime devotion. Although Boyd Shreave wasn’t the type to rush out and murder his wife, he was probably capable of other lust-crazed misbehavior.

Eugenie was certain that she could control him. To that end, she packed four bikinis, in escalating degrees of skimpiness. She applied the same unsubtle strategy to her selection of travel panties and bras. Boyd was not a complex machine.

While struggling to shut her suitcase, Eugenie Fonda caught a sideways glimpse of herself in the bedroom mirror. She shook off her robe and stood there for a minute of blunt self-appraisal. At the end she concluded that she looked pretty darn good-nice legs, premium tits and not a crease on her face; nothing that a light foundation couldn’t hide anyway.

Undoubtedly she was the best thing that had ever happened to Boyd. He, unfortunately, was destined to be at most a very short paragraph in her future autobiography.

Eugenie slumped on the edge of the bed. What am I doing? she wondered. Why am I hopping on a plane with this slacker?

Of course he’d promised he would change. They all said that, and they never changed one little bit. Yet Eugenie always tried to persuade herself that the men she dated weren’t really dim, just deceptively shy; that deep in their souls glowed something precious and rare, which they were waiting for just the perfect moment to share.

She straightened up and told herself to get a grip. It wasn’t like she was whoring on the streets; she was vacationing with a guy who wasn’t physically repulsive and whose companionship was not entirely unbearable. Life is a ride, so what the hell.

From a hand-carved jewelry box she took the pearl stud that had been given to her by a man she’d met on a Denver talk show during her book tour. He was a famous self-help guru-blissfully married, of course-who by coincidence was also staying at the Brown Palace. At half past midnight he’d shown up at her suite toting a two-hundred-dollar bottle of cabernet, a girl-on-girl porn tape and an elephant’s dosage of Levitra, every last milligram of which he would ultimately require for a six-minute erection.

Eugenie stuck out her tongue at the mirror and deftly inserted the glossy pearl.

She understood that she must be heedful, and she must be firm. The trip to the Ten Thousand Islands meant something very different to her than it did to Boyd Shreave.

He wanted to make a whole new man of himself.

She just wanted to get out of Texas for a spell.