CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It was too hot to eat. It was too hot to sleep. It was too hot to even move.
Louis lay still on his bed amid the damp tangled sheets, staring up at the ceiling fan. It did almost nothing to cool the cottage down but it was all he had now. Yesterday the air conditioner had finally died and his weasel landlord Pierre said it would be at least three days before he could get a new unit installed.
Louis looked down at the foot of the bed. Issy was sprawled on her side, all four legs extended, unmoving. He rose on one elbow to watch her. It took a minute but he finally saw the gentle rise and fall of her thin chest.
It was almost too hot to even breathe.
He rose, pulled on a pair of shorts and went out into the living room, glancing at the stove clock. Almost five. He had napped for two hours.
Louis grabbed a Heineken and started toward the porch, stopping as his eyes fell on the telephone and the answering machine. The machine’s steady red light stared back at him like a taunting eye.
He had called Lily this morning but there had been no answer and he had to assume — hope — that Lily and her mother were still away at ballet camp. He still hadn’t told her he wasn’t going to make it up to Michigan in time for her birthday but he was determined not to break the news with a message.
Louis took a swig of beer. He had called Joe, too. No answer at her cabin and he hadn’t had to guts the call her office, afraid he’d be told she was still on vacation.
He took another long drink of beer. He didn’t want to think of her, lying in some big bed at the Ritz Carlton in Montreal with some guy.
He brought the cold beer bottle up to his sweating forehead and closed his eyes.
Screw this.
He grabbed a second beer and went out onto the porch. The sea oats on the low dune beyond his yard were swaying slightly. If there was any air to be found, it would be down by the water.
The beach was deserted. No one searching for shells, no one braving the bite of no-see-ums. Late August on Captiva. Even paradise could sometimes feel like hell.
Louis dropped down onto the beach, wedged the unopened beer in the sand and took a drink from the open one. As he watched the sun’s slow descent into the gulf, he tried to will his mind to go blank. But Joe was there at his side.
Have you ever heard of the green flash?
No, Louis, but I suspect you’re going to tell me about it.
It’s an atmospheric phenomenon where if conditions are just right, the top of the sun will turn green just before it disappears. The Celts believed that anyone who sees it can never be hurt by love.
He had shut his eyes, giving in to the lull of the surf and he didn’t hear her come up behind him.
“Hey there, stranger.”
He looked up into Katy’s face.
“I followed your footprints down here,” she said.
He smiled and patted the sand. “Have a seat.”
She sat down, cross-legged on the sand next to him. “Where have you been? I called you a couple days ago.”
“I had to go down to Bonita Springs for a deposition. I’m testifying in an insurance fraud trial next month.”
“I tried the sheriff’s office, too, but they said they hadn’t seen you around.” She paused. “So the job there didn’t work out after all?”
He took a long draw from the beer. “Haven’t heard,” he said.
Katy was quiet for a moment. “You see that picture of Mobley in the paper?”
Louis nodded. “Yeah. He was holding my kitten.”
“How do you know it was yours?”
“I just did.”
She chuckled. “I named it Lou.”
Louis turned to her. “Lou?”
She shrugged. “The only rocker I could think of was Lou Reed. The other kitten is named Nico, after his girlfriend.”
“Lou…close enough.” He held out the second beer. “You want one?”
She nodded, took the bottle and popped the top. After taking a drink she set it down in the sand front of her. “I called you because I wanted to explain about Hachi.”
Louis knew that Mobley had reached a détente with the Seminole police chief and Keno had gone back to the reservation. No charges had been filed by anyone or against anyone.
“I know it bothers you that he got away with it,” Katy said. “But you need to understand why he did it.”
“Katy — ”
She held up a hand. “I want to tell you.” She pulled in a deep breath. “I left the rez when I was twenty so I didn’t know much about him but Moses told me what I am telling you. Hachi’s mother died when he was very young and in the tribe your social place is counted only through your mother’s side. He was taken in by my great aunt Betty’s family even though she is of a different clan. Hachi was a lonely kid. Even after the ceremony — ”
She stopped to look at Louis. “The Seminoles have a special ceremony to recognize a boy’s entrance to manhood. Even after that, he couldn’t seem to find his place. He didn’t really belong to anyone or anything.”
“Lots of people don’t fit in,” Louis said. “But they don’t commit crimes.”
“But in his mind it wasn’t a crime.”
“So why’d he go after the panthers?”
Katy let out a sigh. “It’s complicated. The tribe has doctors but they also still have shamans.”
“What, like medicine men?” Louis asked.
She nodded. “They use plants and animal parts to treat our people. They are important in our ceremonies and are very respected in the tribe. Hachi wanted to go to medical school but didn’t even make it through high school so he decided he was going to become a medicine man.”
“You just become a medicine man?”
“No, and that was the problem. Shamans are chosen and trained from boyhood.”
Louis was quiet, watching the sunset. “You said something back at the shack about Keno wanting to use the panther to help your aunt. Is that what this was all about?”
“Yes,” Katy said quietly. “He believed that if he could get the placenta of a mother panther he could use it to cure Aunt Betty’s sickness. That’s why he tried to take Bruce, to mate with Grace. But then he realized Grace was already pregnant. And he came to get me to help.”
Louis shook his head. “I have to ask, Katy. Is he mentally ill?”
She sighed. “No, just lost. And desperate to help Aunt Betty, to stop something no one can stop.”
They fell silent. The sun was hovering just above the horizon as the sky began its slow kaleidoscopic color shift.
Katy leaned forward, drawing her finger through the sand to make two intersecting lines.
“What’s that?” Louis asked.
“The world,” she said.
“I thought the world was round?”
“This is the world of man’s two souls.”
“I thought we only had one.”
In the waning light he saw her smile. “Humor me,” she said.
“Okay, go ahead.”
“The Seminoles believe we all have two souls,” she said. “The first one is the one that leaves our bodies when we die. The second one, the ghost soul, leaves the body when we dream and it sort of just wanders around until we wake up.”
“I’ve had nights like that,” Louis said.
“Well, our dream soul needs to travel to the north, but sometimes it gets lost and goes across the solopi heni. That’s our word for the Milky Way, the road that leads to the west. The west is where the dead souls go. If a ghost soul wanders into the west then when the person wakes up their ghost soul is forever sick.”
She brushed the sand from her hands. “That’s what happened to Hachi.”
Louis was staring down at the lines in the sand. “Do we all go north in our dreams?”
She looked over at him and smiled. “Yes. The north is the place of happiness.”
Louis was quiet. A sudden breeze blew in from the water, cool and smelling of rain. Far out over the gulf, a zigzag of lightning lit up the purple clouds then it was dark again.
“It’s getting late,” Katy said. “I better go.”
“Want to go get a burger or something?” Louis asked.