Which is what he did, sucking the bag to his face.
The screams lasted twenty-five minutes; the vomiting, twice as long.
Chub had never known such volcanic misery – skin, throat, eyes, lungs, scalp, lips; all aflame. He slapped himself senseless trying to wipe off the poison, but it seemed to have entered chemically through his pores. Daft from pain, he clawed at himself until his fingertips bled.
When his strength was gone, Chub lay motionless, mulling options. An obvious one was suicide, a sure release from agony, but he wasn't ready to go that far. Possibly, if he'd had his .357 ... but he surely couldn't work up the nerve to hang himself from a tree or slice his own wrists.
A sounder choice, Chub felt, was to club himself unconscious and remin that way until the acid symptoms wore off. But he couldn't stop thinking about the vultures and what the nigger woman had told him: Keep moving! Once the sun came up, blacking out would be dangerous. The deader you looked, the faster the hungry bastards would come for you.
So Chub made himself stay awake. In the end, what he most wanted was to be saved, plucked off the island. And he wasn't picky about whether the rescue helicopter was black or red or canary yellow; or whether it was being flown by niggers or Jews or even card-carrying communist infiltrators. Nor did he give two shits whether they carried him back to Miami or straight to Raiford prison, or even to a secret NATO fortress in the Bahamas.
The main thing was to get away from this horrible place, as soon as possible. Away.
And if, at dawn the next morning, there actually had been a rescue chopper searching Florida Bay, and if it had flown low over Pearl Key, the crew would have noticed something that would have brought them banking around sharply for a second pass: A lone naked man waving for help.
The spotter in the helicopter would've seen through his high-powered binoculars that the stranded man had a lank gray ponytail; that his body was dappled with dried blood; that one shoulder was heavily bandaged and one hand was swollen to the size of a catcher's mitt; that his sunburned face was raw and striated, and that one eye appeared scabbed and black.
And the crew would have been impressed that, despite the stranded man's severe injuries and evident pain, he'd managed to construct a device for signaling aircraft. The crew would've admired how he had lashed together mangrove branches to make a long pole, and on the end of it he had fastened a swatch of shiny fabric.
But in the end, there was nobody to see the stranded man. No helicopters were in the sky over Pearl Key at dawn the next day, or the day after, or for many days that followed.
No one was searching for Onus Gillespie, the person known as Chub, Because no one knew he was missing.
Every morning he stood in the sunniest spot on the island and feverishly waved his makeshift flag at glistening specks in the blue – 7275 from Miami International, F-16s from Boca Chica, Lears from North Palm Beach, all of which were flying far too high over Florida Bay to see him.
Finally the beer was gone, then the beef jerky, then the last of the fresh water. Not long afterwards, Chub lay down in the coarse bleached sand and did not move. Then the vultures came, just like the bitch had said they would.
Nine months later a poacher would find a skull, two femurs, a rusty can of pepper spray and an oilskin tarpaulin. He would be appropriately intrigued by the doomed man's handmade pole and the unusual streamer tied to it:
A pair of skimpy orange shorts, just like babes at Hooters wore.
On the drive to Simmons Wood, they went back and forth with the radio. Tom got a Clapton, while JoLayne took a Bonnie Raitt and a Natalie Cole (on the argument that "Layla" was long enough to count as two songs). They wound up in a discussion of guitarists, a topic as yet unexplored in the relationship. JoLayne was delighted to hear Tom include Robert Cray in his personal pantheon, and as a reward yielded the next two selections. "Fortunate Son" was playing, full blast, when they arrived.
JoLayne bolted from the car and ran to the for sale sign, which she yanked triumphantly from the ground. Tom took the baby cooters out of the tank one at a time and placed them in a linen pillowcase, which he knotted loosely at the neck.
"Careful," JoLayne told him.
A chapel-like stillness embraced them as soon as they entered the woods, and they didn't speak again until they got to the creek. JoLayne sat on the bluff. She patted the ground and said, "Places, Mr. Krome."
The sun was almost down, and the pale dome of sky above them was tinged softly with magenta. The air was crisp and northern. JoLayne pointed out a pair of wild mergansers in the water and, on the bank, a raccoon prowling.
Tom leaned forward to see more. His face was bright. He looked like a kid at a great museum.
"What are you thinking?" she asked.
"I'm thinking anything is possible. Anything. That's how I feel when I'm out here."
"That's the way it's supposed to feel."
"Anyway, what's a miracle? It's all relative," he said. "It's all in somebody's head."
"Or in their heart. Hey, how're my babies?"
Tom peeked in the pillowcase. "Excited. They must know what's up."
"Well, let's wait till Mister Raccoon is gone."
JoLayne smiled to herself and wrapped her arms around her knees. A flight of swallows came top-gunning out of the tree line, gulping gnats. Later Tom was certain he heard the whinny of a horse, but she said no, it was just an owl.
"I'll learn," he promised.
"There's another piece of land, not far from here. Once I found a bear track there."
In the twilight Tom could barely make out her expression.
"A black bear," she said, "not a grizzly. You'll still need to go to Alaska for one of those."
"Any old bear would be fine."
She said, "It's also for sale, that land where I saw the track. I'm not sure how many acres."
"Clara would know."
"Yes. She would. Come on, it's time."
She led him down to the creek. They walked along the bank, stopping here and there to place baby turtles in the water.
JoLayne was saying, "Did you know they can live twenty, twenty-five years? I read a paper in BioScience ..."
Whispering all this – Tom wasn't sure why, but it seemed natural and right.
"Just think," she said. "Twenty years from now we can sit up there and watch these guys sunning on the logs. By then they'll be as big as army helmets, Tom, and covered with green moss. I can't wait."
He reached into the sack and took out the last one.
"That's a red-belly," she said. "You do the honors, Mr. Krome."
He placed the tiny cooter on a flat rock. Momentarily its head emerged from the shell. Then out came the stubby curved legs.
"Watch him go," JoLayne said. The turtle scrambled comically, like a wind-up toy, landing with a quiet plop in the stream.
"So long, sport. Have a great life." With both hands she reached for Tom. "I need to ask you something."
"Fire away."
"Are you going to write a story about all this?"
"Never," he said.
"But I was right, wasn't I? Didn't I tell you it'd be a good one?"
"You did. It was. But you'll never read about it in the paper."
"Thank you."
"In a novel, maybe," he said, playfully pulling free. "But not in a newspaper."
"Tom, I'll kill you." She was laughing as she chased him up the hill, into the tall pines.