“I know.”
They stepped out onto the flats and pulled the skiff toward the trees. The shoreline was longer than on the other island, and more densely foliated. Fry thought he smelled camp smoke but he couldn’t see any fires.
After securing the boat, Skinner started threading through the mangroves. Fry stayed close and kept quiet, even when the barnacle-covered prop roots raked his legs. They followed the curve of a small bay, searching for an opening.
“Light,” Skinner whispered.
Fry aimed the beam.
“No. Over there.” His father pointed.
The spot fell on a red kayak and a yellow kayak, empty and tethered together.
“Those are Mom’s!” At first, Fry was elated, then queasy with dread. What if they were too late?
Skinner weaved quickly through the trees. Once he broke onto dry land, he began to run. Fry struggled to keep pace but soon he fell, overcome by a shooting pain in his ribs and a hot wave of nausea. Before vomiting he adjusted his Dolphins helmet to avoid soiling the face guard. In a moment Skinner was there, steadying him by the shoulders.
“Go on. I’ll catch up later,” Fry said. He was embarrassed to be puking in front of his father, who already felt guilty about taking him out of the hospital.
“Don’t leave this spot-you understand?” Skinner gave the boy’s arm a firm but affectionate squeeze.
Fry handed over the spotlight. “But I want to help find Mom.”
“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Do not move.”
“I heard you, Dad.”
He waited until he was alone before upchucking again. He hoped it wasn’t fear that was making him sick. He hoped it was a flu bug, or even the knot on his head.
He sat back, resting against the rock-hard trunk of a gumbo limbo. His ankles stung from the barnacle scrapes, but at least his stomach was settling. Still, he meant to obey his father and remain right where he was. He had no intention of going anywhere…
Until he heard among the stirring leaves a soft voice. Fry cupped the ear holes of his helmet and listened-it was definitely a woman. She was speaking in a hurried, secretive tone.
The boy sprang up and ran toward the voice. He was moving at a steady jog, snapping branches and kicking deadwood, when he burst from a thicket and surprised her. He was crestfallen to see that it wasn’t his mother.
“Well, if it ain’t Dan Marino,” the woman said, “scaring the holy crap outta me.”
Fry was out of breath and nauseated again. The woman steered him to an aluminum suitcase and made him sit on it. She had thick light-colored hair and wore a cotton pullover, and she was nearly as tall as his father. In one hand she held a cell phone and in the other a flashlight. Fry doubted she was the college girl who’d run off with the poacher; she looked too old to be in school.
“What’s up with the helmet?” she asked.
“I got a concussion. I’m out here lookin’ for my mom.”
“Yeah, and I’m lookin’ for Johnny Depp.”
“I’m serious. She took some people on a kayak trip.”
The woman turned the flashlight on Fry’s face. “Oh my Lord. Are you Honey’s boy?”
Fry pushed to his feet. “Where is she? Is she all right?”
The woman was silent for a few moments. “Damn,” she said finally.
“What’s wrong? Tell me!”
“Oh, she’s fine. It’s just that I honestly wasn’t planning to go back there…but now here you are. How in the name of Mother Mary you found us in the middle of the night, I can’t imagine.”
Fry said, “Wait-you’re one of the kayakers.” She was the woman he’d seen from a distance, outside his mother’s trailer, while they were loading the car for the trip.
“Where’s your husband?” he asked.
The woman made a pinched face. “We are not married, thank you very much. He’s my former travel companion and he’s with your mom right now, griping like a brat and driving her crazy, no doubt. It’s a long, pitiful story.”
“She said she knew you both from junior high. Said you were old friends.”
The woman was grandly amused. “Where’s your boat, by the way? Can I hitch a ride back to the real world?”
“But we heard a gunshot, my dad and I.”
“Yeah, some spaced-out Seminole accidentally plugged the guy who loaned me this cell phone, which unfortunately just ran out of juice in the middle of an extremely urgent call. My name’s Genie, by the way.” The woman firmly shook his hand. “It’s okay, the guy who got shot didn’t die or anything. Technically, he didn’t even loan me the phone-I sorta borrowed it while he was passed out.”
Fry said, “That’s how I found you. I heard you talking to somebody.”
“The reservation desk at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples,” the woman explained. “Tragically, the battery croaked before they could take my MasterCard number. You mentioned your father-where’d he waltz off to?”
Fry pointed. “Out there somewhere.” He filled her in about Louis Piejack.
“Whoa, hold on-your old man’s sneakin’ around this godforsaken jungle in the middle of the night, risking his butt to rescue his ex-wife. Is that possibly true?” The woman named Genie seemed enchanted by the notion.
“Is there a gun in that suitcase?” Fry asked.
“Just a videocam,” she said, “but don’t worry, sport, you won’t need to shoot anybody. The Indian’s girlfriend told me he brained some pervo that sounds like your mom’s stalker. She said the guy looked dead as a doornail.”
“Yesssss!” Fry pumped a fist.
Genie tossed the useless cell phone into the bushes. “Let’s go find your folks,” she said, “and get the hell outta here.”
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.”