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 calclass="underline" “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!