A month’s worth of gasoline and provisions had been delivered by Sammy Tigertail’s half brother, Lee, whom Sammy had contacted with a cellular phone that he’d found in Piejack’s johnboat. It was Lee who had delivered the news about Wilson’s car, and he’d agreed it would be premature for Sammy to return to the reservation. During Lee’s visit they had selected future drop sites and a timetable. Aware that his half brother’s wilderness skills were not as advanced as those of a full-blooded Seminole, Lee had also provided a compass, a dive watch, a NOAA marine chart and a bag of flares.
At night Sammy Tigertail was occasionally pestered in his sleep by the spirit of Wilson, who would complain sourly about sharing eternity at the bottom of a river with Louis Piejack.
“I thought you’d like some company,” Sammy Tigertail said the first time the dead tourist appeared at the camp on Toms Bight.
“The guy’s a total scumbag! Not even the damn crabs want a piece of him,” Wilson griped.
He’d brought along Piejack’s ghost for dramatic impact, but the Indian was unswayed. The depraved fish peddler looked no worse in death than he had when he was alive; the river scavengers were avoiding him like a toxin. Wilson, meanwhile, was disappearing by the biteful.
Sammy Tigertail said, “You told me you were lonely.”
“Lonely, yeah-not desperate. The dude’s a major perv,” fumed the dead tourist. “I can’t believe you wasted a perfectly good guitar on this fuckwit!”
His facial bones having been staved in by Perry Skinner’s lethal blow, Louis Piejack was unable to respond effectively in his own defense. It wouldn’t have mattered.
“I wasn’t the one who killed him,” the Seminole said.
“What happened to that guy you plugged?” Wilson inquired. “The porky one in the business suit. Hell, I’d rather hang out with him.”
“He didn’t die,” Sammy Tigertail replied.
“Always some excuse.”
“Go away now. I’m tired.”
“Fuck you, and good night,” said Wilson.
The dream visitations always ended the same way-the expired white men clomping away with their anchors dragging, two sullen figures deliquescing in a funky blue vapor. Afterward Sammy Tigertail would awaken and lie still, studying the stars. His uncle said that whenever a Seminole soul passed on, the Milky Way brightened to illuminate the path to the spirit world. On some crystal nights Sammy Tigertail worried that when his time came, the Maker of Breath would look unfavorably upon his white childhood as Chad McQueen.
He regarded the arrival of the hoary bald eagle as a powerful sign, and it remained near his camp as the days passed. Sometimes the old bird would drop a feather, which the Indian would retrieve and attach to a homemade turban of the style worn by his ancestors in the Wind Clan. Each morning he’d sneak from beneath the ragged palm canopy and scout the tree line to make sure that the great predator was still watching over him. During this period Sammy Tigertail’s sleep was undisturbed, for Wilson and Piejack did not show themselves.
On the same day that Sammy Tigertail finished rebuilding the Gibson, he began composing a tune for his mother. Musically its roots were closer to Neil Young than to the traditional Green Corn chorus, but nonetheless he was pleased by his first effort. Later he took the johnboat on the river and started casting for snook. He hooked a good one that jumped several times, attracting a nine-foot alligator. The animal exhibited no fear of the Indian, who tried to spook it by shouting and smacking the water with a frog gig. Even after the fish was boated, the gator lingered, its black fluted profile suspended in the current behind the transom. The sight reminded Sammy Tigertail of his ignominious stint in the wrestling pit at the reservation; he vowed never to harm another of the great beasts unless it was for survival.
Back at camp he cleaned and fried the snook. Then he doused the fire, stripped off his clothes and swam into the bight to watch a pod of dolphins herding mullet. He was a hundred yards from shore when the mystery helicopter returned, cruising low from the north. Exposed and unable to hide, Sammy Tigertail went vertical in the water, moving his legs only enough to keep his chin above the muddy chop. He hoped that from the air his dark head would look like a bobbing coconut.
The chopper banked and then hovered near the dolphins, which began vaulting and turning flips, the mullet spraying like silver fireworks. The aircraft was near enough that Sammy Tigertail could make out the features of the pilot and, on the passenger side, a young woman watching the frenzy through binoculars. The Seminole blinked away the salt sting so that he could better focus on the woman, her hair showing chestnut in the afternoon sunlight. When she lowered the binoculars she looked very much like Gillian.
Sammy Tigertail remained motionless, treading water and resisting an urge to wave. He was not dismayed by the idea that a rambunctious college girl in mesh panties might be searching for him, but at the same time he was grateful to the dolphins for distracting her. He could imagine Gillian’s half of the conversation on her cell phone, gloating to poor geeky Ethan about where she was and what she was seeing.
When the wild dolphin show was over, the helicopter moved on. Sammy Tigertail swam back to the beach and walked the shoreline for nearly an hour. There was no sign of the eagle, and the Seminole returned sadly to his camp, thinking the bird had been driven away by the noisy chopper. He sat down with the guitar in his makeshift hideout and resumed work on his song, which he suspected would have benefited from Gillian’s frisky creative input.
Shortly before dusk, something substantial struck the thatching above Sammy Tigertail’s sleeping bag. He grabbed Perry Skinner’s.45 and scooted from beneath the canopy, where he encountered the freshly stripped skeleton of a redfish. Slowly the Seminole raised his eyes.
Overhead, on the tallest branch of a lightning-charred mangrove, the old eagle was chewing on a ropy pink noodle of entrails. The Seminole grinned and called out in fractured Muskogee to the bird, which pretended to ignore him.
Later Sammy Tigertail moved his bedding under the stars. Although the temperature was dropping, he didn’t light a fire. The warrior spirit of his great-great-great-grandfather was traveling somewhere in the galaxy, and Sammy Tigertail wished him good night. Then the Indian closed his eyes and pondered what to do if Gillian came back tomorrow in the helicopter.
Maybe he would hide. Maybe he wouldn’t.
Honey Santana noticed the pearl stud pinned to a lamp shade next to her son’s computer.
“Where’d you get that?” she asked.
“From a woman,” Fry said.
“Miss Fonda had one of those. The telemarketer’s girlfriend.”
“You sure talk an awful lot,” he said, “for someone with their jaws wired shut.”
“Dinner’s almost ready,” said his mother.
“So I guess you’ll be skipping the corn on the cob.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Just a joke, Mom.” He gave her a hug.
She said, “Go help your father up the steps.”
Perry Skinner had moved into Honey’s painted trailer. They said it was no big deal because the arrangement was strictly temporary and didn’t mean a thing. Fry only heard that about ten times a day, which is why he was certain they were getting back together. While it was fun having both of them around at the same time, Fry was apprehensive. He remembered how they used to fight, and he worried that it would start up again once their respective injuries healed and they went back to being their old hardheaded selves.
He went outside where his dad was trying to walk with a cane. Skinner had a new left hip joint; Louis Piejack had blown the old one to bits. At the hospital a sheriff’s detective had gotten the same story from the boy and his parents: They’d gone out to Dismal Key for a picnic, and Skinner had accidentally shot himself while plinking beer cans. Fry’s mother didn’t think the detective believed them, but Fry’s father said it didn’t really matter. As vice mayor he enjoyed a solid relationship with the sheriff, who had never-even in the heat of a high-stakes poker game-questioned his credibility.