“Are you kidding? They love me. I’m up for a promotion.”
“That’s great news.” Lily bit her lip. “This is my fault, too, Boyd. I’ve been so tied up with the restaurants that I didn’t notice what was happening between us.”
In fact she’d been very busy-quietly closing a deal to sell her six pizza joints to the Papa John’s corporation for a boggling sum of cash and common stock, none of which she intended to share with Boyd Shreave in the upcoming divorce. Lily felt sure that her husband’s unfaithfulness would make him an unlikely candidate for alimony in the eyes of most Texas judges, especially the Republican ones. In the meantime, Lily was finding it strangely enjoyable-almost exciting-to toy with him.
She said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s get dressed.”
Shreave frowned. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“But Judge Joe Brown is on in fifteen minutes.”
“Great. Now I’m married to Rain Man.” Lily steered Boyd out of the kitchen, saying, “When’s the last time Judge Joe gave you a hard-on?”
Later, in the car, Shreave sat solemn and petrified. He feared that Lily was taking him on a shopping adventure to the adult-video store a few blocks from their house-the same place he’d been renting DVDs for his clandestine visits to Eugenie Fonda’s apartment. Shreave had no faith that the video-store clerk would be merciful enough to pretend not to recognize him, or to not mention the $37.50 in late fees he’d piled up.
But Lily went speeding past the porn parlor, and Shreave sagged in relief. She wheeled into a busy strip mall and led him into a bagel shop, which he vaguely recalled from a long-ago date, before they were married.
“We came here the morning after our first night together,” Lily reminded him.
“Oh, I remember,” Shreave said.
“The night, or the bagels?”
“Both.” Shreave forced a laugh. He was sweating like a hog with typhoid.
Lily clearly was planning something dramatic, and Shreave waited in a state of pale dread. He couldn’t possibly resume sexual relations with his wife and still carry on with Eugenie; it would be way too much work. While some men were able and even eager to juggle the needs of many women, Shreave withered at the thought. Whether on the job or in the sack, he’d never been burdened with an abundance of ambition.
“We’ll have two raisin cinnamons,” Lily told the waiter, “with cream cheese.”
“And ice water for me,” Shreave added urgently.
For some reason his wife had not removed her sunglasses. She appeared to be smiling to herself as she pulled her frosted hair back into a ponytail. From her handbag she took the car keys, which she let fall with a jingle to the linoleum floor.
“Oops,” she said, and disappeared beneath the tabletop.
Shreave gripped the arms of his chair as if plummeting on a crippled jetliner.
“What are you doing!” he whispered bleakly.
The question was answered by the sound of a zipper, his own. “Sshhh,” came the muffled counsel from his wife. “Just relax, sweetheart.”
Never before had Boyd Shreave felt a need to fake impotence, and he was not up (or rather, down) to the task. As Lily rapidly got the better of him, he floundered in a state between panic and marvel-not once in thirty-five years had he been publicly fellated, and now it had happened twice in as many weeks, with different women! Most men would have found the coincidence thrilling, but Shreave worried about the heavy implications. He understood that yielding to his wife would officially reinitiate his marital obligations, and compromise his secret life.
He ignored the gapes of other diners and pretended to study the menu listings printed on the paper place mat, all the while endeavoring to compress his knees together. However, Lily would not be dislodged.
Just as surrender seemed imminent, the raisin cinnamon bagels arrived. Shreave seized the moment to stage a mishap, overturning a tumbler of cold water on his lap. Lily came out sputtering from beneath the table, Shreave loudly chastising the innocent waiter for his clumsiness.
The restaurant manager picked up their tab for breakfast, but the couple rode home in a slack and deflated silence.
The circumstances of Sammy Tigertail’s conception had not been concealed from him. His father drove a Budweiser truck three times a week between Naples and Fort Lauderdale, and was a regular customer at the Miccosukee service plaza where Sammy Tigertail’s mother worked in the gift shop. Because she had serious doubts about trying to raise a half-white son on the reservation, Sammy Tigertail’s mother reluctantly agreed to let his father keep the boy.
So, for his first fourteen and a half years, Sammy Tigertail was Chad McQueen. He lived in a middle-class subdivision in Broward County with his father and, beginning at age four, a stepmother who aggressively attempted to acculturate him. Growing up, the boy showed no interest in soccer leagues or video games or skateboarding. His passion was roaming the outdoors, and learning the rock music that his father played on the car radio. By the time he was in first grade, the kid was singing along to Creedence and the Stones and the Allman Brothers. Everybody said he was going to turn out fine, despite his Indian genes.
Then one day his father died suddenly. After the funeral, the boy’s stepmother drove him back to the Everglades and dropped him at the truck stop. He had sensed it coming, and he was privately looking forward to the move. Every other Sunday his father had taken him to visit his real mother at the Big Cypress, and the boy liked it out there.
“I should’ve never let go of you,” his mom said when he arrived with his suitcase and fishing rod. “This is where you ought to be.”
“I believe so,” the boy said.
“Remember the time you caught that cottonmouth with your bare hands? You were only seven.”
“I didn’t know it was poisonous,” the boy reminded her. It had been an embarrassing episode. “I thought it was a water snake,” he added.
“But you weren’t afraid!” his mother said supportively. “That’s when I knew you belonged here, and not in that other world. First thing we do now is fix your name-starting today you’re a Tigertail, same as me.”
“Chad Tigertail,” the boy said proudly.
His mother winced and shook her head. The boy agreed: Chad was definitely too white for the reservation.
“What about Sammy?” he suggested.
“Perfect. That was your great-grandfather’s name.”
“Was he a fighter?”
“No, a trapper. But your great-great-great-grandfather was a chief.”
“Tiger Tail?” the boy cried excitedly. “The Tiger Tail?”
It was true. Sammy was descended from one of the last great Seminole warriors, Thlocklo Tustenuggee, a cunning leader whose fate Sammy chose to regard as a mystery. Most accounts said the U.S. Army had shipped the chief off to New Orleans, where he’d died of tuberculosis in a stinking military dungeon. But at least one teller of the Tiger Tail legend claimed he’d committed suicide by swallowing ground glass on the ship to Louisiana. Another said he’d escaped to Mexico and ultimately made his way back to Florida, where he’d lived to be a very old man.
Sammy felt honored to be half of a true Tigertail and, except for his Irish blue eyes, he looked full-blooded. To make up for the time lost during his white childhood, he spent hours listening to the stories of the elders. He envied them for having grown up in a time when the tribe lived in relative isolation, buffered by swamp from the other world.
Now things were different. Now there were casinos and hotels and truck stops, and the stampede of outsiders meant big money for the Seminole corporations. A few of the tribal bosses even flew around Florida in private jets and helicopters, which impressed some people but not Sammy Tigertail. He remained on the reservation and worked hard, although his frequent bad luck caused others to whisper that he was cursed by the paleness in his past. It was a thought that also had occurred to Sammy Tigertail, and shadowed him now like a buzzard as he paddled alone across Chokoloskee Bay.