That’s not the only reason I didn’t fire. I wanted to see what happened. If he made it to the boat and climbed aboard, yes, I’d pull the trigger-better to wound an unarmed man than to be lost to a place like this.
It all depended on the python. Larry hadn’t noticed what resembled six feet of fire hose stretched across the stern. The tail, my warning flag. That’s all that was visible. It lay as motionless as a hose, too. The snake was still a lifeless lump due to hypothermia.
Larry doesn’t know that, I thought. When he sees what’s in there, he’ll panic again and run.
If he didn’t…?
That decision could wait. I would let it play out, watching from the water’s edge.
Larry stumbled, fell sideways. His bulk made a mighty splash, displacing a geyser that sprinkled the deck of my skiff.
I watched the python’s tail twitch, then twitch again. Or was it an illusion created by waves rocking the hull?
The big man righted himself, tried to stand and fell forward, but this time lunged within a body length of the skiff.
I watched the python’s tail slowly curl itself into a question mark. Or was that imaginary, too? When angry, I am often guilty of perverse hope.
Larry did something smart that Roberta and I had learned weeks ago. He closed the distance by belly crawling, then reached up and slapped a big hand on the gunnel so he could hang there and catch his breath.
My eyes swung, hoping for a reaction, but there was nothing to watch. The python’s tail lay as immobile as a frozen chunk of pipe.
I’d holstered the pistol but drew it when the man noticed me for the first time. Immediately, he turned his back and hollered, “Once I get the motor started, you’re welcome to come aboard. But not with that damn gun.”
“Look what’s on the deck,” I said. “You might change your mind about me and my gun.”
He swung his head around, still sitting on his butt in the water. “In here?” He rapped the hull with his knuckles. “I don’t give a shit. All I know is, you won’t shoot an unarmed man in the back. That would look real good in a magazine, the famous girl fishing guide…” His voice trailed off because of a sudden change in my behavior. He’d seen a swift shift in countenance, and I’d raised the pistol as if to shoot him in the head. “Hey, don’t! I said you can come along. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“I warned you,” I said, barely able to whisper. “Move… Get away from there.”
The man considered the pistol’s angle and looked up to see what I was aiming at. His brain had only a microsecond to process the image-a swaying lamppost with a serpent’s head, a flicking tongue the width of a pitchfork.
I fired.
The python struck.
Larry screamed.
TWENTY-NINE
More than a month after returning from Choking Creek, I drove Roberta to her obstetrician’s office in South Fort Myers. We were unaware that March 30, a Friday, was considered National Doctors’ Day until we entered to find baked goods on a tray in a room decorated with balloons. Fittingly, they were about fifty-fifty pink and blue.
I am not a bows-and-ribbons type of person, so could only pretend to appreciate their gaiety.
Roberta said, “See why I like the place? Only a woman doctor would feed me brownies before ordering me to lose weight. Not that she will”-my friend and business partner took a bite-“but she might if someone doesn’t finish off that fudge. Get to work, Hannah, or I’ll have to fight that skinny nurse for the tray.”
I selected crackers and a wedge of cream cheese instead. Roberta felt betrayed until I opened my shoulder bag and produced a jar of marmalade, which I dolloped out liberally.
“Is that new?”
“Right off the stove. I made a fresh batch yesterday.”
“Not that. That! I don’t remember seeing it.”
She was referring to the vintage leather bag I’d placed beside my chair. Yes, it was new. A present to myself after, despairing, finally throwing away my favorite shoulder pack. Bloodstains are tough to remove from ripstop nylon. I associated them with Larry Luckheim, another form of stain. He’d bled a lot-not an episode I cared to revisit. An afternoon spent answering questions from police, then reporters, had taken the dazzle out of what happened after the python anchored its teeth in Larry’s head.
“Try this,” I said, and heaped marmalade onto a cracker.
With roots in 4-H homemaking, Roberta would not have faked her wonderment when she took a bite. “Oh my lord…” Her eyes widened “You made this?”
I showed her the hand-lettered labeclass="underline"
Mother Tree
Sour Orange Marmalade
“Incredible. And so… different. I’ve never had anything that comes close.”
“It’s easy to make. Just sugar and oranges, then a lot of boiling. Separate the pulp, and the more sliced peeling you add, the better. That makes it gel-the natural pectin in the skin. You already know the real secret.”
“Special oranges.” She smiled, and reached for another cracker.
Special. Yes, they were.
In the vintage leather bag was my laptop. Through emails, Dr. Gentry and her husband had kept us updated on their campaign to make our efforts profitable. An application for a provisional patent had been filed. Every t and i crossed and dotted. According to their inside sources, ours was the first to claim a foothold in an important, esoteric niche.
Roberta got up to use the restroom, muttering something about “Even faucets get a break.”
Pregnant women, I had learned, do love a good joke about peeing.
I watched her waddle away, then opened my computer and found Dr. Gentry’s most recent email.
Ladies, I had a great conversation with Vern Norviel of Berkeley, one of the nation’s leading legal experts on intellectual properties and biotechnology. I have good news. Sequencing of samples you provided last month suggest they are more closely related to original Spanish seed stock than any previously tested. Congratulations!
According to Vern, if the clones prove to be more resistant to parasites/pathogens, the beneficial DNA from your plants can be reproduced. This is done via a gene processing device, then inserted into the DNA of modern varietals. The technique is a genetic breakthrough, recently named with the acronym CRISPR. (See below.)
Vern is going to put me in touch with Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church (he was the first to do Neanderthal sequencing), who might be willing to join in as a partner for profit (and fun).
There was still a lot of lab work and experimentation to be done, of course. Various scion varietals would have to be grafted onto our Spanish rootstock, then nurtured to fruition-something Roberta looked forward to during her maternity leave. The process was daunting. It would be two years or more before any conclusions could be drawn regarding how resistant our hybrids were to citrus greening disease. Yet, at any stage of the process, Dr. Gentry had told me, I could sell my percentage of the partnership and walk away. She had an investor who’d already offered 1.5 million dollars for my share, and the Gentrys were confident the figure would double within a year.
Roberta returned from the restroom only to be summoned by the nurse. I shouldered my new bag and went out for air, focusing on the door rather than a room full of very ripe, rosy-cheeked women. How much champagne and backseat jockeying, I wondered, did their numbers represent?
My peevish attitude accompanied me outside to the parking lot, where I rationalized my mood. Seduction isn’t a word, it’s a drama. Implied are three components: an instigator, a willing participant, and an objective, although the participant can be just as eager; slyer, too.