Gillian gobbled down the granola bar and complained of a killer hangover. “You got any Tylenols?”
“Sleep it off,” the Seminole advised unsympathetically.
He hauled the canoe into the mangroves and carefully covered it with loose debris from what appeared to be a rotted dock. Using the paddle as a machete, he began hacking his way uphill through a thicket of formidable cactus plants. Gillian followed, toting the guitar case. Jagged shells crunched under their feet.
Beneath a vast and ancient royal poinciana was a half-sunken concrete structure that Sammy Tigertail recognized as a cistern. It had a blistered tin roof that seemed intact, promising not only shade but concealment. The Indian was relieved that he wouldn’t need to construct a lean-to, a wilderness task he had never before attempted.
Farther along they came to a rubble of sun-bleached boards, cinder block, trusses and window frames-the remains of Al Seely’s homestead. In a nearby ravine lay hundreds of empty Busch cans older than Gillian, who picked one up and studied it as if it were an archaeological treasure.
Sammy Tigertail walked back to the shoreline to retrieve the rest of the gear. He returned to see Gillian slashing at a cactus with the end of the paddle.
“I heard they use ’em for food in the desert. I heard they taste pretty good,” she said.
“This ain’t the Sahara, girl.”
“Fine. You’re the Indian,” she said. “Tell me what’s safe to eat around here.”
Sammy Tigertail didn’t have a clue. Since returning to the reservation from the white man’s world, he’d been unable to shake a fondness for cheeseburgers, rib eyes and pasta. Because of modern commerce coming to the Big Cypress, there had been no need to familiarize himself with the food-gathering skills of his ancestors, who’d farmed sweet potatoes and made bread flour from coontie. Sammy Tigertail wouldn’t have recognized a coontie root if he tripped over it.
“Later I’ll go catch some fish,” he said again.
“I hate fish,” Gillian stated. “One time when I was only four, my dad brought home a salmon he caught on Lake Erie and we all got really, really sick. Our cat, Mr. Tom-Tom, he took two bites and dropped dead on the kitchen floor. Me and my sister threw up for about five days straight, and swear to God the puke was, like, radioactive. I mean, it practically glowed.”
Sammy Tigertail said, “You’re so full of crap.”
“No way! It really happened,” Gillian said, “and ever since then I can’t eat fish.”
“You will now. You’re on the South Beach hostage diet.”
The cistern was littered with leaves and animal scat. It looked like a solid place to hide, because there was no sign that it had held water in many years. Sammy Tigertail squeezed through an opening under the roof, chased off a wood mouse and announced: “We picked the right island.”
Unfazed by the scrambling rodent, Gillian said, “Are we up on a hill? I didn’t think they had hills around here.”
“It’s made of oyster shells. The whole thing.” Sammy Tigertail stripped off his shirt.
“Made by who?” she asked.
“Native Americans-but not my people. Hand me the rifle, please.” He tied his shirt around the barrel and methodically went through the cistern taking down spiderwebs.
Long before the Seminoles arrived, southwest Florida had been dominated by the Calusa tribe, which fought off the Spaniards but not the sicknesses they brought. The most striking remnants of the sophisticated Calusa civilization were their monumental oyster middens, engineered to protect the settlements from flooding and also to trap fish on high tides. Sammy Tigertail felt proud, and inspired, to be camping on an authentic Calusa shell mound. He hoped to be visited in his sleep by the spirits of their long-dead warriors-perhaps even the one whose well-aimed arrow had been fatal to the invader Ponce de Leon.
“They must’ve been the horniest Indians anywhere,” Gillian mused, “if all they ate was oysters.”
Sammy Tigertail stared at her. “What kind of grades do you get in college?”
“I made the dean’s list twice.”
“God help us.”
“Screw you, Tonto.”
Once they finished cleaning the cistern, they loaded in the gear. Gillian lay down on top of her sandy sleeping bag and said she was going to crash.
“What’s that music?” Sammy Tigertail asked. “You got an iPod or something?”
It sounded like the opening bars of “Dixie.”
Gillian rolled over and said, “Shit. My cell.” She took it out of her fanny pack and checked the caller ID. “Oh great, it’s Ethan.”
The Indian snatched the phone. “What’re you going to tell him?”
“That he’s an asshole. Seven hours later he calls to see if I’m alive!”
“Say one word about me, I’ll-”
“What-kill me? Rape me? Stake me to an anthill?”
The phone stopped ringing.
“Hey, where you goin’?” she asked.
“To make a call,” Sammy Tigertail said.
“Watch my battery. I didn’t bring a charger.”
He laughed. “I didn’t bring any electricity.”
He went outside and dialed his mother’s house at the reservation. Her machine answered, so he left a message saying that he was camping in the Fakahatchee, collecting tree snails.
Next he phoned his uncle Tommy, who answered on the tenth ring.
“Who’s Gillian St. Croix?” he said, reading from his caller ID, “and why are you calling from her number?”
“Long story. Is anybody hunting for me?”
“No, but they’ve been out to the reservation asking about a man from Milwaukee.”
Sammy Tigertail’s heart quickened as he thought of Wilson at the bottom of Lostmans River. “Do they know about the airboat ride?”
“My guess is no. But that drunken shithead ran the SunPass lane on Alligator Alley, so they got a photo of his car heading west. They figure he probably drove into the canal on his way to Big Cypress.”
“I like that theory.”
“We’re doing what we can.”
“What kind of questions are they asking?”
“Don’t sweat it,” Uncle Tommy said.
Sammy Tigertail was worried. What if the dead tourist had big-shot kin back in Wisconsin? The search might drag on for months.
“Where the hell are you?” asked his uncle.
“Some island near Everglades City. I don’t even know the name.”
“No problem. I’ll get the air force up and we’ll find you.”
Tommy Tigertail had been the financial architect of the tribe’s early bingo enterprises, which had made him a power player in the Seminole hierarchy. He was not a fan of white men, but he liked their toys. A Falcon jet and several luxury turboprops were available to him on an hour’s notice.
“You can stay at the town house on Grand Bahama until the heat’s off,” he told his nephew.
“Thanks, but I’m okay out here,” Sammy Tigertail said. “I’m learning the guitar.”
“Your brother told me. Is she with you-this Gillian girl?”
“Temporarily.”
“Don’t lose your senses, boy. White pussy is bad medicine.”
Sammy Tigertail chuckled. “Speaking of which, you seen Cindy?”
“Yeah. She says she’s finally off the crystal and dating a realestate man from Boca Grande. I told her she’ll be getting your remittance, and she said you’re a prince.”
“Hang on a second.” Sammy Tigertail flattened himself against the cistern wall and scanned the sky.
“She said she’s going to take the first check and buy herself some new boobs,” his uncle continued. “She wanted me to be sure and tell you thanks.”
Sammy Tigertail heard the thing clearly now, coming in fast from the south. “Uncle Tommy, I gotta go,” he said, and vaulted through the narrow opening.
He landed hard on the bare cement floor, and lay there listening as a small plane passed very low over the island. A shadow moved to block the sunlight, and there was Gillian standing over him-pointing the rifle at his chest. Sammy Tigertail noticed that she’d removed his shirt from the point of the barrel, indicating a possible seriousness of purpose.