“What exactly happened with those stone crabs?” Dealey inquired in a plausible tone of sympathy. He couldn’t stop staring at the man’s fingertips, which protruded from the gauze like nubs of dirty chalk. Something wasn’t right.
“It was these goddamn Cubans hired by Honey’s shitwad ex-husband. They shoved my hand into a loaded trap and the fuckin’ crabs went to town,” Piejack said. “I know it was him that set me up, ’cause, first off, he speaks Cuban real good. Second off, he’s jealous of my hots for Honey.”
Dealey said, “Makes sense.”
“Then, when they got me to surgery, some doctor fucked up and sewed my fingers back all wrong. Look here.”
Louis Piejack held up what appeared to be a pinkie where a thumb ought to have been. Dealey was unnerved by the sight, although he wasn’t sure if he believed any of the man’s story, from the crabs to the surgeon. Piejack seemed entirely capable of self-mutilation.
He said, “I got me a sharp lawyer, don’t you worry. Come back in a year and I’ll own that fuckin’ hospital.”
“Can’t you find another doctor to stitch your fingers back where they belong?”
“I s’pose,” Piejack said, “but I’m gonna wait a spell and see how this new setup works.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Honey might like me better this way.” Piejack attempted without success to wiggle the misplaced pinkie. “You follow?”
Dealey nodded agreeably, thinking: What a loon.
It was tempting to blame Lily Shreave for his predicament, but Dealey knew it was his own fault. Lily was merely rich and kinky; he easily could have said no to the Florida trip. Greed, pure and simple, had drawn him into this mess.
“I’ll say this: Them doctors put me on some superior dope for the pain,” Piejack remarked as they chugged past a row of commercial fishing boats.
“Yeah, like what?”
“Vikes,” he said. “But I et up the whole damn bottle the first day! Lucky I know this pharmacist up in East Naples-he traded me a hundred pills for five pounds of swordfish.”
Beautiful, thought Dealey. The man’s not only deranged, he’s overmedicated. Add the loaded shotgun and it’s party time.
“If you’re not feelin’ good, I can steer for a while,” Dealey offered.
“Yeah, right.” Piejack coughed once and spat over the side.
Dealey turned in his seat so that he could see where the madman was taking him. Soon the brown river emptied into a broad calm bay fringed with dense trees. There wasn’t a hotel or a high-rise to be seen, which Dealey found surprising. Piejack gunned the throttle and the johnboat picked up speed. Dealey hugged his camera cases and shivered at the rush of cool air.
“Now where the hell are they?” Piejack wondered, his voice rising above the whine of the motor.
Dealey saw birds diving and silver fish jumping, but no kayaks on the water.
“Maybe they turned back already,” he said hopefully.
Louis Piejack laughed. “Naw, they’re out here somewheres. I’ll find ’em, too. That’s a damn fact.”
Fourteen
The plan was to steal water but no food from other campers. Water was essential for life, Sammy Tigertail said. Pringles were not.
“How would you feel about beer?” Gillian asked.
“That’ll do.”
They searched for hours but spotted no other fires, and encountered nobody else on the water. When the moon disappeared behind a gray-blue ridge of clouds, Sammy Tigertail began navigating back toward the island. He feared getting lost in the web of unmarked creeks, although he didn’t let on to Gillian.
From the bow of the canoe she asked, “Do you know a rain dance?”
“First I need a virgin.”
“I’m serious,” Gillian said.
Sammy Tigertail wasn’t sure if the Seminoles had a dance for making rain. He knew firsthand about the Green Corn Dance, a purification and feasting ritual dating back to the tribe’s Creek origins. The celebration took place every spring and required participants to swallow boiled black concoctions that induced copious vomiting. Sammy Tigertail attended with his mother and his uncle Tommy, who customarily brought a flask of Johnnie Walker to wash away the taste of the black drinks.
Gillian said, “Speaking of virgins, you wanna hear how I lost it? I’ll tell you, if you tell me.”
“Not interested.”
“It was on a riding mower.”
“Stop.”
“On the sixteenth hole of the south course at the Firestone Country Club,” she said.
“I get the picture.”
“Which happens to be the jewel of Akron, Ohio. What about you?”
“I don’t remember,” said Sammy Tigertail. He spotted their island around the bend and increased the pace of his paddling, heedless of his thirst or the blister rising on his left palm.
Gillian went on: “It was my best friend’s big brother. Is that a fucking cliche or what? And you do too remember.”
“We’re almost there,” said the Seminole.
“So-what was her name?”
“Sally Otter.”
“Excellent!”
After stowing the canoe, they ate some cactus berries and moved their sleeping bags from the cistern to open ground, where they could see the stars. They lay down side by side, shoulders touching.
“Hey, Thlocko,” Gillian whispered.
“I’m tired.”
“You go to college?”
“Never finished high school.”
One week after his son was born, Sammy Tigertail’s father had gone to the bank and opened the “Chad McQueen College Fund,” into which he faithfully deposited one hundred dollars every month. When Chad/Sammy had turned twelve, his stepmother had persuaded his father to close the account and invest the accumulated balance-$16,759.12-in 307 Beanie Baby dolls, which she grandly predicted would quintuple in value by the time the boy finished high school. Each tagged with an insipidly perky nickname, the rarest and most valuable of the small stuffed animals was reputed to be Leroy the Lemming, of which Sammy’s stepmother owned four. The collection was locked inside a steamer trunk that occupied many cubic feet of the boy’s bedroom. Upon the sudden death of Sammy’s father, his stepmother immediately hawked her entire Beanie Babies stash for $3,400, which she put down on a new Lexus coupe.
The Indian elected not to share that memory with Gillian. His half-white past was a private matter.
“So what’s your problem with college?” she asked.
“Be quiet,” Sammy Tigertail said.
“Hey, what about the Fighting Irish?”
“The who?”
“Remember you gave me a ration of shit about my Seminoles jersey? What about Notre Dame, huh? How come all the Irishmen aren’t all pissed off about the name of that team?”
Sammy Tigertail reached out and clapped his hand over Gillian’s mouth. “Shut the hell up. I’m begging you.”
She pushed his arm away and rolled over. “Is that how you talked to Sally Beaver?”
“Otter was her name.”
“Whatever,” said Gillian.
The Indian closed his eyes, longing for a peaceful sleep. A thousand years ago, Calusa warriors had lain under the same winter sky. When he was in the eighth grade (and still Chad McQueen), Sammy Tigertail had written a school paper about the Calusa, who had predated by twelve centuries the arrival in Florida of the beleaguered Seminoles. The Calusa’s highly structured society revolved around fishing, and they were accomplished makers of palm-fiber nets, spears, throat gorges and hooks. They traveled widely in dugout canoes, dominating by trade and force all other Indian tribes throughout the peninsula. Sammy Tigertail remembered seeing photographs of intricate tribal masks, shell jewelry and delicate wooden bird carvings excavated from a Calusa midden on Marco Island. The body paint favored by Calusa braves had been mixed with the oil of shark livers, to repel mosquitoes. (Sammy Tigertail once asked his uncle why the Seminoles didn’t try the same formula, and his uncle said he would rather swat a bug than kill a shark.)