But the most remarkable thing that Sammy Tigertail remembered from his middle-school project about the noble Calusa was how suddenly they were wiped out-erased from the landscape barely two hundred years after their first fateful contact with Spanish soldiers, who carried diseases more deadly than their muskets.
The Calusa brave who plugged Ponce de Leon with an arrow had the right idea, Sammy Tigertail thought. He knew those white fuckers were bad news.
In the end, ravaged bands of Calusa were hunted down by mercenary Creeks and other newly armed Indians, who sold them to slavers. Sammy Tigertail recalled that a few hundred Calusa were thought to have escaped with their cacique to Havana in the mid-1700s, and he wondered what had become of them. He’d always thought it sad that the Calusa had disappeared from Florida’s southernmost wilderness before the Seminoles-driven by another rapacious bunch of white men-had settled there. Because the two tribes had never crossed paths, there was no chance that even a droplet of Calusa blood flowed in Sammy Tigertail’s veins. In dark moments he actually worried that he might be descended from one of the slave-hunting Creeks who’d preyed upon the Calusa, for ironically it was displaced Creek clans and other cimmarones who would later become the Seminole Nation.
Sammy Tigertail took several deep breaths and pressed his arms against his sides. He was hoping to feel the power and wisdom of a hundred warriors rising up from the ancient bones and shells beneath him…
Yet when he opened his eyes, he felt no different from the way he’d felt before-like a man who didn’t fit in anybody’s world, red or white.
Emptily he blinked at the milky heavens. The sun had risen and the morning haze was burning off. He lay shirtless on top of the sleeping bag, clutching the Gibson guitar to his breast. Somewhere down by the shore, Gillian was saying, “Right side, Boyd, right side. Watch out for those snags, Genie.”
Which made no sense, until the Indian realized that it wasn’t Gillian’s voice he was hearing from the water. Gillian was in the limbs of the poinciana, signaling for him to get up.
Sammy Tigertail sprang to his feet and unwrapped the rifle. Gillian dropped lightly out of the tree. She touched his arm and said, “You think they’ve got water, Thlocko?”
“Time to behave,” he advised, “otherwise I’m gonna leave you out here alone to die.”
“I can be quiet. I swear I can.” She gave a crisp salute and mimed a zippering motion along her lips.
Eugenie Fonda recognized Boyd Shreave’s self-transformation from ambivalent dullard to condescending asshole as a last-ditch attempt to raise his game. It wasn’t the first time one of her lovers had tried to re-invent himself, but for sheer detestability Boyd had outdone all the rest. He’d pay dearly for it, of course. Instead of lounging on a beach with chilled rum runners in hand-Eugenie’s ideal of a proper Florida vacation-they were paddling through a funky-smelling, bug-infested swamp. Worse, she was doing all the hard work; as a kayaking partner, Boyd was useless, his strokes splashy and mistimed. He snottily spurned instruction from their tour guide, who-Eugenie had noticed in the light of day-was quite attractive. Most of Eugenie’s past loser boyfriends would have been hitting on Honey Santana by now, but not Boyd. He’d decided to advertise his virility by behaving like a conceited dipshit.
“I gotta take another leak,” he announced to the world. Eugenie Fonda disregarded him. Honey spun her kayak and said, “Everything okay back there?”
“No, it’s not. I’ve gotta piss again,” Shreave said.
“We’ll stop for lunch up ahead.” Honey pointed to an island a half-mile away.
“Better hurry,” Boyd growled to Eugenie, “or you’ll be up to your ankles in something nasty.”
He resumed his spastic paddling, which immediately put the kayak off course. To neutralize him, Eugenie shed her life vest and matter-of-factly unstrung her halter.
“What’re you doin’?” she heard Boyd ask.
“My New Year’s resolution: no more tan lines.”
“But what if another boat comes by?”
“Who cares, Boyd? They’re just tits.”
From then on he was so preoccupied that he scarcely paddled at all, which had been Eugenie’s objective. Unhindered by his inept flailing, she guided the kayak effortlessly with the tide. As they closed in on the mangrove island, Honey called out, “Right side, Boyd, right side. Watch out for those snags, Genie.”
No sooner had the bow creased the bank than Shreave stepped into the shallows, clambered ashore and vanished. Honey Santana and Eugenie Fonda dragged the kayaks up on dry land.
“Can I ask you something?” Honey said.
“Yeah, but there’s no good answer. I was bored, I guess,” Eugenie said. “I mean really bored.”
“He sure doesn’t seem like your type.”
“I’ve never met my type. That’s a problem,” Eugenie said. “How about you?”
Honey nodded. “Once I did. We stayed together a long time.”
“I’d settle for that. You have no idea.”
Shreave reappeared. His hat was crooked and he was struggling to remove a twig from the zipper of his pants. He said, “Ladies, you won’t believe what yours truly found up the hill.”
“An ounce of charm?” Eugenie said.
“A campfire!”
“Way out here?” Honey looked concerned.
“It’s still warm,” Shreave reported, “and it smells like greasy fish.”
Honey said they should move to another island immediately.
“What’re you scared of? They’re gone now.” Shreave swept his arms dismissively. “Besides, I’m starving.”
“Well, that settles it. His Majesty wants supper.” Eugenie opened her backpack and removed a light cotton pullover, which she put on despite Boyd’s adolescent protests. She had no intention of marching topless through spiderwebs.
Fry woke up giggling. He didn’t know where he was, and he didn’t much care. He heard his father’s voice say, “Nice job, champ.”
“Whah?”
“You T-boned a garbage truck.”
Fry tried to remember.
“On your skateboard,” his dad said.
“Shit,” Fry mumbled. Normally he tried not to cuss in front of his parents, but at the moment he had no self-control. The sun was blinding and his neck throbbed when he turned away.
His father said, “The truck was parked, by the way. Six tons of solid steel and you couldn’t see it.”
“I’m sorry, Dad.” Fry laughed again and scrambled to recover. “I know it’s not funny. Really, I know it’s not.”
“You’re wasted,” his father said. “Don’t get too used to it.”
“Ohhhhhh.” Fry closed his eyes, floating. He comprehended that he was in his father’s pickup, and it was speeding along the Tamiami Trail.
“They gave you some heavy-duty pain pills,” Perry Skinner said.
“For what?”
“Three busted ribs. Concussion with a hairline skull fracture. Plus you’ve got a knot on your head as big as a strawberry.”
Fry tried to touch it but all he could feel was smooth plastic.
“What’s the deal?” he asked.
“The hospital wanted to hold you for observation but we had to get a move on, so I stopped at the mall and bought a football helmet.”
“Bucs or Dolphins?”
“Dolphins,” his father said. “In case you get dizzy and fall, I didn’t want you to spill your brains all over the place.”
Fry’s memory was returning in muddy waves. “Where was I going when it happened? To school, right?”
“Yep.”
“Dad, are you driving superfast, or is it the medicine?”
“Both.”
Fry recalled looking up and seeing the garbage truck broken down directly in his path, unavoidable. He wondered what he’d been thinking about at the time, what had distracted him so completely.
“Where we goin’?” he asked.
“For a boat ride,” Perry Skinner replied.
“Why?” Fry didn’t feel like getting on a boat. He felt like going home and shutting the blinds and crawling under the sheets.