Skink--No Surrender (12 page)

When I asked Skink if he’d ever been mistaken for a Bigfoot, he said, “The only thing I get mistaken for is a nut case.”

No comment from me.

Soon after we got the flames going, he fell into a deep and sudden sleep. Curled up in the shape of a comma, he didn’t look much like a Sasquatch. After the sun went down I felt hungry, but I didn’t try to wake him until he started having one of those snarling nightmares. The sounds coming from his throat made the hair on my arms stand up. If Online Talbo was near enough to hear the growls, he’d think there was a rabid panther roaming the forest. Probably haul up the anchor on that houseboat and take off full-speed with Malley.

I was afraid to stand too close, so I used the nine-iron to jostle Skink. Gradually his sounds shrank to soft cries, like a lost kitten would make. I knelt down, spoke his name firmly and shook him by the shoulders. His live eye opened as slowly as a clam.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re having another bad dream.”

“Are you in it?”

“No. I’m real.”

“You sure?”

“Positive. It’s me—Richard. Remember?”

He sat up, snatched the front of my shirt and yanked me closer for inspection.

“Well, all right,” he said, and let go.

His face and neck were dripping sweat. Hanging from his beard were a pair of june bugs, which he flicked into the shadows.

“Let’s make dinner,” I suggested.

“Before we move forward, one item of business.”

“What?”

“I want to hear your terrible secret,” he said. “This hideous crime you say you committed, the one your cousin threatens to blackmail you with.”

Out of nowhere! The man goes from barely recognizing me to full-on interrogation mode.

“It’s called full disclosure,” he said.

“But there’s lots of
your
secrets I don’t know.”

“You know the most important one,” Skink said. “You know who I am.”

“I’m talking about bad stuff.”

“You’ll feel better after you tell me.”

“No, I’m pretty sure I’ll feel like crap.”

“Listen up. You need to clear your head before we make our big hero move tomorrow.”

“My head
is
clear. Totally.” Talking about Saint Augustine was the last thing I wanted to do. “Let me go take those fish off the stringer,” I said.

He grabbed my ankle. “You will not.”

The strength of his grip was unbelievable. I mean, for an old dude? He could have snapped my lower leg like a chopstick, if he’d wanted to. That’s no lie.

“Tell me the heaviest thing you’ve ever done in your life,” I said, “and I’ll tell you what I did.”

“Deal.”

“You go first.”

“All right, Richard.” He released my ankle. Using the nine-iron, he levered himself to his feet.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Anytime.”

But I was so
not
ready. My jaw hung open while Skink told his story. The craziest rumors about him on Wikipedia didn’t come close to what he told me that night. I’d write it in these pages, except I promised him I’d never tell a soul.

And I owe the man, big-time. Always will.

“A life such as mine is a treacherous path. These were bad people, son.” That was the sum of his explanation. He wore a calm expression as he poked the blade of the golf club into the campfire, sparking embers.

“Your turn,” he said to me.

“Right.”

“Enough with the drama. Let’s hear what you did.”

“I stole something.”

“Was it cash money?”

“No way. But I walked into a store and took something I didn’t pay for.”

The governor grunted. “Shoplifting? This is why you’re tormenting yourself?”

“It wasn’t like stealing a pack of gum!”

“So what was your big score? Diamonds? A Rolex watch?”

“It was a skateboard,” I said. “Just the deck, not the wheels and trucks.”

He rubbed his brow. “Basically a piece of plywood.”

“Maple. And the price was almost two hundred bucks.”

“Why’d you take it?” he asked.

“Because I was being an idiot. Mom wouldn’t get it for me, even though she knew I’d pay her back.”

At the time, I was working three afternoons a week for a guy who owned a mobile car-washing service. He stayed busy on the lower beach road. Some tourists get weird about having salty air touch the paint on their cars, and they’re happy to fork out twenty-five dollars for a wash job. My cut was eight bucks, nine for SUVs, plus tips.

“Son, why’d you want that particular skateboard so badly?”

“Because it was exactly like one my father had.”

“The one he was riding the day he died.”

“Yup,” I said.

“An awfully painful reminder for your mother.”

“I guess.”

Skink was right. That’s why she wouldn’t buy the board for me—seeing it made her sad.

“Malley was with me that day in the surf shop. She pretended like she was choking to death on a Jolly Rancher, and the guys who work there all ran over to help. I picked up the board and walked out. Nobody noticed.”

My cousin had come along with us on the trip to Saint Augustine, where we were meeting my brothers. She let me put the stolen deck in her beach bag so Mom wouldn’t see it on the ride home.

As I recounted the story, I was biting through my lower lip. Didn’t feel a thing. I told the governor the skateboard was still in my bedroom, hidden in a place my mother would never think to look.

“Let me guess,” he said. “It’s in the box springs of your bed.”

“How’d you know!”

“I was your age once, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.”

“After a couple weeks I had enough money to pay back the shop, but I never did. Guess I was too ashamed. See, the owner was friends with Dad—he came to the funeral and everything.”

“He probably would’ve given you the board for free.”

“Yeah.” I was an idiot, like I said.

It’s a vintage Birdhouse board with sweet Rasta graphics. They don’t make that model anymore, and even online they’re hard to find. The one my father was riding when he crashed into the UPS truck got run over and split to pieces by the ambulance. I salvaged the wheels and trucks, which I later attached to the deck that I’d lifted from the shop.

“You ever ride it?” Skink asked.

“Never once.”

“Understandable.”

“So … now you know.” I expected him to shrug off the whole thing and say that what I’d done was no big deal, crime-wise, but that wasn’t his reaction.

“Next time you’re in Saint Augustine, do what’s right,” he said. “Go back to that store and pay the gentleman for his merchandise. This isn’t just a piece of grandfatherly advice, Richard. It’s a moral instruction.”

“Okay, I promise.”

“Guilt is a bear. You’ll feel liberated afterwards,” he assured me. “Now, let’s eat while we’ve still got a fire to cook on. Go fetch the bass.”

A soft drizzle had begun, and a storm was rumbling toward us from the south, off the Gulf. I hurried down to the river where we’d beached the canoe, only to find that the canoe had moved.

Was still moving, actually—away from shore, nosing steadily downstream. An empty vessel departing on a straight course, as if steered by a ghost.

Which I didn’t believe in. Still don’t.

The most likely explanation was a tricky gust of wind or a rogue current. After pulling off my sneakers and emptying my pockets, I was ready to jump in after the runaway canoe.

That’s when Skink appeared at my side. All he said was “My fault, son.”

Well, that and a curse word.

Bottom line: Don’t leave a stringer of fish dangling
too long in a river, especially if the river hosts a hungry population of alligators. The one that was swimming off with our dinner—and towing our canoe—briefly revealed itself with a boiling swish of its thick armored tail.

Definitely not a lazy golf-course gator. Immediately I scrapped my plan to dive into the water.

Watching the canoe disappear around the bend made me feel useless and totally frustrated. It was the worst kind of luck at the worst possible time. If the alligator made a fast dive with the bass in its jaws, either the stringer would snap or the canoe would flip—possibly both.

“What do we do now?” I said gloomily. “How will we reach Malley?”

“I got this.” He brushed past me. “Stay here and mind the camp.”

Leg splint and all, he hobbled straight into the Choctawhatchee.

“Are you insane? That’s a major gator out there!” I yelled.

“ ‘Nature never deceives us. It is always we who deceive ourselves.’ ”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“It’s from a novel by Rousseau,” Skink called back, neck-deep in the flow. “He was the son of a Swiss watchmaker, swear to God. You should goggle him on your computer!”

“It’s ‘Google.’ Now, get out of the water before you get
bit!” I seriously doubted that Rousseau, whoever he was, had been writing about carnivorous river reptiles.

“I’ll be returning shortly,” the governor declared, and with a splash he went under. A series of fat bubbles appeared, trailing down the current.

Any moment I expected his hairy deep-lined face to pop up for air among the raindrops, but it didn’t. A jagged spear of lightning sliced the darkness, and in that ultraviolet moment I could see how completely alone I was.

The wind began swirling as the rain fell harder. Our small fire smoldered and hissed.

I put on my shoes. Wrapped a sleeping bag around my body, trying to stay dry. On the ground lay the governor’s lame shower cap, which looked like something my eighty-six-year-old great-aunt would wear. I picked it up and fitted it on my head.

The downpour went on for a long, depressing time. I wasn’t hungry anymore.

Thunder shivered the treetops. Our camp turned to puddles and red muck.

I waited and waited. Never once shut my eyes, all night. At daybreak there was still no Skink, and still no canoe.

Just me and the dark river, rising.

TWELVE

I didn’t want to give up on the man, but the awful reality of the situation was as clear as a ticking clock.

For a distraction I took out the Rachel Carson book he’d loaned me. At first I wasn’t really into it, but then I got to a frightening account of what happened in certain towns when powerful chemicals were sprayed to kill insects like bark beetles and fire ants. Right away the wildlife began dying—squirrels, opossums, rabbits, even the neighborhood cats. Children would awake to dead-silent mornings because all the songbirds had been killed by the poison. Hawks, owls and bald eagles fell sick, too—and those that survived stopped having babies.

All this went down a few years before my mom and dad were born, in the middle of ordinary America. Terrible but true.

Growing up by the ocean, I’ve always taken birds for granted. How bad would it suck to grow up in a place where life was gone from the skies and the trees? I closed the book and took note of what was visible in the woods—warblers, sparrows, mockingbirds, a lone crow, redwing blackbirds, a
pair of cardinals. From the water’s edge I could hear kingfishers and ospreys and a croaky blue heron. Somewhere else a northern flicker was hammering on a cypress trunk, which made me wonder how one wood-pecking species managed to survive mankind’s dumbass mistakes while others—like the poor ivorybill—didn’t make it.

I closed the book, thinking about my own survival issues. Skink would have been back by now, if he were coming. Either the gator had nailed him or he’d drowned from exhaustion while pursuing the loose canoe. It was time for me to face facts—the man was old, half-crippled, and the swollen river was strong. The thought of him dying made me feel empty and sick-hearted, but I couldn’t hang around waiting any longer.

He was gone. I was alone.

And Malley was still out there, in trouble.

The idea that I could save her all by myself was crazy, yet I had no choice but to try. There wasn’t time to find help—I didn’t know which way to run, and it might have taken a day or longer to get out of those woods.

So the only real option was the most reckless and dangerous one. Even though the odds were ridiculous, I didn’t let myself think about failing. What I made myself think about was getting it done, period.

Like I can just clap my hands and turn myself into a Navy SEAL, right?

For breakfast: A peanut-butter granola bar and a slug of water from my only bottle. The others had departed
on the canoe, along with Skink’s fishing rod, a fry pan, a hatchet and other gear that would have been very useful.

Sneaking through the woods, I tried to keep close enough to the river’s edge so I could spot the houseboat where Online Talbo was holding Malley. Unfortunately, the water had risen so high that in some places I had to hike inland to stay on dry land.

Which wasn’t
that
dry, thanks to the overnight deluge. Several times I sunk up to my ankles in muck. The tread on my sneakers kept slipping on mossy old tree roots—it was a miracle I didn’t fall and break my butt. For balance I used the governor’s nine-iron, which I figured would also be good for self-defense. It felt heavier than the aluminum ball bat that my mother made me carry on turtle walks.

I tried to creep silently, but the ninja thing wasn’t working. When I wasn’t sloshing or stumbling, even the softest step forward snapped a few twigs. Since there was no trail for me to follow, I had to make my own.

A cherry-red bass boat went speeding up the Choctawhatchee, its wake knocking sleepy turtles off their logs. The fishermen aboard couldn’t hear my shouts over the engine noise and never turned in my direction. They probably had a cell phone, but I never got a chance to borrow it. The boat disappeared from view within seconds.

Although the bugs were vicious, the bottle of repellant stayed zipped inside my backpack. After reading those sickening stories in
Silent Spring
, I felt guilty about squirting
chemicals at any living thing, even a mosquito that was guzzling my blood.

As the sun rose higher, the woods heated up and the air got sticky. There wasn’t a wisp of a breeze. I stopped to take another sip of water. Okay, two sips. Through the pines I could see I’d made it past that bend in the river, yet no houseboat was in sight. No canoe, either.