Nature Girl

by Carl Hiaasen

Some wives would’ve paid a ten-grand bonus just for the deli shot, Dealey thought, but my client happens to be a total kink. She wants penetration.

  For a closer look at his targets, Dealey waited until the rest room in first class was occupied. Then he stood up and made his way to the back of the plane. Eugenie Fonda and Boyd Shreave were sitting in one of the emergency-exit rows. She was staring out the window; he was thumbing through the in-flight magazine.

  They don’t even look like a couple, Dealey noted with concern. They look like two total strangers.

  Poised before the toilet in one of the aft rest rooms, the investigator pondered the dispiriting possibility that Boyd Shreave’s illicit romance was already cooling. If true, the sex in Florida would be infrequent, brief and subdued.

  Which would make even more improbable Dealey’s quest for the coital grail.

  Oh well, he thought, there are worse places to waste a few days in the wintertime. Hell, I could be flying to Little Rock instead of Tampa.

  At that moment the plane hit turbulence, rocking the private investigator sideways and disrupting his otherwise-flawless trajectory.

  “Goddammit,” Dealey muttered, snatching a handful of paper towels to mop the piss from his right pants leg. The stain, he observed bitterly, was the shape of Arkansas.

  Stalking back to his seat, Dealey didn’t bother to look at Lily Shreave’s husband and Eugenie Fonda.

  Who were now holding hands.

  The island was quiet after the small plane passed.

  Gillian shoved the rifle back to Sammy Tigertail and said, “Scared you, didn’t I, Thlocko?”

  “Please go,” he said. “Take the damn canoe, I don’t care.” He wasn’t sure who was the actual hostage—the girl or him.

  She punched a number on her cell phone.

  “Ethan? Hey, it’s me. Alive and seriously pissed.”

  Sammy Tigertail started to climb out of the cistern but Gillian motioned him to stay.

  “Why’d you wait so long to call?” she said to Ethan. “Know what? You’re full of crap. I’ve got Verizon, too, and it’s workin’ loud and clear.”

  To Sammy Tigertail, she said, “He says he couldn’t get a signal. How lame is that?”

  The Indian sat down heavily and tuned out Gillian’s telephone chatter. His head was beginning to ache. He rubbed his palms across the concrete floor and for a moment imagined it was Louisiana mud, like in the government prison cell where his great-great-great-grandfather might or might not have perished.

  Although pained by his tribe’s blood-soaked history, Sammy Tigertail had never believed that all white people were evil; his own father had been an honest, good-hearted guy. During his childhood in the suburbs, Sammy Tigertail had made friends with lots of white kids, and observed several acts of decency and kindness by white grown-ups. It was also true that he’d encountered plenty of assholes, though to what degree their obnoxiousness could be blamed on race was debatable. Sammy suspected that some of them would have attained asshole status in any culture, on any continent.

  His uncle Tommy had occasionally mentioned an unusual white man named Wiley, who’d written articles for a Miami newspaper. Sammy Tigertail’s uncle said that Wiley had wanted to save Florida as desperately as any Seminole, and that he’d gone mad trying. Sammy Tigertail had gotten the impression that his uncle Tommy and the crazed white writer were friends of a sort. When he’d asked what had happened to Wiley, his uncle said that the great Maker of Breath had given his spirit to an old bald eagle.

  Sammy Tigertail remembered that story whenever he saw a wild eagle, which wasn’t often. He had yet to meet a white person like Wiley, and doubted he ever would. Gillian’s flitty spirit was more akin to that of a sparrow.

  “Oh, just some guy I met,” she was saying to her boyfriend, giving him the needle. “You really want to know? Well, let’s see. He’s like six-one and real tan and he’s got these drop-dead blue eyes.”

  Tan? “God Almighty,” the Indian said.

  “And I don’t even know his real name,” she went on, winking at Sammy Tigertail, “which makes things kinda interesting.”

  The Seminole whispered for her to hang up. When he made a slashing motion across his throat, she smiled and shook her head.

  “Ethan wants to know if you’re the same maniac who shot at them on the island. What should I tell him?”

  “Tell him to lay off the weed. Nobody shot at anybody.”

  Gillian said into the phone: “My new friend’s sorta shy.”

  Sammy Tigertail thought he could actually feel his cranium cracking like an egg. He lay down, clutching the gun to his chest. He heard Gillian tell her boyfriend: “I don’t know when I’m comin’ back. Tallahassee is such a drag, y’know?”

  The Indian closed his eyes yet there was no hope of sleep. When Gillian turned off the phone, she said, “You look awful.”

  “Thanks for not giving me up.”

  Gillian laughed. “How can I tell him your name when I can’t hardly pronounce it?”

  “If they knew I was a Seminole, they’d come after me for sure.” Sammy Tigertail rose to his feet. He hoped the dizziness was from hunger and not white man’s brain fever.

  “Ethan promised to have them call off the search, but I can tell he’s sulking. He refuses to believe I’d rather be with someone else,” Gillian said. “You boys and your egos.”

  “Speaking of names, yours is really St. Croix?”

  “Ever been there? The beaches are awesome—you should take your girlfriend, or whoever.”

  “No, I won’t be leaving the Everglades,” the Indian said. “Never again.”

  They went outside, where Gillian counted four kinds of butterflies. Sammy Tigertail could identify a zebra and a swallowtail, but not the others; Gillian was still impressed. She climbed halfway up the old poinciana and perched on the end of a trunk-like branch, high among the bright green leaves. “Hey, Thlocko,” she called out. “Why don’t I want to go home?”

  Sammy Tigertail was secretly pleased that Gillian remembered his Seminole name, even though she’d left out the second l. Others had trouble with Thlocklo, too. At the Miami public library he’d once found a copy of a muster roll of “99 Florida Indians and Negroes” delivered to the U.S. Army barracks in New Orleans on January 7, 1843. Among those on the list was “the party of Indians with the chief Tiger Tail or Thlocko Tustenugee,” transported for involuntary relocation west of the Mississippi. The man was Sammy Tigertail’s great-great-great-grandfather.

  When Gillian climbed down from the tree, she said, “I seriously need a bath.”

  “Good luck with the plumbing.”

  “You said you wanted me to go away. Did you mean it? Because I can tell you’re not too thrilled.”

  Against his better judgment, Sammy Tigertail found himself intrigued by the way she looked at that instant, how the breeze was nudging her hair and the sunlight was coloring her cheeks.

  He said, “Ethan’s freaked out enough. You’d better go.”

  “To hell with Ethan.”

  “You don’t get it. Anything could happen out here.”

  “Exactly!” Gillian exclaimed. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

  Sammy Tigertail couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

  She said, “How about this—what if I told you I can play the guitar?”

  “I wouldn’t believe you.”

  “Don’t move, Cochise.” Gillian ran out, and came back carrying the Gibson. “You got a pick?”

  “I sure don’t,” Sammy Tigertail said, curious.

  “That’s okay. Check out these fingernails.”

  She played. He listened.

  That evening, another telemarketer called and tried to sell Honey Santana a term-life policy for $17.50 a month. Instead of scolding the man, she was appallingly patient and polite. “God bless you, brother,” she said before hanging up.

  Aghast, Fry dropped his fork in the lasagna. “I’m definitely tellin’ Dad.”

/>   “You’ll do no such thing. I’m absolutely fine,” Honey said.

  “You’re not fine, Mom, you’re going bipolar. Maybe even tripolar.”

  “Just because I’m nice to a stranger on the phone? I thought that’s what you guys wanted.”

  “Yeah, but that,” Fry said, clearing his plate from the table, “was creepy.”

  Honey elected not to mention the aberrant pang of sympathy that had inspired her to visit Louis Piejack at his home that afternoon. Misled by a pleasant greeting and a seemingly benign offer of lemonade, Honey had taken a seat in her former employer’s living room only to hear him announce that (a) his wife was away in Gainesville, receiving chemotherapy, and (b) his testicles had fully recovered from the pummeling Honey had delivered at the fish market. Piejack had gone on to say that the brutal stone-crab amputation and subsequent surgical reshuffling of his fingers, while problematic for his piano ambitions, promised an innovative new repertoire of foreplay. That was when Honey Santana had dashed for the door, Piejack bear-pawing at her with his bandaged left hand. Honey didn’t want Fry to find out because he’d tell his father, who might do something so extreme to Louis Piejack that Skinner would end up in jail.

  The boy went to pack while Honey stepped outside to test her latest mosquito remedy—citronella mixed with virgin olive oil, which she slathered on both legs. After several minutes she decided that the night was too breezy for a bug census, so instead she began rehearsing the lecture she intended to lay upon Boyd Shreave, the man who’d called her a dried-up old skank. She planned to wait until the second day of the eco-adventure, when they were so deep in the wilderness that Shreave wouldn’t dare make a run for it. He’d have no choice but to sit and listen while Honey Santana straightened him out.

  The theme of her rebuke would be the erosion of manners in modern society, the decay of civility. Honey was prepared to accept responsibility for her own sharp words during the sales call. Perhaps she’d begin by apologizing for mentioning Shreave’s mother.

  “That was wrong of me, Boyd, and I’m sorry. But I was upset, and now I want to tell you why—”

  “Mom?” Fry’s voice, from behind the screen door. “Who’re you talking to?”

  “Nobody. Come out here and sit.”

  She scooted over to make a place for him on the top step of the trailer. His backpack was slung over one shoulder and he was eating an apple.

  “When’s your old man showing up?” she asked.

  “Ten minutes. Who were you talking to?”

  “Myself. Lots of perfectly sane people do that, Fry.”

  Honey leaned against him. His hair was damp, and it smelled like her shampoo. She felt like hugging his neck and crying.

  “They had a plane up today,” he said, “looking for some college girl who supposedly got snatched from one of the islands. Then her boyfriend calls up and says she’s okay. She’d dumped him and took off with a poacher.”

  Honey sniffled a laugh. “Sounds like true love.”

  Fry turned to gaze up at the nature mural his mother had painted on the trailer, which was partially illuminated by a street lamp. “Your parrot turned out cool. The monkeys are killer, too,” he said.

  “Thanks, but the neighbors aren’t real impressed. Hey, whatever happened with that girl you used to like at school? Naomi.”

  “Moved to Rhode Island. And her name was Cassie,” Fry said. “So, what’ve you got planned for your friends?”

  “I dunno, just hang out. I heard there’s a crafts show in Naples.”

  “High-octane excitement,” said Fry.

  “Or maybe we’ll break in those kayaks, if the weather’s decent.”

  “How come your eyes are all red?”

  “Cat dander.” She pointed to Mrs. Saroyan’s spavined gray tabby, which was squatting on the chain-link fence and spraying their mailbox.

  Fry reached into his backpack and took out something that looked like a BlackBerry, only smaller. “Here, take this. It’s a GPS receiver, in case you get lost on the water.”

  Honey grinned. “Lemme guess where you got it—my guilt-ridden former spouse?”

  “He had an extra one lying around. It was my idea.” He showed her how to use it, and she seemed to pay attention.

  “Everybody’s so damn worried about me. I suppose I should be touched,” she said.

  A pair of headlights appeared at the end of the street.

  “That would be him.” Fry stood up.

  Honey told her son to have a good time. “But don’t forget to do your homework. I’ll call tomorrow to set up a dinner, so you can meet my friends.”

  Of course there would be no such gathering, but Honey had to keep up the act in case Fry was buying it.

  “And, for God’s sake,” she added, “wash your jock after track practice.”

  “You’d better not be crying. I mean it.”

  “I told you, it’s allergies.”

  When Perry Skinner braked to a stop in front of the yard, Honey thought she saw him give a small wave. Fry pecked her on the cheek and said, “Love you, Mom.”

  “Love you, too. Now stop worryin’ so much, would you?” She smiled and teasingly shoved him toward his father’s truck.

  “Don’t run off with any poachers,” he said.

  “Hey, I could do worse,” Honey called after him.

  Eleven

  The landing in Tampa was bumpy. At the airport, Eugenie Fonda charged into the first open bar on the concourse. “Margaritaville” was playing over the sound system, so she ordered one.

  Boyd Shreave had a beer. He raised the glass and said, “To freedom.”

  “I guess,” said Eugenie.

  “Come on. This is the start of a brand-new lifetime.”

  “What’d you rent us?”

  “A mid-sized Saturn.”

  Eugenie whistled. “Whoa, baby.”

  “What’s wrong with a Saturn?”

  She smiled. “Very sensible, Boyd. You gonna put it on Lily’s gold card?”

  Shreave looked away, feigning fascination with a basketball game on the TV mounted above the Budweiser display.

  “Then why not go nuts? Get an Escalade,” Eugenie was saying. “You’re not some schmuck on an expense account, Boyd. You’re on safari.”

  “Fine. I’ll rent the biggest road hog they got.”

  “Unless you’re feeling guilty,” Eugenie said, “about mooching off your wife.”

  “Yeah, that’s me. Crippled with guilt.” Shreave slapped three fives on the bar. “You done?”

  They stood in line at the Avis counter for forty-five minutes and departed with an ordinary Ford Explorer, the last Escalade having been rented to a middle-aged man toting two Halliburton travel cases.

  Traffic out of the city was murder. Eugenie Fonda shut her eyes and leaned against the window. Boyd Shreave wondered how to draw her into the frisky spirit of a Florida adventure. Despite their rollicking sex life, Eugenie had always maintained emotional distance, and on the long drive Shreave found himself overtaken by an urge to possess her in every way. As she dozed—twitching whenever he swerved or tapped the brakes—Shreave was galvanized by a preposterous desire for her to be charmed and bedazzled and ravenously alert in his presence. Inwardly he began to speculate about what qualities might have attracted her to Van Bonneville, the killer-to-be, five years earlier. As self-deluded as he was about his own allure, Shreave understood that he had little in common with the homicidal tree whacker who’d been so chillingly profiled on Court TV. The man had shown himself as daring and decisive, traits that had never been ascribed to Shreave.

  North of Fort Myers he exited the interstate, located a shopping mall and informed Eugenie that he was going to find a rest room. She acknowledged with a drowsy grunt, reclined her seat and drifted back into an ebbing haze of Valium and alcohol. Shreave beelined for a Barnes & Noble, where a bemused clerk led him to the last unshredded paperback copy of Storm Ghoul, which he purchased along with a road map of southwest Florid
a.

  The sun was setting when he and Eugenie finally rolled into Everglades City, which was not a city in the Texan sense of the word. It was, in fact, barely a town.

  Eugenie lowered her window to let the cool air rouse her. “Where’s the beach?” she asked Shreave.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Where’s anything?”

  “Just wait,” he said.

  When he stopped at a Circle K and asked directions to the Dancing Flamingo Eco-Lodge, the clerk peered at him as if he was a registered sex offender. He had better luck at the Rod and Gun Club, where a bartender examined the street address provided by the telemarketer and said it was within walking distance. He drew a map on a cocktail napkin and handed it to Shreave.

  “Let’s eat first. I’m wasting away,” Eugenie said, and headed toward the restaurant.

  Admiring the sway of her hips, the bartender told Shreave he was one lucky bastard. “But I’d stick close if I were you,” he added. “Guys around here, they don’t see many women like that.”

  “There aren’t many of ’em to see, no matter where you live,” Shreave said authoritatively.

  Dinner was excellent—hearts of palm, conch fritters, stone crabs and Key lime pie. Their table overlooked the Barron River, where jumping fish flashed like squirts of mercury under the dock lights. Eugenie ate heartily, and Shreave discerned an improvement in her mood. After dessert she even kicked off one shoe and tickled his crotch with her bare toes.

  “We’re gonna have some major fun tonight,” she said.

  Nearly delirious with anticipation, Shreave decided to drive the few blocks to the eco-lodge so that he wouldn’t have to schlep their bags. Following the bartender’s map, he turned on to an unpaved street called Curlew Boulevard.

  Eugenie stiffened in her seat. “Boyd?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “This is a fucking trailer park.”

  “I can see that,” he said grimly.

  The address was 543 Curlew, and the residence was definitely a double-wide. Some wacko had painted psychedelic parrots and monkeys all over the front.

  Eugenie Fonda said, “Tell me it’s a joke.”

  Shreave felt prickly and light-headed.