Nature Girl

by Carl Hiaasen

  “I would’ve just snuck out and hitched a ride.”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  Neither of them spoke again until they reached the flashing yellow light that marked the turn toward Everglades City.

  Fry’s father said, “Your skateboard made out better than you. One of the wheels got snapped off, but that’s it.”

  “Dad, you gonna bring your gun?”

  “What?”

  “When we go look for Mom. Are you takin’ the gun?”

  “I am.” Perry Skinner cleared his throat.

  “Good call,” Fry said.

  Louis Piejack gazed through the binoculars and said, “Jackpot!” Then he said it another six or seven times.

  “What is it?” Dealey asked miserably from the bow.

  “Get your camera ready. I see titties.”

  Dealey squinted ahead. The bay was a rippled puddle of glare, and the two kayaks were at least five hundred yards away.

  “No good,” he said to Louis Piejack. “It’s too far, plus they’re backlit.”

  “They ain’t Honey’s, but those are some major-league boobs. Rig up that damn camera.”

  Dealey snapped open one of the Halliburtons and removed a Nikon body, which he attached to a small tripod. From the other case he took a 600-millimeter telephoto lens. Assembly was achieved with shaking fingers, for Dealey was afraid of dropping the expensive equipment overboard.

  Louis Piejack laid off on the throttle, crowing, “Jackpot! Jackpot! They stopped at the island!” His good right hand held the field glasses to his eyes while his swathed left paw steered the johnboat.

  “It’s still backlit, don’t you understand? There’s no shot from here,” Dealey complained.

  “That’s Dismal Key. I know another way in.”

  Dealey said, “Go slow, okay? Camera gets splashed and we’re out of business.”

  And I’m out two grand, he thought.

  “But I want movies,” Piejack said, “not pitchers.”

  Dealey packed the Nikon away. He said they needed to get much closer to record usable videotape.

  “Noooooo problem.” Piejack was fuzzy from the Vicodin tablets he’d eaten for lunch. It wasn’t easy maintaining a high-level addiction to prescription painkillers with one’s dominant hand swaddled so cumbersomely. Piejack had assigned Dealey—under threat of execution—to open the bottle and count out five tablets, which with lizardly flicks of his scabbed tongue he’d slurped from his captive’s palm. Dealey, mortified, had said nothing.

  Piejack circled to the far side of the island and poked the johnboat along an overgrown mangrove creek. The talon-like branches clawed at Dealey’s skin and tore holes in his suit jacket, but Piejack seemed unconcerned. He ran the boat hard aground, snatched up his shotgun and jumped out. Dealey followed, lugging the camera gear.

  “Don’t get no ideas,” Piejack warned.

  “You think I’m crazy?”

  In fact, Dealey had thought of nothing but escape since they’d motored out of Everglades City. Now, trailing Piejack into the heart of the island, Dealey waited for the loopy kidnapper to falter. With providence, Piejack soon would pass out from the excess of narcotics, presenting Dealey with a couple of options. Running like hell would be high on the list, but where would he go? Even if he got the johnboat running, Dealey wasn’t confident that he could find his way to the mainland.

  A more practical idea was to snatch the shotgun while Louis Piejack slept, and then force the nimrod to ferry him back to town. Even with a plan in mind, Dealey remained anxious, for nothing on the streets of Fort Worth had prepared him for such a situation—being trapped in the Everglades with a maimed and trigger-happy fishmonger.

  “Shut up,” Piejack barked.

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “Then who the hell did?” Piejack halted, raising a begauzed hand. Dealey heard nothing except his own rapid breathing; the camera cases were heavy.

  “Over there.” Piejack pointed to a fifteen-foot hill sprinkled with scrub and cactus plants. “You first.”

  “Gimme a break.”

  “How ’bout a load of bird shot up your butthole instead?”

  The slope consisted almost entirely of broken oysters and seashells. Dealey’s shoes crunched noisily as he advanced, Piejack goosing him crudely with the barrel of the sawed-off. As they approached the top, Dealey heard voices on the other side. Piejack directed him toward a clump of sticky vines, where they took cover.

  The three kayakers were in a clearing under a big tree, about fifty yards away. Boyd Shreave and Eugenie Fonda were sitting on a duffel bag, eating from plastic containers and sharing a gallon jug of water. The woman from the trailer park, Louis Piejack’s beloved Honey, stood spritzing her arms with bug juice.

  “My God, ain’t she a treasure.” Piejack sighed. “Take out your camera, Hawkeye.”

  “She’s got her clothes on. They all do.” Dealey felt sure that in his earlier sighting, Piejack had hallucinated the naked breasts.

  “Just make me a goddamn movie,” Piejack whispered menacingly.

  Dealey rigged up the camera and began to tape, Piejack hovering at his left shoulder. Through the viewfinder it appeared that Boyd Shreave was talking constantly, and that neither of the women was paying the slightest attention.

  Dealey felt Piejack’s hot breath on his ear. Then, in a singsong voice: “Where’s my lil’ Honey Pie runnin’ off to?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Stay on her! Stay on her!”

  Dealey said, “Easy, Louis.” He kept the camera trained on Honey as she made her way into a brushy stand of small trees.

  “I bet she’s gonna pee,” Piejack said excitedly.

  He’s probably right, thought Dealey, discreetly pressing the pause button.

  “Are you still shootin’? Keep shootin’!” Piejack was panting like a broken-down dog. “Can you see her? I can’t see her no more.”

  The crackpot was unaware that the tape had been stopped, so Dealey easily could have faked it. He could have kept quiet and pretended to record Honey squatting in the bushes, Piejack hopping beside him in elation.

  Yet even Dealey, whose life’s work was invading and exploiting the most private moments of others, had moral boundaries. A sex tape was evidence; a pissing tape was trash.

  The investigator pivoted with artistic deliberation, touched the record button and boldly advanced with the lens aimed squarely at his captor.

  Louis Piejack began backing up. “Now what the hell you doin’?”

  “Makin’ a movie,” Dealey replied, “about the sickest piece of shit I ever met.”

  At the crest of the oyster mound, Piejack’s expression changed from ragged confusion to rage. He dug his heels into the loose shells and leveled the sawed-off at Dealey’s gut.

  “Don’t come no closer. You’re done,” he said.

  “I’m not so sure about that.” Dealey adjusted the exposure and continued taping.

  Piejack peered at the red dot blinking beneath the lens. “Turn that damn thing off.”

  “Don’t you want to be famous?”

  “What for?”

  “Stinking up the planet,” said Dealey.

  “That’s it. Get ready to die, you sonofabitch.”

  “Then good luck, Louis. You’re gonna need it.”

  Piejack scowled. “What the fuck’s that s’posed to mean?”

  “Good luck opening your precious medicine bottle without me to help,” Dealey said.

  Piejack pensively nibbled his upper lip. “It’s those goddamn kiddy-proof caps. They’re murder with one hand.”

  “Oh, you’ll figure out a way.” Dealey noticed a brown iodine-stained nub on the trigger of the shotgun. It was a thumb, sprouting from the gauze where a forefinger ought to have been. Dealey briefly zoomed in on it.

  “Make up your mind, Louis.”

  Piejack grunted. “You think I won’t shoot? Ha!”

  Dealey heard a dull crack
and the kidnapper disappeared from the viewfinder. In his place stood a muscular young man holding a rifle. Dealey lowered the camera and saw Piejack, facedown and lifeless in a cactus patch.

  “I owe you, bud,” the investigator said to the stranger, who retrieved Piejack’s shotgun and tucked it under one arm.

  Then he walked up to Dealey and ungently pinched his nose.

  “You’re not real,” the man said accusingly.

  “I am too,” Dealey quacked, struggling to pull free.

  “Look at your damn suit.”

  “I can explain!”

  The man with the rifle said, “Don’t lie to me. You’re a death spirit.”

  Perfect, Dealey thought. Another Florida wacko.

  The man let go of Dealey’s nose and said, “Take off your shoes and socks.”

  Dealey stowed the video camera and did what he was told. The man balled up the sweaty socks and crammed them into Dealey’s cheeks.

  “You got any water?” he demanded.

  Dealey shook his head apologetically.

  “Hell,” the young man said. He motioned with the rifle. “Stand up and follow me.”

  When Dealey pointed to his Halliburtons, the man shrugged. Dealey hoisted the two cases and trudged heavily after the stranger. The broken oyster shells gouged the soles of the investigator’s feet, and before long he heard himself whimpering.

  This is the worst job I ever took, he thought. By far.

  Fifteen

  She thought she’d heard voices, but what else was new? Rarely was there a silence in her world; no peace, no quiet. Nat King Cole crooned a duet with Marilyn Manson, a sniper tripped a fire alarm at the nursing home, a parakeet landed in a margarita blender….

  Just another day inside the head of Honey Santana.

  “Some vacation,” said Boyd Shreave, the man who’d phoned during dinner and given his name as Eisenhower and tried to sucker her into buying a tract of overpriced real estate.

  The man who’d called her a skank.

  “Not what we had in mind,” he added. “Right, Genie?”

  “It isn’t much like the Bahamas,” his mistress allowed.

  Honey said, “What were you two hoping for? Besides a beach and a tiki bar, I mean. This is raw, untouched wilderness, the very last of it. That’s what people come to see on an ecotour.”

  Boyd Shreave chuckled coldly. “Just give us the damn sales pitch and take us back to town.”

  “There is no sales pitch,” Honey said.

  “Yeah, right.”

  Eugenie Fonda stretched her arms. “What’s the name of this island, anyhow?”

  “I don’t know,” Honey said, “but it’ll do.”

  Shreave frowned. “For what?” He stalked up to her and flicked the half-eaten granola bar out of her hand. “Do for what?”

  “That was rude,” Honey said. She collected the pieces off the ground and placed them in a garbage tote. “Beyond rude, as a matter of fact.”

  Eugenie Fonda told Shreave to quit acting like a jerk.

  “No sales pitch, she says?” He kicked at the ashes of the previous campers’ fire. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Honey Santana decided it was pointless to wait any longer. She was ready; he was more than ready.

  She stood up and said, “There’s no pitch because there’s no such development as Royal Gulf Hammocks, Mr. Eisenhower.”

  Shreave’s brow inverted in a simian portrait of vexation. He swayed slightly, working his lower jaw.

  Having connected the dots, Eugenie Fonda said, “Shit, Boyd. Shit, shit, shit.”

  “Do I know you?” he asked Honey. The words came out as a rattle. “Don’t tell me you’re the same one who called my house.”

  “You called me first, Boyd. Peddling some worthless scrub in Gilchrist County, remember? I gave you a short history lesson on Stephen Foster, how he never laid eyes on the Suwannee River. Why don’t you have a seat?”

  Shreave spun around. Stammered. Shook his arms. Finally, Eugenie snagged him by the belt and pulled him down beside her.

  “Do the voice,” he said to Honey. “If you’re really her, do the phone voice.”

  She was well prepared. “Good evening, Mr. Shreave. My name is Pia Frampton and I’m calling with a very special offer—”

  Shreave’s chin dropped. “Aw, Jesus.”

  “You said it was too ‘creamy-sounding,’ remember? You gave me lots of helpful pointers.”

  Eugenie Fonda said, “Incredible.”

  Honey recognized the inflection of fatigue; of low expectations, unmet. What am I doing with this loser? Honey had more than once asked herself the same question, before she swore off dating.

  “Boy, she got you good,” Eugenie said to Shreave.

  “Bullshit. It was a free trip to Florida!”

  “Nothing’s free, Boyd. Don’t tell me you forgot.”

  “Yeah, but she sent plane tickets!”

  “You got suckered. Get over it.” Eugenie looked over at Honey and said, “Wild guess. There’s a couple of redneck goons waiting to jump out of the bushes and rob us.”

  Honey Santana had to laugh.

  “Then what’s this all about? Wait, I know—a ransom deal!” Eugenie guessed. “Maybe you found out Boyd’s wife has some bucks.”

  Shreave said, “Genie, shut your piehole.”

  Honey popped a Tic Tac. Her attention was drawn to the debris of a cottage—peeling lumber, charred beams, broken window frames—that somebody had once called home. A squat bunker-like structure of bare cinder blocks had been erected on one slope of the shell mound, perhaps as a cistern.

  Honey noticed a flurry of gulls and pelicans overhead, and she wondered what had flushed them out. They’re probably just going fishing, she thought. It was a fine day.

  “Why’d you do this?” Shreave asked in a scraping voice. “The airline tickets and all, Christ, you must be nuts.”

  Eugenie Fonda said, “She’s not nuts. Are you, Honey?”

  Honey was opening a packet of dried figs. The campsite was dominated by an ancient royal poinciana, and she considered climbing it to get a better fix on their whereabouts. She felt like she was a long way from her son.

  A shot rang out, followed by another.

  Eugenie jumped. Shreave went wide-eyed and exclaimed, “It is a trap!”

  “Sshhh. It’s just poachers,” Honey said, thinking: They must be the ones who built the fire.

  Shreave became antic, the gunfire having unstapled his nerves. He launched himself at Honey’s knees and tackled her, pinning a clammy forearm to her throat.

  “Get us out of here!” he rasped.

  With some difficulty, Eugenie Fonda dragged him off. As Honey picked chipped oyster shells out of her hair, she recalled the time that Perry Skinner had made love to her on the beach at Cape Sable, both of them caked with sand and wet grit. It was in the middle of a wild spring rainstorm, and they were alone except for a bobcat watching from a stand of palmettos. Honey wanted to believe that she’d become pregnant with Fry that afternoon.

  “Who shot off that gun?” Shreave demanded.

  “I’ve got no idea. That’s the truth,” Honey said.

  For several minutes they stayed quiet and listened. There was no more gunfire, and Shreave calmed down.

  When Honey began to unpack the pup tents, Eugenie said, “Uh-oh.”

  Shreave snickered. “No way we are spending the night out here. I’ll call for help.”

  “How?” Eugenie asked. They’d left their cell phones in the rented Explorer because they were afraid of losing them overboard on the kayaks. She said, “We’re campers, Boyd.”

  “Like hell we are.”

  It took half an hour to set up the tents. After Honey finished, she turned to the Texans and said, “I have one son, the boy you saw in the pictures back at the lodge. I’ve tried to teach him to be a decent, positive person—these days they get so cynical, you know, it breaks your heart. We watch the news together every night bec
ause it’s important for young people to be aware of what’s happening, but sometimes, I swear, I want to heave a brick through the television. Don’t you ever feel that way?”

  Eugenie said, “Not Boyd. He loves his TV.”

  “Except the news,” he cut in. “I don’t ever watch the damn news, not even Fox. By the way, we’re leaving now.”

  Eugenie said, “Let her finish, Boyd. Obviously she’s gone to a lot of trouble.”

  Honey thanked her, and continued: “I always tell my son, ‘The world is crawling with creeps and greedheads. Don’t you dare grow up to be one of them.’ And what I mean is: Be a responsible and caring person. Is that so hard? To be generous, not greedy. Compassionate, not indifferent. My God, is there a worse sin than indifference?”

  Shreave hoisted a water jug and glugged noisily. He wiped his lips on his sleeve and grumbled, “Would you get to the point, if you’ve got one.”

  “I do. I do have a point.” Honey paused to sort out the tunes in her head. One was “Yellow Submarine,” which she’d often sung to Fry when he was a baby. Even Perry Skinner, who preferred Merle or Waylon, knew all the words.

  She said, “I tend to get overexcited, I admit. Obsessed about certain things, though in a non-clinical way. ‘Hyperfocused,’ my son calls it. The dinner hour is important to me. It’s the only time we really get to talk anymore.”

  “You and your boy?” Eugenie said.

  “Right. That part of the day is ours, you understand? Fry’s growing up so fast—he’s got track practice and homework and his skateboarding. Plus he sees his ex-father a couple of times a week, which is strictly his choice. Anyhow…where was I?”

  “Dinner,” Eugenie prompted gently.

  “Yes. Practically every night the phone rings in the middle of dinner and it’s some stranger, hundreds of miles away, trying to sell me something I don’t need, don’t want and can’t afford. The name of your company is Relentless, right? Like they’re proud of how they never let up from pestering people.” Honey felt her arms flapping. She heard her voice rise. “You call up my house, Mr. Boyd Shreave, and do not even have the honor, or spine, to give your true name!”

  Shreave snorted. “Strictly SOP.”