Nature Girl

by Carl Hiaasen

  Possessing Honey would be a triumph—and also a dagger in the soul of her ex-husband, the man who Piejack believed was responsible for the mutilation of his hand. He could hardly wait to be seen, arm in arm with his new mate, strolling the waterfront of Everglades City.

  Piejack had no particular plan for capturing Honey; lust alone was his co-pilot. Even after the cacti encounter his focus remained singular and unbreakable, for his pain was so intense as to erase such primal distractions as thirst, hunger and exhaustion.

  Under a rising moon he emerged from the pile of cans and on pricked knees began to ascend the shell mound from which he’d earlier fallen. After reaching the top he wilted feverishly, hurt pulsing in every pore. Feminine voices rose from the campsite below, and Piejack rallied with the hope that one of them belonged to Honey. He thought about the other woman in the group—the big blonde who’d gone topless in the kayak—and he fantasized for himself a star role in a writhing, glistening three-some. He recalled that the male camper was of lumpy build and not much good with a paddle, and from him Piejack foresaw minimal resistance. The man would either flee on impulse or be hurled into the creek.

  Like a rheumatic old crocodile, Piejack began his long crawl, guided by the soft voices and a reddish smudge of flame at the edge of his vision.

  Dear Geenie,

  Last night in my truck was magikal and prefect. I never had such amayzing you-no-what!

  Truly I believe we’re destinationed to be together for eternalty, and I will do everthing in my par to make it happen!!! I am a man of my werd, as soon you’ll find out.

  Yours fourever,

  V. Bonneville

  What a fucking Neanderthal, thought Boyd Shreave. The woman’s obviously got a thing for primitive hunks.

  “What are you doing down there with the flashlight?” Eugenie Fonda inquired. “Or maybe I don’t want to know.”

  “Just reading,” Shreave replied crossly.

  “Right. Under a blanket in the woods.”

  “I’m not up for socializing. Sorry.”

  She said, “I’m not askin’ you to square-dance, Boyd, I just want to know how you’re feeling.”

  “How do you think I feel? I Tasered myself in the schlong.”

  “Did it get burned?”

  “Don’t pretend like you care.”

  “Let me see.”

  “No thanks,” Shreave said, too emphatically. Quickly he added, “Not right now,” on the chance that Eugenie might later choose to demonstrate her concern in a more generous way.

  “Why don’t you come out and join us by the fire?” she asked.

  “In a minute.”

  Even more punishing than the fifty thousand volts was the withering embarrassment. Once the convulsions had ceased, Shreave had staggered to his feet, removed the now-broken stun gun from his pocket and mutely gimped away. He’d been sulking shamelessly ever since, certain that the two women had nothing more interesting than him to talk about.

  Eugenie said, “So, what’re you reading down there?”

  “A book.” He was strongly tempted to show her the front jacket of Storm Ghoul, just to get a rise.

  “Must be a good one,” she said.

  “Not really. It’s pretty dull.”

  Reading the tree trimmer’s love letter depressed Boyd Shreave, although not because of the kindergarten spelling or even the leering allusion to Eugenie’s seismic sexual energy. Shreave was bummed because the note was a black-and-white reminder that Van Bonneville was all about action. The guy had made good on his written vow, however crudely expressed. He’d actually gone out and killed his wife, in order to spend the rest of his life with the woman of his dreams.

  Sure, he was a moron, but he wasn’t a bullshitter. He was a man of his “werd.”

  Which was more than Shreave could say for himself.

  He dimmed the flashlight and threw off the woolen blanket and followed Eugenie Fonda back to the campsite, where he surreptitiously re-stashed her memoir in the Orvis bag. The space case named Honey was heating a kettle over the fire.

  “Green tea?” she offered.

  Shreave sneered. “I don’t think so.”

  “There was a raccoon over in the beer cans,” Eugenie reported, pointing up the hill. “A big sucker, too, it sounded like.”

  “Maybe that’s who stole our kayaks,” Shreave said caustically.

  “Honey also thought she heard a guitar.”

  “A guitar, huh?” Shreave tossed a broken oyster shell into the flames. “Sure it wasn’t a harp? Maybe we’re all dead and this is Heaven. That’d be my luck.”

  Honey handed a steaming cup to Eugenie. “Boyd’s right, it probably wasn’t anything. It was just in my head,” she said quietly.

  Eugenie asked about panthers. Honey told her there were wild ones on the mainland. “But only a few. They’re almost extinct.”

  “What a tragedy that would be,” Shreave muttered.

  “They don’t eat people, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  Shreave laughed thinly. “The only thing I’m afraid of is getting bored out of my skull. I don’t suppose you two came up with a game plan.”

  Eugenie said, “We sure did. Our plan is to ignore all your dumbass comments.”

  Honey raised a hand. “Shhhh. Hear that?”

  “Don’t pay attention to her,” Shreave told Eugenie. “She’s a complete nut job, in case you didn’t notice.”

  Honey remarked upon how different Boyd had sounded when he’d phoned to sell her a cheap piece of Gilchrist County. “You’ve got a wonderful voice when you’re lying,” she said. “The rest of the time you’re just a whiny old douchebag.”

  Eugenie laughed so hard that green tea jetted through her front teeth. Shreave was furious but low on options. Honey emptied the kettle over the fire and said it was time to hit the sack.

  “Big day tomorrow,” she added. “We’re gonna search the whole island ’til we find those kayaks.”

  “What if they’re not here?” Genie asked.

  “Then I guess we start swimming. Either way, you’ll need a good night’s rest.”

  Once it became clear that Eugenie had no intention of ministering to his wounded member, Shreave dragged his bedding out of the pup tent and relocated closer to the fire. He’d been camping only once, twenty years earlier, during a brief hitch with the Boy Scouts. His mother had signed him up as part of an ongoing (and ultimately futile) campaign to imbue her only male child with character. Almost immediately young Boyd had alienated the other Scouts with his nettlesome commentary and disdain for physical labor. By the time the troop made its first overnight expedition, Shreave had been accurately pegged as the resident slacker. Soon after midnight a prankster had opened his sleeping bag and set loose a juvenile armadillo, which innocently began to explore Shreave’s armpits for grubs. The unhappy camper had reacted by clubbing the bewildered creature to death with his boom box, a second-degree misdemeanor resulting in the troop’s ejection from the Lady Bird Johnson State Floral Gardens and Nature Preserve, and of course in Shreave’s lifetime banishment from the Scouts.

  Now, lying in the moonlight, Shreave tensely attuned himelf to the many sounds of the night. He felt foolishly exposed and defenseless against feral predators. What did that goofball Honey know about panthers? The hairs on his arms prickled when he heard an animal with heft—surely no raccoon—scraping slowly through the trees. Shreave groped around for a rock or a sturdy stick, but all he came up with was a handful of oyster shards.

  “I smell fish.” It was Honey’s voice.

  “From the campers before us,” said Shreave. Secretly he was glad to know that someone else was awake.

  “Not cooked fish. Raw fish,” she said. “I swear I know that smell.”

  Trying to be casual, Shreave said, “I hear that critter you guys were talkin’ about.”

  “Sounds substantial, doesn’t it?”

  “For sure.”

  “So go check it out,” Honey
suggested. “Don’t forget your flashlight.”

  Shreave rolled over, thinking: She’s quite the comedienne.

  “Nighty-night, Boyd.”

  “Go to hell.”

  After a while the noise in the trees stopped, and one of the women began to snore softly. Shreave had to piss like a fountain, but he was reluctant to venture out among the nocturnal fauna. Besides, the painful Taser mishap temporarily had taken the pleasure out of urination.

  With no success he slapped at some gnats that had developed a fondness for his hair. Minute by wretched minute, the mystique of Florida was bleeding away. Bitterly Shreave reappraised his grandiose dream of launching a new life with Eugenie Fonda. If the trip continued on its present downward trajectory, the dimension of this particular failure would dwarf all the others in Shreave’s lackluster past. As usual he deflected both blame and responsibility; cruel chance had imbedded him here—stranded on a scraggly island with a psychotic divorcée, an increasingly unresponsive girlfriend and a half-barbecued cock.

  Lulled by the hiss of the dying campfire, Shreave was surprised when his thoughts turned to Lily back in Fort Worth. His longing was characteristically base and unsentimental; the memory stirring him was that of his heiress wife clad in those red thong panties, dry-humping his lap on the living room sofa. Shreave regretted not having taken advantage of that extraordinary interlude, for Lily—who by now must have figured out that he’d flown the coop—was lost to him forever.

  He would have been shocked to know that he wasn’t the only man on Dismal Key thinking about her.

  The Indian had slipped away, leaving the young woman named Gillian to supervise Dealey. The investigator knew he was in trouble when she said, “I think I’d make a good TV weather personality. They don’t call ’em weathermen anymore—they’re ‘weather personalities.’ Forget the hurricanes and tornadoes, but I’d love to do the winter ski reports. You ever been to Aspen?”

  Dealey shook his head.

  “Me neither. Park City?”

  “I really need to sleep,” Dealey said.

  “Let’s make a demo tape.”

  At first Dealey refused, but then the girl jabbed his gut with the sawed-off shotgun, a weapon with which she was clearly, and harrowingly, unfamiliar. So he took out the video camera and taped her holding the gun while she pretended to do a television weather report. When he replayed it for her to see, she said, “Jesus, my hair’s a wreck. Did you bring some conditioner?”

  “Oh sure. And rose-petal bath crystals.”

  Gillian said, “Maybe I’ll switch my major to communications. I can’t see myself in a classroom full of third graders.”

  “It’s a stretch,” Dealey agreed.

  “Or maybe I won’t go back to college at all. I’ll just stay here on the island with you and Thlocko.”

  “Look, I need a favor. I want to call home and let my wife know I’m okay.”

  Gillian looked more amused than sympathetic. “You got a cell phone, Lester?” She’d decided he looked like a Lester and to address him that way.

  “Two minutes is all I need. She’s probably worried to death,” Dealey said.

  “Where’s your wedding ring?”

  Dealey hesitated a half second too long while making up an answer. Gillian wagged a finger. “You think just ’cause I’m young I can’t tell when a guy’s lying his balls off? I’m an expert, Lester, so you’d better watch out. I’m like a human polygraph!”

  “Can I make the call or not?”

  “To who?” Gillian was sighting the sawed-off through her toes.

  Dealey said, “I need to speak with the lady who hired me. I’m a private investigator.”

  “For real? How cool is that!”

  “At the moment, not cool at all.”

  “By the way, I know how to use this,” Gillian said, hoisting the shotgun. “Thlocko told me it was okay to blast away if you try anything funny. He told me to aim for the legs, in case you’re really alive and not a spirit.”

  “Mighty white of him,” Dealey said.

  “So tell me your story, Lester, and stick to the truth.”

  “Sure,” said Dealey, and he did.

  Gillian thought it was fantastic. “She’s paying you twenty-five grand to tape her old man boning some bimbo! That’s awesome, L-man.”

  Dealey said, “I won’t see a dime, because I’ll never get the triple-X shot that my client wants. She’s a total kink.”

  “And these are the kayak people we’re talkin’ about, right? The same ones camping near Beer Can Gulch.”

  “The Yuppie couple from Texas, yeah. The trailer-park woman, she’s not involved.”

  Gillian was so delighted to learn some juicy details about the mysterious intruders that she gave Dealey permission to call his client.

  “But first, my turn.” She motioned for the cell phone.

  Dealey removed it from an inside pocket of his suit jacket and handed it to her. Gillian punched the number and waited.

  “My mother,” she said to Dealey.

  “Save me some battery.”

  Gillian nodded and whispered, “It’s her machine, thank God.”

  Dealey could hear the beep on the other end.

  “Hey, Mom, just me,” said Gillian brightly. “My cell’s not workin’ and I didn’t want you guys to worry. Everything’s awesome except I’m takin’ some extra vacation. I broke up with Ethan, which you predicted of course, but now I met this new guy—he’s real real different, and I bet you’ll like him. Give my love to Dad, and I’ll try again in a few days.”

  She tossed the phone to Dealey and said, “Whew! That’s a load off. You want some privacy?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll be in the ladies’ room.” She pointed toward a thicket at the edge of the clearing.

  Dealey waited until she was out of sight. By moonlight he fished through his wallet for the scrap of paper upon which Lily Shreave had written her mobile number. She answered on the first ring.

  “I hope this is good news, Mr. Dealey.”

  “Yes and no,” he said.

  “Uh-oh. Here we go.”

  “The good part is, I got what you asked for.” He knew Boyd Shreave’s wife would believe it.

  “Penetration? You got penetration?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “On the beach, right? And she was on top, wasn’t she?”

  “Big-time,” said Dealey. He had no intention of ripping Lily Shreave off, but a lie was still a lie. He might have felt worse about it, if she weren’t such a perv.

  “So what’s the bad news?” she asked.

  “I’m trapped. I can’t get outta this fuckin’ place.”

  “And where exactly would you be?”

  “I got no earthly idea, Mrs. Shreave. There’s ten thousand goddamn islands out here, and I’m stuck on one of ’em.”

  “With my twenty-five-thousand-dollar sex tape.”

  “Correct,” Dealey said.

  “May I ask how you got there?”

  “At gunpoint.”

  “Holy Christ,” said Lily Shreave. “It wasn’t Boyd, was it?”

  “Get serious.”

  “Please don’t tell me you were kidnapped.”

  “Twice,” Dealey said.

  “But somehow you escaped.”

  “Negative. Not by a long shot.”

  “So who’s got you now?” Lily Shreave demanded.

  “Not important.” Dealey saw no benefit to admitting that he was the prisoner of a guitar-toting Seminole Indian and a college sorority girl.

  “Here’s what I need you to do,” he said to Mrs. Shreave, and he told her.

  “I like it,” she said. “You’re a smart fella, Mr. Dealey. I’ll call first thing in the morning.”

  He held no illusion that she cared whether he lived or died. Getting her mitts on the video was all that mattered to her.

  Dealey heard a rustling and Gillian stepped from the thicket. He said into the phone
, “I’ve gotta go.”

  “Wait! One more question.”

  “What?”

  “The tape—how’d it turn out? Can you see…everything?”

  “The works,” Dealey said.

  “Wow.”

  “More like double wow.”

  “I can’t wait,” said Boyd Shreave’s wife.

  “Oh, you’ll be surprised,” Dealey told her, and hung up.

  Seventeen

  Cecil McQueen died in a chokehold at a nightclub called Le Lube, where he and six friends had gone for a bachelor party. The branch supervisor of the trucking firm was being married the next day to his ex-wife’s divorce accountant, and his buddies couldn’t decide if it was a masterstroke or an act of self-destruction.

  At the strip joint the men drank festively but set no records. Normally a shy person, Cecil McQueen surprised his companions when he bounded into the mud-wrestling pit to take on a dancer known as Big Satin, who outweighed him by fifty-three pounds and was unaware (as was Cecil) of his obstructed cardiac arteries. Afterward Big Satin felt terrible. So did Cecil’s co-workers and supervisor, although the wedding went on as scheduled.

  The police ruled the death as accidental, but nonetheless it dominated the TV news, which is how the victim’s only son—then addressed as Chad—learned that his father had not perished while rescuing a vanload of orphans from a flooded drainage canal. That was the yarn his stepmother had cooked up.

  Years later Sammy Tigertail often thought about his dad, a cheery and harmless soul who believed that the three essential ingredients of contentment were classic rock, Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a hot tub. It was the music that had cheered young Chad, even after he’d moved out to the Big Cypress and shed his name and turned forever away from white people (except for one). His affinity for rock was what had led to the foolish, soul-bruising lapse with Cindy, whom he’d met at a Stones concert in Lauderdale. Within ten seconds Sammy Tigertail had known she was poison, yet he’d willingly opened his veins.

  And learned nothing from the ordeal, because the same thing seemed to be happening with Gillian.