by Tom Poland
It moved me … this murderous woman’s soulful singing. Jackson had crossed the Styx.
Back at camp, we hashed over Jackson’s death. The mainland couldn’t let a man go missing. There are forms to fill out and statistics to keep, and if nothing else, he owes people money. Someone would look for him eventually.
“Jackson’s a legend now,” I said. “Add him to the people missing on Sapelo.”
“Me too, maybe” said Tyler. “I’m not leaving until I find Lorie, she half said for she was deep in thought and going away from me into her own world.
Finally, the next day close to sundown, an autumn-like day, Rikard came into camp and walked over to the fire. I told him about Jackson’s body washing ashore.
“Did you check his pockets?” he asked, holding his hands over the fire.
“Never occurred to me,” I said. “He was not a pretty sight.”
“Well, then, the Old Mullet Man will. Where’d you bury him?”
“Don’t disturb old Jackson,” I said.
“Where is he?”
“Down south of where his boat sunk, about forty yards, behind the dunes. Look for the cross.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” said Tyler, getting in Rikard’s face, who got right back in hers.
“On this island we don’t waste nothing. Who knows what he has on him.”
“Don’t you worry about Jackson, pretty lady” Rikard said. “I told you I’d take you to my place. You don’t want me to change my mind, do you? Y’all got a shovel?”
I threw the shovel to Rikard, who caught it clean around the handle.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Put the cross back up.”
“Will do,” he said and jogged off down the beach.
Thirty minutes later, Rikard returned, carrying a wallet in the shovel.
“You know it’s damn cool to be early August, the weather’s kind of freaky, ain’t it?” He huddled by the fire. “Give me some water. I need to rinse this thing off. It smells like shit. Old Jackson’s ripe I tell you.”
“Use the shower,” I said.
Rikard went over to the solar shower and sprinkled water over a brown wallet. He sniffed it and satisfied with the smell, peeled the wallet open.
“Well, I’m two dollars richer,” he said, pulling two pale, watery ones out. “And, let’s see … here’s a note but the ink’s smeared.”
“What’s it say?”
“You tell me.”
I took the note, which was falling apart. The note was wet and flimsy and the blue ink had washed away, leaving the original message a ghost of itself. It was illegible.
“I can’t make anything out.”
Tyler looked at it.
“No, I don’t see how you can make anything out. Maybe it’s a grocery list.”
“Jackson couldn’t read,” said Rikard, “someone had to give him the note.”
“Well, to hell with it,” I said.
I tossed it into the coals, where it landed with a sizzle. I watched it dry, shrivel, and then to my amazement, the writing revealed itself just before it burst into flames. Before I could read it, it was gone.
“Did you see that?” I asked, incredulous.
“See what?” said Rikard.
“The note, right before it burnt. The writing was clear. Kind of like the invisible ink thing where kids heat a note over a candle. Clear as day it said ‘Slater.’ ”
“Well, there’s nothing to do about it now,” said Tyler. She turned to Rikard. “So, are we going to your place?”
“For the night. Remember what I told you about the girl. Let’s go.”
“Hold on,” I said. “Let us get a few things. Tyler, get what you’ll need. Can we take the dog?”
“No, he won’t like my place. My place will freak him out. Tie him up somewhere. Bring your girl’s spell ingredients. I’ll see what I can do for her.”
“We can’t just leave the dog tied up. What if he knocks his water over?”
“Fill every bowl you got and put them in the shade beneath that palmetto. Make them spill proof, settle ‘em firm in the sand.”
“All right, but put me on record as against this,” I said.
Tyler came from her tent carrying her basket and her small suede bag. I tied Voodoo to a shade tree and left six bowls and a bucket of water buried into the sand so he couldn’t tip them over. I got Brit’s spell ingredients and we struck out for the channel in Rikard’s camouflaged bateau.
And so, at long last, we were on our way to an outcome: good or bad. We eased into a large creek south off the channel until it narrowed, then began switchbacks reminiscent of Appalachian roads, the blue-green land of waterfalls where Cameron, the Rainbow Chaser, was turning nature into art. After many turns, we entered a large expanse of estuary where creeks branched off in many directions. A pelican on a bank flew up and began to shadow us. Tyler pointed, her face afire with hope.
We moved farther into the marsh, going from one tributary to another. We turned here and there until we entered a creek Rikard called “Mullet Slough.” The slough narrowed and shallowed, and Rikard cut the engine and we drifted. The pelican landed behind the bateau, and Rikard began to pole us along. Soon, we passed a whale shaped mound of mud Rikard said had been there forever.
“Jump on that and it’ll suck you in so deep you’ll come out in China,” he said, giving me a knowing wink. “Now, I’ll show you why they call me the Mullet Man. This creek right here is one of my grocery stores. I like my fish fresh, not frozen.”
He poled up the narrowing creek, a strategy underlying his movement. He was herding mullet into a dead end. As we neared the end of the creek, he stood in the bow, a purple bandanna hanging from his pants, and cast his net. Clutching it with his teeth and artfully throwing it, a shimmering circle plopped onto the water and sunk, a ring of death. Tugging its strings, he closed the net and pulled it up. Two silver mullets fell into the boat where they thrashed about, making the moves that propel them through water but appear as death throes on land.
Soon, ten, nice-sized mullet joined the thrashing. Rikard surveyed his haul, took the smallest mullet, slippery and wriggling, and stuck its head into his mouth. He bit down into it hard, stunning the fish. As cold fish blood ran from the corners of Rikard’s mouth, the pelican flew to the boat’s side. Rikard flipped the mullet into the pelican’s pouch and the bird downed it with a backward tilt of its head.
Rikard, wiping fish blood onto his sleeve, fired up the motor and we threaded back through the marsh to the channel. The pelican flew behind us, flapping, then gliding. This pilgrimage was bringing renewed life to Tyler and she seemed to grow younger right before my eyes. When Rikard turned the bateau, the pelican mirrored our course. Tyler locked her eyes on the bird as we twisted and turned through the marsh. We were taking so many turns down so many small creeks, it would have been difficult to find our way out, which added to my surprise when Rikard spoke.
“Now in a few minutes, I’m gonna blindfold you,” he said, pulling two blue bandannas from beneath his seat. “Don’t get your feelings hurt. Seclusion and secrecy are how I survive. Can’t take chances on anyone finding my sanctuary. I came here to escape people, not have them drop in on me when they feel like it.”
He was folding a bandanna into a blindfold working with deliberation, making them wide enough to cover our eyes.
“You can trust us,” I said.
“Maybe, but can I trust who might follow you back? When you get to my place, you’ll understand. I go to great pains to be safe. All right, we’ll hold off on these for a while,” he said, stuffing them into his shirt. “In a few minutes, though, you’ll have to put ’em on. No choice. That’s just the way it is.”
“All right,” I said, you must have a good reason.”
“The best reason—staying alive.”
***
We entered yet another creek cutting deeper into the southern half of Forbidden Island or so I thought. One moment
I was lost, the next I recognized the creek where Rikard’s camouflaged gate barred entrance. He had deliberately taken a roundabout course to confuse us.
“All right, you been here before, but from this point on, you gotta wear these,” he said, tossing us bandannas. Tyler and I put on the blindfolds and Rikard checked them, making sure they were snug.
“All right, sit tight.”
We moved again, then he cut the engine. Wind cooed through the grasses, which complained beneath the bateau, scratching as we ground to a halt.
The boat rocked as Rikard stepped ashore. A click, a disconnecting, and a groan of metal broke the air. The engine coughed, then hummed, and we moved again for a few seconds. The engine died and a reversal of groans and clicks filled the air. Again, we were underway.
We were heading for Rikard’s mysterious fortress. The light was warm upon my face for we were heading into the sun, going west. Tyler’s hand found its way into mine. The shifting turns of the boat told me we were twisting, turning, and taking forks. We turned south and the sun struck the right cheek hard. After a while the wind died, and staccato bursts of brightness indicated we had entered a fringe of swamp. Then everything darkened. After a long time, the engine slowed and Rikard began to talk.
“We’ll be there soon.”
“Is the pelican still following us?” asked Tyler.
“No, he’s gone.”
We slowed, the engine died, and Rikard poled us forward. A distant alligator bellowed as Rikard removed my bandanna.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked
We had stopped in near-impenetrable swamp. Mirror-like water reflected a green world fractured by floating cypress needles. Fifty yards beyond the bow, a rise of cypress, gum, ash, oak, and sycamores stood in black mirror-like water, their buttressed trunks forming massive columns.
Tyler took off her bandanna and swept the sky for the pelican but there was no sky.
“Well, what do you think?” repeated Rikard.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Well, we ain’t. Look h-a-r-d-e-r.”
I concentrated on the forest and looked hard, so hard I could almost feel the light strike my retina. So hard, I could feel the cypress needles and bark of the trees brush against my brain.
Nothing.
I willed my pupils to define the infinite shapes, greens, and textures, and something slowly started taking shape just as a photo emerges in the darkroom. The light paled beneath the thick canopy and I forced my eyes to see as an eagle sees. Patterns and lines came forth. Slowly it all came together and I absorbed a view of a palatial treehouse anchored against massive, virginal trees growing from a rise of ground.
Rikard started the engine and we headed toward his hideout. As we approached, the lodge grudgingly revealed more of its shape—a round, domed structure of massive cypress boards rigged with netting, broken branches, and leaves. Camouflage covered everything, even the razor and barbed wire barring other watery avenues to his stronghold.
Leafy camouflage netting covered the air above the lodge, built around an oak, and anchored against four large cypress trees. Beneath the house, three support poles driven into the earth rose like painted like cypress trunks. Spanish moss draped the house.
Rikard lived in an arboreal lodge—a fortress thirty feet off the water in the midst of a wetland forest. The whole effect reminded me of a banyan tree.
An armada of alligators filled the moat encircling his fortress, but Rikard’s killing fleet of reptiles let us cruise through them as if we didn’t exist. We tied up at a steep bank encircling his house, and Rikard spoke with pride.
“Before the Civil War, this was a hunt club for planters. When the island became a reservation, they abandoned it. When I took it over, it was in ruins.”
“It’s magnificent,” I said. “If we had come in here without you, I’d have missed it.”
“Well, the men who built it were pretty smart. A ridge of high land ran through the swamp. Once they built the lodge, they used slaves to remove the rest of the ridge, making their retreat an island. Dug it up, one basket at a time. Lots of slaves died here. Sometimes you can hear their spirits, like minstrels singing and chanting in the night. You can hear them pick axes adigging. They dug away the ridge and left a fortress for Old Mullet Man.”
“You have a castle,” I said, “surrounded by swamp. Your gators seem tame. The other night, now that was a vicious gator.”
“Tame’s another word for trained. These gators obey me. They respect me. I bring ’em food. The little gators I caught are going out back where I’ll teach ’em to obey me. Let’s say we’re up there having a meal and I see somebody coming that don’t belong here.”
Rikard looked at Tyler and winked.
He clasped both hands and blew a pure note between his thumbs. The gators went into a frenzy, thrashing their tails, bellowing, and snapping their jaws, and fanned out through the water like attack dogs.
Rikard shouted over the din. “When the wrong people get too close to my nest,” he said, “they’ll have one damn hard time getting away from a hundred hungry gators. I got ’em trained, trained good.”
He whistled the same two-fingered shrill pitch he’d used to stop the charging gator and the raging ceased.
“Now, you can come and go as you like ’cause I brought you in here and my gators have your scent … an interloper … now that’s another matter.”
I continued to take the place in. Sharpened bamboo stakes, camouflaged, of course, bristled from the trees, a booby trap for anyone trying to enter Rikard’s secured zone.
“Those bamboo spears … ?”
“Oh, punji sticks for sure. They got a little ex-cre-ment on the end of ’em. Come here in the dark trying to sneak up on me and someone’s gonna get a nasty puncture wound that’ll never heal. Beyond those punji sticks is a Boston Whaler, all camouflaged and hidden in rushes. That’s my water taxi to the mainland. I use this bateau just to get about the island. Surprises, secrecy, and safety—that’s what I have here.”
The house had loopholes—cone-shaped holes in its walls that let him fire on intruders with relative safety. A swinging bridge of ropes and planking ran from a balcony to a tupelo where he’d built a towering observation deck. He could spot intruders long before they could spot him. Anyone coming after him would be in for a rough time, sure enough.
“You like it here. I can tell,” said Rikard. “Well, there’s no place like home. Welcome to Conjura. He pointed above us into the canopy surrounding his fortress. “Now up there, time moves according to ancient rhythms. Up there I live in an easygoing way. It’s a quiet world far removed from televisions, computers, and phones.”
“You make it sound good,” I said.
“Oh yes, good indeed. Up there I can hear the sun burning. The winds bring me a thousand scents … blossoms, tree ferns, mosses, flowering plants, and I can watch butterflies and birds like I’m one of ’em. I wouldn’t live anywhere else. No way. Here, I am at one with nature. All right, that’s enough poetry. Get your stuff out of the boat and put it under the house here. Then I’ll clean the fish. I’ll go up, cook a little dinner, open some wine, and you can come up and meet my girl.”
Rikard’s old lodge seemed strong enough and high enough to withstand a hurricane and its tidal surge. I admired this survivalist. He had turned an old lodge into a fortress where bright sunshine, cool shadows, orchids, rain showers, birds, and pure air were his neighbors. And he had saved Crystal from herself, although he had other motives as well. Still, he wasn’t as bad a fellow as I had thought. I could be wrong, but I didn’t think so.
As Rikard went to get the mullets, Tyler seized my arm. A pelican in solo flight shot through a break in the canopy, its glide path taking it beneath a gauze of leafy air—camouflage netting—through the trees, around the house.
I was excited for her but fearful too. I hoped tonight would work out for her. I had come to care for her and her mission had become mine. I di
dn’t want disappointment to crush her. After serving time, after all those years and all those dead-ends … her personal judgment day came down to frying nine mullets. That was all that separated Tyler from her daughter, if it were her … nine mullets and ascension into the house where her fate waited.
She faced a great divide from which there was no turning back: absolution of guilt or heartbreak of unknowable dimensions.
SOMETHING HAPPENED
We went out back where old ship planking wedged between two massive cypress trees formed a worktable. Rikard scraped the silvery fish, whistling. He seemed pleased with himself, like a nameless philanthropist who has quietly donated a huge sum to a cause.
“Walk around, check out the place. We got a garden and a yard, kind of.”
“We’re not going to step on some booby trap, are we?” I asked.
“Not in the back. My traps are in the water and beyond.”
Rikard’s house was rustic-innovative. A tremendous water tower like you see in the great Australian outback collected rainwater. Colossal bamboo ran from the tank to the house in various spots—a kitchen and bathrooms, no doubt. From beneath the house more bamboo slanted steeply out and over the water—improvised sewer lines. It was better than an outhouse, and I doubted the gators minded some extra nutrients. The trees and poles supporting the house had wide green collars of camouflaged, greased metal. “These keep the squirrels out?” I asked.
“Oh, keeps snakes from paying us a visit. Water moccasins all around.”
Tyler and I walked beyond where Rikard was scaling the mullets, their minute scales showering away in silver bursts. The shingled roof was camouflaged to look like a blend of ground and canopy from air. Leaf-strewn netting floated over it, and the house itself sat upon heavy joists resting on large beams of the old days bolted to perfectly spaced trees.
A massive oak rose through the center of the house. Its overarching branches spread out like the ribs of an immense green parasol. Rikard’s sanctuary was as much a part of the trees as their needles and leaves.