Skink--No Surrender

by Skink- No Surrender (ARC) (epub)

“I’m not a deeply religious person,” Skink continued, “but stealing a preacher’s car is a slime-dog move, even by the gutter standards of today’s common criminal. I presume this houseboat was obtained the same way—by theft rather than an honest purchase.”

  “It’s a loaner,” Tommy said dully.

  “No, he stole it,” Malley interjected, “in the middle of the night. After he sunk the car, we hitched a ride to some marina and jumped the fence.”

  Skink brought his freed hands out from behind his back. No pocketknife.

  You’re kidding me, I thought.

  “Son,” he said to Tommy, “you’ve chosen the proverbial dead-end highway. Anyone who takes pot shots at a lovely wading bird is a hopeless defective, in my view, an evolutionary mistake. There’s a natural order to what happens to you next, an inevitable conclusion to all this low villainy.”

  It was quite a performance. Dodge Olney probably heard the same sort of lecture before he wound up in the ambulance.

  Tommy wore a crooked, clueless grin. “Oh yeah? Well, here’s my conclusion. I’m gonna kill all three of you and dump your dead bodies in the river.”

  “No, you are NOT!” Malley was beet-faced, shaking a fist. “You’ve done enough, T.C. Too much!”

  Skink parted the sheet and used a frayed edge to wipe a circle in the condensation on the windshield. Peering downstream he said, “By the way, Thomas, there is a word that rhymes with orange. ‘Sporange.’ S-p-o-r-a-n-ge. The definition can be found in the unabridged Oxford dictionary. I’d say go look it up, except you won’t have the opportunity.”

  Tommy cocked the pistol’s hammer maybe two seconds before the houseboat struck the half-submerged tree stump that Skink must have spotted ahead of us when he looked through the window. The boat shuddered, swayed—then the gun went off. Blue light flashed from the muzzle, and the bang was deafening.

  The governor didn’t go down. He was on top of Tommy in an instant, yelling for me and Malley to get off the bleeping boat. I dragged her breathless and squirming through the cabin door. Outside in a stinging rain I pulled her close and told her everything was all right. She was shuddering, weeping into the front of my shirt. I’d never seen her that way before, and I won’t lie. It shook me up.

  Skink appeared, hauling Tommy by the hair and backlit by the strobing flashlight, which was rolling around the floor of the cabin. Once again the old man had been lucky, the bullet barely grazing an ear lobe. He hurled something overboard, and from the heavy splash I knew it was the gun.

  “Okay, let’s go! Let’s go!” I screamed.

  “With no further delay,” he said in that canyon-deep rumble, and with a gentle sweep of an arm he launched me and my cousin over the side, into the muddy roiling Choctawhatchee.

  Malley and I are both good swimmers, but swimming for fun is way different from swimming for your life. We got to the shore, but you wouldn’t call it graceful. Like two weary frogs we shimmied up the slick bank and hugged the trunk of a cypress, flinching at every thunderclap.

  I turned my head so I could see the houseboat. It was drifting away at a peculiar tilt, pulling the canoe like a sleek dog on a leash. A familiar wide-shouldered silhouette remained visible on the aft deck. He’d been watching to make sure Malley and I had made it. I called out his name, but of course he wasn’t coming.

  A fork of lightning split the clouds, a phenomenal silver-yellow pulse that froze Skink in place like the flash from an old-time camera. One arm was raised skyward, the hand open in a farewell wave. At the end of his other arm hung the thrashing, raging form of Tommy Chalmers.

  The governor’s smiled seemed to cast its own light.

  That insane movie-star smile.

  I swear I could still see it after the sky went black.

  Eighteen

  During the storm I fell fast asleep. Incredible but true.

  Scared stiff, plastered to a tree, soaked to the bone, thunder booming, Malley huddled at my side. …

  Not only did I sleep, I had a dream, which I blame on watching too much TV with my stepfather. A Bigfoot was chasing me through the parking lot of an Appleby’s. It wasn’t your standard Bigfoot, all hairy and ape-like. This one was scaly and pink and stunk like a garfish, though it was wearing a really sweet pair of Oakley shades. Trent would have been blown away. The Bigfoot’s face didn’t look like Tommy Chalmers, but instead it was a dead ringer for Mrs. Curbside, my seventh-grade Language Arts teacher. FYI, in real life Mrs. Curbside weighs maybe a hundred pounds.

  The dream Bigfoot didn’t ever catch me, but I felt worn out when I woke up. There was rapid tapping, like a drum roll, on the tree trunk. I could feel the vibration in my fingertips. Malley was sitting on the bank trying to dry her sneakers. Her soaked hoodie lay in a heap beside her.

  She said, “See? I really saw one.”

  “Saw what?”

  “Shh. Don’t spook him.”

  I followed her gaze up the branches to where a tall red-crested woodpecker was drilling holes in the bark. It was a cloudless morning, so the bird’s dark feathers stood out vividly against the pale sky.

  “Mal, that’s not an ivorybill,” I whispered.

  “Is too!”

  “There’s no white down its back. And check out the beak,” I said. “It’s too dark and pointy. That’s a male pileated.”

  “You’re wrong, Richard.”

  The woodpecker quit drumming and cocked its head to scope us out. I wished it had been an ivorybill, but it wasn’t.

  “Still very cool,” I said to my cousin.

  She snorted. “You think you know everything.”

  The bird gave several high-pitched squawks and took off. I sat down beside Malley and removed my own wet sneakers. Above us the tree limbs looked stark except for wispy flags of Spanish moss that reminded me of the governor’s beard. In front of us the Choctawhatchee rolled high and fast, creamy with mud. Overnight it had carried the damaged houseboat downstream, and possibly engulfed it.

  “Decision time, Richard. Do we stay here or make a run for it?”

  There was a third option, too, but I said, “Let’s wait here for some fishermen to come along. Somebody’ll have a phone we can use.”

  “But what about your one-eyed, leech-slurping friend?”

  “I know.” Skink wouldn’t want us to go searching for him, though Malley and I were both thinking about it.

  “There’s a reason he shoved us off the boat,” I said.

  “Something really bad could happen to him. Tommy’s totally whacked.”

  “Tommy’s in over his head.”

  I told her some of what I knew about Skink, starting with Vietnam. How later he was elected governor, got depressed, freaked out and disappeared. How he lives off eating roadkill. How he lost his left eye to thugs. I mentioned there were crazy rumors on the Internet, but nobody could prove a thing. I told her about him fighting the turtle-egg robber on the beach, about the gray getaway car that mysteriously had been left in town for him. How it was his idea to come save her from T.C. How his foot got run over when was he saving the baby skunk.

  I ended with a description of the canoe being pulled away by a gigantic alligator, Skink plunging in after it.

  My cousin said, “God, but he’s so old. He’s, like, older than Grandpa Ed, and Grandpa Ed couldn’t wrestle a gecko.”

  “The governor’s a serious freak of nature.”

  “You think he’s gonna hurt Tommy?”

  “That’ll depend on Tommy’s attitude.”

  “I hope he does,” she said. “Hurt him. Does that sound terrible? I don’t care.”

  “Did Tommy hurt you?”

  The sun was sneaking over the treetops warming our arms and legs. Malley was braiding her hair into two long strands, scowling at the black dye job.

  “He kissed me a couple times,” she said, “which I t
old him to knock off. When he didn’t, I slugged him in the nose. You should’ve seen the mess, like a rotten tomato exploded on his face. After that was when he brought out the handcuffs.”

  “What else?” I asked.

  “Online he came across so different, so … normal. And not mean at all. He emailed me this one poem—‘a daughter of the gods, divinely tall, and most divinely fair.’ Said he wrote it late one night just for me, and like an airhead I’m all, ‘Oh, Talbo, that’s so sweet!

  “Then he picks me up at the airport in Orlando, and after a day or two he isn’t sounding so much like a great poet. So I Google a few lines of his masterpiece and guess what? He stole it from Alfred Lord Tennyson, or Lord Alfred Tennyson, whatever. Some English writer who died like a hundred years ago. I called Tommy out on it, and that’s when he smashed my laptop. I was so pissed.”

  “When did you find out he wasn’t Talbo Chock?”

  My cousin smiled ruefully. “I busted him on that deal right away. Lots of people use weird screen names, so it didn’t seem like a biggie. But, seriously, I had no idea the real Talbo was a soldier, swear to God. Turns out there’s lots of stuff about T.C. I didn’t know.”

  “Like the poet was driving a stolen car?”

  “Yeah. I figured that out when he decided to sink it.”

  “What else happened? What else did he do?” I asked.

  “I’m fine. Stop worrying, you sound like Dad.”

  “Let me see your wrists.”

  “He always made the handcuffs too tight. He said he bought ’em at a gun show.”

  Behind Malley was a stand of wild azaleas, the leaves yellow and pale orange. It was a peaceful burst of color.

  “Know what I feel really bad about?” she said. “The beer and gas we brought back in the canoe—Tommy swiped all that from a house trailer on a lot about a mile down the river. The ice cubes, too. I said why don’t we leave these people some money, and he just laughed.”

  “I still feel bad about Saint Augustine. Same thing.”

  “Richard, that was so not the same thing. You were just freaked about losing your dad. I mean, dude, you don’t even like to skateboard.”

  “Stealing is stealing.”

  She said, “Hey, I’m really sorry I ever brought it up. I’d never, ever in a jillion years tell your mother, okay? But I had to say whatever so you wouldn’t rat me out, even though you did anyway, until I was far away. The scene at home, I don’t know, I was just ultra-stressed and I had to shake free. You understand? Talbo—I mean Tommy—he was my ticket out. Big mistake, no doubt. Major mistake. But, God, Mom was on my case all the time and Dad’s always takin’ her side—no way am I going to school at the Twirp Academy! Sorry, sports fans. A New Hampshire winter is not on this girl’s wish list.”

  Another blue heron glided low across the Choctawhatchee trailing its stick-thin legs the way they do. I knew it wasn’t the same one Tommy Chalmers had fired at. That poor critter was probably halfway to Mexico, and still flying.

  Malley went on: “He told me he understood everything I was going through. He said we’d just be good friends and not to worry—if I changed my mind about running away, he’d turn the car around and drive me straight home. That’s what he promised, word for word. I was so beyond stupid to believe him.”

  “That’s what liars are pro at, making people believe them.”

  “I know, right? Tommy had the nice-guy act totally down.”

  “Still, not a genius move on your part,” I said, “taking off with a stranger you met in a chat room.”

  “I really thought I could handle him, but what a psycho. That whole wedding-on-the-beach thing? Perv World.”

  The river life was waking up. We saw a fat sturgeon jump, about as graceful as a flying log. Ospreys were on patrol calling to each other. Our gaze turned downriver, and so did our thoughts.

  “That old man gets hurt or killed, it’s all on me,” Malley said. “If he ends up dead, I’ll hate myself forever.”

  “Don’t worry. He threw the pistol overboard.”

  She looked downcast. “Tommy’s got another one.”

  “Don’t tell me that.”

  “He stashed it somewhere on the boat. He didn’t want me to see where, ’cause he said I’d ‘cap’ him if I got the chance, but no way. Guns scare the pee out of me, Richard. Speaking of which, I can’t believe you jumped T.C. after he shot at that bird! You went all Vin Diesel on him!”

  “Another opposite-of-genius move,” I said.

  It was bad news that Tommy Chalmers had stashed a second gun aboard. I told myself everything would work out all right—Tommy was weakened and woozy from the catfish infection. He probably wouldn’t even remember where he hid the pistol on the houseboat.

  Was the houseboat boat even still afloat? If so, probably not for long.

  Skink would know when it was time to abandon ship. Would he take Tommy with him? I could totally picture the governor coming out of the river alone, the kidnapper’s body being found days later in the sunken wreck.

  Or never seen again.

  From what Skink had told me about his life, I knew he was capable of such things. I also suspected that he wasn’t one to exaggerate.

  Malley was growing restless on the riverbank. “How will we get somebody to stop and pick us up?”

  “Uh, we yell ‘Help’?”

  “Not funny, Richard.”

  “I’m serious. That’s what marooned people do.”

  She made a snarky face. “So not cool.”

  This was my cousin in full-on diva mode—too vain to call for help. Unbelievable.

  “Then yell ‘Asparagus!’ if you want,” I said. “I’m yelling ‘Help!’ ”

  As it turned out, we didn’t get a chance to yell anything. Two hours passed without a single boat appearing on the Choctawhatchee. The fishermen were staying home because the river was too churned from the storm. So far I hadn’t seen one osprey make a dive, which meant that even full-time fishing birds couldn’t find any fish. Only the occasional leaping sturgeon broke the surface.

  I told Malley we’d better get moving.

  “Which way?”

  “Back toward the highway bridge where Skink parked. We’ll walk close to the shoreline in case a boat comes by.”

  “Richard, you do see it’s a total swamp, right? Thanks to that insane rain.”

  “It was swampy before the rain,” I said.

  “Yeah, what if I want to go the other way?”

  “Be my guest. Maybe you’ll find a paved bike path with water fountains.”

  “Sometimes you’re such an ass,” said Malley.

  “Hurry, put on your shoes.”

  She went ahead of me taking long, show-offy strides. We definitely weren’t in ninja mode—more like two buffaloes splashing through a rice paddy. Not that we were trying to sneak up anything, just the opposite. We wanted to be heard and seen, preferably by a friendly human who could lead us to safety.

  The hiking would have gone easier if we’d had higher, drier ground, but the deep woods that lay ahead us were low-lying and boggy. The sticky air buzzed with gnats, mosquitoes and small biting flies. I couldn’t find any wax myrtle leaves to crush and wipe on our skin.

  Hooked to her iPod earbuds, Malley could go forever. Without her music she quickly got bored and cranky. After a while I ignored the complaining, though I was tempted to say: Would you rather be back on the boat with your maniac kidnapper?

  As thirsty as we were, neither of us would drink the murky river water. The last thing we needed on our trek was an attack of jungle diarrhea. We grew tired in the heat, and our pace slowed down. Rest breaks became more frequent. We got good at slapping insects off of each other without leaving a mark.

  The sun was almost dead high, so cool patches of shade got harder to find. In the brutal humidity my
cousin and I were panting like old hound dogs.

  “How long till we get there?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. A while longer.”

  “This sucks, Richard.”

  The next time we stopped it was pretty much the same conversation. The time after that, Malley got super excited and said she heard an ambulance siren, which meant we must be nearing the highway. While I wanted that to be true, I couldn’t hear anything except the rattle of cicadas in the bushes. She got mad at me, of course, and declared that we should immediately turn due west because that’s where the sound of the ambulance had come from. I said no.

  “Who made you the navigator?” she huffed.

  “I’m older.”

  “By only nine stupid days!”

  “Come on, Mal, it’s a joke. Let’s keep walking.”

  My cousin isn’t a patient person, but extreme patience is what the situation called for. It’s not as if we were lost. The Road 20 bridge wasn’t going anywhere, and we didn’t need a GPS to find it. All we had to do was follow the shoreline of the Choctawhatchee upstream. I didn’t want to be too harsh with Malley, after all she’d been through, but there was no way I’d let her take charge of our escape.

  The last time we stopped to rest, I was the one who heard a noise.

  “Somebody’s following us.”

  “Okay, you’re finally losing it, Richard.”

  “Please shut up and listen.”

  “It’s probably a deer. They’re thick around here.”

  “Not a deer,” I said. “A deer would be running the other way.”

  Something definitely was approaching us from behind, moving with zero stealth through the tangled cover and rain puddles. My first emotion was relief, because I thought it had to be the governor—the houseboat had sunk and he’d made it to shore and was trying to find us.

  “Hey, Skink!” I shouted. “This way!”

  Nobody shouted back.

  “It’s Richard! We’re over here!”

  Still no voice answered from the woods. Malley and I stood up.

  “Now I hear him,” she whispered.

  The splash of footfalls, the snapping of twigs and a muffled snort, like a man trying to swallow a laugh.