I thought of Tommy Chalmers and my stomach pitched. What if he’d gotten hold of the second gun and shot Skink? What if he alone made it off the sinking boat, and now he was stalking me and my cousin?
She looked at me anxiously. “Well?”
“I say let’s wait and see.”
“I say let’s run.”
There was no time to continue the discussion because our stalker had materialized like a glistening ghost at the edge of the clearing. He was hunched forward, slobbering and gape-jawed, his black eyes narrowed in fury.
“This is not happening,” Malley said in a cracked voice.
“Don’t panic,” I told her, which was idiotic. Panic was the only logical reaction.
“Richard?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I run now?”
“Yes, run.”
And I was right behind her.
Nineteen
One man was to blame for our present dilemma, and it wasn’t Tommy Chalmers.
It was Hernando de Soto, the Spanish explorer. He is most famous for discovering the Mississippi River, but he did something else on his historic expedition that caused Malley and me to be running for our lives nearly five centuries later, along the banks of a different river.
On May 25, 1539, De Soto’s flotilla sailed into Tampa Bay and pitched camp. The conquistador and his soldiers had crossed the sea carrying weapons, ammo, supplies and, for food, thirteen pigs. These were the very first pigs ever to set foot (hoof, actually) on the North American continent, and from the beginning the sturdy oinkers made it clear that they didn’t miss Europe one bit.
If de Soto had brought cows or even goats to the New World, my cousin and I wouldn’t have been in such deep trouble. Goats and cows are grazing animals, content to hang out in a pasture and mind their own business. Not pigs. Pigs require supervision, because they’re so curious and crafty, adaptable to almost every type of habitat. They totally loved Florida, and since happy grownup pigs produce lots of baby pigs, de Soto’s pack multiplied faster than he and his men could barbecue.
For three years the Spanish forces tramped through the southeastern wilderness terrorizing, torturing and enslaving the native Indians. This was standard operating procedure back in those days, though it doesn’t make de Soto any less of a cruel thug. Who knows how much more misery he would have inflicted on the locals if he hadn’t caught a fever and croaked. It happened soon after he reached the Mississippi, by which time his imported pig herd had grown to seven hundred slobbering mouths.
Flash forward to the twenty-first century and a sprawling country that’s been settled from coast to coast—a country that craves a fat, juicy pork chop. Pigs are a huge business in America, raised and slaughtered by the millions. Over the decades, however, many have escaped from farm pens and scuttled into the woods, where they’ve become as wild as bobcats or coyotes—only bigger, and way more destructive.
I researched all this myself later, though not for a new science project. I was simply curious to know all about the badass creature that nearly killed me.
These so-called feral pigs now roam forty-five states and they party hard, destroying valuable crops and wetlands with their sloppy rooting. Some places have officially declared war on free-roaming swine and offer cash bounties to hunters. So far, the swine are winning.
The boar chasing Malley and me must’ve weighed at least two hundred pounds, and that’s no lie. His long black nose was bristly, and his nappy thick fur was the color of a rusted junkyard heap. He owned two sets of filthy yellowed tusks, the bottom pair being longer and more curved. My goal was to avoid finding out how sharp they were.
Malley was way ahead, weaving through trees, hurtling the scrub, bounding over puddles. It was ridiculous, she was so much faster than me. Every few strides she’d glance back to see if I was catching up, and I’d yell at her to keep running. “Don’t slow down! Go! Go!”
The wild pig huffed like a locomotive at my heels. His shoulders were low to the ground, and he kept slashing his tusks in an upward motion that would have sliced the tendons in my legs, had I faltered. Only later did I learn that a boar that size can reach a speed of thirty miles an hour, much fleeter than any human, which explained why he seemed to be moving at such an easy trot.
Optimistically I surmised that he wasn’t interested in eating me for breakfast (pigs will eat anything), but rather that he only wished to drive us out of his territory. Malley and I would have happily departed with no further encouragement, yet the beast continued his cold-eyed pursuit. If it had been a movie, Nickel the gar man would have stepped out of the bushes and plugged the pig with his .22. Then he would have grinned at me and said, “See, boy? Dint I warn you ’bout them things?”
But that wasn’t going to happen. There was no sign of Nickel and now, ahead of me, no sign of my track-star cousin. She’d left me in the dust (well, the muck), which is what I’d urged her to do. No sense in both of us getting mauled.
My lungs burned, my knees throbbed and I was painfully aware I’d never outrun the mad boar, undoubtedly a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of a seafaring de Soto piglet.
I decided to climb a tree. No big deal, right?
Wrong. Not all trees are designed for rapid climbing, and the good ones are scarce when you absolutely, positively need to reach a safe altitude. Try scaling an ancient bald cypress when the trunk is slick from a rainstorm or the nearest boughs are too high to offer a step. It’s a sure way to end up flat on your back, staring up a hairy pair of cavernous pig nostrils.
So onward I ran until spying a young maple that forked conveniently at a height of maybe five feet. I scaled straight up the bark, wedged a foot into that snug cleft and slapped both hands around a sturdy branch. With a tired grunt I pulled myself into the tree’s leafy embrace and there I balanced, huffing to catch my breath. Below, the wild boar swiped his tusks back and forth across the trunk, sharpening their edges with each long scrape.
Hang in there, I told myself. He’ll get bored soon and go away.
Then the demon pig did the one thing I didn’t expect. He lay down panting and closed his eyes.
“You’re kidding,” I said out loud.
My mood was not good. I was desperately thirsty, sore, itchy, exhausted, worried about Malley being alone in the forest. …
And now the swine was taking a nap under my maple tree.
I said, “No. Way.”
The critter began to snore, his upper lip flapping slightly. He reminded me of Trent dozing on the sofa in front of our TV.
I considered jumping down from the tree, but I feared the sound of my landing would rouse the boar and spark another chase. A second choice was to stay patient and pray that the smelly porker would wake up and wander away, having forgotten what had led him to that spot. Unfortunately, a pig that size could sleep all day, and I didn’t have the whole day to waste. I didn’t even have an hour.
My cousin wasn’t blessed with a flawless sense of direction, and all the foot-speed in the world wouldn’t help if she made a wrong turn. She had no water or food, and the midday heat was hellish. Another unpleasant issue was snakes. Malley was accustomed to running safe ovals on our school’s bright, smooth, reptile-free track. But the Choctawhatchee River basin was basically snake heaven, and it would be easy to accidentally step on a murky-colored water moccasin.
I didn’t want to think about Malley getting snakebit all by herself, lost and miles from a hospital. Instead I focused on my problem porker, who was drifting deep into piggy dreamland. The new plan was to startle him so badly that he’d jump up and gallop off, freeing me to go find Malley. Working in my favor (or so I thought) was the element of surprise.
My family used to have a beagle-setter mix named Slater who would freak out if anyone tried to pet him while he was asleep. I mean, this dog would whip around and
snap like crazy. Yet when he was awake, he was the chillest, friendliest little dude you ever met. Dad said he had a college roommate who was the same way, a total bundle of nerves once his head hit the pillow. You couldn’t make a sound in the dorm room because you didn’t know how he might react. One night, as a joke, my father and another student put a live gerbil on the sleeping kid’s bed, and he leaped naked and yowling out the window. Luckily, the room was on the first floor.
I was hoping for a similar reaction from the dozing boar. Reaching down, I gingerly tugged the soggy sneaker from my right foot. Then I took aim.
In Little League I played shortstop, a position that requires a strong, accurate arm. Although I wasn’t much of a hitter, I could definitely throw some heat. The sneaker struck the pig with a wet smack flush on the tip of his quivering, disgustingly runny nose.
Sadly for me, the brute didn’t bolt wide awake and race off in a panic.
Instead he groggily rose, grunted twice, clacked his tusks and hunched closer to examine the odd object that had bounced off of his face. It was a size-8 Nike cross-trainer with neon-lime soles and a silver swoosh on the sides, not that the pig cared about style.
To him my shoe was nothing but a snack, which he chewed up and swallowed with a rude gurgle.
“Perfect!” I yelled down from the branches. “Just perfect!”
The boar raised his anvil-sized noggin to peer at me.
“Get outta here! Go away!”
He didn’t run. He didn’t walk. He just yawned, unfurling his long pink slug of a tongue.
I hollered some more and shook the branches, Bigfoot-style. You’ve probably never seen a pig shrug, but they do. Trust me. I got so mad that I threw my other Nike, which he actually caught with his yellowed chompers. The sneaker was gone in two seconds, and the foul critter’s tufted tail began to wag.
He thought it was a game!
“We’re done here,” I snapped, in sour defeat.
Cheerfully the boar circled the base of the maple tree waiting for another tasty shoe to hit him. There was no doubt in my mind that he could do that for hours.
“I AM SUCH AN IDIOT!” I shouted into the woods.
And, to my shock, the woods shouted back: “I’ve been tellin’ you that since pre-K!”
My cousin, of course. She’d come back to get me. I spotted her crouching behind a spruce pine.
“Mal, don’t do anything stupid!”
“You mean like feed my sneakers to a pig?”
“Stay back or he’ll rip you to shreds.”
Slowly she emerged from behind the tree. The boar stopped circling below me and squinted intently in her direction.
“Hey there, Mister Pig,” said Malley.
The animal lifted his twitchy snout in the air. Pigs possess average eyesight but an amazing sense of smell.
“Oh great. It’s your shoes,” I said.
“Mine are Reeboks, not Nikes.”
“He doesn’t care.”
“This is all your fault, Richard.”
“Honestly? He’d eat a truck tire if you rolled it to him.”
Malley took a dainty step forward and said, “You’re such a nice piggy.”
“He’s not a nice piggy.”
“Shut up, Richard.”
“And he’s faster than you think.”
“Good mister pig,” she said softly.
“You’re wasting your breath.”
The boar snorted and pawed at the dirt.
“Do you have a plan?” I asked my cousin.
“Just wait.”
“You’re only pissing him off.”
“I so do have a plan,” said Malley.
Then she began to dance, which was spectacularly weird because my cousin doesn’t dance. Not with her girlfriends. Not with boys. Not even in the privacy of her own room—or so she says. At parties she refuses to grind, freak or twerk. The only rhythmic motion I’ve ever seen from her is her chin bobbing in time to music.
Which, at least then there was music. The woods of the Choctawhatchee were as silent as a graveyard, except for the heavy panting of the wild boar. From my tree perch I couldn’t tell whether the animal was enraged or just confused.
It’s almost impossible to describe the wild jerky moves that Malley was making, her black braids twirling like helicopter rotors, her pale eyes rolled back in the sockets. At first I thought she was having some sort of convulsion, then she started to sing.
If you could call it singing …
Yo, hog!
Go, hog!
You hip,
You hop.
I makin’
Some bacon.
So, yo, pig!
Slow pig!
Be gone,
Be quick,
Or you am,
Big ham!
It wasn’t the words to Malley’s song that frightened the wild boar. It was her crazed flailing and annoying off-key voice. In a lifetime of roaming the wilderness, that poor pig had probably never encountered anything so disturbing. I actually wasn’t surprised to see him wheel around and sprint away. If Malley wasn’t my cousin, I would have run, too.
“You can stop now!” I shouted.
“You’re welcome,” said Malley.
Shoeless, I climbed down from the maple and once more we set off for the bridge.
Twenty
“Get in,” I said.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Just get in.”
The plain gray Malibu was in the same place, at the east end of the bridge, where Skink and I had left it. I lifted the floor mat on the driver’s side and grabbed the keys.
“Don’t even,” said Malley.
“Hey, I can drive now.”
I popped the trunk and placed the shoe box inside. I’d been happily surprised to find it buried in the same hole beneath the tupelo tree, and even more surprised to feel the weight of the cash bundles. If Nickel the gar man had dug up the box, he must not have taken much of the money for his water-taxi fee.
“Richard, you so don’t know how to drive.”
“Oh yes, I do.” I showed her the license that Mr. Tile had given me.
She snickered. “Who’d you have to bribe to get this?”
“It’s legit, Mal.”
“Liar. You’re not old enough.”
“You want to hitchhike? Me, neither.” I positioned myself behind the steering wheel, centering my butt on the thick John Steinbeck novel.
“Well, you look like a total dork,” my cousin remarked, but she still got in the car.
I turned the key in the ignition, and the Malibu rumbled to life. Malley shot me a tight sidewise look as she hastily buckled her seat belt.
“We need a phone,” I said. Mine was in my backpack on the houseboat. Hers was in the river, where Tommy Chalmers had tossed it.
Hanging uselessly from a socket in the console of the Malibu was my battery charger.
Malley said, “Okay, Dale Jr., let’s see what you got.”
I slipped the transmission into Drive and took my right foot off the brake. We started to roll.
“Gee, I’m so impressed,” said Malley.
“Would you shut up?” I was nervous enough without her sarcastic commentary.
Traffic on Road 20 was light, thank goodness. I waited until no vehicles were coming either way before I made a very careful, very slow U-turn. As soon as the car was lined up on the straightaway, I pushed down on the accelerator the way Skink had showed me, like stepping on an egg and trying not to break it.
“So, who taught you how?” Malley asked.
“The governor. After his foot got smashed.”
“What’s it like?”
“Fun,” I said. “Scary at first.”
She was watc
hing me closely. I sensed she was a little envious. “You’re doin’ pretty good,” she admitted.
“We’ll see.”
“I’m tall enough I wouldn’t need to sit on a book.”
“You’re only two inches taller than me.”
“Two and a half. Is it legal for you to drive barefoot?”
“We’re in Walton County, Florida. I’m guessing the dress code’s pretty chill.”
“But what if—”
“What if you stop asking questions and start looking for a pay phone?” I said.
“A what?”
She spotted one outside a Tom Thumb store. A logging truck stacked with cut pines took up like the entire parking lot, and I nearly had a heart attack trying to squeeze past it in the Malibu. For once Malley stayed quiet.
Neither of us had ever used a public telephone. It looked something from a museum. I lifted the receiver, which reeked of cigarette smoke, and punched my mom’s number into the gummy keypad. An operator came on the line asking how I wanted to pay for the call. Malley and I didn’t have any coins, not one.
“My mother’ll pay for it,” I told the operator.
“So you’d like to reverse the charges?”
“Is that the same as calling collect?”
“Please hold on,” she said.
After two rings I put the receiver back on the hook.
Malley gave me a quizzical look.
“What if we stayed one more day?” I asked.
“For what? Oh.”
“He came back for you and me. We should go back for him.”
“Once we tell the police about the houseboat, they’ll get right on it,” Malley said.
“You don’t understand. Everyone thinks he’s dead, and that’s how he likes it. Certain things he’s been involved with over the years—I mean, things they think he’s been involved with—the cops’ll have a ton of questions. Once they check his fingerprints and find out who he is …”
“It’s that bad?”
“It’s just messy,” I said.
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