Racing the Rain

by John L Parker

  “You’re that Cassidy kid,” he said.

  Cassidy stared, still wide-eyed, before noticing movement at his feet. He looked down to see a small head poking tentatively out of the burlap bag. He involuntarily jumped when he saw it was a snake.

  “Just black snakes,” the man said. He was holding a handful of powdery sand against the big leech on his leg, drying it out. After a few moments he carefully peeled off the now white-coated creature and tossed it out into the water.

  “Darn things,” he said. “Must have picked him up setting traps in Otter Creek. But I guess even leeches gotta make a living.”

  Cassidy sat back down next to the burlap bag, peering at the little creature now trying to slither out. He reached down in one motion and caught the snake behind the head and pulled it smoothly out of the bag, holding it up in front of him to admire. The swamp man watched him, saying nothing.

  “He’s pretty small, just a baby,” Cassidy said. The snake coiled around his wrist. Its skin was a beautiful greenish-black in a beam of strong sunlight.

  “Found a whole nest of them about a mile upriver.”

  Cassidy nodded, held the snake up again, then opened the bag and dropped it back in, twisting it several times and wrapping the top back up under the bottom to prevent more escape attempts.

  “I see you got some bugs this morning.” The swamp man gestured toward the canoe, where the lobsters were still noisily scraping at their aluminum jail.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They say you can go to forty feet and stay awhile. That true?”

  “I guess maybe by the end of the summer. Can’t right now. These were only at twenty feet or so, right along the inner reef line.”

  The stranger looked at him, and Cassidy had the distinct impression he was being appraised.

  “I know your dad,” the man said finally. “And your uncle Joe. You don’t have to be afraid of me, son. I’m Trapper Nelson.”

  Cassidy had been hearing about Trapper Nelson since he was little, and the stories were all so mythic, so gilded with hyperbole and heroic imagery he hardly knew what to make of them. Trapper Nelson was supposedly bigger and stronger than Paul Bunyan, had more powers than Superman, knew more about animals than Tarzan; he wrestled alligators for fun, laughed at poisonous snakes. He disliked civilization and lived back in the swamp way up on the Loxahatchee River, hunting and trapping for a living. He would supposedly eat just about anything that walked, swam, or crawled. No one knew more about the ocean, the swamp, or the river than Trapper Nelson. His purview encompassed both the creatures that dwelled in them and the tastiest methods for their preparation. That included possums, turtles, alligators, snakes, sharks, oysters, stingrays, conchs, manatees, catfish, and of course the more standard fare of snapper, grouper, mackerel, and snook. And it apparently included, Cassidy surmised from the man’s frank and continuing interest, spiny lobsters.

  Cassidy’s older friends snickered that rich and beautiful ladies from Palm Beach would leave their oceanside mansions to come visit Trapper in his primitive compound on the river, and some reportedly spent the night. Famous and powerful men were brought around, men like Jack Dempsey and Babe Ruth, who would become giddy and childlike in his presence, awed by his strength and obvious mastery of the Florida wilds.

  And here he was, sitting next to the larval Quenton Cassidy like they were waiting for a bus! Trying hard to keep his voice casual, Cassidy gestured at the alligator lying placidly in the shade.

  “What are you going to do with him?”

  “It’s a her, I think. Haven’t checked yet. They asked for a female. She’s headed to a zoo outside St. Louis.”

  “That’s kind of sad.”

  “Is it? She’ll get fed regularly, be warm in the winter and cool in the summer. And she won’t get eaten by some hungry twelve-foot cousin of hers. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”

  “Well . . .”

  “But the best part of it is I’m going to get seventy-five American greenbacks for her!” He laughed so loud that a pair of pelicans erupted from a nearby cypress and flapped away up the river.

  Cassidy couldn’t help but laugh, too, but he still felt bad for the little gator, destined to be ogled and hooted at by a bunch of white-kneed Yankees.

  “You play sports, Youngblood?” Trapper asked.

  “Yes, sir. Well, try to. Basketball, mostly. Haven’t made the team, though.”

  “Lot of good players at your school. Pretty big boys, too.”

  “Yes sir. I know I’m not that big.”

  “Have you tried track?”

  Cassidy looked down. “I’m not fast enough,” he said.

  “Hmmm. Other ways to skin a cat.”

  “Sir?”

  When Trapper Nelson talked about skinning something, he might not be speaking figuratively.

  “Just an expression. Tell you what, you know where my place is, up the Loxahatchee, where the rope swing is? You come by sometime. I got a bunch of critters around you might find interesting. Just be sure to ask your parents first. It’s up the river a good bit, just past the bend at Cypress Creek, if you’re in the mood to paddle that far.”

  “I don’t mind. I’ve been down the intracoastal almost to North Palm before,” said Cassidy.

  “Good! Means you’ve got some stamina! We’ll have to go for a run sometime. You ever run on the beach?”

  Cassidy looked dubious.

  “No? It’s fun. I used to do my road work on the beach at Singer Island back when I was training for boxing.”

  Cassidy couldn’t imagine being hit by one of those huge hands.

  “Well, better get a move on,” said Trapper, slapping his knees. “Got critters need feeding. Thanks for the drink, Youngblood.” He stood and started assembling his load, then looked back toward Cassidy’s canoe.

  “Say, you wouldn’t want to trade for a couple of those crawfish, would you? Looking at them has made me hungry. I don’t have much with me. Would you have any use for a black snake or two?”

  “I already have a couple, and my mother said if I brought another one home I’d have to live on the carport with it.”

  Trapper Nelson smiled.

  “But you don’t have to trade me anything, Mr. Nelson. You can have some crawfish. I can get more.”

  “If you can go to forty feet, I bet you can,” he said, ambling over to the canoe where he stood appraising the creatures for a moment before nonchalantly grabbing the two biggest ones by the base of their antennae. He came back and wrapped the top on the burlap bag around them so he could carry both in his right hand. Then he threw the little alligator over his right shoulder and balanced it there while he picked up his traps with his left hand. He smiled and nodded to Cassidy before starting back upriver in water halfway up his shins, his shrugged shoulder pinning the little gator against his tilted head.

  “Hey,” Cassidy called, “I can paddle you back upriver if you want!”

  “My canoe’s just past Moccasin Gap. Thanks for the lobsters! I owe you one.”

  Cassidy watched him walking down the river for a few moments, then stood up suddenly and called out, “Two! You owe me two!”

  Trapper’s right arm, snakes, lobsters, and all, shot into the air in agreement, and Cassidy could hear the laughter booming down the river corridor.

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  POT ROAST

  Dinner tonight was one of the few grown-up dishes Cassidy actually liked, so he was not engaged in his usual squirmy charade of pushing food around his plate until enough time had passed so he could politely abscond.

  The timing was crucial. If his escape bid was premature, some mysterious grown-up sense of propriety would be offended and he’d be told: For goodness’ sake, we just sat down. At least eat some of your squash casserole.

  This was the most dangerous kind of injunction, focusing attention on a single undesirable item, which might then take on a significance wholly out of proportion to its ostensible nutritional
value. The situation could escalate into a regular casus belli, with an outcome much worse than a shortened play session. Tears, confinement to quarters, even corporal punishment were all in the offing. In such a case it would be impossible to neutralize the item in question by the usual mangling, clever plate distribution, or sleight of hand.

  “You might as well just eat the damn stuff,” his uncle Henry once advised. “The collard greens probably won’t kill you, though come to think of it, the turtle patties might.”

  But Cassidy considered pot roast perfectly edible, in part due to his mother’s singular obsession with her pressure cooker. He couldn’t imagine what strange alchemy was going on inside that hissing, rattling contraption, which seemed to dominate the kitchen all afternoon with its implied threat of detonation. But he certainly couldn’t argue with the results. The succulent cubes of beef parted at the touch of a fork, the potatoes and carrots emerged tender and tasty in the plentiful gravy, and the occasional half-moon of limp celery was easily separated out and pushed to the edge of the plate to wither and molder until the expiration of the known universe.

  His father had no such scruples when it came to icky items. Himself a big proponent of pot roast, he had come to the table still in his Air Force khakis, incongruously stiff with starch in those places where rings of perspiration hadn’t soaked through. The master sergeant’s stripes and the metal insignia over the breast pocket always fascinated Cassidy, triggering some deep patriotic impulse.

  The old man simply wolfed it all down, never bothering to separate out clearly objectionable items. Celery was no problem for him whatsoever. A chunk of turnip from some strange stew would go right down the hatch. Even those rare and possibly toxic bits of flotsam and jetsam—bay leaves, cloves, parsley sprigs—were blithely countenanced by his father. But when Cassidy found such an item, he would disgustedly and accusingly hold it up on the end of his fork. Stop making that face, his mother would say, it’s just for flavor, for heaven’s sake. No, you don’t have to eat it, just put it under the edge of your plate. Don’t look at me like that, it wouldn’t have killed you!

  Cassidy had pretty much cleaned his plate save for the celery and a large and disgusting bay leaf and was preparing to make his break when his father suddenly became interested in conversation. Cassidy’s heart sank.

  The sun had dropped low enough in the western sky that it now penetrated the thin cotton print curtains of the jalousied side door, filling the tiny kitchen with a harsh glare and almost unbreathably hot afternoon air. In such circumstances Cassidy couldn’t help squirming like a defendant without an alibi.

  “I hear you met Vince down at the river yesterday,” the old man said.

  Cassidy looked puzzled.

  “That’s Trapper Nelson’s real name, honey,” said his mother. “Vincent Natulkiewicz. He made up the name Trapper Nelson because when he first showed up here, no one could pronounce his real name.”

  Cassidy was amazed. “Where did he come from?” he said.

  “Originally from New Jersey. He came down during the Depression. He and his brother Charlie and a friend were riding the rails down to Key West. They just hopped off here to take a break, see if they could find some work. They set up a beach camp down at Jupiter, and he just never got around to leaving.”

  His father was spooning blackstrap molasses onto his plate, mashed a pat of butter into it, and spread it onto a slice of Merita white bread. Cassidy had seen this humble dessert so many times it no longer disgusted him.

  “The trapping and fishing were pretty good in those days. That was back in the thirties, and it was still pretty wild around here. Those boys were making a pretty good go of it. It was a real shame—”

  His mother shot his father a look.

  “John,” she said. Cassidy knew this signal, and his ears perked up.

  “What happened?” he said.

  His father was looking at his mother, who steadily held his gaze. His father looked as if he was actually thinking of ignoring the signal.

  “Oh,” he said, looking back to Cassidy, “there was a disagreement. It got out of hand. There was—”

  “John.”

  His father fell silent.

  “It was a long time ago,” he said. “Vincent . . . Trapper was hardly even involved. It was between the other two, Charlie and this John Dykas fellow.”

  “Who?”

  His father looked over at his mother, who sighed and looked away.

  “Fella they knew from New Jersey. They’d been bummin’ around together for years. Spent some time in Michigan, then out west, hunting and trapping. They’d get odd jobs when they could, but there wasn’t much work in those days. Eventually they caught a freight out of Jacksonville and headed down this way, the three of them.”

  “What was the argument?”

  “Charlie said it was about how to divide up the money they had made. Vincent supposedly was out trapping, not even there when it happened. But there are still some folks around here who won’t have anything to do with Trapper because of it. Think he got away with something,” he said.

  “I didn’t know Trapper had a brother,” said Cassidy.

  “Sure did. Older stepbrother, Charlie. Not as big as Trapper but three times as crazy.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Judge Chillingworth sent him to Raiford for a long long time,” his father said, gazing out the back window at the royal palm tree blowing in the afternoon sea breeze. He fell silent.

  “And the other one, the friend . . .”

  His mother got up suddenly and began to clear the table. Cassidy could see that she wasn’t happy, but she didn’t say anything. His father leaned over. Cassidy could see the nearly skinned oval in the center of his military flattop.

  “Dykas. John Dykas. He’s down there at Roselawn to this day, deader than Kelsey’s nuts.”

  CHAPTER 9

  * * *

  UP THE LOXAHATCHEE

  Very little light was coming through the cypress canopy as Cassidy paddled up to Trapper Nelson’s dock. It was early Saturday morning, but Trapper apparently was an early riser. Wet clothes hung on the line, several baskets of freshly picked vegetables and citrus sat on the porch. A nervous lynx cowered in the back of one of the wire pens and a bobcat lay stretched out in a sunbeam in another. A pit next to the garden held turtles, and a flock of noisy guinea hens fluttered around in the lower branches of a live oak, ruled over by a yellow-crested Amazon parrot who intimidated the bolder hens with a fierce-looking open beak if they got too close.

  Another boat was pushing off from the dock, a fast-looking open-fisherman with an Evinrude 100 on the back. Cassidy waved at the man at the wheel, Jim Branch, a friend of his father’s. He was easy to recognize from the battered straw Panama hat he always wore. A stern-looking man wearing wire-rimmed eyeglasses sat in front of the center console, but Cassidy didn’t recognize him. He might have smiled a little at Cassidy, but it was hard to tell.

  Trapper Nelson was busy at the cleaning station on the dock, working with a wooden-handled fillet knife.

  “Hello and good morning!” he called out, holding up a slimy hand in greeting.

  “Hello!” yelled the parrot. Then: “Willie! Cut that out!” An unholy screech followed.

  “Yeah, exactly right! Cut that out, you betcha,” said Trapper Nelson, squirting the hose at him. The bird, hoping for a real shower, fluffed up the feathers on his head and turned it sideways, holding his wings out like an eagle. The startlingly beautiful red and purple showed on his shoulders and Cassidy stared, transfixed.

  “Well, Youngblood, I didn’t expect to see you today. You been in a fight or something?”

  “Sort of,” Cassidy said.

  He sat in the canoe next to the dock with the paddle across his lap, taking in Trapper’s compound. There was the main cabin by the river, but there were also pens and cages, outbuildings, woodpiles, a water tower, fruit trees, and a garden.

  “I hope the other guy lo
oks worse,” said Trapper pleasantly.

  Cassidy shrugged. “Billy Claytor said you paid kids a quarter each for box turtles,” he said.

  Trapper looked up from his fish. “True enough,” he said. “You got some?”

  “Yes, sir. A couple. And I know where there are more.”

  “Good! I’ll take all you can get.”

  “Whatcha do with them? Are they good to eat?”

  Trapper laughed. “Only in a pinch. Now, gopher tortoise stew is another story. There’s a whole pit full of them over there. We used to call them ‘Hoover chickens.’ ”

  “Yuck.”

  “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. And don’t try it until you’re good and hungry.”

  Cassidy made a face. His grandfather caught snapping turtles from a river. He had once paid Cassidy a quarter to eat a sliver half the size of a thimble. It wasn’t worth it.

  “But box turtles, buncha folks want them for pets, put them in their gardens,” Trapper said. “They like the yellow designs on them, I guess. I don’t know why they don’t just go out in the woods and look at one when they want to, but then there’s a lot of things people do I don’t understand.”

  He was working the sharp thin blade flat along the spine of a large gray grouper, removing a fillet from each side of the fish. He placed them flat on the cutting board and used his thumbnail to pin the tough skin to the board, then ran the flattened blade horizontally between the flesh and the skin to remove it, holding the pearly white meat up to the sunshine and flicking the skin into the river. It floated for no more than a second before there was a swirl of motion and something got it. He picked up the skeleton of the fish by the gills and held it up to Cassidy. It looked like nothing so much as what a cartoon cat pulls out of a garbage pail.

  “Twenty pounder, at least,” Trapper said.