‘Again with the clichés,’ I whined good-naturedly. ‘First your “old Indian trick” and now the stereotype of the big man.’
‘I come from a simple family,’ he explained.
‘Fair enough,’ I agreed. ‘You want me to shut up?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘OK so then I’m going to ask where you’re taking me. You’re taking me to the same place where you’ve got Lou Yahola and Lynette Baker, right?’
To this statement he did not respond and, just like that, our conversation was over.
So I gazed once again on the scenery. I had thought, in general, that a swamp would be a place with lots of water and bugs and, I don’t know, sulfur-like smells. But as the moon luxuriated over the flora, I could see how people wouldn’t mind calling this place home. There was a very nice clatter of frogs and owls filling up the air. Every once in a while, I saw a deer hopping around. Pine and cypress trees were everywhere. All in all, it was pretty fetching, as long as you didn’t step on a diamondback snake and get poisoned to death.
Strangely, this got me to thinking about the way life was – all in one place you had beauty, nice smells, peaceful sounds, and certain death. All at the same time. In that way, I thought, the swamp was like my part of Brooklyn, minus, of course, the nice smells, and peaceful sounds. We just had beauty and death.
NINETEEN
I didn’t have on a watch, but my guess was that it had to be just before midnight when we rolled into the Indian camp. I couldn’t say what I had expected, but what I saw in the moonlight was not it. There were a dozen or so small concrete block houses, all with tin roofs. There were dogs, plenty of dogs, but they seemed to recognize Philip and his Jeep. They didn’t raise much of a ruckus as we pulled into the compound.
Here and there a few lights were on. Some of the windows were open. I could barely make out the figure of a man sitting beside the front door of one of these hovels. He was smoking a cigarette and seemed to be watching the Jeep.
Philip waved as we came to a halt in front of that particular house. The man waved back. Philip got out. I stayed put, mostly because of the dogs.
Philip said something to the smoking man in what I assumed was the Seminole language. The man answered and they both looked in my direction.
The smoking man stood and took a step or two toward me. He was a fairly old geezer. Even his wrinkles had wrinkles. But his eyes caught the moon just right, and they looked very young. He was dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans – cowboy boots of some sort, no hat. His hair was white like smoke and pulled back behind his head.
He tossed the cigarette in the dirt, ground it out, and motioned for me to come his way.
‘I’m a little afraid of the dogs,’ I said, soft, so I wouldn’t wake up the neighborhood.
The old guy turned to Philip, who repeated what I’d said in his language, I guess, and the geezer laughed. He whistled a couple of times, and the dogs vanished, like they had never been there.
‘It’s OK now,’ Philip assured me.
I looked around and I was skeptical, because a dog can be a tricky animal. You never could tell. Sometimes they wait in the shadows and jump out at you, and make you have a stroke. So I was very cautious, because I figured I didn’t need a stroke at that point.
The old man motioned impatiently. He apparently wanted me to walk faster.
I took a few wary steps, but no dogs appeared. I gained a little confidence and ambled a bit more expeditiously. Philip took off his tux jacket. I could see that he had a very clean .44 in a shoulder holster. The cleanliness meant he took care of his gun. Taking care of a gun meant you used it a lot. That told me a little more about Philip, and I began to understand what he said about not shooting McReedy – professional courtesy.
As I approached the old guy, Philip took one step closer to him, sort of protectively. I could see that this was a reflex, so I was not offended, but I wanted to make it clear that I meant the codger no harm, so I held out my hand as to shake his.
Philip said, very politely, ‘He won’t touch you. Not yet. He’s not sure about you. He has to talk with you for a minute. You understand.’
‘Who better than I?’ I assured him.
‘This is one of our older citizens,’ Philip explained. ‘He’s been around for a while, and he knows a lot of stuff. He’s not a chief or anything like that. He’s maybe the village grandfather or something.’
‘Can I ask his name?’ I wondered.
‘He won’t tell anyone his boyhood name, and he has too many titles and adult accomplishments to go into, but sometimes he lets people call him John Horse, after another Seminole from a long time ago. The old John Horse was a great leader, and some of the old members of the community started calling him New John Horse, but since the Old John Horse has been dead for around a hundred years or something, we shortened it to John Horse.’
‘Sure,’ I agreed congenially, ‘because there’s really no danger of confusing the two.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So. I have to say both names? John Horse?’
At that the old geezer raised up his head and said, ‘What?’
Philip explained something and the old guy nodded. Then Philip turned to me and said, ‘Go on.’
‘Go on?’ I asked him. ‘Where?’
‘Into his house,’ Philip said.
‘By myself?’ I held my ground.
‘Yeah, and by the way, I have to ask you for McReedy’s gun, OK?’
‘Oh.’ I looked down. ‘You saw me take that.’
‘Yes.’ He held out his massive hand.
I gave out with a fairly hefty sigh, but I dug into my pocket and handed over the pistol.
‘You’re going to give it back to McReedy, aren’t you?’ I assumed.
‘Maybe.’ Philip shrugged. ‘One day. If I think of it.’
‘I see.’
The old guy was more impatient than ever and began to talk to me in his native tongue.
I glanced at Philip. ‘So how am I supposed to understand him?’ I asked. ‘How are we supposed to communicate?’
‘Go on,’ Philip repeated. ‘It’ll all work out.’
I tried to register my doubts with a strenuously unhappy look, but what could I do? I headed toward the old man’s door.
This made him smile, and he disappeared very quickly into his house. I moved a little slower, but I achieved the same end: through his front door and into his shtub.
My first impression was that it was depressing. It was poorly lit, one lamp. There was a beat-up old chair that a junk heap would have refused to take, a dining table that wasn’t much better, a cot that looked like it had been tossed out of a chain-gang prison cell, and various spooky paraphernalia. There was something that looked like a bear skull in one corner next to a bunch of feathers all tied together with brown twine. Five or six cardboard boxes took up another corner. They looked to be filled with papers. On the floor next to the dining table was a two-burner hotplate. Something was simmering there, and it smelled like crap. There was nothing on any of the walls; it was all bare concrete block. There was one window in each wall except for the one with the door. That was it.
The old guy plopped down in the beat-up chair. I looked around, but there wasn’t even a pillow I could use for a seat. Still, he motioned me down, using his right hand. It wasn’t a command, more like a suggestion.
What the hell, I figured, the pants needed to go to the cleaners anyway. So I sat on the floor.
He smiled. ‘Want some tea?’ he asked me, with not even a hint of an accent.
I tried not to react too harshly. ‘You speak English?’
‘I do.’
‘So why all the show outside?’ I wanted to know.
‘I don’t know you yet, and I don’t trust you,’ he said. ‘Best not to reveal too much at the start of any relationship. But I feel a little more comfortable inside my own house.’
‘OK.’
‘So. Tea?’
‘Is that what I smell over there on your hot plate?’ I asked him.
He nods.
‘Then I don’t think so.’
‘It stinks,’ he agreed. ‘But I think you might like it anyway. I’m going to have some. Give it a try. It’s made from black nightshade.’
‘I don’t know what that is,’ I admitted.
‘It grows wild around here,’ was all he would tell me. ‘And you would be rude not to accept my generosity, don’t you think?’
‘As long as it doesn’t taste like it smells, and you drink it first, I’m in, I guess.’ I shifted around trying to get comfortable on the floor.
He arose, a little majestically, and motored toward the hotplate. He squatted there, which took all the majesty out of the moment. Somewhere in the shadows there were, apparently, a couple of big coffee mugs. He set them beside his hotplate and poured some of his so-called tea into each one. In a nonce, he was back in his chair, and I was holding a cup that was burning my hand.
‘Set it down,’ he advised. ‘Let it cool.’
I did that. Then I said, ‘Look, I appreciate that Philip saved my life, but did he have to lug me out here to your camp or whatever you’d call this compound?’
‘I don’t call it anything,’ he said.
‘Fine,’ I told him, ‘but the point is, I have about a dozen questions for you or for someone like you or for Mister Redhawk or, I don’t know—,’
‘Stop,’ he interrupted. ‘Let’s just take our time. Let the tea cool. Drink the tea. Then we’ll talk.’
‘I’m nervous about the tea,’ I confessed.
‘You’re nervous about the answers I might give you, the answers to your questions.’
‘I’m nervous because I’m out in the middle of the swamp with rattlesnakes and dogs and people who don’t trust me.’
‘Well, that’s a fair point. I guess anything could happen to you out here. No one would ever know.’
‘Thanks,’ I told him. ‘Thanks very much. That sets me right at ease.’
He chuckled. It’s been a long time since I’d heard anyone actually chuckle.
‘You can relax,’ he said. ‘We take our debts very seriously, and you’ve done a pretty good thing. You saved a very important baby.’
‘It’s my job,’ I said.
‘There’s more to it than that,’ he told me quietly. ‘For you and for me.’
The way he said it made me think he knew something about me. Then he leaned toward me and said, very seriously, ‘Pick up your cup.’
‘Do I really have to drink this tea?’ I asked him.
‘No,’ he said, ‘but it’s bad manners not to. I offer you my hospitality, you’re supposed to accept it. Wasn’t it that way in your family?’
I had to nod. ‘Well, you’ve got me there. My aunt Shayna would murder you if you didn’t eat everything she gave you. And it didn’t matter to her if you were stuffed and about to throw up, you still had to take it, like it, and tell her how wonderful she was.’
So I picked up the cup.
‘Well, then.’ He raised his cup up.
‘OK,’ I sighed. ‘Here goes.’
I watched him take a sip, saw him swallow, and then blow on the cup. I shrugged. Trying not to inhale, I took the most modest of sips myself.
‘Hey,’ I said, very surprised, ‘it’s sweet.’
‘That’s the orange blossom honey,’ he told me. ‘It’s local.’
I took a bigger gulp.
‘Better to sip it,’ the old guy warned me.
He sipped again, as if to demonstrate.
So we sat and we sipped, like it was high tea at the Ritz. I had to admit that the drink was warming, and I began to feel a bit of a glow in my face.
‘This stuff doesn’t by any chance have booze in it, does it?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘No. But what it does have, you’ll feel in a second.’
I didn’t like the sound of that. I set the tea down in front of me. ‘You poison me?’ I tried to make it sound like a joke, but my voice came out a little unsteady.
He smiled. ‘No. I’m drinking it myself. We’re going to have a conversation in a few minutes, and when that conversation is done, we’ll know each other better. I’ll trust you. Or I won’t. You’ll know me. Or you won’t. But there will be no doubt. No confusion of any kind. No one will be on the fence. We’ll either be one or the other.’
‘One or the other?’ I asked him.
‘Friends or enemies,’ he told me calmly. ‘Time will tell.’
I had no idea what he was talking about, but it didn’t seem at all good to me, so I leaned forward and tried to stand up. That didn’t work out. I couldn’t, in fact, coordinate any of my muscles. My brain was disconnected from the rest of my body. I was pretty sure I’d been poisoned, no matter what the geezer had told me.
‘Philip!’ I called out, trying not to sound too desperate.
I figured it like this: Philip’s job seemed to be to protect me from harm. And I was feeling pretty close to panic at that moment. So I thought maybe he’d want to give me a hand.
‘He’s gone to bed,’ the old man said. ‘Just settle in. Maybe you’d like to rest your back against the wall. And try not to clench your teeth. That can give you a headache the next day.’
‘The next day,’ I repeated, getting dizzier and dizzier. ‘So I’m going to have a next day, then?’
‘Of course.’ He downed the rest of his tea and leaned back in his chair. ‘This is a herbal medicine. It’s very strong. If the mixture is wrong, yes, you could die. But I’ve been doing this for almost a hundred years, and nothing’s gone wrong so far.’
Did he actually say a hundred years, or was I hearing things, I wondered?
‘Boys take it at a certain age to show that they’ve become men – like a bar mitzvah,’ he said, ‘and, especially, we used to use it in the Green Corn Ceremony, before all of this Christian nonsense took our people.’
I found myself leaning against cold concrete blocks, and I confessed to him, ‘I don’t really understand what you’re saying. I know that you’re speaking English, but I can’t seem to put the words together right. Personally? I never had a bar mitzvah, and I probably know less about Christian nonsense than you do.’
‘Just breathe in and breathe out,’ he said slowly.
I accepted his advice, and I realized that the sensation of breathing was very nice. I also realized that it was very loud. My breath sounded like thunder when I exhaled. My heart was pounding in my ears. My face was red hot. And I was having trouble seeing.
‘What the hell is in that tea?’ I asked him loudly.
‘I told you. Black Nightshade. Belladonna. And some nice honey, and a few other ingredients to calm everything down from the nightshade. Why do you ask?’
‘What?’ I was starting to think I couldn’t hear so good.
‘In a minute or two I’m going to start asking you questions, OK?’
‘What?’ I yelled again.
‘Just relax,’ he said, and again, he chuckled.
I was beginning to hate that chuckle.
Suddenly, something was rustling over in the corner, in the shadows behind the codger’s chair. I got it into my head that one of the dogs from outside was over there and about to menace me.
‘Get the mutt out of the house, all right?’ I asked as politely as I could.
‘You see a dog?’
‘Isn’t that a dog?’ I asked and I pointed to the corner.
But, as soon as I pointed in that direction, I saw what was actually in the corner. It was a dwarf deer. I could tell it was a female deer, though I had absolutely no idea how I would know that.
‘Is it a dog?’ he asked me without turning around.
‘No,’ I said softly. ‘It’s a deer. A little, tiny female deer.’
He grinned ear to ear. ‘That’s great! What’s it doing?’
I started to ask him why he didn’t just turn around and see for himself, but the deer blinked. A
nd it was a pretty cute number, so I lost my train of thought.
‘What’s the deer doing?’ he repeated.
‘It’s looking at me.’
‘Is it saying anything?’
I tore my eyes away from the deer and looked at the old man. ‘Is it saying anything? Is that what you’re asking me?’
‘No, don’t look away!’ he snapped.
But it was too late. The deer was gone.
I looked around.
‘Where did it go?’ I asked him.
‘Sh!’ he snapped.
We sat there for a while, and I was feeling pretty weird.
‘Wait,’ he said after a minute, or maybe it was an hour, I had no idea. ‘Did you have anything to drink today before you came here? Like alcohol?’
‘Yes,’ I said immediately. ‘I had something very much like alcohol; a nice Hot Tom and Jerry and then two martinis.’
‘Oh, hell,’ he said to himself. ‘I should have asked about that. That’s getting in the way.’
‘In the way of what? I don’t think I could feel any more looped.’
‘Just … OK, so just listen to the sound of my voice. Close your eyes, all right?’
I shrugged. I closed my eyes. What the hell. I expected to die any second anyway.
‘Picture yourself down by the water. There’s a nice lake just a few hundred feet from this house. We could walk there right now. The moon is full. The stars are out. The tree frogs are singing. The reflection of the night-time sky in the water is so lovely and so perfect, it’s hard to tell the real sky from the mirror. Do you have that in your mind?’
‘Sure,’ I told him. ‘Nice night, a little chilly, but it feels good because my face is hot. I like the tree frogs. That’s nice. The moon is big.’
‘And beautiful.’
I could see it in my mind’s eye. Everything he said.
‘And beautiful,’ I agreed.
‘What else do you see?’ he asked gently.
‘There’s a woman.’
‘Yes. A woman. What does she say?’
‘Say? She doesn’t say anything. But she is entirely without benefit of clothing, and I will tell you that she is not the least bit embarrassed about it.’
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