A brief consideration of the facts left me feeling a little tapped out. McReedy would certainly get me if I went back to Fry’s Bay. The swamp would get me if I tried to leave Indian Town. And, if I was forced to look at the bigger picture, the cops would get me if I tried to do much of anything else. So I was beginning to think of myself as fairly well screwed.
John Horse seemed to read my face, and he said, ‘It’s not so bad. You’ll talk with me, we’ll arrive at some conclusions, you’ll feel better. Maybe even good enough to consider going back to Brooklyn.’
And of all the things John Horse had said to me, that was the thing that set my neck hairs on end. I reached down to pick up my nearly empty Coke bottle so that he would not be able to read my face again, because I was suddenly very, very nervous about the old guy.
I was beginning to understand that he was only playing the part of the wise old Indian medicine man. I had to wonder why he was interested in sending me back to Brooklyn, why he wanted to keep me out of Fry’s Bay, and why he really wanted to keep Lynette. Because I did not, for a second, buy the line about her baby being a water spirit.
I mean, at first I had thought of this so-called John Horse as a convenient and convivial movie character. He was Chief Dan George from Little Big Man – a film that I saw three times on account of Dustin Hoffman, who was one funny Jew.
But now I saw John Horse as a sinister figure who kidnapped me, drugged me, got my story, and then wanted to keep me out of Fry’s Bay – way out, like, far-away-as-Brooklyn out. All his nice manners and mystical pronouncements were a pose, and I would have none of it.
‘Well,’ I said, looking down, ‘since I really can’t do anything else, I guess I’ll content myself to stay here and chat a while. Have some of the aforementioned turtle steak. But I really do have to be getting back to my apartment in Fry’s Bay eventually. I have a job there. I have half a pizza in the refrigerator that will turn into a science project if I don’t return to it in several days. And then there is the little matter of my ongoing investigation into the disappearance of Lynette Baker’s baby. See, I haven’t filed my report yet, the paperwork that makes my boss get off my back. See, to her – and to everybody else in the United States Government – that file is still open. By and by, someone will begin to wonder why. And then the creaky wheels of bureaucracy will begin to scrape together, rust will fall away, and a big machine of useless power will be unleashed. Alas, it just may roll your way. And you don’t want that.’
Philip turned to John Horse and said, ‘I love the way he talks. It’s like poetry.’
‘But he’s troubled.’ John Horse lowered his voice. ‘Foggy. You’re uncomfortable that I know about your past. That’s completely understandable. Would it help you to know … would you feel better if you knew why I was in jail?’
‘You were in jail?’
‘I was in jail because I killed a horse,’ he said.
That sentence hung in the air for a moment.
‘That’s really how I got my name,’ he went on. ‘I know what Philip told you about my name, and there really was a Seminole a century ago called John Horse, a real hero. But, mainly, I got this name because I killed a horse.’
I stared.
‘You actually killed a horse?’ I finally asked.
‘Wasn’t mine,’ he said. ‘That was the problem.’
Against my better judgment, I was forced to say, ‘OK. I’ll bite. What happened?’
‘I’ll tell you.’ John Horse settled into his seat, slumped down a little, and began. ‘It was an army horse. Belonged to the United States Government. Back in 1957, the first real Tribal Council was formed. Had elected representatives and everything. That’s when the white Congress officially recognized us, even though we never signed a peace treaty with them. The problem was, some of us wanted to be known as the Miccosukee Tribe, and some of us wanted to be Independent Seminoles. Unfortunately, the Independents weren’t recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This was a problem for me, because I was one of the Independents. I am against any government interference in my life. I also claim this entire swamp, and most of the state of Florida. This land all belongs to us. But, every once in a while, someone in the white government disagrees with us, and they send in people to convince us that we’re wrong. Most of them never leave the swamp. I’m not sure what happens to them.
‘But one man, an Army captain named Brighton, visited me in my house. He came in on horseback. I think he did it to show that he understood something about me. But he didn’t. We argued, he got mad, he shot me, so I shot him, but he used his army pistol and I used my hunting rifle and my bullet went through him, busted my front window, and killed his horse.’
‘The captain didn’t die,’ Philip said to me, filling in an important detail that John Horse had omitted.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s an important thing to know about the story. So, John Horse, you did not really get arrested for killing a horse, you got arrested for screwing with the man.’
‘No.’ John Horse shook his head. ‘The man was fine. The horse was dead. I went to jail. I know what I did.’
‘John Horse was wounded in the leg, and they didn’t take him to the hospital,’ Philip said. ‘They wrapped a bandage around it and took him right to jail. All the way to the Columbus stockade.’
‘I was there for several months,’ John Horse said. ‘I almost died.’
‘Our lawyers got him out,’ Philip said. ‘They even sued the Army. But they lost.’
‘They got John Horse off, though,’ I concluded.
‘No,’ said Philip.
‘I skipped bail in 1965,’ John Horse said. ‘I don’t know if there’s still a warrant out for me or not. But I haven’t seen any army around my house for years now, so I might be all right.’
‘You never went to trial?’ I asked. ‘You just beat it into the swamp and stayed here?’
He nodded, and I suddenly saw why he told me this story.
‘Kind of like you did,’ he said to me, smiling like a fox, ‘coming to Florida.’
‘Look,’ I admitted, ‘I’m not certain what I said to you and what I just imagined last night under the influence of your funny tea. But I gather that you think you know my story.’
‘Oh, I do,’ he said. ‘You stole a car, the mother chased you down, she had a heart attack and died. You think that’s your fault. The mother had a baby who is now in foster care, and you feel responsible for that baby. That’s why you’re in exile. That’s why you have the job that you have. That’s why you’re here in this room with Philip and me right now. Because you think if you save enough babies, eventually the end of your story will be different: the woman would not die, the baby would not be given away, and you’d be snorting coke in Gravesend Park with your petty criminal cronies.’
I had to admit, that was pretty much the story, and it disturbed me greatly that he knew it. So I realized what I had to do.
‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ I said, standing up. ‘Where is it?’
‘I got no bathroom,’ Philip told me, grinning.
This I already knew because I cased the place when I walked in.
‘Well, I really have to go,’ I told him. ‘Maybe it’s this cola.’
‘You just go outside,’ Philip said, still amused, ‘far away from my house, not too close to anything in the swamp that would eat you, and do your business.’
‘Christ,’ I said, deliberately grumbling all the way to the door, although this was exactly how I had hoped things would go.
‘Watch your step if you get too far away,’ John Horse said plainly. ‘There’s a lot of swamp mud. That’s what happened to a lot of the soldiers, I think. They fell in the mud and never got out.’
Philip grinned bigger.
I shoved through the door, jamming my fists into my pants, hoping to appear very angry as I left the house.
TWENTY-THREE
Now, hotwiring an old Jeep was, for me, a cinch. Philip’s model, as it ha
ppened, was an M715 from 1965, a product of Kaiser-Jeep. It had heavy full-floating axles and a foldable windshield. I wouldn’t care to give away too many tricks of my trade, but the first thing to know about starting an M715 would be that it had an on/off switch. If you wanted to start the thing, you had to turn it on. Then it was really just a matter of tricking the wiring, either through the fuse or through the positive cable and starter wires, into thinking that you’ve turned a key, which gave the sparkplugs a jolt and exploded a bit of gasoline.
By the time I was backing the Jeep up to turn it around, Philip and John Horse were out the front door of the little cabin in the woods. But it was too late. I gunned the engine and took off like a rocket down the wheel-rut road, glancing only once into the rear view to see two Seminole Indians chasing after me – and fading, ever-so-slowly, into the distance.
I kept my eyes locked on the wheel ruts, and followed the only path back out of that particular part of the swamp. It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t like I had a lot of choices. There was only one road, and I’m not an idiot.
Eventually I saw a clearing, the place where the lodge Lynette and baby were. I slowed down the Jeep, but something in me said, Don’t be a big shot, don’t think this out. Just follow your nose, and you’ll do what you need to do.
So I drove right up to the door, about where Philip had parked the Jeep before. I left it running, of course, and hopped out, waving at the teenaged guards and smiling.
‘Hi!’ I said. ‘John Horse told me to come get Lynette and the baby. He wants to talk with them. I mean, he has some questions to ask. So he sent me.’
I motored ahead, right for the door, before the two kids could even rouse themselves. They didn’t appear to understand what I was saying, but I found it hard to believe that they didn’t speak English, so I said it again, only louder.
‘John Horse told me to come get Lynette and the baby. He wants to talk with them!’
They were up with rifles pointed before I could get all the way to the door.
‘Why didn’t Philip come?’ one asks.
‘Have you seen his house? All those trees,’ I said. ‘One of the limbs got busted in the rain last … no, night before last. He’s trying to save his roof.’
‘Bullshit,’ the other guy said and pointed his rifle right at me. ‘That house is as solid as a rock.’
‘Well, then,’ I said, pretending to be as perturbed as I could be, ‘why did John Horse send me, genius?’
Tough it out, that’s what I always said. The best defense is a kiss-my-ass offence, and it generally works. At least, it worked sometimes in Brooklyn.
The genius looks at the other guy and you could see that they were both trying to figure it out, so I barreled ahead, right for the door.
‘Hold on,’ the first guy said. ‘Not so fast.’
And he put the rifle right on my chest.
‘Really?’ I said. ‘You think it’s the best idea to put a hole in my chest when I came here to do what John Horse told me to do? Let’s follow your logic all the way to the end. I’m dead, on the ground, with my heart shot out. John Horse shows up, wondering what’s keeping me. He looks at my corpse, then he looks at you guys, and he says, “What the hell? What did you do?” And what will you say?’
‘This doesn’t seem right,’ the genius said.
‘Well,’ I began, taking one step closer, ‘let me see can I explain it to you in a way that you will understand.’
Fighting a guy who is bigger than you is always a question of leverage. It was actually better that he had a rifle instead of a pistol. I grabbed the genius’s gun by the barrel, put my left foot behind his left foot, and I pushed really hard. He let go of his rifle, I bopped his head with the hard part of the gun barrel, and he went down backward.
Before goon number two could figure out what was going on, I had the rifle by the barrel and I used it like a club. I swung it upward, fast as I could, and landed it right on the guy’s chin, at which point he didn’t feel like standing anymore.
Honestly, I was wishing somebody had seen me do this. It was a thing of beauty. There I was, with a fistful of rifle and two unconscious goons at my feet.
‘Who’s the grandpa now?’ I asked them, but they seemed disinclined to answer.
‘What’s going on out there?’ said a plaintive little voice from inside the lodge.
‘Lynette?’ I called out, dropping the rifle and stepping over the Indians.
I pushed the door cover open, and there she was, all by herself, naked, nursing her baby and smiling very sweetly.
She looked up.
‘Let’s go,’ I said, moving her way.
She looked back down at her baby. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
I got closer to her, and I saw why she wasn’t in the mood to go anywhere. In front of her, by her left knee, was a nice wooden bowl and I could smell what was in it—it was very strong, the same kind of tea that John Horse had given me that made me wacky.
Then I noticed that, also close by, there were vials of very official looking hospital-type medicine, and I surmised that this was the juice that Maggie Redhawk wanted to get to the baby. But I didn’t linger.
I zipped back to the door, tore down the blankets there, and brought them back to Lynette. I draped the blankets around her and got her to her feet. She didn’t protest because she didn’t seem to understand what was happening. I figured she didn’t know if she was in trouble or in Cleveland. I tried to reassure her.
‘We’re going for a little ride in a Jeep,’ I said, like to a five-year-old. ‘How would that be?’
She smiled. I took this to mean she was all right with the idea.
I maneuvered her around the fire and through the open door, stepping over the sleeping Seminoles, and moved as quickly as I could toward the Jeep. The engine was beginning to cough, because it was cold, and old, and maybe even low on gas. I got mother and baby into the passenger seat with only a modicum of trouble, and made it to the steering wheel just in time to hear the first rifle shot. One of the Seminole guards was awake.
The bullet whizzed past my left ear. The shooter aimed outside, instead of between me and Lynette, so as not to disturb mother and baby. I thought that was very considerate. Then I put the Jeep into reverse and floored the accelerator. We flew backwards, in the direction of the gun. It was my theory that when a guy had something as big as a Jeep coming right at him, he’s going to panic, at least a little, and momentarily forget how to fire his gun.
In this particular case, the theory worked. I screeched on the brakes just in time so as not to hit the guy hard enough to kill him. But I did tap him pretty good. He went flying into the side of the lodge. Then I shoved the gearshift into some forward gear and the Jeep made a jump, spraying dirt and grass behind us. We shot forward on to the wheel-rut road.
As it happened, I have always had pretty good spatial memory. I could be on a street anywhere in any town just once, and I could always find my way back to it. I was hoping that the same talent applied to a ride in the swamp. And I had a couple of things still on my side. The day was still young, it wasn’t too cold, and maybe the rain was all gone.
Lynette was serene, the baby was still nursing, and I had a very good feeling about myself, our chances, and the world in general.
TWENTY-FOUR
I have no idea how many hours went by, but the sun was sinking low by the time Lynette’s tea wore off, and I had reversed my previous rosy assessment of our chances. We were about as lost as a person could get.
Lynette, meanwhile, was groggy and trying to get her bearings.
‘Where the hell am I?’ she asked, her voice harsh and gravelly.
‘Swamp,’ I answered, trying to concentrate, ‘Seminole territory. Lost as hell.’
‘And who are you?’ She didn’t sound alarmed – more like she was trying to remember something that she thought she ought to know.
‘I am the man,’ I told her, summoning all the pomp I could muster, ‘who rescued
your baby from Lou Yahola. By the way, you understand how crazy it was to leave the baby with that guy, right? This was a sorry choice that you made. The baby was very, very sick. What goes on in your head?’
‘I was in the hospital.’ She squeezed her eyes shut for a second, obviously trying to snap out of her stupor. ‘I had a baby.’
‘Yes,’ I said, not bothering to hide my irritation. ‘Welcome to your life.’
‘I had to get the baby out of the hospital,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘I couldn’t let them get her. She’s a very important baby.’
I nodded, but I was only humoring her, because, suffice it to say, I knew paranoia when I saw it.
So I told her, to soothe her, ‘No, but, see – it’s OK now. I’m taking you away from the bad Indians.’
‘What?’ She was trying, you could see, to rouse herself. ‘You think … you’re trying to … wait. Stop the Jeep.’
I didn’t.
‘Stop the goddamn Jeep or I’ll jump!’ And, to prove her point, she started to stand up.
I eased back off the accelerator. ‘Whoa. What are you doing?’
‘I want the Seminoles to … you have to take me back. I’m supposed to be there, with them, with John Horse. It … look, dumbass, I didn’t hide my baby with Lou Yahola to keep her from the Seminoles, I was trying to hide her from her father! Did you come here to … wait – did you come here to take me back to him?’
‘Who?’
‘The baby’s father.’
‘I have no idea who the baby’s father is,’ I said, almost completely stopping the Jeep.
‘The hell you don’t!’ she screamed.
I could see she was about to panic.
‘No, see,’ I scramble, ‘I’m going to take you back to Fry’s Bay.’
‘Fuck!’ she screeched.
‘OK. OK. Let’s unpack a little,’ I said. ‘I’m confused. You want to be with the Seminoles?’
‘Yes. God! They … they saved my life, they’re making me better, they’re helping my baby. I’m safe with them. But if he gets the kid, he’ll take her away!’
Cold Florida Page 14