“Right. So you guys had an argument?”
“What do you mean? Why do you say that?”
“Listen, I know you. When a topic makes you uncomfortable, you avoid talking about it.”
I stared out the windshield at the long asphalt path that stretched ahead through the endless green grasses. “I pushed her. I don’t really understand why. I pushed her to explain to me how she could have just walked away like that back in high school. And in the process I may have pushed her away for good.”
“No, I don’t think so. Give her more credit than that. Molly’s a pretty amazing woman.”
I turned to look at him. His profile was so familiar. The straight line of the bridge of his nose, the swell of the cheekbones below his eyes, the strong jaw. Just looking at his smooth brown skin made me long to reach over, touch him, caress him. And often it made me terrified of losing him.
“How do you know? You haven’t really known her very long,” I said.
“No, but there are some people with whom we are naturally in tune. I feel that with Molly. We don’t have to know each other well to feel the harmony. She has a strong spirit and an inner beauty. Losing her freedom must be incredibly painful for a person like her, but she’ll survive it. Probably better than most.”
“Huh,” I said, but I was thinking inner beauty, my ass. “You and Molly really seem to have hit it off.”
He took his eyes off the road for a moment and flicked them in my direction. “Yeah. And is that a problem?”
“No, no, of course not.”
The rest of the drive up Snake Road toward the reservation passed in silence, or at least with no conversation. No trip in my Jeep was ever silent. As we roared through the cattle pastures, past the lakes and the distant stands of cypress trees, I tried to put the visions of Molly and B. J. together out of my mind. I tried to think about Nick’s murder and his frightened son. I wasn’t terribly successful.
When we pulled into the dirt drive at Gramma Josie’s house, Zale burst out of the door as soon as we turned off the engine. He had been watching for us. He ran around to my side of the Jeep and said, “Let’s go. I’ve gotta get out of here.”
“Zale, you can’t just leave like that,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s not polite, for one thing. We have to go inside and say good-bye to Gramma Josie, at least.”
“I don’t want to go back in there. I just want to leave.” I put my hand on his shoulder and walked him out into the middle of the front lawn, away from earshot of the house. “What happened, Zale? Why are you so spooked?”
“I told you. Someone tried to kill me.”
I shook my head. “I need a few more details. What exactly happened?”
He jerked his head, indicating that I should follow him. We walked to the far side of the yard and he pointed back behind the house. “See the lake back there?”
The thicket of trees was dense, but in one spot a glint of blue water was showing through. “Yeah.”
“I got bored. Gramma Josie suggested I go riding on the ATV. I did that for a while, but that was boring, too. Gramma had mentioned a canoe, so I came back here and asked her if I could take it out, paddle around a little. While I was out there on the lake, somebody tried to shoot me.”
I stopped breathing for several seconds. I was picturing Molly’s face while I tried to explain that her son had been shot. Only when I started to feel light-headed did I remember that I needed to breathe.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It’s kinda hard to make a mistake about something like that.”
“Maybe it was an accident or something.”
“Yeah, right. Two bullets came this close.” He held up his fingers only inches apart.
“This happened a while ago, right?”
He nodded. “This morning.”
“And did you tell anybody else about it?”
“No,” he said, kicking a toe of his sneaker at the ground, digging a hole in Gramma Josie’s lawn. When he looked up at me, I saw the panic that was just below the surface. In a matter of days this boy had lost his father and his mother, and now he believed someone was trying to kill him.
I put my arm around his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Show me where it happened,” I said.
I motioned to B. J. that we were going out behind the house. He nodded and gave me the okay sign. I followed Zale across the mowed grass of the back lawn and off onto a path through the scrub to the trees by the lake.
When we reached the edge of the trees, Zale turned and looked back at me, his eyes questioning whether or not we should be doing this.
“Whoever was around here this morning is long gone. I’m with you now. It’s okay.” I hoped I was right.
The stand of cypress trees did an excellent job of hiding the lake from the house. The Seminoles called these cypress domes. Years ago, most of the dry land on which we were standing was once Everglades marshland. Hammocks were the high, dry places where slash pines and mahogany trees grew in the drier soil. Those mounds were like tree islands in the river of grass. Cypress trees, on the other hand, thrive in water. They grew in depressions where the soil would stay soaked, even in the drought years. In the middle of the depression, where the water was deepest, the trees would grow tall and thick, while at the outer edges of the dome, where the water was scarcer, the trees would be shorter, hence the appearance on the horizon of a dome-shaped stand of trees. The earth under this canopy was drier than most, leading me to believe that the lake had been dredged, draining some of the water out of the swamp.
It was much cooler in the shade of the trees, and if someone hadn’t cleared the trail we were on, the brush would have been impenetrable. The faint breeze rustling the palmetto fronds smelled like damp, rotting vegetation. Patches of white lichen on the trunks of the thin cypress trees looked like snow, and in the golden evening light, with the greens of palmettos and ferns growing among the bushy shrubs, tall grasses, and mossy pools, I thought, this is a place where myth and magic are bom, where the imagination can invent almost anything— even murderous gunmen. I hadn’t realized how big the lake was until we broke out into the sunlight on the far side of the woods.
I was expecting the boy to take me to a canoe that looked something like the old hunter-green aluminum model Red had bought me at Sears when I was a kid. Instead, the boat he led me to was nearly invisible, drawn up onto the knobby beach of cypress knees: a handmade dugout canoe. A ten-foot-long wood pole, knotted where the branches had been lopped off, rested in the bottom of the canoe. I ran my hand over the boat’s rough surface. You could still feel the cut marks from the small axe the canoe carver, probably Henry John Billie, had used to shape the canoe out of a tree.
Zale walked up into the trees, near the boat’s bow. “See here?” He pointed to two splintered holes in the wood. One bullet had entered up near the bow where the boat builder had hardly dug out any of the tree’s center core. The wood was probably ten inches thick there. The other bullet had entered about three feet aft, and an exit hole showed where it had gone clean through the side of the boat.
Zale pointed out to the center of the lake. “I had poled out there, in the middle. The sun felt good and I lay down to watch the hawks and just drift for a while. I heard—”
From the direction of the path came a sharp crack, like the sound of someone stepping on a piece of wood. Zale stopped talking, and we both turned to look through the sunlight-dappled woods in the direction of the sound. I couldn’t see anyone, but the trees were so thick it would be easy to hide. My heart rate doubled and I motioned Zale to get around behind the canoe and crouch down. The old canoe had stopped one bullet. Maybe it could do it again.
The seconds dragged past and I was almost ready to stand up when we heard a distinct crunching sound, like a person stepping on a pile of limestone rock and crumbling it underfoot. That was followed by another snap of breaking twigs. Definitely footsteps. I found myself thinking that the
se modern Indians had certainly lost some of that tracking ability their forefathers were known for. This guy was making a hell of a racket.
XXI
I peeked my head up over the side of the canoe to see if I could spot movement back there. I could see only twenty-five feet or so into the thick clusters of lichen-covered tree trunks.
“Seychelle?”
I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It was B. J. leaning against a tree, watching us. He’d come up behind us.
“What’re you guys doing?”
“Shit, B. J. You scared the hell out of me.” I rolled onto my back on the ground and tried to catch my breath.
“Sey, watch your language in front of the kid.”
“We thought...” I sat up and began pulling twigs out of my ponytail. Zale looked at me, and I understood for the first time just how frightened he really was. “Oh, never mind, B. J. Come here and look at these bullet holes.”
B. J. ran his hand over the holes much the same as I had. “Wow. I’ve, never seen one of these made by Seminoles. They are like the ones my ancestors made. I once saw a Samoan canoe at my uncle’s in California. Only the wood is different.”
“B. J., I wasn’t telling you to look at the canoe. Geez, these are bullet holes. Zale was in the canoe today when somebody shot at him.” I turned to the boy. “You were starting to tell me about it. You heard the shots?”
He nodded. “They sounded far away. You know, I’ve spent time out here before, and it’s not that unusual to hear shots. They hunt pig and wild turkeys, and the kids mess around with target practice. There were three shots. I heard the third one hit the water. The ones that hit the boat made these loud thunks.”
“When did this happen, Zale?” B. J. asked.
“This morning, after eleven, probably.”
I looked at my watch. It was almost five o’clock. At this time of year, it would be dark by six. The warmth from the sun had already abandoned the day, and the evening chill was taking over. “What did you do after you heard the shots?”
“I was too scared to do anything. I was just lying there in the canoe, afraid to sit up. After what seemed like about two hours, but probably wasn’t that long, the canoe grounded over there.” He pointed to the shore about one hundred feet from us. “Then I sat up and paddled over here, ran to the house, and called you. I stayed in the house until you got here.”
“That was good, Zale. It probably was just an accident. Somebody was hunting or something and didn’t realize you were in here on the lake,” B. J. said.
“I was scared that it was the same person who shot my dad.”
“That’s not likely,” I said, thinking about Molly’s comments about Jimmie and how much he cared about the financial welfare of the tribe and himself. “When you asked Gramma Josie if you could go out in the canoe on the lake, was anybody else around? Did anybody else hear you say that?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t think so.”
“What about Earl and Jimmie? Had they been around at all?”
“They left yesterday right after you did. Uncle Earl’s truck is really loud. I’d have heard it if he was around.” Yeah, I thought, if he came in his truck. But every family out here has several all-terrain vehicles. Kids ride their ATVs to school, and adults take them out hunting and just to go visit a neighbor.
“You did the right thing to call. I don’t think you should spend another night out here. Come on, let’s go tell Gramma Josie we’re taking you back to town.”
There was simply no polite way to escape staying for dinner. Gramma Josie didn’t ask us, she just assumed. When we walked into the house, the table was already set for four, and when I introduced her to B. J., she asked him to come close to her so she could see him better.
“You look like Earl when he a boy,” she said, stroking the side of his head, running her hand across his slick black hair, back to his ponytail.
She had a point. Put one of those patchwork Seminole shirts and a cowboy hat on B. J., and anyone would take him for a Native American.
“What clan?” she asked.
“My family is from islands in the South Pacific,” he said. “A place called Samoa. It is very far from here.”
She nodded her head, smiling, and patted him on the cheek. “Okay. Okay. You not white man.”
B. J. laughed. “I think you mean that as a compliment, and I’ll take it as such.”
Gramma Josie told me to go to the kitchen and pour iced tea for everyone. It seemed crazy, but I swear she wanted me out of the way so she could flirt with B. J. The young girl who worked for Josie during the day had left a plate of pan-fried fish and a macaroni and cheese casserole in the oven. After a while, B. J. came into the kitchen. He rummaged in the refrigerator and added a side of steamed green beans after a raised-eyebrow look at the crusty pasta dish.
Zale helped his great-grandmother serve herself. As I watched her eat, I wondered how much those clouded eyes were still able to see. Did she really know what B. J. or Zale looked like, or did she only see shadows?
I went out to the kitchen to find some catsup for my fish, and when I returned, B. J. and the old lady were deep in conversation as though they had known each other for years.
“When I girl, no TV, no car. Live in chickee, eat turtle, garfish, sell eggs and skins. All this place idaponi land. They Seminoles who talk Mikasuki. My people talk Creek.”
“My people in the islands? It was the same story. They lived in huts, too, just like chickees. They also hunted and fished. That all changed when the white man came. Now, I don’t speak my people’s language.”
“You Indian.”
“In a way, you could say that.”
I pushed my catsup-soaked fish around my plate. “So I guess I’m one of the bad guys, huh?”
Gramma Josie cackled at that. “Not all white people bad.”
“Ah, well, that’s good to know,” I said, looking at Zale and wondering just where he fit into the picture.
“You like her,” Gramma Josie said.
“Like who? What are you talking about?”
“I say I have white friend. You talk like her. Now she old like me.”
I turned to B. J. “Gramma Josie was telling us about this girl she knew when she was very young. She said she met her at the Stranahans’ house when her family used to come to town to trade.”
Frank Stranahan and his bride Ivy were considered by many to be the founders of modern Fort Lauderdale. A real pioneer, Frank had opened the first trading post on the banks of the New River in the late 1890s, ran the ferry for crossing the river, started the first bank in town, and married the town’s first schoolteacher. What local history I knew came from Mrs. Cross, who taught me that mandatory month of Florida history in fourth grade at Croissant Park Elementary School, as well as the many tales Red used to tell me as we chugged up and down the river on Gorda. My father had been something of a local history buff.
B. J. pushed his plate out of the way. As usual, his food had disappeared without my being aware that he was eating. He was so precise, cutting his food into these tiny bites and downing them without a sound. I, on the other hand, ate with loads of mess and noise. He placed his forearms on the table and leaned closer to Josie. “Tell me about those days.”
“We live in Annie Tommie’s camp on de New River. I help my mother. Fish. Cook sofki.”
“What’s that?”
“Seminoles eat corn sofki. Cook de corn in water, add cappie. Taste real good.”
“So, you were friends with a white girl?” B. J. asked.
“Mizz Stranahan teach English. I see her dere. White kids throw rocks. Call us ‘dirty Indian.’ ”
B. J. shook his head. “Kids. They act out what they hear from their parents.”
“My grandmother on my mom’s side lived in those early days of Fort Lauderdale,” I said. “I hope she wasn’t one of those kind of kids.”
“Dis girl nice,” Josie continued as though I hadn’t spoken.
“No rocks. She teach Josie English, too.”
“She must have been a very special girl,” B. J. said.
“De whole family good,” she said, and then she started her cackling again, which turned into coughing, and finally B. J. got up from his seat and went over and began to massage her back. The coughing quieted and the wheeze left her breathing. She cocked her head back and looked at him over her shoulder. “You strong medicine.” When B. J. sat back down, Josie turned to me. “You see Molly,” she said. It wasn’t a question. She knew.
“I visited her this afternoon.”
“You saw Mom?” Zale said. “How was she?”
“She’s okay.” I didn’t want anybody to ask me any more questions about her, so I tried to shift the subject from that disastrous visit. “I think I might have found someone who could help her. There’s an old woman who was there, walking along the river the morning it happened. She witnessed something, and it might help get Molly off. The police are looking for her now.”
Josie sighed and shook her head. “She got to let go.” I figured she was talking about Molly.
After dinner, when we were cleaning up in the kitchen, I pulled out the white trash bag from the corner can and was tying the red ties when I looked up to ask what to do with it. B. J. was standing at the sink in front of a window that looked out across the back of the house. It was dark outside now, and his face was reflected in the glass. I still felt my heart go pitter-pat when I caught him unawares and had the chance to study him. Though his face had a classic beauty, a huge part of his allure was the serenity in him. Even without her eyes, Gramma Josie had “seen” it. Like B.J., she saw things most of the rest of us could not see. Maybe it was some kind of special radar built into those mammoth ears of hers. Molly used to say that the kids around here on the reservation called Josie an old medicine woman and said she had magic powers. She recognized similar qualities in B. J.
“So, your power as a ladies’ man continues to amaze me. Even ninety-year-old Indian ladies go ga-ga for you.” His eyes flicked up to the glass and connected with my reflection.
Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) Page 21