by Erin Teagan
“What are you talking about? He’s dead. You had a funeral for him and everything.”
Dad shakes his head. “Grandma had a funeral for him, but I think he’s still out there somewhere.” He looks mistily out the window. “Surviving.”
I look over my shoulder to see if Jake’s hearing any of this, but he’s still sleeping, drooling all over the seat.
“Okay, Dad,” I say, looking for a way to change the subject. I pull a map of Virginia from the glove box. “How far away are we?” The Great Dismal Swamp is not hard to find, a giant sprawling national park with a lake right in the middle.
Dad’s ripping off a bite of beef jerky and driving with one hand now. “About two hours to go.”
“That’s it?” I say, because how exotic is that? I’ve driven farther for an archery meet.
“Yessir.” He smacks his lips. “Practically in our backyard. Bite?” He thrusts the jerky in my face and I swat it away.
I look at all the regular people going on regular family vacations driving along the highway with us. Bikes tied to the backs, cargo pods fastened to the tops, back seats piled high with pillows and bags. Moms and dads sitting up front.
“So, this is the season finale?” I say. “Are you coming back home for a while after?”
Dad stops chewing and rests his beef jerky hand on my shoulder. “Ali, you know that your mom and I—”
“I know, I know.” My stomach is getting all bounced up with the Jeep, swirling orange fizz pizzazz and chocolate candy bits.
“I want you to give Mom a break. This is hard for her too,” Dad says.
“She doesn’t let me do anything. You have no idea what it’s like when you’re not there.” My face burns with shame, though, and I wonder if I should have let her hug me. It’s just that lately, when she touches me or even gets near me, all I can think about is how she made Dad leave. And she had no right to do that.
“We’ll always be a family, the four of us. I just might live in a different house.”
Dad squeezes my shoulder and I knock his hand off. The look on his face is one of complete betrayal. My stomach cramps. I might suffocate and die in this car if we don’t get there soon.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I manage to say. My stomach is churning and grumbling and boiling.
Dad frowns. “Not many bathrooms around here. You’ll have to wait for the next rest area.”
I picture Dad’s fans, all wearing cargo shorts and khaki button-downs with Survivor Guy binoculars hanging from their necks. Some of them even have the Survivor Guy compass and matching snakeskin pouch. It’s not like mine though—I have the real thing. I feel for the bulge of it, safe in my pocket. I wonder if all those fans would be disappointed if Survivor Guy went to a plain old rest area when he needed to use the facilities on long car rides.
I vow to never drink another slushy in my life again. At ten a.m., anyway.
Dad looks at me. “You all right?”
Jake kicks the back of my seat, waking up and flailing himself upright.
I burp. “How long to the rest area?”
“Yeah, when’s lunch?” asks Jake, letting out a gigantic moaning yawn.
I grab my stomach and look at my feet. Not at the cars whizzing past us, or the trees waving at us with their leaves, or the rotting roadkill carcasses. I imagine the orange fizz pizzazz bubbling in my belly and the up-and-down bounce of the Jeep makes it bubble faster. I grab for the button to open the window, but it’s not on the door or in the center console.
“I could go for some tasty barbecue,” Jake says. “Some pulled pork smothered in greasy sauce—”
“How do you open the windows in this thing?” I ask, desperate for a gulp of real air, outside of the Jeep air, any air that I wasn’t sharing with Jake or my dad and his beef jerky.
“It’s manual,” Jake says from the back, reaching over my head, his sweaty smell making me gag, to point out the handle on my door.
I crank it until my arm muscles are jelly, but it’s still only open a baby crack. I crank some more, simultaneously wishing I’d actually used the weights in gym class and looking for an empty bag to stick my head into. The only one I find is the half-eaten bag of trail mix, and when I open it, the smell of peanuts and pretzels wafts out into the car.
I hear a thwack-splat against the windshield. “Did you see that?” Jake says, nearly leaping over the seats to point. “What was that, like an insect alien life form?”
I crank, crank, crank for my life.
“It was just a dragonfly,” Dad says. “Big one. Must be getting closer to the swamp.”
And that’s all it takes. I lose the orange-fizz-pizzazz and chocolate-candy battle. All over the outside of Dad’s Jeep.
Six
We pour out of the Jeep gasping for air, as soon as Dad pulls over. “I told you not to invite her!” Jake yells.
I peel my socks off, because apparently I puked on myself as well. “I’m fine, if anyone cares.”
Dad waves at us to be quiet. He’s on his cell phone, pacing the side of the road. If Mom were here the Jeep would already be cleaned and disinfected. Jake and I stare at each other. “I’m not touching it,” he says.
I give him my death glare and walk carefully to the back and open the hatch, trying not to brush anything against my contaminated clothes. Dad’s duffel tumbles out, nearly killing me. I pull on Jake’s bag, but it must weigh three thousand pounds. “What do you have in here?” I grunt. “A little help?” But Jake is busy pretending to gag into the ditch next to us.
I think I see movement inside an abandoned old gas station beyond the ditch, and when I look closer, I see a silhouette of a person through the broken screen door. I yelp, nearly stumbling back into the road, just as Jake’s bag manages to unwedge itself and slide out of the car. I roll away from it Indiana Jones style.
“You all need any help?” Silhouette says from behind the screen, and I bounce back onto my feet.
There’s pizzazz on my arm now. I am frozen. Silhouette could be a roadside serial killer and I’d be completely defenseless.
The screen door opens and out shuffles a little old lady in a housedress, a puff of some sort of animal under her arm. “You out of gas? Closest station is about twenty miles west of here.”
The orange puff of fur barks hysterically and she stuffs him under her sweater. It must be nearly one hundred degrees, and she’s wearing a sweater fit for the arctic tundra.
“So this is what we’re going to do,” Dad says, striding up to us, out of breath, oblivious to the sweater lady standing there. “We’re taking a boat from the canal to Lake Drummond, where the production crew found a nice dry place to—” Dad notices the lady. “Hello.” He pockets his phone and looks from the dilapidated gas station to our car to me.
“You headed to the swamp?” Sweater Lady asks, a look on her face like shock mixed together with horror.
“Yes, ma’am. Survivor Guy here.” Dad points to himself.
Sweater Lady looks annoyed.
“Outdoor Central? Channel 62 on Lox Cable, 88 on satellite?” Dad tries, his chest deflating as he realizes his celebrity has not made it to this abandoned gas station. “Every Sunday at eight p.m.?”
“Ain’t no one in his right mind in the swamp this time of year.” She swats a mosquito away from Orange Puffball. “You got bug nets?”
Dad clears his throat, and I can tell the only kind of nets he has are the ones hanging bedraggled from the animal traps.
“Where you all from?” she says, talking to me all of a sudden.
“Northern Virginia,” I say, flapping a swarm of gnats from my ears.
“Ever heard of yellow flies?” she asks.
“Homarus americanus? Yes, yes I have,” Dad says, and I look at him because Homarus americanus is the scientific name for lobster.
“Does Dad have any bug nets?” I say to Jake, but he’s collecting rocks from the side of the road like a three-year-old. “Dad? We have nets, right?”
“Jake?” I try, desperate for anyone to join us inside, wishing that Mom was here, and wondering how many dead bodies I’ll have to climb over to get to the bathroom.
“Dad?” I say, and then I yank my arm away. “I’m not supposed to go anywhere with strangers.” Shouldn’t my dad know that? Has he spent too many years in the wild?
“I’m no stranger,” the old lady says. “Name’s Betsy Sue. I’ve been living outside of this swamp for fifty years. Raised six kids and a miniature pony in these parts.”
It’s about three hundred fifty degrees inside the building. “You live here?” I ask before I can stop myself. There are towers of bowls and baking sheets, mounds of whisks, spoons, and empty pink boxes, and an avalanche of books in the corner.
“Does it look like I live here?” she says, leading me toward the back.
I can’t see Dad or Jake through the screen door anymore and I panic, but then the cool air in the back room makes me want to melt into the armchair looking out onto the yard. It’s clean and homey. I search for signs of a thousand cats or more piles of hoarded junk, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary. Orange Puff slips out of Betsy Sue’s arms and settles into the tiny doggie couch beneath the bay window.
“Bathroom’s over there.” She points with a craggly finger to an open door.
As soon as I close it behind me, I realize I don’t have any clothes to change into. I hold my breath as I pull off my shirt, and try to splash-clean it in the sink without getting the entire thing wet. I attempt to wash my hair with the hand soap and call to Jake telepathically to bring my bag inside, knowing it’s no use. He’s probably still collecting rocks and wouldn’t hear me if I called him with a bullhorn.
There’s a knock. “Someone’s in here!” I call.
“I know that, you loony bin,” Betsy Sue says. “Thought you’d be needing this.”
I crack the door open and she thrusts a shirt at me. Puffball is at her feet and barks at me all over again. “Will you cut that out!” she yells, and then nearly shuts the door on my fingers.
I shake out the shirt and pull it over my head. It’s white with dark pink writing: SWEET TREAT BAKE SHOP, NOT EVERYTHING’S DISMAL IN THE GREAT DISMAL SWAMP. It’s tight around my belly and all loose and ballooned where my chest should go. I will never eat another piece of chocolate again. I suck in my gut and take a second look at myself. I wring out my hair once more, give it a sniff test, and head out of the bathroom.
Betsy Sue is hovering over her coffee table, a smattering of outdoor gear spread out before her. She lifts a hat, hooded with nets and zippers, and hands it to me. “No one in their right mind goes in the swamp this time of year,” she warns. “Take this and maybe you’ll be the only one to survive.”
If Harper was with me, we’d be on the floor laughing, because there is no way I am wearing that, especially if there’s a camera involved. It looks like something you’d need when the plague hit or if you were a killer-bee keeper. Brad Garrison watches Survivor Guy. That helmet will never touch my head.
“Take it,” she says, pushing it into my chest. I do as she says, but promise nothing.
“My boy Robbie-Jay used it every day. He really loved the swamp, you know. Right up until the end.” Betsy Sue looks wistful. “Actually, I think he was wearing it that last day.”
“Last day? What last day?” I ask, holding the helmet away from me.
“Don’t worry about returning that shirt,” Betsy Sue says.
I shake my head. “I shouldn’t take this.” I hand her the helmet back. “It’s special to you.”
She cackles. “He deserved it.” She picks Puffball off the floor and strokes his fur. “Ever heard the saying ‘you don’t poke a sleeping bear’?”
“There are bears in the swamp?” I ask.
“Of course. Snakes, bears, alligators, yellow flies.” She swats the air even though nothing is there.
I pull at my shirt, wondering if I should call Mom. If I told her about all the dangerous predators I’m about to face, not to mention the fact that I was lured into a strange lady’s house without a chaperone, she’d be on the next plane to get me.
“Sounds like your daddy’s used to those kinds of things though.” Puffball is snuggling in her arms now. “And he won’t be the first. Legend has it whole flocks of people survived in the swamp for years, generations even. People escaping slavery, runaways, ghosts.”
“Ghosts?” I say, startled. Where is Dad taking me?
We pass through the mess in the front room and Betsy Sue rattles off a thousand terrifying facts about yellow flies and how they swarm and how to outrun them and what to do if they catch you.
I’m relieved, for once in my life, to see Jake staring at me through the screen door. “Get a move on!” he says. “Dad already had to push back production three hours.”
I see Dad at the Jeep, throwing a pail of water on the spot where I lost my breakfast.
“Thank you,” I tell Betsy Sue. I try and pat her little dog, but his teeth, which are giant compared to the rest of his body, come out of nowhere and snap at my fingers.
“What is that?” Jake asks, pointing at my helmet.
I run for the Jeep. “Just get in the car!”
Jake slides in behind me, and as soon as the doors are closed, we’re off.
“Hope that hat brings more luck to you than it did to my Robbie-Jay!” Betsy Sue calls after us.
Dad beeps the horn and we wave.
“Do you know the swamp is filled with ghosts?” I ask.
“FACT!” Dad says. “There is no such thing as ghosts.”
“It smells like puke in here, can we just get there?” Jake moans from the back.
“Baby,” I call him.
“Scaredy-pants,” he says.
Dad opens all the windows and I drop the helmet on the floor and check my cell phone. No service. I lean back, letting the hot, humid air tumble over me. Great Dismal Swamp, here I come.
Seven
Dad pulls off the gravel road next to the sign that says INTERIOR DITCH, GREAT DISMAL SWAMP, VISIT AT YOUR OWN RISK. We bump to a stop and twenty or thirty horseflies immediately land on the Jeep. I put a lot of effort into rolling up my window. Jake bursts out laughing and I stare at the helmet at my feet. Perhaps I will use it after all. Off camera, anyway.
Dad’s already out of the car, not scared of anything, especially a tiny little black fly. “After you,” I tell Jake, wondering how I got stuck doing the Dismal Swamp when Jake’s first Survivor Guy trip was to a deserted Caribbean island.
Dad knocks on my window and the flies disperse in a black cloud. He waves for me to come out. There are three people dressed in safari gear grinning next to him, one behind a giant camera and another carrying a pole with a fuzzy top.
“Rick, Bianca, and Wes,” Jake introduces them. “The producer, lead camera, and audio.”
“I thought Dad was the cameraman,” I say.
Dad taps on my window again. “Come on out,” he mouths.
I open the door, suddenly very aware I’m the only one not in survivalist gear. Even Jake has his hiking boots on. When did he change into those? I flip-flop next to my dad, tugging my shirt. “Is that on?” I say to the camera.
“It’s always on, honey,” Dad answers.
“What happened to the tiny camera that fits in your shirt pocket?” I ask. “The one with a raccoon bite?”
“We have it.” Dad swats at a fly. “It doesn’t work, but we still use it in shots.”
Bianca extends a hand. I shake it, trying to avoid colliding my face with the piece of equipment on her shoulder.
“Is there going to be a charger at camp?” Jake asks, looking
at his phone.
I laugh because any serious survivalist knows there’s no electricity in the middle of the wild. But if we were having an emergency, we could read chapter fifteen in Grandpa’s book: “Wilderness Wind Power and You.”
“Of course,” Dad replies, walking down a short path.
“Seriously?” I say.
“Just a few gas generators. For the equipment.”
The boat launch comes into view and it’s abuzz with people wearing matching Survivor Guy shirts and visors, carrying trunks and cases. One guy walks past me with a cappuccino machine. “How much equipment, Dad?”
There are several small boats in the water, already loaded up with Survivor Guy gear, bags and tubs and metal containers. I see a giant pot in one of the boats, too clean and sparkly to have ever been cooked over a fire.
“Dad?”
Some woman with a CREW shirt passes by with our luggage and starts tossing it into a boat next to a canoe. I quick-grab the hiking boots tied to the top of my bag and swap out my flip-flops, stuffing Grandpa’s book in too, under my clothes for safekeeping.
Jake climbs into the canoe, rocking it back and forth and pretend-screaming, waving his hands in the air, looking like a complete moron. Bianca stares at him, her camera to her side. A row of fishermen standing along the water give up and pull their lines out. They sit on their coolers because all the benches are taken up by production stuff.
“Ali-Gator!” Dad calls to me, and half the crew freezes. Dad smiles. “No. This little alligator. Get it? Ali-Gator?” While Dad laughs at his own joke, everyone relaxes, all eyes on me and my too-tight bakery T-shirt. And then Dad does this “zip-a-dee-doo-dah” whistle and everyone unfreezes and whistles “zip-a-dee-ay” back. “Time to get in the boats,” he says.
The crew swarms the bank of the canal. Bag lady throws the last of our stuff into the boat next to us and I have to squeeze through a throng of people wearing Survivor Guy visors to reach Dad. He’s already in the canoe. He extends his hand, and someone lifts me from behind and deposits me next to Jake. I hear crackling walkie-talkies, boat motors sputtering. I whirl around, remembering my helmet. It’s on the luggage boat, right on top in case I need it. I have a five-second freak-out as a fly lands on me, but I remain calm on the outside. The camera is pointed directly at me.