Lost in the River of Grass Read online

“Shall I call someone to come get you?”

  “No,” I say, maybe a little too quickly. “I’ll be fine by this afternoon.”

  “We’ll be back for lunch.”

  “Okay.”

  He stands for a moment, looking at me through the screen. “You’re a smart girl, Sarah. In the long run, that’s all that will matter. Do you understand?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I hope you feel better.”

  A tear forms in my right eye, then rolls out and down my cheek into my ear. I wish what he said was true, but either way, he’s too nice to lie to. “Thank you,” I say, but am just ready to say that I probably feel okay enough to go when he turns and goes down the steps.

  The air is already beginning to warm in the cabin, but the slick surface of the sleeping bag feels cool against my legs. After I hear the last bus leave, I get up, stand on the ladder, and rifle through my duffel bag, trying to decide what to wear. I wonder if an airboat ride counts as a date?

  Andy told me to wear long pants and a long-sleeved shirt to protect against cuts from the sharp-edged saw grass, so I lay out a pair of jeans and Dad’s shirt, but by the time I wash my face and brush my teeth, it’s too hot to stay covered up. I put on Mom’s shorts with an assortment of zippered pockets, but they are too baggy and make my legs look like sticks. I take those off and put on a pair of blue shorts. I choose a yellow T-shirt and tie my Dad’s old shirt around my waist by the sleeves.

  Andy also told me to bring a cap, but the one only one I have is a sweat-stained, high-profile, half mesh, Alabama Jack’s fishing cap of Dad’s. I dig deep into my duffel bag and find a bandana. Last night, at the after-dinner lecture and slide presentation, Courtney wore a bandana with the ends pulled through a soda-can ring. I hate to admit it, but she looked kind of cool. I rummage in the cabin trash for an empty can, find one, and break off the ring.

  Yesterday, at the Miccosukee Indian restaurant, the tourists on the airboat ride were weighted down with multiple cameras and bulky binoculars hanging like so many anchors around their necks. I don’t want to look like them, but I don’t want to miss anything either. I seal Dad’s camera into a large Ziploc bag to insure it doesn’t even get splashed, then put it and my binoculars in the bottom zippered compartment of my backpack, add my hairbrush, a tube of lip gloss, a mirror, a single can of mosquito repellent (though I have two with me), and my brother’s treasured Swiss Army knife, which he had trouble letting go of after he offered to loan it to me. I add a tube of sunscreen and put the potato chips and apples that I picked up last night at dinner into the top half of the pack.

  There’s a foggy mirror on the wall between two of the bunks. It has a full-length crack in it that makes my right half look slightly shorter than my left half. I’ve got long legs, the too-wide shoulders of a swimmer, and no breasts to speak of. Mom says that’s a good thing. She says young girls with breasts have them from eating fast-food hamburgers all the time, which come from cattle pumped full of hormones. “When you get your period, breasts will follow,” she says.

  “Looking good,” I say to the two halves of my image in the mirror, then turn sideways to admire my outfit. Real outdoorsy, I decide before pulling the string to the light bulb.

  Andy is finished washing the airboat and has backed the old Dodge up to the trailer. He smiles as I come across the yard. “Sleep well?”

  “Not really,” I say. “Too hot. What can I do to help?”

  “Not a thing. We’re ready to rock and roll.” He looks at my feet. “What are those for?”

  I’m wearing bright yellow rubber boots, which look kind of hot with my shorts and match my T-shirt. “Making doubly sure my feet stay dry.”

  “Uh huh,” he says.

  My stomach growls.

  “Hungry, huh?”

  “Starved. I didn’t eat breakfast.”

  “We can stop at the Miccosukee Restaurant for pumpkin bread. Will that hold you ’til lunch?”

  “I can’t stay out for lunch. They’re all coming back here to eat, so I have to be back by noon, okay?”

  “That’s a bummer. If we stop for breakfast, it won’t give us much time.”

  “We don’t have to stop. I’ve got some chips and two apples.”

  “Well, I’ve got cheese and Gatorade. Will that be enough?”

  “Plenty.”

  Andy goes around and opens the truck door for me, then holds his hand out to help me into the cab.

  I’ve seen Dad do this for Mom. “Thanks,” I say.

  …

  When I was younger, Dad used to take me fishing in the Keys. Our boat was only fourteen feet, too small for him to take both me and my brother at the same time, so I only got to go every other weekend. When Andy asks me to hold the bowline and walk down the ramp while he backs the trailer toward the water, I think about those trips with Dad. I do like I used to do for him, and when the airboat begins to float, I guide it off the trailer. Andy drives the truck back up the ramp and parks it on the grassy strip between the road and the canal.

  I hold the boat tight to the shoreline. Cars whiz by on the highway, and I imagine they envy me. I think about the Barbies on the hot bus ride to the Fakahatchee. I really wouldn’t have minded seeing it if it didn’t include riding the bus with them, and getting in the water.

  Andy asks what I’m smiling about. He’s carrying a ratty-looking blue bag with a Pan Am logo on it and a small cooler.

  “I guess I’m glad to be here and not on the bus with the others.”

  “I forgot to ask. How’d you get out of going?”

  I put the back of my hand to my forehead and scrunch up my eyes. “Don’t I look sick to you?”

  “Very. I’m not sure we should even go.”

  I pretend to kick him, then start to hand off the rope. “Wait. I want to take your picture.”

  “Only if I can take yours.”

  “Okay, though I’m not sure I’ll show either of them to my parents. I’m not too keen on them ever finding out about this.”

  I hold the airboat in place with my foot on the rope and take Andy’s picture sitting in the driver’s seat. We switch places after I show him how to focus.

  “Cool camera,” he says and snaps my picture with my hand on the throttle.

  “My mother wanted to kill Dad for buying it, but he never spends money on himself, so she finally forgave him. I still can’t believe he loaned it to me.” I put it back in the Ziploc and seal the bag.

  Andy puts one leg in and pushes us off with the other foot. He takes a long-sleeved shirt from the Pan Am bag and puts it on over his T-shirt, then climbs past me to his seat. He puts a key in the ignition, pumps the rubber-buttoned choke three times, and starts to turn the key. “Oops,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. We need ear protection. Hand me the flight bag will you?” He’d left it on the deck beneath my seat. When we get going, if I tilt my head back at all, it will rest against his knees. I like the thought of that.

  I get down, hand the bag up to him, and climb back into my seat.

  “Here,” Andy says. “You wear these ear guards, and I’ll wear the plugs.”

  “Do we need these?” I turn them over in my hand. They’re the same as people working around airplanes wear, bulbous and ugly, with a wide, tight band that will mash my hair. I hand them back. “I’ll take the plugs,” I say. “You’re closer to the engine.”

  We swap, and Andy waits for me to get the plugs into my ears before he turns the key. The engine starts with an explosion of smoke, and I grab the sides of my seat. There’s nothing else to hold on to, except maybe his feet. I turn to watch the propeller in the cage behind him spin first one way, then the other, until its two blades blur. I face forward and push the plugs deeper into my ears.

  The noise increases as Andy gives the engine more gas, and we begin to skim across the surface of the canal like sliding on ice. Birds lift into the air; turtles, sunning on logs, drop into the water. Basking alligators in asso
rted sizes launch themselves into the canal.

  We’re going fast when Andy makes a skidding left turn off the canal through a break in a stand of cattails.

  I scream when we turn, though I wouldn’t have if I could have helped myself. It doesn’t matter. I can’t hear my own voice over the roar of the engine, so I’m pretty sure Andy didn’t hear me. I tilt my head back and grin up at him.

  I thought it would feel like riding in a convertible, but it doesn’t. Not anything like that at all. The sensation is of moving through the landscape at a high speed while perched on top of a pole. We are on a trail of open water and going so fast it feels like we’re skimming above the surface on a pocket of air, until he turns us into the saw grass and I feel the tug of it beneath the boat. My arms and legs sting, which makes me think I’m getting pelted with insects, but when I look there are tiny cuts and flecks of blood. That’s why Andy told me to wear long sleeves. The airboat is like a lawn mower, and the bits of saw grass fly up and cut my arms and legs. We’re going so fast I’m only able to undo the sleeves of Dad’s shirt and slip my arms inside. It makes me feels hog-tied, but warmer and more protected.

  The floor of the airboat is accumulating critters. Little green tree frogs—a half dozen at least—hop about. They must be confused and scared; one minute they’re clinging to a cattail blade, and the next they’re whizzing along as if captured by aliens. Every tall stand we plowed through adds to the collection: a few more frogs and a dozen more spiders. The tiny spiders are everywhere, but unlike the disoriented frogs, they immediately set about building new webs. I want to brush away the ones that have landed on me, but it would mean letting go of the sides of my seat. Instead I try not to think about them and soon begin to admire their focus. The Pan Am bag, a long pole, the gas can, and the cooler are all being webbed to the deck with hopeful little strands of silk.

  Off to our left is a strip of dry land with a few low shrubs and a tree or two. It’s on the way to becoming a tree island—a hammock—according to the lecture we had last night. Andy veers toward it. “Hang on,” he shouts, his mouth warm next to my ear.

  My heart races as he takes direct aim at the patch of dry land. When we hit, the airboat slows and looks as if it’s going to stop, but Andy gives it more gas and uses the stick to flap the rudders from side to side. The rear of the airboat fishtails. We are nearly to the far edge when it stops completely.

  “Go stand in the bow,” Andy yells in my ear.

  I climb down and step cautiously through the frogs to the front of the boat. Andy opens the throttle full blast and uses the stick to flap the rudders again. The boat moves sluggishly until it lurches off the edge and back into the shallow water and thick, short saw grass. After I climb back into my seat, Andy runs the airboat in a tight circle, over and over, until he’s flattened the saw grass into what looks like a crop circle. He moves the throttle to neutral.

  “Why’d you do that?” I ask.

  “I thought maybe you’d like to run her, and this gives us a launch pad. Thick grass, water hyacinths and mud can stop an airboat, not to mention dry land.” He grins.

  “Can I really drive?”

  “Sure. Nothing to it, just don’t try to show off.” His eyes sparkle.

  He steps down to help me climb into his seat. “The most important thing is how you steer. Push the stick right, you go left, left for right. You’ll get the hang of it.”

  Right away, I give it too much gas, pull back, and end up in neutral again. I test the rudders, which sways the back end like a duck walking. As I get a feel for the boat, I ease the throttle forward, adding gas slowly until we’re going pretty fast, but not fast enough to be scary.

  A couple of times, Andy had raced at a solid-looking wall of cattails, or a dense stand of saw grass, and hadn’t even slowed down. Just when it looked like we’d fly up the side and flip over, the boat flattened a path through the center. It was exciting, so I search the horizon for a stand of cattails to hit. When I see one, I slow to make the turn toward it.

  “Where you going?” Andy shouts.

  I point. “Those cattails.”

  He laughs and gives me a thumbs-up.

  As we barrel toward the stand, I’m suddenly afraid but fight the urge to veer off. Instead, I stare at the cattails until it feels like we’re standing still and the bank of green is in a headlong rush to consume us. In a second or two we will be swallowed up by a sea of green stalks. I see a duck lift off the water in front of us just before I squeeze my eyes shut and hit the wall of cattails. I feel the tug of the thick stalks beneath us, then the surge as the airboat comes out into water on the other side. I open my eyes, pull back on the throttle, and laugh.

  Andy’s looking at something; then, without a word, he hops over the side. The water’s only knee-deep as he wades to the edge of the cattails. He leans over with his hands on his hips. He reaches for something, and when he turns, in each hand is a dead baby duck.

  5

  “It’s my fault.” Andy reaches up and turns off the ignition. “All sorts of animals live and hide in the cattails and saw grass. I should have told you. You didn’t know.” He lifts an arm to pitch the first one overboard.

  “Don’t,” I cry.

  “Why?”

  “We need to bury them.”

  “Bury them? Look where we are.”

  “We’ll take them to wherever we’re going and bury them there.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. So nothing eats them.”

  “What have you got against letting the dead feed the living? Something should eat them,” he says. “Otherwise their death is wasted.”

  “It’s just not right to throw them away.”

  “So you want to have a little funeral?” He smiles.

  I feel my cheeks burn. He’s laughing at me. “I just want to bury them.”

  “Cover them with dirt and let the worms eat ’em, huh? How dumb is that? It goes against nature’s plan . . .”

  This reminds me of what the ranger said about the warbler. I raise my hands to shut Andy up. “Stop with that let-nature-take-its-course thing.”

  “You’re in the wrong place to feel that way.”

  “I don’t care. I killed them, and we’re going to bury them.”

  Andy looks at the duckling in his left hand. I thought I saw something, too. “Did it just move?”

  “I think it did.” He hands it up to me, and puts his ear to the breast of the other one. Its little head slides off the side of his hand and dangles limply. “This one’s neck is broken.”

  The one cupped in my hands opens its eyes. “I think this one is okay. Just stunned.” I smile. “Maybe we can find its mother.”

  Andy snorts. “That duck’s a zillion miles from here.” He puts his hand out to help me down. “What are you going to do with it?”

  I’m surprised he asks. “Take it back with us.”

  “You gonna raise it in your bathtub?”

  “Can’t you keep it? You live out here.”

  “It will be imprinted.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It will be tame, not afraid of people. That’s not good for a wild thing.”

  “Well, what would you do with it?”

  He rolls his eyes like he knows he’s wasting his breath. “Put it overboard for something to catch and eat.”

  “That’s sick. There’s no way I’m leaving it here.” I look at the dead one, lying on the cooler lid. “You can put that one over the side if you want to.”

  “Naw. There are gators where we’re going. I’ll feed it to one of them.”

  “You will not. Give it to me.”

  I pick it up. Its eyes are dull, black slits. I feel awful about killing it and stroke its downy yellow belly and touch its rubbery little bill. “I’m sorry,” I say, then lob it into the cattails. “I don’t want to see anything else eaten by a gator.”

  “What’d you see eaten?”

  “A heron.”

  �
��What kind of heron?”

  “A great blue.”

  “Where’d you see that?”

  “From the observation tower in Shark Valley.”

  “Cool.”

  Boys.

  The duckling in my hand tries to leap down, but I catch it midair, then carefully let it go on the floor of the boat. It pads around, peeping like a baby chick, calling for its mother, I guess. It steps on one of the last remaining frogs, most of which have escaped over the side while we’ve been sitting here. When the frog wriggles out from beneath its webbed foot, the duckling falls on its butt, then can’t get its feet under itself. Andy and I laugh, but I can’t help feeling sad, like this is another reason I shouldn’t be here. If we weren’t out here messing around where we don’t belong, the little thing would still be with its mother.

  Andy climbs back up to his seat, and I catch the baby duck before he starts the engine. It squirms, trying to find solid ground with its flapping feet. I hand it to Andy while I put on Dad’s shirt, button it up, and tuck the tail into my shorts. When he hands the duckling back, I put it down the front of my shirt. Its toenails scratch my stomach as it tries to climb back out, but when I cup my hands over it, it calms down and lies quietly.

  Andy points to a tree island in the distance. “That’s where we’re headed.”

  Good. I’m starving.

  …

  The entrance to the camp is invisible. I hold my breath when Andy turns us and, without even slowing down, takes aim at a narrow channel through a stand of cattails. Only when we see the trail is blocked by tree limbs does he cut the motor.

  “Are you sure there’s a cabin in there?” I already don’t like this place.

  “Last time I looked.” He’s busy breaking away the branches that snag the propeller cage. When we’re through the densest part, he pulls the airboat, hand over hand, along the channel until we clear the tree limbs and glide into a man-made pond that is right out of the movie The Creature from the Black Lagoon that I saw on the Turner Classic Movie channel.

  Oh my God, I’m thinking when Andy says, “Kind of pretty, ain’t it?”

  It’s the ugliest place I’ve ever seen. The cabin is nothing but plywood covered with black tar paper, the pond water is black, and the mud at the edge is black. The cypress trees are so dense no light gets through. I’m totally creeped out even before I see the alligator. It had been asleep on the muddy bank, but now its eyes are open and staring at us. The hair on my arms stands up as I watch about fourteen feet of lumpy gray reptile slide lazily into the water and disappear. The tower at Shark Valley was over twice as tall as the high-dive platform at school. Looking at huge gators from there was one thing, but being this close to one that is now somewhere beneath us is freaking me out. I know it can still see us, and all I can think about is seeing that gator at Shark Valley explode out of the water, launch itself at the heron, and drag the poor thing under. I start to shiver.