Lost in the River of Grass Read online

  Tell the AABCs? After they make sure I didn’t steal any of their junk, they’ll be happy I’m gone. I bite my lip, then shake my head. “Didn’t you tell someone?”

  “No. Remember? It was our little secret. And what makes you think it will occur to anyone that you might be in the missing airboat, if they even notice it’s gone?” Andy hitches himself up on the dock and sits with his legs dangling in the water. He seems unconcerned that the gator has resurfaced and is watching us—just his eyes and two nose-holes above the surface.

  “The way I figure it,” he says finally, “they may miss you pretty soon, unless they think you’ve gone for a walk. When they do realize you’re gone, they won’t know where to start looking. They might think you’ve been kidnapped or something. It won’t occur to anyone that we might be together until one of my parents gets home. In all likelihood, that will be my father late Monday. Best guess is they’ll find the boat trailer Monday evening, but too late to start searching. And even then, they won’t have a clue which direction I went, or that you’re with me. Once they start searching, it could take a week to finally locate us if we stay here. You saw how overgrown this place is. You can’t even see it from the air. There’s a north-south levee. If I start walking now, I can be on it by Monday, and out by Tuesday morning.”

  I begin to tremble. Everything he says makes perfect sense. “Maybe the owners will come out to hunt.”

  “It ain’t hunting season, and they haven’t been here in months, maybe even years.”

  “That swing looks pretty new.”

  “So you think they’ll come out to visit it?”

  “Don’t be mean. I can’t stay here alone for a minute, much less for a couple of nights. No way.”

  He sighs and shrugs. “There’s only one other choice then. You have to come with me.”

  “Are you crazy? I can’t swim through that.” I point to the pond scum that has drifted in to encircle his legs. “And there are alligators everywhere.”

  “The gators ain’t gonna bother us, and there’s no swimming involved. This is the deepest water we’ll see. Except for a gator hole once in a while, the water’s only a few inches to a foot deep.”

  “What about water moccasins? Mr. Vickers told us they’re aggressive. One swam right at us when we were at Shark Valley.”

  “We just have to keep our eyes open.”

  I feel totally exhausted and out of arguments. I put my face in my hands. “I can’t stay here alone,” I say. “Please, Andy, I can’t.”

  He stands and puts his arms around me. His wet shirt feels cold against the sun-heated skin of my arms. “Then you have to come with me. Those are our only choices. There’s no food. We can’t last a week or more on swamp water and a can of Spam.”

  “We can build a fire,” I say suddenly. “They’ll see the smoke.”

  “Well, that’s a good idea,” he says, and strokes my hair. “Of course, we’d need dry wood and dry matches.”

  “In the cabin?”

  “It’s been raining almost every day since June. Nothing’s dry in that cabin, and there’s nobody to see a fire, and if there was, they’d think it was some fisherman cooking dinner. Nobody knows we’re missing. You have to remember that. Do you really want to sit here ’til we hear the first airboat or see the first search plane—days, even a week from now?”

  “Maybe it won’t take that long. We could wait until we hear a plane, rub sticks together like they do on Survivor and burn the whole cabin down. They’d see that, wouldn’t they?”

  “What’s Survivor?”

  “A reality show.”

  “Is that something on TV?” His tone is curious.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen it.”

  “We don’t have a TV.”

  “If you’ve never seen it, how do you know that we can’t stay right here and survive on berries and stuff until we’re found?”

  He rolls his eyes.

  “I don’t think you should make fun of my idea if you’ve never seen the show. About twenty people get left on an island where they have to fend for themselves for thirty-nine days. They get fires started by rubbing sticks together . . .” I think. Or do they? I can’t remember. Weren’t the first competitions always for flints and a machete?

  “Sarah, even if you could start a fire by rubbing wet, green sticks together, which you can’t, this place actually belongs to someone—remember? As bad as it is, they might not like us burning it down.”

  The duckling stands and stretches on one leg, then steps up on my foot and nestles down again. I pick it up and bring it close to my face so the tears I can’t control fall and bead on its back.

  …

  Andy goes back to the cabin for the cooler, my backpack, and my shirt, which I left hanging over the back of the swing. I can hear him opening and closing cupboards, but when he comes down the path, all he has is the can of Spam and a butcher knife.

  “There’s nothing of any use to us in there except this.” He holds up the knife.

  “What are you doing with that?”

  “Just in case.” He looks toward the gator at the far end of the pond, then at me. “But if you’re staying, I’ll leave it, and the Spam, with you.” He holds the knife out to me—handle first.

  “Andy, please, let’s wait until tomorrow. Maybe someone will come by—a fisherman or a frog-gigger.”

  “No way that’s going to happen, Sarah. Have you seen or heard a single airboat all day? We’re miles from where the Indians take the tourists.” He hands me the Spam, sits on the dock and slips into the water. “I want to get a few hours in before dark.”

  Dark! The backs of my knees tingle like they do whenever I see someone else’s blood. I stare hard at the Spam for a moment, then glance at the gator.

  “He’s just waiting for us to leave so he can haul back out,” Andy says.

  “If something got you, no one would ever know what happened to me.”

  “You should come with me. I’ll get us out. I promise.”

  I think about the few times my family has gone to the beach. Even there, with them on colorful towels nearby, I never went in the water past my knees because it was too silty to see the bottom. I couldn’t stand the thought of what I might step on, or what was just beneath the surface looking up. The difference is that at the ocean, I’m pretty sure it was only my imagination; here the danger is real. The gator floats ten yards away, watching.

  “I can’t,” I say. My whole body trembles.

  “You have to, Sarah.”

  I shake my head.

  He takes the duckling off the top of my foot and puts it in the water, then takes the backpack out of my hand, unzips it, and drops the Spam inside. He swings the pack around and sticks his arms through the straps.

  “It’s best this way,” he says and holds a hand out to help me off the dock. “You’d never make it here alone.”

  I know he’s right and hate him for it. Hate him so thoroughly I can’t speak. I kick my foot like a child, sending the flip-flop spinning.

  He looks at me, but says nothing.

  “Hand me the flight bag, will you?”

  I kick it off the dock, too.

  He catches it before it hits the water.

  “Are you going to carry that, too?” I ask, wiping tears away with the heels of my hands.

  “No. I’m gonna hang it in a tree near the entrance to the channel. If anybody finds it, they’ll know this is where we started from, and they’ll know we went east.”

  “How would they know that?” I sniffle.

  Andy shakes the bag. Something shifts inside. He unzips it and dumps out the flip-flop that matches the one that has floated across the pond and is bumping against the trunk of a pond-apple tree. “’Cause that’s the closest dry land. The levee is due east and much closer than the trail.” He holds his hand out again.

  I sit down on the edge of the dock, hesitate, then put my feet into the black water. Chill bumps spread up my arms.


  The water is to his waist and is covered with a sheet of pale brown scum, which has floated back and encircles his chest.

  “I’ll throw up if I have to get in there.”

  “I wouldn’t waste the food if I were you.” He tries to smile.

  “God, this is so not funny,” I snap.

  “I know that. Doesn’t change anything. We’re still stuck.” He flaps his fingers for me to come on.

  “Ten miles in this sludge.”

  “Seven maybe. Like I said, the levee is closer. Once we’re there, it’s dry land all the way to the highway.”

  Seven miles didn’t seem that far. I walk to school all the time—a mile or so each way. Who am I kidding? I take a last look at the relative safety of the cabin, then at the gator. He’s gone. Only a swath of small bubbles marks where he’d been. My breathing becomes shallow and rapid, and my heart thuds in my chest.

  “I can’t. I just can’t,” I say, but I close my eyes and am about to slip in when I hear a sound like someone slurping a Coke. My eyes snap open. “What was that?”

  “A walking catfish.”

  There’s a small splash as something leaves the surface. I hear the sound again and see a mouth in the water, or rather black lips around a hole in the water. Another surfaces, takes a gulp, and dives to the bottom.

  “Are they eating? I’ve heard about fish that can spit a stream of water and knock a bug right out of the air.”

  I’m stalling. Maybe, if we wait just a few more minutes, we’ll hear an airboat, or Andy will think of something else to try.

  “They’re breathing. Come on Sarah.”

  “They’re fish, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah. Air-breathing fish.” He flaps his hand again.

  I close my eyes, say a little prayer, and tip forward off the dock.

  7

  The water was waist-deep on Andy, so I expect it to be chest-high on me. A scream catches in my throat as water pours over the tops of my boots. The added weight pulls me under and throws me off balance. I have a split second to gulp air like one of those catfish before landing on my hands and knees in mud that is up to my elbows. I try to swim out of my boots, but the angle is wrong. The harder I struggle, the deeper I sink until I’m on my belly, up to my armpits in the ooze with the boots clamped like vises around my ankles. Air leaves my mouth in a big brown bubble as I try to roll on my side. My eyes are open, but I can’t see anything through the mud I’ve churned up. I pull an arm free and wave it above my head, hitting a dock post. Not a post; Andy’s arm. I feel his hands around my wrist. He nearly pulls my arm out of its socket as he drags me upright. The water comes to my chin.

  I gulp air and cough until my throat is raw. “What are you standing on?” I croak.

  “The deck of the airboat.” He leans and lifts me up into it with him.

  My yellow T-shirt is slimy and brown. I cup my hands and bring water up to wash the mud off my face.

  “I forgot you had those boots on. You can’t walk in those.” He puts his hands in my armpits and transfers me to the dock like a sack of potatoes. “You’ll have to take ’em off.”

  “They are off. They’re down there.”

  Andy gets on his knees, turns his head, puts his cheek against the water, and feels around until he finds first one then the other. He drags them up, rinses them out, and puts them the dock beside me.

  “Now what?”

  He sighs. “I’m not sure, but there’s no way you can walk in those.”

  “We’ll have to stay here and wait for help, I guess.” My tone of voice is hopeful. I lean over to rinse my arms, then splash water on my shirt, trying to wash the mud off.

  He makes a hiccup of a laugh and shakes his head. “That’s the option we don’t have.”

  Although the idea of nothing to protect my feet makes me sick, I point to the one of Andy’s giant flip-flops that’s now washed across the pond and is lodged between two cypress knees. “Could I wear those?” I look for the one I kicked off the dock. It’s in the cattails that guard the channel into this place.

  “You’d break an ankle for sure if you did. It’s like walking across a coral reef out there—uneven, with dead trees and stuff hidden beneath the surface.”

  Beneath the surface. Those are the three scariest words in the English language to me right now.

  “Once we’re out of this pond, won’t the water be shallow? Shallow enough to wear the boots without them filling up?”

  “In a few places, maybe, but what about when it’s not?” He slips his arms out of my backpack and puts it on the dock beside me. The bottom half is sopping wet; water gushes out through the zipper and drips from holes in the stitching.

  “My Dad’s binoculars and camera are in there.”

  “Well, they’re done for now,” he says flatly.

  Please, not Dad’s camera. I’m reaching for the pack when something in the water startles the duckling and it comes at us from near the propeller cage, its feet slapping the surface and wing nubs flapping.

  I grab Andy’s arm. “What’s that?”

  We both look toward the end of the pond where we last saw the gator. He’s farther away, but still watching us with just his nose and bubble-shaped eyes above the surface.

  “Maybe there’s another one somewhere.”

  Andy looks at me like I’m an idiot. “I think you can count on seeing another one or two.” He unzips the bottom section of the pack and takes out the camera and the binoculars. Water pours out of the binoculars, but the camera is all right in its baggie.

  “Might as well leave these here.”

  Before I can stop him he pitches the binoculars toward the cabin. They disappear into the thick weeds. I grab the camera and hug it to my chest. “My dad will kill me if anything happens to this.”

  “I’ll betcha it will never occur to him to ask what happened to either of them by the time he sees you again.” Andy drives the blade of the butcher knife into the instep of one of my boots.

  I grab the other one and hug it to my chest. “What are you doing?”

  “Giving ’em drain holes.” He twists the knife, trying to cut out a chunk, but the blade is too wide.

  I feel around in the lower portion of the backpack and hand him my brother’s Swiss Army knife. “This thing has scissors, I think.”

  There are a dozen blades and tools to choose from. “This really is a cool knife.” He turns it over in his hand.

  Andy first tries the little saw, then the scissors, neither of which can cut through the rubber. He finally chooses one of the smaller blades and finishes cutting two thumb-sized squares in the insteps. He dips the first boot and holds it up. Water gushes out the holes.

  When he finishes the other boot, I pull them on. They are cold, clammy, and squishy inside. I step off the dock and stand beside him on the deck of the airboat. Water

  fills them again, and having the holes doesn’t help at all. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “Give ’em to me.” Andy opens the saw-blade of the knife.

  “What are you going to do with that?” I hitch myself onto the dock.

  “You won’t be able to put one foot in front of the other unless I get the water to run out as quickly as it comes in.”

  “Wait. Don’t do that until we see if the water is over the tops when we get out of here.”

  “How are you going to get from here to there?”

  “Swim.”

  He shrugs, then pulls himself out of the water to sit on the dock beside me. He takes off his tennis shoes and cuts holes in them, too. Before closing the knife, he stabs a small drain hole in the bottom of my backpack, puts the Spam in the lower half, the camera and the knife in the top half, and zips it closed.

  It’s been breezy for most of the morning, but it dies suddenly. A few minutes later, the sun disappears behind the southern wall of trees. Mosquitoes, which like shade and still air, appear instantly and seem to come to a boil around us.

  I fan my face and squash th
em against my arms and legs, leaving bloody little streaks. “The bug spray’s in the pack.”

  “You’ll be in the water in a second.”

  “Please. I can’t stand the sound of them.”

  “Spraying won’t stop that.” He puts my pack on again.

  “Let’s hurry then. Can I put my boots in the pack until we get out of here?”

  He turns to let me unzip the bottom part. I stuff my boots inside and zip it as closed as it will go with the tops sticking out.

  I slide off the dock and tread water like a frog with my legs splayed to keep from touching the bottom with my bare feet. I kick so hard that I don’t sink above my waist.

  Andy goes over the side of the boat and sinks to his armpits in the mud. Using his arms like water wings, he begins to plow through the water. I do the breaststroke so close behind him I keep bumping into his back. We’ve only gone a few yards when I slow and glance back to see if the gator has stayed put. It isn’t there. My heart begins to ricochet inside my chest. “The gator’s gone.” Panic chokes off my breath. I swim around Andy and into the channel. The duckling, which has been swimming just off my right shoulder, peeps frantically and follows me.

  I only get about a dozen feet ahead of him when my leg hits something hard and knobby. In a heart-stopping moment, I know it’s the gator, yet I can’t move. In my mind I see its pink throat and huge teeth coming up through the murky water.

  Something brushes the back of my neck, and I scream.

  Andy has me by the collar of my shirt.

  “There’s a gator right there,” I choke. “I touched it.”

  “If there is, it’s dead. No gator in its right mind would just lie there.” Andy feels around with his foot until he too hits the thing I ran into. He reaches down and feels it with his hands. “It’s a tire off a swamp buggy.”

  “How would I know that?”

  “Well, quit thinking everything is an alligator. They are more afraid of you than you are of them.”

  “Maybe that’s true for you, but I can promise it’s not so for me.”