Bone Valley (14 page)

Where to hide
my gun and what to wear took equal top billing the next morning.

This was tricky. The gun had to be out of sight, but handy. And clotheswise, I had to find a balance between what was sexy and what revealed too much skin for too much sun exposure. I settled on a tight blue tank top, with a see-through lacy white blouse worn loose and tied at my waist over the tank, and a pair of short cotton shorts. Yeah, that left a lot of skin out for the gamma-beta-UVH-whatever-devil rays of sun to fry, but after all, that’s why I’d twice coated myself in sunscreen.

Clothing settled, I moved on to gun control—I decided a cooler made more sense than a backpack, and who takes a purse canoeing? In nothing flat, I’d packed a small cooler with Save the Forest trail mix bars, Handi Wipes, bottled water, my still-unused Glock, extra sunscreen, and big chunks of that fake, blue ice stuff.

Then in a fit of something or other, I changed my clothes to a nice, thin-knit white shirt with three-quarter sleeves and a pair of loose cotton Capri pants with a Hollywood waist that would leave me freer to paddle. Not as sexy, but more practical.

When I heard Jimmie in the shower in the guest bath, I wrote him a note reminding him to feed Rasputin and cut the grass, and left.

Miguel was already at the canoe outpost, and I parked a discreet distance from him, and fairly trotted up to him. We hugged, but his hug was like I was his second cousin at a reunion, not like I was the soon-to-be new lover. When I sniffed him, I caught that lovely touch of sandalwood. “You smell good,” I said, and hugged him again. I let my hands play around a little, not too naughty-girl, but enough to check for a reaction. He pressed against me, and his hands got to playing a little. When he slipped his hands down inside the loose waist of my Capri pants and cupped my lower buttocks at the same time he pressed his own chest against mine, the part of my brain that did risk-benefit analysis simply shut down. I forgot the whole murder-test motive, and wondered instead if we could skip the canoe thing and find a hotel. I’d have to shower off all the damn sunscreen first, though.

But then he pulled away.

Jeez, but that boy was a tease.

“Why don’t I wait out here while you go in and rent a canoe. Here, I’ll give you the money.” Miguel pulled out his wallet and handed me some bills. Half panting, I took the cash and composed myself back down from heat and lust to business casual. Then, I wondered briefly about Miguel’s ready-cash supply. I mean, that billfold looked pretty stuffed—like, maybe, someone who had planned in advance for not going home the night he blew up his boat and also his best friend. But, I didn’t want to alert him to my suspicions, so instead of interrogating him about his money, I asked, “Why can’t you go rent a canoe? Or come with me?”

“I don’t want to give an ID. Like I told you yesterday, I’m a running target. Harder to hit.”

Okay, a tad melodramatic, and I couldn’t imagine why on earth one would have to provide a picture ID to rent a canoe even in this post–9/11 security-hysterical world, but on the off chance Miguel was right, and since the police were looking for him, I could see his point about not flashing a driver’s license.

I also thought, nice touch if he doesn’t want anyone seeing him with me. You know, eliminate witnesses.

My lust and my paranoia brawled with each other a bit in my head, but finally my need to know won out over both. I felt supremely confident in my ability to defend myself, especially with that Glock in the cooler.

And, at the moment, with my own skin still on low sizzle from his recent fondling of it, I really did not think he was a killer.

But I had to find out.

So, okay, I agreed to go inside and rent the canoe, walking away in what I hoped was an enticing saunter.

It did cross my mind that the last time I’d agreed to get on a boat with this man, I’d nearly gotten blown up.

As it turns
out, you do need a picture ID to rent a canoe and I was gearing up to make a Big Deal out of this, I mean, come on, looking every bit the terrorist that I was, I was going to what? Crash into Bubba Joe’s fence in a rented canoe and single-handedly end civilization as we knew it? But the man behind the counter gave me one of those “Hey, lady, you want to make an issue of this, we don’t have to rent the canoe to you” responses, so I caved because I had a bigger mullet to fry than some counter jockey.

Just as I was walking out of the canoe-rental place, I spotted Jimmie coming in. Jimmie was no doubt trying to be inconspicuous, but he was lugging the video camera with him and panting as if the camera weighed a hundred thousand pounds, and he was wearing one of Delvon’s hand-painted, red-poppy T-shirts and stood out like Michael Moore at a thousand-dollar-a-plate Republican dinner.

Of course I wondered what in the hell he was doing at the canoe outpost, but after a moment of pondering my possible reactions, I decided it was easiest to pretend not to see him, just as Jimmie apparently pretended he hadn’t seen me see him.

After all, having him around might not be a bad idea, so long as Miguel didn’t know it.

On that note, I practically sprinted back to my car to get my cooler and headed toward the stacks of canoes, while Miguel hovered off to the side, no doubt trying not to draw attention to himself.

“Picnic,” I said, when he nodded toward the cooler with a quizzical look. I put it in the center of the canoe we selected, and eyed the paddles. I wouldn’t mind having a few germ-killing Handi Wipe moments with them, but was afraid if I opened the cooler, Miguel would spot the Glock.

I decided it was better to risk the unclean handles, and we pushed the canoe off into the river and set down the Peace to paddle. Hopefully, I would find out exactly what Miguel might know about Angus being blown up, what sandalwood-soaked sweetie he was staying with, and, of course, the key question of the morning: Was Miguel a killer?

“So, okay. Where are you staying? What do you know about Angus and the explosion? Why did you—”

“We can talk later,” Miguel said. “For now, enjoy the river.”

We went another round before I grumped internally a bit to myself. I didn’t want to wait for answers, and I couldn’t even watch Miguel’s beautiful body as he paddled because I was sitting in the front of the canoe.

So there I was, testing the warranty on my sunscreen, a few miles down the river, when I inhaled and looked around. And looked around again. The water was tea colored, rich with the tannic acids from the leaves of the live oaks that shaded the banks, their gray roots pushing out into the river and hiding small zoos of live things. Silently, we canoed into the center of the river, clear of the trees, out where we were open to the sun and the morning breeze. Overhead, two red-shouldered hawks circled. A moment later, I spotted an anhinga perched on a cypress tree, its wings spread out to the sun to dry, and lifted my paddle to point it out, as if somehow Miguel had gone blind.

Miguel was right. This was worth saving.

The current had us now, and we let the river take us. Lulled as we were by the morning and the river, we drifted until we spotted another canoe ahead of us, with a red-faced man and a preteen kid type. They were yelling stuff and laughing, over the sounds of a portable radio.

Instinctively I reached for my paddle and matched Miguel’s increased paddling to try to get past them and all the ruckus they were creating on the quiet river.

At that point the Peace River ran through a cow pasture and a Brahman bull was watering at the edge of the river. Miguel and I paused for a moment to admire the creature. The bull was large, and regal, with a big hump on its back, and serious horns. While we studied it, the bull eased himself into the river and began swimming, as if to cross over to the other side. As the animal approached the loud people’s canoe, the kid threw a pop can at it. Then the man chunked something at it that hit its broadside with a clear thunk.

“Damn fools,” Miguel said, and stopped paddling. I turned around to stare at him as he started taking his shoes off.

“What are you doing?”

“That bull is going to dump that canoe. I’m going after them.”

And just as if the bull had understood perfectly what Miguel had said, it tipped the canoe with the tops of its horns while I watched. The loud people weren’t laughing anymore. I didn’t feel so good myself.

Miguel dove into the Peace, and quickly grabbed the boy as he floundered in the river. As I watched Miguel struggling in the water with the now-frantic youngster, I looked for the red-faced man, and saw him swimming awkwardly, but steadily, with one hand up in the air, holding something. Since he clearly wasn’t drowning, I turned back to watch the Brahman bull. It continued to cross the river, having, I suppose, made its point and lost interest.

Miguel, apparently gauging the distance to our canoe as shorter than to the drifting flipped canoe, or the shore, swam, dragging the screaming and struggling kid—hey, didn’t he get it? Miguel was rescuing him?—toward me.

In a swift and jarring throw, Miguel pitched the kid in the canoe behind me. “Having fun yet?” he asked me.

But Rescued Kid, the one who was not going to get his Canoe Scout ribbon out of this trip, took one look at us and started flailing about as if Miguel and I were recruiters for Hannibal Lector, and the next thing I knew, splash. Damn, the kid and I were in the river.

Miguel came up from the water cussing me, as if somehow this was entirely my fault. “Damn it, Lilly, don’t you even know how to canoe? Why didn’t you—”

Why didn’t I what? Throw the kid out of the canoe? Alter the nature of gravity? But before I could retort, Miguel grabbed the kid with one hand, and one-handedly swam back to the bank of the river, where the red-faced man had finally gotten to shore.

Abandoned by the man who seemed less and less like my next lover, I tried to grab my now-capsized, though carefully packed cooler—I mean, it had all that bottled water, our snacks, and my gun. But the cooler was too heavy and it sank with great speed and gusto and I didn’t feel like diving to the bottom of the Peace River to rescue it. Yeah, I mean, sure, I’d spent a lot of money on that Glock, but God knows what was at the bottom of that river, and I didn’t want to inhale it, taste it, or feel it. I let the cooler stay sunk. Besides, our paddles were floating out to sea, and it seemed the better part of valor to snag them instead of the bottled water and weaponry, so I did.

So, yeah, spank me, but I was just a little pissed off that Miguel had yelled at me, then forsaken me and the capsized canoe. But this was also an opportunity to show him just how clever and independent I was. In no time at all, I had the canoe right side up, the paddles tossed into the boat, and I climbed in, not, perhaps, too gracefully, but I didn’t think anybody was scoring this, and I paddled the canoe toward Miguel and the loud, wet people on the shore. Just as proud as if I were Catwoman, I beached the canoe and climbed out into the pasture.

Everybody on the narrow river beach stopped screaming long enough to turn and stare at me. At first I thought it was because I so clearly deserved a merit badge, not chastisement by Miguel for the canoe spilling. But then, I watched where Red Face’s eyes landed, and it occurred to me that my thin white blouse, now soaking wet, was essentially see-through. I knew the boy-child was all right when I noticed that his little pervert, preteen eyes had noticed this too. Good thing I’d worn a bra, though not much of one.

The mutual male fascination with my thin bra didn’t last long. I guess it’s more fun to yell at each other than stare at a wet woman in a white shirt.

Red Face waved a cell phone at us like a weapon—I guess that was what he had decided to rescue from his canoe instead of the boy or the radio—and started punching in numbers, shouting, “The law needs to put that bull down. Shoot that animal. Kill it. It’s a dangerous beast.”

Before the man completed his dialing, Miguel snatched the phone from him and threw it into the river. Red Face then screamed at Miguel, who tried to explain to him, though he was clearly in no mood to listen to anyone, that the bull was right where it was supposed to be, doing what it was supposed to be doing, and that it was them throwing things at the animal that had caused the problem.

“I’m gonna call the law out on you too,” Red Face said. “Throwing away my cell, why that thing cost sixty dollars. You got no right.”

So, yeah, obviously Red Face lacked any semblance of sense or class, what with threatening Miguel with the police for throwing away his cell phone, and this despite the fact that Miguel had gone to considerable effort to help his kid and to educate the man about the root cause of the trouble, that being, them.

Hmm? Threatened with legal action for trying to save people from their own foolish, destructive behavior. This was a perfect analogy to the plight of the environmentalists, and, despite the fact that the tannins in the river had surely eaten away my sunscreen and I was standing totally exposed to the deadly rays of Florida sun, I started to pontificate on this observation. “You know, having Miguel arrested when what he did was to save your kid and explain to you about the abuse of large animals, that’s kind of like when Green Peace was prosecuted for trying to save the rain forest—I mean, it’s punishing the do-gooders. And—”

Miguel turned, glared at me, and said, “Shut up.”

“The hell I will,” I shouted back. Nobody tells me to shut up. I mean, except a judge during Official Courtroom Proceedings. So despite the fact that I was standing on the shore of a river many wet miles from my car with a red-faced angry man, my red-faced angry date, and a recently hysterical kid, and that the Brahman bull was out there somewhere, I added to the bedlam by yelling back. “I can talk as much and as loud as I damn well please,” I tossed out there for the general benefit of no one.

By then, everybody, including Miguel, was shouting at everybody. Yelling begets yelling, after all. For an unpleasant and uninvited moment, scenes exploded in my head from my childhood, where everybody shouting at everybody was as common as nobody taking the garbage out. While I shook off my flashback, Miguel stopped verbalizing his displeasure and stomped toward our beached canoe. Then Miguel hopped into our canoe and started pushing it off the sand with one of the paddles I had carefully thought to rescue.

Thinking better the devil I already knew than the stranded loud people, I jumped in after Miguel, just as he steered the canoe into the water. I was relieved when he turned the canoe around and began paddling back to the outpost. Especially since my backup, that is, my Glock, was at the bottom of the river.

Okay, okay, so Miguel was not as peace and love as I had first supposed. But as my brother Delvon had once told me when we were teenagers busily busting out all of the football coach’s windows because he’d punched a fat kid in gym, even Jesus had trashed a temple and yelled at his mother.

Since we were both paddling like we were in an Olympic event, it didn’t take us long to get back to the canoe outpost. We jumped out on the sandy bank by the canoe-rental building and dragged the canoe back toward the drop-off rack before I said, “I’m going to say a few things, important things, now. I don’t think it will spoil the moment.”

Miguel ignored me.

“You’re in a lot of trouble, as far as I can see,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on and maybe I can help.”

“I don’t see how,” he said. “You seem pretty useless to me.”

“Screw you, you can piss up a green rope,” I shouted loud enough to draw stares, forgetting all those years Bonita and Jackson had spent making me into a well-mannered sophisticate. I turned my back on him and stomped and squished in my wet shoes up the landing and into the outpost and up to the front desk and reported that a kid and his dad were stranded upstream after their canoe capsized. I did my best to describe the location.

“What’s your name?” the desk man asked, and stared at my wet white shirt and what was beneath it before he finally started writing down notes. Fortunately, it was a different man from the one who had earlier demanded my photo ID.

Thinking of the potential liability, or criminal charges—what? Willful destruction of cell phone? Canoeing with wanted police suspect? Or at the very least some extremely unpleasant encounters generated by the red-faced man—I said, “Sunny McDemis,” and I recited Sunny’s office number from memory, thinking that that would at least ruin one day in the life of Jimmie’s snide insurance adjuster. Then I stomped out toward my car.

While I was leaning against my Honda taking off my wet shoes, Miguel came up to me, still carrying his canoe paddle.

“Aren’t you supposed to turn that in?” I said, eyeing the paddle and speaking in a definitely snippy tone.

“Don’t you get it?” he yelled at me, and shook the paddle near my face. “Don’t you fucking get it at all?”

“Get what?” I yelled back, not one to be easily outshouted thanks to my early childhood training.

“It’s all dying, going to hell, and I can’t save any of it. Nothing I do,
nothing,
I can’t save any of it. Not a damn piece of it, not the Glades, not the Peace. Hell, they’re even fucking up the Suwannee River, mining the water for Miami. Between the doughfaces and the greedy motherfuckers, it’s all but all gone.”

It?

Florida? I wondered, studying Miguel’s face closely.

“The Everglades aren’t even there anymore, just some dried-up little park with boardwalks and airboat rides for tourists,” he yelled, but a notch lower on the shouting index. “Gone. Dead. And they’re going to dump that gyp shit in the Gulf and finish it off. The coral reefs are dying, the whole fucking Gulf is dying. Do you know what it takes to kill an eco system that big?”

Then he gulped air, and, holding the canoe paddle like a baseball bat, he raised it like a weapon.

I flinched, and jerked backward, thinking my head was the target.

But Miguel spun away from me and smashed the oar into the concrete edge of a nearby picnic table with a splintering whack that definitely commanded my attention.