My Soul to Keep (25 page)

He would have to explain why their departure must be sudden, and not to France, after all. The Searchers would find them without much trouble in France. He must take them to Africa, somewhere they could easily vanish for years.

Could he expect Jessica to agree to such a thing?

“I like your nerve, planning a trip without even asking me,” Jessica said, startling Dawit from his thoughts as he arranged the duffel bags. “What if I had big plans for this weekend?”

“You don’t have any plans and you know it.”

“Isn’t the Everglades a swamp? We’re camping in a swamp?”

“Swamps are very romantic and secluded. There aren’t many people there. Only alligators,” Dawit said, and Kira squealed in mock fright.

Jessica nodded. “Uh-huh. Well, do you know that quote by Jerry Seinfeld? ‘Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.’”

“Who’s Jerry Seinfeld?” Dawit asked.

Jessica rolled her eyes. “Never mind.”

Kira tugged on Dawit’s belt loop. “Is it time to go, Daddy?”

“Stand back, Pumpkin,” Dawit said, and he slammed the rear hatch closed on the van before turning to Jessica to hold her shoulders. “You’re not mad, are you?”

She shook her head. “I guess most people would kill to have a husband who’d plan a surprise weekend trip. I’m slightly speechless, that’s all.”

“Good,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Then, go upstairs and get dressed. I think I packed most of what you need, but you can see what I overlooked. Hurry, though. We have to drive way out west, about sixty miles. The guy’s meeting us at the Big Cypress National Preserve with his airboat at noon. If we miss him, we’ll never get to the island.”

“What about—”

“I’ve packed plenty of food. Plus, it’s an island, so there’s fishing, and he said he has poles at the cabin.”

“What about Teacake, Daddy?” Kira asked suddenly.

Dawit’s stomach sank, but his smile remained frozen on his face as he massaged Kira’s scalp. “We’ll leave the kitty-door unlatched for him. I’ve left two days’ worth of food and water. Let’s just trust the raccoons won’t get to it first.”

“I’m going to find him and say bye-bye,” Kira said, turning to sprint back into the house.

Jessica wrapped her arms around Dawit’s middle and snuggled her face against his bare chest. She kissed his nipple. “A secluded island, David? You’re amazing. And what a great public relations tactic, letting Kira stay with Mom for the weekend. Mom, of course, won’t say anything, but she’s very upset about this idea that we could move.”

“That we will move.”

“That’s what I meant,” Jessica said.

Dawit patted Jessica’s firm backside. “Go on in and get dressed,
mi vida.
I need to put a few more things in the van, then we can get out of here.”

“’Kay,” Jessica said, looking up at him with a girlish smile. “This is going to be great. You shall be adequately rewarded for your creativity and spontaneity. Did you pack the massage oil?”

Her eagerness made Dawit sad. He shook his head slowly.

“Then you didn’t think of everything, did you?” she asked, squeezing his cheek, and she jogged back into the house with a giddy step that reminded Dawit of Kira’s. His wife, in so many ways, was still so much like a child. She possessed the sort of abandon he’d forgotten many natural lifetimes ago, and he loved that about her. He wished he could lose himself inside of it.

Very soon, Jessica would be forced to grow up in a fashion most people could never imagine. How would it change her?

To keep worries from afflicting him, Dawit concentrated on details. He had his hiking boots. His razors. The flashlight. Bread, fruit, leftover KFC fried chicken, crackers, sodas, flour to fry up any fish he might catch, the cast-iron skillet, a saucepan. The cabin’s owner said he had cooking utensils, but Dawit wanted to bring his own to be sure. He wanted dinner tonight to be special, because it could very well be the last pleasant moment he might share with his wife for a long time.

What else would he need for this trip, miracles aside? Ah, yes. His battery-operated CD player and radio. They must have music.

“David?” Jessica’s voice floated to him from Kira’s bedroom window as he stood in the front yard. He looked up, but could not see her behind the gray screen. “Have you seen the cat?”

“I’ll take a quick look around,” he said, waving up to her.

No, he had not seen that cat in at least an hour. Perhaps that hour had made a difference. Dawit prayed it had, but he knew he was only fooling himself as he trudged to the shed.

Inside, he gazed at the lump beneath the fading beach towel. No change. To be sure, he lifted the towel to examine the cat. Teacake’s eyes were still open, muddy pupils completely dilated— which meant the light was not affecting them. He gently poked at Teacake’s rib cage and shoulder blade. He lifted one paw and watched it flip back to the concrete floor as though it were elastic. Unless it was his imagination, Teacake’s joints seemed slightly more pliant, offering less resistance, but he couldn’t be certain. He was probably seeing only what he wanted to see.

“Better you than my wife or child,” he muttered to the corpse. “But I wish you’d lived, Teacake. You don’t know how much.”

Dawit sighed and once again buried the animal beneath the towel. He lifted his portable CD player and was about to leave when he remembered his most valuable supply: an eight-inch hunting knife with a wide blade. He pushed aside wood scraps, goggles, and dust masks on his tool table until he found the knife, which he’d bought two years before and never removed from its leather sheath. The purchase had been on a whim.

This weekend, he would finally need the knife. The thought, by itself, made Dawit shudder with dread.

“Did you find him, Daddy?” Kira asked Dawit when he walked into the house through the back door. She had her Minnie Mouse overnight bag slung over her shoulder, and she’d taken an impatient stance with one hand planted on her little hip and her head cocked far to the side. Dawit wished he had time to find his camera, so he could take a photograph of her.

“No sign of Teacake. I’m sure he’ll turn up. He’s probably just out making friends.” Hearing this, Kira looked downhearted, biting her bottom lip.

“Did you look in the cave, too?” Jessica asked, appearing with her African purse and a handful of paperbacks.

“I looked everywhere, Jess. But I’m sure he’s fine. You know, animals can sense changes like an impending trip. Maybe this is Teacake’s way of voicing his displeasure.”

“Well, he never has before …” Jessica murmured.

After a last search of all of the closets and cabinets to make sure Teacake hadn’t locked himself up somewhere, the lights were turned off, the house was closed up, and the three of them piled into the van to begin their weekend adventures. Dawit noticed Kira’s face in his rearview mirror; she was staring out of the backseat window at the yard, obviously hoping to catch a glance of the cat. Guilt-ridden, Dawit looked away and started the engine.

“Don’t worry about Teacake, hon,” Dawit said softly.

Jessica lifted the hunting knife from the dashboard, turning the sheath over in her hands. “Uhm … Yo, Running Deer, what’s this for? Planning to track some game in the wilds?”

“Don’t underestimate my hunting prowess, my love.”

“Well, my grandmother used to fix us squirrel and rabbit, but I think I’ll stick to more conventional stuff, if you don’t mind.”

“You ate bunnies?” Kira asked, making a face.

“A long time ago. Wabbit stew, like Elmer Fudd. But I’m not going to let Daddy force me to eat any rabbits. Squirrels, either. Any chance you might catch a wild filet mignon out there, David?”

Again, Dawit tried to smile, but he didn’t answer. As he backed to the end of the driveway and swerved around to follow their winding street, he felt momentary release, unexpected promise. His family was with him in the safety of this enclosed vehicle, and he could simply drive them anywhere, if he chose. Teacake, in this isolated moment, was not yet gone for good in their minds. His family loved him, and he was still David, if only for now.

Would they love Dawit, too, or would they think him a monster? And truthfully wasn’t he only a monster, an abomination, in the end?

“When are you and Mommy coming back?” Kira asked, leaning behind Dawit to whisper in his ear as he drove. Dawit nearly chastised Kira for not wearing her seatbelt, but he enjoyed the scent of the baby shampoo from her hair, a sweet lemon, and he could not bring himself to ask her to move away.

“Very soon, hon,” Dawit said, his throat tight. “We’ll be back so soon, you won’t even realize we were gone.”

Soon after David drove past the campus of Florida International University on State Road 41, Tamiami Trail, the sprawl of the suburbs flew behind them, replaced by a canal running alongside the two-lane road and nothing but trees and brush ahead as far as Jessica could see. She smiled, resting her hand on David’s knee. Did he feel the sudden freedom, too, like taking a gasp of pure air after being locked in a musty room? She felt a liberation that was like a dose of some sort of drug, a euphoric high.

The wilderness of the Everglades had always been nearby, even when she was a child, but she’d never explored it, never ventured far from the safety of what she knew. She’d come out here a few years before to write a story about a Miccosukee activist, but she never came to camp; hell, she hadn’t camped since she was a Girl Scout. The idea of camping made her imagine the scent of marsh-mallows roasted with chocolate, sandwiched between graham crackers. Good old s’mores.

The memories also evoked the scent of bug spray.

“Shit,” she said, tightening her fingers around David’s kneecap. He, too, was in a trance. He looked at her, his eyebrows arched. “Did you pack bug spray? The mosquitoes will be murder.”

“I think so. If not, we’ll pick some up,” he said.

Jessica would have preferred a flight to the Bahamas or Jamaica, truth be told. An Everglades island hideaway was a romantic thought, but not necessarily in the middle of May. She was surprised David hadn’t considered what a pain the mosquitoes would be.

But, then again, she knew this trip wasn’t going to be a vacation in the truest sense. David hadn’t been the same since that visit from Mahmoud, so he wasn’t exactly in a fun-and-sun mood. And David’s silence today definitely meant he had something on his mind. That was all right. She’d learned that if she gave him enough time, he’d finally bring up whatever was bothering him. Maybe he wanted seclusion to do it. She figured he was going to try to push her to leave Miami within the next two weeks, as he’d hinted, but she couldn’t agree to that. Kira’s school term would be finished in a month, and she couldn’t understand his hurry. It didn’t make sense to pull Kira out of school early. A month wouldn’t matter.

Signs along the roadway—most of them gaudy billboards, but a few hand-painted and charming—advertised airboat tours, alligator wrestling, Miccosukee and Seminole crafts, and campsites. Their vehicle was part of a steady convoy of cars and campers, she noticed, many with out-of-state plates. So they weren’t the only ones out here, after all.

“Thank you for this, David,” she said.

He smiled, still staring straight ahead. “Don’t thank me yet. Let’s see how you like it.”

“So, what kind of cabin is this? It has electricity, right?”

“There’s a generator. It’s like a tiny house, the way he described it. Bathroom, kitchen, a bed with a mattress. But there’s no TV and no phone. So, in our society, I believe that constitutes a cave and a supply of flint, right?”

Jessica laughed, but the idea of not having access to a telephone for two days bothered her. She would miss Kira, and she was certain Bea would want to hear from her. “We should have brought Kira,” she said. “I’m sorry she’s missing this.”

“Look at that,” David said suddenly, nodding toward a road sign,
PANTHER CROSSING,
it read. Jessica felt a thrill surge through her frame, making her sit up straight.

“There aren’t that many Florida panthers left,” she said. “Think we’ll see one?”

“Who knows what we’ll see?”

They made it twenty minutes early to the Glades Air-Jet Tours dock in Ochopee, off Tamiami Trail. The minisized office with a thatched roof was painted bright cobalt blue, the same shade as a sample airboat elevated on display beneath a billboard on the highway. The colorful billboard pictured a grinning cartoon alligator waving a Western-style hat as he steered an airboat through a spray of water. On the real-life airboat beneath, three weathered mannequins sat in the passenger’s seats; two adult-sized and one childsized. Rain and sun had faded their clothes and any discernible facial features, even their eyes.

“Can we spell T-A-C-K-Y?” Jessica asked, shielding her eyes from the midday sun as she climbed out of the van and gazed up at the billboard and the airboat’s faceless family.

“Watch that idle talk. The guy who owns the cabin runs this place, Jess, and he gave us a good deal.”

“I hope he can give us a good deal on bug spray,” Jessica said, slapping at a huge mosquito that had already found her bare calf. Her palm left a small smear of bright red blood behind. “Damn these things. I thought they disappeared until summer. Are there any mosquitoes in Paris?”

“Not that I can recall, no.”

“Good.”

David slid on his sunglasses with his middle finger, and Jessica paused to admire his face. He always looked good in shades, but with his jaw set with a sense of purpose, and dressed in camouflage-pattern shorts and a matching T-shirt, she felt an impulse to drag him into the backseat and molest him. Jessica wondered how long it would take before they were settled on the island. And alone. This was seeming more and more like a good idea.

“Y’all are a shade early, but that’s perfect. How are you? Rick Mantooth. Ready to roll on out?”

The man who met them on the wooden dock was stocky, crisped red from the sun—especially the rolls of fatty flesh on the back of his neck—and wore his silver hair shaved in a crew cut. He had a genuine Southern accent, the kind Jessica rarely heard south of Ocala and north of Homestead; most people in between, it seemed, were transplants from places anywhere but Southern. Jessica usually told visitors that Miami was more Caribbean than Dixieland; but they were no longer in Miami, she remembered. Their guide sounded like a genuine Florida cracker, one who would be proud to display the title on a bumper sticker.

“Mantooth. Where is that from?” Jessica asked him.

He grinned with rows of straight, tobacco-stained teeth. “Seminole, on my dad’s side. He was a logger, started running airboats out here before nobody knew what one was hardly. Fact, that cabin we’re heading out to is his too. Not afraid of snakes, are you?”

Jessica leveled a no-nonsense gaze at Mantooth, then glanced back at David. “What kind of snakes?”

Mantooth only laughed, reaching to take her duffel bag from her shoulder and nestle it inside the hollow of the airboat tied closest to them. The painted boat was aluminum, the size of a large powerboat, with a monstrous fan propeller and an elevated operator’s seat at the rear. At the front, it had two rows of four aluminum seats with foam backs for passengers. While he helped them load, Mantooth explained that airboats were best for traveling through the hammocks and marshes because they could glide across very shallow water.

Despite her nervousness at climbing into the unfamiliar boat, Jessica was in such a good mood that she found herself humming, of all things, John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads.” No girlhood camping trip had ever been complete without it. After finding her seat, which was slightly damp, she sprayed herself with the can of Deep Woods Off David had rooted out of his duffel bag.

The boat bobbed while David and Mantooth loaded the last bag and climbed on board. The engine started with a deafening rush of wind and the churn of the motor. Mantooth pulled back on a long metal stick beneath his right hand, and the boat lurched backward.

“Oh, shit…” Jessica muttered, grasping her aluminum handrail. She looked at David, who sat unsmiling beside her. “You okay?” she asked into his ear.

He nodded, smiling faintly, and held her hand so tightly that it almost hurt as the boat sped away from the dock. Jessica admired the sight of the massive cypress tree trunks growing submerged alongside the boat’s path. The trunks were adorned with air plants, like mammoth mutant spiders, much bigger than the ones that grew in their yard.

“Island’s a good fifteen miles out!” Mantooth said over the air-boat’s engine. Some of his words were nearly lost in the wind as the boat skated over the water. “Take us about thirty minutes in, and another thirty when I bring you back. Government owns most of the land, but some of the islands, like mine, are still private. There’s plenty of island to keep you occupied this weekend, most likely. It’s two, three square miles.”

When David didn’t respond, staring straight ahead through his impenetrable sunglasses, Jessica turned around in her seat to shout up at Mantooth. “What kind of wildlife is out there?”

Mantooth revved the engine to increase the boat’s speed. “Let’s see … Lots of egrets—there’s one there. Wood storks. The occasional ‘gators. You’ll want to steer clear if you see any waist-high mounds, since it’s late spring—’gator egg-hatching time. Don’t try to feed ‘em, that’s for sure.”

“Don’t worry!” Jessica shouted back.

“No panthers or deer on the island. Sorry. Lots of birds, though. You’ll see blue heron and ibis. And fishing’s great. I got cane poles in back of the cabin, if you want to try your luck with the bluegill and largemouth bass. There’s crayfish too.”

“You hear that, David?” Jessica asked, concerned because he was so quiet. David only nodded, his eyes still straight ahead. Granted, David was usually withdrawn around people he didn’t know, but she thought he’d be more interested in hearing what their guide had to say. He was the one who’d brought up fishing before. What could be bugging him?

“Other than that, it’s pretty much like a standard beach,” Mantooth went on. “Lots of sand for you to take in the sun. Not that either of y’all really needs a tan, I guess.”

Very funny, Jessica thought, but decided to let the remark slide. “With all of these mosquitoes,” she called, sounding slightly hoarse, “I don’t think I’ll want to spend too much time lying out there anyway!”

“Yep, the skeeters are bad,” Mantooth said. “There’s lots more spray in the cabin, case you run out.”

Jessica liked Mantooth’s easy manner and cheerful features. She would feel so much more at ease if she knew she could pick up a telephone or a radio and find him ready to glide back to them in his airboat. She found herself wishing he wouldn’t be so far away.

“How come there’s no phone?” she shouted, and she had to repeat the question because it was drowned out in the noise as the boat skimmed over a bed of waterlogged saw grass.

“No lines,” Mantooth shouted back, and Jessica nodded.

“We don’t need a phone,” David said in her ear, the first words he had spoken since the boat began its journey. “It’s a vacation, remember?”

As the airboat pitched her deeper into the unknown and the wind whipped her short hair across her forehead, Jessica could think of a couple hundred reasons she might need a telephone— snakebite, alligator attack, sunstroke, broken limb, compulsive mother’s urge to speak to Kira. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been anywhere without a telephone. Suddenly, she felt as though the boat were transporting her hundreds of miles away from civilization rather than a few short miles from a roadway that led straight back to Dade County.

“What if something happens?” she called back to Mantooth.

He winked at her, his face.still broad with a smile. “Then you better hold on ‘til about five o’clock tomorrow. That’s when I’m coming to pick y’all up.”

Jessica bit her lip. “Listen … Do you think you could swing by before then, maybe, just to—” David cut her off before she could finish her sentence, wrapping a heavy arm around her shoulder. His abrupt movement annoyed her—just a little. Instead of affectionate, the gesture felt almost rough.

“No need for that, Rick,” David called to Mantooth, overpowering her words. “I’m sure we’ll be just fine.”

“I don’t believe this. The light doesn’t work,” Jessica said, flipping up and down on the exposed switch built into the wooden wall of the cabin, which was in a woodsy, elevated portion of island. The house was built high on what looked like stilts, probably in case of flooding. They’d climbed twelve steps to get to the unlocked door.

“David, go run and try to catch that Mantooth guy. I can’t believe he left us here without—”

“We have to crank up the generator first, baby.”

David took off his sunglasses and put them in his T-shirt breast pocket, gazing around the tiny room. There was a bed, all right; queen-sized, made up with a tightly pulled brown blanket in the middle of the open room, devouring most of the space. A small pine table for two was pushed against the far wall, and then there was a tiny kitchen space with a two-burner range and small oven, with a miniature aluminum sink beside them. A portable refrigerator stood in a corner adjacent to the oven. The only ornament in the room was a replica of an eighteenth-century musket mounted on the wall above the table.

Jessica sneezed. The room needed airing out. She made her way to the picture window across the east wall, hoping the screen was intact to keep the mosquitoes out. They’d been swarmed with the buggers while their shoes got soggy as they climbed across the grassy shoal to the shore. Through the window, she saw a majestic array of cypress, royal palm, and pine trees; and, in the distance, aqua green of the water surrounding them. This would be a nice cabin, with some A.C.

“Okay. Found it,” David called from the kitchenette, and she heard him fussing with machinery. “Guess we’ll need power for the fridge, mainly. The stove is propane.”

“Do we have any?”

David held up an aluminum can. “Ye of little faith …”

The generator began to whir noisily. Much better, she thought. Some sign of the twentieth century.

Actually, the room was sort of quaint, built completely from wood. It was clean-swept and practical, almost like a lodge. From the outside, they’d been able to make out where the individual logs were secured together to build the walls.

Jessica walked past the bed to the bathroom and flicked on the switch. Wooden walls, a smooth wood toilet seat, linoleum floor. The sink was tiny and makeshift, but she was struck by the old-fashioned porcelain tub on brass legs. Nice touch, she thought, but a strangely sentimental detail in such a spare place.

“Well?” David asked her, bending over to unload the fried chicken and drinks into the fridge.