“You call that a motor? I’ve seen bigger eggbeaters.”
“Don’t knock it. It’s better’n paddlin’ the whole way.”
Carl stepped into the water and pulled the canoe off the mud. He hopped into the stern seat and used the paddle jutting from his right sleeve to steady the boat. Jack had no choice but to wade in, sneakers and all, after him.
“Didn’t you bring no boots?”
“Ain’t got no boots.” There I go, talking like him again.
Jack was calf high in water before he reached the canoe and eased himself onto the forward bench. Carl primed the motor, then: a couple of quick pulls on the cord, a cloud of smoke, a bubbling clatter, and—hi-yo, Silver—they were off.
Jack looked down at the sodden legs of his jeans, and his once white sneakers, now tinted brown with mud. His feet squished and squeaked inside them.
Swell.
“This channel’s usually so much deeper and wider this time of year. And most of this saw grass is half underwater.” He shook his head. “Man, we really need us some rain.”
Jack looked up. A lid of clouds had moved in, hiding the sun and the sky, but none of them looked like rain clouds.
“What you need down here, Carl, is a big storm, a hurricane to dump a load of water. Maybe Elvis will take care of your drought.”
“I’d go for a tropical storm, okay. You know—thirty-five-or forty-milean-hour winds and a ton of rain. I could handle that. But no hurricane, thank you. I was here when Andrew came through and I don’t never want to see the likes of that again.”
As they slid along, Jack heard a call and response of throaty roars from either side.
“Those alligators?”
“Yep. Bulls callin’ from their gator holes.”
“What are those grunting sounds? The females?”
Carl laughed. “Naw. Them’s pig frogs. Got the name cause they grunt like pigs.”
Jack noticed lots of snails, with shells maybe an inch to an inch and a half across, floating near the surface. The tops of some of their shells broke the surface as they clung to underwater growths. He saw little pristine white beads lined up on blades of saw grass and asked Carl about them.
“Those’re snail eggs. Cormorants love the snails. Use the hook on the end of their beak to yank them from their shells.”
A goose-necked turtle with a smooth brown shell and an uncircumcised nose stuck its head above the water and looked at him.
“Hello,” Jack said.
The turtle ducked away.
“That’s a soft-shelled turtle. Gators just love to catch those. Gobble them up like crunchy tacos.”
Jack slapped at his neck. He didn’t have a long-sleeved shirt so he’d sprayed on lots of repellent, but it didn’t seem to be helping much.
“How can you stand all these mosquitoes?”
“All? You kidding? This is a good year, a great year for mosquitoes. The drought dried up most of their little breedin’ pools.”
If this is a good year, Jack thought, remind me to stay far away in a bad one.
He reached out a hand to grab a few of the long thin blades of grass brushing the side of the canoe. A sharp sting made him snatch it back. He looked and found long scratches across his palm.
Carl laughed. “Now you know why they call it saw grass.” He swept his paddle around in a wide arc. “Pa-hay-okee.”
Jack remembered Anya using that word.
“Indian, right? Means ‘river of grass’ or something?”
Carl grinned. “Hey, you been studyin’.”
A river of grass… sea of grass was more like it. An ocean of browned saw grass swept away in all directions, dotted here and there by islandlike hummocks of cypress, oak, and pine that looked like giant green mushrooms sprouting from a dead lawn. He hoped it wasn’t dead. Just sleeping.
So flat, so like he’d envisioned Kansas might be. Too open for Jack. He was used to living in steel-, concrete-, and glass-lined canyons. The horizon seemed so far away here. Who needed a horizon anyway? Horizons gave him the creeps. He could live very well without one. In fact, back home he did.
Why on earth would anyone want to live out here? No deli, no pizza delivery, no electricity to keep beer cold. Like living in the Dark Ages.
Carl said, “I got Miccosukee blood in me, you know. At least that’s what my momma told me. They’ve got a reservation north of here off Route 41, and even a casino, but I ain’t never been to neither. The Miccosukee’s on my momma’s side. Don’t know bout my dad. My momma met him at the lagoon. I hear he didn’t hang around after he seen me. Just took off and we never heard from him again.”
Jack flicked a glance at Carl’s covered right arm. Should he ask about it?
Maybe some other time.
Instead he said, “So there’s been people living around this lagoon for generations?”
“Yeah and no,” Carl said. “The only people livin’ there now are the kids of the ones who used to live there. Everybody moved away when we was itty-bitty babies because they thought the lagoon was makin’ us all strange. But we kids came back.”
“Why?”
“Cause I guess we didn’t seem to fit no other place.”
Jack tried to think of a delicate way to say this. “Because of the way you all looked?”
Carl shrugged. “Some of that, maybe. But mostly because the lagoon seemed right for us. It felt like…home.”
“You moved out, though.”
“Yeah. But not far. That’s why I wasn’t too excited bout goin’ back. I’m afraid I might get sucked in again.”
“So how many live there?”
“Bout twenty. We’re all bout the same age too, give or take a couple years.”
Jack ducked as a big bird with an enormous wingspan swooped above them.
“What the hell is that?”
“Just a big ol’ heron.”
“Oh.”
For a moment there Jack had thought it was a pterodactyl. Or maybe a pteranodon. Whatever. The one with the tail.
They began to pass alligators of various sizes sunning themselves on the banks, but none came even close in size to the monster from yesterday.
Jack heard a scraping sound from the bottom of the canoe.
“That’s all for the motor for a while,” Carl said.
They used their paddles until the channel grew too shallow even for that.
“What do we do now?”
Carl rose and stepped out of the boat. “We carry her till the water gets deeper.”
Easy for you to say, Jack thought. You’ve got boots.
The hauling itself wasn’t so bad—only about thirty yards before the water deepened again—but the knowledge that a gator might step out of the surrounding greenery at any second upped Jack’s pace until he was fairly dragging Carl behind him.
“Too bad they don’t do a Survivor down here,” Carl said. “Survivor: Everglades…they’d never let me on, but I know I could win that million.”
Another reality show. Carl did like his TV.
Jack looked over his shoulder. “If you did win, what’s the first thing you’d do?”
“Get me a new TV.” He grinned. “One of them big sixty-inch models. Oh, and a new easy chair, an electric one that massages your back while you’re sittin’ in it. And get my car fixed.”
“How about travel?”
“What for? I’ve already been all over the world watchin’ Survivor and Celebrity Mole and the Travel Channel.”
“But it’s not the same as being there.”
Listen to me, Jack thought. The guy who never leaves New York.
“Is for me,” Carl said. “Oh, yeah, and I’d probably give some money to Mrs. Hansen. She’s havin’ a hard time. Might lose her trailer.”
“That’s a nice thought, Carl.”