After the carnage in the marshlands, the federal government took over the Swamp Reclamation project: its new stated mission was “flood control.” Nobody was trying to drain the swamp anymore, although the Army Corps’ new system of hydrological controls seemed just as shortsighted and failure-prone as their original plans. We had an exhibit in the Family Museum called The Era of Swamp Reclamation, which seemed to give strangers the impression that this era was over — as if the Army Corps weren’t still turning those faucets on and off, sponging phosphorous for Big Sugar, opening the canal locks for the farmers in October and telling the water where to go.
“It’s a wonder this bridge is still standing, isn’t it, Ava?”
The Bird Man looked like he had just crawled out of a lake, he was sweating so badly. We leaned the skiff on the ant-covered bridge supports while he toweled water from his brow.
“I guess.” I was proud of myself for feeling no surprise — I’d been instructed by the Chief to think of mercy as “the wind’s oversight” and miraculous survivals as “a lucky malfunction; a fluke in the weather system.” Streamers of pale marine grass had swallowed the trestles.
“Did the cotton pickers know they were in hell?” I huffed. It was close to five o’clock now, and sweat trickled down my hairline; I could feel a splinter worming inside my palm. The sky above us was a pure and cloudless blue.
“Oh,” the Bird Man said. “I imagine so.”
Forty minutes later we were back on the water, poling around the glacial spires of a long oyster bed. At first I didn’t hear anything; the Bird Man flinched before I did. He whipped around with his burnished eyes dimming. “Go flat,” he hissed, and then he was pushing me down.
After a moment I heard the buzz of an approaching outboard. A beige-and-black Park Services boat pulled around the grass-fringed slough, water spudding off the boat’s rigging, and then abruptly the engine cut out. When I saw who it was, I nearly shouted at the happy shock of a familiar face: Whip Jeters, a park ranger who often patrolled the waters around Swamplandia! was standing in the stern with his hand on the sputtering Evinrude. Whip Jeters was a tall, once-fat man who wore his uniform khakis in a size that swallowed his new frame. He had a painful sunburn, and when he removed his sunglasses I saw a raccoon pallor ringing both eyes. Then I felt hands on my shoulders and my eyes were level with the tackle box, my cheekbone pushed against the wood.
The Bird Man, still seated in the stern, turned and waved. “Howdy, friend!” His voice was unrecognizable. “How’s the fishing over yonder?”
“Kid.” Without looking my way, he murmured in a cold monotone, “If you tell this man where we are going he will take you away from me. He could arrest me — he has the grounds to do that. We are almost to the Eye of the Needle, but this man will not believe you if you tell him the truth about what we are doing. We need to be smart about this …”
Whip began to motor over; above me, the Bird Man put on a big grin that made his face unrecognizable to me. It rejiggered his features so that they were at their most ordinary; even his eyes seemed pale and normal. Who had I been traveling with this great while? How could you change so completely when another person showed up, like a chameleon shifting trees? I was impressed. I didn’t want to be the one who screwed this up.
“Who’s hiding down there? You running aliens, sir? Illegals?”
“This is my young cousin.” He touched my back with the butt of his oar. “We are on a fishing trip.”
“I’d like to see your permit for that. Your cousin, huh? Well what’s wrong with her? She sick or something?”
“She’s taking a nap,” the Bird Man said in an avuncular voice I barely recognized, patting my knotty hair.
“I’m taking a nap,” I confirmed, sitting up.
“Why, you’re one of the Chief’s! One of the Bigtree kids!”
I am, I am! I nodded so hard my teeth hit. Hearing my tribe’s name spoken out here felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket. Mr. Jeters had known me since birth, he had been a childhood friend of the Chief’s, and I think he would have been shocked to know how grateful I felt at that moment. Just his friendly gaze was clothing me.
“I hear from Gus that your brother’s living on the mainland now? You believe that?” He shook his head with mock amazement, and I loved him for making Kiwi’s defection sound dumb and temporary. “I bet the Chief said jack-crap to that. And how’s he liking it, your brother?”
“I don’t know, Warden Jeters. He doesn’t call us.”
“Well, that’ll change. What is he now, seventeen? He’s probably too proud to call, wants to wait until he’s got something good to report. Listen, hon,” Whip said, his voice still casual but his eyes cutting over at the Bird Man, “it’s a funny question, I know, but I got to ask: is this guy your for-real cousin?”
I followed Whip’s gaze to the Bird Man and of course I understood why he had asked. Black feathers shirred along the ruff of his coat and he licked a long finger to tamp them. Behind him the slough had turned the same mix of iron and wine purple as the sky and the wind was blowing the plants apart. “Storm’s coming,” the Bird Man said politely, picking at his teeth.
I nodded. “He is, Whip. The Chief thought it would be good for me to get off the island. We’ve had a tough summer over there.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“My mother’s,” I said.
“Her father’s,” said the Bird Man. We all looked at one another. “The Chief’s,” I corrected myself. “Sorry, I got confused, I’ve been thinking about Mom a lot today …”
The warden said nothing but let his eyes roll over the length of our skiff.
“No offense to you, sir, but you’re an odd sight on the water …”
Whip Jeters was some intermediary age between the Chief and Grandpa Sawtooth, and he had been a friend of our family’s for so long that there was a picture of him on our museum wall under the heading Honorary Bigtrees. It’s really him, it’s Whip Jeters, I kept thinking. I smiled at the zippered life jacket he was wearing — we’d been forced to pole our way for half a mile because the water was only three feet deep. I was so grateful to see his big ears and red bulbous nose that I worried I might start crying. Whip, misinterpreting my look, rubbed at the floury stripe around his eyes. “Yes, well, I guess I had a little accident involving a nap and the sun. But it doesn’t hurt nearly so bad as it looks, although that’s not saying much, is it? Ha-ha …”
Whip patted the seam of his mouth with his checkered collar. He politely squelched a burp.
“Pardon me.” He gave me a wink and a slightly goofy grin, and I realized with a pang that he was embarrassed. “Say, why don’t you come over here for a minute, Ava, stretch your legs on my boat?” The Bird Man gave me a curt nod and so I stood, placing my hands on Whip’s broad shoulders and letting him swing me on board. We were floating beneath black clouds shaped like anvils and I hoped the rain would hold.
“Have you folks eaten?” Whip offered me a red canister of a mainland brand of crackers. He bit into a cheddar round. He chewed into the terrible quiet between our boats.
“You know, these things are delicious? The wife made me switch over from the potato chips, for my cholesterol, but now I actually prefer them. You want to try one, Ava? Sir? Cracker?” He was staring at the Bird Man’s greatcoat.
Whip, I’d noticed, was sidling around the Bird Man with a strange formality, and when he addressed my “cousin” his voice shot an octave higher than his usual genial baritone. After a few minutes I put together that this stiffness was not the product of Mr. Jeters’s natural awkwardness. He was jumpy around me, too, and when his pant leg snagged on his engine he let out a little yelp. He was very polite — I guess he saw no cause to deviate from marine etiquette — but I could tell that something about this encounter had him miserably flustered. He listened to me talk with his knuckles pressed into his red cheek, and when he removed them I saw they’d left a pale indent.