Accustomed to the Dark (26 page)

“Are we going to need a boat?” I asked him.

“We'll find out when we get there.”

“Where is there?”

“Little ways past Harmony Station.”

Just after twelve, we passed the signs for Harmony Station. Ten miles beyond, Carpenter slowed the truck and crossed the road, turning left onto a dirt road that wandered off into the cedars. We bounced and bucked down the road for a mile or two, and then Carpenter made another turn, to the right.

Two hundred yards later we pulled up in a clearing before a small shingled shack, fronted by a lopsided covered porch. Scrawny chickens fluttered and flapped away, clucking fretfully. To the right, an old Chevrolet stood on rust-stained cinder blocks. To the left, in not much better condition but on its own tires, stood an old Dodge pickup. On the porch, an ancient hound dog raised itself up onto its front legs and trembled. Its grizzled brown skin was so loose it looked as though it had once belonged to some other, much larger animal.

Carpenter turned off the engine. “You stay here,” he told me.

I stayed there.

Carpenter left the truck, walked to the porch, climbed up the steps, reached down and patted the hound's head. The dog lay back down. Carpenter knocked on the front door and it opened. I couldn't see who opened it. Carpenter disappeared inside.

I waited. A mosquito bit me on the back of the hand. I waited some more. I noticed that there were no phone lines or electric lines going into the house.

Which would maybe explain why Carpenter hadn't called here before we left Clearwater.

Ten minutes later, Carpenter came out onto the porch, his sunglasses in his hand. He was followed by a short, swarthy man wearing jeans and a khaki shirt.

Carpenter waved the sunglasses at me, beckoning, and I got out of the truck. As I reached the porch, Carpenter said to me, “This is Eugene Samson. He's going to lend us a canoe. Eugene, Joshua Croft.”

I shook hands with Eugene Samson. Silently he bobbed his round head at me. He looked as though he were at least part Native American. “Thank you,” I said. It seemed like the thing to say to a man who was going to lend you a canoe. I turned to Carpenter. “How do you know we'll need a canoe?”

“They're in there,” he said, nodding toward the forest. “Lucero and Martinez. They went in with a third man, two days ago. They were using an inflatable.”

“Mr. Samson saw them?” I asked.

“His cousin did. Down the line a bit.”

“We're lucky.”

His smile twitched. “No way for them to get into the swamp, anywhere along here, without someone seeing them.” He nodded toward Samson. “This is their territory. They keep an eye out.”

I nodded. “So there are three of them.”

He shook his head. “The third man came back out yesterday.” His smile twitched again. “Too bad.”

“You know him? The third man?”

He nodded. “I know him.”

“Who is he?”

“A Cuban. Another Marielito. Name's Esteban.” Lightly, he stroked the white scar at his throat. “He gave me this.”

I looked from Carpenter to Eugene, back to Carpenter. “So that's it? We know they're in there? It's that simple?”

Carpenter smiled that smile. “Simple? Couple hundred square miles of swamp?”

“How long before the third guy came back? This Esteban?”

“Just under twenty-four hours, Eugene says. And the inflatable was using a trolling motor. Electric. Not much faster than a canoe.”

“So Lucero and Martinez can't be more than twelve hours away.”

His smile twitched. “Unless Esteban dropped them off, and they walked.”

“Lot of walking room back in the swamp, is there?”

“Some.” He nodded. “But likely you're right. Likely they're about twelve hours away. Thing is, we don't know in which direction.”

“You don't have any ideas?”

“One or two.” He looked at me appraisingly. “You ever been in a canoe before?”

“Once. A long time ago.”

He nodded, slipped on the sunglasses. “Let's get the gear down to the water.”

We carried the packs around behind Eugene Samson's shack. The swamp began back there, a small pond of black water, maybe thirty feet across, spotted here and there with flat green pads of lotus. At its northern end, a thin channel led off into the grasses.

The canoe was aluminum, dull and dented but watertight. Samson swung it up alongside the shore and he helped us load it, everything but the shotgun and the gunbelts. When we finished, Carpenter handed me my belt and I strapped it on.

Carpenter strapped on his own, then picked up the shotgun. “What's it carrying?” he asked me.

“Double ought.”

He nodded. “I don't like loaded shotguns in a boat.” He worked the pump, jacking out the shells until the action stayed open. He gathered up the shells, stuffed them into the big pockets of his field pants. He lay the gun in the canoe, beside the packs.

“Be right back,” he said, and went off toward the truck. I looked at Samson. He stared back at me, impassive.

When Carpenter returned, he was wearing an olive drab field cap and he was carrying a pair of knee pads, the kind that skateboarders use. He handed them to me.

He said, “Canoe's a lot more stable when you kneel to paddle. These'll help.”

“You brought them along?” I asked him.

“Thought we might need them.”

I strapped on the knee pads.

“Where's your hat?” he asked me.

“In the pack.”

“Get it out. And the repellent.”

I squatted down beside the canoe, opened the pack, found the hat and the repellent. I put on the hat, squirted some repellent into my hand, slapped it over my exposed skin. I tucked the bottle into the other shirt pocket.

“Okay,” Carpenter said. He handed me a paddle. “You're sitting forward. Go ahead.” He held onto the frame of the canoe as I stepped carefully aboard, left foot, right foot. When I eased down onto the thwart, the canoe wobbled. Anxious ripples fanned out across the water.

“Kneel,” Carpenter told me.

I knelt.

The prow of the canoe swung away from the shore, toward the center of the pool, and then suddenly the boat was drifting forward. I turned around. Carpenter was kneeling behind me, beyond the backpacks.

On the shore, Eugene Samson stood and watched us. Impassively.

I looked at my watch. One o'clock.

27

C
ARPENTER HAD BEEN
right about the hat. Without it, I would've fried my brains. The sunlight poured down from that washed-out blue sky and streamed out along the dark surface of the still water like molten metal, yellow and dazzling, and it pressed with physical force against my head and shoulders and arms. Despite the sunscreen, my hands began to go red.

I didn't have much to do. Carpenter told me, early on, not to paddle until he said so. Not to talk, either.

So I knelt there quietly as the canoe slid along.

We sat low in the water, below the tops of the grasses. Sometimes the channel became so narrow and winding that all I could see was grass, a forest of it, left and right and straight ahead. Carpenter used his paddle to push us and I used mine to fan aside the brittle stalks as they came in. They fanned back at me and then rustled and rasped along the frame of the boat. Now and then, in front of us, something plopped into the water, startled and startling. Now and then, off to the side, something chittered and fluttered.

Sometimes the channel suddenly opened onto a small quiet lake, and a single crane, or a pair of them, flapped big astonished wings and climbed up into the sunlight. Carpenter didn't like the open water, and he kept the canoe close to the wall of grass. Occasionally a fish jumped out there, a flash of silver, a gurgling splash, rings of ripples slowly widening. Once a large dark snake swam away from the boat, its head above water, its graceful body slowly whipping back and forth beneath the surface. “Cottonmouth,” said Carpenter.

Snakes didn't bother me. We had snakes in New Mexico. What we didn't have were alligators, and periodically, in the back of my mind, it was alligators I saw, the long bodies lying motionless in the water, the bulbous snouts, the empty patient eyes. But on that first day I saw them only in the back of my mind.

There was land from time to time, low islands of tall cedar, the knobby trunks pale and spectral, like the spines of skeletons. When we came to an island, Carpenter would steer the canoe toward the bank and then paddle more slowly alongside it as he searched for signs. The thin strip of shade was welcome, but he never found any signs.

He had been right, too, about the insect repellent. Mosquitos whined at my ear, tiny eager buzz saws, but they never settled on my flesh. And he had been right about the knee pads. If I hadn't been wearing them, I would've been in agony as soon as we left Samson's. But after a couple of hours, the pressure began to get troublesome. I spent the next hour shifting my weight, as gently and as quietly as I could.

At four-thirty we came to still another island, this one tiny, only a small cluster of gray cedars soaring upward. Carpenter aimed the canoe toward the bank and then, at the last moment, swung it smoothly to the left. The right side smacked gently against the ground.

I looked back at him.

“Wait'll I get out,” he said. He rose as easily from the kneeling position as he might've risen from a sofa. He stepped lightly from the boat to the shore, then stepped toward me. Squatting, he gripped the canoe's side with his left hand and offered me his right. I pushed myself up onto the thwart, took his hand, and clambered from the boat. I did it neither easily nor lightly.

“You see something?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “Time for a break.”

He would get no argument from me. I put my hands against my hips and bent my torso backward, stretching the stiffened muscles.

There was a rope at the boat's stern, long enough to reach the trunk of the nearest cedar. Carpenter tied it there, made it fast. Stepping back to the canoe, he squatted down beside it, opened his pack, burrowed around for a while. He came up with a canteen and a plastic bag of gorp.

He stood, tossed me the canteen. His aim was still good.

I unscrewed the cap, drank. The water was warm, but it was wet.

Carpenter sat down, leaning his back against one of the cedar trunks, straightening out his long legs, crossing them at the ankles. I walked over and handed him the canteen. He offered me the bag of gorp.

I opened it, poured myself a handful, gave it back to Carpenter. I sat down about four feet away, against another cedar. The ground was damp.

Carpenter took a swallow from the canteen. “How're the knees?” he asked me.

“They've been better.”

He nodded. “You get used to it,” he said. He screwed back the canteen's cap, set the canteen upright beside him on the soft ground. He took off his sunglasses, lay them in his lap, rubbed at the bridge of his nose.

“What do we do,” I said, “when we run out of water?” I flipped some gorp into my mouth. Raisins, nuts, bits of chocolate.

His smile came and went. He nodded toward the dark channel. “What's that?”

“Polluted.”

“There's iodine in the first aid kit. And some salt tablets. How's your bladder?”

“Distended.”

He smiled. “Pick a spot.”

“In a minute. When did it happen? With Esteban?”

He frowned, and for a moment I thought he was going to fob me off with another curt answer. But maybe the silence of the swamp had relaxed him. Or maybe he'd grown to admire the way I caught everything he tossed.

He peeled off his fatigue cap, lowered his head, ran his hand forward over the damp white hair, raised his head again. “In eighty-one,” he said. “I was working a camp over in Broward County. Training some Cubans. Esteban was one of them. We had an argument. He came at me later, while I was asleep. I woke up in time.” He smiled his twitchy smile, and then scratched at the scar on his throat. “But I was a little slow.”

“What kind of training?”

“Paramilitary.”

“Anti-Castro Cubans?”

He nodded and then looked up into the branches of the cedars. “We've got a few hours of light left.” He turned back to me. “Camp here or go on?”

“Go on.”

He nodded. “There's a place, couple of miles away. They could be there.”

We glided through the silence. I had only Carpenter's word for it that this part of the swamp wasn't the same part we'd covered earlier. I could see where the sunlight angled into the trees and through the grasses, so I knew where the west lay. At any given moment I knew which direction we were taking. But it all looked the same—narrow channels through the grasses, pools and ponds and lakes, sometimes a hummock of land, sometimes an island.

About an hour after we started off again, I found out why Carpenter didn't like the open water. We were sliding along the edge of a small lake when suddenly the canoe picked up speed. I glanced back.

“
Paddle!
” he rasped, and pointed his oar toward a small opening in the grass.

I paddled, and a moment later we slipped into the opening.

Another powerful thrust from Carpenter and we rounded a bend in the channel. I glanced back again.

“Airboat,” he said. “Probably a ranger.”

I heard it then, a distant muffled moan, growing louder. The volume increased until it became a roar, sounding like the airplane engine it was. It passed us by on the far side of the thin wall of grass. The grass swayed and shivered, the canoe bobbed gently. Slowly, the roar faded.

“What's he looking for?” I asked Carpenter.

“Poachers, probably.” He smiled. “You want to explain the shotgun?”

“Nope.”

He nodded. “We'll give him a few minutes,” he said.

An hour later, when the sky had grown darker overhead and the slant of the sunlight had become almost horizontal, Carpenter slowed the canoe. We were in a narrow channel, nothing but grass in every direction.