Endangered Species (36 page)

from her pack.  The lawn chairs were gone, the r)iles burned down to

ash, the ash cooled with water and raked over with needles and debris.

Shining the narrow beam as far as it would reach into the recesses

between the thinly scattered oaks, Anna noted the mature plants were

missing as well.  Those plants had achieved the stature of small trees,

twelve or fifteen feet high and carrying enough dope to retail for

$1,500 to $2,500 a plant.  They were gone as if they'd never been.  Even

the roots had been dug up, or the stems cut flush and covered with leaf

litter.  The Hansons had been busy little bees.

Confusion swirled, turning Anna's thoughts into a tornado that

threatened to rip up what little equilibrium she'd regained.  How long

had she been down the rabbit hole?  It was night.  Which night) The

ashes still gave off heat and she took comfort in that.  She'd not lost

a day.  Screwing up her courage, she dug out her pocket watch and shined

the flash on it: 2:42.  Four or five hours had passed since she'd

crawled into the hog pen.  For at least three of that she'd been asleep.

Lost time.  It made her nervous.  She put the watch and flashlight away

and began to massage her legs.

Twenty minutes later she had her body back, such as it was.  It was not

pleased with her, nor she with it.  During her protracted sabbatical

from reality, she'd become home to a thriving colony of chiggers,

Several times she tried to count the bites but always lost her place.

She'd find herself, numbers gone from her mind, head hanging, trouser

legs rolled, wondering what she'd been trying to prove.  Conceding

victory to the chiggers, she turned her limited attention span on ticks.

By the light of her flash she began detaching engorged insects from her

person.  One or ten or a hundred-she couldn't tell.  At first she

crushed them between her nails.  The death penalty: not revenge, just

discouraging recidivism.  It wasn't long before the gore upset her

stomach and she stopped, satisfying herself with flinging the bugs into

the darkness and trusting she'd have moved before they had time to crawl

back.

Like a tape loop on video, she saw herself taking the same action over

and over again.  Having no idea whether or not she was making any

progress, she finally stopped but she doubted she'd gotten them all.

Minutes ticked by as she sat in the dark, trying to decide what to do

next.  Eyes and lungs burned, the pressure in her head had transmuted

into a dull ache.  There weren't three square inches of skin anywhere on

her body that did not itch with such viciousness it took all her

self-control not to claw the flesh from bone.  Anna hated the South and

everyone and everything crawling around in it.

A solution came to her: she had to get the hell out of there .

When she tried to stand it came home to her how thoroughly ripped she

was.  Many shects to the wind.  Vertigo made the forest whirl .

She fell to her knees and vomited up the water she'd consumed .

Nausea: she didn't remember that from the good old days.  Her body had

outgrown its tolerance for recreational poisons.

Stomach empty, she felt marginally better and pushed herself to her

feet, achieving the vertical on the second attempt.  Around her, black

trees were spinning, she could feel them, and dared not look .

Eyes down, she fished out her compass and shined the flashlight on it.

Looking only at the controlled world of the compass face, she began

pushing determinedly east.

Distance was as relative as time had become.  Anna followed the needle

in her palm as a true believer would follow the star.  Navigation around

obstacles was beyond her mutant mental powers.  Gone was her fear of

noise or thickets.  What was one more bite?  Merely an addition to her

already splendid collection.  She bulled her way through the brush,

trusting the rattlers had retired for the night and calling down curses

on the head of any spider who wouldn't give her a tucking break.

An eternity of scratches and bumps and confused dreams later, she

staggered out onto the dunes.  Silver light bathed her and she dropped

to all fours ." Thankyoubabyjesus," she whispered without thought of

irreverence.  Always before, away from the haunts of man she'd found

solace.  Fear of wild places had been alien to her.  Control having been

stripped away, the darkling woods took on a different face.  Crumpled on

the sand, the ocean at peace as far as she could see, she felt the soft

light penetrate her soul, lift the darkness from within, and she

understood at last why the ancients had condemned the wilderness as the

walks of the devil.

Beauty, true and lasting beauty, was personified by the squatting bulk

of the pumper truck.  She'd come out of the woods just three hundred

yards south of where she'd parked.  She ran to it as to a long-lost

love.

Before she left the denuded marijuana plantation, she'd finished the

last ol' her water.  It was with relief she downed half a liter from the

canteen on the seat.  Water cleared her head marginally.  Motion had

restored her muscles.  She knew her lungs would hurt for a while.  She'd

consider herself lucky if she didn't come down with bronchitis.  Of her

myriad ills all were somewhat alleviated but for the ticks and the

chiggers.

Having doffed only her boots and pocket watch, Anna waded fully clothed

into the sea and let the ocean close over her head.  Salt water

purified, weightlessness calmed her spirit.  Time warped again but this

time she could live with it.  She luxuriated in the warn] surf .

Bobbing like a bit of kelp on the tide, she lay at the surface,

\vatching the panorama of beach.

The nesting sites of the loggerheads were invisible in front of oat

grass, thrust up black and spiky, the light of the moon behind the

blades.  A trail, something dragged, cut between two of the nests,

breaking down a lip of sand carved by high tide.  The Hansons, Anna

thought, dragging their harvest.  Wind and water would obliterate the

track by noon.  An ideal setup: a couple on a houseboat known to anchor

in different places to savor island views.  A few nights a year they

anchor just off the beach, drag their goods in, stow them aboard, and

motor sedately away.

Dragging the booty over Marty Schlessinger's prize cache of turtle eggs:

Anna pressed the heels of her hands to her temples and squeezed as if

she could wring the dope smoke from her system and glimpse what flash of

thought that image had engendered.  Had Marty known of the marijuana

plot, found it perhaps in her wanderings?  Would she kill to protect the

eggs?  Possibly.  But killing Todd or Slattery-or both-wouldn't stop the

harvest, whereas one word in the right NPS ear would have shut the whole

operation down .

Besides, looked at realistically, assuming Schlessinger still retained

that capacity, two people dragging a few bales of weed over the top of

the nests would do them no harm.

If it occurred on a night the little loggerheads were hatching, making

that first perilous journey to the ocean, interference might do some

damage.  The turtles were slated to hatch within the next week.  Had

Marty tried a preemptive strike to keep the traffic off the beach?  Had

the Hansons guessed and harvested early?

"Builshit , Anna said, and splashed salt water in her face.  Taking a

deep breath, she submerged until a fit of coughing forced her to the

surface ." Work, damn you, work," she said aloud, and smacked the side

of her skull.  The jolt seemed to do some good.  The flaws in her line

of thinking became apparent.  The night the turtles came out was marked

on calendars all over the island.  The beach would be alive with rangers

and volunteers come to assist and celebrate .

That would be the last night the Hansons would choose for any illicit

activity.

Nothing made sense.

Her ability to think was spent.  Her brain unraveled and she floated,

her clothing waving about her like Ophelia's shroud.

Anna reached Plum Orchard before sunrise and squished up the stairs. The

door was unlocked as she had left it and no one stirred within.  Another

small blessing duly noted.  What with one thing and another, she was out

of patience.  She doubted she could bear the whey-faced sorrow of Tabby

Belfore with equanimity.  And given the way she looked at the moment,

Tabby's laying eyes on her couldn't be good for the baby.

Standing at the sink, she downed another sixteen ounces of water, loaded

the electric coffee maker for eight cups and clicked it on.  Its little

electronic eye was scarcely redder than her own.  On the way to the

bathroom, she left a trail of soggy clothing.

Hot water, then cold; she.  switched back and forth, applying age-old

remedies for sobering up.  The passage of time was the only way to

cleanse the body of drugs but the wives' tales were rooted in a modicuin

of fact.  Cold showers and hot coffee could transniute a dopey,

knee-walking drunk into a wide-awake, alert, knee-walking drunk if

assiduously applied.  Anna would settle for that.

Two more ticks were dislodged by repeated shampooing.  Her legs from

midthigh down were a mass of red bumps that itched like the devil.

Chiggers.  A little red bug that lived in the South and, not

surprisingly, was a relative of the tick.  According to Dijon, an expert

on all things repulsive, the little buggers burrowed in and lived there.

The thought gave Anna the willies, so though she suspected it was true,

she pretended it wasn't.

Five-fifteen found her dressed in clean clothes-two cups of coffee

roiling in her stomach, wet hair hanging in witchy ropespacing around

the tiny living room trying not to scratch.  The black fog that clogged

her brain had yet to dissipate.  Anxiousness bordering on panic licked

around the edges of her awareness and she was consumed by irritability.

At 5:17 a.m.  she banged open the door to Tabby's bedroom.

"Who on this island cuts hair?" she demanded when the sleepy young woman

peered over the bedclothes.

"Huh?" Tabby blinked, her eyes round and rabbity.

Everything about the woman so aggravated Anna's strained nerves that she

had to fight down an urge to slap her.

"Cuts hair.  Snip, snip.  Every park I've ever worked in has somebody

who cuts hair." Anna knew she was irrational.  She knew she was

growling.  She didn't care.

"Cuts hair?" Tabby echoed stupidly.

Anna began to count to ten, Silently, in her head.  At seven Tabby

managed: "Lynette.  Lynette'll do it."

Anna closed the door with a bang and left.

Lynette was up.  When Anna drove in she was out on her diminutive front

porch in a gold and black kimono feeding the dog.  If she was surprised

to see Anna, red-eyed and chigger-gnawed, walking up her front steps

before sunrise, she was too polite-or too wise-to say so.

"Tea?" she offered.

" Can you cut hair?" Anna asked without preamble.

Ten minutes later she was seated on a stool on the porch, a towel draped

around her shoulders and a cup of sugared tea steaming in her hand.  A