Lost in the River of Grass (11 page)

“Just shut up about that, okay? I know it's my fault.” He stops. “Look, I'm sorry. I'm as tired as you are.”

“It's okay.”

“The closer we get to the trees, the more stumps and branches there will be. So watch out.” He starts off again.

I'm trying to get Teapot to stay in the wet, cold sling. Andy has stopped and when I look up, he's watching me with his hands on his hips.

“Just go on, okay?” I say. “I'll catch up.”

I'm so suddenly aware of myself and how exhausted, scratched, bruised, and bloody I am—it feels like part of me is floating on a string just above my own body. I can see myself standing knee-deep in a swamp the size of frigging Rhode Island or something. My hair is dripping wet. My skin stings from too much sun. I'm cold and shivering and wrestling with a baby duck.

“Why don't I put her in the top part of the backpack?” Andy says.

My out-of-body vision dies away. “Are you sure?”

He nods, then wades back and turns so I can unzip the top of the bag. My brother's Swiss Army knife is the only thing in there. I start to put it in the bottom half. “Hold her a minute, will you?”

“What are you doing?”

“I'm going to line the pack so she won't be sleeping in her own poop, and it will be easier to clean.”

I cut a willow branch, strip the leaves off and coat the bottom of the pack. Andy hands Teapot over. I put her inside and zip it closed, leaving a pencil-sized gap for air to get in.

I see Andy smile. “What?”

“She ran back and forth a few times, then plopped down and peeped. At least one of us will get some sleep.”

As we begin to move toward the rookery again, the birds closest to us grow more anxious. A few lift off, squawking, then land a little deeper in among the trees, dislodging somebody else, which starts another argument.

“Are we going to frighten them all away?”

“I don't think so,” he whispers.

A few minutes later, a dark cloud moves across the face of the moon. The birds quiet.

“Let's go,” Andy says. “This is our chance to get closer without them seeing us.”

“But I can't see either.”

“Take my hand.”

I do and feel his calluses again, dry and rough. In the dark, his hand feels like my dad's. That comforts me.

We move as quickly as we can toward the trees, which are now a dark silhouette against the far-off, city-light glow of Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.

“Let's steer right until we find a tree big enough to hold us.”

Turning right will take us to the south end of the tree island. Last night—
just last night? Is it possible?
—at the slide presentation, there was a series of aerial photographs showing the teardrop shape of most tree islands. Their shape, Mr. Vickers told us, was because water in the Everglades flows north to south, and debris, caught in that flow, accumulates at the north end. This build-up was future land where eventually shrubs and trees took root. The thickest tree growth was always at the north end where the soil had been collecting for the longest time. That's where most of the birds were, with only a few at the narrow south end.

“Andy, the largest trees are that direction.” I point to the left. “I remember from the talk last night. That end is older.”

“So?”

“Bigger trees have fatter branches. Shouldn't we go there?”

Andy stops. So do I. The cloud moves on, and everything's all silvery again.

“Well?” I say after a minute of just standing there.

“I'm thinking.”

The closer we get to the trees and the birds, the worse the mosquitoes become. “While you're thinking, I'm getting eaten alive here.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“We'll go to the north end.” He turns left and starts walking.

“Andy.”

“What now?”

“Shouldn't we walk up the east side?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Well, look at it. The trees block out the moonlight on this side.”

Andy turns and trudges back toward me. When he passes, I follow, but I feel pretty smart to have figured that out and wish, at least, he'd noticed. “I'm tired, too, you know,” I say to his back.

We stumble toward the south end, paralleling the hammock. When the trees end altogether, we make an arc around the tip of the island and start splashing and stumbling up the east side.

I've lost all sense of time, but it seems to take forever to reach the north end of the island. When we do get there, the grasses are also taller and denser. We have to cross through yards of tall saw grass to reach the trees. Andy goes first, holding his arms crossed in front of his face. I follow, but have taken only a few steps when I trip over a limb or a root, forget, and grab a clump of saw grass to break my fall. It feels like I've grabbed a fistful of needles. “Ouch.”

“You okay?” He's reached the island.

“Yeah.” My hand is sticky with blood. I rinse it and wipe it on my shirt.

“There's a huge strangler fig here.” I hear him pat its trunk.

I come out of the grass, wind my way through some willows, and step up onto a tiny patch of dry land. Andy is in the tree, straddling a limb. He tilts his head back against the main trunk and closes his eyes. “Heaven,” he says.

A large limb of the tree the fig strangled is broken off and lies like a nice wide ramp into the tree. I head for it, assuming that's how Andy got up there.

“Not that way,” he says a second after I grab a small limb to pull myself up. It breaks away. Instantly I feel stinging bites on my hands, then my arms and legs and down into my boots. I scream and brush at the ants pouring over me. I scream again as they reach my neck and face. I can feel one in my ear.

“Get to the water!” He swings down from the tree.

I fight my way back through the willows and the dense saw grass to the open water, where I plunge in and roll like a gator.

Andy pulls me to my feet. “That limb was rotten.” He drags me away from where I'd gone into the water, brushing my back. He digs his hands into the mud and smears it over my arms, then more over my legs. “Keep moving,” he says. “They'll try to use you to crawl back out of the water.”

My skin is on fire. Welts rise on my arms and legs.

We've frightened the closest birds, which have taken off and are circling, trying to land in a safer place.

“I lost one of my boots.”

“We'll find it in the morning.” He helps me rinse the mud off, then scoops me up, like Dad used to when I skinned a knee and cried, and carries me back to the hammock. At the base of the tree, he puts me down, then intertwines his fingers and turns his hands palms up. I put my bootless foot in the stirrup he's made and let him boost me onto the lowest branch.

The backpack is leaning against the tree trunk. Andy hands it up to me, then grabs a branch and, like a trapeze artist, swings his legs up and over an adjacent limb. “You okay?”

“My skin's on fire.” I unzip the bottom compartment and feel around for the insect salve before I remember that I left it in my duffel bag.
How stupid was that?

Teapot peeps sleepily.

Andy gets himself situated on a limb just above me while I spray my legs with insect repellent, which makes the ant bites sting worse. It's all I can do not to claw my skin. I hand the can to him and fan my legs. My one bare, crinkle-skinned foot glows white in the moonlight, except for my red toenails. They look as black as witch's lips in the dim light.

When he finishes spraying himself, he puts the can back in the pack and gets out the Gatorade.

“Just a sip or two, okay?” He hands it down to me.

I nod. The hunger headache that started hours ago is reaching migraine proportions from the ant bites. I sip the Gatorade, swallowing bitter-tasting bug spray with it. I run a finger across my lips. They are cracked and scaly. “Will you try to find my lip gloss?”

He reaches in and comes up with it and the Swiss Army knife. “Ready for dinner?”

We're seated on opposite limbs; his is a foot or two above mine. He breaks the key off the bottom of the can of Spam, then tilts it toward the moon to find where the metal zipper begins.

“How old is that stuff?”

“I don't know. Why?”

“I don't think cans open like that anymore. They open like dog-food cans with a ring you pull.”

“It's not swollen or anything.” He turns the key, and there's a
whoosh
as air enters the can and the smell of Spam escapes. He sniffs it and smiles. His teeth are as white and even as pearls in the moonlight. Mine feel as scummy as a mossy rock.

In spite of how disgusting the thought of eating Spam is, my stomach growls loudly.

“I guess you don't want any, right? I think I remember you saying you wouldn't touch this stuff if you were starving, or was it if your life depended on it?”

I look up from clawing at my ant bites. “The time for jokes was about seven hours ago.”

“Don't scratch. It'll just make them worse,” Andy says.

“I can't help it, they're driving me crazy.”

With the can balanced on his knee, he cuts the meat into two remarkably equal chunks. He hands me one of them.

I sniff it, then tear half off with my teeth, chew it a couple times, and swallow with a shudder.

“Don't eat it all . . .” his voice trails off. “At once.”

I break the rest into smaller bites, then swallow each like a pill with a slug of Gatorade. I'm not too crazy about Gatorade, but it does help wash the taste of Spam away.

“Save a little for me,” Andy says.

I hand him the bottle. “All yours.”

“You'll be sorry. That's all we have.” He cuts his Spam into two equal parts, then cuts those two pieces each in half. He puts one quarter in his mouth and chews and chews and chews.

I want to slap him.

One of the quarters he puts in the pocket of his shirt. “Breakfast.” He smiles. He drops the other two pieces, one at a time, back into the can. “Lunch.”
Thunk
. “Dinner.”
Thunk
.

From where I'm sitting, I could easily grab his ankles, lift and tip him off his perch, and happily watch him fall right on his smart ass.

He takes two short sips of Gatorade, then puts everything back in the bottom of the backpack. “You should have saved some for tomorrow. Don't ask for any of mine.”

“Wouldn't think of it.” It had almost made me gag to eat it at all. Even the food we feed the stray dog we've adopted looks more appetizing than Spam, and it comes with gravy.

“I don't think I can sleep like this.” The branch I'm on is thick enough to straddle, but I feel tippy when I lean back against the trunk. A breeze blows across my legs, which helps with the mosquitoes and cools the ant bites, but makes me shiver.

“You may not sleep, but I plan to.” Andy reaches up and hangs the backpack on the branch above his head. “If a bear comes, he'll have to crawl over me to get my Spam.”

“Jesus, there are bears out here, too?”

“Sure. Spam-loving black bears.”

“I bet the smell alone will draw them from miles around.” I mean it as a joke—kind of.

Andy doesn't answer, and I wish I hadn't thought of the possibility and another reason to be scared.

I change position to sit crosswise on the limb with my arm around the main trunk, but the bark presses uncomfortably into my goose-pimply, ant-bitten legs. I untie Dad's shirt from around my waist, drape it over my knees, and tuck the sleeves under my thighs where the branch presses into my skin.

A cloud had drifted across the moon, but now it moves on, exposing dozens of nervous birds scattered throughout the trees behind us. Not just great blue herons, but brilliantly white common egrets in the canopy, the smaller snowy egrets and white ibises beneath them. They looked like ghosts among the black, leafy branches. Except for the mosquitoes whining, the distant but ominous rumble of thunder, and the discomfort of tree bark pressing into the welts on my skin, there is something about being with all these birds that is comforting. They make me feel safer.

My face is swollen and sore and it hurts when I put my cheek against the tree's bark. I touch my skin. It's as lumpy as a toad's. I pluck twigs and pieces of grass from my hair, then twist a wad of it into a bun and place it between my ear and the tree trunk. I close my eyes. They sting, too.

“Remember what you said about what goes around, comes around?” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I guess, why?”

“Do you think this is our punishment?”

“Yours maybe.”

“Why not yours?”

“I'm not the one who lied to my teacher and snuck off with a boy I hardly know.”

“Very funny. You
are
the one who forgot the stern plug.”

Andy doesn't say anything.

“Are you asleep?” I ask after a few minutes.

“No.”

“Will you hold my hand?”

Andy groans, then tries to reposition himself, but only the tips of our fingers touch. “I can't reach you.”

His right foot is close enough to smell of swamp. I untie his shoelace and loop a few inches around my little finger, then close my eyes and hope it's too dark for him to see how lumpy and ugly my face is.

Only seconds pass before we hear splashing a few yards away. “What's that?”

“Wild hog, probably.”

“What would you give for some bacon right now, or a ham sandwich or ham and macaroni and cheese?” My stomach feels like there's a bubble of nothing but air in it.

“Talking about food only makes it worse.”

I shift again and finally angle myself so when I lean back another limb hits me across the back of my neck. It's miserably uncomfortable, but at least I'm not afraid that if I manage to doze off, I'll fall out of the tree.