Lost in the River of Grass (5 page)

“Naw. There are gators where we're going. I'll feed it to one of them.”

“You will not. Give it to me.”

I pick it up. Its eyes are dull, black slits. I feel awful about killing it and stroke its downy yellow belly and touch its rubbery little bill. “I'm sorry,” I say, then lob it into the cattails. “I don't want to see anything else eaten by a gator.”

“What'd you see eaten?”

“A heron.”

“What kind of heron?”

“A great blue.”

“Where'd you see that?”

“From the observation tower in Shark Valley.”

“Cool.”

Boys
.

The duckling in my hand tries to leap down, but I catch it midair, then carefully let it go on the floor of the boat. It pads around, peeping like a baby chick, calling for its mother, I guess. It steps on one of the last remaining frogs, most of which have escaped over the side while we've been sitting here. When the frog wriggles out from beneath its webbed foot, the duckling falls on its butt, then can't get its feet under itself. Andy and I laugh, but I can't help feeling sad, like this is another reason I shouldn't be here. If we weren't out here messing around where we don't belong, the little thing would still be with its mother.

Andy climbs back up to his seat, and I catch the baby duck before he starts the engine. It squirms, trying to find solid ground with its flapping feet. I hand it to Andy while I put on Dad's shirt, button it up, and tuck the tail into my shorts. When he hands the duckling back, I put it down the front of my shirt. Its toenails scratch my stomach as it tries to climb back out, but when I cup my hands over it, it calms down and lies quietly.

Andy points to a tree island in the distance. “That's where we're headed.”

Good. I'm starving.

 

…

The entrance to the camp is invisible. I hold my breath when Andy turns us and, without even slowing down, takes aim at a narrow channel through a stand of cattails. Only when we see the trail is blocked by tree limbs does he cut the motor.

“Are you sure there's a cabin in there?” I already don't like this place.

“Last time I looked.” He's busy breaking away the branches that snag the propeller cage. When we're through the densest part, he pulls the airboat, hand over hand, along the channel until we clear the tree limbs and glide into a man-made pond that is right out of the movie
The Creature from the Black Lagoon
that I saw on the Turner Classic Movie channel.

Oh my God
, I'm thinking when Andy says, “Kind of pretty, ain't it?”

It's the ugliest place I've ever seen. The cabin is nothing but plywood covered with black tar paper, the pond water is black, and the mud at the edge is black. The cypress trees are so dense no light gets through. I'm totally creeped out even before I see the alligator. It had been asleep on the muddy bank, but now its eyes are open and staring at us. The hair on my arms stands up as I watch about fourteen feet of lumpy gray reptile slide lazily into the water and disappear. The tower at Shark Valley was over twice as tall as the high-dive platform at school. Looking at huge gators from there was one thing, but being this close to one that is now somewhere beneath us is freaking me out. I know it can still see us, and all I can think about is seeing that gator at Shark Valley explode out of the water, launch itself at the heron, and drag the poor thing under. I start to shiver.

I'm so focused on trying to see where the gator is that I nearly jump out of my skin when Andy swings down from his perch. He grabs the pole and pushes us toward the rotting dock.

“So what d'ya think?”

“Can we go now?”

“What d'ya mean go? We just got here.”

“Didn't you see that gator?”

“Sure, but he's not going to bother us. Come on.” Andy hops across to what's left of an old dock and holds out his hand.

About every other plank is missing, and where the dock ends there is a double row of equally rotten boards set side-by-side on top of what looks like ankle-deep mud. Where the mud ends, the boards zigzag through knee-deep weeds.
One in a million, ha!
I'm with the other 999,999 who are afraid of everything out here. I can already imagine feeling the first of the bloodthirsty ticks waiting to crawl up my bare, saw-grass–cut, chill-bump–covered legs.

I fight down the urge to beg him to leave right this second, hold the duckling steady against my stomach, and take his hand. His palm is warm and calloused like my dad's, and I'm suddenly and oddly homesick.

I step across to the dock and follow Andy along the plank walkway, holding onto a belt-loop of his jeans. I will myself not to think about what is living beneath each termite-eaten plank. One thing Floridians know practically from birth, even city kids like me, is to never turn over a log or board—the dark, damp places where coral snakes and scorpions like to hide.

The walkway parallels the side of the shack, makes a right turn, and ends at the remnants of steps. The shack, like the dining hall and the cabins at the Loop Road Environmental Center, is perched on concrete blocks, which makes me think the water must get a lot higher than it is right now.

“Does someone live here?” I can't imagine.

“This is a hunting camp. It belongs to someone, but all the camps out here are left open for anyone to use.”

That's big of them, I think to myself. What's to lock? What's to steal?

From the front of the cabin, an overgrown trail meanders a short distance to the edge of the woods and ends at a plywood outhouse that someone has decorated by painting a quarter-moon on the door. It's a facility I'm in desperate need of. I get as far as the door, but I'm afraid to open it.

“Go in the woods,” Andy suggests, putting the cooler on a makeshift picnic table: two sawhorses and a sheet of plywood set between two decaying tree-stump stools.

I glance at the dark tangle of trunks and vines behind the outhouse. “No way, and I can't go in there either unless you'll check it for things first.”

He comes, opens the door, steps inside, and lets the door smack shut behind him.

I wait.

“What are you doing?” I say.

“Peeing,” he answers.

“I was first.”

“Not through the door, you weren't.” The door swings open, and Andy comes out carrying a very large, colorful snake.

I scream and run from him down the trail, holding the duckling against my stomach.

“It's only a corn snake,” Andy says, as if that will make a difference.

“Don't come near me with that thing,” I plead. “I hate snakes.”

Andy stands stock-still. “I hadn't planned to,” he says. “I don't want to scare the snake.”

“Very funny.”

“Why do you hate snakes?”

“They're slimy.” I shudder. I have no intention of telling him how my brother stood on a ladder in our laundry room, which shares a drop-ceiling with the bathroom, and pitched a snake into the shower with me. He still loves to tell his friends how I took the shower curtain and rod down with me and looked like a cat in a sack trying to get out the door.

“No, they aren't.” He drapes it around his neck but keeps a good grip on it right behind its head. “I'll hold her head. Come touch her.” He holds its tail out to me.

“No way.”

“She's not slimy. She's dry as a bone and cool to the touch.”

“I don't care. I don't want to touch her. And how do you know she's a she?”

“I don't think I know you well enough to go into that.”

“Whatever.” I shrug. “I still don't want to touch her.”

“Suit yourself.”

“What was she doing in there, anyway?”

“People bring these snakes out and leave them to keep the rats under control. So use the head, then let me put her back.”

Gators. Rats. Snakes.
What was I thinking, coming out here with him?

If he'd been my brother, he would jump at me with the snake, so I just stand there until he steps off into the weeds and gives me a clear path to the outhouse. He speaks softly to the snake and rubs it under its chin. The snake's forked tongue flicks in and out, which makes my skin tingle with disgust.

Still, I don't trust him, and I scoot by, jerk the outhouse door open, and back in. I close the door, then shoot right back out again. “There's a huge spider-web in there.”

“It's way up in the corner.”

“But the spider?”

“She won't bother you.”

“I can't sit there with a giant spider above my head.”

A clear expression of boredom crosses his face. “Pee in the woods then.” He strokes the snake and lets its tongue touch his cheek.

I shiver at the thought of a snake's tongue against my cheek, and I know Andy thinks I'm acting like a sissy, but I can't help how sickening this place is. I'm from the city, for God's sake. Why would he think this world of snakes, rats, outhouses, and alligators is an easy adjustment? Tears threaten, so I whirl, snatch the door open, and duck, even though the web is in a corner high above my head. I let the door slam, then look for a lock just in case he decides it would be fun to pitch the snake in here with me. There isn't one. Just a knothole that I can put my finger through to hold the door closed.

The spider, which is about the size of my hand, moves up the web on its long, hairy red legs. I sit kind of sideways over the smelly hole so I can watch it. The duckling waits on the dirt floor, preening its matted belly, wet from my sweat.

“Do you want to see inside the cabin?” Andy asks after he put the snake back in the outhouse.

“Sure.” I'm trying to sound brave. The airboat ride was fun—until I killed the duckling—but enough is enough. I just want to go back right now to the Loop Road camp, which is luxury compared to this place. Maybe I could continue to pretend I'm sick for the rest of the day, and tomorrow leave for home without ever seeing another inch of the Everglades.

The cabin has a screened-in porch with most of the screens punched out and a door that sags on its last rusty hinge. When Andy tries to straighten it so it will swing open, the door comes off in his hands. He shrugs, carries it across the porch, and neatly leans it against the wall. The hollow-core wood door to the cabin is warped and rotting from the bottom up. Andy has to shoulder it open like a cop breaking into a suspect's house.

It's pitch black inside. I'm pressed so tight on Andy's heels that my nose brushes his shoulder.

“What's that awful smell?”

“Just a little mold and mouse piss.”

A claustrophobic chill sweeps over me. I draw my head in like a turtle, ducking at the sound of feet scurrying across the plywood ceiling.

Andy, with me in lockstep, crosses to the sink, smacks the swollen wooden window with the heel of his hand to break the seal, then props it open with a broom handle. A roach, startled by the sudden flood of light, lifts off the floor and flies toward us. I plaster myself against Andy's back, squeezing a peep out of the duckling in my shirt. The roach hits Andy in the chest. He brushes it off and stomps it.

“I hate roaches.” I turn and start for the door, but Andy catches my hand.

“It was a palmetto bug. Come on, don't be such a chicken.”

“Roach, palmetto bug, whatever. I hate them both,” I snap. “And I'm not a chicken. This place is disgusting.”

A cracked porcelain sink is set in an unfinished wooden counter. Above it is the open window, and on either side of the window are bare plank shelves lined with mismatched plastic plates and a couple of bloated, deadly looking cans of pork and beans.

In the center of the room, another table has been created out of two more sawhorses and a split and peeling sheet of plywood. Four rusty metal folding chairs sit at different angles, as if the occupants had left suddenly. I imagine a fight over cheating at cards and the players leaving to shoot each other in the yard.

In the far corner are two pairs of bunk beds, head to head. Each has a mattress that looks as if it'd been dragged here from the Dade County dump. A filthy pillow lies at the head of each bunk. Towels and army blankets are stacked along a wooden bench attached to the fourth wall of the cabin.

“It's nothing fancy,” Andy says. “But . . .”

I burst out laughing.

For a second he looks hurt, then he starts laughing too. “It is only a hunting cabin,” he says, lamely, as I wipe tears from my cheeks.

In contrast to the rest of the camp, there's a relatively new wooden swing hanging from a limb of a huge old cypress tree by chains that are beginning to rust. After Andy kicks a picnic-table stump and it crumbles, releasing a swarm of red ants, he takes the cooler to the swing. I pull my shirttail out, catch the duckling, and put it on the ground.

We sit side by side, each eating from our own small bag of potato chips. Half a bar of cheddar cheese waits on Andy's knee to be divided, and an open bottle of Gatorade is jammed in the space between our thighs. I loan Andy my Swiss Army knife to cut the apple into quarters.

“This is a nice knife.” He turns it in his hand. His fingernails are dirty, and the cuticles chewed and ragged. “I forgot, there's Spam, too.”

“Yuck,” I say. “What is Spam, anyway?”

“Ham and something. Salami, I think. Read the can.”

“I don't want to even get that close to it.” I make a face.

“You'd feel different if you were hungry.” Andy hands me a chunk of apple and one of cheese.

“Well, I hope I'm never
that
hungry.” I crumble a chip and scatter it at my feet for the duckling.

“It's good fried.”

“I doubt it.” I take a bite of cheese, then one of apple. They taste good together. “Got any cups?”

“For what?”

I tap the lid of the Gatorade.

“We either have to drink after each other, or . . .” He grins. “I bet there are glasses in the cabin.”