Lost in the River of Grass (7 page)

He looks at me, but says nothing.

“Hand me the flight bag, will you?”

I kick it off the dock, too.

He catches it before it hits the water.

“Are you going to carry that, too?” I ask, wiping tears away with the heels of my hands.

“No. I'm gonna hang it in a tree near the entrance to the channel. If anybody finds it, they'll know this is where we started from, and they'll know we went east.”

“How would they know that?” I sniffle.

Andy shakes the bag. Something shifts inside. He unzips it and dumps out the flip-flop that matches the one that has floated across the pond and is bumping against the trunk of a pond-apple tree. “'Cause that's the closest dry land. The levee is due east and much closer than the trail.” He holds his hand out again.

I sit down on the edge of the dock, hesitate, then put my feet into the black water. Chill bumps spread up my arms.

The water is to his waist and is covered with a sheet of pale brown scum, which has floated back and encircles his chest.

“I'll throw up if I have to get in there.”

“I wouldn't waste the food if I were you.” He tries to smile.

“God, this is so not funny,” I snap.

“I know that. Doesn't change anything. We're still stuck.” He flaps his fingers for me to come on.

“Ten miles in this sludge.”

“Seven maybe. Like I said, the levee is closer. Once we're there, it's dry land all the way to the highway.”

Seven miles didn't seem that far. I walk to school all the time—a mile or so each way.
Who am I kidding?
I take a last look at the relative safety of the cabin, then at the gator. He's gone. Only a swath of small bubbles marks where he'd been. My breathing becomes shallow and rapid, and my heart thuds in my chest.

“I can't. I just can't,” I say, but I close my eyes and am about to slip in when I hear a sound like someone slurping a Coke. My eyes snap open. “What was that?”

“A walking catfish.”

There's a small splash as something leaves the surface. I hear the sound again and see a mouth in the water, or rather black lips around a hole in the water. Another surfaces, takes a gulp, and dives to the bottom.

“Are they eating? I've heard about fish that can spit a stream of water and knock a bug right out of the air.”

I'm stalling. Maybe, if we wait just a few more minutes, we'll hear an airboat, or Andy will think of something else to try.

“They're breathing. Come on Sarah.”

“They're fish, aren't they?”

“Yeah. Air-breathing fish.” He flaps his hand again.

I close my eyes, say a little prayer, and tip forward off the dock.

7

The water was waist-deep on Andy, so I expect it to be chest-high on me. A scream catches in my throat as water pours over the tops of my boots. The added weight pulls me under and throws me off balance. I have a split second to gulp air like one of those catfish before landing on my hands and knees in mud that is up to my elbows. I try to swim out of my boots, but the angle is wrong. The harder I struggle, the deeper I sink until I'm on my belly, up to my armpits in the ooze with the boots clamped like vises around my ankles. Air leaves my mouth in a big brown bubble as I try to roll on my side. My eyes are open, but I can't see anything through the mud I've churned up. I pull an arm free and wave it above my head, hitting a dock post. Not a post; Andy's arm. I feel his hands around my wrist. He nearly pulls my arm out of its socket as he drags me upright. The water comes to my chin.

I gulp air and cough until my throat is raw. “What are you standing on?” I croak.

“The deck of the airboat.” He leans and lifts me up into it with him.

My yellow T-shirt is slimy and brown. I cup my hands and bring water up to wash the mud off my face.

“I forgot you had those boots on. You can't walk in those.” He puts his hands in my armpits and transfers me to the dock like a sack of potatoes. “You'll have to take 'em off.”

“They are off. They're down there.”

Andy gets on his knees, turns his head, puts his cheek against the water, and feels around until he finds first one then the other. He drags them up, rinses them out, and puts them the dock beside me.

“Now what?”

He sighs. “I'm not sure, but there's no way you can walk in those.”

“We'll have to stay here and wait for help, I guess.” My tone of voice is hopeful. I lean over to rinse my arms, then splash water on my shirt, trying to wash the mud off.

He makes a hiccup of a laugh and shakes his head. “That's the option we don't have.”

Although the idea of nothing to protect my feet makes me sick, I point to the one of Andy's giant flip-flops that's now washed across the pond and is lodged between two cypress knees. “Could I wear those?” I look for the one I kicked off the dock. It's in the cattails that guard the channel into this place.

“You'd break an ankle for sure if you did. It's like walking across a coral reef out there—uneven, with dead trees and stuff hidden beneath the surface.”

Beneath the surface.
Those are the three scariest words in the English language to me right now.

“Once we're out of this pond, won't the water be shallow? Shallow enough to wear the boots without them filling up?”

“In a few places, maybe, but what about when it's not?” He slips his arms out of my backpack and puts it on the dock beside me. The bottom half is sopping wet; water gushes out through the zipper and drips from holes in the stitching.

“My Dad's binoculars and camera are in there.”

“Well, they're done for now,” he says flatly.

Please, not Dad's camera
. I'm reaching for the pack when something in the water startles the duckling and it comes at us from near the propeller cage, its feet slapping the surface and wing nubs flapping.

I grab Andy's arm. “What's that?”

We both look toward the end of the pond where we last saw the gator. He's farther away, but still watching us with just his nose and bubble-shaped eyes above the surface.

“Maybe there's another one somewhere.”

Andy looks at me like I'm an idiot. “I think you can count on seeing another one or two.” He unzips the bottom section of the pack and takes out the camera and the binoculars. Water pours out of the binoculars, but the camera is all right in its baggie.

“Might as well leave these here.”

Before I can stop him he pitches the binoculars toward the cabin. They disappear into the thick weeds. I grab the camera and hug it to my chest. “My dad will kill me if anything happens to this.”

“I'll betcha it will never occur to him to ask what happened to either of them by the time he sees you again.” Andy drives the blade of the butcher knife into the instep of one of my boots.

I grab the other one and hug it to my chest. “What are you doing?”

“Giving 'em drain holes.” He twists the knife, trying to cut out a chunk, but the blade is too wide.

I feel around in the lower portion of the backpack and hand him my brother's Swiss Army knife. “This thing has scissors, I think.”

There are a dozen blades and tools to choose from. “This really
is
a cool knife.” He turns it over in his hand.

Andy first tries the little saw, then the scissors, neither of which can cut through the rubber. He finally chooses one of the smaller blades and finishes cutting two thumb-sized squares in the insteps. He dips the first boot and holds it up. Water gushes out the holes.

When he finishes the other boot, I pull them on. They are cold, clammy, and squishy inside. I step off the dock and stand beside him on the deck of the airboat. Water

fills them again, and having the holes doesn't help at all. “This isn't going to work.”

“Give 'em to me.” Andy opens the saw-blade of the knife.

“What are you going to do with that?” I hitch myself onto the dock.

“You won't be able to put one foot in front of the other unless I get the water to run out as quickly as it comes in.”

“Wait. Don't do that until we see if the water is over the tops when we get out of here.”

“How are you going to get from here to there?”

“Swim.”

He shrugs, then pulls himself out of the water to sit on the dock beside me. He takes off his tennis shoes and cuts holes in them, too. Before closing the knife, he stabs a small drain hole in the bottom of my backpack, puts the Spam in the lower half, the camera and the knife in the top half, and zips it closed.

It's been breezy for most of the morning, but it dies suddenly. A few minutes later, the sun disappears behind the southern wall of trees. Mosquitoes, which like shade and still air, appear instantly and seem to come to a boil around us.

I fan my face and squash them against my arms and legs, leaving bloody little streaks. “The bug spray's in the pack.”

“You'll be in the water in a second.”

“Please. I can't stand the sound of them.”

“Spraying won't stop that.” He puts my pack on again.

“Let's hurry then. Can I put my boots in the pack until we get out of here?”

He turns to let me unzip the bottom part. I stuff my boots inside and zip it as closed as it will go with the tops sticking out.

I slide off the dock and tread water like a frog with my legs splayed to keep from touching the bottom with my bare feet. I kick so hard that I don't sink above my waist.

Andy goes over the side of the boat and sinks to his armpits in the mud. Using his arms like water wings, he begins to plow through the water. I do the breaststroke so close behind him I keep bumping into his back. We've only gone a few yards when I slow and glance back to see if the gator has stayed put. It isn't there. My heart begins to ricochet inside my chest. “The gator's gone.” Panic chokes off my breath. I swim around Andy and into the channel. The duckling, which has been swimming just off my right shoulder, peeps frantically and follows me.

I only get about a dozen feet ahead of him when my leg hits something hard and knobby. In a heart-stopping moment, I know it's the gator, yet I can't move. In my mind I see its pink throat and huge teeth coming up through the murky water.

Something brushes the back of my neck, and I scream.

Andy has me by the collar of my shirt.

“There's a gator right there,” I choke. “I touched it.”

“If there is, it's dead. No gator in its right mind would just lie there.” Andy feels around with his foot until he too hits the thing I ran into. He reaches down and feels it with his hands. “It's a tire off a swamp buggy.”

“How would I know that?”

“Well, quit thinking everything is an alligator. They are more afraid of you than you are of them.”

“Maybe that's true for you, but I can promise it's not so for me.”

“Let's go.” He starts off again.

The duckling's feeding on some pond scum. When I start to move, it skids toward me and nibbles at the tips of my hair, which is long enough to trail behind me in the water.

I want to think the pity I feel is for the duckling who's orphaned because of me, but it's myself I'm feeling sorry for. I'm glad it's with us. I'll have something to take care of, and I hope that will make me feel braver than I am. I reach to pet it, but it dodges my hand.

“You should leave that thing,” Andy says. He's a few yards ahead of me. “It's slowing you down.”

“It is not.” I maneuver around the tire. “If you weren't racing ahead . . .”

“Racing? Get real. We have about six hours of daylight left. We need to get out of here and make some headway.”

“I'll show you headway,” I snap.

With the duckling following right behind my head, I swim past Andy and into the narrow, tree-guarded channel. I kick and splash, all the time imagining that fourteen-foot gator has sunk beneath the surface and is moving through the ebony water, gaining on me. My breathing is quick and panicky. I kick harder and don't stop until the tree canopy dissolves into blue sky.

Two hours ago, Andy had followed the thin, black remnant of a trail as it snaked through the cattails toward the cabin. Now, thank heavens, it feels wider because the airboat flattened the margins. I don't know what it is, but cattails, especially towering over me like they are, make me claustrophobic. I've never thought of myself as an easily frightened kind of person, but by the time I reach water shallow enough to feel the tops of plants brushing against my stomach, I'm gasping for air. I roll over on my back, looking for Andy.

He's where the trees give way to the cattails, in water to his thighs. “Try standing up,” he says.

“Not without my boots.” I float on my back, fanning my arms, and occasionally kicking to keep my feet from sinking to the bottom. Plants—at least I need to think they're plants and not water bugs or leeches or whatever's looking up at my back—tickle my arms and legs.

Andy catches up and sets my boots beside me.

I have to sit up to put them on. I let my butt settle to the bottom and find the surface is rocky and hard. I pull my boots on, then take Andy's hand and let him haul me to my feet. The tops of the boots end about six inches below my knees. The water level is two inches beneath the tops of my boots, but it doesn't matter since water seeps in through the holes he made and soon fills them to the same depth as the water I'm standing in. Instead of dry feet, they will be wet for however many miles this trek turns out to be. I force myself to smile. “Is it like this the rest of the way?”

“No,” he says sharply, then adds in a softer tone, “but it won't be as bad as back there. They dynamited that pond out of the oolite.”

“Oolite?”

“Limestone. It's what we're standing on.”

I part the slimy brown algae to see the lumpy, sharp bottom. “It looks like coral.”