Randy White - Everglades

I said, “ Earthquake? You’re… you’re not serious. The idea that he had anything to do with that little tremor we had is absurd. Plus, why would they care?”

The woman took my arm in hers-Tomlinson was right. Because of my relationship with her father, Joseph, her acceptance of me was instant and seemed unconditional. She said, “It’s because of something that no outsider would know about. Or understand. Have you ever heard of Tecumseh?”

I said, “Yes. The Indian leader. Most people have.”

She was holding my arm tight.

“In eighteen eleven, he tried to organize all the southern tribes to help fight the whites. On November sixteenth, in central Alabama, he told our people that, one moon cycle later, he would stomp his foot, and the earth would move. It would be a sign to join him.”

Still keeping her voice low, she added, “That prophecy spread across the country, village to village. It’s well recorded. It happened. Exactly twenty-eight days later, the New Madrid earthquakes began. The worst in American history. He was also a genius, a prophet. He was a Shawnee; an Ohio tribe. What almost no one knows is that Tecumseh’s mother was core Maskoki-some called us Creek. She was what they’d call a Seminole. So it’s part of Seminole legend. To my aunts and uncles, an earthquake is a tremendously powerful sign.”

From the amphitheater, the chant continued:

We will…

Boom!

Move the earth.

Boom!

I will…

Boom!

Make the earth move!

I said, “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about. Because there’s no way a human being can cause an earthquake. Shiva, the Bhagwan, whatever you want to call him, that fraud can sit down there and meditate, chant, whatever he wants to do, all night long. The ground’s not going to shake just because he promises that he can-”

I stopped, feeling a sudden, dizzying sense of suspicion, then of realization. I said, “Wait-when did Shiva make his prediction about the earthquake. Was it prior to Sunday?”

“Long before that,” she replied. “Remember me telling you about the meeting he had with us? About the wooden masks he told us he’d seen in a dream, and carved himself? That’s when he said that he’d also dreamed he would one day make the Everglades tremble. As a sign; a sign that we should join together. He pretended that he didn’t know anything about Tecumseh or our connection with him. Which I never believed.”

Now I was shaking. My mouth was dry. I felt a flooding sense of panic and urgency. I was walking toward Tomlinson, my brain connecting what had seemed to be random events, meaningless sentence fragments:

A man Izzy’s size standing beside a maintenance truck in an abandoned limestone quarry, leaving behind an empty bag of ammonium nitrate, and a couple of blobs of goo that smelled of fuel oil.

Me asking Billie if someone was blasting in the area. I’d asked because there is a commercial explosive jelly called Thermex. It consists of little more than ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel.

I remembered Izzy tape-recording a furious Tomlinson. Remembered Tomlinson telling me that he was getting e-mail from manufacturers of blasting caps and explosives, and from eco-terrorist organizations. Remembered Tomlinson saying that, if it was a joke, he didn’t think it was very funny.

I remembered Detective Podraza telling me that, in an abduction-murder, getting rid of the body is always the biggest problem. How can you destroy the evidence? Remembered Kurt, the bartender, telling me that he’d seen Izzy that morning, driving a U-Haul.

Walking faster now, I said to Billie, “Shiva’s prophecy. What time is it supposed to happen? The earthquake.”

“At sunset. That’s just a few minutes from now.

I checked my watch. Seven-forty P.M. We had seventeen minutes until sunset.

From the amphitheater, the chanting seemed louder.

We will…

Boom!

Move the earth.

Boom!

I will…

Boom!

Make the earth move!

“Billie. I’ve got to get back to that rock quarry. The place where we saw the white truck. Did James come in his airboat?”

She’d stopped following me. “Marion? What’s wrong with you? Why’re you acting so strange?”

“Did he come in his airboat!” I said it so loud that she jumped.

“ Yes. It’s right over there. At the edge of the cypress head.”

Tomlinson was still standing, eyes closed, holding Karlita’s hand. I grabbed him roughly and turned him around. I said, “Let’s go. I need you.”

“Doc? Why? I can’t go. Not now”

Karlita had turned her head; was staring at me. “It’s you. I want to go. We belong. ”

I told her, “Not a chance,” as I took Tomlinson by the shoulders and shook him. “Damn it, I need your help. I think I know where Sally is!”

I couldn’t figure out how to get the airboat started.

Tomlinson and I had sprinted far ahead of Billie; found the big twenty-one-foot airboat banked at the edge of the sawgrass. On the boat’s twin aft rudders, its name, Chekika’s Shadow, glowed a metallic crimson in the late sunlight.

We were both aboard, Tomlinson in a lower seat, me standing at the stainless-steel control panel where there was an ignition key tied to an oversized float, and three rows of unmarked toggle switches.

When I turned the key, nothing happened.

There were twin automotive batteries beneath the captain’s chair. I checked to see if there was a cutoff switch. There was. I twisted the dial to “On” and tried the key again.

Nothing.

“ Goddamn it!”

I looked my watch. Saw that my hands were still shaking: 7:46 P.M.

Tomlinson said, “Maybe I should run back and ask Billie. Or try to find James.”

I’d refused Billie’s help, and her offer to fetch James because, if I was right, and I allowed them to come with me, I might well be responsible for their deaths.

I answered, “We don’t have time.”

I took a deep breath, told myself to stay calm and to think. All those years with Tucker Gatrell, I’d learned more than most about airboats. Some were powered by standard car engines, others by aircraft engines.

Then I realized: That’s the problem.

All the toggle switches were flipped down-the off position.

I flipped each switch momentarily, experimentally, until I heard the steady hum of what I guessed to be an electronic fuel pump.

At least two of the toggles had to be magneto switches.

They have to be.

I flipped them until I found the right combination, turned the key, and the huge engine fired like a mini-explosion.

I swung myself up into the captain’s chair, pulled on the headphones. Tomlinson had done the same, his scraggly hair sticking out. I said into the transmitter, “Hold on tight. It’s been awhile.”

I heard him reply, “Let ’er roll, brother!”

I touched my foot to the accelerator pedal, pushed the control stick forward, and the boat pivoted to the right in a fast, tight circle. When we were bow-out, the boat straightened itself as I gradually backed off the stick, accelerating like a dragster as I pressed the pedal toward the deck.

I had to keep reminding myself: To turn right, stick forward. To turn left, stick back. At sixty-plus miles per hour, we went sledding through sawgrass, southward.

To the west, only a few degrees above the horizon, the sun was the smoky orange of a hunter’s moon. Because it was precisely bisected by a band of purple stratus clouds, there was a ringed effect-as if Saturn were ablaze and spinning on a collision course toward Earth. The harsh light flattened itself across the prairie, horizon to horizon, turning feathered sawgrass to gold, turning the mushroom shapes of distant cypress heads to silver.