Carl Hiaasen - Nature Girl

Honey whistled softly. “I guess he’ll be selling his piano.”

“Mom, what are you doing? Why’re you stopping here?”

“I’m not stopping. I’m waiting for the traffic to pass so I can turn the car around,” she explained. “I need to speak with your ex-father.”

Fry deftly snatched the keys from the ignition.

“Give me those,” his mother said.

“No, ma’am.”

“Do you want to kill us both? We’re parked in the middle of Route 41, or didn’t you notice?”

She has a point, Fry thought. It was a good way to get flattened by an eighteen-wheeler.

“Dad’s in Miami,” he said, “so there’s no point racing home.”

“Did they catch whoever did this? Have they arrested anybody?”

“No, but Mr. Piejack told the cops it was three Spanish-speaking guys he’d never seen before. So don’t automatically assume Dad was involved,” Fry said, though he himself assumed the same thing.

His mother laughed. “Who else could it be? A normal person would’ve had Louis beat up or shot. It’s just like Perry to get carried away and hire a gang of sadistic gangsters. Stone crabs, I mean, how sick is that!”

Cars and trucks and campers were stacking up, honking behind them.

“The keys, please.” Honey held out a hand.

“What-you think he was trying to impress you or something?” the boy asked. “Maybe he was just pissed off.”

Honey sighed and adjusted the rearview mirror in order to better appraise the chaos mounting behind them. Fry sullenly tossed her the car keys.

“Attaboy. Now let’s go buy some kayaks,” she said.

“Whatever.”

Fry didn’t know what his mother was planning, but he feared that she was slipping into one of her manic spirals. She’d made no credible effort to land another job, even though the manager at Wal-Mart had left two phone messages asking her to come in for an interview.

Meanwhile she was spending hours at the kitchen table poring over marine charts of the Ten Thousand Islands. The more she gibbered about starting an ecotour business, the more Fry regretted not telling his father how concerned he was. Honey Santana had no innate sense of direction, frequently getting lost in broad daylight in an automobile, on a grid bristling with street signs. Out on the water, the possibilities for calamity were infinite.

Still, Fry tried to remain optimistic. After all, several days had passed since his mother had mentioned the foulmouthed telemarketer. That could only mean she’d already confronted (and probably crucified) the a-hole, either by telephone or snail mail.

Which was good, Fry thought. She’d gotten all that venom out of her system without harming a soul, including herself.

On the other hand, she continued to skate around all questions pertaining to the two airline tickets. Fry was exasperated, and more than a little suspicious.

“So, who are these friends that you’re flying in?” he asked when they were stopped at a traffic light.

“I told you about seventeen times-it’s been like forever since I’ve seen ’em.”

“You guys go to high school together or something?”

“Junior high.” Honey kept her eyes fixed on the highway. “But we’ve stayed in touch. They send a fruitcake every Christmas.”

Fry pointed out that he’d never seen a fruitcake in their home.

“That’s because I throw the damn things out immediately. Stuff’ll rot your teeth like battery acid,” his mother said.

She was obviously winging it, so Fry dropped the subject. He also decided not to inquire why she’d stopped shaving her right leg-he couldn’t imagine any response that would put his mind at ease.

They stopped at an upscale outfitter’s shop, where some over-tanned Yuppie wearing razor-pressed khakis informed them that a thousand dollars wasn’t nearly enough for two new tandem ocean kayaks. Prowling in the rear of the shop, Honey Santana discovered a pair of used fifteen-footers, one red and one yellow. In no time she talked Khaki Jack into selling her both, plus paddles and travel racks, for nine hundred even.

“That guy couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, twenty-six years old,” Honey remarked on the trip home. “I can’t believe he asked for my phone number.”

“I can’t believe you gave it to him,” Fry grumbled.

“Actually, I didn’t.”

“Then whose number was that?”

“Oh, I just made one up.”

Again Honey wasn’t being truthful. It was Perry Skinner’s number she handed out to men who wanted to call her but whom she had no intention of dating. One conversation with her ex-husband usually cooled their interest, Honey had found, while simultaneously serving to remind Perry that not all guys thought she was a basket case.

“Hey, I need a favor,” she said to her son. “Would you mind crashing at your ex-father’s place for a few days?”

“Can you please stop calling him that?”

“Thing is, I invited my friends to stay at the trailer, which means I’ll have to sleep in your room,” Honey said.

Fry hitched his eyebrows.

“Honest to God, I won’t peek in the closet.”

“Damn straight.”

“Or under your mattress.”

“How do you know what’s under the mattress?” Fry demanded.

“Because that’s where all teenage boys hide their porn, isn’t it?” Honey said. “It’s only for three or four days, I promise. And I won’t touch the computer, either.”

“Why can’t they get a motel?”

“Because they’re on a budget, young man. Not everybody’s rolling in dough like the president’s millionaire pals in the oil racket. Or Mr. Perry Skinner, the dope smuggler.”

“Knock it off, Mom. And watch where you’re going, ’kay?”

“I’m doing fine!” she snapped.

“In England you’d be doing fine. In this country we use the other side of the road.”

His mother’s driving skills eroded dramatically whenever she got frazzled.

“I don’t mind going to Dad’s,” Fry told her in a calming tone. “I’ll ask him as soon as he gets back from Miami.”

“Thank you.” Honey exhaled with relief. “I owe you a big one.”

She seemed to relax, and almost immediately the car found its way back to the proper lane. Later she began humming a tune that resembled in no way the song on the radio.

Another ominous sign, her son knew.

He said, “So when will they be here? Your friends.”

“Day after tomorrow,” his mother replied.

“You never even told me their names.”

Honey Santana drummed her fingernails on the steering wheel. “Oh, we’ll all get together for dinner one night. I promise.”

He counted three young men and three young women. Their beer cans glinted in the firelight. Thanks to a thundering boom box (with which one of them was now doing a tango), they hadn’t heard Sammy Tigertail’s somewhat unstealthy approach. He crouched in a line of palmettos and watched the kids frisking around a wind-whipped fire that they’d built on a dry spit of beach. Nearby were three gum ball-colored canoes that had been dragged ashore and emptied. Numerous articles of clothing, including bras and bathing suits, had been laid out to dry on the upturned hulls.

Sammy Tigertail guessed that the intruders were about his age, probably college students on holiday break. Most likely they were harmless, yet he wanted them to go away. He wished not to be seen by any other humans. The battery in his cell phone had died, so for all he knew, a police manhunt was under way for the missing Wilson and the Indian airboat driver with whom he’d last been seen.

It was Sonny Tigertail’s third night of spying on the strangers, and finally he’d settled on a plan. Frightening them off would be easy; a couple of rifle shots over their pale heads would do the job. But first he needed to steal a canoe, a small crime requiring grit and patience.