Carl Hiaasen - Nature Girl

From the bow came Gillian’s voice: “What should I call you? I mean, since you won’t even tell me your name.”

“Thlocklo Tustenuggee,” he said.

It was his great-great-great-grandfather’s Seminole name.

“Thlocka what?” said Gillian.

Sammy Tigertail pronounced it again, although not as mellifluously as the first time. Since returning to the reservation, he had struggled to master the traditional Muskogee dialect.

“Never mind,” Gillian mumbled.

“Tiger Tail,” he said between strokes. “That’s my other name.”

“Cool. I like ’em both.”

The tip of the paddle struck something hard under the surface, jolting the canoe. Gillian yipped and said, “Easy, dude!”

Sammy Tigertail cursed under his breath as the hull screaked across a submerged oyster bar.

A few minutes later the girl said, “I did two semesters of crew.”

“What?”

“Rowing. We can take turns with the paddle,” she offered. “I’m serious. It’ll give me somethin’ to keep my mind off the damn bugs.”

“Why’d you ask to come with me?”

“I dunno, Thlocko. Why did you let me?” Gillian laughed. “I’m semi-drunk and totally stoned. What’s your excuse?”

“I’m weak,” Sammy said flatly. He dug harder against the tide.

“So, am I your first-ever hostage?” she asked.

He thought of Wilson, the tourist. “The first live one,” he said.

“You’re funny.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me one funny Injun.”

Honey Santana grew up in Miami, where her parents owned a jewelry store on Coral Way. She had three older sisters, each of whom married urologists and moved across the causeway to Miami Beach. Honey was different. Even as a child she’d felt suffocated and disoriented in the city. Crowds made her dizzy and traffic gave her migraines.

She inherited her father’s impatience and her mother’s lousy sense of direction, a combination that made her teen driving years exceptionally eventful. On the night of her senior prom, Honey’s date got blasted on Cuervo and passed out on top of her in the spacious backseat of his father’s Continental Mark IV. The task of navigating homeward fell to Honey, who missed the turn off Eighth Street and continued due west on the Tamiami Trail, all the way to the opposite coast of Florida. Honey’s date, who would grow up to be a heartthrob on a popular Latin soap opera, awoke to the surreal vision of Honey skipping barefoot in her ice-blue prom gown along the Naples beach.

On the return drive across the Everglades, the young man pulled over numerous times to throw up. The last of these pit stops occurred near a kidney-shaped pond in which a large alligator was wolfing down a purple gallinule. Honey got out of the car to watch, aghast but fascinated. After a while she went back to the Lincoln and found her date snoring in a splash of his own vomit. She took a long thoughtful walk around the pond, counting three more alligators and five old beer cans, which she gathered up.

From the road came the sound of squealing brakes. Honey turned and saw a westbound pickup skid to a halt, tires smoking. The man who stepped out wore a dark flannel shirt and pale dungarees and white rubber boots that came up to his knees. He walked over to Honey and asked if she was all right. Then he took the rusty beer cans from her arms and lobbed them one by one into the bed of his truck.

Immediately Honey Santana forgot about the tuxedoed nitwit passed out in the Continental.

The man in the rubber boots had broad shoulders, his hair was sun-bleached and his face was baked caramel brown. Honey thought he was uncommonly good-looking. He told her he was a commercial fisherman from Everglades City, and a volunteer firefighter. He said he was heading home from Dania, where he’d purchased two new propellers for his crab boat. He said his name was Perry Skinner.

“Perry, do you have a pen I can borrow?” Honey asked.

In the console of the truck he found a black marker that he used for numbering boxes of crab claws.

“That’ll do fine,” Honey said.

She walked over to the Lincoln and picked up the limp right arm of her date. She removed the silver cuff link and rolled up the sleeve. With the black marker she wrote out the word LOSER in fat block letters stretching from the young man’s wrist to his elbow.

Perry Skinner, who was standing behind Honey, said, “I can’t take you home. I’ve gotta work tomorrow.”

“I don’t want to go home,” she told him. “Anywhere except home would be lovely.”

“Look, I’m married,” he said.

“Liar.”

He grinned. “How’d you know?”

Honey hooked a finger in the waistband of his dungarees. “See, you missed a loop with your belt. My mom would never let my dad out of the house if he did that. No wife would-or girlfriend. I got ten bucks says you live alone.”

Skinner raised his hands in surrender. Honey let go of his pants.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

Honey told him. She was thinking about his outstanding smile.

“How old are you, Perry?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Well, I’m only eighteen and a half,” Honey said, “but if I stay in Miami ’til my next birthday, I’ll go totally fucking insane. Honest to God.”

Perry Skinner said he’d seen it happen before. He opened the passenger door of the truck and she climbed in.

“You didn’t even ask about my ridiculous dress,” she said.

“And you didn’t ask about my rubber boots.”

Three weeks later they got married.

Honey Santana was surprised to see Fry’s skateboard on the sidewalk when she parked in front of her ex-husband’s house. The screen door was half-open so she knocked lightly and let herself in. The two of them were in the kitchen, pretending to talk about something other than her. Honey wasn’t fooled.

“Don’t you have homework?” she asked her son.

“Just algebra. Quadratic equations-totally easy.”

“Get a move on.”

Fry looked to his father for a reprieve. Perry Skinner tossed him an apple and said, “See you at the track meet tomorrow.” Fry slung his book bag over one shoulder, shuffled out the door and skated away.

Honey said, “Let me guess-he thinks I need to start back with the shrink.”

“Be grateful you’ve got a kid that gives a shit,” Skinner said. “Want something to drink?”

“I’m fine, Perry.”

“How about an orange?”

“No, I mean I’m fine. As in, not loony,” Honey said. “Fry worries too much, same as you.”

Skinner went out on the porch and sat down in his rocking chair. Honey followed but remained standing.

“He said you found some decent kayaks,” Skinner said.

“I didn’t really come to talk about that.”

“Or say thanks, either, I guess.”

Honey was stung. “Knock it off,” she told him.

“I’m dying to hear more about these ecotours. Where exactly do you plan to go?”

“Back in the islands.” She waved her hand toward the river. “I’ve got the trip all charted out. Give me some credit, okay?”

Skinner took out a joint and lighted it up.

“Oh, that’s polite,” Honey said.

Skinner ignored the bite in her tone. “You got your medicine, I got mine. By the way, Fry can stay with me for as long as he wants.”

“What?”

“He said you needed his room for those friends who’re coming into town.”

“Oh. Right,” Honey said. “Thanks.”

“See, that wasn’t so painful.”

She let it slide. She was watching an osprey fly upriver with a fish wriggling in its talons. Her skull had filled up with two songs playing simultaneously. It sounded like “Bell Bottom Blues,” which she loved, and “Karma Chameleon,” which made her bowels cramp. Honey wilted under a churning wave of vertigo.