Carl Hiaasen - Nature Girl

Piejack was glaring at both of them. “Git lost, kid!”

Fry whispered to his mother: “I heard the gun go off and I freaked. Have you seen Dad?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Dad’s tryin’ to find you. We came out here together.”

Honey thought: I’m gonna brain that man.

“I tole you to beat it!” Piejack bellowed at Fry.

“Chill out, Louis,” Honey said.

“It’s just you and me, angel, that was the deal. You and me for all time.” Piejack coldly leveled the sawed-off at Fry. “I ain’t gonna be nobody’s step-pappy. Now git movin’, boy. Go home to your old man.”

Honey firmly turned her son. “You heard him. Get outta here.”

“I’m not leaving. No way.”

“What’d you say?” Piejack tilted his head. “I can’t hear a goddamn word. You gotta speak up.”

Fry pulled free of his mother’s grasp and stepped toward Louis Piejack until the barrel of the shotgun touched the face guard of his helmet.

“I said, I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE!” the boy hollered.

Then he doubled over and puked on Piejack’s shoes.

For once, Honey Santana’s head was absolutely clear. No tunes blared. No sirens whined. No trains whistled. A rare and welcome clarity prevailed.

A brutish criminal had clobbered her son, and there was only one appropriate response: Honey clamped both hands around Louis Piejack’s oily neck.

It felt right; empowering, as Oprah might say.

Honey knew that if the man shot her, she would die strangling him. Saving Fry was all that mattered.

Honey forced Piejack against a pigeon plum tree, trapping the shotgun between their bodies. The barrel lodged lengthwise in her cleavage, the dirty muzzle sticking up at her chin. Fire ants began pouring out of Piejack’s bandaged hand, which he flogged against his thigh until the surgical dressing fell off in a putrid husk.

To hinder his movements she pressed harder, though at first the lecherous fishmonger seemed to enjoy the rough frontal contact. He winked moistly and ran his spotted tongue around his lips.

When Honey squeezed harder, Piejack’s smirk faded. His yellowed eyes began to bulge and seep. Brownish spittle bubbled from the corners of his mouth, and his rank breath came in short, croupy emanations. As she dug her fingertips into his Adam’s apple, Honey regretted having trimmed her nails the week before. She nonetheless felt capable of inflicting mortal damage, and, despite his narcotic intake, the sonofabitch was definitely uncomfortable. She could tell by his gurgling.

“Watch out!” It was Fry.

To Honey’s immense relief, the boy hadn’t been hurt. Piejack’s gun butt had cracked the football helmet and knocked him flat, but Fry had sprung up quickly. Honey caught glimpses of him circling the scene, darting in to throw wild, ineffectual punches.

“I told you to get outta here!” When she opened her mouth to yell, her broken jawbone clacked like a castanet.

“No way!” Fry shouted back.

“Do-as-I-say!”

“Mom! Look!”

“Oh shit.”

From wrists to shoulders, her sleeves shimmered with fire ants. They were abandoning Piejack en masse, using Honey as a bridge. By the hundreds they streamed down her arms, but she was afraid to release her grip on Piejack to slap them away. He’d need only a moment, Honey knew, to regain control of the sawed-off.

As Fry flayed at the insects with a palmetto frond, Honey tried not to think about where the blood-red hordes might be heading. Piejack’s misshapen face was darkening due to loss of oxygen, yet he continued to grapple ferociously with good hand and bad for possession of the shotgun. So heated was the scuffle that Honey failed to notice a column of ants disappear between the top buttons of her shirt. The stings seared, like a sprinkle of hot acid, and she wondered how much she could endure.

Not enough, it turned out. Within seconds she was breathless from the pain. She let go of Piejack, tore off her shirt and flung herself down. When she stopped rolling, he stood over her panting and clutching the sawed-off. His shoes still reeked of Fry’s vomit.

Honey sat up and crossed her arms, to cover her bra. Her chest was burning along a sinuous track of tiny crimson bites.

“They’s one in your curls,” Piejack croaked.

As shaky as he was, the man had managed to hook one of his reconnected digits, possibly a pinkie, over the shotgun’s trigger. With the more nimble fingers of his good hand he was grubbing dirt from his ears.

Honey flicked the ant from her hair and thought: Where the hell is my son?

To find out if Piejack’s hearing had returned, she asked in a level tone, “What’re you going to do now, Louis?”

“What the hell d’ya think? I’m gonna shoot yer fine ass,” he said, “but first I’m gonna fuck it.”

He coughed up something, scowled at the taste and spat. Honey peered out between his knees, looking in vain for Fry.

Piejack said, “Your kid’s run off. But I’ll catch him later, don’tcha worry.”

His eyeballs rolled and he gulped slowly, like a toad. It was plain that Honey had injured him.

“Lose them pants,” he told her.

“Not a chance, Louis.”

“You know damn well I’ll shoot.”

“And that’s the only way it would ever happen between us-if I was dead,” Honey said.

“Now, that ain’t too bright.” Piejack touched the sawed-off to her forehead. “But if that’s how you want it…”

Honey expected her whole life to flash past, like people said it would, yet only a single event from her thirty-nine years replayed in fast-forward: Fry’s arrival.

She’d gone into labor on a Monday afternoon, six weeks early. Radioed Perry out on the crab boat. He raced home, carried her to the truck and sped ninety-five miles an hour across the state to Jackson Hospital in Miami. A sweet old Cuban doctor asked if she wanted an epidural, and Honey answered no because she figured the baby would be small and it wouldn’t hurt so much coming out. But it hurt plenty, and lasted way longer than she’d expected: fifteen hours and forty-one minutes. Perry stayed by her side. When there was pain he’d squeeze Honey’s hand, and when there wasn’t, he’d read to her from a book of fishing stories by Zane Grey. Honey had no interest in fishing, but it was the first time she’d heard her husband read aloud and for some reason she found it calming.

Then the cramps got fierce. Doctor told her to push. Nurses told her to push. Perry told her to push. Honey remembered biting her lip, thinking: Thank God the little guy didn’t go full term. He’d split me open like a melon! And all of a sudden there he was, wriggling on the sheets like a purple tadpole: Fry Marti Skinner, four pounds and fourteen ounces.

From the first breath he seemed uncommonly self-assured. Never cried once in the delivery room, not even when Perry snipped the cord. The nurses were freaking because the child wouldn’t make a peep, but Honey wasn’t worried. Boy was smart. Knew he was safe and loved.

Mom and Dad were the ones who’d wept when the nurses bundled Fry off to the preemie ward and wired him up like a mouse in a laboratory tank. Fluid in the lungs, the doctor said, avoiding the term pneumonia so as not to further derail Honey, who was already frantic. She refused to leave the hospital, Skinner bringing her meals and books and fresh clothes. Fifteen days later Fry was home and his mother was whole, though not unchanged.

It was natural now, with time running out, that the final thought in her head would be of her son.

Who now emerged helmetless from behind the pigeon plum tree. He was carrying a bleached and broken two-by-four.

Honey willed herself to be silent and locked her gaze upon Louis Piejack’s shotgun. Best that he kept pointing it at her, not elsewhere.