Russell Banks - Lost Memory of Skin

So I’m sort of like a pioneer, right?

That’s right, Kid. You’re the future. Now, remember this spot, Kid.

Why?

No special reason. It’s just a spot where we had an interesting discussion about the future. Maybe our last.

Yeah, okay. Drive on, Haystack. The Kid’s got an appointment with destiny in the Great Panzacola Swamp.

So the Kid’s speaking of himself in the third person now? Money talks, I guess.

Yeah, it does. Unless you’re a parrot.

The Professor, chuckling, drives on.

THE COUNTY ROAD INTO THE GREAT PANZACOLA Swamp ends at a crushed limestone parking lot the size of a football field. Adjacent to the parking lot a grove of tall slash pines draped with scarfs of Spanish moss slopes down to the shallow end of a long, narrow estuary where the swamp empties into the southern end of Calusa Bay. It’s the first of dozens of small, meandering, island-clotted estuaries where freshwater slowly slides off the swamp and mingles with the salty depths of the Bay and the Gulf. All the way west to the Gulf and north to the lakes, except for the turnpike that slices off the top of the park with a single straight stroke, there are no more paved or unpaved roads. Nothing but endless miles of floodwater sluiced off the lakes in concrete canals and poured into the swamp where it spreads out in a thin slowly drifting plane of water that passes through tangled thickets of mangrove and saturates wide knee-high saw grass veldts. It’s a primitive ancient landscape, Paleozoic. From time to time the shimmering watery plane gets split by low tree-covered hummocks into mazes of dark shifty streams and sloughs, making thousands of impenetrable islets where water moccasins lurk and alligators wait patiently in the mud for their next meal. Here and there along the outer edges of the park ripples of dry sandy ground and a long broken chain of oyster-shell mounds, ten-thousand-year-old midden heaps left by the first human residents of the swamp, are laced with narrow footpaths and board catwalks, nature trails for day-trippers winding in circuitous routes to dark green observation towers that stick up from the flat expanse of the vast swamplike sentries.

In the shady grove by the parking lot most of the Spanish moss has been ripped from the branches of the slash pines by yesterday’s wind and several of the larger, older trees have been uprooted and thrown to the ground. Palmettos and torn palm fronds lie scattered around the lot and under the trees, yellowing in the morning sun like abandoned brooms. The Professor’s van, a red national park service pickup truck, and a dark green minibus with the county seal on the side door are the only vehicles in sight. On the seaside of the estuary where the swamp flows into the Bay a quarried limestone breaker and a wide bunkerlike concrete dock with a half-dozen empty slips and a boat-launch ramp appear to have survived the storm intact and undamaged. Opposite the slips and the dock four young black men in baggy dark green trousers and pale green T-shirts lug aluminum rental canoes from a rusted corrugated iron shed and place them gently down on the grassy bank of a slurred black-water stream that flows out of the dense jungle beyond. A portly middle-aged white man in a dark green short-sleeved shirt and trousers with a rifle cradled in the crook of his arm stands nearby smoking a cigarette. He watches the Kid and the Professor as they pass, flicks his cigarette butt into the water, and turns back to his prisoners.

A forty-foot open tour boat with a canvas canopy extending its length has been let back into the water and tied to stanchions. A teenage white boy near the bow of the boat wearing the same inmate’s uniform as the young black men pointedly grunts from the effort of lifting an overturned ticket booth back into a standing position ready for business. At the edge of the dock a peeling gasoline pump and beside it another for diesel wait for takers. A tipped hand-painted sign, PAY INSIDE! CASH ONLY! points toward a low flat-roofed cinder block building where a lizard-skinned man in a baseball cap, sleeveless undershirt and cutoffs and a tanned white-haired woman in denim overalls and tie-dyed T-shirt pry sheets of plywood off the plate glass store windows. Signs on the glass advertise groceries, fishing gear, beer, bait, and sundries, an ATM, and a United States post office, Panzacola branch.

Behind the store and adjacent to the parking lot is the ranger station, a low stucco Bahama-style building with a covered porch on three sides and open floor-to-ceiling wood-latticed windows. There’s a small office for the rangers in back and in the front an information center with a pamphlet stand and public restrooms, a beverage-dispensing machine and not much else. There are no visitors to the park this morning. Only the Professor, the Kid, Annie on a rope leash, and Einstein in his cage.

A heavyset red-faced ranger in his late thirties with a pale blond buzz cut and rumpled uniform, his short-sleeved shirt already wet with sweat, sits at his desk in the office and talks into the radio to fellow rangers located deep in the swamp checking on storm damage to the lookout towers and catwalks. The ranger glances up and notices the Professor and the Kid. Park’s closed today, folks. On account of the hurricane. No visitors. Not till tomorrow at least.

I was gonna rent a houseboat.

The ranger says he’ll need a permit. He speaks in short crisp sentences. No permits issued till tomorrow. Still have to clear some trails out there.

Without meaning to the Kid imitates the ranger’s way of speaking. He says he’s ex-military. Back from Afghanistan. Needs to clear his head.

The ranger crinkles his brow and thinks a minute. Ex-military, eh? He asks the Kid if he knows how to handle a canoe.

The Kid lies and says sure. He’s never been in a canoe in his life but figures it can’t be all that hard to stick a paddle in the water and push. Or maybe you pull.

The ranger says that the guy who runs the rentals is short of workers today. All he’s got is a small crew from the county jail that the guard won’t let him send into the swamp. Willing to work a few hours for no pay?

Maybe. Why?

Go talk to Cat Turnbull. Guy who runs the store. Help him get his houseboats in from the swamp this morning, maybe he’ll rent you one today. If he does, I’ll give you a permit to go into the park. In spite of its being officially closed till tomorrow. Seeing as how you already came all the way out here. You both going in? He tosses a skeptical glance at the Professor as if trying and failing to imagine the man paddling a canoe. Hard to imagine him even sitting in one.

No. Just me.

How long you want it for?

Not sure yet. Have to see how it goes. A few days anyhow. Maybe more.

Okay. Costs fifty-something bucks a day. Plus tax. Cat’ll want a deposit. You got a credit card?

No. I got cash though.

The Professor grunts.

Okay, go see Cat. Tell him what I said about volunteering. Take it from there.

The Kid snaps him a military salute, turns on his heels and marches out to the parking lot. The Professor, leading Annie and holding Einstein’s cage, trails along behind.

At the store, where Cat Turnbull and his wife are still removing plywood sheets from the windows, the Kid makes his deal for the houseboat. The leather-skinned old man is surprised and pleased to hear the Kid’s offer to help bring the boats in from the swamp where they rode out the storm. And he’s very glad to have what looks like a cash-paying rental in hand, especially at this time of year, four months before the start of tourist season. From March to December the only business that comes through the door of his store is brought by fishermen from Calusa who drive in with their own fishing gear and boats with the gas tanks already topped off and park in the lot and launch their boats straight into the Bay; and bird-watchers who want only to walk the marshes on the footpaths and catwalks and bring their own binoculars and sandwiches, cold drinks, and coolers with them. From June to early October, hurricane season which is where we are now, even the local fishermen and bird-watchers stay away. This kid is the first cash customer he’s seen in nearly two weeks. And now he’s offering to paddle into the swamp where they parked the houseboats and bring them in. Good deal.