Nature Girl

“You’re cute enough for it,” Eugenie said.

“Check out the video and let me know. A ‘weather personality’ is what they call the job. I’d have to take some, like, meteorology classes and probably switch majors, but that’s okay.”

“So you’ll go back to school?”

Gillian glanced at the Indian, who was lying mute and miserable next to Lester on the ground. She said, “I guess. If this thing with Thlocko doesn’t turn serious.”

Eugenie said, “His kind of serious is too serious, trust me. You got a flashlight I can borrow?”

Gillian found one among the Indian’s supplies and handed it to Eugenie, who went off toting Dealey’s video case into the darkness. Gillian thought: That girl’s not scared of anything.

“Where’s she going?” Sammy Tigertail raised up on one elbow. “Tell her to get back here.”

Gillian walked over and lay down on top of him, her lips lightly touching his neck and her breasts pressing against the warmth of his chest. She could feel his heart pounding, and it made her smile.

“This time you be the alligator,” she said.

The moaners had been right. Somebody was firing a gun.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, I heard it.” Ski

Fry bounced like a sack of apples in the bow. The football helmet felt as if it weighed twenty pounds. Three hundred yards from the island his father raised the engine and started poling again. Fry was in charge of the spotlight.

“You sure this is where the shot came from?”

“Fifty-fifty. So damn windy it’s hard to tell.”

“There’s no beach like at the other place,” Fry observed.

“I’m go

“You got it.” The beam cut a smoky purple groove through the dark. Fry was growing numb from riding in the cold, but numb wasn’t bad. It kept him from breaking down when he thought about his mother.

“Does Mr. Piejack have a gun?” he asked.

Perry Ski

“Dad, does Louis Piejack keep a gun?”

“That was a rifle we heard.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Piejack’s got a shotgun, a crappy little sawed-off. You can shut down that spotlight now, we’re almost there.”

Fry hardly ever thought about the divorce; when it had happened, he wasn’t surprised and certainly not traumatized. His mother and father were so different that he’d long been baffled by their marriage. He was now old enough to understand that Honey Santana and Perry Ski

“Dad, what’s the name of this island?”

“Dismal Key.”

“That’s sick.”

“I’m not jokin’,” Ski

“I know.”

They stepped out onto the flats and pulled the skiff toward the trees. The shoreline was longer than on the other island, and more densely foliated. Fry thought he smelled camp smoke but he couldn’t see any fires.

After securing the boat, Ski

“Light,” Ski

Fry aimed the beam.

“No. Over there.” His father pointed.

The spot fell on a red kayak and a yellow kayak, empty and tethered together.

“Those are Mom’s!” At first, Fry was elated, then queasy with dread. What if they were too late?

Ski

“Go on. I’ll catch up later,” Fry said. He was embarrassed to be puking in front of his father, who already felt guilty about taking him out of the hospital.

“Don’t leave this spot-you understand?” Ski

Fry handed over the spotlight. “But I want to help find Mom.”

“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Do not move.”

“I heard you, Dad.”

He waited until he was alone before upchucking again. He hoped it wasn’t fear that was making him sick. He hoped it was a flu bug, or even the knot on his head.

He sat back, resting against the rock-hard trunk of a gumbo limbo. His ankles stung from the barnacle scrapes, but at least his stomach was settling. Still, he meant to obey his father and remain right where he was. He had no intention of going anywhere…

Until he heard among the stirring leaves a soft voice. Fry cupped the ear holes of his helmet and listened-it was definitely a woman. She was speaking in a hurried, secretive tone.

The boy sprang up and ran toward the voice. He was moving at a steady jog, snapping branches and kicking deadwood, when he burst from a thicket and surprised her. He was crestfallen to see that it wasn’t his mother.

“Well, if it ain’t Dan Marino,” the woman said, “scaring the holy crap outta me.”

Fry was out of breath and nauseated again. The woman steered him to an aluminum suitcase and made him sit on it. She had thick light-colored hair and wore a cotton pullover, and she was nearly as tall as his father. In one hand she held a cell phone and in the other a flashlight. Fry doubted she was the college girl who’d run off with the poacher; she looked too old to be in school.

“What’s up with the helmet?” she asked.

“I got a concussion. I’m out here lookin’ for my mom.”

“Yeah, and I’m lookin’ for Joh

“I’m serious. She took some people on a kayak trip.”

The woman turned the flashlight on Fry’s face. “Oh my Lord. Are you Honey’s boy?”

Fry pushed to his feet. “Where is she? Is she all right?”

The woman was silent for a few moments. “Damn,” she said finally.

“What’s wrong? Tell me!”

“Oh, she’s fine. It’s just that I honestly wasn’t pla

Fry said, “Wait-you’re one of the kayakers.” She was the woman he’d seen from a distance, outside his mother’s trailer, while they were loading the car for the trip.

“Where’s your husband?” he asked.

The woman made a pinched face. “We are not married, thank you very much. He’s my former travel companion and he’s with your mom right now, griping like a brat and driving her crazy, no doubt. It’s a long, pitiful story.”

“She said she knew you both from junior high. Said you were old friends.”

The woman was grandly amused. “Where’s your boat, by the way? Can I hitch a ride back to the real world?”

“But we heard a gunshot, my dad and I.”

“Yeah, some spaced-out Seminole accidentally plugged the guy who loaned me this cell phone, which unfortunately just ran out of juice in the middle of an extremely urgent call. My name’s Genie, by the way.” The woman firmly shook his hand. “It’s okay, the guy who got shot didn’t die or anything. Technically, he didn’t even loan me the phone-I sorta borrowed it while he was passed out.”

Fry said, “That’s how I found you. I heard you talking to somebody.”

“The reservation desk at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples,” the woman explained. “Tragically, the battery croaked before they could take my MasterCard number. You mentioned your father-where’d he waltz off to?”