Nature Girl

Expressionless, she gazed up the barrel.

“Now, git yourself naked and let’s start this romance off proper,” Piejack said. “Then we’ll take the boat home and be happy ever after, just you, me and Charlie Main. As for your boy, well, he’s better off with his daddy. You can visit him maybe on Saturdays, if I don’t need you at the market. That’s the fuckin’ deal, angel, take it or leave it.”

Honey said, “I need time to think, Louis.”

“How long, goddammit?”

“About three seconds.”

“Okay,” Piejack said. “One…two…”

On the count of three, something sharp and heavy struck him from behind and knocked the air from his lungs. Piejack pitched sideways, thinking: This ain’t love.

The first white person to betray Sammy Tigertail had been his stepmother, who’d dumped him at the reservation the morning after his father was buried. The second white person to betray him had been Cindy, his ex-girlfriend, who’d started screwing anyone with a functioning cock after the Seminole demolished her backyard meth lab and confiscated a butane-powered menorah that she’d swiped from a local Hanukkah display.

Sammy Tigertail would concede that his Native American heritage wasn’t a factor in either instance of treachery-his stepmother was simply a self-centered shrew who didn’t want to be saddled with a teenager, while poor Cindy was a buzzed-out tramp who would have cheated on Prince William for a thimbleful of crank. As it turned out, both women had done Sammy Tigertail a favor. One had liberated him from his pallid existence as Chad McQueen, and the other had sprung him from a destructive and potentially gene-thi

Like many modern Seminoles, he had never been personally abused, subjugated, swindled or displaced by a white settler. The “injurious accompaniments” to which the Rev. Clay MacCauley had alluded in his nineteenth-century journal were old, bitter history; there had been no significant perfidy or bloodshed for generations. By the 1970s Florida was being stampeded from coast to coast, and the fortunes of the Seminoles had begun to change in a most unexpected way. It all started with a couple of bingo halls, and the knowledge that bored white people were fools for gambling. Soon they were swarming to the reservations by the busloads, and the bingo venues expanded to make room for card games and electronic poker.

Even as its numbers dwindled, the tribe’s prominence was inversely escalating to a dimension that boggled the elders. Wealth brought what three bloody wars had failed to win from the whites: deference. Once written off as a ragged band of heathens, the Seminole Nation grew into a formidable corporate power with its own brigade of lawyers and lobbyists. The Indians found themselves embraced by the lily-white business establishment, and avidly courted by politicians of all persuasions.

Some tribal members called it justice while others, such as Sammy Tigertail, called it a sellout. His uncle Tommy, who had helped mastermind the Seminole casino strategy, respected and even sympathized with the misgivings of his half-blooded nephew.

“My heart was in the same place,” he’d once told Sammy, “but then one day I asked myself, Who is there left to fight? Andrew Jackson’s dead, boy. His face is on the twenty-dollar bill, and we’ve got suitcases full at the casinos. Every night we stack ’em in a Brink’s truck and haul ’em to the bank. It’s better than spitting on the old bastard’s grave. Think of it, boy. All their famous soldiers are gone-Jackson, Jesup, Clinch-yet here we are.”

Yeah, thought Sammy Tigertail, here I am. Risking my dumb ass to help a white man rescue his wacko ex-wife.

The shot had sounded odd; like a firecracker in a toilet.

Ski

No one appeared to have been wounded, despite the ominous echo of gunfire earlier. The Seminole briefly considered dashing to his canoe, for the frenzied scene in front of him promised a messy climax that was certain to further complicate his life. There are at least 9,999 other islands, he thought, where a man might find peace and isolation.

And Sammy Tigertail might have bolted if it weren’t for the improbable sight of Ski

Ahead he saw Ski

The man then leered and displayed for the boy’s horrified parents the shiny black.45, which had been jarred from Ski

As the fiend placed the weapon to Fry’s temple, Sammy Tigertail regretted losing his composure and busting his rifle into pieces, as now he had no means by which to end the mayhem. Without moving a step, he took inventory. Ski

“Get lost, asswipe.” It was Piejack, finally taking notice of the Seminole. “This ain’t yer bidness.”

The creep might be right, Sammy Tigertail thought, but here I am.

“Be on your way,” Piejack said, “’less you wa

The Indian could almost hear his uncle saying: What’s happening there has nothing to do with you. It’s more crazy shit among white people, that’s all.

“Can I get my guitar?” Sammy Tigertail asked. He had spotted the Gibson, his fondest co

Piejack said, “That thing’s yours? Ha!”

Sammy Tigertail recalled a quote he’d memorized as a teenager. It was from Gen. Thomas Jesup, appraising the long Indian war in Florida:

We have, at no former period of our history, had to contend with so formidable an enemy. No Seminole proves false to his country, nor has a single instance ever occurred of a first rate warrior having surrendered.

Sammy Tigertail’s uncle had said it was mostly true. He’d also said there were some in the tribe who’d dropped their weapons and run like jackrabbits; others who’d taken bribes from the U.S. generals in exchange for scratching their names on worthless treaties.