Chomp

TEN

Mickey Cray was surprised to learn that Derek Badger didn’t want any of his captive critters on location. Mickey had never wrangled for a nature show that used only wild animals, nor had he ever encountered a person less qualified than Derek to handle untamed specimens.

“How ’bout if I bring a water moccasin? I got a three-footer so calm that a baby could play with it,” he said. “Or maybe a couple of the raccoons-they’re always fun to have around the set.”

Raven Stark said no thanks. “Derek wants to do this totally wild and raw.”

“Slow and dumb doesn’t mix with wild and raw.”

“Thanks for your input, Mr. Cray.”

“Seriously. The man almost got killed by the world’s laziest alligator.”

Raven said, “See you bright and early.”

The next morning, Mickey got the kids up first. While he went out back to check on the animals, they ate a quick breakfast and loaded the truck. Wahoo told Tuna that she should call her father to let him know she was all right.

“I already did,” she said. “He hadn’t even noticed I was gone.”

“Didn’t he ask where you were?”

“Nope. He was too busy yelling.” She tossed her tote bag into the back of the pickup. Her black eye looked worse than it had the night before.

Wahoo said, “Your dad could go to jail for what he did.”

“What if I told you I hit him back? Let’s just say he won’t be riding any motorcycles for a while.”

They spritzed each other with bug repellent and walked down to the pond because Tuna wanted to have a look at Alice.

“Wow. That’s a major Alligator mississippiensis.”

“A queen,” Wahoo agreed.

“To think, she almost ate the great Derek Badger.”

“She wasn’t trying to eat him. He climbed on her back and she spazzed out.”

Tuna grinned. “Whatever. It’s still epic.”

Expedition Survival! was one of her all-time favorite TV shows, and she was excited about the opportunity to see Derek Badger in action. Wahoo didn’t want to burst her bubble by revealing that the man was a menace to all other life-forms. She’d figure that out for herself.

“Do you think I’ll get to meet him?” she asked. “Would he autograph my jacket?”

Before Wahoo could compose a diplomatic answer, a racket arose from a nearby enclosure-the raccoons, demanding food.

“Procyon lotor,” Tuna said.

Wahoo wanted to know how she’d learned the scientific names for so many animals. She explained that the study was called taxonomy, which classified all living things into categories based on traits and common ancestors. The first part of the scientific name identified the genus, and the last part was the species.

“Every organism, from a fungus to a whale, has its own special place on the taxonomy chart. You should Google a guy named Linnaeus,” said Tuna. “Speaking of names-not Latin names-we both ended up as fish. How’d that happen?”

“I wasn’t named after the fish. I was named after a wrestler.”

“Yeah, but the wrestler was probably named after the fish,” Tuna said. “I was named for my aunt, who worked at a sushi bar. Any which way you look at it, we’re both named for something with scales, gills and fins. Personally, I’d prefer to be called something else.”

“Me too.”

“I see you as a Lance.”

“No way,” said Wahoo. “If you call me Lance, I swear, I’ll start calling you… Lucille.”

Tuna seemed delighted. “Cool. I could roll with Lucille.”

Wahoo’s father walked up and said it was almost time to go. Donny Dander was at his side, awaiting instructions on what to feed the Crays’ array of animals, and how often.

“If I come home and find any of ’em sick-and I mean one little monkey with a runny nose-you’re in deep trouble,” Mickey warned. “I will haunt you like a bleeping ghost.”

“Take it easy, bro,” Donny said. After what had happened the last time-when the parrots escaped, a lemur got sick and Alice mauled the crocodile-he knew better than to make Mickey mad.

“I’ll treat ’em like they’re my own,” Donny promised.

Mickey massaged his forehead. “Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.”

Leading the convoy to the Everglades were two equipment trucks hauling all the lights, scaffolds, wiring, batteries, sound boards and video cameras. Next was a rented minivan transporting Raven Stark and the crew, followed by the huge luxury motor coach carrying only Derek himself. Last in line was Mickey’s pickup truck.

They were on the road barely ten minutes when Wahoo saw his father wash down four aspirins with a slug of coffee.

“How are you feeling, Pop?”

“Like a million bucks.”

“Can you see okay?”

“One of everything. Quit worryin’.”

But Mickey’s hands were locked in a death grip on the steering wheel, and he was squinting like a stamp collector through the windshield.

“What’s wrong?” Tuna asked.

Wahoo told her about his father’s iguana injury. Tuna, who was sitting between them, said, “I’ve got some medicine that works pretty good.”

“I’m fine,” Mickey insisted.

“Then how come your eyes are watering?”

“Mind your own business.” He dragged a sleeve across his face to dry his cheeks.

Tuna said, “I’ll be right back.”

Before Wahoo could stop her, she slid open the back window of the cab compartment and squirmed out onto the open bed of the truck, among the groceries and camping gear. His father watched worriedly in the rearview mirror as she rummaged calmly through her tote bag.

Wahoo told his father to slow down. Tuna was so small that he feared she’d be bounced skyward if the pickup hit a bump.

Frowning, Mickey laid off the accelerator. “It was a big mistake, inviting that girl to come along.”

“What else could we do?” Wahoo said. “Send her back to her dad so he could punch her around some more? Plus, he’s got a gun!”

“Call the cops is what we should’ve done.”

“And where would she go if her old man was in jail? Stay all alone in that crappy motor home? In a Walmart parking lot?”

Mickey said, “Settle down. What’s done is done.”

Tuna slithered back through the window and repositioned herself between Wahoo and his father.

“You oughta be an acrobat,” Mickey said. “Join a circus or somethin’.”

Tuna uncapped a small brown bottle and tapped out two pink tablets. “Say aaahhh,” she instructed him.

“Are you nuts?”

She jabbed him sharply in the gut. When he opened his mouth to moan, she flicked the pills into his throat. He had no option but to swallow.

“Akkk-akkk!” he said.

“It’s a killer on migraines,” Tuna informed Wahoo.

Sure enough, within minutes Mickey’s eyes quit watering and his hands relaxed on the wheel. When Wahoo asked if he was feeling better, he denied it.

“Tell the truth, Pop.”

“Okay, maybe a little better. But so what?”

“Aren’t you even going to thank her?”

“Hey, I’m sorta busy right now. Driving?”

Wahoo turned to Tuna and said, “He’s too stubborn to say so, but thank you for the medicine.”

She smiled. “You’re welcome, Lance.”

Ahead of them, Derek Badger’s enormous black motor coach jounced and swayed on the road to the Everglades.

The man’s name was Sickler, and a year earlier he’d been run out of Tennessee for selling fake rubies at a fake mine outside of Gatlinburg. Now he had a souvenir shop on the Tamiami Trail, a two-lane road that crosses southern Florida between Miami and Naples.

There Sickler peddled counterfeit Seminole artifacts and charged tourists twenty dollars a head for a one-hour airboat tour-five bucks more when they asked for a box lunch. He promised a full refund if they didn’t spot at least one alligator during the boat ride, which they always did. That’s because Sickler had purchased an eight-footer from a taxidermist in Homestead and nailed it to a cypress log half a mile from the dock. He named the stuffed gator “Old Sleepy,” and the tourists never caught on.

For the sum of one thousand dollars, Sickler had agreed to let the crew of Expedition Survival! use his store and dock as a center of operations. He’d never seen the show because his television had been malfunctioning for years; the only channel that came in clearly was the Pastry Network, which was the main reason that Sickler weighed two hundred and ninety-one pounds.

“We’ll need all three of your airboats,” Raven Stark told him.

Sickler said that was fine. “But it’ll cost you another grand.”

“Five hundred,” said Raven. “End of discussion.” She handed him the cash.

Derek Badger sauntered up and introduced himself. “Would you like me to autograph the wall of your shop?”

“I’ll whip your hide if you do,” said Sickler. “I just repainted the place.”

“Easy, mate. Don’t you know who I am?” Derek looked at Raven. “Is he for real?”

“Let’s go look at the new script,” she suggested.

Derek remained focused on the portly Sickler. “What can we expect to encounter out there?” he asked, jerking his marshmallow chin toward the shimmering wetlands.

Sickler, who ventured into the wilderness as seldom as possible, sensed that Mr. Badger and his TV crew were seeking an element of danger.

“Poison snakes,” he replied ominously. “And gators, for sure.”

“What kinds of snakes?”

“Water moccasins, diamondbacks. We’re Snake Central.”

Derek’s face glowed. “That’s fantastic!”

“And now we got them killer pythons from Asia. They grow thirty feet long and eat the tourists right off the boardwalk.” This was utter nonsense, but Sickler laid it on thick.

“Panthers?” Derek inquired hopefully.

“You bet.” Sickler thinking: In your dreams, pal.

Maybe a hundred panthers were left in the entire state. Every so often a federal game officer would stop by the shop to ask if the airboat drivers had seen any sign of the big cats, which was sort of pointless. Powered by large automobile engines, the airboats were equipped with deck-mounted aviation propellers that worked as giant fans, pushing the flat-bottomed crafts at high speed. They were so loud that panthers heard them coming from miles away and ran for cover.

Raven raised a hand. “How about bears?”

“Absolutely, ma’am,” said Sickler, who hadn’t seen a bear since a field trip to the Atlanta zoo with his third-grade class, forty years earlier.

But Derek was sold. “We’ve come to the right spot! Now, where’s Cray?”

“Right here.”

The wrangler was leaning against a soda machine in a corner of the souvenir shop, where he’d been listening to Sickler’s baloney.

“Can you deal with a bear?” Derek asked Mickey. “What about panthers?”

Mickey gave Sickler such a cold, cutting stare that the crooked proprietor sheepishly excused himself and waddled off to the stockroom.

To Derek, Mickey said, “Whatever’s out there, I can handle.”

The TV star raised a cheery thumb. “That’s all I need to hear, mate.” Through a window he caught sight of the catering truck, and he hurried out the door on a quest for boysenberry pancakes.

Raven, who’d lain awake all night worrying about the show, asked Mickey if she could have a word with him.

“Aw, don’t worry,” he told her. “We’re not gonna run into any bears or panthers.”

“Promise me you’ll stay close to Derek,” she said. “We cannot have a repeat of what happened with your alligator. Is that clear?”

“Lady, do I look like a bleeping babysitter?”

“He nearly died.”

“Yeah, because he’s a fool,” Mickey said. “There’s no known cure for that.”

“Then do whatever’s necessary to keep him from getting harmed.”

Mickey chuckled. “You got a call from your bosses in California. Am I right?”

Raven blinked, but her tone remained firm. “We need Derek in one piece. He’s the whole franchise.”

“The franchise, huh?” Mickey whistled sarcastically. “Then I guess we’d better make sure a cottonmouth doesn’t crawl into his sleeping bag and bite him on the butt.”

Now it was Raven’s turn to chuckle. “Oh, Derek won’t be camping with the rest of us, Mr. Cray. He’ll be staying at the Empresario.”

“Isn’t that a hotel?”

“One of Miami’s finest,” Raven said.

Mickey was puzzled. “How’s he gonna get from the middle of the Everglades to the middle of the city every night?”

Raven touched a red fingernail to her ear. “Hear that?”

“What?”

“Listen.”

Mickey heard it now. “I should’ve guessed,” he muttered.

It was the sound of a helicopter.