Chomp

FOURTEEN

Derek Badger was rushed back to the camp, where his bite marks-tiny but numerous-were slathered with antibiotic cream. He was so shaken by his battle with the feisty water snake that he declared he was finished for the day.

“Call the chopper,” he said to Raven. “I’m going back to the hotel.”

She informed him that the helicopter was grounded in Miami due to bad weather.

“That’s ridiculous,” Derek said just as a wave of thunder grumbled ominously in the western sky.

“They can’t fly in lightning. It’s too dangerous,” said Raven.

“Dangerous? Ha! Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”

When Mickey Cray approached, Derek held out his arms to display the result of the reptile’s attack.

Mickey said, “That’s what happens when you go raw.”

“But you’re the wrangler! We’re paying you big bucks to control these animals.”

“Look, Mr. Beaver-”

“Stop calling me that!”

“There’s no such thing as a snake whisperer,” said Mickey. “I have some fat, sleepy ones back home that wouldn’t nip even if you tied them in a knot. But you wanted wild, and wild is what you got.”

Derek jutted his chin to reveal yet another U-shaped series of dot-sized punctures, which glistened from the medicine cream. “This is all your fault, Cray!”

Mickey felt no urge to apologize. He turned his attention to Raven.

“So what’s next? You want me to trap a raccoon? Or maybe a skunk?”

“We’re taking a break,” she said.

“Good plan. There’s some heavy-duty weather moving in.”

Derek muttered, “Thanks for the bulletin.” Then, to Raven: “Try the chopper pilot one more time. Make it fast.”

Mickey returned to his mini-camp, swallowed a couple of Tuna’s headache pills and stretched out on his sleeping bag for a nap. To prepare for the oncoming downpour, Wahoo and Tuna were staking a blue plastic tarp over the fire pit so the wood stayed dry. Just as they finished the job, a double flash of lightning lit up the clouds. A blistering crack of thunder followed.

The airboats all took off toward Sickler’s dock. Minutes later, the wind kicked up and the rain began to fall hard. Wahoo and Tuna scrambled into her tent and closed the flap, the squall drumming loudly on the canvas.

Outside, another heron squawked between thunderclaps, prompting Tuna to remark: “That would be Ardea herodias, commenting on the foul weather.”

Wahoo was mystified by this odd talent of hers. He said, “How many Latin names have you memorized?”

“I don’t know-a couple hundred maybe.”

“But why?”

“Because I like to,” she said. “Every single species on earth has been classified that way by science. I’ll never learn them all, but I’m gonna try.”

Wahoo couldn’t get over it. “My brain hurts when I’ve got to memorize one little poem for English class. What’s the secret?”

“I told you. I study a lot.” Tuna paused to wait out another roll of thunder. “Before the bank took our house, I’d just go in my room, lock the door and start Googling like a fiend. Some nights I worked on insects. Other nights it might be fish or amphibians, whatever. I’d sit there and say their scientific names over and over again until they stuck in my head.”

“Too much like homework. I couldn’t do it,” Wahoo said.

“Sure you could-if your old man was trashed out of his skull and acting like a maniac. Then you’d find a place of your own to hide,” she said, “and something to keep your mind off all the craziness.”

Wahoo felt his face turn hot and he thought he might be sick. He excused himself with a mumble and pawed his way out of the tent. Sucking raw shallow breaths, he began walking nowhere in particular, through the teeth of the storm.

The rain lashed his cheeks, and soon his clothes were soaked. Fingers of blue lightning split the sky, but he never flinched; he just kept tromping like a zombie. Tuna’s story had made him feel angry and guilty at the same time-angry at her father for hurting her, and guilty because his own life was so good, so easy. Compared to hers, Wahoo’s world was paradise, a day at the beach. Nobody ever got drunk and tore up the house. Nobody ever punched him in the eye.

“Get out of the rain, for heaven’s sake!”

“What?” Wahoo looked up and realized he was standing in the main camp.

Raven Stark motioned for him to come under the big fabric awning where the catering service was headquartered. Most of the crew members had gathered there to wait out the storm, which had somehow failed to disturb a single red hair on Raven’s head.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked Wahoo. “All we need is for you to get barbecued by a lightning bolt. Then your crazy father would sue us.”

Wahoo was still in a sad daze. “Where’s Mr. Badger?”

“Over there.” Raven waved toward a white hexagonal tent that was being puckered by gusts of wind. The entrance had been zippered tight. “He’ll come out after the thunder stops,” she said. “Here, put this on before you catch cold.”

She gave Wahoo a shiny blue weather jacket that had the Expedition Survival! logo stenciled in gold lettering on the front. He peeled out of his dripping shirt and wrapped the jacket around his bare shoulders.

On a nearby table sat a telephone in a black case that looked waterproof.

“Do you get a signal way out here?” Wahoo asked.

Raven said, “It’s a satellite phone, dear. I could get a signal on Mount Everest.”

“Can I borrow it?”

She looked amused by the request. “Exactly who are you going to call?”

“Please?”

“Sit down, young man.”

As she toweled off his hair, Wahoo groped through his pockets until he located the piece of paper with the number written on it. The paper was wet, so he opened it slowly to keep it from falling apart.

Raven removed the phone from the case and turned it on.

“I’ll pay you back,” Wahoo said.

“No worries. This is a company phone.”

He handed her the number. “It’s in China,” he whispered. “Look, whatever it costs, you take the money out of my paycheck.”

She smiled skeptically. “Who can you possibly know in China?”

“My mom. She’s working there.”

“Doing what?”

“She’s a language teacher.”

Fortunately, Raven seemed to believe him. She checked her watch and said, “Your mother’s probably sleeping now. It’s the middle of the night in that part of the world.”

Wahoo nodded. “Yeah, I know. Please?”

The thunderstorm was sliding to the east, and the rain had softened to a drizzle.

As Raven dialed the number, she said, “Let me tell you a secret: I use this phone to call my mom back home every day, no matter where I am.”

“Where does she live?” Wahoo asked. From Raven’s accent, he figured it was someplace exotic, like South Africa or New Zealand.

“Fairhope, Alabama,” said Raven.

“You sure don’t sound like you’re from Alabama.”

She handed the satellite phone to him. “Ten minutes, okay?”

Susan Cray wasn’t sleeping; she was sitting up in bed, staring at a bulky old-fashioned telephone. When it rang, she knew who was calling even before she answered.

Ever since Wahoo was little, he and his mom had shared an unusual mental connection that was almost telepathic. One day, in kindergarten, he’d fallen on the playground and received a nasty gash on his head. Susan Cray had arrived at the school before the ambulance did-before, in fact, Wahoo’s teacher had phoned to tell her about the accident. Susan had confided to her son that a strange and anxious sensation had swept over her at work, and that she’d known instantly that he needed her.

The same thing had happened on the afternoon that Alice the alligator accidentally ate Wahoo’s thumb. Susan Cray had arrived at the house right behind the paramedics-and no one had called her about the mishap.

When she picked up the phone in Shanghai, the first thing she said was: “What happened?”

“Nothing, Mom. I just called to say hi.”

“Well, that’s very sweet,” said Susan Cray, “but I don’t believe you.”

“I’m fine. Pop’s fine. The job is going… okay.”

“But what?”

“I didn’t say ‘but’ anything,” Wahoo noted.

“You don’t have to. I can hear it in your voice.”

“Okay, there’s this girl-”

His mother groaned.

“Mom, come on.”

“I’m listening.”

“She sort of ran off with me and Pop.”

“Sort of?”

“Her dad beat her up,” Wahoo said.

Susan Cray was silent on the other end.

“Her mom’s gone. She didn’t have anywhere else to go.” Wahoo was still waiting for a response. When he didn’t get one, he said, “So we brought her along on the job. She’s out here in the Glades with us.”

Finally his mother spoke. “How old is your new friend?”

“She’s in my same grade at school.”

“Your father should have called the police.”

“He wanted to,” Wahoo said. “But if they locked up her old man, she’d be all alone. Mom, they live in the Walmart parking lot.”

“Get out.”

“I’m serious. In a crappy old RV.”

Susan Cray said, “The police wouldn’t let her stay there alone. They’d find someone to take care of her.”

“You mean, like foster parents?”

“Or family. Doesn’t she have any aunts or uncles?”

Wahoo said he hadn’t asked.

“Well, find out.”

“This wasn’t the first time it happened. Her dad, he drinks all the time.”

“That’s awful.”

“It’s hard to listen to her tell about it.” Wahoo heard his voice quaver and he thought, What’s the matter with me?

His mother said, “She needs somebody to talk with. You have to be strong.”

“I know. It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“She’s little, Mom. I don’t understand how a person could do that to their own kid. He slugged her with his fist!”

On the other end, Wahoo’s mother sighed. He could picture her expression.

“You can’t make sense of it,” she said, “so don’t even try. There are some seriously messed-up people in this world.”

Raven Stark reappeared at Wahoo’s side and tapped her wristwatch. He held up a finger, seeking one more minute on the satellite phone.

Susan Cray was saying, “When this job is over, you and your dad should take your friend to the police station so she can report what happened.”

“But the black eye might be gone by then.”

“They’ll still believe her. They’d better believe her.”

“Miss you, Mom.”

“I miss you, too, big guy. What’s her name? Your new friend.”

“It’s not important.”

“Are you kidding? Tell me.”

Wahoo braced himself. “They call her Tuna.”

Susan Cray laughed warmly. “Wahoo and Tuna! Maybe it’s fate.”

“I knew you’d think that was funny.”

“Hey, you’ve got to admit. It’s quite a fishy coincidence.”

“I’d better go now,” said Wahoo. “This lady needs her phone back.”

“Not before you tell me how your father’s doing?”

“Much better, Mom. Really.”

“Does that mean he’s behaving himself?”

“Well,” Wahoo replied carefully, “we haven’t been fired yet.”

The weather got worse, not better. One band of thunder-showers was followed by another, and then another. Late in the afternoon, Derek Badger emerged from his private luxury tent and glared at the roiling sky.

“Still no chopper?” he said peevishly to Raven Stark.

“It doesn’t look good,” she allowed, which was an understatement. The radar app on the director’s iPhone showed a series of flame-orange waves sweeping in from the west.

“The helicopter can’t possibly take off or land in this mess.”

“Then how am I supposed to get back to the hotel?” Derek protested.

Sometimes Raven was surprised by her own patience. “It doesn’t look good,” she said again. “We might be spending the night out here with the crew.”

Predictably, Derek pitched a tantrum, cursing and hollering like a brat. He drop-kicked a plastic bottle of mosquito repellent into the woods. He dumped a tray of turkey sandwiches into the mud. He snapped off a dead oak branch and hurled it wildly, inconveniently slicing a hole in his own tent.

And of course he vowed to fire the helicopter pilot for insubordination.

The childish performance ended abruptly when a spear of lightning struck no more than a hundred yards from the camp. Derek turned gray and retreated into his leaky quarters, where he cowered until nightfall.

Dinner was served late, during a break in the storm-braised chicken, wild rice, buttermilk rolls and a garden salad. The wondrous aroma was too much for Derek, who crept out of his tent and joined the others beneath the caterer’s canopy. The wicks of the tiki torches were too soggy to hold a flame, and no one had thought to stockpile dry wood, so the crew members built a fire using folding chairs that they tore apart with hammers.

After his third helping of chicken and rice, Derek croaked out a burp and asked, “What’s for dessert?”

“Cheesecake,” the chef replied, “with bing cherries.”

Derek beamed. “Hallelujah! Bring it to baby.”

Firmly, Raven said, “One small slice for you.” She was scoping out his gut, a bulging orb that threatened to bust the buttons off his safari shirt.

“Oh, lighten up, Mother,” he said. “After the terrible day I’ve had, I deserve to eat as much as I please.”

His attack on the cheesecake was a gross spectacle. Raven could only stare in disgust. The director and the cameramen turned their backs on the scene; someone broke out a deck of cards, and a game of gin rummy was organized.

By the time Derek finished gorging, there wasn’t a crumb on the platter. His snakebitten chin was shining from the creamy combination of cake goo and antibiotic ointment. He dabbed a paper napkin to his mouth and nodded at Raven.

“The scene we shot this afternoon,” he said in a half whisper, “did you look at the footage?”

“Not yet.”

“Here’s a thought-what if we said it was a cottonmouth that fanged me?”

“Then we’d get boxes of angry letters from snake collectors and herpetologists who would notice that it wasn’t a cottonmouth.”

Derek smirked. “Come on, Raven, use your imagination. CGI?”

He was referring to computer-generated imaging, a technique often used in movies to create illusions and special effects. “Those little geeks in postproduction,” he said, “they can turn it into a cottonmouth or rattler, or any kind of snake we want. Then we can shoot a scene where I’m injecting myself with the antidote and saving my own life!”

Raven sat back and folded her arms. “You said we were done faking it. You said you wanted to put the ‘real’ back into reality.”

Derek was annoyed to be reminded of his recent conversion to integrity.

“Whatever,” he muttered lumpishly.

The sky strobed, a jagged stutter of ice-blue light. A ripple of thunder rattled a tray of silverware.

Derek frowned. “Get someone to patch that hole in my tent. Chop-chop.”

“Fine,” said Raven.

“While we’re on the subject, don’t they make one of those bloody things with air-conditioning? It must be ninety degrees in there-”

Just then, a piercing scream arose behind them. They spun around and saw one of the catering staff, a lanky middle-aged woman sporting a green hairnet, hopping frenetically. She was pointing at a long-tailed clump of fuzz that lay quivering on the cake platter.

Raven stood up and gasped. “What is that-a bird?”

Derek was standing, too. “Birds don’t have big ears,” he said.

“A rat!”

“No. Rats don’t have wings.” Approaching the platter, he leaned down to examine the furry, twitching intruder. When he turned back to Raven, he was grinning.

“Just as I suspected-a bat!”

She said, “Lord, that’s a big one.”

“Indeed.” Derek’s eyes twinkled in the golden flickering of the campfire.

“It must be sick or hurt,” Raven said. “I’ll go get Mr. Cray.”

“Wait, I’ve got a better idea.” Derek motioned to the director. “How long will it take you blokes to set up some lights?”

The director folded his cards. “Seriously?”

Raven looked down at the woozy bat, then back at Derek Badger.

“Oh no,” she said.

“Oh yes!” He licked his upper lip. “Let’s do this!”