Lost Memory of Skin

CHAPTER ONE

FOR HOURS THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE HAS enveloped the Professor like a moving bell jar. It has shifted its course just as he has shifted his, and now the storm slides south along the peninsula with him inside it toward the Great Panzacola Swamp, where it veers off to the east, crossing the state again, headed this time for Calusa and the open ocean beyond. The Professor’s van is inside an enormous meteorological bubble that protects him from the fury of the storm that rages beyond and behind him. Hurricane watchers and meteorologists and TV weather forecasters say that the hurricane was briefly stalled over land by an enormous offshore high-pressure area, slowing and turning it away from its predicted eastward path toward the Atlantic, gradually spiraling it back over the Gulf for a few hours, where it regained force and refilled with moisture, then resumed its slow assault on the land and the cities at the lower end of the peninsula. But for the Professor, cosseted by the eye of the hurricane, the storm has ended; it’s dissipated; gone. The wind has abated, and the rain has ceased to fall. The sky is pale yellow, except at the horizon way out there in front of him over the Atlantic, where it’s dark green and sooty gray, and above the Gulf behind him, where great masses of black clouds have piled up.

The only storm the Professor is aware of is the one raging inside his brain. The music blasting from the van’s speakers doesn’t work anymore to cool his roiled mind. He’s sweating and has shucked his jacket and necktie and loosened his collar. He has the music cranked up to top volume, trying to make a wall of it around his secrets, but they keep breaking through the sound and make him feel like he’s under attack from them, as if they are hornets and he’s accidentally bumped their nest and busted it apart with his unprotected head. He’s not in physical pain, but he howls as if he’s being stung again and again, and he slaps at his cheeks and neck and the top of his head, slaps at the sides of his enormous, soft arms and his pillowed chest, twists and turns in his seat like a man possessed by a demon.

The Professor knows very little about his deepest self, but as one who has studied the field and the phenomenon, he knows that this is the point in a secretive man’s long life of compartmentalization and disguise that one’s thoughts turn longingly toward the idea of suicide. This is when the walls fall and the contradictions collide openly with one another. He’s read the literature, the journals, the reports, and has paused over them in deep reflection and vague recognition. There was the Polish writer Jerzy Kosinski, who may or may not have been a Holocaust survivor, and many master spies, and another writer, Michael Dorris, who may or may not have been an American Indian, and doubtless thousands upon thousands of unknown others. That’s as close as he himself can get to the pure idea of suicide, of self-annihilation — close enough to know that it’s a desire felt by others who found themselves in his present situation.

It’s a desire not yet felt by him, however. He expects it to arrive soon, if he can’t somehow put his lifelong secrets back into the boxes that have held them all these years, held and kept them from knowing of one another’s existence. He drives down the Gulf Turnpike inside the eye of the hurricane, howling in pain and slapping at his body, twitching and twisting away from himself, batting at the idea of suicide, as if fighting off an avenging angel sent by an angry god to torment him.

One hundred miles east of the Professor’s van, the leading edge of the swirling hurricane has hit the city of Calusa and its sprawl of suburbs and malls, sucking the ocean inland in a widening surge that lifts the waters of the Bay and floods low-lying streets and boulevards. Torrents of rain wash across the highways and turnpikes in foot-high waves. The entire city is in an official hurricane evacuation zone, and most residents of the Great Barrier Isles have already started to migrate inland by car and bus to the county evacuation centers and the suburban homes of friends and family members.

The winds have followed the rain, quickly increasing in velocity, and soon sixty- and seventy-mile-an-hour gusts are bending the stalklike trunks of palms and tossing their fronds like unraveled turbans, ripping off the branches of live oak and cotton trees and flattening palmettos, disassembling carefully planted hedges and shrubs, shredding flower gardens and municipal park plantings, kicking trash cans over and blowing the contents into the streets and roads and into the canals and the Bay. The sky is low, thickened as if bearing a great weight, and though it is midmorning, it’s dusk-dark, and long lines of vehicles with their headlights on crawl bumper to bumper off the chain of man-made islands over bridges and causeways onto the mainland, merging there and flowing slowly on widening roads toward the slightly higher ground miles from shore, headed in the direction the Professor is coming from, still driving his van inside the eye of the storm somewhere out there just north of the Great Panzacola Swamp, still howling and slapping at his arms and chest like a gigantic, bearded baby lost in a tantrum.

CHAPTER TWO

THE CITIZENS OF CALUSA ARE ACCUSTOMED to hurricanes at this time of year, and most of the residents who have actual residences have followed the detailed instructions distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The day before the arrival of the storm they will have secured their homes as best they could by clearing their terraces and patios of outdoor furniture and toys, and those who have them will have double-tied their boats to pilings or put them in dry-dock storage, brought their satellite dishes inside, rolled their bicycles and garbage carts into their garages. They will have charged their cell phones and portable TVs and installed fresh batteries in their portable radios, gone to the nearest ATM machine and withdrawn as much cash as permitted by their bank, filled the car with gas, shuttered, taped, and in some cases boarded over windows with five-eighth’s-inch plywood, especially the windows with the nice view of the sea or the Bay. They will have put together a family disaster kit, its contents recommended on FEMA’s “Are You Ready” website (http://www.fema.gov/areyouready/hurricanes.shtm): bottled water, nonperishable packaged and canned food, manually operated can opener, change of clothing, rain gear, and sturdy shoes, bedding, first aid kit and all prescription medications, extra pair of glasses, battery-powered radio, flashlight, extra batteries, extra set of car keys, phone list of family physicians, special items for infants, elderly, or disabled family members, pet supplies, and should their neighborhood be secured by authorities after the storm due to damage, a current utility bill to prove residency. They will have an evacuation plan, especially those who live on the Barriers or adjacent to the Bay. Many of those who have pets will have packed a pet disaster kit with a two-week supply of food, bowls, water, portable carriers, collar, tag and leash, cat litter and litter box for the kitties, paper towels, plastic Baggies, and hand sanitizer for the doggies. They will bring their birds’ caged homes with them when they evacuate their own homes, carry their hamsters in closed boxes with air holes cut in the top, their pet snakes, turtles, and lizards, their ferrets and pet tarantulas. They will have had sufficient time, thanks to the official hurricane warning system, to be ready for the storm, and when the storm finally smashes into the city, they will simply slip under it and wait until it passes over and drifts out to sea.

The men who reside beneath the Claybourne Causeway, however, have neither been warned of the approaching hurricane nor would they be able to prepare for it if they were. Yes, they knew it was on its way, some hearing about it on the radio, a few others reading about it in newspapers pulled from Dumpsters and trash cans, or noticed the citywide preparations and the gardeners and yardmen employed at the hotels and condominium buildings cutting down low-hanging coconuts that the rising wind might otherwise toss through the air like cannonballs. Most of them know the storm is arriving soon, maybe today, possibly in five or ten minutes, but when you have not the means to follow the emergency instructions put out to the citizenry via radio, TV, newspapers, and Internet by city, county, state, and federal agencies, when you are in fact not a member of the citizenry, you tend to discount the warnings to the point where you simply are not aware of any emergency. For you, since you can’t do anything to protect yourself from it, there is no emergency. And so the men who live beneath the Causeway go about their usual domestic business as if a hurricane were not about to descend on them.

First the rain, then the surge. The pounding rain the Kid can handle. He’s got Einstein and Annie dry inside his tent with him. He’s got his own emergency kit — a half-gallon bottle of Sprite, a big bag of Cheez-Its and a jar of peanut butter to dip them in, his favorite between-meal meal. He’s got his stove and three cans of Spam and six hard-boiled eggs, a week’s worth of parrot and dog food, and a plastic bucket set outside under a drip off the Causeway to catch drinking and wash water. He’s chain-locked his bike to a steel stanchion. He’s got candles, a headlamp with fresh batteries, and the wind-up radio and telescope that the Professor gave him. It’s not exactly FEMA’s kit, but it’ll get him through the worst of what he’s expecting: a couple of boring days of heavy, wind-driven rain.

The rain hammers on his tent. He’s lit a candle and has pulled out the Shyster’s Bible again and is reading in the book of Numbers. This section of the Bible makes no sense to him because there’s no story. But he likes reading it anyhow. Mostly it’s rules and regulations being laid down by God and His main human Moses upon the ancient Israelites after they got away from the Egyptians. It’s a kind of moral menu for religious fanatics, the Kid thinks. He planned to return the Shyster’s Bible and the packet of papers in the briefcase he grabbed the other night during the police raid but has decided that he’ll read them first, both the Bible and the papers, before trading them back for something useful. Like money. The Shyster has the most money of anyone in the encampment and has been hiring the others to build his shack and buy his groceries and wash his clothes and his dishes and pots and pans. He’s even got Otis the Rabbit doing his cooking.

The Kid has started reading the fifth chapter of Numbers and it gives him a sudden chill, makes him sit up in his sleeping bag and keep reading: And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is defiled by the dead: Both male and female shall ye put out, without the camp shall ye put them; that they defile not their camps, in the midst whereof I dwell. ..

Not cool, the Kid thinks. Even lepers deserve a break and shouldn’t be abandoned and put under a bridge someplace outside the city like garbage just because they’re sick. That’s what hospitals are for. And who doesn’t have issues anyhow? Everybody’s got issues with something. You don’t have to be a convicted sex offender to have issues. He’s not sure what it means to be defiled by the dead but it can’t be as bad as defiling the dead which he thinks means sex with dead people, a thing he’s heard about but has almost as hard a time imagining as sex with little children like the Shyster and most of the other guys under the Causeway are guilty of doing. Even they wouldn’t have sex with dead people but if they did instead of putting them outside the city you’d want to get them to try and talk about it and figure out why it interested them so much. Which probably goes back to their early childhoods and not having any confidence because of stuff that happened to them back then so that the only people they could picture having sex with was people who couldn’t reject them. Like dead people. Or little kids. The trick would be getting them to have enough confidence not to be sexually attracted to dead people. Or little kids.

Maybe the Professor’s theory about sex offenders is right, he thinks. Put them in charge of something. Something they can’t fail at. So they’ll get enough confidence not to worry about being rejected if they decide to hit on a living adult woman instead of a little kid or a dead person.

The Kid has charged his windup radio and with the volume up as high as it will go is listening on earbuds to WBIG which plays mostly rap with very few advertisements and no news. Rap suits him fine as background music because he can’t understand most of the words and doesn’t especially want to since all the music with words that he’s ever heard hasn’t got anything to do with his real life unless of course it’s used as background music for pornography or for a pole dancer in a strip club for instance. Songs that are just songs are sung by and to people whose lives aren’t anything like his and all they do is remind him of that fact. It’s the steady pulsing beat of rap and the rhymes — the pure sound of the words and not their meaning — that he likes. It’s the same for him with any music, even when it’s just a soft-rock or pseudosamba sound track for a porn film. When the words happen to come in standard white people’s English which is the only language he understands except for a little Spanish he almost always tunes them out and hears only the rhythm and the instrumentation and the rise and fall of the human vocal sounds and uses them to help him concentrate on what he’s looking at which in this case instead of pornography or a stripper is a page of the Shyster’s Bible.

So he hears neither the rising wind that batters the sides of his tent nor the angry shouts and frightened cries of his fellow residents. The water off the Bay has risen over the sloping ledge at the edge of the concrete island and is now flooding the low-lying flats where many of the men have built their shanties and pitched their tents. Several of the shanties have already been demolished by the surging waves and washed into the Bay. The nearly completed latrine has been tipped over by the wind and floats like a narrow coffin-shaped raft toward one of the support pillars where it is smashed back into scrap lumber. The Greek has pulled his generator up under the overpass to the highest level place he can find there and parked it in the dark cavelike area where until now none of the residents has elected to settle because there’s barely room to stand and it smells of rotted food and human feces and urine. It’s where only the rats have made their nests. No people.

Otis the Rabbit and Paco have abandoned their flooded tents and moved their possessions including Paco’s Harley up the steep grassy slope toward the highway and have stopped there in the wind-driven rain to take what appears to be a last look back at the disappearing encampment. Their island home is being absorbed by the Bay. The Shyster and most of the others stand in the doorways of their camps, shacks, and tents helpless and confused, unsure of whether to wait out the storm or flee. If they stay and try to protect their possessions from the rising water and the winds which have now reached Category 3 hurricane force, will they be blown into the Bay and drowned? But if they give it up and flee their island, where will they go? For the men who live beneath the Causeway there is no private or public shelter from the storm anywhere in the city or the adjoining suburbs.

The Rabbit says to Paco, Where the fuck’s the Kid? You seen the Kid?

Paco can’t hear him over the roar of the wind. He cups his ear and leans in close and the Rabbit asks it again.

Must still be in his tent! Paco hollers back. With his dog and the bird!

We better get him outa there! Water’s almost up to his tent! Wind’s gonna fucking blow it away any minute anyhow! the Rabbit shouts. He starts to hobble on his crutch back down the slope and stumbles and nearly falls.

Paco grabs the old man by the arm and steps in front of him and tells him to stay here by the Harley, he’ll get the Kid. He likes being a hero. He’s wearing a black muscle shirt and gym shorts and high-tops, his usual workout clothes. His tanned shoulders and biceps flex and glisten in the rain as he descends to the encampment, makes his way along the embankment and crosses under the Causeway toward the Kid’s flapping tent.

The waters off the Bay have risen to within a yard of the tent and the wind pummels its thin nylon skin and yanks on the taut cords the Kid so carefully tied to cinder blocks and stanchions when he pitched it. The Kid thinks of himself as ex-military and therefore an expert by-the-book camper who as head of the Executive Committee tries to set military standards for the rest of the men even though in spite of his and the Professor’s exhortations and warnings most of them seem not to care about keeping their quarters foursquare, neat and clean. The Kid doesn’t understand why everyone isn’t as orderly and fastidious as he is especially when it’s the only way to keep the police and the sanitation department from coming back and breaking up their camp again like it’s a filthy rats’ nest and sending them scampering away to darker dirtier more dangerous hideouts. Or if they can’t escape, if they don’t scamper into greater darkness and invisibility, putting them in cages, tossing away the key. Next time they’ll lock them up permanently, even the Shyster unless the men beneath the Causeway demonstrate that they’re basically good neighbors and citizens of Calusa who aren’t violating any municipal regulations or laws.

A few of them have tried to follow the Kid’s example — Otis the Rabbit and Paco and P.C. and Plato the Greek have pitched their tents correctly or built themselves foursquare huts out of plywood scraps and polyethylene with the Shyster paying them to build his to the same high standard and were instrumental in constructing the latrine and organizing trash and garbage collection and disposal — but the rest have set up their households like drunks and druggies who all they think about is getting or staying high so they pay minimum attention to how and where they actually live. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone since many of the residents down here in fact are drunks and druggies in spite of having settled beneath the Causeway solely because they’re convicted sex offenders who have served their time for their crime and have nowhere else in the city to live.

In most cases it’s the only reason they’re homeless. It’s the one thing they have in common. A bond that unites them against everyone else, even other homeless people. Just yesterday a bushy-haired bearded guy in a long topcoat who wasn’t a convicted sex offender wandered down under the Causeway from a park or abandoned building elsewhere in the city and tried to settle among them but they stood together shoulder to shoulder and cast the guy out. The Kid as spokesman for the group explained to the guy that standard-issue homeless people have easy access to dozens of public and church-run shelters that are not available to convicted sex offenders because sometimes there are children being sheltered, So fuck off, dude, or I’ll turn Paco and our other security guys loose and let them kick the shit out of you.

Paco unzips and flings back the tent flap and the Kid takes out his earbuds and says, Wow, I was just thinking about you, man!

Paco says, You got to abandon ship, Kid! We gettin’ flooded out! This a fuckin’ hurricane!

The Kid takes a look outside and his eyes widen. Holy shit! It’s fucking Noah and the flood!

Working frantically he and Paco shove his belongings into his duffel and backpack. He puts Annie on her leash, picks up Einstein’s cage and Paco tucks the expedition-size backpack under one meaty arm and wraps the duffel with the other as if rescuing a pair of children from a fire. He says to the Kid, You take care of the animals, I’ll get the rest.

Einstein squawks and says, Women and children first! Women and children first!

Where’d he learn to say that shit?

Not from me, man. He says stuff all the time that he never heard from me. You can have real conversations with him.

Yeah, right. Follow me, Paco says and the Kid obeys, holding Einstein’s cage and leading Annie by her leash. Leaning into the wind they make their way up the steep switchbacked path to the roadway where the Rabbit waits beside Paco’s Harley and a pile of black garbage bags stuffed with most of his and Paco’s clothing, bedding, and cooking gear. The Kid huffs and puffs his way behind Paco up to the Rabbit where he turns and looks back down at the drowning settlement and the men in flight, most of them scrambling to salvage their possessions by moving to higher ground and stashing as much of it as they can in the dark underside of the roadway, a few others following Paco’s, the Rabbit’s, and the Kid’s example by abandoning the settlement altogether and lugging what few possessions they can carry uphill toward them.

Suddenly the Kid says, Jesus, I forgot my bike! I gotta try and get my bike. And my tent too.

The Rabbit puts a hand on the Kid’s arm and stays him. Too late, Kid. They’re gone. You’re lucky you got yourself and them fuckin’ animals out.

The Rabbit’s right. The Kid’s tent and bike are half underwater. The wind- and tide-driven surge off the Bay is rising faster now and is coming in waves with a heavy three-foot chop. The Kid hollers over the wind, Maybe we should try to wait it out under the Causeway where it ain’t flooded yet! Up high underneath, like those guys’re doing, the Greek and Shyster and them!

Paco hollers back, Forgetaboutit, man! Them guys’re gonna get trapped under there and drowneded!

That’s fucking harsh, Paco.

That’s reality. Those guys’re too stupid to abandon a sinking ship. Even your fucking parrot knows reality.

Paco sets a pair of garbage bags onto the back of his seat and straps his bundled goods onto the Harley with bungee cords, leaving barely enough room for him to ride. He slings one leg over the Harley and starts the engine.

Where you goin’, man?

Inland! If the wind don’t blow me over!

What about us?

Paco flashes a white-toothed grin at the Kid and Rabbit. It’s every man for himself. Better start walking!

The rain falls on the pavement faster than it runs off and the highway looks more like a shallow rippling river than a six-lane roadway. It’s entirely empty of vehicles; from the Barriers to the mainland not a car or truck of any kind, a ghost of a road from nowhere to nowhere. Except for the men who live under the Causeway everyone who wants to be evacuated from the Barriers has been evacuated and there’s no one on the mainland foolish enough to be driving in the opposite direction. Paco guns the engine and cuts a wide arc across all six deserted lanes and rides his Harley up and over the long arch of the Causeway and in seconds has disappeared in the distance.

Bracing himself with his crutch the Rabbit leans against the wind. He looks exhausted from the effort as if he’s about to fall over. Both he and the Kid are soaked through and are shivering from the cold rain. The Kid says, What’re we gonna do, man?

You heard him. Start walking.

What about you? With your busted leg and all? The Rabbit doesn’t look like he can walk across a room, let alone get himself over the high arching Causeway and hobble down the highway for more than a mile to the mainland. Especially in this wind which the Kid estimates at fifty to sixty miles an hour with gusts in the eighties. And once on the mainland where would they go? They could find some sort of temporary protection against the hurricane maybe — a bridge they could hide under or a mall where they wouldn’t get busted for loitering — and could wait it out. But what then? Whatever they had going for them under the Causeway a day ago is pretty much smashed now and if Paco’s right and a bunch of the men living there end up drowning the city will put a high fence around it. And who would want to live down there after that anyhow? Who could sleep there with all those ghosts haunting the place?

Shouldn’t we do something about those guys up under the bridge?

Like what?

I dunno. Tell ’em they’re gonna get drowned.

Rabbit speaks very slowly and with effort as if struggling to get his breath. They won’t listen to you, Kid. Besides, maybe they won’t drown. Then after a few seconds, Yeah, you’re right. I’ll tell ’em. They’ll listen to me. You gotta take care of yourself, Kid, he says.

The old man swings around on his crutch and starts moving down the soaked muddy pathway. The Kid shouts against the howling wind for him to wait, then to be careful, for chrissakes, it’s slippery, when the old man’s crutch slides out from under him and he collapses onto the ground and keeps falling. As if he planned on falling and even desired it he offers no resistance to it. His body crumples and seems to come apart, legs going one way, arms another, head lolling loosely on his skinny neck, as if he’s a marionette made of wet papier-mâché. He rolls some twenty feet off the zigzagged path to a ridge where the long slope from the highway to the settlement below turns into a sixty-degree drop. The old man drags himself to the ridge and goes over. It’s almost a precipice and he falls faster and faster tumbling down the incline all the way to the bottom where there’s now three feet or more of rapidly rising water and he ends up lying there facedown half in the water and half out.

The Kid quickly ties Annie’s leash to the guardrail and scrambles down the long hill after him, pushing past P.C. and Ginger making their way up with their loads on their backs like hobos hoping to hop a freight. By the time he reaches the bottom the tidal surge off the Bay has already risen another foot and the Rabbit is floating away. The Kid wades into the water and reaches for Rabbit’s pants leg but before he can grab it a wave hits him in the chest, driving him back. The wave catches the old man and shoves him farther out. Otis the Rabbit floats away from the Causeway and the sunken settlement toward the open Bay. He does not resist. He’s gone.

Struggling against the undertow the Kid backs slowly free of the waist-high water and turns and looks up under the bridge. The rest of the men are huddled up there in the shadows watching him like gargoyles. Above him on the right Ginger and P.C. have crossed the guardrail onto the empty highway and are trudging west heading inland.

The bastards. They watched the old man fall and not a one of them made an effort to come to his aid. Not a one of them moved from his perch. But the Kid knows that the Rabbit had finally given up on living like an abandoned animal and didn’t want anyone to save him. He fell down that hill like a man jumping off a bridge. And who could blame him? Maybe they should all give up the struggle — just let go and fall down whatever hill you were trying to climb until you end at the bottom and the sea rolls in and takes you away like it took away Iggy and now the Rabbit. What’s the point of trying to solve your problems and get ahead in life if the only problems you can solve are the little meaningless housekeeping ones and you’re never going to get ahead in life anyhow because you’re a convicted sex offender and are condemned to be one for the rest of your life even if you never commit another sex offense. Your name and face are always going to show up on that registry and scare the shit out of people who will make you live outside the camp as if told to do it by Moses under orders from God.

He casts his gaze over the flooded encampment and notices that the surge seems to have receded a foot or two. The wind has diminished to a steady breeze and has shifted from the east around to the west and the rain has let up slightly. The men squatting up under the bridge have ventured out a ways to where they can stand in a low crouch and they’re talking to one another excitedly as if surprised at not having drowned, as if they think that soon everything will return to the way it was yesterday — as if the way it was yesterday was worth living for.

But the Kid knows it’ll never be like it was before the flood and the hurricane. Once you’ve seen your life and where you live for what they are they never look the way they did before. Illusions die hard especially when like the Kid you’ve only got a few to hold on to and when they’re dead and gone you can never get them back. He knows now what the Rabbit knew when he let himself fall: this life is the only one available and it’s not worth the effort. Fuck the Professor and his theories.

The rain has stopped and the sky is turning from dark gray to a buttery shade of yellow. The water is receding rapidly as if the Bay is being emptied out through Kydd’s Cut back into the ocean. His tent is gone, swept away by the flood. Like Rabbit. All the tents and huts have been demolished and dumped into the Bay. Chained to the stanchion his bike lies buried beneath a huge pile of dripping debris, garbage, old boards and plywood, and tangled sheets of polyethylene. He can barely make out its twisted and bent wheels and frame. Everything is beyond repair or simply gone.

He can’t think of what to do now or where to go. Maybe he should just stand where he is and wait for something to happen and react to whatever it is. As if he were an object, a thing instead of a human being. Because that’s what he feels like now.

Then he remembers that his water-logged duffel and backpack and few remaining possessions are up by the highway. What the hell, he can be a thing up there as easily as down here under the Causeway. Head down he starts trudging up the path and halfway to the top he lifts his head and sees Annie soaked and shivering tied to the guardrail and on the pavement next to her is Einstein miserable in his cage with his head tucked under a wing, his long tail-feathers a soaked mat on the floor of the cage.

The Kid never should have taken responsibility for Annie and Einstein. What was he thinking? It’s all the Professor’s fault, he thinks. He never would have taken them with him when he left Benbow’s if the Professor hadn’t given him the illusion that he was capable of taking care of them. That illusion is gone now too. Those two helpless creatures are way worse off with him than they were at Benbow’s.

Then to his amazement just as the Kid reaches the top and steps over the guardrail he sees the Professor’s van coming down the highway from the west. Every time he thinks about someone that person suddenly appears in reality. He should start thinking about people he actually wants to see except that he can’t think of anyone he really wants to see. Nobody he knows in person anyhow. He wouldn’t mind seeing Willow the French Canadian porn star. He wouldn’t mind seeing Captain Kydd the pirate so he could ask him about the buried treasure.

The van crunches to a stop beside the Kid. The Professor gets out of his vehicle and hurries up to the Kid. He’s in shirtsleeves with huge sweat circles under his arms and a gray wet blotch across his heaving chest. His face is red and he’s breathing rapidly as if he’s climbed several flights of stairs.

Put the animals and the rest of your gear in the van!

The Kid answers, You can take the animals if you want. But I’m stayin’ put. I don’t need you.

The Professor slides open the side door and lifts Annie into the back and sets Einstein’s cage beside her. Yes you do. The storm’s only half over. You can’t stay here. He reaches for the Kid’s backpack but the Kid yanks it back from him.

Fuck you, fat man! Like I said, I’m stayin’ put.

Look at you! You’re soaked through. He glances down the hillside at what was once the settlement beneath the Causeway. Your camp is wrecked. You can’t stay here.

Fuck you.

The Professor picks up the Kid’s duffel and places it on the backseat. Come with me. I’ll take you to my house. You can come back here and rebuild tomorrow or the next day, after the hurricane’s passed out to sea.

The Professor takes hold of the backpack again. This time the Kid doesn’t resist. He’s remembered that he’s an object, a thing, not a human being with a will and a goal, and that he’s only capable of reacting, not acting. The Professor’s the human being here, not the Kid. So he opens the passenger door of the van and gets in.

CHAPTER THREE

TO THE KID AS THEY DRIVE ACROSS THE city and along deserted suburban streets the Professor seems agitated and uncharacteristically urgent. Usually he’s calm, slow-moving, and talks in long complete sentences that keep your attention but today he rattles on about how until now he’s been protected and that’s all going to change so he’s going to have to protect himself. The Kid’s not sure what he’s talking about and thinks at first that it’s the hurricane that’s got the Professor in a lather so he asks him if he means protected from the hurricane.

No, no, of course not, the Professor’s not afraid of the storm, he’s been in far worse storms than this, he insists. He’s been in typhoons at sea in an open boat.

No shit, the Kid says, not knowing what a typhoon is exactly but admitting to himself that it does sound worse than a hurricane. Especially at sea in an open boat.

And besides, the Professor adds, wherever I go, the eye of the storm goes. The I of the eye. He laughs loudly at this, a joke the Kid definitely does not get. As you may have noticed, the big man says and laughs again.

Yeah, whatever.

Dodging fallen tree branches and uprooted foliage to the end of a looping tree-lined residential street, the Professor turns the van onto a driveway and pulls up before a double bay garage attached to a sprawling ranch house. He raises the overhead door with an electronic remote and drives the vehicle into the garage and parks it.

Lugging Einstein’s cage and leading Annie by her rope leash, the Kid follows the Professor into the house. The Professor, still in shirtsleeves and sweating, drags the Kid’s expedition backpack and duffel across the carpeted floor and drops them by the entrance to the living room. It’s a large comfortable tastefully furnished home, a professor’s and a librarian’s home with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, paintings and framed photographs on the walls, Oriental carpets, an elaborate stereo system and racks of CDs, a large flat-screened TV, and a long shelf of DVDs next to it. The Kid can’t remember ever being inside a house like this before. He wasn’t aware that comfy good-looking rooms like this even existed except in magazine ads and on TV. It’s more like a set for actors to use for an upscale porn film than a real home for real people, he thinks. Then he flashes on the night he got caught by Dave Dillinger and the girl he thought was brandi18. Except for the books and pictures this house is a lot like that one.

You don’t have like any hidden cameras or anything here, do you?

Of course not! What made you ask that?

Just wondering. Is this where you live?

Yes, it is.

You live here alone or with a wife?

With a wife and our two children.

They around?

Yes, yes, of course. They wouldn’t go anywhere in this storm.

Maybe I oughta leave. If there’s kids in the house.

No! You have to stay! Wait out the storm, and I’ll cover for you.

Too late now anyhow.

They pass through the dining room into the kitchen, a large open space with stainless steel restaurant-size appliances and copper-colored tile countertops and floor to match. The Professor heads straight for the refrigerator and then abruptly stops. A sheet of white paper with a long typed paragraph on it has been taped to the door.

The Professor peels the paper off the refrigerator door, reads it quickly, and passes it to the Kid. He opens the refrigerator door and caresses its brightly lit interior with his gaze. At least she left us plenty of food, the Professor says and starts carrying bowls and plastic containers to the table. He sets out two plates and forks, sits down at the table and opens several of the plastic containers.

Soaked and chilled to the bone the Kid stands by the refrigerator reading:

I have taken the twins and gone to my mother’s in Port Vitalie. It may be temporary, it may be permanent. I don’t know. I need time to think this through without you present. I need to decide how seriously to take all your secrets and lies. I realize that I’ll never know the truth about you and that you will probably always keep secrets and will continue to lie to me. I have to decide if in spite of that I can go on living with you. Right now I don’t think I can. Please don’t call or e-mail me. Please don’t try to speak with me at the library when I’m working or at my mother’s. I need to listen to my own voice and the kids’ voices, not yours. If you want to speak to the kids, call my mother’s number, not mine, and ask for them. If they want to speak to you, I will let them call you. Please don’t try to contact them when they’re at school as my mother will be driving them in and picking them up afterward, and as you know, her view of you has always been negative and will likely be even more so now. When I have made up my mind about what to do with this marriage, I will let you know. — Gloria

The Kid lays the sheet of paper next to the Professor’s loaded plate. So I guess no kids. But, dude, that’s cold.

The Professor glances at the letter and goes back to eating. Between mouth-filling bites of cold macaroni salad he says, Yes… but appropriate… and in some sense… useful.

Useful? To who?

To her. To our children. And to me.

I don’t get it, man.

You will, you will. He stops eating and looks at the Kid. You’re really wet. Go down the hallway on the far side of the dining room. There’s a guest bedroom and bath at the far end. Take a shower and get dried off, and then we’ll feed you and look after this poor dog and parrot. I think like you they’ll be fine once they’ve gotten dry and are fed.

The Kid points out that his duffel and backpack are soaked through and he doesn’t have any dry clothes. The Professor says there’s a laundry located next to the guest room, he can run his clothes through the dryer while he’s showering, and he better do it now while they still have electric power. If the storm knocks out the power, they’ll have to get by with candlelight. The Professor estimates the hurricane will last the rest of the day and abate during the night. We’re lucky it’s only a Category Three. Now that we’re safely sheltered here the eye of the storm can move on. By tomorrow everything will be back to normal. Damage should be minimal, except out at the Barriers.

Yeah. And under the Causeway. That’s totally trashed, man. I’m never going back there.

We’ll discuss that later. Meanwhile, go on and dry your clothes and shower and come back to the kitchen for something to eat. I’ll still be here.

Yeah, I can see that. At the door the Kid stops and turns back. How come you’re so jumpy and nervous, man? I mean, your wife just took your kids and left you. Shouldn’t you be all sad and fucked-up? Or at least all pissed off?

You’ll understand soon enough. Go on, go on. We’ve got work to do.

Whaddaya mean, work?

We need to film another interview.

No fucking way, man! No more interviews. I’m done with that.

This time you’re going to interview me, Kid.

That’s stupid. Why would I want to interview you?

I need you to interview me. For me, for my wife and children. Don’t worry about it, just do as I say.

The Kid shrugs and heads off down the hallway dragging his duffel and backpack behind him. Annie has collapsed in a puddle on the kitchen floor. From his cage next to her Einstein says, Do as I say! Do as I say!

CHAPTER FOUR

P: You sit there, Kid, off camera. I’ll sit here on the sofa in front of it.

K: Whaddaya want me to ask? I mean, I never done this before, interviewed somebody.

P: No, but you’ve been interviewed. You start by asking a question that you want answered, and then I decide if and how I’m willing to answer it. Then you ask a follow-up question that’s generated by my previous answer. Simple. Especially for the one asking the questions.

K: Okay. How about what’s the fucking reason for making this interview in the first place?

P: Excellent first question! The simple answer is that in the coming weeks or possibly months my body will be found, and it will look like a suicide. This interview will provide evidence that it was not a suicide.

K: No way, man! Why would you commit suicide? I mean, you’re kind of jolly. You don’t seem the type to kill yourself.

P: I’m not.

K: So how come your body’s going to be found? A heart attack maybe, I can sure see you having a heart attack. On account of being so overweight. But how come it’ll look like a suicide?

P: That’s two questions. Which one do you want answered?

K: Okay. How come it’ll look like a suicide?

P: There will be a scandal, a public exposé. I know who I am, a man with a publicly certified, locally celebrated, genius IQ, a respected university professor with a wife and family, a deacon of the church, et cetera, and what I look like, morbidly obese, bearded, eccentric, et cetera. A popular parody of an intellectual. Given that profile, the scandal will be of an embarrassing, probably criminal, sexual nature. That’s how they do these things. I know the script. I practically wrote it myself. First a complaint is made to the local police by someone claiming to have been raped by the targeted party or sexually molested by him in the distant past when the accuser was a child. The police quietly begin an investigation. Then the targeted party mysteriously disappears. The accusation of rape or sexual molestation is surreptitiously leaked to the news media. Weeks pass, sometimes months. Eventually the body of the targeted party is “discovered” under circumstances and in a condition that indicates suicide. By now the accuser has disappeared. The investigation ends. Case closed.

K: You’re just making this shit up, right?

P: No, I’m not making it up. I wish I were, believe me.

K: Okay, now I got a hundred questions! If you’re not just shittin’ me.

P: (chuckles) Pick one, and we’ll go from there. I’ll answer them all eventually.

K: You are one really weird dude, Professor. So okay, who’s the “targeted party” you’re talking about?

P: In this case, me.

K: Okay. That’s what I thought. Who’s doing the targeting?

P: I’m not sure yet. It could be one of at least three of my previous employers. Let’s call them government agencies.

K: What government? You mean the government of the United States of America?

P: Yes. And the government of at least one foreign nation and possibly a second. Or all three in collusion.

K: So like, are we talking FBI and CIA and shit?

P: Not really. There are agencies that aren’t as well known as the FBI and CIA whose purposes and activities aren’t as closely monitored by Congress and the public. Agencies that are off the books, so to speak. Black-box agencies. But we needn’t go into that here. I don’t want to put you in any danger, and I certainly don’t want to endanger my family any more than I already have. My sole use for this interview is to provide some small comfort to them after my body is found. So I’ll spare you, and therefore them, some of the details.

K: Are you not really a professor then?

P: Oh, yes! I am who I say I am! A professor, husband, father, deacon, library trustee, et cetera. All that and more.

K: But you’re saying besides being a professor and all you’re also like “targeted” by these super-secret agencies.

P: That’s correct.

K: So why the fuck would they do that, target you? Why would they set it up so they can like kill you and make it look like you committed suicide because of some sex scandal?

P: (sighs) It’s a long story, Kid. I was recruited very early. While still in college, in fact. I was recruited because of my intellectual and linguistic gifts, no doubt, but also because my psychological and social profiles fit certain known and tested templates. I arrived early and stayed late, let us say, and consequently over the years I saw and heard and participated in much that if they became publicly known could cause great harm to powerful political and economic interests. Especially now that both political and economic interests are so intricately connected. Simply put, even though I was never anywhere near the top of the pyramid, I saw and heard and participated in too much. Those on top operate strictly on a need-to-know basis. It’s the people nearest the bottom, people like me, who know too much. More than they need to know.

K: Yeah, but so what? Lots of people know too much. They don’t get killed for it, so long as they don’t talk about it to anyone. Even me, I know shit for instance about the guys who live under the Causeway that I’d never tell about, stuff they told me or I saw them do that could get them sent back to prison, and nobody wants to kill me. They just trust me not to tell anyone what I know. Were you like planning on telling what you know about these secret agencies and so on, going on TV or writing it in a book or something? And somehow these guys found out about it?

P: No, nothing like that. But it’s assumed among my previous employers that people who lived as I did for years, for decades, can only be trusted as long as they are not who they say they are. It’s when they become who they say they are that they can no longer be trusted.

K: I’m confused. Trusted to what?

P: Not to reveal what they saw and heard and did in the past.

K: So now that you are what you say you are, a professor and such, married and all, you can’t be trusted anymore to lie about who you were in the past? Like you might start by telling your wife and then a priest or a shrink or the guys in your therapy group if you had one, and pretty soon some newspaper writer would hear about it or a book writer, and then the whole world would end up knowing what you know. And that would fuck up a lot of important people like in politics and so on?

P: Correct.

K: So that’s why they want to get rid of you?

P: Yes.

K: This sounds like a fucking movie. Are you sure you’re not making this shit up?

P: I’m not making any of it up. Unfortunately.

K: Were you like a spy, then?

P: Informant first. Then mole. Then spy. Counterspy. Double agent. That’s the usual progression for someone with my particular abilities and temperament.

K: How do you know they want to do you? The suicide thing.

P: Like I said, I know the script. The Calusa police have started an investigation. Two plainclothes officers came to my home asking to speak with me. They have already gone to the trouble to question my parents, which means the scandal will no doubt be set in my distant past. It will be a crime that I am accused of having committed when I was a young man, when my parents and I were still more or less in touch, before I decided to distance myself from them. It will therefore have to be an act for which there is no statute of limitations.

K: What’s that mean?

P: Misdemeanors and most felonies have to be prosecuted within a limited amount of time following the commitment of the crime. Crimes that society regards as particularly repulsive, however, have no statute of limitations. First-degree murder, for instance. Also, in most states, rape, distribution and possession of child pornography, and sexual abuse of children, especially in cases when the victim doesn’t remember the event until years later. My best guess is that someone has recently uncovered long-repressed memories of having been sexually abused by me when she or he was a child and has taken those resurrected memories to the Calusa Police Department.

K: But you didn’t, right? Abuse anybody. You’re not a fucking chomo, right?

P: Correct.

K: Dude, that’s some serious shit! You could end up living under the Causeway yourself!

P: It’ll never come to that. I’ll never be indicted or even arrested. I’ll never be tried or convicted. I’ll simply disappear. Then my accuser, whoever she or he is, will allow her- or himself to be interviewed by some local investigative journalist, or else one of the police officers will leak the nature of the accusation and investigation to the press. Sometime after that my body will be found, and the official cause of death will be ruled a suicide. Naturally, they can arrange it so my body is never found. But then my disappearance would remain an open case and would invite a long-term ongoing investigation. Who knows what would turn up? No, they want my wife, my children, my colleagues and students, the entire city of Calusa and especially the press and other news media to believe that I killed myself because I was about to be exposed as a child molester or rapist. It’ll make a titillating, convincing story. “So-called genius professor of sociology, an eccentric, bearded, fat man doing research on homeless convicted sex offenders, is a sex offender himself.”

K: How come you’re telling me all this in front of a camera, instead of telling your wife in person, say? Or the cops. Or why not go on TV and tell Larry King or some news guy? Or here’s an idea, why don’t you put it up on YouTube?

P: First of all, if I tell Gloria what is about to happen, she will want me to save myself in a way that will basically destroy her and my children’s lives. She’ll want us to flee to some undeveloped country and assume new identities, for instance. Which wouldn’t work anyhow. It would only shatter their lives and postpone the inevitable. All it would do is buy me a little extra time until they found us. Ten or fifteen years ago it might have worked. But the world is digitalized now and interconnected, so it’s impossible for a high-profile American man with a wife and two small children to flee the country and change his and his family’s identity. The first time one of us went online we’d be located. And if I go to the police, as you suggest, they will merely assume I’m lying in order to protect myself against my accuser. That would make my accuser go away, which is good, and the suicide script would be scrapped. Also good. But they’ll know I’ve been alerted to their intentions, so a different way to make me disappear will be contrived. Which is not good. In that script there’s usually an accident or a fire that takes out the whole family or several other people associated with the target, fellow workers or innocent bystanders. If I’m killed alone it will appear that my story is true. An “accident” that takes others with me is messy, perhaps, but not incriminating. The same thing will happen if I go public with it by posting this interview on YouTube, for instance, or tell my story to a journalist.

K: Okay. So why don’t you just cut out by yourself? Leave your family here. Go to Jamaica or someplace, change your name. Shave your beard and get a haircut. If you lost a lot of weight nobody’d recognize you, man. Even your wife when she came and visited you there once in a while. If you really are an ex-spy and all, you oughta know how to disappear. Even in the digital world.

P: If I fled alone, it would put Gloria and the children in great danger, especially if they knew where I was. To get to me these people would go after my family. My parents would be in danger too. It’s the reason I broke off all contact with my parents in the first place. It was to protect them. I suppose it was also to let me more freely become who and what I wanted to be, regardless of who and what I said I was. That was a long time ago. It’s only in recent years that I began to think I could become the same as who and what I said I was. (long pause) I forgot that I was still being watched. And that I was expendable. And because of the life I built here in Calusa, I had become a danger to them.

K: Are you sure you’re not like paranoid or something, Professor?

P: (chuckles) I wish I were!

K: Here’s a question. Maybe my last, unless you still have stuff you want to add. Why tell me all this? Why don’t you just talk to the camera by yourself and then download it onto your computer and burn it onto a DVD and drop it into the mail to the wife? If that’s what you’re planning to do anyhow. Besides, if you’re not nutso paranoid and what you’re telling me is true, then I’m in trouble too, just for sitting here listening to this shit. If they’re watching you, they’re watching me now. What’re you thinking, I’m expendable too? Are you sure this place doesn’t have hidden cameras and microphones?

P: Don’t worry, I do an electronic sweep of the house every few days. As for your last question, why tell you all this? There’s a very simple answer. I trust you, Kid. I do. For decades I’ve trusted no one but myself. But I trust you. After I burn a DVD of this interview and erase the original from my computer, I trust you to keep the DVD in your possession until my body is found. It’ll be in the papers and on TV, so you’ll know about it. I trust you then to deliver the DVD to Gloria and no one else and never to say a word about it to anyone for the rest of your life. I don’t trust anyone other than you to do that. No one. I don’t even trust the postal service. Besides, I can’t mail the DVD myself if I’m dead. It has to be hand delivered. By you. I trust you to do that. I’ve studied your character closely these last few days. Also, you are probably the only human being I know personally who is not being watched.

K: C’mon, I got a GPS beeper on my ankle. I’m being watched closer than you. I don’t know, man. If you’re telling me the truth about all this and you’re not just fucked-up in the head or playing some kind of weird college professor’s game with me to prove how much smarter than me you are, like with that treasure map game, then I’ll end up with some very dangerous information on my hands that these guys would like to eliminate. Which would make them want to eliminate me. That DVD is like Captain Kydd’s treasure, man. If anybody thought I figured out where X marks the spot, they’d torture me for it and then kill me.

P: Don’t worry, Kid. That map’s a fake.

K: Yeah, well, I thought it was, anyhow. Why’d you try to make me think it was real? That wasn’t cool, y’ know.

P: I apologize, Kid. I was testing you. I knew you were honest, but I wasn’t sure if you were imaginative.

K: So I passed the test?

P: With flying colors.

K: First test I ever passed. Is this what happens when you pass a test? Okay, forget it. Here’s something else I just thought of. What if this whole super-secret spy agencies story is just a cover story? What if you’re not an ex-spy, which can’t be proved anyhow one way or the other, so it doesn’t matter, and you’re really just some old ex-chomo, and you’re about to get busted for something you actually did to a kid or maybe several kids way back before you were a professor and married with kids of your own and so forth, and you know it’s gonna hit the papers and TV? What if you’re planning to kill yourself first, so you don’t have to go through all that and do time and end up living under the Causeway with an electronic anklet like the other sex offenders, and you’ve got me making this interview with you so it’ll look like it was really homicide, not suicide, at least to your wife and your kids, and you weren’t really guilty of sexually abusing kids? What about that, Professor? The camera’s still on, isn’t it?

P: Yes, it’s running. Hm-m-m. Maybe you’re more imaginative than I thought. Well, yes, Kid, you’re right, you may never know for sure if I’m telling you the truth. But will it make any difference to you? Will you refuse to keep the DVD in your possession and deliver it to Gloria when my body is found and my death is declared a suicide?

K: Depends.

P: On what?

K: On what’s in it for me.

P: Ah! You mean money, I assume. I hope not Captain Kydd’s treasure. I’m not a rich man, you know. And when my death is ruled a suicide, my wife won’t be able to collect on my life insurance policy.

K: Maybe that’s what you want this interview for! So your wife can use it to show that you didn’t kill yourself, you were knocked off by some super-spies from Russia or someplace. So she can collect on your insurance.

P: They’d never go for it. She’d have to take the insurance company to court, and if indeed I am telling the truth, that would put her and the children in grave danger. You don’t want that on your hands, do you? Just tell me what you want in payment for delivering the DVD to Gloria after my body is found and for never revealing the DVD or its contents to anyone else.

K: I don’t wanna talk about it in front of the camera.

P: Understandable. Pretty much everything I wanted Gloria to hear has been said already. Except that I truly love her and the children. I need to say that. And I am not guilty of the heinous acts that I will soon be accused of.

K: Are you ashamed, though? Like you asked me when you were interviewing me about brandi18.

P: Ashamed? Of what?

K: You know, of spying and shit. Being an informant and a mole and a double agent. All that.

P: No, I’m not ashamed. And I don’t feel guilty for all those years of deceit and betrayal, secrecy and lies. That was the nature of the world then and now, and those are the rules of the game that runs the world. And once you know that, you either play the game or it plays you. I only regret that I stopped playing the game. Now it’s playing me. Except for this one last move. ..

K: Maybe we should shut off the camera and discuss my fee.

P: Fair enough.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE UNBLINKING EYE OF THE HURRICANE swerves east of Calusa and crosses over the Barriers and out to sea. Then the second half of the storm pounces. The wind speed jacks up to eighty and ninety miles an hour and gusts start to reach a hundred and above. Torrential rain floods the streets of the Professor’s neighborhood and surrounding yards. At the edge of the neighborhood a tall live oak tree is uprooted and falls against a utility pole, blowing out the transformer and shutting down the electricity for a dozen blocks, including the Professor’s.

The Professor breaks out a bundle of candles and several hurricane lamps and lights up the living room. He hands a candle to the Kid, picks up a hurricane lamp for himself, and tells the Kid to follow him. And bring your bags, he adds. He waddles back to his study at the far end of the house, his flickering lamp casting a wedge of lemony light against the walls and ceiling as he goes. The reenergized wind slaps relentlessly at the sides of the darkened house.

The study is a small, book-lined room with an enormous blue leather recliner chair and a wide desk cluttered with books and papers. Next to the desk is a black, old-fashioned floor safe. The Professor places his lamp on top of the safe and grunting from the effort gets down on his hands and knees in front of it. He puts his eye close to the dial, spins the numbers several times each way, clockwise, then counterclockwise, and swings open the heavy door. The Kid steps forward and lowers his candle so he can see what’s inside. Filling the interior of the safe are stacks of neatly bundled cash.

He says to himself, Excellent! Finally, Captain Kydd’s treasure!

The Professor turns and looks up at the Kid. How much is this going to cost me?

The Kid is silent for a minute. He thinks: If we’re supposed to be negotiating my fee, he probably shouldn’t have let me see this. But it does make the hard-to-believe ex-spy story a little more believable. He takes a stab at how much cash is in the safe and says, Ten K.

No, that’s way too much. Try twenty-five hundred dollars. That’ll buy a lot of dog food and birdseed.

The Kid remembers that everything the Professor does has a game plan. This money was probably intended for him from the beginning. All of it. Pretending to negotiate is just another of the Professor’s little mind games. The Kid says, If you’re gonna get turned into a suicide you’re not gonna be needing any extra cash. So how about you put all the money that’s in the safe into my duffel and we’ll call it a deal. I’ll count it later.

I’ll give you five thousand dollars for your services. I need to hold back as much as possible for my family’s use. After I’m gone.

Come on, man, your wife don’t even know this money’s here. If what you told me in the interview is true, you stashed it strictly for this occasion way back. Like you say, you wrote the script. I bet your wife don’t know the combination and you don’t plan on telling it to her or writing it down for her, neither. If the cops or one of your secret agent ex-buddies decides to crack open this safe after you disappear or after they find your body, you’d want it to be empty. A whole lotta cash left here would make your suicide look real. An empty safe will help back your story in the interview.

The Professor makes his usual fat man’s professorial chuckle, Heh-heh-heh. Okay, Kid, you win this one.

Yeah, except sometimes with you it seems like whatever I think and say is what you planned for me to think and say. Maybe all you really wanted was getting me to believe your spy story.

Nonsense. I’m barely in control of what I think and say myself, never mind controlling your words and thoughts too.

You’re supposed to be a fucking double agent or maybe a triple agent times two. You guys plan everything out in advance. Or maybe you’re just playing a made-up role. So who knows what you’re in control of? Not me, that’s for sure. I’ll do what you want me to, though. With the DVD, I mean. A deal is a deal. It don’t actually matter to me what’s true about you and what isn’t. It ain’t like this is in a novel or a movie where the whole point is figuring out what’s true.

Despite what he says, the Kid is a little scared of the Professor. Especially now. The more the fat man reveals what he claims to be the truth about himself the less the Kid knows who or what the fat man is. Other than weird. If he’s telling the truth he’s the weirdest dude the Kid has ever known and if he’s lying he’s still the weirdest dude the Kid has ever known. Just gimme the fucking money and the DVD of the interview and I’m outa here. I don’t know where I’m going but wherever it is, it has to be in Calusa County, so I’ll be checking the news for when they find your body.

The Professor points out that he can’t download the interview onto his computer and burn the DVD until the electricity comes back on. The Kid will have to stay a while. Besides, with debris flying through the air and fallen tree limbs and rising waters, it’s dangerous out there for someone on foot. He reminds the Kid, who needs no reminding, about Annie and Einstein and suggests that the Kid use the guest room for the night.

The Kid says no way. He’s willing to stay put until the storm blows over — but not inside the house. He and Annie and Einstein will sleep in the Professor’s van in the garage.

The Professor says all right and proceeds to empty the contents of the safe into the Kid’s duffel while the Kid peers down from above. He counts ten bundles of hundred-dollar bills and is pretty sure now that his first guess of ten thousand dollars was correct. Very cool ending to a treasure hunt, he thinks, even though he wasn’t exactly hunting. All he was looking for tonight was shelter for himself and Annie and Einstein.

The Kid grabs his duffel and follows the Professor into the kitchen where the Professor sets out a new meal for himself at the table. Before he sits down to eat, he makes a ham and cheese sandwich for the Kid to take with him to the garage and gives the Kid a flashlight and an extra candle. The Kid stands by the door for a minute and watches the fat man go back to the refrigerator and load a second plate with pie and ice cream and he decides to keep the doors of the van locked when he’s sleeping. Even though most of what he’s heard and seen tonight is probably a lie or a trick or part of a game whose rules he’ll never really get, he knows too much about the Professor now to turn his back on him. The guy never says or does anything without a hidden agenda. For all the Kid knows it could be sexual and the Professor could have a thing about the Kid’s thing. He wonders how a guy that fat can even have sex anyhow. Unless his dick is humungous — longer for instance than the Kid’s — he’d have a hard time getting his hands on it under all those rolls of fat.

Maybe he’s into giving BJs, the Kid thinks. Not for him. No BJs for the Kid these days or maybe ever. Especially not from the Professor. Not in return for the ten K. Not for any amount of money. Since getting busted that night by Brandi’s dad and the cops he hasn’t jerked off even once. He actually doesn’t like looking at his dick anymore or touching it and he sure doesn’t want anyone else looking at it or touching it. He doesn’t mind if Annie or Einstein happen to see his dick when he’s naked from a shower or changing clothes like earlier in the Professor’s guest room and bath. They’re only a sick old dog and a trash-talking bird. But no humans, male or female, are going to see it. Or touch it.

CHAPTER SIX

THE AREA OF A CIRCLE IS PI TIMES THE square of its radius. Which means: if you’re required to reside 2,500 feet away from anyplace where children regularly gather — a school or a playground, for instance, or a video arcade — you have to live outside a closed circle of 9.25 million square feet. Since every school, playground, or video arcade lies at the center of such a circle and nearly all of the circles partially overlap and often extend well beyond the others, when you step clear of one 9.25-million-square-foot forbidden zone, you immediately step into part of another.

Thus, if you’re a sex offender tried and convicted in Calusa County and are required by the terms of your parole to stay in Calusa County, as is almost always the case, there are only three places where you can legally reside: under the Causeway that connects the mainland with the Barrier Isles; in Terminal G out at the International Airport; or in the eastern end of the Great Panzacola Swamp.

The Kid knows he can’t go back to the Causeway again. Whatever they had going for themselves down there before the hurricane, it’s totally smashed now. The Rabbit is dead. And Iggy is dead. Their ghosts will haunt the place forever. The Shyster, Paco, the Greek, P.C., Froot Loop, Ginger, all the residents are scattered across the city like cockroaches and in any case will be looking out only for themselves now. It’s like Paco said when he rode off into the rain. The Kid’s got to do the same. Look out only for himself. Forget communal living, collaboration, cooperation. Forget community completely. Except for Annie and Einstein, you’re on your own now, Kid.

He can’t set up camp in the parking garage at Terminal G or sleep on one of the benches in the waiting area inside. The airport’s a favorite cul-de-sac for homeless crazies, drug addicts, and alcoholics to panhandle harried travelers who are usually flush with cash and more or less confined to the terminal waiting for their delayed flights to arrive or depart. People like that are easily hit for a buck or two just to make the panhandler go away, since they’re stuck at the airport and can’t go away themselves. The homeless crazies, addicts, and alcoholics end up nodding out or falling asleep on a modernist stainless steel bench inside the terminal stinking up the place or else they look for an unlocked car in the garage or failing that break into a locked car where they can hole up till the owner comes back from his trip. Which is why there are so many cops patrolling the area. The Kid would be busted in an hour for vagrancy and sent back to prison for violating parole.

That leaves the Great Panzacola Swamp. The vast grassy marshland is a fourteen-thousand-square-mile national park that sprawls across the entire southwest quarter of the state, extending all the way east into Calusa County to where it was partially drained a generation ago by a concrete grid of thirty-foot-deep canals creating the cane fields, citrus groves, and truck farms that bump up against the expanding suburbs and tract-house developments of Greater Calusa. West of the suburbs, fields, farms, and groves, there is a sizable chunk of the swampy waters, lakes, slow shallow streams, mangrove islands, low hummocks, and grasslands — some five hundred thousand acres of the Panzacola National Park — that remains within the borders of Calusa County. The Kid can legally reside there.

Though less than thirty miles from so-called civilization, the swamp is home to alligators, small deer, the last of the American cougars, and hundreds of species of birds. Out where the freshwater streams and the shallow run-off from the lakes farther north mingle with the saline waters of Calusa Bay and the Gulf there are diminishing numbers of crocodile colonies and manatee pods. Also in recent years many Calusans have released into what looks to them like the wild exotic pets grown too large for their cages or too dangerous for domestic life with humans. The swamp has become the home away from home of twenty-foot-long Burmese pythons and other large Asian, African, and South American snakes, huge snapping turtles captured as babies in Georgia and Alabama ponds, pet wolves, feral cats, parrots and cockatoos, and in a few cases monkeys, macaques, gibbons, and at least two pet chimpanzees grown from cute little humanoids into powerful destructive adults that a year ago had to be shot by park rangers for attacking a group of their Homo sapiens cousins visiting the park from abroad.

At the ranger station located near the entrance to the park you can buy a ticket for a thirty-minute tour-boat ride through a small part of the swamp and out into Calusa Bay to watch the sunset. Or if you prefer to penetrate to the heart of the swamp on your own you can rent a canoe by the hour for the day. If you want to stay longer than a day but are not eager to sleep in a tent at one of the flea- and mosquito-infested campsites you can rent one of the half-dozen small underpowered flat-bottomed houseboats, stock it with water, food, iced beer or wine, fishing gear, and plenty of sunscreen and bug spray and with a topographical map of the entire multimillion-acre park in one hand and the tiller in the other you can disappear into the depths of the swamp for days or weeks or even longer if you can afford the rent.

Though he’s never been to the Great Panzacola Swamp in person and doesn’t know much about anything that he hasn’t experienced in person the Kid knows all this. He learned about the swamp and the houseboats from the Rabbit one night back when he first pitched his pup tent under the Causeway. Still unused to the noise of the traffic overhead, the filth, stench, and crowdedness of the place and the sometimes erratic scary behavior of the other residents, he was grousing to the Rabbit who was the only one living down there who had befriended him and didn’t seem to want anything from him in return. The Kid whined that there’s got to be a better place than this rat hole where they could legally reside.

The Rabbit told him there wasn’t. But if they had enough dough they could rent a houseboat and live in the Great Panzacola Swamp and still be in Calusa County. Nobody hassles you out there, Kid. They got a store at the ranger station where you can buy what you need. You can even rent a post office box there for your Social Security check or if you’re on welfare. Once a week or so you come in off the swamp, pick up your mail and restock your supplies, fill up the gas tanks and head back out the same day. ’Course, it’s probably pretty boring after a while. And there’s all kindsa dangerous snakes and animals out there. And it’s buggy. I mean, Kid, it’s a fucking swamp! They probably got malaria out there. But nobody can bust you as long as you can pay your rent for the boat and obey the park rules.

The Kid asked him what the rules were and the Rabbit said he wasn’t sure but figured you couldn’t toss any trash overboard or pick the flowers or use firearms or make campfires except in designated spots. That sort of thing. He said he heard there were still a few Indians living deep in the swamp way west and north of the Calusa County line, descendants of the Seminoles and escaped slaves who fought the white Americans to a standstill back in the nineteenth century getting by on hunting and fishing for food, living in hidden huts and tents on the mangrove islets and now and then guiding fishing parties out of the lodges located near the highways and in the small towns on the far edges of the park. He thought they signed a peace treaty years ago that gave them some special park privileges. He heard there were a few fugitives hiding out in the swamp too. Outlaws, Kid. Sort of like us. Only without electronic GPS anklets, so nobody knows where they are. If you cut the fucking thing off your leg, nobody’d know where you were, either. The cops’d never think of looking for you in the swamp. They’d just think you booked for Nevada or somewhere in the West. They’d put out an APB to have you picked up and wait for you to turn up busted for vagrancy in Salt Lake City or someplace.

The Kid was interested in the idea. That sounds awesome, man! I hate this fucking bracelet.

It’s an anklet, Kid. And if you cut it off you’d be an outlaw too, the Rabbit pointed out. A fugitive. You’d have to live in the swamp the rest of your fucking life. For me, no big deal maybe, but for you, different. If you ever wanted to come back to civilization for a visit or to get laid you’d get busted the first day just on suspicion of being alive, and they’d nail you for cutting off your tracker and you’d be back in the can. ’Course, as long as you kept your tracker on and the battery charged, which you could probably do at the ranger station, and didn’t go beyond the county line, they couldn’t legally stop you from living on a boat in the swamp.

The Kid asked him if he was up for it. Why not? They could rent one of those houseboats and live in the swamp together. It had to be an improvement over living in a tent under the Causeway.

The Rabbit laughed and agreed, sure, it would be a decided improvement. But forget about it, Kid. Those houseboats go for like fifty bucks a day. Maybe more. Who’s got that kinda bread? Not me. And not you either.

But that was then. This is now. The Rabbit may be gone to the bottom of the Bay with Iggy, but thanks to the Professor’s upcoming suicide, the Kid’s got plenty of bread now.

CHAPTER SEVEN

FLATTENED AGAINST THE SIDE WINDOW OF the van, the Professor’s fat bearded face peers inside at the Kid stretched out asleep on the backseat. Annie and Einstein stare at the Professor from the rear cargo space. All hands on deck! Einstein screeches. All hands on deck! All hands on deck! Annie offers a weak whimpering bark — her first attempt to protect the Kid since he kidnapped her from Benbow’s. She’s gradually getting her strength and health back and evidently with it a small amount of confidence.

Slowly the Kid props himself up on his elbows and checks out the Professor face-to-face. The man looks sad and worried to the Kid, different from last night when he was spinning his tale and the Kid fears that he’s going to ask for the money back. Too fucking bad, the Kid thinks. He’s not getting it back no matter how sad and worried he looks. A deal’s a deal. He checks the van doors — still locked. The keys dangle from the ignition.

The Professor tries the door and when it won’t open he holds a DVD in a plastic case up to the driver’s window and offers a wan smile. The Kid scrambles into the driver’s seat and without starting the engine turns the ignition on and lowers the window an inch. He asks what time is it. The Professor says eight in the morning. This is yours now, he says and pushes the DVD through the slot to the Kid. The hurricane’s passed out to sea. It’s safe for you to leave now. He offers to drive the Kid back to the Causeway.

The Kid grabs the DVD and reaches around behind him and quickly shoves it inside his duffel next to the money. Forget that, man.

You can’t stay here, Kid. There’s a day care center on the next block and an elementary school three blocks over. Now that the storm’s over they’ll be checking your anklet’s location again.

I don’t need to be reminded. You want to take me someplace, Haystack, drive me and my stuff and Annie and Einstein out to the Panzacola Swamp ranger station. Otherwise call me a cab.

The Professor raises his bushy eyebrows in surprise. Why there?

The Kid briefly lays out his intentions and reasoning, and the Professor purses his lips and nods in agreement — he doesn’t think the Kid will last long out there on a houseboat but he agrees to drop him and his possessions and his two friends at the ranger station. Now will you unlock the van doors?

The Kid flicks the lock off and climbs into the back where he positions himself in the middle of the wide seat and waits for his driver to heave his huge bulk up and behind the wheel. The garage door rises and bright white daylight floods inside.

Cock-a-doodle-doo! Einstein cries. Cock-a-doodle-doo-o-o!

The Kid smiles and reaches around behind him and pats Annie on the head and gives a friendly wink to the parrot. This is better than he’s felt in at least two years. Maybe longer. He’s almost happy. If someone asked him if he was happy he’d say yes and he’d only be lying a little.

BEYOND THE SUBURBS MOST OF THE OTHER vehicles on the road this morning are pickup trucks and green and white city and county trucks carrying work crews out to begin repairing the downed lines and road signs and corporate vehicles headed to clean up the ravaged fields and the migrant workers’ overturned trailers and shacks. The sky is clear and sapphire blue. West of the city limits a few miles past the last of the industrial parks, gated communities, and suburban housing developments they pass along the concrete drainage canals that run like arteries from the swamp down to the Bay, irrigating the hundreds of square miles of sugarcane and citrus groves. The waters of the overflowing ditches and canals glisten brightly in the sunlight. It’s like a gigantic gleaming green game board out there despite the devastation caused to the crops and groves by the wind and the flooding of the canals and irrigation ditches. The blown-down bright green stalks of cane all lie on the ground in the same east-west direction and wide swaths of citrus trees are broken off at the same knee-high height.

The Professor has grown more animated as they drive and as is his wont is explaining to the Kid much of what the Kid is not the slightest interested in: the history of the canals and the draining of a huge chunk of the swamp for corporate agriculture, the political and economic battles waged for decades between the environmentalists who wanted to keep the swamp intact and the businessmen and politicians who wanted to carve it up piece by piece for industrialized farming and the real estate developers who had and still have designs on the fresh loamy soil for tract housing, gated communities, industrial parks, theme parks, stadia, and malls. The environmentalists lost their end of the battle years ago and have had to content themselves with guarding the remaining two million acres protected by the national park, but the fight between the agricultural interests and the real estate and banking interests continues. Meanwhile, the Professor goes on, these concrete canals have come to function not just as conveyors of water to drain and irrigate the land but also to serve a valuable service for the Calusa underworld. That’s the aspect of industrialization that particularly interests me, he says. Professionally. How the underclasses and the underworld end up making good use of social environments designed and built for altogether different purposes. Like your Causeway. Or the way you’re now planning to make use of the Panzacola.

The Kid perks up at this and asks how the underworld makes use of the canals. The Professor pulls the van over onto the shoulder near a thick hand-cranked lock on the farther bank where a smaller side canal feeds water into a thousand-acre cane field. If you want to get rid of a body or a gun or other incriminating evidence or a stolen car stripped of its resalable parts, you drive out here at night and drop it into a main canal like this. Look down. You can’t see a thing. It’s twenty to thirty feet deep. The water’s darkened by the tannin off the mangroves that grow around the lakes miles north of here, where most of the canal waters originate.

The Kid asks why the canals don’t eventually fill up with all those bodies and guns and stolen cars and shit and turn into like garbage dumps and clog up the canals and the Professor explains that once every few months the Calusa police and county sheriff’s departments send crews and divers out to drag and search the canals and when possible identify the bodies and whatever else they fish out of the dark waters and try to attach them to unsolved crimes. Usually in vain, of course. Bodies of missing persons can often be identified, and the serial numbers of guns are sometimes still there, and there’s usually a way to trace a stolen car back to where and from whom it was stolen. But there’s almost no way after it’s been in the canal for a month or two to determine who put the body there or who used the gun or stole the car.

That is very cool, the Kid says. I mean the way criminals and gangsters and what you’re calling the “underclasses” like me get to reuse things like canals and causeways and swamps for their own purposes. Sort of like recycling. So is that what you teach at the university?

It’s not of general enough interest to justify an entire course. It’s merely one of the things I like to investigate and think about. In the future it’s all that will be left to us, Kid. Recycling. You’re readier for the future than most people. Before long we’ll all be recycling buildings, roadways, industrial machinery, everything we’ve built for the last two hundred years or so, recycling them for purposes other than what they were originally designed and built for. And it won’t just be the underclasses and criminals doing it. We’ll all be living that way.

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.

CHAPTER EIGHT

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.

How long you gonna need the houseboat for?

Not sure. I’m thinking maybe five days, maybe more. I’m sort of recovering from the war. Afghanistan. I’m just out of the military. Need to get my head together. Post trauma whatever.

Semper fi, sonny. Retired Marine. What branch?

Army. First Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, New York.

Well, damn! Welcome back, soldier. America thanks you for all your sacrifices. And we’re real glad you’re back home alive in one piece. The old Panzacola’s a good place for a man to get his head together. Especially after what you been through. Nothing out there but gators and slithery snakes and pretty birds. And they won’t bother you none. You can do a little fishing. Catch your own supper. No fucking rag-heads blowing themselves up and cutting off people’s heads on TV. It’s real peaceful.

That’s good.

I’ll give you a military discount. You gonna need supplies? Food, water, gas, and so on?

Yeah. Five days’ worth anyhow. And some dog food and birdseed if you got it.

We’ll fix you up good, son. He tells the Kid to leave his bags and animals here at the store and take one of the canoes that the colored guys are bringing out. There’s three houseboats tied to the mangroves about a hundred yards upriver. You won’t get lost. The river’s blazed. You’ll have to make three trips. Just tie the canoe to the boat when you bring it in and paddle it back for the next one. Shouldn’t take you more’n an hour a trip. You know how to drive a houseboat, sonny?

Sure.

There ain’t much to it anyhow. Pontoon boats, little pissy twenty-five-horse outboards, no wheel or tiller to worry about. They only draw about ten inches. Moron could drive it. Lots of ’em have. Water’s pretty deep out there now on account of the storm and you might run into some drowned trees coming in, so don’t try no water-skiing, sonny. Heh-heh.

Cat’s wife has been looking the Kid up and down in a kindly, warm open-faced way as if she recognizes the young man from someplace pleasant and can’t remember where it was. The Kid catches her gaze and feels the warmth of it and grows uncomfortable. It’s a familiar enough gaze to him, one that he usually gets from women. Especially older women. They seem automatically to trust him. He doesn’t trigger their usual alarms against strange young males nor does he in any way invite their erotic attention or desire, subliminal or otherwise. He doesn’t even make them feel maternal. It’s as if he’s outside all sexual potential, is without an erotic marker of any kind, has no sexual past or future. Somehow in his presence middle-aged and older women seem released from all their usual forms of sexual anxiety and feel instead a physical warmth toward him, unrestrained and unedited. It’s almost as if he’s a very old woman himself.

But whenever the Kid perceives this warmth flowing in his direction — which due to his deflective nature isn’t all that often — he grows itchy and uncomfortable. A little fearful. It makes his stomach churn, and his breathing speeds up and goes shallow. He’s afraid that if he doesn’t turn away from that onrush of female warmth he might literally start to cry.

So he ignores Cat’s wife, refuses even to look at her. Instead he walks a few yards away from the couple and turns his attention to the Professor.

Well, Haystack, I guess this is good-bye.

Yes. I doubt we’ll meet again. I’ll leave your backpack and duffel up at the ranger station.

Okay. Thanks. Well, it’s been… interesting knowing you. The Kid doesn’t understand why he suddenly feels so sorry and sad for the Professor. He can’t remember when he last felt both sorry and sad for someone — even the Rabbit whom he felt sorry for when the cops busted his leg and sad about when he drowned but never both at the same time. Most people seem to him not quite real, as if they’re on a reality TV show and are only pretending to be themselves like the guy who’s supposed to be the park ranger and the old guy who calls himself Cat Turnbull and his wife who the Kid doesn’t want to look at. It’s like they’re on a reality show called Swamp People. They’re not actors like you see in soaps and movies or even porn because they’re playing themselves instead of people invented by a writer to say words written in a script and do what a director tells them to do, smiling or crying or taking off their clothes and screwing each other or just talking to each other on their cell phones. The ranger and the old guy named Cat and his wife and pretty much everyone else the Kid meets aren’t actors, he knows that — they’re just not real in the same way that he himself is.

But the Professor is different. He’s starting to feel real to the Kid the same way the Kid feels to himself and he’s puzzled by the feeling. He’s never much liked the Professor or enjoyed his company the way he enjoyed Rabbit’s for instance or even Paco’s because of his goofy concentration on something as useless as pumping iron that turned him into a cartoon character. On the other hand he didn’t particularly dislike the Professor either, not the way he disliked the Shyster and certain other deviants under the Causeway or O. J. Simpson for instance whom he never actually knew personally but definitely did not want to know personally anyhow, not just because he was a stone-cold wife killer but because he was an arrogant asshole. On the likability scale until this moment the Professor has fallen somewhere between the Rabbit and O. J. Simpson. Which for the Kid is about where most people fall. Even his mother. That’s how he prefers it. It’s how he’s always preferred it.

You know all that shit you told me in the interview? About how you’re gonna get whacked and everything from becoming “expendable and therefore dangerous”? Only it’s supposed to look like it’s a suicide?

Yes.

That’s not true, is it? You just made it up so your wife will feel better if you kill yourself.

Kid, it’s all true. You don’t believe me?

Why do you want to kill yourself, Professor? If your wife and kids come back, except for being so fat you got a lot to live for. Even if they don’t come back and she wants a divorce, you still got a lot to live for. Nice house, big prestigious job at a college, all those books and pictures and nice stuff you live with. You can travel wherever you want, live wherever you want, get credit cards and bank loans, take friends out to fancy restaurants for dinners. If you lost some of that weight you could even probably get a fairly good-looking girlfriend if you wanted one. Christ, look at me, I’m the one who should be talking about suicide, not you. I can’t even vote in this state. Why do you want to kill yourself?

I don’t. And I won’t. Someone else will do the job. Only he’ll be masquerading as me. As it were.

That means he won’t really be you? People will just think he’s you?

Correct. Except for you and Gloria.

It doesn’t add up, Professor. You must be really bored with life. Like you’re too frigging smart for reality and other people so you make up this complicated spy story about how you’re not really gonna kill yourself, some secret government agent’s gonna do it, and then you go and kill yourself anyhow but you get to feel superior about it. ’Course, that doesn’t make much sense either. Once you’re dead you don’t get to feel superior to anybody. You don’t feel anything. Unless you’re a Christian who believes in God and heaven and all. But you’re a professor, so you don’t believe in any of that, do you?

No.

Me neither. Maybe you’re too tricky for your own good, Professor. You ever think of that?

I’m touched by your concern, Kid. Seriously.

Yeah, well, I guess the truth is I’m gonna miss talking with you. I kind of wish what’s gonna happen wouldn’t… you know, happen. Maybe it won’t. I actually hope it doesn’t. No shit. But if it doesn’t, do I get to keep the money anyhow? You know, in case you don’t end up dead. Otherwise I’ll be back to squatting under the old Causeway with the rats again.

The Professor smiles and says, The money’s yours, Kid. No matter what happens. He extends his hand and the Kid shakes it firmly. Listen to the news on that radio I gave you, Kid. And check the newspapers whenever you can.

The Kid nods, and the Professor hands him Annie’s leash. He turns away and the Kid watches him waddle slowly up the long slope toward the parking lot and his van. He watches him the whole way. That’s the last time the Kid will see the man: a huge hairy figure sweating inside the ten yards of brown cloth it takes to cover him with a suit, a man submerged in a body as large as a manatee’s, graceless, slow moving, arms and thighs rubbing themselves raw, spine and knee and ankle joints stressed nearly to the breaking point by the weight they must support, enlarged heart thumping rapidly from the effort of shoving blood and oxygen through all that flesh, overheated lungs gasping from the work of getting that enormous bulk up the incline to the parking lot, liver, kidneys, glands, digestive tract, all his organs overworked for half a century to the point of exhaustion and collapse — a man with two bodies, one dancing inside his brain, a hologram made of electrons and neurons going off like a field of fireflies on a midsummer night, the other a moist quarter-ton packet of solid flesh wrapped in pale human skin.

CHAPTER NINE

IF YOU’VE NEVER PADDLED A CANOE BEFORE it can at first be surprisingly difficult — you have constantly to correct the tendency of the bow of the canoe to swing in the direction opposite your paddle. At first you may try correcting the tendency by alternately dipping your paddle into the water on one side of the canoe, then switching to the other, but all this does is drive the bow from right to left and back again, and you waste a great deal of energy and time making corrections instead of moving straight ahead on your desired course. Eventually to keep the canoe from wagging its bow from side to side you learn to lean forward from your seat in the stern, dip, pull, and curl the paddle away from the canoe in what’s called the J-stroke. A beginning canoeist who is physically intuitive can figure all this out on his own fairly quickly, and if there is no strong current to fight or the water is still, in a matter of minutes he will be on course, slipping smoothly upriver through overhanging foliage, past mangroves and dense palmettos, the only sound the soft plash of each stroke of the paddle as it breaks the surface of the dark water. Overhead, bands of sunlight streak the bright greenery of swamp willows, gumbo-limbo trees, and strangler figs, drift downward past epiphytes and flowering red mangroves and end up lying across the water in flattened stripes.

The canoe rounds a long slow S-bend in the narrow stream startling a snowy egret into awkward flight. A pair of small chartreuse parrots stares down at the slender craft from high in the branches of a cottonwood tree. As the canoe comes out of the S-bend the streambed straightens for twenty or thirty yards and the canoeist sees the first houseboat tied to the trunks of three stout cypress trees. The houseboat is nearly as wide as the stream, a raftlike platform carried on tubular aluminum pontoons with a small box of a cabin set in the center, a short deck aft and another at the squared bow. As he approaches the houseboat he makes out two more beyond it, also tied to cypress trees. He brings the canoe alongside the first, steps aboard, and ties the canoe to the stern. Five minutes later he has the outboard motor started and has untied the moorings and is ready to bring the houseboat back downstream to the settlement at the estuary, where he will by then be feeling utterly competent at this, and with a certain pride he will bring the rectangular boat out to the end of the pier and pull it into a slip, shut down the motor, and tie the boat to a pair of stanchions there.

He will do this twice again — paddle his canoe upstream to the houseboat, bring the houseboat down to the dock and tie it there. The convicts cleaning up the campground and the area surrounding the store will stop in their work and watch him come and go, and on his final trip downstream to the settlement as he passes the convicts he will impulsively smile and wave to them. Look at me, guys! They will look at him, but with expressions approaching disgust and irritation, and the guard will toss him a hard angry look and with a push of the flat of his hand will tell him to keep moving, unless you want to end up alongside these poor souls yourself.

THE THINGS HE CARRIES FROM TURNBULL’S Store and stashes aboard the houseboat named Dolores Driscoll:

waterproof charts of the channels, sloughs, and streams of the Great Panzacola Swamp

topographical map of the Great Panzacola National Park

compass

fishing license

filet knife

fishing rod and reel with hooks and lures

plastic container of earthworms

mosquito netting

mosquito repellent

water purification tablets

5 one-gallon jugs of drinking water

first aid kit

sunscreen

10 cans Alpo dog food

2 pounds mixed nuts

1 pound sunflower seeds

rice

3 loaves Sunbeam bread

peanut butter

Rice Krispies

powdered milk

instant coffee

sugar

tub of coleslaw

3 large bags Cheez-Its

Tang

6 cans Dinty Moore beef stew

1 dozen eggs

1 dozen oranges

1 case Budweiser Light

6 flashlight batteries

6 candles

20 pounds of ice

10-gallon plastic cooler

white gas for Coleman lantern

1 rented one-man dome tent

1 carton Newport 100 mentholated cigarettes

When he’s paid Cat Turnbull for everything on his list he asks the old man if he can charge his cell phone battery from a wall plug he noticed when he used the restroom at the rear of the store, and Cat says yes indeed, adding that it’s probably a good idea to have a cell phone out there in case he needs to be rescued by the rangers. People wake up lost in the swamp all the time ’cause they forget how they got to where they anchored the night before. Some of ’em are just drunk, of course, or on drugs, but some of ’em are purely stupid. Good idea to mark on the topo each night exactly where you anchor. You ain’t stupid, sonny, I can see that, but you might decide to drink that whole case of Budweiser the same night or smoke too much pot sitting out there all alone in the swamp listening to the tree frogs.

I don’t touch no drugs, the Kid says. No, sir. And I never drink more’n three cans a day. I keep count of everything. Same as with cigarettes. I’m down to eleven a day, and next week it’ll be ten. Ten weeks from now it’ll be one. And then none. Quit.

That’s the military in you, sonny. Better than being a goddam Boy Scout Christian. Can’t trust those types. It’s always the damned Boy Scout Christians who get drunk or stoned ’cause they think they’re on vacation from the wife and nobody’s watching so they can do whatever the hell they can’t or won’t do the rest of the year, and either they get lost or they fuck up the boat somehow and don’t want to pay for it afterward.

I ain’t no Boy Scout Christian. Though I’ve known a few, the Kid says, remembering the Shyster and his Bible in particular.

He heads for the back of the store and locks himself into the restroom with a copy of the Calusa Times-Union and plugs the charge-cord for his anklet into the wall socket. He sits down next to it on the closed toilet seat with his ankle extended and reads the newspaper for a half hour until the battery is topped off with enough juice to report his whereabouts for the next seventy-two hours. He switches over to his cell phone charger’s cord, sets the phone on the back of the toilet and returns to the store and commences loading his large pile of purchases, his duffel and backpack, Annie and Einstein onto the Dolores Driscoll.

The boat is the first that he brought in from the swamp. A floating house trailer, it has an eight-by-ten-foot cabin minimally furnished with a fold-down table and two stools, a pair of collapsible cots, a propane-powered stove and refrigerator and a row of low cabinets with cookware, plastic dishes, and eating utensils stored inside. He has his radio and flashlight, his own sleeping bag, the Shyster’s Bible and packet of purloined papers for reading material, clothes, the telescope given him by the Professor in case he wants to look at distant birds or stars at night, and the rented tent in case he decides to spend a night camping at one of the island campsites over near the Gulf.

The Dolores Driscoll is named after Cat’s girlfriend and business partner, the same white-haired lady the Kid caught looking at him with such affectionate regard a while earlier. She watches him now from behind the deli counter as he comes and goes between the store and the boat. Then he disappears from her sightline for a while, gone to the ranger station for a park permit, she figures. She’d like to talk with him, find out where he’s from, who his people are, how old he is and so on, but instead when he returns to the store to pay Cat she hangs back in silence. She can see that he’s extremely shy and averts his eyes from her, and though he speaks forthrightly if a little stiff in an odd loud way when he’s talking with Cat, whenever he appears to know she’s in earshot he mumbles and looks down at the floor. He’s a strange boy with his derelict yellow dog and caged parrot and what looks like all his worldly effects paying for the boat and supplies with hundred-dollar bills like a sudden millionaire. He doesn’t ever smile, even with Cat who has a humorous way of putting things and is the friendliest man she’s ever known.

Cat told her that the kid’s just back from Afghanistan, which explains a lot about his manner and affect and probably all the cash, but it doesn’t explain the dog and the parrot or the fact that he seems so alone in the world now that his fat bearded friend has driven off. They were a mismatched couple, the short skinny young man with the buzz-cut hair in T-shirt and worn jeans and sneakers who looks barely old enough to shave and the enormous hairy middle-aged man wearing a dark three-piece suit like a TV professor or that fat TV detective, Whatzizname, Nero Wolfe. The two seemed intimately connected but formal; attached to one another but determinedly independent: they acted like a father and son who love one another, who are stuck with one another for life, but have no idea of who the other is.

The young man reminds her some of the little schoolboys she knew back when she was driving a country school bus up by the Canadian border years ago, before her invalid husband died and she moved as far south as she could go and still be in America to get away from the memories of all that and try to start her life over in her late fifties, which, thanks to finding Cat Turnbull, she has pretty much succeeded at. She remembers how every year or two a scrawny pale boy several years short for his age and looking almost malnourished would show up on the first day of school at the school bus stop outside a falling-down shingled wreck of a house or one of the rented dented double-wide house trailers on the outskirts of town, a new boy in town who couldn’t make eye contact with anyone, not even with the other children. They were born to lose, those little boys, no other words for it, and the other children recognized it instantly and turned on them the way a flock of hens will single out the weakest member of the flock and start pecking at its head and eyes until it bleeds and tear out its feathers one by one until they’ve made it so ugly and deformed that lying panting on its side in the dust it looks more like a grotesque version of a newborn chick than an adult hen. You couldn’t protect those persecuted boys from the other children, any more than you could protect the poor pecked-to-death hen from its flock, because those boys mistrusted adults, no doubt with good reason, even more than they mistrusted other children, as if the protective adult were merely a larger stronger version of the worst of the other children. If you tried to help them they turned surly and pulled away in sullenness from your extended hand and stumbled back into the eagerly waiting flock.

From her post behind the deli counter she looks out the screened door and along the dock to the slip where the young man is untying the houseboat that Cat so sweetly named after her when she first moved into the trailer with him. Cat stands off a ways watching him with more than usual interest though it’s probably mostly because like Cat he’s ex-military and Cat never got over his time as a Marine in Vietnam and to him anyone who once wore a uniform is a brother or nowadays a sister. The way he does for everyone who sets off in a rental Cat salutes the young man who from the afterdeck of the boat salutes him back. He squats down and starts the motor and slowly steers the craft away from the dock out into the open water of the estuary. He brings it back around and heads it into the quickly narrowing Appalachee River. Seconds later the Dolores Driscoll has disappeared up the river and into the jungle.

Cat walks into the store with a worried frown on his face. I prob’ly shouldn’a done that.

Done what?

Rented him a boat. Took his money.

For God’s sake, why not? A cash customer at this time of year? Five days’ rental. All those supplies.

He ain’t straight, that kid. Paying with cash, all hundreds, even for the deposit. And using a state-issue ID instead of a military one. Not even a driver’s license. You see what he was wearing on his ankle?

On his ankle?

Noticed it when he sat down and started the motor. His pants leg come up a ways and he had one of them electronic whatchamacallits on, like they make people wear who’re under house arrest.

You think he’s some kind of criminal? He did seem a little odd to me. Actually just unusual, not odd. Kind of sweet, I thought. And shy and sad, like he’s trying to get over a busted romance or something. The one I didn’t trust is that big fat guy who brought him in. Maybe that thing on his ankle is just a kid thing. You know, some new kind of cell phone or electronic game machine or one of those gizmos they use for playing their music like the joggers wear on their arms.

Maybe. Still, I think I oughta look him up on the computer. The Internet. Assuming his ID ain’t a fake. See if the cops’re looking for him or something.

Cat, my dear, underneath that good nature of yours lies a suspicious nature. He’s just one of those born-to-lose kids who probably lives most of the time in his head because he hasn’t got any friends, except that big fat guy.

You could use a little more suspiciousness yourself.

As my dear departed late husband Abbott used to say, I have a sanguine personality.

Cat grins and pats Dolores on her rump and nuzzles her with his leathery face. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that dear departed late husband of yours. Him and his unforgettable words of wisdom. “Short-term profits make long-term losses.” “The biggest difference between people is their quality of attention.” “Everyone must sometimes serve.”

She nuzzles him back. Sweet of you to remember.

You never let me forget. Still, despite your sanguine nature, whatever the hell that is, I’m gonna go over to the trailer and crank up the computer and see what I can find out about the kid.

You think the computer’s going to tell you about a total stranger?

’Course! Everybody’s on the Internet now. Even you, sweetheart.

CHAPTER TEN

THE KID IS IN AS BLISSFUL A STATE AS HE has ever experienced and he knows it and truly appreciates it. He’s not thinking about his past for once and he’s not thinking about his future either. It’s late afternoon and he’s miles upriver not far from where the Appalachee flows out of Turner Slough on its winding way to Calusa Bay. From the map the slough appears to be a quarter-mile wide and two miles long, a narrow shallow collecting basin for a veiny network of streams draining the farther reaches of the swamp and the watery saw grass prairies beyond. The slough is where he intends to anchor and spend the night.

Annie lies half asleep on the foredeck in shifting splotches of afternoon sunlight falling through the breaks in the overhanging foliage and Einstein released from his cage has taken a watchful position on the flat roof of the cabin. It’s the first time the Kid has let Einstein out of his cage — a true experiment because he conducted it without preferring one result over another: all he wanted was knowledge of whether the parrot despite his broken wings could fly up into the cypress trees and into the jungle where he could join a flock of other parrots most of whom are descended from escapees from urban and suburban cages themselves and live a normal free life up there among his own kind which would have seemed natural to the Kid. Or would he hang around the boat with him and Annie like a regular member of the crew where he didn’t have to hunt for food in a strange land or need protection from predators? Which also would have seemed natural to the Kid. But when the parrot stepped from his cage and did a little dance on the deck and showed no inclination to fly any farther than up onto the roof of the cabin the Kid was relieved and smiled and said, Looks like you got first watch, man. He decides it’s time to teach Einstein some new words and expressions. Like Land ho! and Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest and Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. Time to teach the parrot how to be a proper shipmate. Annie, the Kid figures, due to her age and condition, is more of a ship’s mascot. Retired.

So far on his trip upriver he’s seen dozens of wading birds — egrets and ibises, great and blue herons, anhingas and even a huge brown stork, although he doesn’t know what they’re called, they’re just beautiful strange birds to him that stand or walk slowly in the water looking to snag a fish or a frog near the banks and in among the mangrove tunnels that branch off the Appalachee. When the houseboat approaches they flutter clumsily to the upper branches of nearby cypress trees or take a position among the clusters of bright green fan blades that top off the tall Panzacola palms where they stare down at the Kid and his crew with what looks like irritation and when the boat has passed return to the water to resume their interrupted hunt for food. He’s seen dark brown mahogany trees hugged almost to death by strangler figs and peeling red gumbo-limbo trees looking like sunburnt tourists. He’s seen six-foot-long alligators and their babies that look like mechanical toy alligators and striped mud turtles the size of bicycle helmets all snoozing together side by side in the muck. He watched a water moccasin as thick and long as his arm slip from a boney black mangrove root into the water and swim slowly alongside the boat for a few moments as if hoping for a handout before veering back toward shore and he decided right then that he’ll be bathing aboard the boat with water taken from the slough with a bucket and not do any swimming which he almost never does anyhow because he doesn’t know how to swim and for once is glad. He saw an otter dive off a log into the stream and at first thought it was a giant rat but quickly realized it was an animal that lives off the land and the slow-flowing waters of the Panzacola instead of eating human waste beneath the Causeway and took comfort in the thought and was once again very glad to be exactly where he was. He’s seen soft white orchids dangling from the trees among long strands of Spanish moss and orchids with strings of blossoms like small yellow butterflies and three-foot air plants with blushing red blooms pushing through long green wraps and thickets of gigantic ferns some of them growing on dead logs, ferns so large and ancient-looking that as a private joke he keeps an eye out for dinosaurs. From time to time he’s cut the speed of the boat almost back to zero and peered down into the water and spotted crayfish and whole schools of bluegills and sunfish and once saw what he thought was a largemouth bass and decided then and there that when he anchors at Turner Slough later he’ll make like the egrets and herons he’s been disturbing and for his first supper aboard the old Dolores Driscoll he’ll serve fresh-caught fish.

At half past four in the afternoon the houseboat reaches the headwaters of the Appalachee and slips through the grassy marsh into the glistening still waters of the slough. There is no overhanging foliage here, no deep dark mangrove tunnels off the stream to peer into. The sky is enormous, the light bright enough to make him wish he’d bought a pair of sunglasses back at Cat Turnbull’s store.

Now that he’s had some time to reflect on it he’s sorry that he lied to Cat about being just back from Afghanistan because he likes the man and respects him for having served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. Whenever the Kid lies about himself or hides the facts that he’s a convicted sex offender who got kicked out of the army before completing basic training for distributing porn he feels like even more of a creep than he actually is. As if he’s something worse. A child molester like Shyster. And when he pretends that he served in Afghanistan like he did in person with Cat and online with brandi18 he feels as if he’s worse than a Shyster or a chomo. He feels like he’s a cold-blooded wife killer who got away with it, an O. J. Simpson. Secrets and lies, they eat your insides until all you have left is a hard thin skin that covers you like the shell of one of those eggs you poke a little hole in and draw out its eggy contents before you dye it for Easter.

He’s glad that Cat’s wife didn’t try to talk to him and instead just hung back and watched him with her smiling eyes because it’s harder to hide who you really are from a trusting woman like her than from a skeptical man like Cat Turnbull and he might have ended up telling her the truth about himself. Cat’s the kind of man who like most men expects you to lie to him but she’s the kind of woman who expects you to tell her the truth so before you know it you’re telling it to her. When you lie to a woman like that you feel twice as bad as when you lie to a man who expects you to lie anyhow. Most men take it for granted that people have secrets and tell lies. Most women, especially older ones, don’t. The Kid figures that’s because men have lots of secrets and tell lies on a regular basis like the Professor for instance and just about every other man the Kid has ever known. It’s just something in their masculine nature. Whereas most older women are pretty much who they seem to be and usually tell the truth at least when they’re not trying to get laid. Even the Kid’s own mother. With her what you see is what you get for better or worse. She’s 100 percent truth in advertising. Although maybe it would have been better for him growing up if she had kept a few things from him and had lied now and then about herself and about what she did in her spare time and after work in the bars of Calusa and later or when she went off with her girlfriends on cruises. Too much information, he thinks. TMI. He knows all that wasn’t his mother’s fault and he doesn’t blame her for the way his life ended up but knowing your mother’s secrets and always being told the truth by her can hurt you. Especially when you’re a child.

But these are thoughts he doesn’t want or need right now. It’s peaceful here. He’s anchored the houseboat about twenty feet off the eastern shore of the slough and he wants to concentrate on catching his supper which he just saw break the water in the weedy shadows cast by a stand of slash pines at the edge of the slough: a silvery swirl and slosh and then expanding rings of concentric ripples. It’s within easy casting distance from the boat even for the Kid who has never used a casting rod before. He’s seen it done of course by Rabbit and other denizens under the Causeway fishing in the Bay and can imitate them: a little flick of the wrist, an overhand toss of a squirming worm impaled on the hook, follow-through with the arm extended and the worm and red-striped white plastic bobber plops into the water and you watch the bobber go still until it’s suddenly pulled under and you jerk back on the rod and start reeling in what turns out to be a bluegill the shape and size of the Kid’s open palm.

Excellent first catch! Life as it was meant to be lived in the Bible when God gave human beings the Garden of Eden and told them to be fruitful and multiply. He cuts the fish open and guts and beheads it and realizes that without its head and tail it’ll barely provide two or at most three small bites so he’s going to need to catch five or six more bluegills if he wants to feed himself and his crew properly tonight. Which does not displease him. He’s happy to have to continue catching fish here in the Garden of Eden with Babylon completely out of sight and mind.

Except for the whir of the reel and the plop of the worm and bobber hitting the water at the end of his cast the only sounds are tree frogs creaking like rusty hinges and a chirping choir of crickets. The sun has slipped closer to the treetops on the western shore of the slough. Mosquitoes have begun to cloud around his face and arms but he has plenty of repellent which he spreads over his skin and he has a mosquito net to hang over his cot later. He catches two more bluegills in quick succession. Then two more. Almost enough. He cracks open a can of beer chilled in ice and takes a thrilling first gulp — the first swallow of a cold beer is always the best. It’s what you remember when you want another swallow and another beer and though they’re never as thrilling as the first the memory lingers on anyhow so you can’t complain. Reeling in his sixth bluegill in twenty minutes the Kid can’t complain about anything right now. If this isn’t heaven, which he doesn’t believe exists anyhow, it certainly is paradise.