Alligator Park (34 page)

“Yes, I’d love to.”

“Great. Be ready at 5:00 AM,
but don’t eat breakfast. We’ll get it on the trail.”

At five in the morning, I
saunter into the living room wearing the Native American outfit he gave me for
Christmas. The room lighting is subdued so as to not wake up Will who’s
sleeping in his usual spot on the floor. Fargo’s already there, stuffing
supplies into his backpack. He’s wearing only a breechcloth as he always does
when he hunts alone and there’s a Bowie knife on his belt. He pulls it out,
tests the sharpness with a flick of his thumb, and then, satisfied, slides it
back into the sheath.

We open the front door and
slip into the darkness. The morning air is cool and crisp and feels good
against my skin. I follow him down the path to the airboat, and after a few
minutes of preparation, we’re on our way, dashing over the waves so incredibly
fast my hair flails wildly in the wind. I’m glad it’s Fargo that’s driving.
Even though my vision is obscured by fog and darkness, I feel secure in the
knowledge he knows every inch of the lake by heart, every submerged log, every
sandbar, every channel marker, and every moored boat, hazards that would be a
disaster at sixty miles per hour.

The morning sky is beautiful,
with a reddish-blue glow that brings out the black silhouettes of the
tree-covered islands off in the distance. Fargo parks the airboat in the hidden
cove just as the crest of the sun’s fireball peeks over the water. We make our
way down the trail to his secret hunting grounds accompanied by the chatter of
a chorus of birds scrambling to find an easy meal before the sun ascends to its
zenith and the day becomes oppressively hot. Along the way, Fargo stuffs wild
oranges, lemons, coco plums, bananas, coconuts, and whatever else he finds
along the trail, into a large leather bag.

We arrive at the sandy
clearing where the trail ends and the swamp begins and Fargo drags the canoe
out from under the brush. He slides it in the water and steadies it while I get
in. He then pushes off and maneuvers the canoe between the immense Cypress
trees until we reach the crystal clear water where he likes to fish. He had
once explained to me that this area is fed by a spring and that’s why it’s
cooler and clearer than the other parts of the swamp. And the alligators stay
away because they don’t like cold water.

He ties the canoe to a tree
and then slips into the water with the grace of a ballet dancer, scarcely
making a ripple. I hand him the fish spear and he swims off to a group of
Cypress about a hundred yards away where trout tend to congregate.

The heat and humidity are
beginning to get stifling compounded by my leather outfit which is making me
sweat. The water looks so inviting; it’s as clear as a swimming pool and I get
the inclination to take a dip. Fortunately I had the good sense to wear my swimsuit
under the outfit so I shed my clothes and slip into the water with care, doing
everything possible to avoid tipping the canoe or making a splash. The water is
delightfully cool and I instantly feel refreshed.

Fargo returns a few moments
later with two trout tied together with a string through their gills and places
them in an empty cooler in the canoe. He returns the spear to its storage place
inside the canoe and then swims towards me. I splash him in the face, and he
splashes me back, and then we horse around and laugh a lot. He lifts me to his
broad shoulders and lets me dive off into the water. We have so much fun I’m
reminded of the first time I went hunting with him back in December, how scared
I was, but persisted because of my curiosity, and because I wanted to be
accepted. How easy it is to get trapped in your daily life and forget the
things you really love.

It’s time to go, so Fargo lifts
me into the canoe, and then, gets in himself. He paddles steadily for about a
half-hour, guiding us between huge flared-out Cypress trunks anchored beneath a
dense canopy of leaves which gives the area a subdued mystical look. Straight
ahead, a sandy beach comes into view and he heads right for it driving the
front of the canoe up onto the bank until it comes to an abrupt halt.

Set back away from the water
is a chickee, an open-sided hut with a palm-leaf roof and a railing on three
sides. On the beach is a fire pit consisting of stones arranged in a circle and
a metal grill over them.

“What is this place?” I ask.

“My refuge.”

“What’s it for?”

“Sometimes, after a long hunt,
I stay here for the night.”

“Are we going to sleep here?”

“I’m making you breakfast.”

“I thought we would eat on
the trail?”

“You’re always cooking for
us. It’s my turn.”

Fargo hops out of the canoe
and drags it farther up the bank making it easier for me to get out. I step
onto the bank, wander around, and see him enter the chickee, pick up an armful
of logs stored under the roof, and then start a fire. He fills a pan with
water, places it on the grill, and retrieves two aluminum cups from his backpack.
He cuts two oranges in half with his Bowie knife, squeezes the juice into one
of the cups until it’s full, and then hands the cup to me.

“Florida’s finest,” he says.

I take a drink and it’s the
freshest and sweetest orange juice I’ve ever tasted. The water in the pan is
now boiling so he goes back to the chickee and cuts a string hanging from the
roof that has a small bundle of leaves and twigs attached to one end, and then,
drops the twigs and leaves into the hot water.

“What are you making?” I ask.

“Indian tea.”

“Is that indigenous?”

“Actually no, but it grows
well here if you plant it on dry land. The Indian name is Ch
ʼ
il gohw
é
h
í
,
Navajo Tea. My ancestors, the Creek, brought it back from Oklahoma, when they
escaped the reservations. It
’
s a holy tea. Before they pick the stems,
they say prayers to thank Mother Earth, express their great appreciation.”

I watch the water turn to a
rich gold color. Fargo picks up a short branch and holds it in the fire until
it starts burning. He removes it, blows out the flames, and then rushes off
into the woods carrying the smoking branch in one hand and a small aluminum pan
in the other. He returns a few minutes later with something in the pan.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Honey.”

“There’s a bee hive around
here?”

He points to a dead tree
trunk that was struck by lightning.

“In there. The smoke confuses
the bees while I break off a bit of the hive.”

He asks me for my cup so I
gulp down the last few drops of orange juice and hand it to him. He fills it
with the golden tea and adds a bit of honey to sweeten it. Then he slices a
lemon in two, squeezes a few drops into the tea, and hands me the brew.

“Thank you.”

“In the Creek language, we
say, ‘Mu-toh.’”

“Moo-Toe.”

“No, not ‘moo’ like a cow.
‘Mu-toh.’ Shorten up on the ‘u’ and the ‘toh.’”

“Mu-toh,” I repeat.

“En-gah.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re welcome.”

“En-gah,” I repeat.

“That’s it. You’ve got it!”

He fills his own cup and then
we toast, clinking our cups together. I take a small sip and it’s marvelous,
sweet and pungent, and thicker than normal teas, almost like a soup. But I love
it and go back for another sip.

Fargo retreats to the water’s
edge to clean the fish, first slicing them up the middle, pulling out the guts,
and then, rinsing the body under the clear water. He dresses them with some
lemon pepper he had stored in the chickee, and then places the fish on the
grill. Ten minutes later, they’re done and he scoops them up and puts them on
two aluminum plates he brought with him. He smashes open a coconut and scrapes
some thin shavings onto the trout, enough to almost completely cover them. Then
he sprinkles a few drops of lemon juice on each one, peels a mango, slices it,
and then meticulously arranges the pieces around the perimeter of the plate.
Finally, he finishes with a garnish, a fresh green herb he cut along the way
and then hands me a plate. It’s a work of art.

“Grilled Coconut Trout.”

“Mu-toh,” I say.

“Well, what do you think?”

I balance the plate on my
knees, pull off a bit of the delicate white meat, and take a bite.

“A French restaurant couldn’t
do better.”

Fargo smiles and I can see
that he’s pleased. Personally, I’m amazed. It’s the first time he’s
demonstrated his cooking skills and what an accomplishment.

“And all this from the wild?”

“I try to use whatever’s
available,” he says.

My mind flashes back to my
early days at college when I would improvise meals with whatever was in my
kitchen. What a coincidence, it was a trait we had in common.

“How did you learn to cook?”
I ask.

“From necessity. When you’re
in the wild, alone, and you get hungry, you have the greatest motivation in the
world.”

“Yeah. It was like that for
me too, except I was in the city alone. When I got my first apartment, I used
to buy cheesesteaks all the time. But that got expensive... and boring. So I
had to learn or starve.”

“Funny, I always imagined you
went to school for it.”

“That’s a nice compliment,
but no, it was totally out of necessity, and hunger, like you.”

I take another bite of the trout,
and then, in a moment of daring, feel the urge to ask the question I’ve
wondered about since the day we first met.

“How did you get the name
Fargo?”

He laughs. “It’s a long
story.”

“We have time.”

“Okay then, this is the way
it was told to me: In the eighth month after conception, my mother decided she
wanted to be with her parents for my birth. Her husband, my father, had gone
away with no promise of return, and the only help she had was my brother Will, who
was ten at the time. So she loaded up this old station wagon with a couple of
suitcases, and then, she and Will set off for Florida, a trip that would
normally take less than a day. She always took the back roads; didn’t like the
Interstate.

But then, as she’s driving
through a remote area near the Georgia border, by the Okefenokee Swamp, the
contractions started. She pulls into a local fire station to get directions to
the nearest hospital, but it was too late. The EMT’s had no choice but to deliver
the child right in the station. At the exact moment of birth, when the pains
were at their worse, she notices a sign across the wall, ‘Fargo Fire Department.’
You have to understand one thing: Indians don’t give random names to children
like white folks do. The name has to carry significance. My mother believed
there was a reason she stopped at that particular fire station and that was the
significance she needed. And that’s how I got my name.”

“Amazing story.”

“What about you?”

“Oh forget it. It’s silly.”

“I want to hear it.”

“My parents lived in
Philadelphia, in a neighborhood with brown-stone row homes and trolleys. They
didn’t own a car because you could get everywhere on public transportation.
When my mother started having contractions, they called a cab, as was the
custom. It was the fastest way to get to the hospital. But twenty minutes later,
the cab gets trapped in gridlock from all the traffic going to a major football
game. The cabby panics and calls in on the radio and the dispatcher calls
police. Special policeman on horseback were common in center city Philadelphia because
they could get into places where cars couldn’t. So having no other option, they
sent in a female officer with EMT training. Right there, in the back of the cab,
with newspapers over the windows, she delivers the baby, which turned out to be
me.”

“So where does the name
‘Indigo’ play into all this?”

“The name tag. When the
officer was helping my mother, she had a name tag prominently displayed on her
jacket. On it was written, “Indigo Ramirez,” the woman’s name. She was so nice;
stayed with my mother all the way to the hospital, helping her, and giving her
support. When they asked for the baby’s name, Officer Ramirez was still there, holding
me in her arms, with the most contagious smile you would ever see. She had
wrapped her jacket around me and was holding me close, to keep me warm. My
mother looked at the name tag, and without hesitation said, Indigo.”

“It’s a nice story.”

“Thanks.”

I turn away and gaze out over
the swamp, and in an instant, my entire life flashes through my mind. Sadness
overwhelms me.

“What’s the matter?” he asks.

“I was just thinking; isn’t
it ironic? I was given life in the back of a cab. And then, ten years later, my
parents lost their life in the back of another cab.”

“I didn’t know.”

“They were taking a cab to
the airport for a wedding in Boston. I stayed with my grandparents. The cabby
was driving too fast, weaving between traffic. And then this truck comes out of
nowhere. They never knew what hit them.”