Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) (27 page)

XXI

I peeked my head up over the side of the canoe to see if I could spot movement back there. I could see only twenty-five feet or so into the thick clusters of lichen-covered tree trunks.

“Seychelle?”

I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It was B. J. leaning against a tree, watching us. He’d come up behind us.

“What’re you guys doing?”

“Shit, B. J. You scared the hell out of me.” I rolled onto my back on the ground and tried to catch my breath.

“Sey, watch your language in front of the kid.”

“We thought...” I sat up and began pulling twigs out of my ponytail. Zale looked at me, and I understood for the first time just how frightened he really was. “Oh, never mind, B. J. Come here and look at these bullet holes.”

B. J. ran his hand over the holes much the same as I had. “Wow. I’ve, never seen one of these made by Seminoles. They are like the ones my ancestors made. I once saw a Samoan canoe at my uncle’s in California. Only the wood is different.”

“B. J., I wasn’t telling you to look at the canoe. Geez, these are bullet holes. Zale was in the canoe today when somebody shot at him.” I turned to the boy. “You were starting to tell me about it. You heard the shots?”

He nodded. “They sounded far away. You know, I’ve spent time out here before, and it’s not that unusual to hear shots. They hunt pig and wild turkeys, and the kids mess around with target practice. There were three shots. I heard the third one hit the water. The ones that hit the boat made these loud
thunks
.”

“When did this happen, Zale?” B. J. asked.

“This morning, after eleven, probably.”

I looked at my watch. It was almost five o’clock. At this time of year, it would be dark by six. The warmth from the sun had already abandoned the day, and the evening chill was taking over. “What did you do after you heard the shots?”

“I was too scared to do anything. I was just lying there in the canoe, afraid to sit up. After what seemed like about two hours, but probably wasn’t that long, the canoe grounded over there.” He pointed to the shore about one hundred feet from us. “Then I sat up and paddled over here, ran to the house, and called you. I stayed in the house until you got here.”

“That was good, Zale. It probably was just an accident. Somebody was hunting or something and didn’t realize you were in here on the lake,” B. J. said.

“I was scared that it was the same person who shot my dad.”

“That’s not likely,” I said, thinking about Molly’s comments about Jimmie and how much he cared about the financial welfare of the tribe and himself. “When you asked Gramma Josie if you could go out in the canoe on the lake, was anybody else around? Did anybody else hear you say that?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t think so.”

“What about Earl and Jimmie? Had they been around at all?”

“They left yesterday right after you did. Uncle Earl’s truck is really loud. I’d have heard it if he was around.” Yeah, I thought, if he came in his truck. But every family out here has several all-terrain vehicles. Kids ride their ATVs to school, and adults take them out hunting and just to go visit a neighbor.

“You did the right thing to call. I don’t think you should spend another night out here. Come on, let’s go tell Gramma Josie we’re taking you back to town.”

There was simply no polite way to escape staying for dinner. Gramma Josie didn’t ask us, she just assumed. When we walked into the house, the table was already set for four, and when I introduced her to B. J., she asked him to come close to her so she could see him better.

“You look like Earl when he a boy,” she said, stroking the side of his head, running her hand across his slick black hair, back to his ponytail.

She had a point. Put one of those patchwork Seminole shirts and a cowboy hat on B. J., and anyone would take him for a Native American.

“What clan?” she asked.

“My family is from islands in the South Pacific,” he said. “A place called Samoa. It is very far from here.”
 

She nodded her head, smiling, and patted him on the cheek. “Okay. Okay. You not white man.”

B. J. laughed. “I think you mean that as a compliment, and I’ll take it as such.”

Gramma Josie told me to go to the kitchen and pour iced tea for everyone. It seemed crazy, but I swear she wanted me out of the way so she could flirt with B. J. The young girl who worked for Josie during the day had left a plate of pan-fried fish and a macaroni and cheese casserole in the oven. After a while, B. J. came into the kitchen. He rummaged in the refrigerator and added a side of steamed green beans after a raised-eyebrow look at the crusty pasta dish.

Zale helped his great-grandmother serve herself. As I watched her eat, I wondered how much those clouded eyes were still able to see. Did she really know what B. J. or Zale looked like, or did she only see shadows?

I went out to the kitchen to find some catsup for my fish, and when I returned, B. J. and the old lady were deep in conversation as though they had known each other for years.

“When I girl, no TV, no car. Live in chickee, eat turtle, garfish, sell eggs and skins. All this place
idaponi
land. They Seminoles who talk Mikasuki. My people talk Creek.”

“My people in the islands? It was the same story. They lived in huts, too, just like chickees. They also hunted and fished. That all changed when the white man came. Now, I don’t speak my people’s language.”

“You Indian.”

“In a way, you could say that.”

I pushed my catsup-soaked fish around my plate. “So I guess I’m one of the bad guys, huh?”

Gramma Josie cackled at that. “Not
all
white people bad.”

“Ah, well, that’s good to know,” I said, looking at Zale and wondering just where he fit into the picture.

“You like her,” Gramma Josie said.

“Like who? What are you talking about?”

“I say I have white friend. You talk like her. Now she old like me.”

I turned to B. J. “Gramma Josie was telling us about this girl she knew when she was very young. She said she met her at the Stranahans’ house when her family used to come to town to trade.”

Frank Stranahan and his bride Ivy were considered by many to be the founders of modern Fort Lauderdale. A real pioneer, Frank had opened the first trading post on the banks of the New River in the late 1890s, ran the ferry for crossing the river, started the first bank in town, and married the town’s first schoolteacher. What local history I knew came from Mrs. Cross, who taught me that mandatory month of Florida history in fourth grade at Croissant Park Elementary School, as well as the many tales Red used to tell me as we chugged up and down the river on
Gorda
. My father had been something of a local history buff.

B. J. pushed his plate out of the way. As usual, his food had disappeared without my being aware that he was eating. He was so precise, cutting his food into these tiny bites and downing them without a sound. I, on the other hand, ate with loads of mess and noise. He placed his forearms on the table and leaned closer to Josie. “Tell me about those days.”

“We live in Annie Tommie’s camp on de New River. I help my mother. Fish. Cook
sofki
.”

“What’s that?”

“Seminoles eat corn
sofki
. Cook de corn in water, add
cappie
. Taste real good.”

“So, you were friends with a white girl?” B. J. asked.
 

“Mizz Stranahan teach English. I see her dere. White kids throw rocks. Call us ‘dirty Indian.’ ”

B. J. shook his head. “Kids. They act out what they hear from their parents.”

“My grandmother on my mom’s side lived in those early days of Fort Lauderdale,” I said. “I hope she wasn’t one of those kind of kids.”

“Dis girl nice,” Josie continued as though I hadn’t spoken. “No rocks. She teach Josie English, too.”

“She must have been a very special girl,” B. J. said.
 

“De whole family good,” she said, and then she started her cackling again, which turned into coughing, and finally B. J. got up from his seat and went over and began to massage her back. The coughing quieted and the wheeze left her breathing. She cocked her head back and looked at him over her shoulder. “You strong medicine.” When B. J. sat back down, Josie turned to me. “You see Molly,” she said. It wasn’t a question. She knew.

“I visited her this afternoon.”

“You saw Mom?” Zale said. “How was she?”

“She’s okay.” I didn’t want anybody to ask me any more questions about her, so I tried to shift the subject from that disastrous visit. “I think I might have found someone who could help her. There’s an old woman who was there, walking along the river the morning it happened. She witnessed something, and it might help get Molly off. The police are looking for her now.”

Josie sighed and shook her head. “She got to let go.”
 
I figured she was talking about Molly.

After dinner, when we were cleaning up in the kitchen, I pulled out the white trash bag from the corner can and was tying the red ties when I looked up to ask what to do with it. B. J. was standing at the sink in front of a window that looked out across the back of the house. It was dark outside now, and his face was reflected in the glass. I still felt my heart go pitter-pat when I caught him unawares and had the chance to study him. Though his face had a classic beauty, a huge part of his allure was the serenity in him. Even without her eyes, Gramma Josie had “seen” it. Like B.J., she saw things most of the rest of us could not see. Maybe it was some kind of special radar built into those mammoth ears of hers. Molly used to say that the kids around here on the reservation called Josie an old medicine woman and said she had magic powers. She recognized similar qualities in B. J.

“So, your power as a ladies’ man continues to amaze me. Even ninety-year-old Indian ladies go ga-ga for you.” His eyes flicked up to the glass and connected with my reflection.
 

He shrugged and said deadpan, “Oh yeah, baby, it’s that Moana magic.”

“Right,” I said, rolling my eyes at Zale. “You know, though, listening to your grandmother tell those stories, it makes me wish I knew more about my own grandmother. My mother hardly ever talked about her. Do you think it’s possible to miss someone you never knew?”
 

Zale was sitting on a stool in the middle of the kitchen. “Yeah, in a way, that’s kinda how I felt about you.”
 

“Me? What do you mean?”

“My mom used to tell me about you. She used to talk about how much fun she had with you when you guys were kids. She always used to say she was sorry she had hurt you.”

“Molly said that?”

“Yeah. Those stories made me wish I knew you.”

I stood there, stunned. Zale’s words were forcing me to rewrite our history, and I didn’t know if I was ready for that.

B. J. put his fist under my chin and angled my face up toward his. “You and Molly need to sit down and talk. Sort all this out. Start new,” he said.

I didn’t know what to say. I felt like they were both watching me, and I just wanted to get off somewhere by myself. “Anybody know where the trash goes around here?” I asked, holding up the white plastic bag.

“Come on,” Zale said. “It’s outside. I’ll show you.” He walked over and put his hand on the doorknob.

“That’s okay, I’ll find it,” I said, hoping he would understand that I wanted to go out alone.

He looked from my face to the bag, and then over to B. J. When he looked back at me, he opened his eyes very wide and jerked his head toward the back door. “It’s out in the shed,” he said. “
Come on
.”

Okay, so sometimes I’m kinda slow, but I finally got it. The kid wanted me to go outside
with him
.

“All right. Just let me go grab my sweatshirt. It must be ten degrees colder out there already.”

When we were halfway across the yard, I pulled on the sleeve of Zale’s sweatshirt. “Hey, hold on a minute,” I said. “I just want to stand here and look at these stars.”

The sky on a moonless, clear night out in the Everglades is a sight not easily forgotten. The only other times in my life I could remember ever seeing the sky look like that was once years ago when I’d sailed down to the Dry Tortugas with Neal, my last boyfriend, or lover, or whatever we almost thirty-year-old women were supposed to call the men in our lives. And the time I’d once been left dog-paddling in the Gulf Stream. That night, I’d said good-bye to the stars, and now, like then, the Milky Way looked like a solid mass of light. There were so many stars you couldn’t distinguish them as separate spots of light. No wonder someone named it the Milky Way. It really did look like someone had splashed milk across the sky.

I draped my arm across Zale’s shoulder. “Isn’t it amazing?’ I whispered.

“Yeah,” he said, “it’s great, but I want to talk to you. Come on.”

We walked back to the shed at the back corner of the mowed section of Gramma Josie’s yard. It was dark inside the structure, but Zale had obviously made earlier trips out to the trash cans and he knew how to thread his way around the two parked vehicles to the back of the shed where the big garbage can resided. I lifted the lid and he swung the heavy white bag into the can, then turned to face me.

“There’s something I need to do,” he said, “and I’ve got to talk to somebody about it.”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

“I hope I’m doing the right thing. Ever since I got the news that Dad had,” he paused and I heard him swallow, struggling against the emotion that was backing up in his throat, “that Dad had been shot, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do. It seemed easy enough when my dad first told me about it because it didn’t seem like it would ever happen. I mean, I had even forgotten all about it.”

“Slow down, Zale. What did your dad tell you?”

I could barely see the outline of the hood of his sweatshirt. Only the lights from the house reflected off his eyes as he blinked at me. “I don’t know what to do.”
 

“What are you talking about?”

“You were once Mom’s best friend and I know she trusted you.”