Lost in the River of Grass (19 page)

He shakes his head. “You go ahead over and we'll just parallel each other.”

“I have to get my feet out of this water.” I pull a sock off.

Andy glances at my foot, then quickly looks away.

I'd known it was bad, but it's worse than I imagined. Most of the top layer of skin on my foot is still in the sock. I pull off the other one, then turn them both inside out, lean over the edge of the berm, and dip them in the water. Pieces of skin float off. In few seconds, minnows, hiding in the shallows among the reeds, gather in a feeding frenzy around the strips of flesh. Teapot, curious about the minnows, waddles to the edge, settles into the water, and begins to eat my skin, too.

I wrinkle my nose. “I guess I should be glad it's not going to waste.”

 

…

Nothing I say persuades Andy to get back into the water, so Teapot and I swim across alone, back to where I'd left my boots. Once there, I take my socks off again, wring them out, and put them back on. Then, clutching willow branches to keep from slipping, I climb the steep side to the flat top of the levee.

What I'd wished for—to see cars whizzing past on a distant Tamiami Trail—isn't to be. There's only the glaringly white levee stretching endlessly before me, with a humid mist rising as the sun dries the hard-packed surface.

I'd hoped that once on the dry ground, I'd be able to let my feet dry out, but my soles are too raw and tender to walk barefoot across the sharp seashells and gravel. They are too raw, even, for the rubber boots without the damp socks. With Teapot in my bandana, it feels like I'm crossing hot coals. I bend my knees to absorb some of the pain, but it doesn't help.

I'm so focused on the pain of walking that I hear the rattled warning before I see the snake, even though it lies just two yards ahead of me in the middle of the levee. It coils and rings its tail again.

“There's a little rattlesnake right in front of me,” I call to Andy. He's walking nearly parallel to me, but in the knee-deep water on the saw-grass prairie side of the canal.

“Find a stick and poke it out of the way.”

I look around. “There's nothing like that here.”

“Can't you walk around him?”

“He's right in the middle.”

“The levee's gotta be ten feet wide.”

“That's not wide enough.”

There's probably a four-foot clearance on either side of the snake, but it looks like four inches to me. Teapot squirms in the bandana, wanting out since I'm not moving. Andy is wearing the backpack, which would have been a safer place to carry her.

“I need the pack—for Teapot.”

Andy looks across at me. “I can't throw it that far.”

“Well, try.” I back away from the snake, then cross to the edge of the levee.

Andy takes it off, swings his arm in a couple of wide circles . . . “Wait!” I scream as he launches the pack. I watch it soar across the water to land among the willows about three feet shy of where I'm standing.

“The camera,” he says. “I forgot the camera.”

“So did I. I hope the willows cushioned it.”

Holding onto branches as I go, I lower myself down the slope until I can reach the pack, snag it, and climb back up. I unzip the bottom compartment and take out the Leica. The body seems okay, but the barrel of the lens is badly dented.
I'm so sorry, Daddy
.

“Did it break?” Andy's standing with his hands on his hips.

“The lens doesn't look too good.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

The snake hasn't moved except to relax its coils, which it tightens again when it sees me, or smells me or whatever it does.

I put Teapot in the top of the pack, then break off a willow branch, but it's too wispy and not nearly long enough. Most of the shells and gravel are ground too fine, but at the edges of the levee there are a few larger chunks. I find one that isn't too big to hurt the snake if I actually hit it, throw it, and miss completely.

“That does it.” I scoop up a handful of shells, sand, and gravel and rain that down on the snake.

It lifts its head and rings its tail. I throw another fistful. The snake strikes, fangs exposed.

Though it's too far away to actually bite me, I leap back when it strikes. The pain that shoots up both my legs drops me to my knees. I fall forward, catch myself with my hands, then scramble backwards away from where the snake was when I fell. I stop only when I realize that it has disappeared into the willows at the side of the levee.

I look at Andy, ready to let him know I'm all right, only to find he's walked on ahead.

“I'm okay,” I shout.

My knees are covered with a powdery white dust, through which I'm bleeding from a dozen cuts. The heels of my hands look the same, cut, scraped, and bloody. I sit picking shell fragments out of my knees and crying.

Andy must have glanced back and seen me sitting there because he shouts, “Are you okay?”

“I fell.” I wonder what he would have done if the snake had bitten me. It wasn't like he could swim over or run for help.

I finally get to my feet and start my limpy, gimpy way along the levee. I've only gone a dozen yards or so when I see something glinting in the sun. I shield my eyes. Whatever it is flicks like someone sending a signal, not like the wings of the airplanes when they bank to turn. Besides, it's closer than any of the planes, and it's coming from a tree island.

Andy's ahead of me again. He turns when I shout his name.

“What?”

“I don't know. I see something in those trees over there.”

Whatever it is isn't moving. The flashing is caused by the wind moving tree branches.

“What is it?”

“I don't know. It's shiny.”

He looks where I'm pointing, then shrugs. “I don't see anything.”

“Well, I'm higher than you are.”

He loses interest and trudges on.

I begin to move again, too, but the light keeps drawing my eye. “Do they ever use tin for the roofs of the cabins?”

Andy's plodding along, but when I say that his head snaps up. “It's a camp,” he shouts. “Where? Where is it?”

I point a little south and west of him.

“Come on.” He begins to run.

“Wait for me,” I call.

He's running, plowing the air with his elbows held like Teapot's nubby wings, twisting from side to side with each step.

“Andy!” I shout. “Don't leave me—” I say to myself.

When I can no longer tell he's a human, I sit down. I'll wait for him to come back or for the searchers to find me. My T-shirt is yellow. Surely, they'll be able to see me when they get a little closer. I take the backpack off, hug it to my chest, and lie back. If I think school is a lonely place, look at me now. Tears run from my eyes into my ears.

19

I don't know how long I lie there before I begin to hear Teapot peeping. “Shhh.” I pat the pack. It's hot to the touch. “Oh, my God.” I sit up. The dark maroon pack has been soaking up the sun and cooking Teapot. When I unzip the top, she's lying with her neck stretched out and her beak open. Her sides heave.

I get my feet under me, only to crumple from the pain. I look frantically for a break in the cattails and willows where I can get down to the water. “Don't die. Please don't die.” I fan her, then struggle to stand again.

I keep fanning her as I limp along the levee, looking for a path to the water. A few yards down I find a spot where the willows are sparse. Almost the second I start down the steep, gravelly bank my feet go out from under me. I know the instant before I hit the ground that if I try to break my fall, I'll have to drop Teapot. I go with the momentum of my body, land on my left shoulder, and slide all the way to the water's edge on my bare arm.

The pain is excruciating. I lie there groaning. My left arm is twisted behind my back and, since I've come to a stop on my side, my full weight is on top of it. It feels broken. I lift my head and look at Teapot lying in the open pack, which I've somehow managed to keep balanced in my right hand. I put it down in the shade of the willow that's behind me. Her breathing is shallow.

I try to sit up without using my left hand, but can't get leverage. I reach with my right, grab a willow branch, and pull myself up to a sitting position. That's when I hear the now too-familiar rattle.

The air leaves my lungs in a gasp. I hold perfectly still for a moment before slowly turning just my eyes. I don't see it and am hoping it has slipped away when the dead leaves at the base of the willow, whose branch I still hold, move. It's among them—two feet away—watching me, its tongue flicking in and out.

I can't move or think what to do. Andy is gone. Even if he comes back, I'm not where I was when he ran off. I'm in dense willows, which will make it hard for anyone to spot me. If the snake strikes, there won't be anything he or anyone else can do.

The rush of blood pumping through my body sounds like a train in my ears. I imagine my skeleton being found by a fisherman one day, mine and Teapot's, side by side. The muscle in my right arm trembles from holding the willow branch.

If I'm going to die here, let's get it over with
. I squeeze my eyes shut and let go. I hear the branch whoosh back into place and cringe, expecting to feel fangs pierce my arm. When nothing happens, I take a deep breath and open my eyes. The snake is just where it had been, still tasting the air between us. “Go away,” I whisper. “Please, please, please, go away.”

I sit there, letting the minutes seep by. My body aches and my muscles begin to stiffen. The blood on my knees dries and turns black. I watch the snake while I rotate my left shoulder and, though it hurts terribly, it moves and my arm seems to be okay, just badly scraped and bloody. The breeze dies and mosquitoes begin to whine, land, and take advantage of the exposed blood. I watch their abdomens swell.

Teapot's breathing is almost normal, but she's still unconscious. The snake looks pretty relaxed, and it occurs to me that it might have gone to sleep. I want to lie down, too—put my head back and rest for a while. And I'm thirsty—terribly thirsty. I close my eyes and try to think about what it will be like when I get home. I can almost smell the line-dried, sunshiny scent of the sheets that will be on my bed.

Fresh rustling in the leaves startles me. I glance at the snake. It's exactly as it had been. I look a little higher up the slope. A little mouse with huge ears moves toward me, sniffing and snuffling among the grasses and dead leaves beneath the willows.

For the longest time, the snake's tongue has not appeared, which was the reason I thought it may have gone to sleep, but now its head turns ever so slightly in the direction of the mouse and its tongue slides out—the forked tip flicks the air.

My heart aches for the little mouse, so oblivious to its fate. “Shoo,” I say, and the mouse freezes. The snake is deaf, but the mouse isn't. “Scram,” I say.

It scurries into a little tunnel of grasses. The snake straightens and begins to slide after it. When it, too, disappears, I put the pack with Teapot on my lap and scoot into the water on my butt. Keeping an eye on where the snake has gone, I gently lift Teapot and hold her so only her feet are in the cool water. Her lolling head rests on my thumb.

Long minutes pass before she blinks and opens her eyes. When she does, I tip her so she can drink, then carefully put her in the water. Though she seems sluggish, she stays upright and bobs against the shore.

I stare at the far side of the canal.
To hell with you, Andy. I'll find the camp without you
. I take my boots off. Thank heavens it's not my right arm that is too sore to lift. I throw first one boot, then the other, as hard as I can, then slide into the water and swim to meet them.

I'd done pretty well. They've landed near each other and bump as they float back toward me. I swim as quickly as the pain in my shoulder will allow, checking to make sure Teapot follows.

I catch the first boot and pitch it out of the canal. I hear the splash of it landing in the shallow water on the other side of the berm. The second one gets away from me and I have to chase it down. Once I catch it, my arm hurts too much to swim back against the current, so I pull out on the boulders where I am, put a hand under Teapot and lift her over the edge, then follow on scraped hands and knees.

From this side, which is probably ten feet lower than the levee, I can't see the roof of the camp, and have no idea where Andy is. Still, I cup my hands around my mouth and shout his name.

Nothing. Just the whispering grasses and a hawk calling as it makes slow circles high above me.

I sit in the shallow water for a few minutes, then put the one boot on, get up, and limp back up the side of the canal until I find the other one.

“We're on our own,” I tell Teapot. I take a deep breath and squint at the sun. If I keep it on my face, I'll be headed pretty much southwest.

Since the saw grass here is sparse and grows low, I leave Teapot out to let her swim along beside me, but she gets busy eating so I pick her up and put her in the sling so she can see out.

By the angle of the sun, I guess it must be after four. I'm trying not to think about what will happen if I'm not headed in exactly the right direction. Darkness will come, and I'll be out here alone. If a whole squad of search planes can't find us, how will we ever find each other again?
Is Andy even looking for me?
It doesn't matter. I'll find him— and the cabin.

Each time I come to anything I can stand on—a rock outcropping, a small tree, some matted vegetation—I step up and try to glimpse the roof of the cabin. When I come to a good size pond-apple tree, I climb it, shade my eyes and search the horizon, but the sun is all wrong now—too low. There are a couple tree islands a half-mile or so ahead, but is either the right one? I glance behind me to see where to put my foot before climbing down when out of the corner of my eye I see a flash. There it is. The closer of the two islands. “We're headed the right way,” I tell Teapot.