So onward I ran until spying a young maple that forked conveniently at a height of maybe five feet. I scaled straight up the bark, wedged a foot into that snug cleft and slapped both hands around a sturdy branch. With a tired grunt I pulled myself into the tree’s leafy embrace and there I balanced, huffing to catch my breath. Below, the wild boar swiped his tusks back and forth across the trunk, sharpening their edges with each long scrape.
Hang in there, I told myself. He’ll get bored soon and go away.
Then the demon pig did the one thing I didn’t expect. He lay down panting and closed his eyes.
“You’re kidding,” I said out loud.
My mood was not good. I was desperately thirsty, sore, itchy, exhausted, worried about Malley being alone in the forest.…
And now the swine was taking a nap under my maple tree.
I said, “No. Way.”
The critter began to snore, his upper lip flapping slightly. He reminded me of Trent dozing on the sofa in front of our TV.
I considered jumping down from the tree, but I feared the sound of my landing would rouse the boar and spark another chase. A second choice was to stay patient and pray that the smelly porker would wake up and wander away, having forgotten what had led him to that spot. Unfortunately, a pig that size could sleep all day, and I didn’t have the whole day to waste. I didn’t even have an hour.
My cousin wasn’t blessed with a flawless sense of direction, and all the foot-speed in the world wouldn’t help if she made a wrong turn. She had no water or food, and the midday heat was hellish. Another unpleasant issue was snakes. Malley was accustomed to running safe ovals on our school’s bright, smooth, reptile-free track. But the Choctawhatchee River basin was basically snake heaven, and it would be easy to accidentally step on a murky-colored water moccasin.
I didn’t want to think about Malley getting snakebit all by herself, lost and miles from a hospital. Instead I focused on my problem porker, who was drifting deep into piggy dreamland. The new plan was to startle him so badly that he’d jump up and gallop off, freeing me to go find Malley. Working in my favor (or so I thought) was the element of surprise.
My family used to have a beagle-setter mix named Slater who would freak out if anyone tried to pet him while he was asleep. I mean, this dog would whip around and snap like crazy. Yet when he was awake, he was the chillest, friendliest little dude you ever met. Dad said he had a college roommate who was the same way, a total bundle of nerves once his head hit the pillow. You couldn’t make a sound in the dorm room because you didn’t know how he might react. One night, as a joke, my father and another student put a live gerbil on the sleeping kid’s bed, and he leaped naked and yowling out the window. Luckily, the room was on the first floor.
I was hoping for a similar reaction from the dozing boar. Reaching down, I gingerly tugged the soggy sneaker from my right foot. Then I took aim.
In Little League I played shortstop, a position that requires a strong, accurate arm. Although I wasn’t much of a hitter, I could definitely throw some heat. The sneaker struck the pig with a wet smack flush on the tip of his quivering, disgustingly runny nose.
Sadly for me, the brute didn’t bolt wide awake and race off in a panic.
Instead he groggily rose, grunted twice, clacked his tusks and hunched closer to examine the odd object that had bounced off of his face. It was a size-8 Nike cross-trainer with neon-lime soles and a silver swoosh on the sides, not that the pig cared about style.
To him my shoe was nothing but a snack, which he chewed up and swallowed with a rude gurgle.
“Perfect!” I yelled down from the branches. “Just perfect!”
The boar raised his anvil-sized noggin to peer at me.
“Get outta here! Go away!”
He didn’t run. He didn’t walk. He just yawned, unfurling his long pink slug of a tongue.
I hollered some more and shook the branches, Bigfoot-style. You’ve probably never seen a pig shrug, but they do. Trust me. I got so mad that I threw my other Nike, which he actually caught with his yellowed chompers. The sneaker was gone in two seconds, and the foul critter’s tufted tail began to wag.
He thought it was a game!
“We’re done here,” I snapped, in sour defeat.
Cheerfully the boar circled the base of the maple tree waiting for another tasty shoe to hit him. There was no doubt in my mind that he could do that for hours.
“I AM SUCH AN IDIOT!” I shouted into the woods.
And, to my shock, the woods shouted back: “I’ve been tellin’ you that since per-K!”
My cousin, of course. She’d come back to get me. I spotted her crouching behind a spruce pine.
“Mal, don’t do anything stupid!”
“You mean like feed my sneakers to a pig?”
“Stay back or he’ll rip you to shreds.”
Slowly she emerged from behind the tree. The boar stopped circling below me and squinted intently in her direction.
“Hey there, Mister Pig,” said Malley.
The animal lifted his twitchy snout in the air. Pigs possess average eyesight but an amazing sense of smell.
“Oh great. It’s your shoes,” I said.
“Mine are Reeboks, not Nikes.”
“He doesn’t care.”
“This is all your fault, Richard.”
“Honestly? He’d eat a truck tire if you rolled it to him.”
Malley took a dainty step forward and said, “You’re such a nice piggy.”
“He’s not a nice piggy.”
“Shut up, Richard.”
“And he’s faster than you think.”
“Good mister pig,” she said softly.
“You’re wasting your breath.”
The boar snorted and pawed at the dirt.
“Do you have a plan?” I asked my cousin.
“Just wait.”
“You’re only pissing him off.”
“I so do have a plan,” said Malley.
Then she began to dance, which was spectacularly weird because my cousin doesn’t dance. Not with her girlfriends. Not with boys. Not even in the privacy of her own room—or so she says. At parties she refuses to grind, freak or twerk. The only rhythmic motion I’ve ever seen from her is her chin bobbing in time to music.
Which, at least then there was music. The woods of the Choctawhatchee were as silent as a graveyard, except for the heavy panting of the wild boar. From my tree perch I couldn’t tell whether the animal was enraged or just confused.
It’s almost impossible to describe the wild jerky moves that Malley was making, her black braids twirling like helicopter rotors, her pale eyes rolled back in the sockets. At first I thought she was having some sort of convulsion, then she started to sing.
If you could call it singing …
Yo, hog!
Go, hog!
You hip,
You hop.
I makin’
Some bacon.
So, yo, pig!
Slow pig!
Be gone,
Be quick,
Or you am,
Big ham!
It wasn’t the words to Malley’s song that frightened the wild boar. It was her crazed flailing and annoying off-key voice. In a lifetime of roaming the wilderness, that poor pig had probably never encountered anything so disturbing. I actually wasn’t surprised to see him wheel around and sprint away. If Malley wasn’t my cousin, I would have run, too.
“You can stop now!” I shouted.
“You’re welcome,” said Malley.
Shoeless, I climbed down from the maple and once more we set off for the bridge.
TWENTY
“Get in,” I said.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Just get in.”
The plain gray Malibu was in the same place, at the east end of the bridge, where Skink and I had left it. I lifted the floor mat on the driver’s side and grabbed the keys.
“Don’t even,” said Malley
.
“Hey, I can drive now.”
I popped the trunk and placed the shoe box inside. I’d been happily surprised to find it buried in the same hole beneath the tupelo tree, and even more surprised to feel the weight of the cash bundles. If Nickel the gar man had dug up the box, he must not have taken much of the money for his water-taxi fee.
“Richard, you so don’t know how to drive.”
“Oh yes, I do.” I showed her the license that Mr. Tile had given me.
She snickered. “Who’d you have to bribe to get this?”
“It’s legit, Mal.”
“Liar. You’re not old enough.”
“You want to hitchhike? Me, neither.” I positioned myself behind the steering wheel, centering my butt on the thick John Steinbeck novel.
“Well, you look like a total dork,” my cousin remarked, but she still got in the car.
I turned the key in the ignition, and the Malibu rumbled to life. Malley shot me a tight sidewise look as she hastily buckled her seat belt.
“We need a phone,” I said. Mine was in my backpack on the houseboat. Hers was in the river, where Tommy Chalmers had tossed it.
Hanging uselessly from a socket in the console of the Malibu was my battery charger.
Malley said, “Okay, Dale Jr., let’s see what you got.”
I slipped the transmission into Drive and took my right foot off the brake. We started to roll.
“Gee, I’m so impressed,” said Malley.
“Would you shut up?” I was nervous enough without her sarcastic commentary.
Traffic on Road 20 was light, thank goodness. I waited until no vehicles were coming either way before I made a very careful, very slow U-turn. As soon as the car was lined up on the straightaway, I pushed down on the accelerator the way Skink had showed me, like stepping on an egg and trying not to break it.
“So, who taught you how?” Malley asked.
“The governor. After his foot got smashed.”
“What’s it like?”
“Fun,” I said. “Scary at first.”
She was watching me closely. I sensed she was a little envious. “You’re doin’ pretty good,” she admitted.
“We’ll see.”
“I’m tall enough I wouldn’t need to sit on a book.”
“You’re only two inches taller than me.”
“Two and a half. Is it legal for you to drive barefoot?”
“We’re in Walton County, Florida. I’m guessing the dress code’s pretty chill.”
“But what if—”
“What if you stop asking questions and start looking for a pay phone?” I said.
“A what?”
She spotted one outside a Tom Thumb store. A logging truck stacked with cut pines took up the entire parking lot, and I nearly had a heart attack trying to squeeze past it in the Malibu. For once Malley stayed quiet.
Neither of us had ever used a public telephone. It looked like something from a museum. I lifted the receiver, which reeked of cigarette smoke, and punched my mom’s number into the gummy keypad. An operator came on the line asking how I wanted to pay for the call. Malley and I didn’t have any coins, not one.
“My mother’ll pay for it,” I told the operator.
“So you’d like to reverse the charges?”
“Is that the same as calling collect?”
“Please hold on,” she said.
After two rings I put the receiver back on the hook.
Malley gave me a quizzical look.
“What if we stayed one more day?” I asked.
“For what? Oh.”
“He came back for you and me. We should go back for him.”
“Once we tell the police about the houseboat, they’ll get right on it,” Malley said.
“You don’t understand. Everyone thinks he’s dead, and that’s how he likes it. Certain things he’s been involved with over the years—I mean, things they think he’s been involved with—the cops’ll have a ton of questions. Once they check his fingerprints and find out who he is …”
“It’s that bad?”
“It’s just messy,” I said.
Skink wouldn’t have approved the mission. He would’ve said my job was to get my cousin home as fast as possible. Yet what if he needed help down the river? What if he’d been hurt so badly that he couldn’t get himself to a hospital?
I owed the man. He’d risked everything for Malley and me.
“If you’re not up for it,” I told her, “I totally understand. I can drop you at the police station.”
“You try that and I’ll kick your ass, Richard Sloan. This T.C. disaster is totally my fault.” Malley reached for the telephone and slapped it in my hand. “So come up with a story that’ll buy us some time to find your weird old senator.”
“Governor.”
“Whatever. Use your famous imagination.”
But my imagination stalled. The best excuse I could think of was car trouble, which Malley said was incredibly weak. When the operator placed the call to my house, I lucked out and got the answering machine.
“Hey, Mom, it’s me! We found Malley and she’s okay and we’re coming home. It’s a long story, I can’t wait to tell you what happened, but I lost my phone and now the car’s overheating. Don’t worry, though. Skink says he’ll have us home tomorrow night. And please don’t—”
“Sir? Excuse me, sir?” It was the operator.
“Yes?”
“You’ll have to try again later. Nobody was there to accept the charges.”
“But what about my message—”
“I had to disconnect as soon as the recording came on. There has to be a person on the other end to take the call.”
“Hang on,” I said, and handed the phone to my cousin. She gave the operator her home phone number.
Uncle Dan picked up on the first ring and practically shouted, “My God, of course we’ll accept the charges!” Even standing several feet away I could hear the sobs on the other end, he was so excited to hear his daughter’s voice. Aunt Sandy picked up on another line, and it was more of the same.
And Malley—cynical, selfish, tough-as-nails Malley—began crying, too.
I ducked around the corner to give her some privacy. She found me sitting on a curb near the Dumpster.
“We’re good to go,” she announced with a leftover sniffle.
“What story did you go with?”
“Never mind, Richard.”
“Car trouble, I bet.”
“Yeah, so what?”
“Ha!”
“Who did you tell them was driving us?”
“I said we found a cab driver in Panama City who’d do the trip for five hundred bucks plus gas. I said they can write him a check when we get home.”
“Not bad,” I admitted.
“I said the radiator in his taxi blew up, but it’ll be fixed by tomorrow. They still have radiators, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Excellent,” said Malley. “My mom’s calling your mom right now.”
“But no police yet, right?”
“Definitely. I told her all I want to do is come home and go to sleep in my own bed.”
“Which happens to be true, right? You can say it, Mal.”
“Give me some money.”
At the Tom Thumb we bought a road map, a Styrofoam picnic cooler, five pounds of ice, twelve bottles of water, a six-pack of Coke, chocolate-chip cookies, a bag of Doritos, two prepackaged subs layered with anonymous gray meat, a box of granola bars and four random candy bars (excluding Butterfingers, because that’s what my father was eating when he had his stupid accident).
I handed the tattooed store clerk a couple of damp fifty-dollar bills that I’d gotten from the shoe box. If he was suspicious, it didn’t show. He gave me back twenty-two dollars and change, and said there was a restroom in the back, if we wanted to clean up.
Hint, hint.
Malley and I packed the cooler to the brim, hoisted it into t
he backseat of the Malibu and took off. I know you’re supposed to drive with both hands, but I kept one off the wheel so I could stuff my face with snacks and guzzle a cold bottle of water. It was either that or pass out from hunger.
The map was spread open on Malley’s lap, sprinkled with granola crumbs from the bar she was gnawing like a starved chipmunk.
“Go straight,” she advised.
“Straight is good.”
“Till you get to a place called Freeport, then hang a left. From there it’s like four miles to the bay.”
Choctawhatchee Bay, where the river empties.
I glanced at the speedometer and nearly choked. Sixty-six miles an hour! That’s what happens when you’re in a super hurry—your foot gets heavy on the pedal and you don’t even realize it. I tapped the brake until the needle dropped to fifty, which Skink had told me was the ideal pace for blending with traffic. Driving too slowly, he’d said, attracts just as much attention as driving too fast.
“Beth really likes you,” my cousin said, out of nowhere. That’s how I knew she was anxious with me behind the wheel—she was trying to make small talk, act casual.
“No way,” I said. “Beth’s going with Taylor.”
“He’s a loser. You should call her. She’s hot, right?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?” Malley frogged me in the arm. “Don’t be such a geek.”
“Seriously, I’m supposed to take dating advice from you?”
“Good point,” she said.
“I’ve gotta ask again. Did Tommy do anything else to you? I mean besides the kissing and the handcuffs.”
“God, Richard, why don’t you believe me when I say I’m fine?”
“The police are going to ask the same question.”
“Then they’ll get the same damn answer,” Malley snapped, turning her face to the window.
“There’s a chance Skink’ll kill him, if he hasn’t already. You know that, right? He might die himself in the fight, but there’s no way Tommy can take him.”
“T.C. is strong.”
“The old man’s stronger. You have no idea.”
“Well, good.” Malley had flame in her eyes. “Tommy is a monster. Whatever it takes, I don’t want him hurting anybody else. Some other girl, she might not be as tough as me.”
And that, in the words of Forrest Gump, was all she had to say about that.