“You need to lose those gnarly things in your beard,” I suggested.
“Yeah.” He unfastened each of the buzzard beaks carefully, as if they were delicate Christmas ornaments.
“Here’s our story,” he said. “You and I went for an evening stroll on the beach together, okay? We didn’t see anything unusual or suspicious. If they ask for my ID, you tell ’em the family doesn’t let me carry one because I’m always losing it, I’m so old and forgetful. Tell ’em some days I don’t even remember to take a shower.”
“But we still love you, Grandpa,” I said.
He broke out laughing, a thunderous rumble. As we made our way north, he snatched up a length of driftwood and said, “My trusty cane!” He started faking a limp as we drew closer to the yellowy lights of the beachfront district. I took his duffel, which was heavy. If we were questioned, I’d say that my crazy grandpa took off his clothes and went for a night swim in the surf, sharks and all.
Luckily, nobody stopped us. A single police cruiser remained at the scene of the egg robber’s misadventure. The officer at the wheel was writing his report and never glanced up as we passed on the other side of the street.
The car left by Skink’s friend was a midsize gray Chevrolet Malibu that needed a good coat of wax. It was the most ordinary-looking car imaginable, which I suppose was the whole point. We found it parked in the lot of a bikini shop, where my brother Kyle had tried repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) to get a summer sales job.
Skink sat down on the driver’s side of the Chevy and groped under the floor mat until he found the ignition key. I opened a rear door and heaved his bag onto the seat.
“You’re a good citizen, Richard.”
“Hey, you’re hurt!” I said.
The car’s interior lights had illuminated a comma-shaped gash on one side of his head. Although the wound wasn’t long, it looked deep.
“See, Mr. Olney didn’t want to have an adult conversation. He wanted to be a tough guy.” The governor shrugged. “There’s a first-aid kit in the trunk. Needles, sutures, iodine, plenty of aspirin.”
“Sutures?”
Skink smiled. “Mr. Tile is a thorough fellow.”
A whale song rose from my pants pocket. It was Mom calling from Gainesville. I let the phone go to voice mail.
Skink nodded approvingly after starting the Malibu. The gas gauge said full and the engine idled smoothly. With his good eye he studied himself in the rearview mirror, arranging his tangled silver mane to conceal the scalp gouge. Now I could see that it wasn’t normal surfer shorts he was wearing but funky old boxers.
“Don’t worry,” he said to me. “I plan to do some personal grooming down the road.”
“Have you got somewhere to hide?”
“Hide?” Another earthquake laugh. “At my age, son, the trick is to keep moving. Always have a new project on the board. That’s what keeps you going.”
“So, what’s your new project?” I asked. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.”
“Of course I’ll tell you,” the governor said. “I intend to go find your cousin. Want to come?”
SIX
Trent isn’t a bad person, not at all. He’d do anything for my mother, and I mean throw himself in front of a speeding train. She says it’s better to be with a simple man who really cares about you than to be with some Einstein who treats you like a doormat.
Still, I can’t deny that I occasionally take advantage of my stepfather’s—how should I say this?—intellectual limitations.
When I rushed in the door after the Dodge Olney incident, Trent was on the edge of the sofa glued to a documentary called Bigfoot Uncensored.
“Yo, Richard, sit down and watch this! It’s awesome.”
“Sorry I’m late.”
“Are you late?” He looked at his watch. “Oh, wow.”
“The engine on the boat was running rough, so I changed out the plugs.”
“Good job. You get somethin’ to eat?” Trent had refixed his gaze on the TV screen, where a spacey car salesman from Oregon was telling about the time he picked up a Sasquatch hitchhiking on the interstate.
“That,” said my stepfather, “would be so radical.”
“I would totally stop for a Bigfoot.”
“Duh, yeah!”
“I’d take him straight to the Cracker Barrel,” I said. “Let him order whatever he wanted off the menu.”
“Are you being a smartass again?”
“What’s wrong with the Cracker Barrel?”
He said, “Shh. I want to hear this part.”
“Hey, Blake and his dad are going camping in Ocala for a couple days. They asked me to come. Mom said it’s cool as long as you check it out with Blake’s folks.”
“Me check it out?”
“She’s stuck at Home Depot with Kyle and Robbie, picking out new paint for their apartment.”
Helpfully I dialed, then handed my cell to Trent. By now I was losing track of all the lies I was telling; the main thing on my mind was finding Malley as fast as possible.
“Hi, this is Richard’s stepfather,” Trent said into the phone.
The voice on the other end belonged to Beth, Malley’s friend. She was pretending to be Blake’s mother. Beth has acted in a few plays at the community theater, and she can do all kinds of voices. Impersonating a mom was easy.
I’d prepped her on what to say—how much Blake and his dad were really looking forward to me joining them on their trip.
We’re sorry for the short notice, Beth would be saying.
“Hey, no problem,” said Trent. “This is supernice of you.”
Now I had to get out the door quickly, in case Mom called the house. I packed my stuff in, like, three minutes flat. Toothbrush, hat, board shorts, T-shirts, underwear, my laptop and a pocketknife—everything went into my backpack.
Then I grabbed a box of granola bars from the pantry and said goodbye to Trent. He actually pried himself away from the Bigfoot documentary long enough to stand and give me a knuckle-bump.
“Have fun, dude, but be safe.”
“Always,” I said.
The dull gray Malibu was parked in the driveway of a vacant house at the end of the block, Skink drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He’d put on his shower cap, which I feared would draw more attention than the gash in his scalp. Also, he was wearing sunglasses with violet mirrored lenses. It looked to me like he’d run a comb through his beard (a good start), but dangling from a cord around his leathery neck was the rattle from a big eastern diamondback.
In other words, the man was not what you’d call inconspicuous.
On the way out of town I recounted my last phone conversation with Malley. “So she’s got to be on some island that has a drawbridge,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“Hey, it’s the best clue we’ve got.”
“Tell me about the boat horn you heard on the phone. Maybe a tug? Or a shrimper?”
“I have no idea.”
Skink seemed annoyed. “Well, was the pitch high or low?”
“Pretty low.”
“Deeper the horn, bigger the boat,” he muttered. “Bigger the boat, bigger the bridge.”
“Makes sense.”
“Check in the glove box, would you? Should be a CD.”
Mr. Tile had thought of everything. Skink told me to feed the disk into the slot on the car stereo. A song came on that I recognized. It was called “Run Through the Jungle,” kind of a Deep South rocker. My father had known all the words.
“So, this is, like, your personal mix?” I asked the governor.
“Road music, son.”
We were heading due west, crossing the state, because the last place Malley had used her cell phone—the city of Clearwater—was on the Gulf coast. Maybe the fake Talbo Chock had friends on an island in that area.
I asked Skink how he’d lost his left eye.
“Long time ago, some dirtbag kicked me in the face.”
“No way. Why?”
“They beat up homeless people for fun, he and his buddy.”
Honestly, I didn’t know what to say.
“But that was the last time they did it,” the governor added.
“How come? They go to jail?”
“Ancient history.”
The next song on Skink’s mix was called “Heartbreaker,” by Led Zeppelin, another band my dad liked. I had my laptop open, doing a little research.
“Is this right? You were born in—”
“I’m seventy-one.”
“No, seventy-two,” I said. “You had a birthday two weeks ago.”
“Hmm. Guess I missed the party.”
I asked if he’d really been bitten on the nose by a coral snake, like Jim Tile had told that reporter.
“It was a toe, not the nose. My friend was being a comedian.”
“Then why aren’t you dead from the poison?”
“For three long days I wished I was. Jim kept me up and walkin’ so my heart wouldn’t stop.”
I pointed to the rattlesnake rattle on his neck cord. “What’s the story there?”
“He got hit by a tomato truck on Highway 41. I honor his memory.”
The governor was a steady driver, a pleasant surprise. I’d assumed it would be hard to steer a car in a straight line if you only had one eye. A few hours out of town, in the middle of nowhere, he slowed down, swung open his door and snatched a dead crow off the road. Next was an opossum (also deceased), which he grabbed by its hairless pink tail and lobbed into the backseat next to his duffel and the bird.
“I’m starving,” he said. “You?”
I shook my head no, politely.
“What story’d you cook up to tell your mom?”
“Nothing yet,” I said. “Just texted her to say good night. She’s visiting my brothers at college.”
“What about Troy?”
“His name’s Trent.”
“She’s gonna strangle him,” Skink said.
“No, I’ll tell her it wasn’t his fault. It was all me.”
“Okay, your turn.”
“What?” I said. The Malibu was slowing down again.
“See that armadillo up there in the headlights?”
“Yeah, what’s left of him.”
“Waste not, want not.”
“Seriously?”
“Perfect angle for a right-hander,” said the governor. “Just lean out the door and grab the flippin’ thing. And don’t unhook your seat belt!”
“Fine.”
As we rolled by, I reached for the unfortunate creature—and whiffed.
The car couldn’t have been going ten miles per hour, max. Skink chuckled, put it in reverse and collected the rest of his dinner. Twenty minutes later he turned off onto a dirt cattle road. I helped him build a small fire, but I wouldn’t eat any of his roadkill stew. Truthfully, though, it smelled all right. He said freshness was key, and also the condition of the corpses.
“Obviously, flattened is no good,” he said.
“Unless you’re in the mood for pancakes.”
“Show some respect, son.”
“Are we camping out here?”
“No, tonight we drive. If you’re tired, sleep in the vehicle.”
That was all right with me. Every mile we traveled was one mile closer to Malley.
She had run away five other times. Once it happened after she got mad at Uncle Dan for confiscating her laptop, but the other four times she’d bolted simply out of boredom. And when I say ran away, my cousin literally ran. Her specialty is cross-country, and good luck trying to keep up with that girl.
Two nights was the longest she’d ever stayed away, and no boyfriends had been involved—only Malley running solo. After each incident Sandy would take her to counseling, and naturally Malley enjoyed making up all kinds of whacked stories to mess with the psychologist. One time she claimed that in a past life she was Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile. Another time she told the counselor that her parents were so mean, they made her sleep hanging upside down from the ceiling, like a bat.
Her worst-ever excuse: After she came home the last time, Malley told the shrink that she’d run away because Justin Bieber was stalking her. She swore he kept climbing the big oak tree outside her house, waving at her adoringly whenever she peeked out the bedroom window.
The story was especially outrageous since my cousin can’t stand Justin Bieber, but here’s the amazing part: The counselor actually believed that Malley thought she was being stalked and wrote in his report that she was “clearly delusional.” She couldn’t wait to tell me.
My cousin is supersmart. She aces any class that she wants to ace, and blows off the ones that don’t hold her attention. But even if she were way smarter than the Talbo Chock impostor, it wouldn’t help her much if he decided to get rough. Although Malley’s almost three inches taller than me (thanks to a major “growth spurt”), she’s thin from all the long-distance running. Her arms are like noodles, and I doubted she could punch her way out of a soap bubble.
“Pray it doesn’t come to that,” said Skink.
I was too wired to nap in the car, so I was telling him more stuff about Malley.
“She ever had any boyfriends?” he asked.
“Not a boyfriend boyfriend. The guy she ran away with, she met him in a chat room.”
“But you said they met on their computers. This ‘chat room’—is it like a library?”
“Chat rooms are on the computer,” I said. “Come on, dude, they’re virtual.”
“Stop calling me ‘dude’ or you’ll virtually regret it.”
“Why? There’s nothing bad about ‘dude.’ Didn’t you see The Big Lebowski?”
Skink’s good eye turned away from the road and squinted at me. “The big what?”
“It’s a movie classic.”
“I haven’t been to the movies since 1974,” he said.
In a way, it was like traveling with a space alien.
A space alien who cussed a lot. I’ve been leaving out the bad words, even though they didn’t bother me at the time. The man went to war for this country and got shot at, so he could talk however he wanted to talk, as far as I was concerned.
Also, he was totally committed to finding my cousin and bringing her home. Maybe his friend Jim Tile had told him about the ten-thousand-dollar reward, but the governor never once mentioned that to me. It seemed unlikely that a person who’d spend his summer chasing turtle-egg robbers was interested in money.
“Are you a fugitive now?” I asked. “Because of what you did to Dodge Olney?”
“Nobody who saw what happened knows who I am.”
“Still, the cops will be hunting for whoever did it.”
“Not very hard,” Skink said, “considering Olney’s rap sheet.”
He was probably right. Some people would have given him a gold plaque for getting that lowlife off the beaches.
I plugged in my car charger and hooked it to my iPod. “Hey, can we play some of my music?”
“Under no circumstances,” said Skink.
A line of trucks was coming the other way, and their headlights were blinding. I shut my eyes and thought about my cousin. Was she in a motel tonight? A tent? Maybe the backseat of that Toyota.
I wondered if she’d brought any money with her, or if the bogus Talbo Chock was paying for all their gas and food. Anybody who swiped license tags would have no qualms about stealing a credit card. Maybe he really was a fabulously talented club DJ, like Malley said, or maybe she’d made up that part, too.
Evidently I fell asleep. Next thing I knew, the sun was up and I was alone in the Malibu, which was parked on the bank of a small brackish bay. What had awakened me was the whale song coming from my phone.
“Hi, Mom,” I said.
“Where are you?”
“On my way to find Malley.”
“Richard, have you lost your freaking mind?”
She’d already spoken to Blake’s fathe
r, who had been puzzled to hear about the nonexistent camping trip.
“Don’t be mad at Trent,” I said. “It’s a hundred percent my fault.”
“You come home right now!”
“I can’t, Mom.”
“Let the police handle this!”
“No, we’ve waited long enough.”
“Richard, I swear—”
“It’s fine, okay? Totally under control.”
“But who are you riding with? Who do you even know that’s old enough to drive?”
“Mom, it’s—”
A hand darted hawk-like through the open window and snatched the phone. Mr. Clinton Tyree was now calmly speaking to my mother.
Unbelievable.
“Ma’am, I want to assure you that Richard is safe and well supervised. He and I have set out to find your niece, God willing. I completely appreciate your concerns—do you have a pen or pencil at hand? I’m going to give you a phone number. The gentleman on the other end will tell you as much about me as he prudently can. He has an outstanding background in law enforcement, so please give him your complete attention. Richard will be in touch with you later. He is a promising young man, as you’re surely aware, and he deeply regrets deceiving his stepfather, necessary though it was. Now, here’s that phone number.…”
That’s when I understood how Skink had gotten elected governor. He was smooth as silk when he chose to be. He said goodbye to my mother and handed me the phone.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“The wrong damn place. I’m sorry.”
We drove along the waterfront for maybe half a mile. Then he pulled over in the shade of a concrete span, four lanes across. It was tall enough for any tug or deepwater fishing boat to pass under; even a sailboat could make it through.
“That used to be a drawbridge,” he said dejectedly. “Long time ago.”
The new bridge arched from the mainland to a barrier island where the shoreline bristled with private docks. Once upon a time it was all mangroves. On the Gulf side of the island was a tourist beach. I only knew that because a small plane was flying back and forth, pulling a banner advertising “Happy Hula Hour” at some tiki bar.
“This is where I thought your cousin might be,” Skink said. “But last time I was here, there weren’t any high-rises. It was a quiet place.”