Swamp Story: a Novel, page 4
“That right?” said the beard. He made an elaborate show of looking around, then turned toward the goatee. “You see anybody else out here?”
“Nope,” said the goatee. “Just this pretty lady.” He took a step closer.
Jesse gripped the machete tightly. She thought about trying to leave the way she’d come, but that would mean getting past the beard, who was blocking the path. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, as if inviting her closer. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the goatee take another step toward her.
She turned, raised the machete toward him and said, “You stay away from me!” She pivoted and left the clearing, picking up the path at the far end. She walked quickly, almost running, afraid to look back. She knew she was going the wrong way, farther from the cabin. But for the moment all she could think about was getting away from the men.
Fifty yards ahead the path veered right, around a thicket of tall bushes. As she reached them she looked back.
The men were following her.
They weren’t hurrying, but they were keeping pace easily.
They saw her looking back, and they both smiled.
“No,” she whispered. “Please no.”
She rounded the thicket and, with the men temporarily out of sight, began running. She’d always been a fast runner, had played softball and soccer for years. But since she’d had Willa she’d been out of shape. Clutching her baby tightly to her chest, she ran along the path, glancing back every few seconds. The men were still out of sight. She looked left and right for a way to escape the path, a place to hide, but on both sides lay nothing but sawgrass emerging from murky water.
She tried to run faster, but it was hard, carrying Willa, and she was getting tired. Ahead the path disappeared into the vast expanse of sawgrass, headed in the direction of some live oak trees in the distance, maybe a mile away. Beyond that she saw nothing but more grass, nowhere to escape. She looked around, desperate now. To her right, maybe one hundred feet away across an expanse of water, she saw a slight rise, a little island with a thick clump of bushes and a stunted gumbo-limbo tree. She looked back—still no sight of the two men—then ahead again at the trees in the distance. Then from behind her she heard a laugh; the men were close. She made a decision and left the path, plunging into the water to the right.
It wasn’t as bad as she feared. The water was only knee-deep here, and the ground beneath it less mucky, more sandy than back at the cabin. She sloshed forward as quickly as she could through the sawgrass, constantly glancing back toward the path. She reached the rise just as the two men came into view. Finding firm ground, she dropped on her hands and knees and crawled into the bushes, grateful for Willa’s silence.
She crouched, turned and peered toward the path. The two men apparently hadn’t seen her. They were still on the path, looking ahead, not hurrying. They were talking, but she couldn’t make out the words. Jesse figured that in a few minutes they’d be far enough into the sawgrass that she’d be able to get to the path unseen and head back the way she had come.
Staying low, she scuttled deeper into the bushes, which opened onto a clearing, the gumbo-limbo at the far end. She crouched at the edge of the clearing, listening for the men.
Willa whimpered.
“Oh, honey, not now,” whispered Jesse. But she knew her baby; Willa was still hungry, and her next cry would be louder. Jesse sat cross-legged on the ground, pulled up her T-shirt again and brought Willa to her breast.
As the baby started feeding, Jesse felt something sharp poking her right hip. She shifted her weight and looked down. Something was sticking out of the ground; it glinted yellow in the sun. Holding Willa with her left hand, Jesse reached down with her right and brushed some dirt away. She uncovered the corner of something solid.
Something gold-colored.
As Willa fed, Jesse clawed at the soft dirt until she had uncovered a metal bar, roughly the same shape as a patio brick but about half the size. She tugged hard, pulled it out of the ground, hefted it. It was much heavier than it looked. She held it up. It reflected the sunlight with a lustrous golden glow.
“My God,” whispered Jesse.
She looked down at the hole she’d dug to extract the bar. Clearly visible was the top of another one just like it. She dug her fingers into the ground and yanked it out; there was another bar below that, and the edges of more bars visible on the side of the hole.
“My God,” she said again.
She was breathing hard now, both from the exertion of digging and from excitement. Willa was done feeding. She pulled her shirt down, rose and peeked through the bushes. There was no sign of the two men.
She put the first gold bar into her backpack. She returned the others to the hole and covered them with dirt.
Then she rose, settled Willa into the baby carrier and hurried back to the path.
Chapter 5
Phil was working on his second Moscow mule. For emotional reasons he wanted to guzzle it, but for financial reasons he needed to nurse it.
He was seated at the bar in the Gallo Grande, a seedy restaurant on the Tamiami Trail in far west Miami, almost to the Everglades. “Gallo Grande” means “big rooster,” which explained the eight-foot-tall sun-bleached fiberglass rooster out front, listing at a steep angle ever since being almost blown over by Hurricane Irma. The rooster was one of the two things the Gallo Grande was known for, the other being that drugs could be purchased in the parking lot. It was not known for its food.
The Gallo Grande was Phil’s regular hangout, because he could walk to it from his apartment complex, a clot of run-down buildings named Glades Falls, which did not have any waterfalls per se but did have, because of poor drainage, a semipermanent lagoon in the parking lot.
The other reason Phil patronized the Gallo Grande was that it had a three-for-the-price-of-one happy hour every weekday afternoon from two to five. Phil was pinching pennies. He was seriously broke, way behind on his rent and child support, living on credit card debt he currently had no way to repay.
He felt guilty, drinking when he should have been looking for work. But when he looked for work—which he’d been doing for seven straight months—he was repeatedly slapped in the face by the cold dead fish of rejection. Lately he’d decided that feeling guilty was slightly less awful than being rejected. So here he was, at 2:40 on a Monday afternoon, sitting at the bar of the Gallo Grande with the other happy hour losers.
“Another one?” asked the bartender.
Phil looked at his Moscow mule, which was down to ice water. He sighed and gestured for a third. At this rate, without some serious nursing, he’d be on his second three-for-one before three thirty. Not good.
His phone vibrated. He looked down and felt a tiny jolt of happiness when he saw it was a text from Stella, his sixteen-year-old daughter, who lived with his ex-wife.
r u busy?
No, he typed. What’s up?
ummm
This was Stella letting him know it was going to be awkward.
What? he typed.
ok first heres some punctuation;;;;;;
Phil snorted, almost laughed out loud. As an old-fart newspaperman, he was always complaining about Stella’s generation’s aversion to punctuation, capitalization and grammar. So here she was softening him up with some semicolons.
He typed, I’m surprised you could find that on your keyboard. Must be serious.
it kind of is dad
Tell me.
i need some money
The bartender replaced Phil’s dead mule with a new one. Phil stared at his phone, trying to think what to type. Stella, noticing the delay, typed another text.
im sorry dad i know its a bad time but theres a school trip
Don’t be sorry! he typed. I’m your dad.
He felt foolish, typing that, and quickly added, How much do you need?
A longish pause from Stella, then: 235.
Phil picked up the mule and swallowed half in one gulp.
Stella typed, i know its a lot dad im so sorry
Phil stared at the screen.
Stella typed, mom says she cant do it
Phil stared at the screen.
if u cant dont worry i dont have to go
Phil typed, When do you need it?
friday
Phil took a deep breath and typed, OK.
Stella typed really??? Suddenly, she was punctuating.
An image flashed in Phil’s mind—Stella as a little girl, on a family trip to Disney World. She was wearing a princess costume, holding some kind of overpriced Disney princess wand Phil had just bought her at the overpriced Disney souvenir store just because she wanted it.
He used to buy her everything she wanted, his princess. He hadn’t bought her anything nice since he’d lost his job. For her last birthday he’d taken her to lunch at Fridays; when he dropped her off at his ex-wife’s house, he gave her, apologetically, her birthday gift, a $20 Amazon gift card. Stella, a good girl, did her best to act thrilled, hugged him and told him it was perfect, just what she wanted. He watched her walk to the house. She turned at the front door, gave him a wave and a smile, still his princess. He smiled and waved back, drove around the corner, pulled over to the curb and sobbed like a baby.
He was tearing up now, looking at his phone.
He typed: Really.
dad thank u SO MUCH i love u a million semicolons ;;;;;;;;;;
I love you a billion semicolons.
talk to u later bye xoxo
OK, baby girl. Bye.
Phil drank the rest of his mule, signaled for the bartender to start him on his second round of three. He was fully aware that getting drunk was going to make him even less capable than he already was of coming up with $235. But at the moment getting drunk was the only thing he could think of that would make him at least slightly less conscious of what an utterly worthless human he was.
“Shit,” he said, aloud.
“I hear that,” said a man sitting two stools over.
Phil glanced at him. “Sorry,” he said.
“No problem,” the man said. He pointed at Phil’s phone. “Bad news, huh?”
Phil nodded. The bartender brought him his fourth Moscow mule.
“Lotta that going around,” said the man.
Phil grunted and, not wanting to get into a conversation with another Gallo Grande loser, looked up at the TV over the bar, which was tuned to ESPN, one of those shows where middle-aged TV commentators pretended to find deep significance in the activities of twenty-four-year-old multimillionaire athletes. Phil stared at the screen, but he could feel the man still looking at him.
After a moment the man said, “You’re the YouTube guy, right?”
Phil looked over. “What?”
“You’re the guy from the YouTube video, with the big head, right? Got hit in the balls by that little girl? With the golf club? And fell on the cake? You’re him, right?”
Phil sighed. “Yeah.”
“I knew it! I saw you in here two days ago, and I said to myself, that looks like the guy from YouTube. I bet that hurt like hell, right? Your balls?”
“You have no idea,” said Phil. “Listen, if you don’t mind—”
“That was fucking hilarious,” said the man. “I watched that like twenty times.” He got up, grabbed a backpack off the floor and shifted over one stool, next to Phil. He stuck out his hand. Phil shook it reflexively.
“My name’s Ken Bortle,” said the man. “Of Bortle Brothers Bait & Beer? On the Tamiami Trail? You familiar with it?”
“Is that that one with the big thing out front?” said Phil. “Like a gorilla?”
Ken, disdainful, shook his head. “That’s the skunk ape. That’s our competition. So anyways… hold on, I don’t even know your name.”
“Phil,” said Phil, reluctantly.
“Phil,” said Ken. “Listen, Phil, I’ll be honest, I was hoping I’d run into you here.”
“Me? Why?”
“You in that video, first of all, hilarious. But also it fits so perfect with this concept I’ve been thinking about. It’s like, boom, it just clicked in my mind. I swear to God it’s fate, Phil, you being here.”
“Listen,” said Phil, “I’m not really—”
“You watch Shark Tank?” said Ken.
“No,” said Phil. “Listen, whatever this is, I’m not—”
“Great show,” said Ken. “Really, really great show. I watch every one. You know what I learned?”
“No,” said Phil. He very much wanted to leave, but he had two more Moscow mules coming.
“What I learned, Phil, is if you want to make money, with a product, you need something different. Has to be unique. Has to grab their attention. That’s what I’m focused on, Phil. Grab their attention. Make them pull off the road, instead of driving past. Now, here’s where it gets a little weird.”
“What does?” said Phil.
“Bear with me, Phil. You ever hear of the melon heads?”
“The what?”
“Melon heads.”
“No.”
“OK, bear with me on this, Phil. The melon heads are these legendary creatures, supposably they live in the forests of Michigan, according to the Internet. Also Ohio. They’re some kind of whaddyacallit, genetic fuckup, kind of like a human, but they have these giant heads and sharp teeth. They avoid people, but anybody they see, they eat them. As a protective measure.”
“They eat them?”
“Exactly. With their teeth. According to the Internet, the paranormal sites. Now, Phil, I’m gonna have to trust you on this. This is confidential.”
“What is?”
“This concept.”
“What concept?”
“Bear with me, Phil. What if the melon heads came here?”
Phil looked around the Gallo Grande. “Here?”
“Not right here. But Florida. The Everglades. It makes sense.”
Phil, drawn in despite himself, said, “How does it make sense?”
“You look at the Gulf Coast, Naples, Fort Myers, all those places over there. Who lives there?”
“Retirees?” said Phil.
“Retirees from Ohio and Michigan,” said Ken. “They come down from the Midwest on I-75, like a pipeline.” Ken paused here to give Phil what he believed to be a meaningful look. “And who else is from Ohio and Michigan?”
“The melon heads?” said Phil.
“Bingo,” said Ken, slapping the bar. He leaned close and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Now think about this. What if the melon heads came down here too?”
“Wait a minute,” said Phil. “You’re saying these… these melon heads are traveling on I-75?”
“Course not,” said Ken. “They travel through the forests. At night.”
“Ah,” said Phil. “But why would they come?”
“Same reason as the retirees,” said Ken.
“No income tax?”
“Very funny, Phil. I’m serious. They come for the climate.”
“Ah,” said Phil.
“And when they get here, they hide out in the Everglades. They’re whaddyacallit, invasive. An invasive species. Like the pythons.”
Phil finished his fourth mule, signaled for the fifth.
“So here’s the thing,” said Ken. He looked around the bar to make sure nobody was listening, which nobody was. “Suppose a melon head got sighted, out near the Trail. You follow me?”
“Not really.”
“OK, suppose one got sighted, and I’m the guy who sighted it. Suppose I got a video of it. It gets on the TV news, YouTube, Instagram, all that social media. It goes viral. People are like, ‘Holy shit, a melon head! Right here in Miami!’ All of a sudden everybody wants to see this thing. Where do they go?”
“To the Everglades?”
“To Bortle Brothers Bait & Beer, Phil. Because that’s where I am, and I’m the guy who saw the melon head. I’m the guy they all want to interview. I’m the guy the tourists want to talk to. And I’m the guy with the Everglades Melon Monster merchandise, which they can buy.”
“Everglades Melon Monster?”
“The name I’m using for now,” said Ken. “I’m still workshopping it.”
“But you already have Melon Monster merchandise?”
“Not yet, Phil, but I will, once I get this thing rolling.” Ken put his hand on Phil’s arm. Phil immediately removed it. Ken did not appear to notice. “Phil,” he said, “I’m trusting you here, OK? Because this is the meat of the whole thing, right here.”
“What is?”
Ken lowered his voice again. “Do you still have the head? From the video?”
Phil frowned. “The Dora the Explorer head?”
Ken nodded rapidly. “The face is wrong, but we repaint it, make it a scary face, it’s perfect. With that head, and your size, you’ll be—”
“Waitwaitwait,” said Phil, holding up both hands. “You want me to be the melon thing?”
“The Everglades Melon Monster,” said Ken.
“Forget it,” said Phil, his left hand involuntarily protecting his testicles, which were still in recovery. “I’m not wearing that head again.”
Ken gave him an appraising look. “Not even for money?”
Phil started to say no. Then he looked at his phone. He stared at it for a few seconds, then turned back to Ken.
“How much money?” he said.
Ken leaned in. “A lot of money, Phil. Potentially. Sky’s the fuckin’ limit. This thing goes viral, we’re selling Melon Monster T-shirts, hoodies, beer koozies, all kinds of Melon Monster shit. Possibly reality TV. You get a piece of that, Phil. A percentage. Every unit we sell. After costs.”
Phil shook his head. “That doesn’t work for me.”
“Why not?”
“I need cash. Up front.”
“Phil, this opportunity, I’m talking about a huge payoff. Potentially. You gotta think long-term on—”
“Nope. Cash. Up front.”
Ken nodded. “You sure you never watched Shark Tank, Phil? And you negotiating like a hard-ass?”
“I’m not negotiating. I’m just telling you I’m not doing this unless I get paid cash up front.”
