Crocs, page 7
The girls clapped their hands.
“Not so fast.” The old fishing guide was no longer smiling. She glanced skyward. A big milky moon was visible despite the sunset afterglow. That seemed to make up her mind.
“Should be okay for the next few weeks,” she said. “But you start by setting up camp next to my house, where I can keep an eye on you. There’s a lot you need to learn about camping in the mangroves—or before you risk a night all alone out there.”
Bonefield Key she meant.
As the kids were mounting their bikes, the old fishing guide took Sabina aside and added a private warning in Spanish. “Listen to me! Never camp there on a full moon unless I say it’s okay,” she whispered. “You’ve got to promise.”
Since they were sharing secrets, the girl felt it was okay to call the woman by her real name. “I promise. But why, Poinciana?”
“Don’t call me that.” The woman bristled. “A tree as pretty as a poinciana don’t fit a person with my looks. That’s why, early on, folks started calling me Pony.”
Instead of shrinking back, Sabina looked into the old lady’s eyes. “You’re a lot prettier than I’ll be at your age. I know it—and I don’t care. You can trust me, Poinciana. What’s so dangerous about the Bone…” The girl hesitated before saying, “The Bone Tunnel?”
The old lady cleared her throat, suddenly emotional. “You are so wrong, my new little friend. You’re a beautiful young person. Just do as I say, child. Maybe one day I’ll tell you the truth about what can happen out there”—Captain Pony looked toward the water—“when the moon is full. The ancient people who lived here still have ancient secrets. If the Calusa want you to know, they will you show you the way.”
TWELVE
SCORPIONS AND AN ANCIENT SHELL HORN
Maribel and Sabina had never heard of Halloween until they left Cuba and arrived in the United States.
The sisters hadn’t believed the stories at first. To Sabina, Halloween sounded too wonderful to be true. Kids could dress up like witches or ghosts, and wander the streets at night eating free candy?
But it was true.
In Florida, no excuses were needed. There would be no weird looks from strangers like those Sabina had received after sneaking into the beautiful cemetery west of Havana. Those looks might have had something to do with the black cloak she’d worn out of respect.
That was a long time ago, of course. Back when she was a little kid.
There was a lot to like about living here. There were things to dislike, too. But Sabina loved Halloween. In a thousand years, she couldn’t have thought of a more perfect way to celebrate the day before her birthday.
Sabina was thinking about that on Wednesday when they rode their bikes to Captain Pony’s house. Every day after school this week, the kids had worked in the yard. They had found a spot on the beach where they could build a place to camp. And they had already learned a lot about how Florida’s first settlers had survived, despite the heat and bugs.
“Let the dead rest in peace,” the old fishing guide said that afternoon when the trio arrived. “Today, no more questions about the gold medallion or that poor young girl. Please? Upsets me too much to even think about.”
Sabina heard that sweet, sad tone again. Maribel heard it, too.
“We need to do something to cheer Pony up,” Maribel suggested to Luke. “I’m worried about her health. Or maybe it’s because she’s low on money. Has to be awful to be old and poor.”
“It’s not a lot of laughs at our age, either,” the boy replied, tightening his leather gloves. He had been collecting lumber to build their first bat house. “Hey—take a look at this. I’ve got an idea.”
“About what?”
“About how to cheer up the old lady. See for yourself.”
Sabina drifted closer and watched him kick over a board. Beneath the board was a scorpion, five inches long. Its body was covered with what looked like black armor. Startled by the sunlight, the scorpion thrust its pincers upward as a warning. At the end of its curly tail was a needle, sharp as a thorn.
“Don’t mess with that,” Maribel said. She took a step back. “Even through your gloves, it could sting you. We saw lots of scorpions in Cuba. They’re not deadly, but they sure hurt. I know. I stepped on one once.”
“That woodpile is loaded with them,” the boy replied. “Dozens, some with hundreds of babies on their bellies. Last night, I looked up scorpions on the computer. In some parts of the world, yeah, they’re really dangerous. But these are no worse than a wasp sting. I can’t wait to tell Captain Pony the good news.”
Sabina wrinkled her nose with disgust. “If you think a woodpile full of scorpions will make Poinciana happy, please don’t choose a birthday present for me.” As an aside, she whispered to her sister in Spanish, “He falls down so often, maybe he hit his head.”
Luke tried to explain. These were Florida bark scorpions. They cost twenty dollars apiece on the Internet. That was Dr. Ford’s business—sort of. He sold marine specimens to colleges and laboratories around the country. So why not include live scorpions in his catalog?
“Sell them, plus a few bat houses,” Luke reasoned. “And Captain Pony makes the best smoked fish I’ve ever had. We could help her sell that, too. She wouldn’t be poor anymore.”
Maribel liked the idea. Sabina did not.
“There’s nothing fun about earning money,” the girl argued. “Halloween is on Saturday. I’m going to tell Pony that we want to decorate this place and invite her to the marina party. That’ll cheer her up.”
“She’s not going to let us decorate here,” Luke countered. “That would attract visitors. And she doesn’t like visitors. Remember?”
“She will if I tell her those scorpions are putting wild ideas in your head,” Sabina replied tartly.
When Luke protested, “But they’re not!” the girl ignored him. She tossed her pigtails back and started across the lawn to the house.
The old fishing guide was in the back, hoeing a garden that was choked with weeds. There were stalks of corn, and a few pumpkins tucked beneath vines loaded with squash and green tomatoes. Some spiny-looking pineapples planted in a row were golden green and ready to pick.
“Captain Pony, I’m worried about Luke,” Sabina began. “He’s been working so hard, he claims to see a scorpion under every board he finds. If he doesn’t have some fun soon, I’m afraid he’ll start seeing even weirder stuff.”
The woman leaned against the hoe. She used a bandanna to wipe her face. “Hooray for Luke. Doesn’t mean he’s weird. Means he’s got good eyes.”
“You think he’s right?”
“Hope so. Scorpions are almost as good as bats when it comes to killing insects. Now, if he found a mess of palmetto bugs in my house, that might bother me. But he won’t, ’cause my spiders and scorpions eat them like candy.”
Palmetto bugs were what old-time Floridians called great big cockroaches. These roaches could fly and hide in the shadows, where they left piles of poop.
The way the lady’s mind worked gave Sabina hope. Bats, scorpions, and spiders fit with the decorations she wanted to make for the Halloween party on Saturday.
Pony, though, refused. No party, she said. And no decorations—not on her property.
The girl felt a chill when the woman pointed in the direction of Bonefield Key. “Besides, I already told you—let the dead spirits rest in peace. You wouldn’t like it if folks danced around in costumes and made fun of you. It’s the Devil’s holiday—that’s what some say. I want no part of it. But you kids are still welcome to come here and camp if you want.”
Suddenly, Sabina had a different view of Halloween.
“Follow me, young lady,” Captain Pony said. She hefted a basket of freshly picked vegetables and started back to the beach. “If you kids want to know how to survive on these islands, you’ve got a lot more to learn.”
When Luke saw Sabina and the old lady coming, he hid the jar of scorpions in his backpack. Maribel pretended not to notice.
Pony placed the vegetables on a picnic table and announced, “When I was a fishing guide, I’d stop at a beach and fix my clients what we called a ‘shore lunch.’ They loved it because they had to catch or gather their own food and cook over a fire. Wasn’t much different for the Calusa and the other settlers who came to Florida hundreds of years ago.”
That’s how they spent the afternoon. Catching and gathering food for a shore lunch—and learning to cook in the old-fashioned island way.
Something else they learned was how the mound builders had communicated. Captain Pony brought out what she called her “sacred shell horn.” She had found it on a Calusa mound when she was a little girl. The seashell was hollow, football-sized, sharp at one end. The other end was wide and knobbed like the crown a king might wear.
On the crown was a pointed spiral. The spiral had been sawed flat to create a blowhole like the mouthpiece of a trumpet. Drilled into the spine of the shell were three perfectly round holes, similar to the holes in a wooden flute.
“The Calusa made this from a horse conch,” the woman said, pronouncing the word as “konk.” “It’s different from most—white as bone and made from a very, very old shell. You can tell from the weight. On quiet nights, you can hear this horn for a mile or more.”
To prove it, she slipped her hand inside the shell. She pressed the flat area to her lips. After a deep breath her cheeks puffed out. The sound the shell produced was the mournful wail of a bugle. When her fingers covered the flutelike holes, the tone deepened.
“It might take you a while to get the hang of it,” she said, and placed it on the table. The shell was heavy, as if made of marble. The inside spiraled into a series of chambers near the crown.
“Give it a try,” Captain Pony said. “You’ve got to make your lips sort of buzz—and blow hard. Don’t worry about playing different notes.”
One by one, the kids did.
THIRTEEN
A BEACH LUNCH AND THE MEAN NEIGHBOR
On Captain Pony’s property were fruit trees stunted from growing so close to saltwater. Many of the names were strange to Luke. There were knobby golden fruits called guavas. Barbados cherries sort of looked like cherries, but their taste was different. Sea-grape trees grew everywhere—but the same thing. The grapes tasted nothing like grapes back in Ohio. There were also fragrant key limes, and green coconuts littered the ground. Hanging in a larger tree were what the woman called “alligator pears.”
In fact, they were huge avocados, three times the size of those sold in stores.
“Gators love to eat avocado pears,” she explained. “You always gotta watch your step when you find a tree near a pond. A gator will grab anything that hits the water—including people, dogs, you name it.”
She also warned, “Never eat any fruit or vegetable—even fish—unless you’re a hundred percent sure it’s safe. It’s better to starve than to risk poisoning yourself. A person can live for months on fresh water alone. Forget that nonsense in books about ‘edible wild plants.’ Too dangerous unless you’re an expert—or a fool looking for a trip to the hospital. You kids understand?”
Luke said from experience, “Mushrooms can be really bad news. Cows can die from eating those. And a friend of mine’s dog got sick once from eating rhubarb leaves.”
Something the boy would’ve never tried was “prickly pear”—a cactus that grew in sandy areas near the beach. Knives and gloves were required. Lobes of the cactus had to be shaved clean of needles. The same with the rose-colored fruit.
In Cuba, though, prickly pears were a favorite food.
“We love nopales,” Maribel said, using the Spanish word for the cactus dish. “If you have an onion and a chili pepper, Sabina and I have a good recipe.”
“Bird chili peppers grow wild out back. Or help yourselves to my garden,” the woman replied. She was enjoying herself. “First, though, let’s catch some fish.”
That was easily done off the dock, where the tidal current swirled. There, in a bucket, was a cone of woven nylon—a “cast net,” it was called. The mesh was weighted at the bottom with lead balls. At the top was a wrist lanyard spliced to a coil of rope. Years ago, Pony had been one of the best in Florida at “cast-netting” fish.
“My balance isn’t good enough now,” she admitted. “I get dizzy spells, and I ain’t as strong as I used to be. But I can teach you. Who wants to try first?”
The kids took turns. After attaching the wrist lanyard, take a sort of dance step. Swing the net back … twist and throw. Do it right, and the net would balloon open like a parachute. The lead weights would then carry the net to the bottom before fish could escape.
Maribel was already good at catching bait for their shark-tagging trips. She went last. With a graceful turn, she spun the net wide and let it sink. When the wrist lanyard began to throb with life, she yanked hard on the rope and pulled the net in hand over hand.
“Heavy,” she grunted. “I could use some help.”
Luke squatted and lifted with his knees. Dozens of flopping fish spilled onto the dock. Most had blunt heads and bulging eyes like the headlights of a car.
“Striped mullet,” Captain Pony said. “Jumpin’ mullet, we call them, because they jump out of the water for no good reason anyone can figure out. You got some beauties there.”
“Maybe they jump just to have fun,” Sabina suggested.
“Makes as much sense as anything else,” the woman said. “Get busy now—grab the smaller fish and put them back in the water while they can still swim away. We don’t keep nothing we can’t use. That’s what I was taught—take care of what lives in the bay. This bay will take care of you.”
The kids did as they were told.
It was interesting, listening to the old fishing guide while they prepared their shore lunch. Before refrigeration, she explained, people on the Gulf Coast wouldn’t have survived without mullet. The fish could be salted and dried. It was tastier if the splits were cured in a smokehouse at low heat. Female mullet contained sacs of golden eggs—fish roe. The roe could be fried or scrambled into an omelet. In some countries, buyers paid a lot of money for Florida mullet roe.
“That’s how a lot of us fisherfolk made our living,” Pony said. “What we didn’t catch, we grew. Or gathered from trees planted long ago by those skunk-in-the-weeds Spaniards.”
The term “skunk-in-the-weeds” had become a private joke. It lightened the mood when they sat down at a table they had moved to the beach. The breeze was better there.
“Looks fantástico,” Sabina said.
Luke used his beginner’s Spanish to agree.
“Hold your horses,” the woman said. “This used to be a tradition on this island before folks gave thanks over a fire and ate.” She put the ancient shell horn to her lips and blew three joyous notes. It sort of sounded liked like a French horn.
“There now.” She grinned. “Dig in.”
The table was loaded with food. There was a platter of fried mullet. It was covered with a pepper sauce of cactus, onion, and lime. Potatoes had been buried in the fire. The potato skins had a delicious charcoal taste when served with butter. There was also corn on the cob and a pitcher of iced tea.
Coconut shells became fruit bowls. Coconut water—“milk,” some called it—sweetened sliced Barbados cherries. The fruit mix was okay—not bad, Luke said. But it didn’t compare to the whole pineapple they roasted over the coals on a stick. It was basted with wild honey until golden brown, then sliced.
Dessert was the best dish by far. Pony provided her specialty—frozen key lime pie made with Eagle Brand condensed milk. The pie was tart and creamy, like frozen sherbet. But better. A lot better.
“Without a refrigerator, canned milk was all we had to cook with—unless there was a cow handy,” the woman said. There was a playful grin on her face. The kids had never seen her so happy.
That changed when her neighbor’s sleek cabin cruiser came roaring around the point. They recognized the big engines, the yellow hull, and the gleaming chrome tower.
“That fool,” Captain Pony muttered. “He doesn’t know diddly about the waters around here. Speeds back and forth no matter the time of day. It just goes to prove, you don’t need brains to drive a fancy yacht. Just money.”
She addressed Maribel, “You ever see that joker when you’re out fishing, go the other way. He’s the sort of tourist who gets good captains killed.”
As she spoke, the cabin cruiser swerved wildly toward a bank of mangroves on the other side of the bay. Water was shallow there. The yellow hull jolted. The outboard motors kicked a rooster tail of mud and created waves that were the boat’s wake.
Maribel yelled, “If he keeps going, he’s going to hit those pilings you told us about!”
Bones Gate, she meant.
The driver, hidden inside the cabin, realized he’d left the channel. Without slowing, the cabin cruiser heeled to the right in a high-speed turn. It swerved again and rocketed, out of control, toward Captain Pony’s dock.
The old fishing guide got to her feet. She flagged her arms in warning. The kids did the same. Seconds before a collision, the cabin cruiser made another swooping turn. It nearly crashed onto the beach where they were standing, then turned again.
Over the sound of the screaming engines, Sabina hollered, “He did that on purpose!”
They were all frozen in shock by how close they’d come to being crushed by a huge speedboat. Worse, the vessel’s twisting path had created a gigantic, circular wake—sort of like a whirlpool.
Those waves were now rolling toward them.
Because Sabina and Luke were closest, they rushed to steady the old lady. But not in time. The first wave that crashed ashore flooded the beach. The next wave knocked Pony off her feet. When she fell, she hit her head on the picnic table.
