Crocs, p.14
Crocs, page 14
“You know it wasn’t an owl,” Sabina snapped. She was about to say something else but was stopped by a series of distant hoots and honks.
Maribel sighed with relief. She smiled. “That’s Carlos! It was just the goose calling, not a horn. Isn’t it funny how our imaginations go wild in a place like this?”
Sabina had to bite her lip to stay silent.
There was a reason. The girl hadn’t told Luke and Maribel everything about that foggy morning. She’d told them about Periwinkle, yes. And she would have described seeing Spaniards on horseback and a Calusa village if Luke hadn’t laughed.
But that wasn’t the only reason: Sabina wasn’t sure if it had really happened. She’d been so dizzy after hitting her head. Now, only a few weeks later, it all seemed like a dream. Had she imagined it?
The only person she had told was Captain Poinciana Wulfert. They had talked often in the hospital—always in Spanish—just the two of them alone.
The old fishing guide had believed every word of Sabina’s story. The woman had shared a few secrets of her own—including the exact spot where King Carlos had spoken to his dead ancestors. She, too, believed there was a mysterious tunnel there that led back in time.
“They’ll all think we’re both bat-daft loco,” Poinciana Wulfert had whispered from her hospital bed. “It’s best we keep this to ourselves.”
Now, sitting by the fire, Sabina was aware that Luke was studying her reaction. On his face was the same irritating look of doubt. The girl took a deep breath. She forced a smile. “I’m starting to like that goose,” she said sweetly. “I’ll give Carlos some extra corn in the morning.”
Luke sensed the lie. It added a gray-brown glow to the girl’s face. The lightning eye behind his forehead was seldom wrong.
“Yeah, it definitely wasn’t a horn we heard,” he said to put the subject to rest. “It was that crazy goose. Let’s eat.”
He got up and returned with a bottle of hot sauce for the roasted oysters.
An invisible moon rose a half hour before sunset. By seven it was midway up the eastern sky. The moon wouldn’t be full until tomorrow, yet it was bright enough to cast shadows while Luke finished the dishes.
Sabina had retreated to her tent to work on a new poem—she claimed.
In fact, the girl had snuck away to reinspect the grave markers made of pioneer concrete.
The poachers had used a shovel to dig around the smallest marker. A layer of shells, as big as rocks, had protected Periwinkle’s grave—and a secret that Captain Pony had told only Sabina.
The old fishing guide had been dazed after coming out of surgery. She had gotten the names of her thieving neighbors wrong when speaking privately with the girl.
In Pony’s confused mind, their names had become Ponce Leon and Don Pedro.
Leon and Donny, Sabina thought bitterly. Those skunks-in-the-weeds.
Weeks before they were arrested, the men had broken into Pony’s house. They’d stolen an old journal.
“They’re after the gold medallion,” the woman had confided, taking Sabina’s hand. “Truth is, I don’t know where it is. Periwinkle took it into the Bone Tunnel the night she died, and the medallion disappeared. You have to find it, Sabina. You’ve gotta! Or my dear sister will never be at peace.”
“And do what with it?” the girl had asked.
“You’ll know when the time comes” was the reply. With a dreamy smile the woman had added, “When I leave this world, I’m giving Bonefield Key to the archaeologists. I’m trusting you, my little nieta, to do what is right.”
This had brought tears to Sabina’s eyes. Captain Pony had never had children. In Spanish, nieta meant “granddaughter.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
LOST SOULS
Sunday morning, church bells sailed across the bay. The chimes mixed with the mangrove silence of wind, birds, and a crackling campfire.
Home seemed a distant world away from their tidy little camp on Bonefield Key.
The kids had already boated to Captain Pony’s house, where they’d fed and watered the animals and done other small chores. They were starving when they returned. Their breakfast consisted of hot cocoa, oatmeal, broiled fish, and badly burned toast.
Sabina had managed to drop four slices of bread into the fire.
Luke scraped off the black edges, slathered a piece with sea-grape jelly, and folded it into a sandwich. “Pretty good,” he said, munching. “In fact, I like this toast better. Crunchier. You know? Sort of like burned bacon. The wood ashes give it a nice salty taste.”
Sabina took this as a compliment. “Instead of being a poet, maybe I’ll become a famous chef.”
This made good sense to the boy. “I’d rather eat than read, so yeah. A chef probably makes more money. But I’m not sure dropping food in a campfire counts as cooking.”
“It’s called being creative,” Sabina argued. “Poets can’t waste their time making money. We have to write about love and sadness and being poor—too poor to buy a computer-game console that would look really nice in my bedroom.”
It was Maribel’s turn to do the dishes. “Mama wouldn’t let you have that even if we could afford it,” she chimed in, pouring water into a shiny tin basin.
“I have plenty of other sad things to write about,” Sabina countered. “In Havana, near our house, was the most beautiful cemetery in the world. Huge, a whole city of marble tombs where dead people live.”
“Live?” Luke asked.
“Forever,” the girl responded. “No smart person would leave a cemetery as nice as that. My favorite poet is buried there. I used to take flowers to her grave and eat a sandwich. That made me sad, too. I loved the place. If I ever get rich enough, I’ll buy a spot next to her.”
She looked over her sister’s shoulder. The basin containing the water was shiny enough to show Maribel’s reflection.
This reminded Sabina of a favorite poem: “The Mirror” by Dulce María Loynáz. It was also a chance to share something important that Captain Pony had told her in the hospital.
“Would you like to hear the poem?” the girl asked. “The writer’s first name is Dulce María. Dulce means ‘sweet’ in English. She was a beautiful young Cuban girl like me. I used to read verses at her grave.”
Sabina cleared her throat. In a low, theatrical voice, she recited the first few lines:
The mirror hanging on the wall,
where I sometimes see myself in passing …
is a dead pond brought
into the house.
The boy gulped the last of his cocoa, suddenly in a hurry. “A poem about a dead pond in a house—yeah, that sure sounds fun. But I’ve got to get back to work on our tree house.”
“Wait and just listen for a minute,” Sabina insisted. “That book by the archaeologist that Pony knew? At the hospital, when she woke up from her surgery, she told me something interesting.”
It was sort of interesting, Luke had to admit. At first, anyway.
The Calusa believed that all people had three souls. One soul lived inside a person’s eyes. A second soul lived in the mirror image of a person’s face when staring into a pool of water.
Sabina motioned to the shiny tin basin. “I remembered when I saw Maribel’s reflection.”
“What about the third soul?” her sister wanted to know.
This part was more complicated, Sabina said. The Calusa people believed that a person’s shadow was more than just a shadow. When the moon was high and bright, the shadow came alive.
“Came alive?” Luke didn’t want to hear any more. The old fishing guide had suffered a stroke, so it was just another imaginary story. More nonsense.
Stroke. The word sounded so simple—unless a kid knew what the heck it meant. Luke did. Three years ago, before his mother died, a nice doctor had told him, “A stroke is sort of like a heart attack. But it happens in the brain.”
Something to do with a blood clot or reduced blood flow, the doctor had explained.
“Nothing to worry about,” the doctor had assured him. “Most people recover and do just fine. If we’re lucky, your mother will be the same great lady she was before this happened.”
Luke’s mother had not been one of the lucky ones.
The memory of those final weeks was painful. Something—the drugs or the brain surgery—had changed her. It was like his mother lived in a fantasy world.
The same was probably true of Captain Pony.
There were no such things as time tunnels and ghosts. As Doc had said, There’s so much to learn about the real world—this bay, the oceans—I don’t waste my time on fairy tales.
Doc’s opinion was good enough for Luke. But he didn’t want to hurt Sabina’s feelings by saying the old lady’s stories were silly. Maribel, however, deserved the truth—even though the subject was so upsetting he was already near tears. Over his shoulder, he gave the older sister a concerned look before he walked away.
They had fished together so often, she understood.
“I’ll be there in a second,” she whispered. “But first I’ve got to radio Hannah or Doc and tell them we’re okay.”
Check in every two hours. Maribel was good about following rules.
TWENTY-EIGHT
LUKE MAKES A DISCOVERY
Luke climbed to a high limb above the tree house he was building. He adjusted one of the many ropes rigged to keep the platform flat. They were strong enough to support the weight of several adults, plus the bamboo walls and roof that would come later.
Maribel had yet to appear. It had been twenty minutes since she’d whispered, Be there in a second.
This was unusual for a girl who was never late.
Radio problems, the boy decided. Maybe she and Sabina had taken the rental boat to the old lady’s house to use the phone. Better yet, the canoe Pony had loaned them. In the shoals off Bonefield Key, a canoe was just as fast.
That was okay. From where Luke sat, twenty feet above the ground, there was a lot to see. A wedge of Captain Pony’s tin roof was visible. To the west was the salt pond. The giant croc, Sabina-Belle, lay on the bank basking in the sun, her babies nearby. She seemed to be doing just fine despite missing two scutes.
To the east, a pyramid of trees marked the highest point of Bonefield Key’s shell mound. Sprinkled among the leaves were specks of color, round like balls.
Luke touched the burn scar on his shoulder. He shaded his eyes and zoomed in. Yes … they were oranges, as bright as Christmas ornaments.
The boy wiped his red eyes and sniffed. Great! Now he knew where to look.
He was straddling a limb, head bowed, when Maribel called his name from below. “I talked to Hannah,” she hollered. “You’re not going to like it. We’ve got to go back to the marina in the morning.”
“Huh?”
She said it again, adding, “We can leave our tents and stuff for now. But tomorrow night—maybe the next few nights—we can’t stay here.”
“What are you talking about? I could have the tree house finished by tomorrow afternoon.”
Maribel realized the boy had been crying when he climbed down and rearranged a pile of bamboo to avoid looking at her.
“You’re upset. Did something happen?”
“Nah, stupid ants,” Luke lied. “I poked myself in the eye slapping at some. There must be a nest up there. Why did Hannah say we have to leave?”
Out of kindness, Maribel didn’t press the issue.
“Because they’re letting Leon out of jail in the morning. He still has to appear in court—I didn’t get all the details. The police want us to stay away from Captain Pony’s property for a few days.”
Luke still didn’t understand. “Those guys won’t mess with us. They’re already in enough trouble. The cops found all sorts of illegal animals locked up in that building next to Leon’s house.”
“It’s more complicated,” the girl said. “Doc and his friend the detective want to keep an eye on Leon. They think he might try to rob Pony’s house again. Those weren’t Hannah’s exact words, but I figured it out. So this is our last night camping here for a while.”
Maribel thought for a moment.
“Dr. Marion Ford.”
She said this in a musing tone that was familiar to Luke. No matter where they went, the quiet, kindly biologist often worked with police or tough-looking military types. Later, he refused to discuss the reasons.
“I’ll never understand him,” the girl added. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly. Can you imagine Doc getting into a fight? Or pulling a gun on some bad guy? He’d have to take off his glasses and clean them first.”
Normally, this would have gotten a laugh from Luke. He had tried to picture it before—Doc scribbling in his notebook despite the blazing gunfire of a SWAT team. Or Doc in an old Hollywood Western, fumbling for a six-shooter, then diving into a water trough so he could watch what happened next. Soaking wet, the notebook, of course, would come out again. Every small detail had to be recorded.
The biologist wasn’t a coward. No way. The kids knew this. He was just a … well, a nerdy scientist who cared more about collecting data than saving his own life.
But Luke didn’t laugh. Not even a smile. Leon was a big, tough, loudmouthed bully. Doc was no match for a drunken thief who, the boy now believed, would’ve killed him and the Estéban sisters rather than go to jail.
Maribel’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Luke? Luke. Are you okay? You wanted to talk about something. What’s wrong?”
He needed a moment to edit what he had planned to say.
“It’s about the old lady. The stuff she told Sabina in the hospital. After a stroke, sick people don’t think straight. They can say some really strange things.”
Maribel agreed. “The story about shadow people coming to life. And the Bone Tunnel. I understand.”
“I’m not so sure you do,” Luke said. He returned to stacking bamboo. “Before my mother … Well, you know about that. During her last weeks, it was like she lived in a dream world. She told me things that I knew weren’t true. That could never be true.”
“About you?”
The boy nodded.
“Like what?”
No way was Luke going to share his mother’s last words of advice—or the predictions she had made about his future.
One day you will be a very famous man, his mother had promised while in a feverish daze. Several times she had insisted it was true.
Another silly fairy tale. No way that would ever happen.
“I’m talking about the old lady,” Luke insisted. “She’s not in her right mind. That stuff about ghosts and some secret tunnel where time has stopped. It’s all”—the boy had to clear his throat to hold back tears—“it’s the sort of happy crap that sick people say before they die. If Sabina believes it, fine. I just thought you ought to know the truth before we make fools of ourselves tonight.”
He loaded his arms with bamboo and started toward the tree.
Maribel walked after him. “You’re not going to tell me what your mother said. Are you?”
Without looking back, the boy shook his head.
There were times when Maribel wanted to take Luke into her arms and hug him like the brother she’d never had. But she couldn’t. Since being struck by lightning, the boy had built an invisible wall around himself. Or maybe he had always been that way.
The best she could do was give his shoulder a gentle touch. “I don’t believe Captain Pony’s stories, either. Not about a time tunnel, anyway. But I don’t see any harm in following Sabina when the moon comes up. Let her find out the truth for herself. This will be our last night on the island for at least a few days.”
Luke sniffed. He cleared his throat. “Fair enough,” he said. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
They went up the bamboo ladder. Maribel commented on how solid the platform felt beneath her feet.
“Are you sure you those are oranges?” she asked when Luke pointed to the pyramid of trees. All she saw was a jungle of leaves.
“It’s the only part of the island we haven’t explored,” the boy replied. “Where’s your sister?”
“Down here,” Sabina hollered. She stood at the base of the tree, dressed in boots and gloves, still wearing the red pirate bandanna. In her hand was the machete they’d been allowed to bring. The tool had been useful during a day spent gathering food. “It’s time to start supper. I think we should explore some more tonight.”
Maribel followed Luke down the ladder before sharing Hannah’s upsetting news. She expected Sabina to be angry. Instead the girl became oddly silent. She stood there squeezing her beaded necklace as if listening to an unheard voice.
Sabina was—a wind-chime voice that gave her goose bumps.
“Something bad is going to happen,” she said finally. “I think Leon’s already out of jail. He … he might be on his way to Sanibel right now. Or already here!”
“What makes you think that?” Maribel asked.
Luke was shaking his head. He was tired of fairy tales. “The moon will be up soon,” he said. “We still have time to find that orange tree. I vote we eat later.”
TWENTY-NINE
THE SURVIVOR TREE
In a modern world of parks, bike paths, and golf-course communities, the hike to the top of the mound would’ve taken twenty minutes.
But this was Florida the way it had been for centuries. It was hot, the temperature in the eighties even this late in the day. Heat radiated up from a century of seashells piled into what might have been a pyramid. But it was now jungle, trees forty feet high. Every weed, bush, limb, and vine battled for space and a glimpse of sunlight to survive. Overhead, the foliage was so dense, it was rare to see a patch of sunset sky.
Maribel and Luke took turns with the machete. They hacked a path uphill through a wall of green. Sabina lagged behind. In her head, the wind-chime voice continued to warn, You’re in danger. Something bad could happen tonight …
