Everglades Assault (3 page)

As the old man said, when you're connected to any living creature for any length of time, you feel.

Good or bad, you feel....

So I walked the teenage beauty up to my stilthouse. She surveyed my living quarters expectantly—and seemed disappointed that everything was nice and neat; clothes hung, dishes washed.

Anyone who's been on a boat for long soon learns that neatness is the first rule of good seamanship.

But women—even the independent ones, like this magnificent April Yarbrough—have trouble accepting the idea of a man's living alone in an orderly fashion without female assistance.

“Just finish your weekly cleaning, Dusky?”

“I clean on a daily basis. It's an old habit, April.”

“Oh.” She swayed over to the little library and went through the books. There is no describing that inexorable feeling of want when you watch a truly beautiful woman move: the rotation of hips beneath thin bikini bottoms; the sleek flattening of breast as she stretches to reach; the ripe convexing and curvature of soft flesh of hips and thighs and stomach.

“Did Hervey know you were going to wear that skimpy bathing suit out here to visit me?”

She turned holding a book and flashed me a vampish grin. “I'm nineteen now, MacMorgan. Off to college and a grown woman. Daddy has nothin' to say about what I wear.”

“Then what would your boyfriend back at college say?”

It was a blind shot. I didn't know if she had a boyfriend or not. But in the moment I said it, I felt the slightest pinch of jealousy.

It surprised me.

“Boyfriend!” She actually looked a little guilty—and that's when I knew that I was right. “How did you know . . .”

As if suddenly aware that I had trapped her, she glared, considered throwing the book at me, then decided to grin instead. “Well, you're right. In a way. He's not a boyfriend. He's a manfriend.” She wrinkled her nose impishly. “He's a professor. He's even older than you. And,” she added coyly, “he's got a lot more books.”

“Great,” I said. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“Why, Dusky!” She laughed. “I do believe you're jealous.”

“Hah! That's a laugh. I'm just wondering what Hervey and your mother think about your dating a guy old enough to be your—”

“My father! And I always thought you were so broad-minded. Now look at you, MacMorgan. Prudish as an old maid.”

“You keep wagging around here in that bikini and I'll show you how prudish I am.”

She put down the book, the grin gone. A new, softer light in her eyes had replaced it. “I'd like that,” she said. “I'd like that very much.”

“April, I thought you came out here to tell me about some problem your family was having up in the Everglades. . . .”

She came steadily toward me, as if she had just accepted my invitation to slow dance. I found myself taking her in my arms, holding her tightly in a warm embrace; an embrace laced with more affection than passion.

And then her sun-colored face was turned toward mine; the high soft cheeks and full lips and golden eyes and raven hair, and I bowed gently to kiss her forehead. But she moved just enough so that I found her lips instead.

It was a delicate kiss; gentle, experimental. And then her lips dampened, and her body seemed to swell, and suddenly I was kissing her deeply; feeling her body pressing to the curve of mine; feeling the heat or her near-bare breasts and hips against my body.

“Oh, Dusky, I've wanted you to kiss me like this for such a long, long time. . . .”

“And I've wanted to. . . .”

The top of the bikini tied with a bow. The material came undone and fell away with a tug. Her breasts were wide and firm and coned; nipples taut and erect. She pressed them hard against my face, her hands tangling my blond hair in ecstasy.

“Please, Dusky, please . . . right here, right now . . . my first time. Please . . . oh, God . . . please. . . .”

So I lifted her and placed her gently on the floor; lips tracing the length of her body, some distant part of my brain wondering absently if it was right or wrong; if the two of us would regret it; wondering, always wondering—and always questioning the wisdom of the first encounter with that final intimacy.

But I didn't have time to question long.

She was trying feverishly to slide my shorts down over my legs. I was very much occupied with something else.

And that's when I heard, for the first time, the gas putter of a boat outside.

We had both been so involved that we didn't realize that we had a visitor until almost too late.

With an oath normally considered very unladylike, April jumped to her feet, grabbed the bikini top, and ran deerlike into my bedroom.

I stood and tried to adjust my gym shorts—and quickly realized that only a pair of heavy khakis would make me even close to presentable.

I grabbed a pair off the hook and slid them on, hopping one-legged toward the door.

I got them zipped up just as my old friend—and April's father—stuck his bearded face against the screen door.

“Hervey! I wasn't exactly expecting you.”

He gave me a wry look. “So I gather, ya old lecher.”

“Now wait a minute, Hervey . . .”

He came through the door chuckling, a big chew of Red Man wide in his cheek. “You don't have to explain nothin' to me, Dusky. Naw, not a word about it. I'd rather have you courtin' that wild girl o' mine than some bookish boy-man up ta the state university.”

He walked across the room still chuckling and plopped down in a chair. He looked at me and winked. “Knew that youngun come out here with romance on her mind, and I got ta wonderin' if she'd remember the business I sent her on.”

“Daddy, are you followin' me? Because if you are, I'll be tempted to rap you on top the head with somethin' the size of a ball bat!”

April stood in the bedroom doorway, glowering. Her face was red and flushed with kissing, and her fists were doubled statuelike on her hips.

And there was something else, too—something that Hervey noticed the same time I did. In April's haste, she had put her bikini top on inside out, so that the label was easily seen.

Hervey looked at me, eyes wide, owlish. For a second, I thought he was going to swallow his chewing tobacco. Instead, he whoofed and howled in an explosion of laughter, slapping at his chest.

And then I found myself laughing, too; roaring at that endless human comedy in which we all, from time to time, play the clown.

April looked at us both as if we had gone stark raving mad.

“What in the world is wrong with you two men?”

I kept pointing at her, laughing helplessly. Finally, I managed to get the words out: “Your top . . . look at your top!”

She studied it momentarily, and then her eyes described wonderment, then shock. Refusing to be intimidated now, she sniffed with the air of royalty, actually stuck her tongue out at me, then sauntered back to the bedroom to correct her error.

We had finally gotten ourselves back under control by the time she returned. Hervey kept wiping at the water in his eyes.

“Are you men done making fools of yourselves now?” she said haughtily as she crossed the room and, without hesitation, sat down on the arm of my chair beside me.

“God,” said Hervey, “she does have cheek. You got to give the woman that. Gets it from her mother's side, not mine.”

“I don't know, Hervey—you've never lacked for brassiness. And I've known you for . . . how long?”

“Longer than I care to think about, Dusky. Makes me feel old.” And then to April, he said, “Darling, I wasn't following you. You know me better than that. Just wanted to make sure Dusky understood the problem our folks got.”

No longer mad, but still offended at her father's sudden intrusion, April gave the ceiling a queenly look and said, “Well, Daddy, if you think you can explain things better than me, just go on right ahead. But I've got better things to do than sit around while you men spit tobacco and drink beer and jabber.”

She stood up airily, patted my hand quickly, and walked out the door, only to duck back in with that vampish expression. “And I'll talk to
you
later!”

“You can bet on it,” I said.

Her raven hip-length hair swung behind her as she descended the steps and roared off in her little skiff.

“Got a will of iron, that girl,” I said after she had left.

Hervey eyed me sagely. “I got a feeling you're going to be finding out just how strong-willed she is.”

“You don't mind?”

“I'd be a fool not to expect a girl as healthy as that not to like men. And I'd be a bigger fool to object to her wanting to see somebody I like and respect.”

“I appreciate that, Hervey.”

“Well, you may not appreciate it so much when I'm done asking you for this favor.”

“So ask.”

“It might take some time.”

I motioned around the room. “Ever since I moved out here I've had an open calendar.”

He nodded, working the Red Man in his cheek. He eyed the brass spittoon beside my chair, and I slid it across the floor to him. He expectorated expertly, and the cuspidor actually rang, just like in the cartoons.

“I've got some family that lives back in the Everglades.”

“You've mentioned them.”

“On my mama's side. That's the Indian side of the family. That's where April gets her looks. Four hundred years ago she'da been a damn Indian princess, the way she looks.”

“Or an Indian chief—the way she acts.”

He chuckled. “Ain't that the damn truth.”

“I'm not complaining.”

“Give it some time. We'll see.”

He worked at the tobacco some more. Hervey Yarbrough is one of my closest, more trusted friends. He comes from sailing-captain stock, born and raised in Key West. He's squat and bulky, all muscle and thick black beard. The slightest movement of index finger triggers a flexing of cords in forearms that suggests a lifetime spent hauling lobster pots and shrimp nets. And what he doesn't know about the water and reefs around the Florida Keys isn't worth knowing.

But there's another side to Hervey, too. With the strength is an underlying sensitivity; one of those people who make the old saying about still waters seem very true indeed. He doesn't say much, but when he's in the mood he can be sharp or funny as hell; one of those rare men with the talent for original insight.

So I gave him time to speak his piece. I knew how the story would come: the barest basics first followed by tangents and possibilities which might be suggestive.

I sat back in my chair and caught the foil package of Red Man when he tossed it, and we took turns shooting at the brass cuspidor as he talked.

Hervey said, “This family of mine in the Everglades—they're neither Seminole nor Miccosukee.”

“I thought those were the only two tribes in Florida.”

“That's what the books and everyone else will tell you. But it ain't quite true. You see, the Seminoles aren't but a combination of several different tribes that escaped into Florida in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. Came here when the Yamassee were driven out of Carolina, and after the Creek wars and after Andrew Jackson drove the Cherokee out of their farms and schools and made them go west.”

“Sounds like you've read up on it.”

He shrugged. “Like I said, I'm Indian on my mama's side. If you want to find out who you are, you got to find out where you're from.”

“So your mother's people are from Georgia and Carolina?”

He smiled. “No. We're Florida, through and through. When those other poor Indians came running rag-tag south, just trying to stay ahead of Jackson's dogs, there were still a few remnants of the Florida tribes around. Way, way back in the old times there were the Calusas and the Ais, the Tequesta and the Timucua and some others. Spaniards kilt most of them—not with their guns or their swords, but with disease. The books will tell you they're all extinct.”

“But the books are wrong?”

Hervey switched his chew from side to side thoughtfully. He said, “Well, it's not something you could prove in court, but my mama's people have their ways and their legends and their word histories, and their word history says they're Tequesta. Probably the last living Tequesta on earth. Of course, they're not pureblood—not anymore. Couldn't be. Like my ma. She married my daddy, and her mama before her had some Spanish blood in her, so they say. All mixed up by now. But the thread is there. And they get real nasty when someone suggests they're Seminole. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that they're Tequesta and proud of it. You've seen the shell mounds down here in the Keys and around Cape Sable and Flamingo? They built those mounds probably before Christ was born. They're the only true Floridians around.”

“I can understand why they'd take some pride in that.”

He chuckled. “They do. They damn sure do. Stubborn as hell, those folks. And it's probably hurt them in some ways.”

“How so?”

“Well,” he said, “the fact they refuse to connect themselves with the Seminole or Miccosukee cuts their political clout right down to zero. Back in 1957 the Florida Indians voted to incorporate under the Indian Reorganization Act. Strength in numbers, you know. But there was only my mama's folks and two other families who considered themselves Tequesta, and they wouldn't have a thing to do with it. What that means is, they're Indians on their Indian land, but they don't get one ounce of government backing.”