Skink snatched the phone. “I love you, Bonnie,” he said. “Max forgot to tell you, so I will. Bye now.”
They ate with the Miccosukees, who declined Skink’s offer of boiled coon but generously shared helpings of fried panfish, yams, cornmeal muffins and citrus juice. Max Lamb ate heartily but, mindful of the electric dog collar, said little. After breakfast, Skink tied him to a cypress post and disappeared with several men of the tribe. When he returned, he declared it was time to leave.
Max said, “Where’s my stuff?” He was worried about his billfold and clothes.
“Right here.” Skink jerked a thumb toward his backpack.
“And my Sony?”
“Gave it to the old man. He’s got seven grandchildren, so he’ll have a ball.”
“What about my tapes?”
Skink laughed. “He loved ’em. That monkey attack was something special. Max, lift your arms.” He spritzed the prisoner with more bug juice.
Max Lamb, somberly: “That Handycam retails for about nine hundred bucks.”
“It’s not like I gave it away. I traded.”
“For what?”
Skink chucked him on the shoulder. “I’ll bet you’ve never been on an airboat.”
“Oh no. Please.”
“Hey, you wanted to see Florida.”
It wasn’t easy being a black Highway Patrol trooper in Florida. It was even harder if you were involved intimately with a white trooper, the way Jim Tile was involved with Brenda Rourke.
They’d met at a training seminar about the newest gadgets for clocking speeders. In the classroom they were seated next to each other. Jim Tile liked Brenda Rourke right away. She had a sane and healthy outlook on the job, and she made him laugh. They traded stories about freaky traffic stops, lousy pay and the impossible FHP bureaucracy. Because he was black, and few fellow officers were, Jim Tile rarely felt comfortable in a roomful of state troopers. But he felt fine next to Brenda Rourke, partly because she was a minority, too; the Highway Patrol employed even fewer women than blacks or Latins.
During one session, a buzz-cut redneck shot a rat-eyed look at Jim Tile to remind him that Trooper Rourke was a white girl, and that still counted for plenty in parts of Florida. Jim Tile didn’t get up and move; he kept his seat beside Brenda. It took the cracker trooper only about two hours to quit glaring.
At the lunch break, Jim Tile and Brenda Rourke went to an Arby’s. She was worried about her upcoming transfer to South Florida; Jim Tile couldn’t say much to allay her fears. She said she was studying Spanish, in preparation for road duty in Miami. The first phrase she’d learned was: Sale del carro con las manos arriba. Out of the car with your hands up!
At the time, Jim Tile held no romantic intentions. Brenda Rourke was a nice person, that was all. He never even asked if she had a boyfriend. A few months later, when he was down in Dade County for a trial, he ran into her at FHP headquarters. Later they went to dinner and then to Brenda’s apartment, where they were up until three in the morning, chatting, of all things- initially out of nervousness, and later out of an easy intimacy. The trial lasted six days, and every night Jim Tile found himself back at Brenda’s place. Every morning they awakened exactly as they’d fallen asleep- her head in the crook of his right shoulder, his feet hanging off the short bed. He’d never felt so peaceful. After the trial ended and Jim Tile returned to North Florida, he and Brenda took turns commuting for long weekends.
He wasn’t much of a talker, but Brenda could drag it out of him. She especially liked to hear about the time he was assigned to guard the governor of Florida-not just any governor, but the one whp’d quit, disappeared and become a legendary recluse. Brenda had been in high school, but she remembered when it happened. The newspapers and TV had gone wild. “Mentally unstable,” was what her twelfth-grade civics teacher had said of the runaway governor.
When Jim Tile had heard that, he threw back his head and laughed. Brenda would sit cross-legged on the carpet, her chin in her hands, engrossed by his stories of the one they now called Skink. Out of loyalty and prudence, Jim Tile didn’t mention that he and the man had remained the closest of friends.