“What about Jenna?” Kara Lynn asked. “You serious about her?”
“What is this, the Merv show?” Wiley ground his teeth. “Look,” he said, “I’d love to sit and chat but it’s time to be on my way.”
“You’re going to leave me out here in the rain? With no food or water?”
“You won’t need any,” he said. “ ‘Fraid I’m going to have to douse the fire, too.”
“A real gentleman,” Kara Lynn said acerbically. She was already testing the rope on her wrist.
Wiley was about to pour some tea on the flames when he straightened up and cocked his head. “Did you hear something?” he asked.
“No,” Kara Lynn lied.
“It’s a goddamn boat.”
“It’s the wind, that’s all.”
Wiley set down the kettle, took off his baseball cap, and went crashing off, his bare bright egg of a head vanishing into the hardwoods. Thinking he had fled, Kara Lynn squirmed to the campfire and turned herself around. She held her wrists over the bluest flame, until she smelled flesh. With a cry she pulled away; the rope held fast.
When she looked up, he was standing there. He folded his arms and said, “See what you did, you hurt yourself.” He carried her back to the bed of pine needles and examined the burns. “Christ, I didn’t even bring a Band-Aid,” he said.
“I’m all right,” said Kara Lynn. Her eyes teared from the pain. “What about that noise?”
“It was nothing,” Wiley said, “just a shrimper trolling offshore.” He tore a strip of orange silk from the hem of her gown. He soaked it in salt water and wound it around the burn. Then be cut another length of rope and retied her wrists, tighter than before.
The rain started again. It came in slashing horizontal sheets. Wiley covered his eyes and said, “Shit, I can’t run the boat in this mess.”
“Why don’t you wait till it lets up?” Kara Lynn suggested.
Her composure was aggravating. Wiley glared down at her and said, “Hey, Pollyanna, you’re awfully calm for a kidnap victim. You overdosed on Midol or what?”
Kara Lynn’s ocelot eyes stared back in a way that made him shiver slightly. She wasn’t afraid. She was not afraid. What a great kid, Wiley thought. What a damn shame.
They huddled under a sheet of opaque plastic, the raindrops popping at their heads. Wiley tied Tommy’s red kerchief around the dome of his head to blot the rain from his eyes.
“Tell me about Osprey Island,” Kara Lynn said, as if they were rocking on a front porch waiting for the ice-cream truck.
“A special place,” he said, melancholic. “A gem of nature. There’s a freshwater spring down the trail, can you believe it? Miles off the mainland and the aquifer still bubbles up. You can see coons, opossums, wood rats drinking there, but mostly birds. Wood storks, blue herons. There’s a bald eagle on the island, a young male. Wingspan is ten feet if it’s an inch, just a glorious bird. He stays up in the tallest pines, fishes only at dawn and dusk. He’s up there now, in the trees.” Wiley’s ancient-looking eyes went to the pine stand. “It’s too windy to fly, so I’m sure he’s up there now.”
“I’ve never seen a wild eagle,” Kara Lynn remarked. “I was born down here and I’ve never seen one.”
“That’s too bad,” Skip Wiley said sincerely. His head was bowed. Tiny bubbles of water hung in his rusty beard. It didn’t make it any easier that she was born here, he thought.
“It’ll be gone soon, this place,” he said. “A year from now a sixteen-story monster will stand right where we’re sitting.” He got to his knees and fumbled in the pocket of his trousers. He pulled out some damp gray newspaper clippings, folded into a square. “Let me give you the full picture,” he said, unfolding them, starting to read. Kara Lynn looked over his shoulder.
“Welcome to the Osprey Club … Fine living, for the discriminating Floridian. Makes you want to puke.”
“Pretty tacky,” Kara Lynn agreed.
“A hundred and two units from two-fifty all the way up to a million-six. Friendly financing available. Vaulted ceilings, marble archways, sunken living rooms, Roman tubs, atrium patios with real cedar trellises, boy oh boy.” Wiley looked up from the newspaper advertisement and gazed out at the woodsy shadows.