“We’re all going,” Keyes said.
“Not me,” Wiley said. “You can’t make me, podner.” He was right. The gun didn’t count for anything now.
“Hey, there’s an eagle,” Jenna said.
The bird was airborne, elegantly soaring toward the pines. It carried a silvery fish in its talons.
“Just look at that,” Wiley marveled, his eyes brightening beneath the Seminole bandanna. He took off his baseball cap in salute.
“It’s a gorgeous bird,” Kara Lynn agreed, tugging on Brian’s arm. Time to go, she was saying, step on it.
“Skip, come with us,” Keyes urged.
“Or what? You gonna shoot me again?”
“Of course not.”
Wiley said, “Forget about me, pal. I’m beginning to like it here.” He held out his arms and Jenna went to him. Wiley kissed her on the forehead. He touched her hair and said, “I don’t suppose you want to keep a one-legged lunatic company?”
Jenna’s eyes, as usual, gave the answer. Keyes saw it and looked away. He’d seen it before.
“Aw, I don’t blame you,” Wiley said to her, “the bugs out here are just awful.” He patted her on the butt and let go.
To Keyes he whispered, “Help her pick out a new coffee table, okay?”
“Skip, please—”
“No! Go now, and hurry. These radio-controlled devices are extremely precise.”
Keyes led the two women across the clearing. Jenna trudged ahead woodenly, but Keyes and Kara Lynn paused at the crest of the homesteader’s hill. They looked back and saw Wiley in the clearing, leaning against the rusty flagpole. His arms were folded, and on his face was a broad and euphoric and incomprehensible grin.
“Hey, Brian,” he shouted, “I didn’t finish my story.”
Keyes almost laughed. “Not now, you asshole!” The guy was unbelievable.
“But I never told you—they called.”
“Who?”
“The Davenports. They phoned the day your piece ran, but you were already gone.”
Keyes groaned—the bastard always wanted the last word.
Anxiously he shouted back, “What did they want?”
“They wanted to say thanks,” Wiley hollered.
“I couldn’t believe it! They actually wanted to say thanks for butting out.”
Keyes waved one last time at his old friend.
Lost forever, his odyssey now measured in minutes, Skip Wiley swung a ropy brown arm in reply. He was still waving his cap when Brian Keyes, Jenna, and Kara Lynn Shivers disappeared into the buttonwood.
They found the trail and, ten minutes later, the mooring where the outboard was anchored. The tide was up so they had to wade, skating their feet across the mud and turtle grass. Jenna lost her footing and slipped down, without a word, into the shallows. Keyes grabbed her under one arm, Kara Lynn got the other. Together they hoisted her into the boat.
The engine was stone cold.
With trembling fingers Keyes turned the key again and again. The motor whined and coughed but wouldn’t start.
“You flooded it,” Kara Lynn said. “Let it sit for thirty seconds.”
Keyes looked at her curiously but did what he was told. The next time he turned the key, the Evinrude roared to life.
“Dad’s got a ski boat,” Kara Lynn explained. “Happens all the time.”
Keyes jammed down the throttle and the Mako chewed its way off the flat, churning marl and grass, planing slowly. Finally it found deeper water, flattened out and gained speed. Already the rim of purple winter sky was turning yellow gold.
“How much time?” Jenna asked numbly.
“Three, four minutes,” Keyes guessed.
They had to circle Osprey Island to reach the marked channel that would take them to safety.
‘‘Brian!” Jenna blurted, pointing.
Keyes jerked back on the stick until the engine quit. The boat coasted in glassy silence, a quarter-mile off the islet. They all stared toward the stand of high pines.
“Oh no,” Kara Lynn said.
Keyes was incredulous.
Jenna said, “Boy, he never gives up.”
Skip Wiley was in the trees.
He was dragging himself up the tallest pine, branch by branch, the painstaking, web-crawling gait of a spider. How with a smashed leg Wiley had climbed so high was astonishing. It was not a feat of gymnastics so much as a show of reckless nerve. He hung in the tree like a broken scarecrow; ragged, elongated, his limbs bent at odd angles. From a distance his skull shone three-toned—the russet beard; the jutting tanned face; the alabaster pate. In one hand was Tommy Tigertail’s red bandanna—Wiley was waving it back and forth and shrieking at the top of his considerable lungs; plangent gibberish.