Brian Keyes drove west at a furious speed, slowing at every intersection, scouting each tacky shopping plaza. Finally he spotted a peeling sign that said “Canoe Rentals” and screeched off the highway.
The name of the place was Mel’s Bait and Tackle, and Mel himself was very busy dipping live shiners from the bait well. He told Keyes to take a seat near the soda machine and he’d get around to him in a little bit. Keyes politely mentioned that he was in a slight hurry, but he might as well have told it to the stuffed buck on the wall.
After fifteen minutes or so, Mel finally turned around, bolstered his dip net, and asked Keyes what exactly he could do for him.
“I’d like to rent a canoe.”
“I’ll need a deposit,” said Mel, eyeing him. “And I’ll need to know how’n hail you gonna get that canoe on toppa yore car.”
Mel had a point. The canoe was four feet longer than the MG.
“I’ll need to borrow some rope.”
“No sir, you’ll be need’n to buy some.”
“I see,” Keyes said. “And the boat racks?”
“Those I’ll rent ya.”
By the time the negotiations ended, Keyes was out thirty-seven dollars and his American Express card, which Mel confiscated as a security deposit.
Keyes made a courageous solo attempt to tie the aluminum canoe on the MG, but the boat flopped off the roof and landed with a crash on the macadam. The noise brought Mel shuffling out of the tackle shop, cursing heatedly. He was an older fellow—late fifties, paunchy, tired-looking—but he proved to be one strong son of a bitch when it came to canoes. He told Keyes to go sit inside and read some magazines, and in five minutes the job was neatly done.
“Lemme ask you sumpthin’, if you don’t mind,” Mel said. “I don’t see no fishing rods and I don’t see no shotguns and I don’t see no bow and arrow. So just where’n hail you goin’ with this canoe, and what you gonna do when you get there?”
Keyes plucked the binocular case from the car and held it up for Mel to see. “I’m a birdwatcher,” he said brightly.
Mel nodded, but he looked skeptical. “Well,” he said after a pause, “good luck with your snipes or woodpeckers or whatever the hail yore after. But don’t put no more scratches on my damn boat!”
The canoe was lashed so tightly to the MG that the ropes sang on the highway. Back on the dike, Keyes had a hell of a time unraveling Mel’s knots. Finally he was able to drag the canoe off the MG and slide it down the bank into the water. He climbed in tentatively, the oar tucked under one arm. He lowered himself to his knees and gingerly rocked the canoe, testing its stability. It seemed steady.
Keyes centered himself and began to paddle down the dike canal toward Wiley’s cabin.
It was an adventurous feeling, gliding so low and alone through the Everglades. Keyes was swept away by the lushness of the scenery, a welcome distraction from his anxiety. He was no great outdoorsman but his discomfort was born of unfamiliarity, not fear. Keyes had been raised in the relentlessly civilized environs of Washington, D.C., and the only wild animals he’d ever confronted were the brazen gray squirrels of Rock Creek Park. Except for one miserable summer at a snotty boys’ camp in northern Virginia, Keyes had spent almost no time out of the city. Since moving to Florida he’d heard the hoary tales of panthers, poisonous snakes, and killer alligators, and though he dismissed most of it as cracker mythology, Keyes did not savor the idea of a chance encounter. Wiley, if indeed he was out here, would be beast enough.
Keyes found a steady rhythm for the oar, and his confidence grew with each stroke. Even against the wind he made good time down the canal. By now it was an hour past noon and the gray clouds had dissipated; the sun quickly burned off the last of the morning’s chill. The wetlands stirred under the heat. The cicadas and grasshoppers brassily came to life in the sawgrass, and once an old mossback terrapin clambered off the dike like a rolling helmet, plopping into the water three feet from the canoe. High overhead Keyes spotted a line of turkey vultures gliding in the thermals, scouting for carrion.
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