Viceroy Wilson seized Mrs. Kimmelman by the shoulders and firmly guided her toward the water. Tommy Tigertail stepped out of the pond, drying his arms with the towel.
“Brian, this may get a little rough,” Wiley cautioned. “You’d better sit down.”
Keyes felt shaky and nauseated. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. He took one queasy step toward Viceroy Wilson, then another, and finally a scream came to his throat and he was able to launch himself at the football player.
He grabbed on with both hands, snarling as he dug his fingernails into the jet flesh. By the look on his face, Viceroy Wilson obviously was surprised at Keyes’s strength.
Keyes felt the athlete’s neck cords tighten in his grip, and saw Mrs. Kimmelman wilt to the ground between them. The lantern strobed, and then came shouting: “No, Jesus! Stop!”
Skip Wiley’s voice, but not in time.
Keyes felt the fiery rip beneath his right armpit and, on the inside, something metal scrape his ribs. His hands turned to cork and he fell back, gasping. A rush of heat drenched his flank. Even with Wiley and the Cuban on his back, Keyes somehow held his balance until Viceroy Wilson put him down with a vengeful right cross to the jaw.
Crumpling after the punch, Keyes dearly hoped that Wilson had knocked him out. He was hoping to awake later, when it was over, in daylight and sanity.
But Brian Keyes was not unconscious.
He lay curled on his right side, sticky with blood, looking out across the misty, lantern-lit pond. Keyes watched helplessly while Viceroy Wilson and Jesus Bernal carried Mrs. Kimmelman to the water’s edge. Pavlov slowly submerged, leaving a cheerful bubble on the pond. In dread Keyes watched as the Cuban took Mrs. Kimmelman’s feet and the football player grabbed her arms and they swung her twice and let go—like at a fraternity pool party. She landed in a tangle and floundered on the surface, spluttering in an enormous voice.
“Oh, stop that!” Wiley scolded, playing swim coach. “Kick your legs and keep your head up.”
Recklessly Mrs. Kimmelman windmilled toward shore, flailing the swamp to a froth. The giant crocodile was nowhere to be seen, but ominous clouds of bottom mud stained the water. Then the silky surface of the pond seemed to bulge.
“Help!” Mrs. Kimmelman yelled.
“Keep swimming,” Wiley counseled. “You’re doing quite well.”
Brian Keyes closed his eyes when the water finally exploded.
As Ida Kimmelman went under, she thought: Damn you, Lou, are you happy now?
12
Brian Keyes shivered on the deck of a speeding airboat and watched dawn bleed across the pale Everglades sky. High on the driver’s platform sat Tommy Tigertail, his black hair dancing in spikes.
Keyes lifted his head with a groan, but the Indian couldn’t hear him over the din of the engine. Tommy wore a serene look as he steered deftly through the sedge.
If Skip Wiley was the ebullient nerve of Las Noches de Diciembre, Tommy Tigertail was the soul. He was a man of unusual temperament—taciturn, sometimes brooding, yet outwardly gracious, even warm. He was quiet not because he was shy or queer, as Jesus Bernal would whisper; Tommy was quiet because he was watchful. Never relax, never look away, never trust a white soul—the expensive lessons of history. Tommy Tigertail did not carry the pain of his ancestors for strangers to see; he carried it in his heart and dreams, which haunted him. He was tormented by the nightmare of his great-great-grandfather, Chief Tiger Tail, dying in the dank misery of a New Orleans prison barrack. Tiger Tail, who had never quit like Coacoochee, or been duped into capture like the eloquent Osceola; Tiger Tail, who had spurned the Army’s demand to abandon godforsaken Florida with its fever and mosquitoes and rebuild the Seminole nation in Arkansas, of all places. Arkansas! Tiger Tail, who from the beginning had sensed the white man’s mendacity and fought back brilliantly until the end, when there were virtually no warriors left. Tiger Tail, who had been captured in the battle at Palatka and shipped to a dungeon on the Mississippi, where he soon died, tubercular, homesick, and broken.