Carl Hiaasen by Nature Girl Read Free Book Online

committed suicide by swallowing ground glass on the ship to Louisiana. Another said he’d escaped to Mexico and ultimately made his way back to Florida, where he’d lived to be a very old man.
    Sammy felt honored to be half of a true Tigertail and, except for his Irish blue eyes, he looked full-blooded. To make up for the time lost during his white childhood, he spent hours listening to the stories of the elders. He envied them for having grown up in a time when the tribe lived in relative isolation, buffered by swamp from the other world.
    Now things were different. Now there were casinos and hotels and truck stops, and the stampede of outsiders meant big money for the Seminole corporations. A few of the tribal bosses even flew around Florida in private jets and helicopters, which impressed some people but not Sammy Tigertail. He remained on the reservation and worked hard, although his frequent bad luck caused others to whisper that he was cursed by the paleness in his past. It was a thought that also had occurred to Sammy Tigertail, and shadowed him now like a buzzard as he paddled alone across Chokoloskee Bay.
    He wondered about the man named Wilson, held fast with trap ropes and anchors on the bottom of Lostmans River. The sun was high and the water was warming, so it was possible that bull sharks would cruise in from the Gulf. Wilson wouldn’t feel a thing.
    A half dozen fishing boats flew past the young Seminole as he made his way through Rabbit Key Pass. Some of the anglers waved but Sammy Tigertail looked away. It had been nearly two days since he’d slept, and his senses were dull. Shortly after noon he beached the canoe on a small boot-shaped island. He unloaded his gear, taking special care with the guitar and the rifle, which was wrapped in a towel. He found a crown of dry land and made camp. It occurred to him that he hadn’t brought much food, but he wasn’t worried—his brother had sent along two spinning rods and a useful assortment of hooks and lures. Sammy Tigertail was not as resourceful in the wild as some of his full-blooded kin, but he did know how to catch fish.
    With noisy seabirds wheeling overhead, he lay down beneath a tree and fell into a hard sleep. The spirit of Wilson arrived, strung with slimy ropes and dragging all four anchors. The sharks hadn’t yet found him, although the blue crabs and snappers had picked clean his eye sockets. He was still half-drunk.
    “I was expecting you sooner,” said the Indian.
    “How come you didn’t take my money before you dumped me in the river?”
    “Because I am no thief.”
    “Or at least the doobs. That was a waste, my friend,”
Wilson said.
    Sammy Tigertail allowed that he was sorry Wilson had died on the airboat excursion.
    “It was that fuckin’ snake, wasn’t it?”
Wilson asked.
    “Naw, it was your heart.”
    “Well, I’ll be damned.”
    “What do you want from me?”
    The dead tourist held up the disposable camera. The cardboard was sodden and peeling apart.
    “How about another picture?”
said Wilson.
“For my guys back at the bar on Kinnickinnic Avenue—something they could frame and hang in the pool room.”
    Kinnickinnic sounded like an Indian word, though Sammy Tigertail didn’t know which tribe had been run out of Milwaukee.
    “Aw, come on,”
Wilson said.
“They got an autographed photo of Vince Lombardi and a game jersey signed by Brett Favre. But a picture of me, dead and with my eyeballs chewed out—that’d be tits!”
    Sammy Tigertail said, “Sorry. No more photos.” He was extremely tired, and he wanted the dream to be over. He hoped that a shark would devour the disposable camera while chewing on Wilson. Sammy Tigertail wanted no one to see the humiliating, though undeveloped, images of him posing with the obnoxious white tourist.
    “It’s freezing in that damn river,”
Wilson complained.
    “I had to move your body off the reservation. There weren’t many options.”
    “I didn’t know the water got