“You saw an alligator?” I asked, and he nodded. “What did it do?”
“Looked at me,” he said. Something about the way he said it added up to a whole lot more than three small words.
“And what happened then?” I asked him.
Cody glanced around and then lowered his already soft voice to make sure no one else could hear him. “Shadow Guy laughed,” he said. “At the alligator.” It was a very long speech for him, and to make it even more notable, he really did smile then, just a brief flicker across his small and serious face, but there was no mistaking it. Shadow Guy, Cody’s Dark Passenger, had made an emotional connection with the honest and savage spirit of a real live predator, and Cody was delighted.
So was I. “Isn’t nature wonderful?” I said, and he nodded happily. “Well, what now?”
“Hungry,” he said, which actually made sense, so I unzipped the fly of our tent and got our lunch. It was in Cody’s pack, because I had wanted him to carry less weight coming home, in case the ordeal of camping made him tired.
We did not have to do a great deal of preparation for this meal; Rita had packed us a premade lunch consisting of bologna salad sandwiches and a baggie full of carrot spears and grapes, followed by a final course of a medley of cookies from the grocery store’s bakery. Hiking and fresh air are said to make food taste better, and it may be true. In any case, there were no leftovers.
After lunch, Frank called everybody together again, and then organized us into teams, each with an Important Job. Cody and I were assigned to the firewood-collecting group, and we stood by the fire circle and listened dutifully as Frank lectured us thoroughly about making sure we gathered only deadwood, and remember that sometimes it could look dead but it wasn’t, and that to injure a living tree in this area was not only bad for the planet but an actual crime; and don’t forget to be very careful about poison oak, poison ivy, and something called manchineel.
I realized that it was very hard to be careful about something if you had no idea what it was, so I made the mistake of asking about manchineel. Unfortunately, this was just the excuse Frank needed to launch himself into a full-blown Nature Lecture. He gave me a very happy nod. “You have to watch out for that one,” he said brightly. “Because it is deadly. Even just touching it will burn your skin. I mean, blisters and everything, and you will definitely require medical attention. So watch for it—it’s a tree, and the leaves are kind of oval and waxy, and it’s got, um—the fruit looks kinda like apples? But Do Not Eat It! It will absolutely kill you, and even touching it is dangerous, so—”
This was obviously a subject close to Frank’s heart, and I wondered if I had misjudged him. Anyone with such a passion for lethal vegetation couldn’t be all bad. He had a lecture five full minutes long just on the manchineel tree, and that was only the start.
It was very instructive: Manchineel, apparently, had been used by the Aboriginal Peoples of the Caribbean for poison, torture, and several other worthwhile purposes. Even sitting under the tree during a rainstorm could be deadly. In fact, the Carib Indians had actually tied their prisoners to the trunk of the tree when it rained, because the water dripping off the leaves made an acid bath strong enough to eat through human flesh. And arrows dipped in the sap could cause painful death; clearly it was wonderful stuff. But Frank’s main point—avoid the manchineel!—was very plain long before he wound up his lecture with a few halfhearted warnings about poison oak. And then, just when I thought we could make our getaway, one of the boys said, “What about snakes?”
Frank smiled happily; on to lethal animals! He took a deep breath, and he was off again. “Oh, it’s not just snakes,” he said. “I mean, we talked about the rattlesnakes—diamondback and pygmy—and coral snakes! They are Absolute Killers! Don’t confuse them with the corn snake— Remember? ‘Red touches yellow’?”
He raised his eyebrows, and the whole group dutifully finished the rhyme, chanting, “You’re a dead fellow.” Frank smiled and nodded at them.
“That’s right,” he said. “Only coral snakes have red bands that touch their yellow bands. So keep clear of those. And don’t forget the cottonmouth, too, by the water. Not as deadly as coral snakes, but they’ll come after you. One bite probably wouldn’t kill you, but there’s usually a whole bunch of them all together, and they come at you like bees, and you get five or six bites, that’s more than enough to kill you. Okay?”
I really thought that might be it, and I actually had one foot raised to make my getaway when Mario cheerfully called out, “Hey, the guidebook says there’s bears, too!”
Frank nodded and pointed a finger at him and we were off again. “That’s right, Mario. Good point. We have black bears in Florida, which are not as aggressive as the brown ones, and they’re not as big, either. Kind of puny next to a grizzly, only around four hundred pounds.”
If he was hoping we would all heave a sigh of relief at the petite size of the black bear, he was disappointed; a four-hundred-pound bear seemed plenty big enough to play jai alai with my head, and judging by the wide eyes of the boys all around me, I was not the only one who thought so.
“Just remember, they may be small, but they can be very cranky if they have a cub? They run very fast, and they can climb trees. Oh! So can panthers—which are very
rare, an endangered species. So we probably won’t see one, but if we do—remember this, guys: They are basically like lions, and … you know. We talk about how cool they are, and how we need to help protect panthers and their habitat—but they are still very dangerous animals. I mean, most of the animals out here. Let’s remember they are wild. So give them room; respect their habitat, because you are in their space, and it’s— Even raccoons, okay? I mean, they get into everything, and they look awful cute. They might even come right up to you. But they can have rabies, which you can get from them just from a little scratch, so stay away.”
Once again, I made some small movement in the direction of escaping, and just as if he was a prison guard nailing a fleeing prisoner with his sniper’s rifle, Frank whipped up his finger, pointed right at me, and said, “And don’t forget the insects, because there are so many venomous insects. Not just fire ants, which you all know about?” The boys nodded solemnly; we all knew about fire ants. “Well, out here you got wasp mounds, too, and Africanized bees are possible—and scorpions? The black scorpion can really sting you good—and there are some spiders to watch out for, too, the brown recluse, the black widow, the brown widow.… ”
I had always thought that Miami was a dangerous place, but as Frank rambled on through his recital of the countless forms of hideous death awaiting us in the woods, Miami began to pale in comparison to the rapacious bloodlust of Nature. There was an endless list of things that could kill us, or at least make us very unhappy, and while the thought of murderous ravening Nature truly did have its charms, I began to think it might not have been such a good idea to come to a place that was so crammed full of lethal plants and animals. I also wondered if we would escape Frank before nightfall, since his list of the Terrors of the Wild was still unfolding after fifteen minutes, and he seemed quite capable of talking at length on each and every one of them. I looked around me for a way to escape, but it seemed that every single direction was blocked by lurking terror. Apparently almost everything in the park was just waiting for a chance to murder us, or at least cause fits of bloody vomiting.
Frank finally wound down with a few words of caution about alligators—and don’t forget the American crocodile! Which has a pointier nose and is much more aggressive! He finished with a final reminder that Nature was Our Friend, which seemed a little delusional, considering the long and deadly census of the park he had just completed. At any rate, Cody was impressed enough that he insisted on going back to the tent and getting his pocketknife. I stood at the head of the trail and waited for him, watching as the other work parties got busy with their jobs. Doug Crowley was leading a trio of boys around the camp in a quest for litter, and I watched them for a moment, until he abruptly stood up with a crushed and faded Dr Pepper can in his hand and turned to look back at me.
For a long moment Crowley just stared, his mouth hanging slightly open. I stared back, although my mouth was closed. The moment stretched on and I wondered why we didn’t both simply look away. But then one of Crowley’s crew shouted something about an indigo snake, and he turned quickly away. I watched his back for a few more seconds, and then I turned away, too. On top of being a total nonentity, Crowley was quite clearly far more socially inept than I had ever been; he had no idea how to relate to other people, and his awkwardness made me a little uncomfortable. But it would be easy enough to avoid him once this expedition into deadly horror was over, assuming I survived. A minute later, Cody came back with his pocketknife and he and I finally managed to tiptoe off into the venomous forest in search of a few combustible twigs that would not kill us.
We moved slowly and carefully; Frank had done a wonderful job of convincing us that we would only survive by a miracle of random chance, and I could tell that Cody felt danger and violent death breathing down his neck with every cautious step he took. He crept along the path with his pocketknife open in his hand, approaching each leaf and twig as if it might leap up and sever his jugular. Still, after an hour or so we had managed to collect a decent pile of deadwood, and miraculously enough, we were still alive. We took our wood back to the fire circle at the campsite, and then slunk back to the relative safety of our tent.
The tent’s flap was open, although I had definitely closed it. Clearly Cody had left it open when he went back for his pocketknife. This was doubly annoying, since we now knew that the whole area was swarming with terrifying creatures that were absolutely trembling with eagerness for a chance to slip into our tent to poison, torture, and devour us. But the whole purpose of the trip was to have quality time with Cody, and scolding him for his carelessness would probably not be a bonding experience in the best sense of the words, so I just sighed and crawled watchfully into the tent.
Dinner that night was a communal affair, with everyone gathered around the fire circle and happily eating traditional wilderness food, just like the Calusas ate—beans and wieners. Afterward, Frank pulled out a small and battered guitar and launched into a program of campfire songs, and by the end of the second song he had worn down the boys’ resistance enough that they began to sing along. Cody stared around him with a look of appalled disbelief on his face, which grew even bigger when I finally joined in on “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea.” I nudged him to get him to sing, too—after all, we were trying to teach him to fit in. But this was too much for his finer nature, and he just shook his head and watched with disapproval.
I had to set an example, of course, and show him how simple and painless it could be to pretend to be human. So I plowed on grimly through “Be Kind to Your Web-footed Friends,” “Davy Crockett,” “Cannibal King,” the Cubs’ version of “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and dozens of other touching and funny reminders that America is a nation with a song in its heart and a hole in its head.
Cody sat and looked around him as if the world had gone mad and exploded into a hideous caterwauling din, and he was the only one left with a clear head and a sense of decency. Even when Frank finally put down his guitar the fun was not over. The magical evening wound on through a series of terrifying ghost stories. Frank seemed to get real enjoyment out of telling them, and he had a knack for horrific detail that made his listeners slack-jawed with fear. We listened with growing dread to “The Hook,” “The Terrible Smell,” “The Quiet Thump in the Next Room,” “The Dark Sucker,” “The Viper,” and many more, until the fire died down to a red glow, and Frank finally released us to stagger away and crawl stunned and trembling into our snug little sleeping bags, with visions of supernatural terror now mingling with our thoughts of snakes and spiders and bears and rabid raccoons.
And as I finally drifted off into sleep, I vowed to myself that if I lived through the night, I would never go camping again without a flamethrower, a bag of dynamite, and some holy water.
Ah, wilderness.