Racing the Rain Page 7

  They started back up the beach, this time with Cassidy running pleasantly in the edge of the surf.

  “Try not to step on any fish,” said Trapper.

  Cassidy laughed, but Trapper was perfectly serious.

  “It happened to me once,” he said, “and it wasn’t pleasant. I thought he just jabbed me in the heel, but it was still bothering me a week later. I got to messing around with a pair of tweezers and finally pulled out about an inch-long dorsal spike.”

  Cassidy looked dismayed.

  “Don’t worry, kid. What are the chances it would happen to both of us?” His laugh boomed up and down the empty beach.

  CHAPTER 14

  * * *

  REEKS & WRECKS

  All winter Cassidy sat in the stands and watched Stiggs and Randleman in their glory on the Glenridge Junior High hardwood. Stiggs was developing into a deceptively agile forward, and Randleman, whose nickname was now “Moose,” had become a sturdy rebounder. Cassidy had to be content with the vicarious satisfactions of the enthusiast, but he was wounded to the core when John Ayers, one of the equipment managers, got mono halfway through the season and Stiggs suggested Cassidy apply for the job.

  “At least you’d be with the team. You’d make the trips,” said Stiggs. Cassidy just looked at him.

  “Goddamn, Stiggs,” said Randleman, before walking away.

  Cassidy couldn’t wait for spring and the start of track season. He had things to prove.

  But on the first day of practice, there didn’t appear to be much glory in the offing. With the exception of Chip Newspickle, Ed Demski, and two or three other actual athletes, the track team turned out to be the usual collection of castoffs and ne’er-do-wells.

  “Paste eaters and pencil necks,” pronounced Stiggs, whom Cassidy had dragged along to try the high jump. Randleman tagged along to try the shot and discus. They jogged out to the infield and began, as Stiggs put it, “scoping out the asylum.”

  Near the high-jump pit, Demski was sitting next to another runner named Lenny Lindstrom, who was just getting up to go jog. Cassidy and Stiggs plopped down next to Demski.

  “W-w-what are you g-g-guys doing here?” asked Demski.

  “He’s going to run, I’m going to high-jump,” said Stiggs. “Randleman’s going to throw stuff. Coach said it would keep us in shape for basketball.”

  “Y-y-yeah, I guess it would,” said Demski dubiously.

  “Who the heck are these guys, anyway?” asked Cassidy, gesturing at a motley trio jogging by very slowly.

  Demski laughed. “T-t-track’s kind of like p-prison,” he said. “Some guys just kinda end up here.” He went down the roster of those he knew.

  There was Dewey Kuster, who fancied himself a pole-vaulter. He had the same aerodynamically interesting ears that Coach Bickerstaff had sported in a younger day. A severely beeswaxed flattop and a really cool silver front tooth brought him much more fame locally than his debatable athletic skills. He could barely clear his own height but was tolerated on the team because his uncle, an irrigation contractor, had bought him a top-of-the-line bamboo pole that he was persuaded to let the other boys use.

  There was Frazier Ravenscraft, III, scion of what passed for Citrus City aristocracy, an incredibly good-looking boy who was actually a decent high hurdler. He might have been even better were his energies not so diverted by more licentious pursuits. Frazier could always draw a rapt audience on those occasions he was persuaded to share his tales of sexual derring-do, real and imagined. He had been hot and heavy with Henrietta Delvechio since the fifth grade, and it was said that they’d gone “most of the way.” Cassidy had no idea what that could possibly mean, but he paid rapt attention to stories redolent of popcorn, mosquito-coil smoke, and passionate grapplings backlit by heavily spliced fourth-run drive-in movies.

  Albert Nutgrass, Jr., was a runner of sorts and considered to be of a piece with the rest of the Nutgrasses, generations of whom were skilled at poaching, moonshining, and helping themselves to the bounty of other people’s traps and trotlines. The family had actually made a considerable amount of money during the glory days of Prohibition, running bonded booze in from Bahamian-based mother ships and up into the labyrinthine channels of the St. Lucie River. The current generation of Nutgrasses were known for their elaborate taste in pickup trucks.

  Rufus Pulliam was an erstwhile discus thrower who was always injured, which prompted Frazier Ravenscraft’s waggish designation: “Rufus Pullyhim Hamstring.”

  There were also Miley Tharpe, Derwood Garr, and Jarvis Parsley. No one knew for sure what their events were supposed to be. There were a few others Ed knew nothing about, including their purported specialties.

  Where do they find such individuals?” Stiggs sniffed. “Did they drain the swamps?”

  “Everyone knows Frazier,” said Cassidy. “Dewey’s in my science class. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen the rest of them in my life.”

  “A lot of them take shop and m-m-m-mechanical drawing and stuff. Some of them do some kind of work-study p-p-program.”

  “What do they do in practice?”

  “They m-m-mostly just kind of jog around,” said Demski. “Sometimes they do intervals, but n-n-not with us. Coach gives them a workout and tells them to stay out of the way.”

  “What’s intervals?” said Cassidy. Demski looked at him.

  “Y-y-you’ll find out.”

  Find out he did. Cassidy ended that day’s set of 220s with needlelike pains on the tops of his thighs. He thought they would go away, but the next day when they were still there, he went to Coach Bickerstaff.

  “Son, you’re just having growing pains,” the coach said.

  Demski noticed something was wrong even as they were jogging a warm-up mile the next day.

  “Y-y-you’re running funny,” he said.

  “The top of my legs hurt, I can’t lift my knees up. You ever have that?”

  “N-no. It’ll pr-pr-probably go away.”

  But it didn’t. Instead, it grew more painful by the day until mercifully the weekend arrived and Cassidy gratefully left his running shoes alone and picked up his paddle.

  CHAPTER 15

  * * *

  MOCCASIN COVE

  The air was worthy of Bombay as he paddled north, but his sore legs felt better from diving that morning; pushing the big rocket fins through the water had loosened them up some.

  It had been dry for months, so the Loxahatchee was low, fed mostly by cold sweet springs.

  If it were August, he thought, people would call these “dog days.” Cassidy figured that had something to do with the way the dogs laid around with their tongues lolling out. Days not fit for dogs, days that made dogs suffer, dog days, it sort of made sense. Anyway, people seemed to know what you meant when you said it.

  He should have made this trip long before now. He had felt a vague guilt every time he walked by his little canoe in the backyard, all but abandoned, strapped facedown on its bike trailer, ready to go but ignored. But for the first time in his life he had been feeling the tug of forces pulling him away from the water. With his still new status as an almost-athlete, the anticipation of the start of track season, and a first budding interest in girls, he just hadn’t been on the water in a while. With the casual solipsism of the young, Cassidy just naturally assumed Trapper Nelson had missed him terribly.

  But now that he’d spent the morning on the ocean and river, Cassidy realized that he would always return to the water. The salt sea could sting, but it could also heal. Near it, in it, or especially under it, a nameless delight always made his sternum tingle.

  This was the time of year his submerged staying power would start to build. Late in the summer he would stay down several minutes, busy the whole time. That was when he would begin to think of himself as a sea creature. On really hot days he would put five or six pounds of lead on his weight belt and just lie on the bottom in twenty or thirty feet in the ocean or river. He was so relaxed he almost felt he cou
ld fall asleep.

  Right now, though, despite the shade from the mangroves, paddling was sweaty work. He was daydreaming about the first plunge off the dock at Trapper’s.

  Trapper would surely be happy to see him for at least one reason: the front of his boat was alive with snapper and small grouper he’d gotten that morning with his pole spear. He’d even gotten a hog snapper, which they didn’t see all that much anymore. Even better was the large clump of plump-looking oysters he’d dredged up, a happy discovery made when he’d retrieved his anchor in the shallows of the intracoastal waterway and it had come back with a cluster of bivalves lodged in the flukes.

  He tried to remember whether Trapper liked oysters, but upon a moment’s reflection it seemed a silly question. He didn’t know many organisms Trapper wouldn’t eat.

  When he reached the halfway point, a little clearing called Moccasin Cove, he saw Trapper’s dark green canoe pulled up by a mangrove stand. Next to it was Trapper, gesturing vigorously at him.

  “S’matter, cat got your tongue?” Cassidy said, pulling in next to his boat.

  “No voice,” Trapper half whispered, pointing to his throat. “Had a cold, gone now. Feel fine, but I still got this.”

  “Whatcha doing with the traps? I thought Saturdays were ‘make-and-mend’ days.”

  “Usually is. I just had a few to check back up in Cypress Creek, and they weren’t doing any good so I thought I’d bring them down this way a little.”

  “They got some kind of bait in them? Something smells funny.”

  “Yeah, they’re baited, but that’s not what you’re smelling. It’s the mocs. They get all riled up this time of year and start giving off their musk. And they get all aggressive on you, too. Best to keep an eye out around here. There’s a reason they call this Moccasin Cove, you know.”

  “I was with my dad one time one tried to bite the pontoon on our boat,” Cassidy said. Trapper nodded.

  “Whatcha got there?” he asked.

  Cassidy brightened. “Mostly little snappers. One hog. But look at this!” He proudly held up the big clump of oysters.

  “Whoa! Where’d you find those?”

  “Intracoastal just north of the Sanderson place, maybe a hundred yards offshore. Some came up with my hook. I thought it was just a rock until I rinsed them off a little. I jumped out and grabbed a bunch and threw them in the boat. Pretty good, huh?”

  “Oh, boy, I love a good raw oyster with a dash of Tabasco sauce! Haven’t had any since that bed Joe Kern and I found got wiped out by a hurricane. Any idea how big the bed is?”

  “I couldn’t tell. Water isn’t very clear in there. I put my sandals on and felt around with my feet, but I never came to the end of them. Must be pretty good size. I can find it again easy. I have it triangulated,” Cassidy said.

  “Good boy!” Trapper croaked. “Mother Nature sometimes makes it hard to find dinner. She wants to make sure you want it bad enough.”

  “She can’t fool me. But I don’t like raw ones much. I like them roasted on the fire with melted butter. And lots of crackers.”

  “That works, too,” Trapper rasped, rubbing his bare belly.

  Cassidy nodded. “Hey, you need help with those?” He gestured at the pile of traps.

  “Naw, just take a few minutes,” he whispered, picking up a pair of traps. “You headed up to the camp?”

  “Yes, sir. Thought I was due for a visit.”

  “You bet you are. Due and overdue. Well, good. We’ll fire up some of those oysters. I’ll see you upriver.”

  As Cassidy eased back into the river and pushed his paddle against the bottom to get his canoe pointed upstream, Trapper saw something dark fall from a tree limb at the water’s edge into the back of the boat. He thought it was just a dead branch until he heard the meaty thunk it made when it landed. Cassidy didn’t notice.

  “Quenton!”

  Trapper called as loud as he could, but only a squeak came out. He picked up a rock and slammed it against the side of his wooden canoe, but the sound wasn’t loud enough to be heard over Cassidy clanging around with his paddle. Slamming the rock against a mangrove tree was even less effective. Banging it against one of the metal traps made a louder noise, but by now Cassidy was twenty yards up the river.

  Trapper’s mind was racing. He didn’t have his shotgun with him and there was nothing else he could use to make a noise loud enough. He took off running down the path that paralleled the river.

  One of his untied combat boots came off right away and he soon kicked the other one off. The path veered away from the river for sixty or seventy yards around a swampy area before rejoining it at a bamboo stand. It then paralleled the river all the way back to his camp, a mile upriver. The trail was studded with roots and rocks, but Trapper’s feet were tough from all the time he spent barefoot around the camp and on the beach. He was fast and in good shape, but he didn’t know how much time he had.

  “Quenton!” he squeaked, trying to make his voice work. His eyes welled in frustration.

  As he came around the last bend before the path rejoined the river, he could hear a thin voice singing a Bahamian folk ditty: “Now de fishing’s good near your island, dat’s why I come back for more . . .” Trapper knew that Cassidy hadn’t been bitten yet, but he was clearly oblivious to the danger.

  Trapper ran to the first break in the bamboo stand just as Cassidy was passing. He could see the moccasin making his way up from the back of the boat. Trapper had been hoping it was a brown water snake, but the muted banding and the girth of the thing were all too obvious.

  Trapper thought the snake was probably just after the fish, but that wouldn’t really matter in the end. Trapper grabbed a handful of bamboo shoots and shook them furiously. Cassidy paddled on, singing: “But when you swim me boat ’round naked, I follow you back to de shore . . .”

  “Quenton!” This time it was barely a whisper. He ran back to the path and sprinted twenty yards to the next gap in the bamboo, just as Cassidy was passing. Gasping now from the effort and the tension, he waved his arms frantically, looking around for something to throw at the side of the boat.

  To his horror, he saw that the snake was now almost underneath the seat. The kid was kneeling on a life preserver in front of the seat, blocking the snake’s path to the fish. Trapper knew that as soon as the snake started to go around him, assuming he didn’t just attack first, the kid would no doubt reach down to see what was brushing him, and that’s when it would happen.

  The next gap in the bamboo was just a few yards away, and when he reached it he launched himself into a flat dive directly at a wide-eyed Cassidy, who looked up just in time to see a looming humanoid projectile coming right at him. He thought his life was over, ended by some huge bird of prey. It was the second time Trapper Nelson had nearly scared him to death, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  Trapper landed half on the canoe and half in the water, reaching his left hand out to the middle of Cassidy’s chest to thrust him out of the canoe like a child flicking over a toy soldier with his finger. The canoe nearly capsized, Trapper fell back into the water, and Cassidy came up sputtering and gagging.

  Cassidy now knew it was Trapper Nelson who had attacked him but could not for the life of him think why. Trapper was known for a lot of things, but not for pulling pranks.

  “Are you bit?” Trapper rasped, dragging Cassidy into the shallows. Then he had him by the shoulders, shaking him, trying to get his attention. All Cassidy could do was gag and sputter. He tried to say something but couldn’t make words. He shook his head. He didn’t think he was bitten by anything but he had no idea what Trapper was talking about.

  “Are you sure?” Trapper tried to yell. This time the first word came out in his normal voice, but the other two words were squeaks. Cassidy wiped water from his eyes and face.

  “By what? By what? What’s the . . .” he sputtered.

  Trapper pulled him up on the bank and began searching up and down his legs and feet for the two dread
ed puncture holes. He saw none, and at last took a deep breath and let it out slowly, looking dourly at Cassidy. He pulled him close and gave him a hug. Good grief, he’s never done that before, Cassidy thought.

  “What’s going on, Trap?”

  Trapper Nelson, panting, hung his head between his knees, exhausted. He looked up at Cassidy, then gestured with his chin at the canoe, almost half full of water now, where it had drifted into some reeds at the edge of the river. As Cassidy watched, a four-foot-long cottonmouth moccasin made his way up and over the gunnel and into the river, carrying one of Cassidy’s mangrove snappers in his mouth. Paying them not the slightest attention, the snake turned downriver and swam past them, his fat, buoyant body riding high in the water, the fish held up triumphantly in front of him.

  Cassidy looked at Trapper Nelson and burst out laughing.

  “It’s . . . not . . . funny,” Trapper said, fighting for air. “The hospital in Citrus City. Good forty-five minutes from here. If my Jeep started. Martin Memorial almost as far.”

  Cassidy sighed. “I would have given him a fish,” he said.

  Trapper Nelson, still panting, looked at his feet for the first time. He slipped them into the cool water and watched as the current carried the muck and blood away. Finally, he looked over at Cassidy with a sheepish grin.

  “Hope we didn’t lose any oysters,” he said.

  CHAPTER 16

  * * *

  TRACK DISASTER

  The needlelike pains in the tops of Cassidy’s quadriceps never completely went away. When he took a weekend off from training, they were much better by the next Monday. But Coach Bickerstaff always started off the week with hard intervals, and by Tuesday he was limping. He complained to Bickerstaff again, to no avail. The man had ears of stone when it came to the aches and pains of thirteen-year-olds.

  To survive the afternoons, Cassidy adopted a strange running style that involved the barest minimum of knee lift and a big back kick. He looked like a man running while carrying a large box in front of him. Demski had a field day teasing him about his “flamingo gallop,” but it was the only way he could get through the workout.