Zane tiptoed through an antique kitchen complete with a tree stump butcher’s block, a rack of silver cutlery and cast-iron pots, a basket of fresh oranges, and a wetback stove that emitted both intense heat and the smell of roasting poultry. As a stranger creeping through someone else’s domain, he thought about Mama Ethel and Goldilocks. A floorboard creaked beneath his feet; he paused and grabbed for the doubloon around his neck, but it was not there. Who had taken it—Miguel? Or the crazy preacher, maybe?
He spotted a doorway. Judging by the dirty floor mat and pair of boots at its threshold, the door led outside, and he hurried through it. He emerged onto a wooden porch and gazed out at what looked like a small farm covered in the stain of dusk. Scattered chickens pecked the ground. A ragged goat chewed weeds. Fruit trees of all kinds dotted the landscape. A vegetable garden flaunted the largest tomato and corn plants he had ever seen. It looked idyllic, all except for the wall of black cloud brooding over the horizon.
Boom! Boom! Zane spun around. The sound, he now realized, was coming from the back of the house. He crept to the edge of the porch and peered around. He could see the profile of a man at the far end of the house pressing a piece of plywood against a window and hammering a nail into it. Boom! Boom! The man wore dingy overalls with no shirt underneath and a straw hat that drooped over his face. A strange tattoo ran up his arm and across his shoulder and chest. Zane slunk back out of sight and tiptoed down the porch steps.
What should he do? He was still too shaken from his run-in with the preacher and his plunge into what was obviously a manmade booby trap to even consider seeking help from another stranger. Judging from the insane amount of books he saw in the house, this particular stranger was not exactly normal. Zane set off down the gravel driveway but he suddenly stopped—there, parked beside an old pickup, was the U-Haul truck. A sharp pang of fear stabbed him in the heart. He hunted for somewhere to hide and his eyes came to an immense stand of trees off to the side of the farmyard. He hurried into it.
Holding his wound, he trudged through the thick foliage and soon encountered a cool white mist like the stuff of clouds. It swirled around him and turned into droplets of water when it touched his skin. Both the mist and the greenery thickened as he pressed on and soon he could scarcely see his hand held in front of his body. When he came to the place where the trees ended, he stopped—there below him something like an immense bowl of fog swirled about in a maelstrom of wind.
A breeze parted the haze on the opposite side of the cauldron and there, approaching the edge, was the hooded figure he had seen in the forest. Zane ducked behind the nearest tree. Partially veiled by mist, the figure let the robe fall away, revealing a nude female body—lean, dark and exquisite. Plumes of black hair enshrouded her. She stepped forward and dove headfirst into the fog.
He gazed into the mist. “Hello? Lady?”
Instead of a response, a deep, guttural growl came from behind. He slowly turned. When he saw yellow eyes staring at him through the haze, his heart seized. The creature stepped into view. Zane’s eyes and brain struggled to classify it. Was it an enormous bobcat? An escaped lion? And then it hit him: it was a panther. But what were the odds? Only a hundred or so Florida panthers still lived in the wild.
“Stay back,” he said.
But the panther strode forward. Zane bolted. He dodged trees and leapt over fallen logs as he ran, ignoring the searing pain in his side. When he reached the outer edge of the tree line where the mist dissipated, he stopped, turned, and gazed back. He was relieved to see nothing but bushes. But then the bushes shivered and the panther pounced out of them and pinned him beneath its bulk. Zane shielded his face with his hands in anticipation for the first scratch or bite. The next thing he felt, however, was the animal’s sandpaper tongue sliding across his neck and up the side of his face. The panther licked him repeatedly, like a dog happy to see its owner. He could not help but laugh at the feeling. He had forgotten he was ticklish.
“Alvar!” said a deep voice. “Let him be!”
The panther stepped off. Zane sat up and wiped the saliva off his face. The man who had been boarding up the house now stood several feet away. The hammer dangled from his hand. He stepped toward Zane, and Zane scooted away.
“Whoa,” said the man. “Relax, I won’t hurt you.” He followed Zane’s worried gaze to the hammer. “Oh, I see. Sorry.” He tossed the hammer into the grass.
The panther rubbed against the man’s leg like a housecat and the man stooped to pet it behind its ears. “I hope Alvar didn’t scare you. He’s really just a big pussycat. He’s supposed to guard my property, but he loves to play.”
The man’s words carried a slight accent that Zane could not identify. “Who are you?” said Zane.
“I think a more appropriate question—you are on my property, after all—is who are you? And, perhaps more importantly, where did you get this?” The man held up Zane’s necklace.
Zane’s fingers twitched, hungry for the feel of the doubloon. “Give it back.”
The man looked at Zane for a long time, and then he smiled. “We don’t have to talk about this now. I think I know why you’re here. Why don’t you come back to the house and we’ll have supper. We don’t have long before the first bands hit.”
“Bands?”
“Feeder bands. Outer edge of the hurricane. Radio’s saying we might get a direct hit. Should be interesting.” The man extended his hand. “Come on.” Zane took it and, as the man helped him stand, he winced and held his wound.
“Still hurts?”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry about that pit, but I have to protect my land.”
“You could kill someone.”
“Kill? No, not me. I aim to maim.” The man pulled a knife out of his pocket and Zane froze, but the man smiled and used the knife to shave a piece of bark from a nearby tree. “Willow bark. Better than aspirin.” He handed it to Zane and then headed out of the thicket. “Come on.”
The panther bounded after the man and Zane followed. He looked at the bark in his hand. What did the man expect him to do with it? What if it was poisonous? He dropped it on the ground when the man was not looking. They came around the back of the house and Zane’s eyes lit up with astonishment. Towering over them like a mushroom cloud was what had to be the largest oak tree in the world, ridiculous in both height and circumference.
Even stranger, dozens of animals lazed about the tree, including gopher tortoises, skunks and an opossum with babies on her back. Alvar crouched in front of the largest tortoise and pawed it; the tortoise retracted its head into its shell, making a hissing sound as it did. A squawk drew Zane’s eyes upward. Dozens of birds—bald eagles, woodpeckers, owls, and a gaggle of colorful parakeets—clung to the branches.
“Carolina parakeets,” said the man. “My little darlings.”
“I thought those were—”
“Extinct, I know. And they would be, if it weren’t for these last holdouts.” The man leaned down and picked up a long indigo snake which wrapped around his arm and slithered across his shoulder. “I’ll have to put all the animals in the house with us later tonight,” he continued. “Hope you don’t mind.”
Zane looked with disgust at the snake nuzzling the man’s neck. Apparently, the man expected Zane to sleep in the house with him, along with what amounted to a small zoo’s worth of wild animals. What exactly was going on here? “Are they your pets?” asked Zane.
The man put the snake on the ground. “They’re all wild, but I’ve been out here so long they’ve lost their fear of me. I think they sense the storm coming. They started gathering here last night. Unannounced, just like you.” He smiled.
“Sir, do you have a phone?” asked Zane.
The man laughed. “I wouldn’t know how to use one if I did.”
“Um, okay. Well is that your pickup out there?”
“It is.”
“Can I get a ride to the nearest town?”
“Sure thing. As soon as the hurrican
e passes.”
Zane sighed.
Moments later, he was sitting on a wooden chair with his elbows resting on a wooden table that sat on a crooked wooden floor. He had never, in fact, seen so much wood in a house. It was the kind of place termites dreamed about.
“Hope you like pollo,” said the man. He presented a steaming platter that coaxed an instant growl out of Zane’s stomach. There, surrounded by potatoes, carrots, green beans, and garlic cloves, was a whole roasted chicken. The man sprinkled a handful of fresh herbs that wilted when they landed on it.
“Looks delicious,” said Zane.
“Well, she should be. Chopped her head off myself two hours ago.”
Zane refused to let the image of a headless chicken intrude his thoughts and instead focused on the man’s knife slicing through the crispy golden skin. Pieces of juicy meat unfolded onto the platter.
“Come on, now,” said the man. “Get some.”
Zane took a plateful. “Thank you.”
He was ravenous. He cut a piece of the chicken with the side of his fork and impaled it along with half a potato wedge.
“Wait!” said the man.
Zane stopped with his mouth open. “What?”
“You forgot the most important part of every meal.”
“Washing my hands?” Zane stood up.
“No. Grace.”
“Sorry about that.” Zane took his seat.
The man closed his eyes and folded his hands. “Go ahead,” he said.
“Sorry?”
“Go ahead and say grace.”
Zane paused. “I don’t really know how.”
“Improvise.”
Zane tried to mimic the way the man held his face and hands. “Dear God,” said Zane, squinting. “We thank you for this food—”
“Don’t speak for me,” interrupted the man.
Zane opened his eyes to see if the man was smiling, but he was not. Zane started over. “I thank you for this food, dear God, and also I ask you to please…” This time, Zane interrupted himself. “Sir?”
The man looked up. “Yes?”
“I need to know something, something that’s bothering me.”
“What is it?”
“Do you know the man who was in that moving truck out there?”
“Unfortunately, I’ve known him for a long time.”
“Where is he?”
“That I don’t know. He took my horse last night—said something about going hunting—and I haven’t seen him since. Why?”
“You mean he’s still around?” Zane’s breathing quickened. Sweat materialized on his forehead. He looked toward the door.
The man leaned back in his chair. “I think it’s time I tell you who I am.”
Chapter Thirty One
“The story I told you,” said Francisco, kneeling in the woods above the spring, “the one about how I came to La Florida with Ponce de Leon. That was not true. And I did not fall off a ship and get taken captive by the Calusa.”
Dominic pressed the sword against his neck. “So you are a liar.”
“We are all born with blood on our hands, are we not? I lied because the truth was a secret, one that must be kept at all costs. But now, it is time for you to know. My brother and I, you see, we joined a later expedition—Hernando as a soldier and me as a chaplain—under the leadership of a conquistador named Pánfilo de Narváez.”
Dominic shuddered. “My father was on that expedition.”
“I know. Álvar Cabeza de Vaca was my dear friend, and by far the most honorable man on the voyage.”
“I doubt that.”
“It is true. In fact, he urged Narváez to follow the coast, but Narváez’s lust for gold, and for something even more tempting, drove us inland. We became lost and wandered in the wilderness for many weeks with nothing but survival as a goal. Some natives, like the Timucuans, helped us, while others were hostile. Envision it, commander. When the expedition began, we were three hundred men. When it was over, only six of us were left alive.”
“More lies. Everyone knows there were only four survivors—my father, two soldiers, and a slave. They trekked all the way to Mexico.”
“Yes, four survivors made it out, but my brother and I stayed behind.”
“And why in God’s name would you do that?”
“I was in my early fifties at the time—one of the oldest in the group—and as our expedition was passing through this region of La Florida, my heart began to fail. Narváez left me behind at Many Waters. Both your father and my brother stayed back to see me into the next world, and, just as I was about to draw my last breath, the villagers decided it was safe to reveal their secret. They said it was to help me, but, as I learned later, the Timucuans—convinced by our burnished armor and powerful weapons that we were demigods—wanted our help to protect their secret from their native enemies. Thank God they waited until Narváez had gone ahead. You see, his other goal was to find the ultimate source of power. Immortality. Natives in other regions had long spoken of a spring, hidden somewhere in the wilds of La Florida, that was blessed with restorative powers.”
“Everyone knows that fairytale,” said Dominic. “The fountain of youth.”
“No, not the fountain of youth.” Francisco gazed at the spring, its surface ignited with afternoon sunlight. “The fountain of life—for when the natives placed me in these cool waters and I drank its sweet nectar, I emerged completely healthy, my mind as sharp as a lance. Álvar and Hernando were astonished. We quickly realized the implications of what we had discovered and your father insisted that Narváez must never know about it, so we devised a plan. Hernando and I would stay at the village, and Álvar would rejoin the expedition. If he found his way home to Spain, he would seek council from the pope, try to gain control of the lands where the spring lay, and return on a later expedition. He brought a bottle of the water with him as proof. But he never came back. In later years, I had heard from other missionaries that he tried to convince the king to appoint him as governor of La Florida, but in the many years it had taken Álvar to reach Mexico and then Spain, the king had already granted the next expedition to De Soto, who, incidentally, met his end in these wilds just like Narváez.”
Dominic kicked Francisco to the ground and spit on him. “Liar! My father never found such a thing!”
Francisco looked up at Dominic with the tranquility of a saint. “Then why is it, commander, that your father and his three closest friends were the only ones to reach Mexico alive? Don’t you see? It’s because they had water from the spring! My guess is they had to use it all to survive, and thus Álvar had none to bring to Spain. Denied permission to return here, he never spoke of it again, such a good and noble man as he was. You see, one sip or one submersion does not make you immortal. It only extends your life and cures your maladies. One must drink every day if one wants to halt the process of aging. A sip a day keeps the reaper away, I have always said, but I also learned that no amount of water can reverse a mortal wound.”
“You learned that from slaying your brother, didn’t you, you coward.”
Francisco looked down. “Hernando and I lived together in this paradise for many years. But while my loyalties were with God, his remained with the crown. He found nothing peaceful about the isolation of this place. One day we heard from a native scout that the Spanish had founded a town on the coast—the inaptly named San Agustín, two days east of here—so Hernando filled a canteen from the spring, donned his armor, and set off to deliver the water as a gift to the king and hopefully earn himself governorship of a more civilized territory somewhere else.”
“So you killed him.”
“Am I not my brother’s keeper? He would have torn the very fabric of nature by disclosing this place! The natives appointed us to guard it because they knew they could not do it forever. You see, they long ago observed that animals will not drink from the spring, none except for panthers, which are like gods to them. And for that reason, the natives—even the worst among
them—will not drink from it, either. It is against the balance of nature, they say.”
Dominic gazed at the spring. Despite its beauty, his heart felt nothing toward it. He was exhausted from all the emotions clashing inside, and his mind strained to make sense of the old man’s wild story. The details of his father painted Álvar as a different kind of man than the one Dominic had known, and yet everything else Francisco said about the expedition echoed the few stories Dominic had heard. He ran the numbers through his head. The Narváez expedition began in 1527. If Francisco were in his fifties at that time then, by God, that would make him well over a hundred now. It seemed impossible, and yet, strangely, it all made perfect sense.
“Do you mind if I pray, commander?” said Francisco.
Dominic’s eyes narrowed when he saw the rosary that now dangled from Francisco’s hand. It was Pablo’s rosary. The old man must have pilfered it off the beach after the shipwreck. Dominic twitched. A flood of memories tore through his mind: the roar of the hurricane, the plunge into violent waters, Juan’s sandy face smiling at death, and Francisco swinging an oak log at his face. Through it all, he heard Pablo’s taunts. Your sins are unforgivable, captain! Unforgiveable!
Francisco kissed the rosary and then gazed up at Dominic and said, “God loves even you.”
Dominic’s eyes bulged with rage. He lifted the sword high and, as he swung it down, he heard Francisco whisper, “Gracias,” and then the old man’s head bounced down the embankment and plopped into the water.
Dominic looked at the headless quivering body on the ground below him and at the red stain in the otherwise flawless spring and a debilitating combination of grief and remorse seized him and brought him to his knees. He wrapped his arms around Francisco’s body and held it close, sobbing.
“Forgive me,” he cried out.
He wanted to kiss Francisco’s cheek but that part of the old man, he realized, was at the bottom of the spring. Dominic put the sword to his own throat. He took a deep, sobbing breath and pressed the blade against his skin. But then he thought about Mela and his son. He let the headless body fall to the ground and stepped to the edge of the spring. He ripped off his helmet and threw it in the water. Then he looked at the blood-smeared sword in his hand.
The Sound of Many Waters Page 21
