Gillian shoved the rifle back to Sammy Tigertail and said, “Scared you, didn’t I, Thlocko?”

“Please go,” he said. “Take the damn canoe, I don’t care.” He wasn’t sure who was the actual hostage-the girl or him.

She punched a number on her cell phone.

“Ethan? Hey, it’s me. Alive and seriously pissed.”

Sammy Tigertail started to climb out of the cistern but Gillian motioned him to stay.

“Why’d you wait so long to call?” she said to Ethan. “Know what? You’re full of crap. I’ve got Verizon, too, and it’s workin’ loud and clear.”

To Sammy Tigertail, she said, “He says he couldn’t get a signal. How lame is that?”

The Indian sat down heavily and tuned out Gillian’s telephone chatter. His head was beginning to ache. He rubbed his palms across the concrete floor and for a moment imagined it was Louisiana mud, like in the government prison cell where his great-great-great-grandfather might or might not have perished.

Although pained by his tribe’s blood-soaked history, Sammy Tigertail had never believed that all white people were evil; his own father had been an honest, good-hearted guy. During his childhood in the suburbs, Sammy Tigertail had made friends with lots of white kids, and observed several acts of decency and kindness by white grown-ups. It was also true that he’d encountered plenty of assholes, though to what degree their obnoxiousness could be blamed on race was debatable. Sammy suspected that some of them would have attained asshole status in any culture, on any continent.

His uncle Tommy had occasionally mentioned an unusual white man named Wiley, who’d written articles for a Miami newspaper. Sammy Tigertail’s uncle said that Wiley had wanted to save Florida as desperately as any Seminole, and that he’d gone mad trying. Sammy Tigertail had gotten the impression that his uncle Tommy and the crazed white writer were friends of a sort. When he’d asked what had happened to Wiley, his uncle said that the great Maker of Breath had given his spirit to an old bald eagle.

Sammy Tigertail remembered that story whenever he saw a wild eagle, which wasn’t often. He had yet to meet a white person like Wiley, and doubted he ever would. Gillian’s flitty spirit was more akin to that of a sparrow.

“Oh, just some guy I met,” she was saying to her boyfriend, giving him the needle. “You really want to know? Well, let’s see. He’s like six-one and real tan and he’s got these drop-dead blue eyes.”

Tan? “God Almighty,” the Indian said.

“And I don’t even know his real name,” she went on, winking at Sammy Tigertail, “which makes things kinda interesting.”

The Seminole whispered for her to hang up. When he made a slashing motion across his throat, she smiled and shook her head.

“Ethan wants to know if you’re the same maniac who shot at them on the island. What should I tell him?”

“Tell him to lay off the weed. Nobody shot at anybody.”

Gillian said into the phone: “My new friend’s sorta shy.”

Sammy Tigertail thought he could actually feel his cranium cracking like an egg. He lay down, clutching the gun to his chest. He heard Gillian tell her boyfriend: “I don’t know when I’m comin’ back. Tallahassee is such a drag, y’know?”

The Indian closed his eyes yet there was no hope of sleep. When Gillian turned off the phone, she said, “You look awful.”

“Thanks for not giving me up.”

Gillian laughed. “How can I tell him your name when I can’t hardly pronounce it?”

“If they knew I was a Seminole, they’d come after me for sure.” Sammy Tigertail rose to his feet. He hoped the dizziness was from hunger and not white man’s brain fever.

“Ethan promised to have them call off the search, but I can tell he’s sulking. He refuses to believe I’d rather be with someone else,” Gillian said. “You boys and your egos.”

“Speaking of names, yours is really St. Croix?”

“Ever been there? The beaches are awesome-you should take your girlfriend, or whoever.”

“No, I won’t be leaving the Everglades,” the Indian said. “Never again.”

They went outside, where Gillian counted four kinds of butterflies. Sammy Tigertail could identify a zebra and a swallowtail, but not the others; Gillian was still impressed. She climbed halfway up the old poinciana and perched on the end of a trunk-like branch, high among the bright green leaves. “Hey, Thlocko,” she called out. “Why don’t I want to go home?”

Sammy Tigertail was secretly pleased that Gillian remembered his Seminole name, even though she’d left out the second l. Others had trouble with Thlocklo, too. At the Miami public library he’d once found a copy of a muster roll of “99 Florida Indians and Negroes” delivered to the U.S. Army barracks in New Orleans on January 7, 1843. Among those on the list was “the party of Indians with the chief Tiger Tail or Thlocko Tustenugee,” transported for involuntary relocation west of the Mississippi. The man was Sammy Tigertail’s great-great-great-grandfather.

When Gillian climbed down from the tree, she said, “I seriously need a bath.”

“Good luck with the plumbing.”

“You said you wanted me to go away. Did you mean it? Because I can tell you’re not too thrilled.”

Against his better judgment, Sammy Tigertail found himself intrigued by the way she looked at that instant, how the breeze was nudging her hair and the sunlight was coloring her cheeks.

He said, “Ethan’s freaked out enough. You’d better go.”

“To hell with Ethan.”

“You don’t get it. Anything could happen out here.”

“Exactly!” Gillian exclaimed. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

Sammy Tigertail couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

She said, “How about this-what if I told you I can play the guitar?”

“I wouldn’t believe you.”

“Don’t move, Cochise.” Gillian ran out, and came back carrying the Gibson. “You got a pick?”

“I sure don’t,” Sammy Tigertail said, curious.

“That’s okay. Check out these fingernails.”

She played. He listened.

That evening, another telemarketer called and tried to sell Honey Santana a term-life policy for $17.50 a month. Instead of scolding the man, she was appallingly patient and polite. “God bless you, brother,” she said before hanging up.

Aghast, Fry dropped his fork in the lasagna. “I’m definitely tellin’ Dad.”

“You’ll do no such thing. I’m absolutely fine,” Honey said.

“You’re not fine, Mom, you’re going bipolar. Maybe even tripolar.”

“Just because I’m nice to a stranger on the phone? I thought that’s what you guys wanted.”

“Yeah, but that,” Fry said, clearing his plate from the table, “was creepy.”

Honey elected not to mention the aberrant pang of sympathy that had inspired her to visit Louis Piejack at his home that afternoon. Misled by a pleasant greeting and a seemingly benign offer of lemonade, Honey had taken a seat in her former employer’s living room only to hear him announce that (a) his wife was away in Gainesville, receiving chemotherapy, and (b) his testicles had fully recovered from the pummeling Honey had delivered at the fish market. Piejack had gone on to say that the brutal stone-crab amputation and subsequent surgical reshuffling of his fingers, while problematic for his piano ambitions, promised an innovative new repertoire of foreplay. That was when Honey Santana had dashed for the door, Piejack bear-pawing at her with his bandaged left hand. Honey didn’t want Fry to find out because he’d tell his father, who might do something so extreme to Louis Piejack that Skinner would end up in jail.

The boy went to pack while Honey stepped outside to test her latest mosquito remedy-citronella mixed with virgin olive oil, which she slathered on both legs. After several minutes she decided that the night was too breezy for a bug census, so instead she began rehearsing the lecture she intended to lay upon Boyd Shreave, the man who’d called her a dried-up old skank. She planned to wait until the second day of the eco-adventure, when they were so deep in the wilderness that Shreave wouldn’t dare make a run for it. He’d have no choice but to sit and listen while Honey Santana straightened him out.