The Girl from Felony Bay (26 page)

Alice shot onto shore, her short legs and long, thick body skimming right over the pluff mud. She raced up the bank toward Skoogie like a green torpedo. Still, he just stood there.

I closed my eyes and waited for the screams that were sure to come when Alice grabbed him in her powerful jaws. But for several seconds, I heard nothing.

“Get outta that canoe!” Skoogie yelled again.

I opened my eyes in amazement as Alice charged him again. Just as he must have done the first time, Skoogie stood his ground and let her get close, then he jumped to one side and ran around behind her. Alice stopped and turned with slow, laborious movements. While alligators are very fast in a straight line, they are slow as molasses when it comes to turning around. Alice had charged him twice, and she already looked tired.

“Got it!” Bee shouted, and I realized my wrists were free. While I was watching Skoogie, she must have gone back to tearing away the tape on my arms. My knife was still in its sheath, because Uncle Charlie hadn't even bothered to take it away once he got my hands bound. I used it to free my ankles, and then it took only another moment to cut the tape from Bee's arms and legs.

We clambered over the side of the canoe. Our legs sank deep into the mud, almost all the way to our hips, but we slogged as fast as we could up onto the bank and through the tall grass away from Alice and her nest.

A few seconds later, Skoogie came up to us, leaving a tired Alice to guard the bank. Her jaws were wide open in a fearsome manner, but she no longer posed any threat to us.

“I thought y'all wasn't gonna get out,” Skoogie said.

“I thought you were gonna get eaten,” I told him.

Skoogie smiled and shook his head. “I'm the best gator dodger on Leadenwah Island.”

“But what are you doing here?” I asked as my brain started to work again. “How did you know how to find us?”

“My granny saw you go past in Mr. Charlie's truck, and she said you looked real scared like something bad was happening. My granny don't like Mr. Charlie, and she had some suspicions, and so she told me to stay outta sight but to see if anything bad was goin' on.

“I hid in the bushes by your house, and I seen plenty a bad stuff goin' on, so I followed the truck to the pond. I stayed out of sight until they left, then got some wood and went around to the right side of the pond, where I could get that mama gator to pay attention to me.”

Bee suddenly reached out and grabbed Skoogie and hugged him until I thought he might suffocate. “You are my hero,” she said.

Skoogie was surprised for a moment, and then a smile broke out on his face, so big I thought it would never come off. Finally I cleared my throat. We might have gotten away from Green Alice, but our problems were still only just beginning.

W
e moved to a spot
about a hundred yards from the pond, our legs and clothes dripping pluff mud and pond water, and tried to gather our wits. Bee and I told Skoogie everything that had happened, starting with the previous night when we had snuck out and gone to Felony Bay.

Skoogie listened without saying a word, but when Bee got to the part where Deputy Simmons wanted to shoot his gun into the bushes, his eyes widened in shock. “What're we gonna do if the police are the bad guys?”

Bee looked at me. “Can't we just go find a phone and call Mr. Barrett or Custis, and tell them what's happening?”

I shook my head. “Uncle Charlie cut the phone line to the big house, remember?”

“What about your grandmother?” Bee asked Skoogie.

“We only got a cell phone, but Grandma broke hers a couple days ago, and she hasn't been to town to get a new one.”

“What about a car?” Bee insisted. “We can go get Grandma Em, and she can drive us out of here!”

Skoogie shook his head again. “Not 'less you want to get your grandma shot. They got a tractor and a manure spreader parked across the plantation drive like it's broke-down. It's blocking anybody gettin' in or out.”

“So what are we going to do?” Bee asked.

“My grandma's got a truck,” Skoogie offered. “She could drive us someplace.”

“First we have to make sure we can get off the plantation without being seen,” I said. “And that won't be easy.”

Skoogie walked a few yards to an ancient live oak with branches that drooped all the way to the ground. With a practiced motion, he grabbed one of the lowest ones, swung himself onto the limb, and climbed up to a place high up in the tree where he had a view around the plantation. After a few seconds he called down to us. “You're right. That Deputy Simmons is parked on the drive near Mr. Charlie's house. Gonna be a little tricky sneaking past him.”

I shook my head. To get around Deputy Simmons, we would have to sneak through the cornfield and then crawl through the soybeans. Even though the corn was high, we would be putting birds to flight the whole way through, so any experienced hunter like Deputy Simmons would know right away that someone was trying to sneak past him. Skoogie and I could move fast enough to probably get away, but there was no way Bee could with her knee. She still wasn't fast enough to take the risk.

We didn't dare leave Bee here alone, because sooner or later Uncle Charlie or Deputy Simmons was liable to come back out to the pond to make sure their little plan had worked. If they spotted the canoe over by the shore, they'd know right away that it hadn't.

As I struggled to puzzle things out, Skoogie dropped to the ground. “Might be that you don't need to sneak out,” he said. “Might be that you want to be right here.”

I looked at him in amazement. Skoogie had always been quiet and cautious. “What are you talking about?”

“When I come in this morning, I seen a couple a them news trucks with them satellite dishes on top.”

“Coming here?” I asked.

Skoogie nodded. “Going down the dirt road toward that little cabin where Grandma used to live.”

I understood what Skoogie was suggesting, and I looked at Bee. Her eyebrows were already up like she was reading my mind and didn't like it a bit.

“Abbey, we need to get out of here. Please, no crazy ideas,” she said.

I shook my head. “Skoogie's right. If we all get caught again, we're dead. We need to do something they don't expect.”

I told them my Idea. It was going to be a huge gamble, but it was better than getting caught trying to sneak out. In the end Bee agreed there was no better choice.

Skoogie had to sneak back to his grandmother's trailer, because a single person sneaking has a way better chance than three. In case Bee and I failed, he would find a way to make a call to Mr. Barrett and the state police and hopefully convince one of them, as crazy as it sounded, about what Uncle Charlie and Bubba Simmons were doing. Skoogie didn't like the idea of leaving us, but he understood the sense of it and in the end he went along.

We watched him head off; then Bee and I started through the thick undergrowth that bordered the pond, heading toward the trail we had used that first day I took Bee to see Felony Bay.

I used my knife to cut another forked stick in case we ran into more cottonmouths, and I led the way. We went slow, staying low and making sure to make no noise.

As we drew close to Felony Bay, I was trying so hard to stuff my fear back down inside and not let Bee see how scared I was that I almost didn't notice that the No Trespassing signs were gone. I walked up to one of the trees where I was sure there had been a sign, but all I could see were the four staples that had been used to fix it in place.

“Somebody tore down the signs,” I said.

“They're cleaning up,” Bee said. “Just like they tried to clean us up.”

“But they didn't,” I said. Reminding myself that we were still alive and free and able to fight back brought a fresh burst of hope that helped calm the fear that bubbled in my stomach.

We started walking again, moving slower. Up ahead we began to hear the sound of machines. They made a low hum, much softer than the excavation machine we had heard the last time. As we came closer, we started to see light through the trees and the glimmer of sunshine reflecting off metal surfaces.

“Those are the satellite trucks,” Bee whispered.

“How do you know?”

“I've heard them before.”

This was good. Satellite trucks meant people and cameras and microphones. With all those things around, Uncle Charlie and Deputy Simmons wouldn't be able to do anything to us. At least that's what I tried to tell myself.

We crept forward, staying behind the thick layer of undergrowth that walled off the beach. When I pushed some branches away and looked out from our hiding place, what I saw nearly made me cry out with anger.

A little wooden platform with a speaker's podium stood in front of the hole where the crate had been “buried.” Uncle Charlie was standing on the platform looking almost respectable in a navy blue pin-striped suit with a red bow tie. He wore a big, happy smile like a person who had just won the lottery. A microphone was in front of his face, and I saw two big loudspeakers set on either side of the hole.

Ruth was standing in front of the platform beside Bubba Simmons, but rather than looking like it was the happiest day of her life, she looked like she was going to be sick. Anyone watching probably thought she was nervous about being onstage, but I thought the real reason she felt sick was that her husband had fed Bee and me to an alligator.

On the other side of the hole, behind a line of plastic tape, stood four different television cameramen along with their helpers. There were also photographers as well as several newspaper reporters, including Tom Blackford, all of them scribbling in little notebooks.

Uncle Charlie must have just started talking, because he was thanking everyone for coming to what he called “one of the greatest treasure finds in the past hundred years.”

It was windy on the beach, and the satellite trucks made a constant roar, but Uncle Charlie's voice came booming over the speakers so loudly that nobody could miss a word.

He went on to say how for many years he had been a great student of local history in general and of tales of buried treasure in particular. He told how many people, including his own family, had pooh-poohed him, but how his belief and interest had never faltered. When, through tragic circumstances, his family's legacy, Reward Plantation, had been put on the market, he had scraped together enough money to buy a small parcel of the original plantation that he believed contained a significant store of buried treasure. According to Uncle Charlie, his “intense and in-depth scholarly and historical research” had attracted several other investors. I had known there was no way Uncle Charlie and Ruth and Bubba Simmons could have afforded to purchase the land on their own. I was reminded of the mysterious man who had been with them the night before.

Uncle Charlie went on to say that the exploration had been “arduous,” as people could see from all the holes that had been dug on the beach. “We did not hit pay dirt right away. It took us some months and much more research and excavation. But ladies and gentlemen, we kept at it with diligence, and today we are going to show you the exciting results.”

He went on to tell the story of the
Lovely Clarisse
. “Up until today,” Uncle Charlie said, “no one has known whether the legend was true, because on its second attempt to make Havana, the
Lovely Clarisse
was sunk with all hands. Over the years many have tried to find the gold, but no one succeeded. Until now.”

Uncle Charlie had made himself sound like some kind of workaholic rather than your basic bum, and now he pointed down at the hole where he and Deputy Simmons had placed the crate. Uncle Charlie stepped down off the stand, grabbed a shovel, and jumped into the hole. The newspeople followed with their cameras, and the photographers popped off pictures as he threw out several shovelfuls of dirt and exposed the crate. Then he grabbed a crowbar that was lying on the ground beside the hole and used it to break the rusty padlock he had put on the crate the night before.

Moving to one side of the hole, he pried up the crate's lid. The crowd made an oohing sound, and Uncle Charlie smiled up at them as the piles of gold ingots and small cloth bags became visible.

“I present the treasure of the
Lovely Clarisse
,” he said to the cameras.

I knew that this was probably the only chance we were going to get. “Come on,” I whispered to Bee. We moved to our right, until we were around the back of the cabin. There, safely out of sight of the crowd watching Uncle Charlie, we slithered out through the vines and brambles and into the open.

Our legs and shorts were caked with pluff mud to midthigh. We were bleeding from lots of tiny scratches and cuts from all the thorns. Our shirts were ripped, and our hair was a tangled mess with burrs and bits of twig that had caught there as we crept through the bushes. If we wanted people to believe our story, we needed to look more like young ladies and less like wild savages.