“Here,” she said, slapping them down on the counter. Then she left the room for a back office area for a second and came back with another one that she placed on top of the others. “This is something you might want to check out, too.”

I took a tentative step forward, keeping my eye on her bat, occasionally glancing up at her face. I was waiting for any sign that she was about to jump all over me again, but it didn’t come. I stopped before I got to the brochures, worried about getting any closer.

“Go ahead and look. I’m not going to hit you.”

“Could you back up a few steps? You’re making me nervous.”

She went two paces back to stand by the entrance to the office.

I pulled the brochures closer to me and looked down at one of them quickly. It was the last one she put down, and I could see immediately that it had something to do with indians.

“What’s this place?”

“There are some indian tribes out there. Not all of them live at the casinos, you know.”

Her accusatory tone told me more than her words had.

“What tribe are you with?”

“Creek. But there are others. You want to find the Miccosukee. There might be some kids out there who could help you if they feel like it.”

“Wow. Thanks.” I couldn’t believe my luck at almost but not quite being killed by a Creek indian in a shell shop. I reached up and felt the ring at my neck. My dad’s spirit had touched me again.

“That your dad’s ring?” she asked, a softer tone to her voice now.

“Yeah.”

She reached into her shirt and pulled out a smaller version on a silver chain. “This is my mom’s.”

I got choked up, looking at the expression on her face and watching her hold the small jewelry carefully in one hand, while the bat hung forgotten in the other.

“Can I ask you for a really huge favor?” she said, her eyes going shiny with tears.

“Yeah. Sure.” She’d helped me and the guys out more than she could possibly have known. Who was I to say no to something in return?

“Can I have a hug?”

I looked at her like she was crazy. “What?” It was the last thing I had expected her to ask me for.

She leaned the bat up against the wall. “I know it sounds nuts. You probably think I’m going to stab you in the back or something, but I’m not. It’s just that … my mom used to hug me all the time … and she’s been gone for almost a year. And I miss her terribly.” The tears fell down her cheeks. She gritted her teeth together, refusing to sob. I could see her jaw muscles standing out. She looked like a proud indian warrior girl.

I shrugged. “Why not? Just don’t stab me, seriously. I’ll kill you if you do.”

She half choked, half laughed, holding up her hands. “Promise.”

We both took two awkward steps towards each other and just stood there for a moment. She was shorter than me, her dark hair hanging in greasy clumps around her face. She had huge brown eyes and wispy eyelashes. I could see why her mom had hugged her a lot. Underneath all her angry bravado, she was just a cute kid, scared about what was going to happen to her.

I grabbed her in a strong hug, feeling her arms come around my waist to settle at my lower back.

She was crying now, her shoulders shaking with the effort.

I just stood there, fighting off my own tears. Life was so friggin unfair. All these kids, left alone to fend for themselves. Like Bodo said, we weren’t meant to be alone.

I rubbed her back a few times and then pulled away. “Listen, we don’t have much, but you’re welcome to join us.”

She shook her head. “No thanks. I’m going to stay here. With my mom’s things.”

I looked around, seeing the place from her perspective now, my eyes picking out shell-covered objects and seeing them differently. I could picture an older version of this girl, her mom, sitting at a table with her glue gun, taking each small shell and putting it in the exact right position, creating something that someone would buy, making it possible for her to put food on the table for her daughter. And man, did I feel like an asshole for mocking the glue gunning now.

I turned back to face her. “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find us. Somewhere out there in the swamp.”

“It’s a big place you know,” she said, wiping her nose off with the back of her hand.

“Yeah. I keep hearing that. Well, we’ll leave you a sign.”

“What kind of sign?”

“I don’t know. You’ll recognize it when you see it.” I was pulling stuff out of my butt now, but whatever. I knew me and my two boys would figure something out.

As I left, she followed me out, pressing a bag of shells in my hand when I got to the door.

“What’s this for?”

“A gift. From me and my moms.”

I gave her another quick hug and then let her go. “What’s your name?”

“Celia.”

“Mine’s Bryn. Look me up sometime, if you’re ever out in the swamps.”

She smiled. “I might do that someday. After I sell all this stuff,” she said, gesturing around the room.

I laughed. “Good luck with that.”

The guys were sitting on their bikes, just watching me with questions in their eyes. I shook my head slightly, telling them silently not to ask until we were gone. I got on my bike and waved goodbye one more time before pedaling away, leading my tribe back to the highway.

We had brochures to study and plans to make, and I didn’t want to do it here in a town where lunatics who ate people or lonely girls with bats might be waiting to jump us.

***

We sat behind a copse of trees near the roadway with the brochures in a pile on the tarp. Buster had decided he liked the feel of shiny paper on his underparts, so did everything he could to spread out on them with his legs poking out behind him, giving him maximum belly exposure to their cool surfaces.

“Ew, Buster, get your wiener off the maps,” I said, nudging him to the side.

He just leaned over quickly and licked me in hyperdrive speed every time I tried to touch him.

“He’s trying to cool himself off,” said Peter, smiling and reaching over to play with Buster’s ears. That was one of Buster’s favorite things. His eyes went half-closed as he floated off into doggy heaven. In Buster’s world, there wasn’t anything much better than an ear tickle and a cool belly.

“I think we shouldt check dis place out,” said Bodo, looking at the booklet that Celia had brought out from her office.

“What is it? She said it had something to do with indians.”

Bodo read from the brochure, “The Miccosukee indians settled da area generations ago, building villages and structures on da wetlands and Cypress forests of da Everglades.” He turned a couple pages and said, “Dey have houses and stuff dare.”

“Well, we don’t want houses. At least not a place where there’s a bunch of them.”

“Why not?” asked Peter. “It’d be a lot less work.”

“Yeah. And easy and convenient. Do you not remember the whole point of swamp life?”

Peter sighed. “Yes, I remember. We need to go someplace hard to get to and inconvenient to live in.”

“Exactly. Keep reading.”

“How about this …,” said Peter. “Canoe and rowboat rental. Discover the forested wilds of the Everglades.”

“Let me see,” I said, taking it from him. I looked it over and saw that the pictures were promising. I could see us hiding out in some of the areas depicted there.

“My turn,” said Bodo, holding out his hand.

I passed him the brochure.

He looked at the back and then turned to the last page of the other booklet he had, comparing something on the two of them and frowning.

“What?” asked Peter. “What are you looking at?”

“Well … it looks like on dese maps dat da two places are not very far away from each udder.” He put the two maps down side by side next to Buster. “What do you think? Am I crazy?”

Peter and I studied the two illustrations. They probably weren’t to scale, but they sure looked almost exactly the same. And the red dots marking the two places weren’t very far apart.

“How far are those places from here?” asked Peter.

I pulled the map book from my backpack and found the page that showed where we currently were. “What are the coordinates of that map? Can you tell? Is there, like, a landmark of any kind?”

Bodo took the larger book and looked closer. “Oh. Dare are directions here above da map.”

As he read them out to me, I followed the track on my map, turning the page over to one that had very little showing on it other than swirls of uninhabited water, wetlands, and green parts that hopefully meant they had trees on them.

“Bingo. Here’s the spot where the canoes are. And here’s the place where that indian village thing is.” I pointed to the two areas on the map for the guys to see, while Buster got up and wiggled around under my arms, using his head to butt up against my hands, insisting on being petted. I sat up straight and dragged him over into my lap, petting his chin absently while we discussed our options.

“That looks like it’s about an hour from here,” said Peter. “We could do that easy.”

“What time is it?” asked Bodo. “We want to get dare at da right time, too.”

I checked my watch. “It’s about nine or so. Yeah, a bit after, actually. It’s getting a little late to travel. Canners will be getting up soon.”

“How about if we go to the place with the canoes and see if maybe we can stay there today? Then we can take them out tomorrow morning at four or whatever.”

I shook my head. “I really don’t want to travel through the swamps at night, in the dark, our first time out. We need to see where we’re going not only so we can find a good spot but also so we can find our way back out again.”

“I’m agreed with dat,” said Bodo. “I think we can risk doing dis today, if we hurry. I doubt dat da canners are going to be out in canoes on da water dis early in da morning. Besides, dare prey is on da land, not in da water.”

I looked at Peter and he shrugged, apparently not disagreeing with the plan.

“Fine,” I said, looking down and realizing with slight disgust that Buster had taken advantage of my preoccupation and was currently several hundred licks into cleaning my hand. I grabbed his muzzle and closed it, turning his face up to look at me. “You’re a punk, you know that, Buster?”

His butt wiggled, carried away again by his tail wagging.

“Stop licking me, you freak.” I let him go and he jumped out of my lap, barking once at me, obviously excited about the prospect of being called a punk and a freak. I guess so long as someone was talking to him, he was happy.

It made me think of Celia, all alone in that crazy shell shop. She’d been so starved for affection she’d asked the girl she’d tried to beat to death two minutes earlier for a hug. I looked at Bodo, busy packing up our brochures, and Peter pouring out some water for a happily expectant Buster - and once again thanked my lucky stars I had found them. Or that they had found me.

We were almost to our goal, and knock on wood, we were all still alive - over two hundred and fifty miles later. Now all we had to do was find some water transportation, figure out how to use it, and not get eaten by alligators or deer-eating snakes before we found a place to live. Simple.

***

Our ride over to the canoe rental place was uneventful. We were no longer on the highway and there were very few abandoned cars on this simple, two-lane side road. We passed an occasional broken down roadside fruit stand, but saw no signs of life aside from ourselves. To our left and right were big waterways, some of them flowing and some of them still, dotted with large sections of treed areas, the edges made up of huge roots that looked like elephant trunks, growing right down into the water.