May 10, 1999 Ron Riggs turned off the radio and rolled down the window of the new Ford pickup. The Department of the Interior had seen fit to purchase a whole fleet of these white trucks for their valiant Florida employees, and damned if they hadn't given Ron the one without air-conditioning. That was going to be tres wonderful when summer kicked in. He could imagine it now, the cab of that truck like so many cubic feet of hot, soggy cotton. This morning was cool, though, by mid-state standards. It had hit sixty-five degrees just before sunup and now it was closing in on eighty-two. And it wasn't even noon. So went another Florida late spring day.
He checked his side view mirror, and caught only the top of his head, sandy-brown hair running amok in the high-speed wind whipping in as he cruised down the interstate highway. He glanced for a second into his own eyes, and thought he could catch just the barest glimpse of his last full-blooded Seminole ancestor, three times removed.
Driving one-handed, he readjusted the mirror until he could spy the other cars dogging his ass. He'd lay money that half of the cars behind him were rentals, tourists running off to Universal or Disney World or Berg Brothers Studios of Florida. He shuddered, eyeing the piney woods whipping past, each tree a dark stick against the grass-and-palmetto backdrop that the Board of Tourism loved to promote.
It was partly because of one of those theme parks that he was out and about that moment. The Brothers Berg had basked for long enough in the popularity and wealth brought in by their family oriented films and their family oriented amusement park. Now they had gone and bought a big chunk of undeveloped land and had built what they were calling "the perfect American township." Ooo la la and hokahey. Ron couldn't wait to get there. He'd heard about it, but hadn't had the opportunity to cruise past and see what obscenity the Brethren were up to.
He sighed, looked again in the side view mirror and once more caught a glimpse of his sun-browned face, which quickly scowled at him as he realized the mirror had shifted out of position again. The damned thing was brand new. Oh. Great. He nudged the mirror with his left hand and made a mental note to tighten it up later.
A huge green sign ahead informed him that he was two miles from exit 117, which would take him to that perfect American village built from the ground up by Berg Brothers Studios of Florida. Its very name brought saccharine images to mind. His stomach did little flips at the very idea. It wasn't so much that Ron hated schmaltzy movies and false fronts; it was that he had grown to love his adopted state. When he'd come to Florida as a kid, there were still plenty of wide open spaces around. You could drive for miles down sandy roads and never see a soul. Just you and the birds and an occasional white-tailed deer. But now it seemed as if there was a shopping center cropping up every quarter mile or so, and all of those miles of piney woodlands were now subdivisions stretching off into infinity. He sighed.
He made the long, slow turn off the interstate and came to a halt at the top of the exit ramp. Five miles to Salutations, it read.
"Salutations," Ron muttered. And then, recalling the old children's book, "Saaaaaaaaaal-yew-taaaaaaaaaay-shunz." In a high, keening voice. Such as that made by a tiny, friendly spider.
Looking both directions, the way his driving instructor had taught him back in high school, he made a right turn down the state road that shot like God's yardstick into the pines. This had been one of the last unspoiled tracts of land left in Florida, Ron knew. For decades it had been locked up within the borders of Edmunds Military Base and Bombing Range. He had to chuckle. While he and his pals had been complaining about Uncle Sam and his free enterprise cohorts raping the environment, the arbitrary lines that marked the edges of Edmunds had protected this important chunk of real estate. There had been rumors there were even some Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers out there. But he didn't believe it. The EPA had been in there, searching, and had found nothing out of the ordinary.
Most of the land was still untouched. Berg Brothers had bought only a fraction of it, so far. Enough to get their perfect little town off and running. But the rest of it was tied up in legal limbo-about 450,000 acres-partly because some environmental groups were lobbying against any further sales, and partly because of Vance Holcomb, a crazy billionaire who wanted to buy up the rest for himself. No one knew exactly why, but Ron sure would like to ask the rich eccentric.
Ahead, down that straight-as-an-arrow road, he watched as a large animal appeared out of the forest, paused at the verge, and then leaped across the asphalt. Deer, Ron noted. Big one, too. Antler-less buck. By the time he got to where it had crossed, it was long gone and all he saw was the green pressing in all around him.
The singing mud tires of his new Ford pickup quickly gobbled the five miles up, and he slowed again and made a left into the entrance of Salutations, USA. Not Salutations, Florida. No. This was USA! He chuckled and keened out, "Saaaaaal-yew-TAY-shuuuuuuuuunz."
Stopping at the gate, he was surprised to hear the not too distant yelp of a dog. A dog that was obviously in a great deal of either pain, or panic. The Berg Brothers engineers built up the road on a tall berm, a wise move, for this part of the country could get plenty soggy. Each side of the four lanes had a wide, solid-looking shoulder covered with a manicured coat of Bermuda grass. Taking his foot off the accelerator, Ron coasted to a stop on the right, where a bike-and-foot path crossed the ditch on that side.
Over the idling of the motor he heard the dog yelping again. And then he could hear a human voice, joining in with that of the dog. There was cursing: a man's voice. Ron switched the motor off and climbed out.
He stood beside the truck, glanced once at the U.S. Fish amp; Wildlife Service painted on the door, and walked briskly around the back of the vehicle and started down the paved pathway. This was the outer edge of Salutations, what the company propaganda was calling "a natural greenway surrounding this pristine community." He'd read their spiel and had some detailed maps of the area in his truck. It seemed they were having trouble with prior residents, and that's what had brought him there. He took a few strides down the pathway, noticing as he did some of the vegetation around him. Even a cursory glance told him that several threatened plant species grew here. There was no way these bike paths should have been allowed.
The dog yelped again, and once more he heard a man cursing.
"Dammit! Hold still, dammit!"
Ron looked to his left, where the patch curved down toward an arm of the waterway that meandered into the forest. There were lily pads floating on the still surface, mirroring the action just beyond the pool.
"Hold still!" A paunchy man who appeared to be in his mid-fifties, dressed in white shorts, white short-sleeved shirt, white socks drawn almost up to his knees, and a pair of even whiter Nikes, seemed to flail madly at a silvery poodle that was bounding even more madly around his feet. The fellow's white porkpie hat was sitting at an odd slant on his balding scalp, and he was trying vainly to land a blow with his polished walking stick: solid oak, Ron realized. Attached to the dog's left foreleg was an impressive snake struggling vigorously against all odds.
Before Ron could announce his presence, the man finally landed a blow on the snake's thick body, a blow which was little more than a glancing thump that bounced off. Even if the strike had been aimed a little better, Ron knew it wouldn't have had much effect. This snake was a constrictor and heavily muscled. A healthy specimen, too, he noted-six feet, at least.
"Hey," Ron yelled. "Hey, there! You! Stop that."
The older man looked Ron's way, bringing his right hand up and knocking off the precariously perched hat. And Ron saw that the dog was tethered; the leash twisted around the man's left forearm and looped around the fellow's left ankle. He probably thought he was going to be bitten, too. A couple of long strides brought Ron up to the man and his frightened doggie.
"Hold still," Ron told him.
The man had drawn his walking stick back again, but held it there. "What are you going to do?" he asked, puffing out the words.
"Just hold still," Ron told him again, kneeling quickly and grasping the dog firmly by the nape of its neck. He reached around with his right hand and gripped the black snake tightly at the base of its jaws, applying a lot of pressure there. Quickly, the snake's jaws opened wide and Ron extricated the reptile's needlepoint teeth from the dog's flesh. The teeth were so fine that he spotted no blood as he pulled the snake free.
Standing, he let the snake loop itself around his right arm, and he chuckled in admiration at the strength the reptile displayed as it constricted, doing what it was born to do.
The man knelt and retrieved both dog and hat. The dog had begun to bark in anger at the black snake. "Prissy. Are you okay, girl? Is Prissy okay?" The man stared at Ron and his cold-blooded cargo. "Is it poisonous? Will she die?"
Ron smiled reassuringly at the transplanted Yankee. "No, sir. This is just a common black snake. They're pretty darned harmless, actually, unless you're a rat or a rabbit or something small."
"Harmless? I'd hardly call it harmless!" He pulled the twenty-pound poodle to his face and rubbed his nose in its neck. "Poor Prissy," he muttered.
"These guys are fine animals. An important part of the forest ecology around here." He indicated the pine and oak forest around them. "Their population fluctuates with that of the small game they hunt," he began, but noticed that the dog owner was scowling at him.
"I don't care about it. Are you going to kill it, now?"
"No, sir. Absolutely not. I'm going to release it." He took a couple of steps off the asphalt trail and into the woods, setting the snake down between a couple of palmetto bushes. It uncoiled from his arm and raced off into the underbrush. In a couple of seconds it was just another silent shadow in the trees.
He turned to see the man gaping at him. "Why didn't you kill it? I can't believe you did that! You let it go."
"They're completely harmless."
"You said that. Try to tell that to Prissy." He held the poodle out to Ron.
"They're harmless, Prissy," he said.
The man, his face red with either too much sun or the excitement of the day, gaped again. "You're a crazy man," he said.
"No, sir. Just with the Fish and Wildlife Service." And he turned and went back down the trail to his truck. Once there, he paused and looked back, seeing nothing but the now empty path and the forest. "By the way," he yelled. "You're welcome."