Daddy Richard Harden moved south to Wood Key because he’d lost his taste for local company, said his own family was as much human society as a man could handle. But squatters was roosted on every bump between Marco and Chokoloskee, and some was already pushin south toward Lost Man’s. Beyond Chatham River, the only settlers besides ourselves was the James Hamiltons at Lost Man’s Beach and Sheldon Atwells back up Rodgers River. Then Daddy let Gilbert Johnson perch on the far end of Wood Key because them two enjoyed squabblin, and us Harden boys was very happy because Mr. Gilbert brung along two pretty daughters.
Sarah Johnson was a slim little thing without no secrets: skipped and laughed and danced and said most anything she wanted. One day-we was out running my coon traps-I walked a log and jumped to cross a swampy place, landed barefoot on a half-hid cottonmouth, a big one: I sprang away quick but felt the strike. When I looked down and seen that deathly white mouth waving, I turned so weak I had to lean against a tree.
“What’s the matter?” Sarah hollers.
“Think I’m snake-bit!”
“Think? You snake-bit or ain’t you?”
She comes across the creek, hikes up my britches. There ain’t a sign of nothing on my leg, only dried dirt.
“Well,” I said, “I think I’m feelin somewhat better.”
“Too much thinkin, boy.” She pokes that snake till it raises up its head and whacks it dead with one cut of her stick.
Sarah was calm but looked as pale as how I felt. Not until later did my deathly snakebite strike her as comical: Think I’m snake-bit! She was sitting on the sand, arms around her knees, and she whooped and laughed so hard rememberin my expression that she rolled straight over backwards, kicking them small brown feet up in the air in the pure joy of it. Bein strict brought up, she kept her skirt wrapped tight, and I weren’t lookin: even so, I seen the full round of her bottom, and it looked to me like a heart turned upside down. I loved that Sarah for the joy in her, and all that a young girl was, but I was drawn hard to her body, too. It weren’t only the wanting her. Her body was like some lost part of my own I had to fit back into place or I would die. That heart turned upside down was my heart, too.
This frisky gal had a way with E. J. Watson, knew how to smooth him down. It kind of surprised me how shy he seemed around her, almost like he needed her approval. She was blunt! Aimed to winkle out the truth about his life and made no bones about it. He was happy that such a pretty girl cared to hear his sad life story, and it got so he confided in her, told her things he would never say to no one else. Maybe what he told was truth, maybe it wasn’t.