Ain't no current in the swamp

“Goddamn it, you little fuckers!”

Don smacked the mosquito chowing down on his arm. Blood smeared across his skin. Nine a.m. on the Rolex and the heat was already motherfucking hell. His Tommy Bahama shirt, the one with the flamingos wearing sunglasses, had sweat stains darker than swamp water.

“Fuck.” He threw Mel a look. “Agreeing to this bullshit was the worst mistake of my life.”

He was right.

Don flicked another mosquito off his cheek.

“I should be sipping margaritas by the pool right now. Hire a bunch of cabana boys to stand guard with fly swatters.”

One of the little winged bloodsuckers almost landed in his mouth.

“Money can’t solve every problem,” said Mel.

She was wrong. Money could solve every problem. Money made regulators lose paperwork. Money made safety inspectors look the other way. Money made pregnant girlfriends go away. Until Florida.

Goddamn motherfucking Florida.

“How the hell do you people live down here?” Another mosquito took a chunk out of Don’s leg.

The airboat captain, Jake, flashed a mouthful of yellow teeth. “Just used to it, I guess.”

He could have been “Florida Man #3” in one of those movies about a tornado made of sharks. Don considered asking Jake why his T-shirt said Gator Bob’s Airboat Tours instead of Gator Jake’s Airboat Tours, but he didn’t give a shit, so he let it go.

“Where you folks from?” On second look, not all of Jake’s teeth were yellow. One was gray.

“Washington.”

“Washington?” Jake’s face soured as he uncoiled the rope.

“Not that Washington. The other Washington. You know, the state.”

“There’s a state?”

Jake turned the key and the big blades on the back of the airboat spun up to a dull roar.

Mel hollered for the kids. “Ruby! J.P.! Get your asses over here. It’s time to get in the boat!”

“I don’t know how I let you talk me into this.” Don swatted the air and scattered a squadron of mosquitoes like King Kong fighting biplanes.

“This place got four-point-two stars on Yelp.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“We gotta have at least one authentic Florida experience.”

Don rolled his eyes. “What? Staying at a twelve-hundred-dollar-a-night resort with on-deck massage services and a fully stocked tiki bar isn’t authentic enough for you?”

“Relax, Don. This’ll be fun.” She turned back to the kids. “Ruby! J.P.! Get your asses over here now!”

Ruby and J.P. stopped throwing acorns at a plastic kiddie pool full of baby alligators. A sign promised a photo with one for five bucks.

“Can Princess Sparkle and me get our picture taken with an alligator?”

Princess Sparkle, the doll Ruby had screamed for at the Circle K when they stopped for Funyuns, dangled from her hand.

“Ruby Taft, don’t you dare touch those disgusting things. Probably full of viruses.” Mel made a face.

Jake pasted his smile back on and corralled everyone into the boat. He handed Don a pair of binoculars and a life vest. The vest smelled like ass.

“Now whatever you do,” Jake said at the end of his seventeen-second safety briefing, “always keep your hands and feet inside the vessel. Don’t want one of them gators taking a bite out of yah.”

Ruby whimpered.

J.P. stuck his hand over the side of the boat to test the theory.

“He’s just kidding, sweetie.” Mel patted Ruby on the arm. “No nasty alligator is going to bite off your hand.” She gave the boat captain a look that could have flash-frozen the Everglades. “Isn’t that right, Captain?”

Jake wasn’t a Mensa candidate, but he knew better than to fuck with Mel. “That’s right, little lady. Sorry ’bout that. Just havin’ a li’l fun is all. Gators don’t want nothin’ to do with people, so this boat is perfectly safe. Haven’t lost one tourist yet.”

J.P. punched his little sister in the arm. “Yeah, dumbass. Alligators don’t eat people.”

She walloped him back.

“Fuck me.” Don squeezed his eyes shut as the beginning of a migraine crept up his neck.

Jake took his place in the captain’s chair, set high in the center of the boat. He revved the engine. The airboat roared like a prop plane about to take off.

“This is going to be so much fun!” Mel clapped her hands like one of the trained seals at Marine World.

At least her good mood was holding. Don said a silent prayer to the good Lord Almighty, thankful he’d remembered to pack her vibrator.

For the next two hours, the Taft family glided through the Florida swamps. Spanish moss spilled from the cypress trees, ancient giants rooted in tea-colored water. The stagnant air smelled sweet, water hyacinth and wild jasmine.

It was quiet. It was peaceful. It was hot as fuck.

They saw lots of swamp grass. Spiders, both inside the boat and out. A stick Jake thought was a snake until they got up close. And a couple of birds that just sat there drying swamp water off their feathers.

“Where are all the gators?” J.P. whined as Jake idled the engine and went to the edge of the boat to look around.

“Yeah, I want to see alligators!” said Ruby. “RIGHT. NOW.”

J.P. held his hand out over the water again, wiggling his fingers as if they were bait. “Here, gator, gator, gator!”

“Get your hand back in the boat,” Mel snapped. “Captain told you not to do that.”

Don stared at the murky water. Serve the kid right if something jumped up and bit him. Ruby had her mother’s pageant queen looks, but J.P., sadly, inherited Mel’s brain.

Ruby turned to the captain. “Where’d all the alligators go?”

Jake stared across the water, brow furrowed like he was contemplating the meaning of life. “Well, kids, sometimes nature goes at its own pace.”

Between the humidity and the mosquitoes, Don’s patience was gone. “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well...” Jake spent the next two minutes explaining the delicate natural balance of the Florida aquifer and some bullshit about climate change and upriver contamination. Another goddamn woke-ass pussy.

Don gave him the expression he usually reserved for over-budget contractors. “We paid to see alligators. Where the hell are they?”

“It’d be a shame if your four-point-two Yelp score tanked.” Mel flashed her bleached veneers.

Jake opened his mouth to say something, but Ruby’s scream cut him off. “Princess Sparkle! Princess Sparkle!”

Don turned. His daughter’s arms were empty. Tears streamed down her pink cheeks.

“I can’t find Princess Sparkle!”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“It’s gotta be around here somewhere,” said Mel.

They scrambled to find the doll, but Princess Sparkle was gone. Ruby kept screaming.

“Daddy, you have to find her. PLEEEEEEAAAASSSSE.”

Don looked at Jake. Jake looked at him. Both men reached the same conclusion.

They were fucked.

Over the past two hours, the airboat had crossed fifteen square miles of dense swamp, mangrove trees, and thick clumps of sawgrass. A labyrinth. Sometime, somewhere, Ruby had let go, and the doll had fallen over the edge.

“Goddamn it.”

Neither of them looked at Ruby. Neither of them looked at Mel.

They were never seeing that fucking doll again. No way in hell.

But this was Florida.

Just as Jake started in on words like needle and haystack, Ruby shrieked. “There she is!” Her little finger trembled. “She’s swimming away!”

“What the hell?”

Princess Sparkle floated thirty feet ahead of the boat. The red painted smile bobbed on the water.

“That’s impossible.” Jake looked dumbfounded. Or, more likely, it was just his normal look. “How’d it get in front of the boat?”

“The current got it.” Now Mel was a goddamn swamp expert.

“Ain’t no current in the swamp.”

“Well, however it got over there, stop blabbering about it and go get it already,” Don snapped.

“Hurry! She’s scared!”

Jake obeyed. He angled the boat alongside Princess Sparkle for a rescue mission and eased down on the throttle.

The doll started moving. Floated away.

“Somethin’ ain’t right.” Jake looked even more dumbfounded. The doll bobbed along as if pulled by invisible strings.

“She’s swimming away! She’s swimming away!”

Ruby looked ready to jump in and go after the doll herself.

“She’s not swimming away, sweetie.” Mel pressed a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “She’s just... floating. I think.”

The doll drifted toward the far edge of a mud bank and came to rest. Jake pulled back on the throttle. The airboat slid to a stop and tossed in the wake.

“What are you waiting for?” Don pointed at the doll. “It’s right there.”

“Can’t go over there.”

“What do you mean you can’t go over there?” asked Mel. Unlike the airboat, her finely honed “Karen” voice was on full throttle.

“That’s restricted space. See?” Jake pointed to a yellow warning sign nailed to one of the trees.

Don lifted his binoculars.