“It’s just that…” She searched for the words to tell him why she couldn’t go back just yet without revealing things he had no right to know. “I can’t go back. Not yet. Not like this.”
She heard him expel a sharp, impatient breath and then say, with undisguised reluctance, “All right. You can stay here.”
Rennie drew in a deep breath of relief. “Thank you, John. You have no idea what this means to me.”
“Don’t thank me just yet,” he warned. “It can get pretty lonely out here. In a few days you just might change your mind and run screaming back to civilization.”
It wasn’t civilization she needed right now. It was peace and quiet and a safe place in which to heal not only her sightless eyes but her bruised emotions as well. It wasn’t easy finding things out about yourself that you didn’t like, and Rennie was no exception. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” she said. “You’ll be here, won’t you?”
“I have my work to do. I’ll be gone most of the day…” There was a pause, almost imperceptible except to someone whose hearing was already sharper to compensate for what her eyes could not see, and then he added “…and the night.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a biologist with the Everglades Research Center.”
“What do you research?” She was desperately tired and struggling to stay awake, but a part of her wanted to know…needed to know…more about the man in whose care she was entrusting herself. He could have been an ax murderer, for all she knew. But there was nothing sinister in the air around him, no hint of danger or violence. And except for that unsettling scent that hovered about him, of something wild and unforgiving, she felt no menace from him.
“I study the ecosystem of the swamp and monitor the animal population.”
“At night?” she questioned.
“There are creatures that live in the swamp that come out only at night.”
“Creatures?”
“Don’t worry. They won’t bother you here.”
Rennie didn’t share his confidence. “Are we near anything? A town or a village?”
“There’s nothing for miles.”
That would account for the acute loneliness that seemed to pervade every corner of the room. The secluded place, made even more secret by her sightlessness, made Rennie feel lost.
“You live here all by yourself?”
“Yes.”
The deep, single-word reply made her shiver. What kind of man shunned the company of others, preferring to live among the creatures of the swamp? What caused that alienating tone in his voice? Why did she sense that, despite the invitation, she was not welcome?
A part of her didn’t want to know. And maybe none of that mattered. She was safe, for the time being at least, and that’s what was important to her. Later, when she could think more clearly, she would decide what to do. Later, when her sight was restored and she could see the face of the man whose very essence was in the air she breathed.
Her exhausted mind battled to stay awake as her head grew heavy. “What if—” The words, almost too unbearable to utter, emerged as a choked whisper. “What if my sight doesn’t return?”
The wooden planks beneath his feet squeaked when he stood up and walked away. “There are no guarantees in life.”
There was no harshness in his voice, only a ring of hopeless resignation, as if he knew firsthand about there being no guarantees in life, and Rennie could not help but wonder what it was that had wrung all the hope out of him.
She felt herself growing drowsy. Her own voice sounded far off, her words as if she’d had too much to drink. “What did you put in that tea?”
“Something to make you sleep.”
She smiled weakly. “An old Indian remedy?”
“Nothing you can’t buy at a health food store.”
He was annoyed, but she was neither worried nor frightened. For one thing she was feeling far too light-headed to entertain any dangerous notions about him. For another, even in her muddled state something told her that beneath the annoyance and unfriendly tone beat the heart of a kind man. Why would he bother to help her if he were not good-hearted? The undercurrent of wildness she had initially perceived about him must have been the workings of a weak and vulnerable imagination.
The protective arms of sleep wrapped around her, drawing her to its breast as it whispered words of gentle comfort into her ear. She tried hard to concentrate on what it was saying and was surprised to find that it wasn’t words at all. It was a sound, an easy shhh somewhere beyond these walls.
In a small voice that hovered midway between conscious thought and dream, she breathed, “That sound. What’s that sound?”
“That’s the saw grass,” he said. “A river of grass swaying in the breeze.” His voice was low with reflection from across the room. “Sometimes I can sit and listen to it for hours. If you wade into it and look down, you can see the water moving slowly, almost imperceptibly, past your feet. So gradually it makes you wonder whether we move through life or life moves past us.”
But Rennie wasn’t listening. She was asleep, lulled into slumber by the effect of the tea, the shhh of the saw grass, and John Panther’s hypnotic, regretful voice.
Chapter 2
With a weary gesture John Panther swept back an unruly lock of black hair that fell from his forehead as he gazed out the small-paned window into the fading light of dusk.
The air outside was filled with familiar sounds. Alligators prowling among the aquatic plants. A mad flapping of wings as a flock of great blue herons took to flight. The croakings of the frogs. The coocooings of the doves. All were as familiar to him as the sound of his own voice.
A mosquito buzzed maddeningly at his ear. He swatted it away. Beneath his breath he grumbled at the persistence of the pesky insect, yet he accepted its right to be there just as he accepted everything else about the Everglades, as natural, necessary ingredients.
He loved this place like no other. The soft, squishy land, the creatures that lived in the mangrove forests and swam in the still, shallow water, the grass, as sharp as saw blades, swaying hypnotically in the breeze, the sky, so endless and unfettered there was room for a whole month of sunsets in a single evening such as this.
If the mosquitoes had not been so thick and the land so soggy, the white men who came here would have split the mahogany hammocks for lumber and turned the mangrove forests into fertilizer and cattle feed long ago. Resort hotels would now stud the wild beaches. The land he loved would have been drained and subdivided and carved into lots, and he would not be standing here now looking out at its ferocious beauty with as much awe as if he were seeing it for the very first time.
The land itself was as flat as a Kansas wheatfield, but what to some was monotonous, John found hypnotic. It was what drew him to the window at just about this time each day, when it was neither light nor dark, when the world seemed to hover in a sort of limbo where there was no past to haunt him and no future to look forward to, when the sky was ablaze with color and all that mattered was the moment and the land. This was country that had to be understood. It was a wild, unforgiving place inhabited by dangerous, venomous creatures. And the most dangerous of all was the one that looked back at him in the clear glass.
With unerring predictability his thoughts drifted back to the past. It was crazy, he knew. After all, he wasn’t responsible for Maggie’s death. At least not in any court of law, tribal or otherwise. Nevertheless, he had tried, convicted and sentenced himself in his own heart.
He heaved a ragged sigh