The Talking Earth

When Iron Wind worked at night Billie would wait for him outside the Space Life lab, staring up at the stars and wondering which one had a sapphire-blue planet with an Everglades and a girl like herself looking out toward her.

The dugout bumped into a clump of alligator flags, tall plants with single leaves growing like flags atop the bare stems. The plants got their name from these leaves and the fact that they usually surrounded alligator pools. Taking heed of this, she paddled around the plants into a clump of willows, drifted past the willows and came upon an alligator trail she had never seen before. She stood up to better see where it led. The trail wound for miles across the glittery pa-hay-okee to a green island. The island’s dark color told her that it was a “hardwood hammock,” not an island of willows or even of cypress trees like Lost Dog Island, but an island that grew mahogany and gumbo-limbo trees. There would be live oaks and bustic trees on the hammock as well as royal palms and pond apples. It was a wild island-unlike Panther Paw, which was planted to oranges, coconuts, papayas and corns. The limestone on the island would be pitted with sinkholes, deep wells leached by the acids from the plants. Orchids and fern would festoon the trees and the floor of the forest, and its glades would be damp and cool.

“That’s where I will spend the night,” she said. “If any animal is going to talk, he’ll talk to me there on that wild, natural island.”

Billie Wind poled along the alligator trail. It would and twisted through the reeds, crossed sloughs, then beelined through the saw grass for many miles.

The white clouds became purple thunderheads. They roiled and flashed with lightning. For the first time in almost two years she hoped they would not pour down rain although the glades needed it. The water was so low in places that the mud of lime and plant cells, called marl, was cracked and dry, and the saw grass that grew in it was withered. The only water in many places was in the alligator holes and trails, and some of these had now gone dry. Not far from Panther Paw a gator hole had dried up, sending the great reptiles down into the marl to estivate, to go into a protective sleep as some animals do in hot, dry weather.

She poled into an area where there were only a few feet of water in the deeply cut alligator trail. The boat stopped. She walked to the bow, put her pole in the marl, hung on to it, kicked the boat forward and dropped back into the stern. In this manner she moved slowly across the blazing glades.

A thunderhead flashed with lightning. She looked up.

“Are you going to rain?” she asked the clouds by way of testing the voice of the thunderbird god. “Answer me!” A clap of thunder banged overhead with such force that she jumped. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she called. “I believe you are there. I believe you are there.” Then she grinned.