Читать книгу Panther On The Prowl - Nancy Morse - Страница 11

It was a place that wasn’t on the way to anywhere else. You had to go there on purpose, not that anyone ever did.

John used his paddle to press the nose of the canoe against a wall of saw grass, but the stalks were higher than John and Rennie’s heads and wouldn’t budge. Eventually, his strength prevailed and the walls parted, and little “saws” scratched at their arms as they moved through it.

Rennie knew now why John had insisted she wear his long-sleeved denim shirt. She’d been hesitant at first to accept it, when that wild and earthy scent of his had wafted up from the supple fabric to fill her head with undisciplined thoughts. She was glad to be wearing it, though, for not only did it offer her arms protection from the nasty little blades that pricked the soft cotton, but the scent that she had found disturbingly intoxicating now filled her with a feeling of safekeeping, as if nothing could harm her in his presence.

“This must be how Moses got his start in the bulrushes.”

His deep voice called her away from the thought of him and the warm surge of feelings it elicited.

Finally, the canoe broke free of the tangle. The fragrance of blossoms and earth and crystal-clear air filled Rennie’s nostrils. “John.”

He knew by the way she said his name what she was asking. “There’s a jungle of cypresses rising from the swamp,” he said, describing the scenery for her. “They’re glowing coppery with morning sunshine and their limbs are laced with Spanish moss and red and white orchids.”

“This place must be Paradise,” she said.

“Some might say that. But you should know that this paradise is dying.”

She turned her sightless eyes toward him and tilted her head questioningly.

“Years of development and agricultural poisons are killing it inch by inch,” he said. “Thanks to a plan dating back to the fifties to dry up the swamp, only about half of the original Everglades remain.” There was an undisguised anguish in his voice, as if he were talking about a good friend that he was watching slowly die. But for now it was still there and teeming with life.

Rennie cocked her head to the side and listened. There was a little plop in the water. “What’s that?”

“A yellow-bellied turtle just dived off the rock it was sunning itself on,” he answered.

A screech from above drew her attention skyward. “And that?”

“An osprey. Clinging to the edge of an elaborate nest. She doesn’t appreciate our company.”

She turned her head toward a rustling that came from a crook in the forest.

“Baby alligators,” he said, “fighting their way across the water lettuce.”

The calm green place that John described offered its heart to Rennie’s troubled soul. She couldn’t see the towering palms, the live oaks and sweet gums, the moss-draped cypresses or the gumbo limbos that he said were there, but she felt them as keenly as if she could. Out here life didn’t seem so terribly complicated at all. She leaned back in the canoe, savoring the sun’s warmth on her cheeks and listening to John Panther’s deep-throated voice describe the sounds and sights that were all around them.