Stomp Bigfoot Harvests Dynamite and Fights Pirates on Chokoloskee

Bandits in the mangroves. Two fugitives tend Wildgrown dynamite in Big Cypress Swamp. Harpoon pirates on the lurk. Stomp is ever-searching.

After the Third Seminole War ended in 1858, the remaining remnants of Miccosukee Seminole Indians receded deep into the swamps to preserve their culture and lives. The two- or three-hundred Unconquered People lived amongst the thickets and cypress trees with their roots bundled in the murk. On the Western piece of the Everglades, a European community of some five families settled in the 1870s on an island trading center called Chokoloskee. This community, at this time, could only be reached by boat.  

Down here was a lore that lay in the mud and watched those who entered – a history of would-be conquerors, of runaway slaves, of brooding outlaws. Some of those who wandered in sought restoration. Some fled for their lives. One or two, holding on to both, came to harvest the dynamite.  

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1893 – Everglades – Chokoloskee Island. The bottom rung of America, where there is nowhere left to run.

“Hold it still, young Stomp Friend. Hold it still for Chup-chup.”

“I am holding it still for Chup-chup.”

“Pull the plant out by the roots with both hands.”

“It’s icky.”

“You’re standing knee-deep in swamp mud. Everything is icky.”

Black writhing hard roots interlaced through the thick murk that was covered in what looked like water lilies with pulsating purple veins in their pads. Drooping cypress branches hung down around them so dense that Stomp brushed them aside like a curtain to speak. Their gentle branches rested their fingers on the water top. The swamp creatures of the half-light tended to their business out of sight and sound. Stomp and Gesuvio the Turtle tended to theirs.

In here, all was still.

Soft droplets shook off like gloopy raindrops as Stomp plunged his right paw deep under a bulbous thick lily pad and held it firm. His left paw pulled up a slack line of translucent tendrils that grew darker as they slimed up out of the water. The root system surfaced, dripping, a knotted glump of dark earthy tangle with clay-like pods – weathered in husks like walnuts. It was Dynamitus Nymphae.

Wildgrown dynamite.

Stomp held the great bulbous knot of hanging roots above his head as mud clopped and dripped down his back. “Is this good for Chup-chup?”

“Yes, Stomp Friend. Chup-chup!”

A plunging sharp splash resounded and a coarse-furred rat creature with squinty eyes and whiskers popped its head up and skittered up Stomp’s back.

“Ahh ah!” Stomp danced his feet in the mush mud back and forth. “Claws in my back. Claws in my back.”

Chup-chup was a Nutria rat.

The beady-eyed rodent scrambled to the thickest piece of the dynamite knot and dunked his head in.

Chuka-chuka-chuka-chuka-chuka-chuka. Nom nom.  

Stomp watched the creature separate the knotted root of dynamite seedlings from the water lily tendrils with its teeth. “Look at those little nibblers. Like a Brazilian machete with fur.”

Chup-chup stopped to look up at Stomp. Chup-chup was not amused.

Bloop.

The water lily fell loose and Stomp was left holding a perfectly harvested cluster of Wildgrown. Chup-chup dove off and splashed in. Stomp felt a sharp rodent-teeth-shaped pain in his ankle and hopped once.

“Owie! The Chup-chup bites!”

“Thank you, Chup-chup.” Gesuvio pulled a bulging wad of coca leaves from under his shell. “Treats for you and your family. Imported from the homeland.”

Chup-chup snatched the wad of coca and hoisted it up. Little furry heads peaked out from logs and roots all around the grove and their squinty faces pinched up in smiles. They ducked down and disappeared.

Gesuvio reached under his great moss-shagged shell and retrieved a sugarcane pipe, which he clamped in his beak. He bent down next to Stomp and delicately pulled a pod from the knotted husk, like a vigneron with grapes. He squeezed the little seed and Stomp watched the pod grow excited with glowing red energy. It shook in Gesuvio’s fingers and trembled as he applied further pressure.

“There you go, little one.”

The trembling pod reached a state of suspended stimulation. Sparks shot out and fell to the water. Gesuvio leaned in and cupped his hands and lit his sugarcane pipe.

Prft. Prfftt. He sucked in deep. Pfft. Perrrf.

“Oh, that’s damn good.” He laughed a big rumbling laugh that echoed across the water. “They’re angiosperms, you know.” He took a deep hit. “The pods are bisexual.”

Stomp looked disturbed. “This sounds naughty.”

Gesuvio puffed and motioned to a cargo canoe moored against a drift log. “Let’s get two more bundles. The manatees will meet us at Harmony Root past dusk.”

“Aw, I hate the manatees,” Stomp whined. “They’re bullies.”

Gesuvio’s thunder rumble voice frightened the water: “Bully them back.”  

“And this island makes my belly button sweat. No escape routes. No map.”

Gesuvio puffed his cigarette. “The thing about islands, Stomp friend, is that no matter who crashes the party, we can escape from any point.”

Stomp rubbed his hands through his armpits and sniffed his paws. “There’s no pies here neither.”

Their banter echoed through curtained foliage, up through the trunks and out the broccoli tops of trees that expanded out for miles under a damp morning sky. Frenzied footsteps tripped and staggered through the brush. Branches snapped. The wheeze of an exhausted creature exhaled mightily as a sweat-drenched man fell forward and plopped face-first into swamp.

A cottonmouth casually slithered off. Watching eyes dipped under and moved with a ripple. A flapping of wings absconded from a tree branch. The forest was ever watching.

Gesuvio’s flipper raised in the air. Stomp froze. The cloud of fine tobacco smoke drifted languid in the humidity. Gesuvio turned, and slitted his eyes, and exhaled a great puff.

The man raised himself to his knees and grasped around a cypress trunk. He was scraggly and stenched with despair and saltwater body odor. His chest hair was matted swirls under broken undershirt buttons crusted with swamp algae. He fumbled along his ears and unclasped gold earrings one by one, and dumped them in a pocket.

Breeze rustled through branches. Stomp still knelt with his hands frozen around a dynamite stem. Gesuvio plucked his pipe out.

“Come out of there, you.”

The swamp was silent. A pair of crusted mud hands groped around the trunk and a head poked around.

“You, come out.”

The man stood up with his hands raised and sloshed through the root tangles. He jerked his head back behind him and looked forward to the turtle and the ‘squatch.

“Shall I bonk him?”

Stomp jerked a log up from the water.

“No bonking just yet.”

“I ain’t here to do nothin’ unsavory.” The man called out. “I’m…I’m runnin’, is all.”

Snneeeerrrrfft.

The man snotted a clod of boogers into his palm and thwatted them into the swamp. They floated there on the surface.

Gesuvio’s voice boomed: “What’s your name, fugitive?”

The man sloshed in closer, and closer. They were three feet apart. His legs and arms visibly trembled. “Sni—” He shook his head. “It’s Hickory.”

“Hickory, is this the first time you’ve stumbled into a deep swamp and met a pair of smugglers with black obsidian souls and no qualms with murder?”

“No, sir.” Hickory wobbled his head. “First time.”

Gesuvio turned to Stomp. “What’s that saying that’s been going around? ‘Once you’ve been found, gotta put ‘em in the ground’?”

Stomp dropped the clump of dynamite back into the water. “Bonk time.”

“N-n-no. Please. I gots daughters and kids. And sons, too. Please, now.”

Stomp sloshed two steps and examined the man at close range – this trembling, whimpering man. Almost endearing how pathetic he was, but there was still some dignity in that face. The man rocked violently and then made a move. He pushed a hand out and held it up to Stomp.

Stomp reached back and shook it firm. Stomp turned back to Gesuvio.

“Well, can we keep him?”

Gesuvio hoisted a swath of knotted plant bundles over his shoulder and trudged to the canoe. “Bring him.”

Hickory smeared his hands across his eyes and flickered the mud from his eyelids. He followed, whipping his head back to check into the jungle thicket behind.

The pounding hum of dusk bugs enveloped the men who sat around a bonfire on the Chokoloskee shore and ate turtle meat. Their transport was a line of long, thin canoes – like Viking raiders – inland pirates of old. The vessels were so thin and the draft so shallow that these men could slip in and through cypress bogs without ever getting their feet wet. On the sides of these boats in block letters were tattoos of ownership:

WESTERN TRADING COMPANY OF WHALERS

These lean men smelt like a pot of vinegar bred with some sauerkraut. The glow of the fire was on all their faces, and the devil lay in the shadows under their eyes. They were drenched in tattoos, wore jumbles of earrings, and smelled of sea salt. Some of them—recruits—were southern whites with an air of the confederate. One of them tied stakes onto the perimeter of a rough-sinewed trap net.   

“We been down these ten thousand islands for weeks and only kilt turtles.”

“ROO!” Was the rough grunt of men in unison.

Another chipped in:

“And the turtle don’t taste right. It make my teeth feel anxious.”

ROO!

A playful-faced man named Van Horn with groomed nails but in cane-farm clothes stood with one knee propped up on a log. He wore a Cuban hat and scribbled on a tablet on his knee. He made short, sharp strokes with a blunted broad-tipped pencil. He ripped the page, folded it, and tucked it into a pocket.

“The trip is already profitable, Mr. Tibbothy and Mr. Thwacker. When you hunt rabbit, where do they run?”

Tibbothy popped a baby sea turtle shell in half and sucked the dripping meat that spilled broth down his chin. “Rabbit run to the thicket.”

The fine-tongued Van Horn motioned behind them to the buzzing reeds and tangled trees in the darkness. “We are in a very big thicket.”

Tobias the Harpoon-wielding Face-tattooed Slayer stood up bare-chested with a coral snake tattoo winding down his neck. He smelled of earthen black tea and ground spice that had laid down in his skin on long travel.

“Should we find a furred whale of exotic influence in these tropics, I lay claim to its eyes.”

ROOOOO – OOHT!

The chant grew lustier at this. Men softly clapped harpoon staffs against the sand. One of them leaned forward to the fire and clenched his hand around a glowing ember. Another with a cutlass on each hip leaned in and there was the urgent hiss of fire against hard skin. He stood up and pounded his chest twice.

“I will find a female whale of the forest and drink her milk and eat her young!”

ROOO!

“I will seek madness in the night and it will taste my blade!”

ROOOOOO!

“Whoa-hoh!” Van Horn smacked his Cuban hat on his knee. “Now you’re getting into it.”

ROO! ROO! ROO! ROO!

In the underside of an uprooted giant, a fire glow threw sparks into the night. It roared and flickered shadows against a great tangle of roots. Gesuvio had his ears strained up to the night. Stomp sat with upright perfect posture and an enrapt look on his face. He watched Hickory gorge a bowl of grass shrimp in swamp broth. Stomp was giddy.

In his chest, Hickory pressed down the terror of the distant chants.  

Gesuvio relaxed down to his resting state and molded fresh Wildgrown into rounded balls. He pulled from a pile of thin reeds and tucked one of them into the ball. He clipped the reed with his turtle beak and gently lay the ball in a burlap coffee sack – like the one Stomp carried on his back.

“This one’ll give some poacher a nice whump.”

Stomp clapped his hands off his knees. “Mr. Hickory, please tell me more about your upbringing as a door-to-door licorice salesman. I am so fascinated.”

Gesuvio observed the pair of sea snakes tattooed on each of the man’s calves and the wide-open earring holes. Hickory wiped a sloppy trail of soup glisten from his chin.

“Welp, call me Hick.” He jerked one hand up and flung up a finger with each ingredient: “blackstrap molasses. Cane sugar. Beetroot juice. Thems is your core ingregients.”

“Hick.” Stomp nodded and put one paw under his chin. “I’m ah…partial to a good pastry now and again. What kind of pies does West Virginia carry?”

“Welp, we got blackberry pies, blueberry pies, elmsweet mango mint pie – I’m bringing one of them back for my daughters.”

“Oh, goodie.” Stomp clapped again like a small child and let loose a little fart of glee. Disturbed, the fire threw sparks into the night. “Hey, teach me that song again.”

Hickory slapped up a beat on one thigh. “Oh, Polly’s got a rump, daddy’s gonna spank it, Polly gotta rump, daddy gonna spank it, Polly gotta rump and daddy gonna spank and all the mice in the walls go ‘Whoaaaaa!’”

Gesuvio stared at the tale-teller who furtively glanced out to the darkness. “Very appropriate, sir Hickory.”  

A heavy splash resounded in the bog. Ripples tremored towards the stillwater around their campsite.

“Hummawhommmm!”

Hickory dove behind his log seat and hid.

A Florida Sea Cow plopped its great fat chest up on the bank and splashed incessantly at them in greeting.

“Stop – stop it.” Stomp swatted at the fat creature’s fat paw. “Swamp degenerate – stop splashing.”

Hickory slowly peeked up over. His face grew trance-like, an ecstasy that reflected sharply in the firelight. A trio more of smuggler manatees splashed up on their tiny shoreline and turned away from the leader. They knelt and presented their humped backs for cargo.

“Hummawhommmm!”

“Yes, hello.” Stomp shimmied his butt away. “Please refrain from splashing during storytime.”  

Gesuvio waited for the shimmering manatee to throw forward a bundled package with its mouth, a clump in brown wax paper. He ripped at it with both flippers. Stomp crawled over and sat on both knees.

“Did he get the raw sugar? Ask him if he got the raw sugar.”

“He got the raw sugar. It’s right here, you addict.”

Gesuvio threw a bundle at Stomp and Stomp delicately ran a hand over the brick. “No more grumbly rumbly in my rumbly tummy.”

Harrroooff Harmawwwwww. Hark Hark Hark!

Gesuvio reached into the tangle of massive tree roots and pulled out two bulbous coffee sacks. He plopped them both on a manatee’s back. He went back twice more. “Tell your friends up north that once this diney-miney dries, it can’t get wet again until they’re ready to pow pow boom boom. Yes? Pow pow boom boom?”

Harrkkkk hark puw puw puw.

The great fat manatee bobbed its head in understanding.

“Ask him that thing we talked about.” Stomp was pacing around the fire. “That big thing.”

“Shush.” Gesuvio held up one flipper.

Stomp was tapping Gesuvio on his shell. “Do it. Ask him the thing.”

“Sit!”

Stomp sat on the log and folded his hands. Gesuvio cleared his throat:

“Hrm Hark pow warnk squatch pow der um…harkem wanderpow seenpow familypow harkem?”

Gesuvio shrugged and held up both flippers. The manatee nodded aggressively and made a throat-slit motion.

“What’s that mean? What does that mean?”

Gesuvio looked back. “Sea Dong says that he hasn’t seen anyone that looks like you in months, not since he came back down the coast.”

Stomp exhaled a sharp breath that misted gaseously and made green flame shoot from the outskirts of the fire. “Months! Not years – months!”

The cargo manatees shrugged off back into the bay water. Sea Dong gesticulated once more and splashed away.

Harm haw!

“Yes, yes – until next time, Sea Dong.”

Gesuvio pulled a heavily bound chunk from their package and unwrapped a gleaming new tin of fine tobacco.

“Just wonderful. All the way up from Cuba.”

Stomp stared into the fire in silence. Sweat fell from Hickory’s chin. He licked his lips.

“I know where you can find trace of you.”

Gesuvio rolled tobacco into loose brown leaves and Stomp stabbed his finger into his sugar brick and dabbed it around his gums.

“I seen a ‘squatch like you on this island not a week ago.”

Stomp kept his eyes intensely on the sugar and dabbed two, three fingers into the bag. The fire crackled. Their little island buzzed thick with insects. A bullfrog listened from its seat in the mud.

“I seen her when I was foraging berries. That’s come why I weren’t surprised to see you.”

Gesuvio finished rolling his cigarette and dipped the end into a patch of coals. Stomp rolled his sugar back up into the wax paper and tucked it in his burlap satchel. He avoided any eye contact and rose and swaggered out of the firelight. There was a crunching of thick, rough reeds being broken and the thwump of a sasquatch landing in the dark growth. Seconds later there was only the soft wheezes of sleep hidden amongst the grass.  

Gesuvio narrowed his eyes from across the fire and puffed his cigarette. His eyes were half-closed in the firelight.

“Hickory.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have children, Hickory?”

“Sir, I have three precious daughters.”

Gesuvio spoke with his eyes resting. “You’ve noted that my partner has a vulnerable interest in finding others like him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I awake in the morning, and find you’ve left on an ill errand, I’ll tie each of your limbs to a manatee and have them har-hum into the swamp until you’ve been pieced into quarters.”

“Absolutely, of course, understood, sir.”

Gesuvio’s soft parts seemed to shrink down. The turtle deflated right in front of Hickory. He was soon only shadow against a vast shell, and Hickory watched intently as all of him disappeared.

KLUNK.

The shell fell over and rocked back and forth, and shivered into stillness. It looked like nothing more than a moss-covered rock in the wilderness. Only little puffs of exhaled tobacco were left – smoke from a living chimney.

Hickory crawled over and waved a hand in front of the empty space where there used to be a skeptical-eyed turtle head. He licked his lips twice. He could hear Stomp’s soft wheezes from the tall grass.

He arose from his thorned-up knees and sprinted into the forest.

Tobias the Harpoon-wielding Face-tattooed Slayer slept in a swath of matted ferns. Around him, legs and arms askew and scattered, were the bodies and snores of the Western Trading Company of Whalers. A Haitian with a dagger across his lap kept watch on the edge. By the fire, Van Horn sat with a map spread and marked distances between islands with his blunted pencil.    

“Van Horn.”

The Haitian spoke softly – a murmur. Van Horn looked up. The pirate made a suppressing motion with his palm down and pointed into the darkness.

A branch snapped. A murmur moved in the saw grass that was greater than the breeze. Another twig broke. The pirates’ eyes flickered open one by one without movement and they each reached for the closest sharp pointy thing.

The ruckus was growing. Brush crackled and the grass stirred in alarm. A pale body shot out of the tall reeds and the Haitian swung an arm out and clotheslined it into the dirt. A swarm of pirates jumped up and hooted and hoisted harpoons:

ROOT! ROOT! ROOOOOO

“Get offa me! Gerroff!”

Van Horn looked up from his map. “Ah, Snitchrat—you’ve returned to us.”

Hickory—AKA Snitchrat—plucked a thorn from his belly button and sniffed it before tossing it in the muck.

“I hain’t never left.”

“No, Snitchrat.” Van Horn laughed. “You very clearly deserted.”

Snitchrat Hickory stood heaving and unfazed, surrounded by spearpoints. “I signed on for a contract. Ain’t no long-term deal.”

Van Horn swaggered up with a cane stick and prodded the sea snakes tatted down Snitchrat’s legs. “The Western Whaling Trading Company is a for-life agreement.”

“I got big news for you.” He huffed. “Big opportunities for all of us.”

“Feed him to the crabs!” yelled one.

ROOT!

“N-no. I tell you—I got daughters, sir—I tell you what I seen.”

“And your daughters will be amply compensated when we redeem your life insurance policy to the Western Whaling Merchant House.”

ROO!

“There’s a grown-ass he-squatch and a talking turtle not 400 yards off.” Snitchrat swung his chin up high, like he just invented chocolate. “I got them set ripe for ambush. You’re gonna need me.”

Van Horn swung the cane stick up on his shoulder. The bonfire crackled. The body of pirates waited. Van Horn stood with his playful resting smirk. He swung the cane stick down into the sand.

“Well, alright then, Snitchrat. Tell us how to harpoon these whales.”

Hickory’s eyes flickered open. He was back in his sleep spot at the sandbar with the downed roots. He had stumbled and cursed his way back through the dark swamp, fearing each moment that his legs would be ground out from under by a gator or his jugular pierced by a swamp panther. What he saw now was far more terrifying.

The hot alcohol breath of Stomp Freedomfoot blew against his cheeks from inches away. Stomp’s eyes were fixated. He was knelt in close, watching Hickory sleep.

“Show me.”

“Show you, sir?”

“The trace of me. What you said.”

Stomp arose and one gruff paw pulled Hickory the Snitchrat up to his feet. The burn in Stomp’s chest smoldered like embers stacked around the base of a too-green sapling. 

“I take you there right now.”

“Stomp, friend.”

Gesuvio nibbled the lime green husk of a pond apple down to its core and threw it on a pile. He stood up. “You suddenly have an unbounding capacity for trust, Stomp Friend.”

Stomp still held a paw on the nape of the refugee’s neck. Hickory was frozen like a creature hoping to survive the moment.

“I’ve got to see.”

Gesuvio lit a loose cigarette and peeled a fleck of tobacco from his tongue. “Very well.”

Stomp looked around the campsite and reached down into the swamp water. He came up with a dripping log, heavy and hardened. “I’ll bring this nice bonking log.” He grunted. “For safety.”

Bedraggled Hickory shook his head hard. “I seen the spore and I seen where she made her nest. Big matted down bitch bed.” He tramped off through the swamp and swatted a hand after Stomp. “Come on, now.”   

Stomp hoisted his log club and stepped on. Gesuvio rose and walked to the sawgrass edge. He knelt and peered into the mud pocket where the bullfrog had astutely sat and listened the previous night.

“Come.”

The bullfrog appeared from its curtain of thick protection. Gesuvio laid down a flipper and the frog hopped aboard. Gesuvio whispered at it:

“…. ….. …. Chup-chup.”

And laid the bullfrog back down in the mud. The frog’s black eyes shone without emotion. It hopped once into the tall grass and was gone.

Gesuvio waddled to the tree where he kept his grenades.

A sea breeze curled its cool body along the mud flats and ran through the grass. The pirates had dulled the glint of their harpoons with wet ash and they lay flattened on the shoreline. One pirate on each corner of the clearing squatted still. Their hands were wrapped around ropes that held up a heavy net draped between tree tops and loaded in the center with rocks and logs. Van Horn lay with his back to the shore and peered into the swamp with a pair of tiny designer binoculars. Tobias the Harpoon-wielding Face-tattooed Slayer held out his hand and grunted:

“Grnt.”

Van Horn handed him the binoculars.

“That’s what I said, Tobias. Nothing stirring. Perhaps we can see what Snitchrat’s hindshanks will fetch at market instead.”  

“Grnt.”

The morning was dewy and humid, but the air here felt oppressive – like God had balled up the Sahara Desert and gently rested it overtop this swamp island. No gators lay in the shallows. The tree foliage had wilted inward to protect their bark. Even the insects fled.

The swamp waited.

Then there were voices.

“My mama always boilt her potatoes with peanut butter. Said it was criminal to just eat potata. Peanut butter easy to make. I’ll show you how to make peanut butter. After.”

“Uh huh.”

“Yeap, right up in that clearing out front there.”

Stomp dropped to his haunches and snuck through the ankle muck and the sawgrass to the grove edge. The soft lap of waves was not far. He sniffed again and peered up. The treetops were unnaturally bent. The branches seemed to point downward.

“I smell men.”

Hickory lifted his head and the sweat streamed down his neck. “I cain’t smell nuthin’.”

“You said you have three daughters.”

“I do. I swear on them that I seen what I seen. Maybe the she-squatch got a taste for men and she’s out there grillin’ some of them shanty shoremen trader folk.”

Stomp gazed out again and made to turn back, but turned around once more, still brandishing his bonking log.

“We had soup together. And stories. And you told me about West Virginia pies.”

Hickory looked up at Stomp with a stoic face. “I seen what I seen.”

Stomp grabbed him up with one arm and swung him forward:

“Then you go first.”

Hickory fell out onto the clearing. The smashed-down soot from a cold fire was visible inches from his face. He stood and brushed his pants and waited.

The clearing was silent.

“See, I tolt you she were here. Look at that fire soot…”

Stomp burst out into the clearing and swung around. He went left to right and only saw ocean.

Thwaaaaaaerrrrrrip.

Four pirates released at once and tree trunks and loose stone fell and smashed Stomp.

“Owie!”

He dropped his log and Hickory Snitchrat scampered into the brush and turned to watch like a mouse in a wall hole.

ROOOOOOOT! ROO ROO ROO ROO!

The pirates jumped up all around. Ecstasy. Delirious enchantment. They were high on capture. They danced on the net edge and hoisted their harpoons.

“Whale! Whale! Whale! Whale!” they chanted.

“Hold the net!” Van Horn screamed. “Hold the net! Don’t disturb the pelt!”

Tobias the Harpoon-wielding Face-tattooed Slayer strode forth and ripped a chunk of fur through the net from Stomp’s ear.

“Owie again!”

“I will eat this beast’s kidney and drink the tears of his mother as his children beg for the scraps of the unforgiven. Hahhhhh!” he hissed.

ROOO - OOT?

Stomp knelt under thick-roped net with two hands to his bloody nose. “What doth thath even mean?”

A chittering came from the shoreline – a single squeak. Then there was a chorus of rising chants from every branch and trunk in the forest.

CHUK-BOOM!

Shards of pirate longboat geyser-sprayed up into the air and rained into the surf. The ragged splinters plopped into the water and floated up. Van Horn stepped slowly backwards toward the shoreline.  

CHUK-BOOM!

Another one.

A squinty-eyed whiskered nutria rat ran out of the brush and shook a little rodent fist:

“Meeeeet!”

Then ran back to cover. Round clay sparking objects rolled out of the swamp grass and settled on the net. A pirate picked it up and stared at it.

CHUK-BOOM.

Pirate chunks everywhere. The harpoonists gripped their weapons. Van Horn turned and sprinted.  

“To the boats!”

The nutria dropped grenades from the treetops. Men screamed and fell. Stomp was still entangled in thick net. A camouflaged figure moved amongst the perimeter and lobbed Wildgrown into the mess.

“Shoo, devils!” The voice boomed. “You shall not pass!”   

Two longboats remained. Van Horn made it to the surf by the second-to-last boat and then—

SHA-BOOM.

Splinters.

Tobias dragged up Van Horn with one arm and dumped him in the last canoe. He jumped in and pushed out with a paddle. The Haitian lookout waded in and they dragged him aboard just before the surf grew too deep.

Panic ensued. The remaining band dropped their weapons and fled into the swamp.

Then the swamp came alive.

A gator leapt up and death-rolled its body around a man and felled him. Another surged forth and clamped its jaws on the neck. The swamp birds hooted. The nutria screeched and ran around rolling grenades into men’s feet. Several made it out to the surf and the introduction of a deep rumble:

Harm hawwww!

A manatee surfaced with its amiable smiling fat face. It flopped once and lay its 600-pound body on top of a man trying to swim out. Two other manatees converged on a water-treading poacher. They pummeled the man until his head went under. Tobias the Harpoon-wielding Face-tattooed Slayer hoisted his spear. With one mighty heave he javelined the harpoon toward the commotion and speared through a manatee. The creature rolled over and a great cry arose from the sea.

Gesuvio entered the clearing with a cigarette in his mouth and the nutria helped him tug the heavy knotted rope from Stomp’s limbs.

“I got all tangled up.”

“I see this, Stomp Friend.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There is no apology here.” Gesuvio looked out to the manatees who were dragging their wounded mate to the shore. “You did what you felt best.”  

Chup-chup the biter rat shuffled forth and stood and held out a paw. Gesuvio reached under his shell.

“Line up, now. Coca leaves for everybody. Nice, non-addictive coca leaves.”   

Stomp felt the net fall from his shoulders but he still knelt in the dirt. He knelt with his eyes down and would not move. Gesuvio put a leathered flipper on his shoulder.

“Come now back to camp. It is still morning.” He smiled a beaky smile. “We will have breakfast.”

Gesuvio and Stomp walked together and Gesuvio put a flipper around his shoulder as they walked. Stomp reached down and picked up the end of his bonking log with one arm. He dragged it along behind.

“I didn’t even get to do no bonkin’.”

“No, you didn’t.”

Their voices faded into the brush.

“You know I really thought there was a chance…”

In here, it was damp and dark. It was warm. The mud was warm. The pee in his breeches was warm. The leeches that worked their way up Snitchrat’s inner thighs—they were warm, too.

He was made small deep in a hollow tree trunk. Outside, insects hummed again. The occasional splash of a frisky gator sounded. He peeked his eyes up out of the hollow and gazed around.

It was the gray before morning. He’d cowered for 20 hours. He knew where he could find a boat—those Miccosukee natives up the shore coast—he would take one from them. He was starved. Maybe he could eat the leeches. He shrugged it off. No. He was a survivor. He’d steal a boat now and get back to Everglades City. He was a survivor.

He smirked to himself and hoisted up and climbed down out of the trunk.

THWUNK.

The log hit him in the back of the head—a light dazing blow. He tried to make sense of the fuzz in his eyes and could only feel the soft blow of fine tobacco smoke in his face. The stern face of the big turtle came into view.

“Hello, friend.”

Four manatees sat stoic behind him. They each had a long length of rope tied around their fore-limb flippers.  

“Remember what I said about your limbs?”

At dawn, Stomp sat on shore by himself and looked out across the green water under a gray sky. Campfire remnants flickered behind him. Occasionally a fishing boat would curl in from the channel and head to the north side of the island to trade. He stared at a piece of broken flotsam that had washed up here with the current:

Property of Western Whaling Merchant House
Oak island, Nova Scotia

He tucked the board into his burlap knapsack and hoisted it onto his back. He stood up his bonking log and used it as a walking stick. He trudged back through the broken sandy path.

The clearing was the same as it was yesterday. The smashed-down soot of a pirate bonfire. Dried blood. A broken harpoon here and there. Stomp surveyed the area and threw down his log. He started on the left side where it met the swamp edge and worked it like a grid. He dropped to his knees and crawled inch by inch.

At midnight of the second night, he was nearly finished. He crawled with his eyes and nose to the ground, sniffing and peering into blades of dark grass. His stomach burned and he knew if he didn’t eat soon, he would rage.

He felt for matted areas where a bed might have existed. He sniffed. He ran his fingers across every bump in the ground like braille. When dawn came on, he stood and stretched and wandered forward into the surf. He gently dipped in and dove forward without a splash. He swam without effort and without idea. He swam to elude memory.  

He could find no trace.

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I’m so glad you came along for this sliver of mangrove adventure and solitude. If you’d like to support Stomp Roams, you can share the story or tap that little “subscribe” button.

How deep into this world do you want to go? Read Stomp’s last adventure, 80s Bodyguard Stomp Does Halloween in the Valley, as an out-of-work Stomp takes on a protection job for a suspicious scientist in 1982.

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