Carl laughed. “Now you know why they call it saw grass.” He swept his paddle around in a wide arc. “Pa-hay-okee.”

Jack remembered Anya using that word.

“Indian, right? Means ‘river of grass’ or something?”

Carl grinned. “Hey, you been studyin’.”

A river of grass… sea of grass was more like it. An ocean of browned saw grass swept away in all directions, dotted here and there by islandlike hummocks of cypress, oak, and pine that looked like giant green mushrooms sprouting from a dead lawn. He hoped it wasn’t dead. Just sleeping.

So flat, so like he’d envisioned Kansas might be. Too open for Jack. He was used to living in steel-, concrete-, and glass-lined canyons. The horizon seemed so far away here. Who needed a horizon anyway? Horizons gave him the creeps. He could live very well without one. In fact, back home he did.

Why on earth would anyone want to live out here? No deli, no pizza delivery, no electricity to keep beer cold. Like living in the Dark Ages.

Carl said, “I got Miccosukee blood in me, you know. At least that’s what my momma told me. They’ve got a reservation north of here off Route 41, and even a casino, but I ain’t never been to neither. The Miccosukee’s on my momma’s side. Don’t know bout my dad. My momma met him at the lagoon. I hear he didn’t hang around after he seen me. Just took off and we never heard from him again.”

Jack flicked a glance at Carl’s covered right arm. Should he ask about it?

Maybe some other time.

Instead he said, “So there’s been people living around this lagoon for generations?”

“Yeah and no,” Carl said. “The only people livin’ there now are the kids of the ones who used to live there. Everybody moved away when we was itty-bitty babies because they thought the lagoon was makin’ us all strange. But we kids came back.”

“Why?”

“Cause I guess we didn’t seem to fit no other place.”

Jack tried to think of a delicate way to say this. “Because of the way you all looked?”

Carl shrugged. “Some of that, maybe. But mostly because the lagoon seemed right for us. It felt like…home.”

“You moved out, though.”

“Yeah. But not far. That’s why I wasn’t too excited bout goin’ back. I’m afraid I might get sucked in again.”

“So how many live there?”

“Bout twenty. We’re all bout the same age too, give or take a couple years.”

Jack ducked as a big bird with an enormous wingspan swooped above them.

“What the hell is that?”

“Just a big ol’ heron.”

“Oh.”

For a moment there Jack had thought it was a pterodactyl. Or maybe a pteranodon. Whatever. The one with the tail.