Jimmy Panther pushed forward on the stick. The airboat shot over an open path through the water, then skidded around a fallen palmetto palm. Everyone leaned left, then right. The saw grass was a green blur. Marie back at the gift shop would have his ass if she could see this. But she was the one who had sold these people the tickets, knowing he didn't like to go out this early, especially on Mondays. Jimmy intended to make this a fast trip, a couple miles into the Everglades and out again.

The four tourists sat in the square bow, kids clamped between their parents' knees as if they might otherwise jump out at forty miles an hour. The man held his sun visor on and the woman's blonde hair whirled around her head. Jimmy sat behind them, six feet off the water above a 327 cubic-inch Chevy engine. The noise from the propeller was deafening. Would be deafening, if he didn't have his ear protectors on. He'd given the passengers cotton balls. White tufts came out of their ears.

The girl twisted sideways far enough to look around her father's arm. She smiled, pigtails flying. He could tell she wanted him to smile back, so he did.

Jimmy wore a baseball cap to keep his hair out of his eyes. Marie had once told him a bandanna would look more authentic. He had laughed. How about a Tonto headband with a turkey feather in it? She did insist on a Miccosukee jacket, though, and he obliged. He wore one his aunt had made, a long-sleeved, blousy patchwork of red and yellow and blue, stitched into geometric patterns and accented with rows of white rickrack.

He cut a sharp turn, leaning hard on the stick, and the airboat skipped sideways, sending out a wave that rolled over the saw grass. The kids squealed and ducked down. The man and the woman hugged them into their chests.

These particular people in the airboat, he guessed they were from Sweden, the way their voices slid up and down. Probably taking a day trip off one of the cruise ships at the Port of Miami. Their noses and cheeks were already red. They weren't made for this latitude. The locals he took out were mostly younger, usually with a kid of two. The old people liked to take the bigger airboats up at Holiday Park where they could all sit together, a dozen or more behind a Plexiglass windscreen, with a roof to keep the sun off. The Cubans liked the airboat. They'd pay him extra to stay out longer. The blacks hardly ever showed up, for some reason.

Jimmy eased back on the throttle. The boat showed, nosing down heavier into the water. The water was shallower here, and he didn't want to drag the aluminum bottom on a rock. He maneuvered into deeper water and hit the grass. The boat skimmed over the water, saw grass clattering against the hull. A few minutes later they broke into open prairie, and he ran the road in a wide arc across the flat, unbroken surface.

Jimmy had seen the Everglades from the air a few times, a shimmering mirror, sky and clouds so perfectly reflected you could be looking up, not down. Dark curving areas where the land came out of the water far enough to be called dry. Straight gray lines where the roads went through, a glimmer of canal alongside. Nearer Miami you could see long scars where the ATVs kicked up dirt. You could see where the city was closing in. The land was drained and cleared in neat rectangles, scraped down to white rock that wouldn't dig, wouldn't move unless it was blasted out.

Nearing a line of trees, he cut the engine. The noise lifted off him like a thick hood. He dropped his ear protectors on a hook welded to the seat. The woman stood up and stretched, laughing a grabbing the man's shoulders when the boat rocked. She was about thirty, wearing shorts and a yellow "Bayside Marketplace" T-shirt. She pulled the cotton out of her ears. The man did the same, then took off his visor, wiped his brow on his short sleeve. He smiled at Jimmy. "It is warm today."

Jimmy shrugged. Only the first week in March. These people should come back in August.

The boat drifted past a clump of water lilies. A plum-colored red-beaked bird the size of a pigeon picked its way across the lily pads.

"What is the bird?" the woman said.

Jimmy pronounced it slowly. "Purple gallinule."

The husband clicked his camera. The bird vanished into the bushes before he could take another shot.