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don’t want to get stuck in the dirt.”
    “We’re not even going to leave the trailer park.”
    “So where is it?”
    “It’s kind of a surprise. I’d rather show you than talk about it. C’mon. Don’t you trust me?”
    “Now why should I trust you, Aaron? You been real nice to me these last few days, but I don’t know you all that well.”
    “I think you know me well enough to know I won’t hurt you. You don’t like this place, you don’t ever have to go back. But I think you might like it. It’s a place I go almost every day.” Aaron turned and walked Tess in the right direction. He heard Billy’s scooter heading down the ramp.
    “As a rule, I don’t like surprises,” Billy said.
    “I think you’ll like this one.” Aaron slowed his pace to let Billy catch up. When they were side by side, he said, “You ever have a hiding place when you were a kid? A place you liked to sneak off to when you wanted to be alone?”
    “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.” They walked in silence a few moments then turned left on the paved road. “Actually, I do remember a place like that,” he said. “There was this old orange orchard a few blocks from our home. I used to like to head there sometimes. Mainly to get out of doing chores or when I got in some kind of trouble.”
    “A place of refuge?” Aaron said.
    “I guess you could call it that.”
    “Well, there’s this spot on the back end of this property that’s become my place of refuge. No one ever goes out there but me. It’s right up ahead here. I thought if I showed it to you, you could go there whenever you wanted.”
    Billy gave him a puzzled look, but he kept following. Tess’s head was just about even with Billy’s hand. She walked right next to his wheelchair. “Hey there, girl.” Billy patted her head. “What’s her name?”
    “Tess.”
    “Kinda fits. She’s got a nice face.”
    They got to a place where the paved road curved to the left, around one of the larger oak trees in the park. About fifty feet ahead, across a grassy area, the oak forest gave way to a border of scrub and cabbage palms and much thicker brush. Cypress trees began to show up too, because they were close to where the marshy area began. As Aaron and Tess stepped into the grass, he heard Billy’s scooter stop. “It’s all right, Billy. I keep the grass mowed real good here. The ground’s nice and hard.”
    “Where we going?”
    “See the sign?” He pointed to it up ahead. It said: Nature Trail & Lookout.
    “I can’t go in there.”
    “Sure you can. It’s got a strong wooden walkway, goes all the way to this deck right on the river.”
    “I don’t . . . I don’t go in jungles.”
    “It’s no jungle. It’s just a marsh, and it’s pretty much—” Just then Aaron remembered. Billy had a major fear of jungles, even worse than his own. That’s where Billy lost his legs in Vietnam, walking through jungles so thick you couldn’t see a man ten feet in front of you. He had been walking point and stepped on a mine, something they called a Bouncing Betty. Blew him twenty feet in the air. When he came down, his legs were gone just past the knees.
    Aaron walked back to Billy and bent down to eye level. Tess came right over. Her expression changed to something that looked like genuine concern. She seemed to know Billy was struggling. “I know what you’re thinking, Billy. And we don’t have to go back there if you don’t want. I haven’t told you too much about my time in Nam, but I got the same fear of jungles you have. But this place ain’t anything like the jungles in Vietnam, I promise. That’s part of the reason I love it back there.”
    Billy looked at him a few moments.
    “Really, it’s okay.” Aaron stood up and walked a few steps toward the river. “Once we get down that walkway a bit, you’ll see. Just low-lying marshes, as quiet and peaceful a place as I’ve ever seen. It turns and winds a little, maybe fifty yards. Then it opens up