Which is why I’d heaped my plate high with shrimp. I sat there eating the shrimp, washing them down with iced beer, talking to the guides. Talking with the guides is a favorite pastime because they spend so much time on the water that any anomaly, any unusual experience, is immediately noted. Most light tackle guides are keen observers and have an even keener sense of humor—a necessity in their very tough business.
I sat there with Dalbert Weeks and Javier Castillo from Two Parrot Bight Marina, plus Nels Esterline, and big Felix Blane from Dinkin’s Bay. They wanted to know about the attempted kidnapping on Guava Key, and I reduced the incident to three or four vague sentences, then spent the next half hour or so listening to their stories. Trolling offshore in twenty feet of water for king mackerel, Dalbert’s party had jumped what he swore was a sail-fish—extremely rare that close to Sanibel or that far from the Gulf Stream. But as Felix noted, “That’s the great thing about saltwater, man. There are no gates out there and fish can swim anywhere they want. You know Sword Point up by the mouth of the river? Supposedly, way, way back, some guy landed a swordfish there and that’s practically
fresh
water come the rainy season.”
Tracking the same king mackerel run, Javier had found the flotsom of what he thought was a refugee boat. As a Cuban who’d fled his homeland during the Mariel boatlift, he’d examined the debris more carefully than most. “Inner tubes tied together, that’s what I first see. Three in all, one of them got no air. That tell me something ’cause inner tubes, that’s the way we used to fish off Havana. Paddle them out”—he made a twirling motion with his hands—“use nothing but hand lines right there at the edge of the Stream.”
He’d also found a five-gallon plastic can with AGUA spray-painted on the side. The can was empty. “Those people dead,” he said sadly. “Died of thirst, maybe went crazy drinking saltwater. Who knows. Over so many years, how many people you think that
maricón
Castro has killed in all?”
I noticed Ransom walking toward me, signaling me to come over, as I listened to Nels ask if anyone else had noticed that orange-colored cloud right at sunrise. He told us it was floating over the Gulf of Mexico all by itself, and was shaped perfectly like the head of a man.
“It looked like Mark Twain,” he said, “with the long hair and mustache. Or maybe Albert Einstein. Wouldn’t it be weird if it was one of their birthdays yesterday?”
Ransom was smiling, seemed real happy with herself. She was thumping her hands, playing an invisible drum, her hips swaying. I noted that she was wearing the golden ring once again, lion’s head in black, as she said, “My brother! I
like
this marina where you live. People, they so nice to me. Ev’body come right up and talk real friendly jus’ like back on Cat Island. An’ they love you, man. They tellin’ me, ‘Your brother, he a good man. He do this for me, or he do daht for me. Your brother, he hold this whole community together.’ ” She hugged her arm around my waist. “That make me so proud. You know what I think I’m gonna do?”
What she was thinking about doing was moving to Sanibel. As I listened to her tell me about it, I noticed a commotion going on over near the rental canoes. It was Tomlinson and several people standing around watching. Tomlinson seemed to be playing tag with Mark Bryant’s dog. He’d tiptoe up to the dog, lunge to grab his collar, and the dog would sprint away. The dog seemed to be moving faster than I’d ever seen an old dog move. He was amazingly agile for an animal his age. It had to be some kind of game, yet Tomlinson appeared to be getting frustrated.
I watched him continue to stalk the dog as Ransom said, “You know what I’d planned to do. I planned to go back to my island, buy me some property, build me a big house with a satellite dish so I don’t have to go to the hotel bar no more to see my shows on the television. Maybe buy me that red car, too, and some air-conditionin’ for the hot days. But after just one night here, seeing how friendly the peoples are, I got me another idea.”
I smiled as the dog began to sprint in crazy circles, really having fun, as Tomlinson tried to anticipate the dog’s trajectory, strangely not seeming to be having much fun at all.
Ransom said, “So the idea I got into my mind, I was talking to some of the women about it. That nice girl, Joyce, who does the cooking and JoAnn, too—man, that woman got a sweet feeling for you! What those ladies think I ought to do is don’t buy a house at all, but maybe buy me a little boat instead. See, that way I can live right here on Sanibel. You get sick or hurt or need somethin’ done at your house, then I’m right here to help you. And if I get homesick for the islands? I’ll just drive my lil’ boat back to the Bahamas and work my way real slow down the chain ’til I get to Cat Island.”
I heard Rhonda call, “Hey, why is Tomlinson chasing Mark’s dog?” as Ransom added, “I already got me a little less than seventeen thousand dollars. That plus the three thousand Daddy Gatrell left me, that’ll give me nearly twenty thousand. Now don’t go tellin’ me
that
ain’t a lot of money.”
I’d warned her before, and now I warned her again about Tucker’s absurd jokes.
I watched her grin fade into a puzzled scowl. “Why you keep saying that, man? What else I got to do but show you those gold coins? Our daddy, he never told you he hid away money?”
Actually, Tucker
had
told me that he’d hidden away money. Often. He was always bragging about all the money he’d made; how much he’d pissed away on failed business schemes, whiskey, and women; how much he had buried if he could just get to it. Tucker had been a tropical junkie. He’d loved the islands; he jumped at any excuse to hop a banana boat or a freighter and head south. The only thing I never doubted about him was that he’d wasted a lot of money. He spent much of his life working cattle in Central America and Cuba, and commercial-fishing the Bahamas. The man I knew never had a cent.
I told her, “Remember what I said about exaggerating? That’s what he might have been doing. He exaggerates to make himself look more important than he really is. Than he really was, I mean.”
The woman’s tone became severe. “Don’t you talk that way about Daddy. Way you speak, you didn’t even like the man.”
Truth was, she was right; I didn’t like Tucker Gatrell. I had my reasons, too. Good reasons.
“Did you read the letter I left out for you? The one he wrote just to you?”
I told her I hadn’t, and instantly regretted it when I saw the unhappy look on her face. I’d known her for only a couple of days, so why did I already hate the idea of disappointing her or hurting her? It wasn’t rational, but there it was. I liked her as a person. She had an endearing honesty about her; seemed genuinely good-hearted, but it was more than that. “I’m going to read it,” I added quickly, “tonight.”
She was shaking her head. “Man, why you want to wait? You go read that letter right now, then come back and listen to us play some more.” She looked at my empty plate. “What’s the holdup? You done stuffin’ your face.”
I chuckled, amused and penitent, dropped my garbage in the can, and told her that’s exactly what I’d do if it made her happy. I walked around by the shallow water docks past the rental canoes to tell Tomlinson that I’d be right back.
The little crowd that had been watching him play tag with the dog had scattered. He stood there alone by the big sea grape outside the Red Pelican. He had his hands on his hips, sweating, breathing heavily. He motioned with his head when he saw me approach and said, “Look at that evil little son-of-a-bitch. And I used to sneak him Milk-Bones every time I had the chance.”
I followed his gaze to see the old golden retriever standing at the edge of the parking lot, staring back at us. The dog’s tail was curved at attention, head held high. “I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s the problem. Why in the world are you mad at Mark’s dog?”
“Because of them, that’s why,” he said, and jerked his thumb toward the Verner twins. They were now standing on the stern of
Das Stasi,
giggling at something Dieter Rasmussen had apparently said.
“Huh? I’m not following. Are you stoned?”
“No! That’s another thing. There’s so much on the line tonight, I didn’t smoke at all and only had seven, maybe eight beers. I can’t even feel it, man. Then that bastard comes along and spoils the entire gig.”
Meaning the dog again.
Tomlinson faced me, his expression pained and said in a frantic whisper, “The fucking dog ate my Viagra, man! I took it out to show Mack what the pill looked like and dropped it. Before it even hit the ground, Shadow gobbled the damn thing down like the Milk-Bone piggie he is. Wouldn’t give it back, either. So now I’m cold sober, plus I’ve got the Verner twins to deal with. How’s
that
for a living hell on earth?”
15
I
walked back to my stilthouse, picked up the envelope that was addressed DUKE FORD, SANIBEL, then tossed it back onto the desk and tried to ignore it. I neatened the kitchen even though it didn’t need neatening, then fiddled with my record player, searching through albums for something to play. Finally selected an old favorite, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and put it on, volume low. Listened to it while I avoided the envelope, marveling at my own immaturity. How could Tucker Gatrell, a man who’d been dead for nearly two years and whom I’d hardly really known, still continue to have a negative influence on my life?
I truly didn’t like Tuck. That, at least, I could admit to myself.
As of a few years ago, I could also finally admit the real reason why.
It had to do with my parents.
My long-dead parents.
I’m not an emotional person. I have very little patience with sappy sentimentality or maudlin displays.
Still, there’s bound to be some emotional attachment between child and parents—which is probably why I still resented what had happened many years before, and the role Tucker had played.
When I was eleven, both of my parents were killed in a boat explosion. They’d set out on a trip through the Ten Thousand Islands south of Naples in Tuck’s homemade, cypress cabin cruiser. It took me more than a year to jigsaw pieces of that boat together and do what professional investigators had failed to do: explain why the boat had exploded.
There were accelerant pour patterns on what remained of the inner hull of the boat—arson wasn’t a consideration, so there’d been a gas leak. Flames will spread fastest across the underside of boat decking or a bulkhead overhang, so the flooring adjacent to a flammable wall is the most likely point of origin.
On the cruiser, the fire’s point of origin was just beneath and above the gas engine’s starter motor. The starter motor was mounted low, under the big block’s cooling jackets, only a few inches from the bilge pump.
Thus I isolated the fuel that had created the explosion and the source of combustion. But what had caused the gas leak? That took longer to figure out.
Tucker had always considered himself a brilliant inventor. He’d applied for and received a number of worthless patents. By going through his papers, I discovered that one of his “inventions” was a butterfly shutoff valve for fuel lines on inboard boats. The valve was made of PVC plastic and joined together by common plumber’s glue.
Petroleum products—such as gasoline—neutralize plumber’s glue, so his choice of sealant was not just idiotic, it was lethal. The glue had melted. The valve had leaked fuel into the bilge. A spark from the engine’s starter motor had ignited the explosion.
Tucker never accepted nor admitted responsibility, though late in his life he did offer me a vague apology.
That’s not the only reason I never got along with my uncle.
Tuck was more than a decade older than my late mother. He looked seventy when I was fifteen. By the time I was thirty, he still looked seventy and he still wore skinny-legged Levi’s and pearl-buttoned shirts. He wore gunslinger clothes because he owned a mud and mangrove ranch in a backwater called Mango, a little tiny fishing village south of Marco Island where he kept a big Appaloosa horse and a few cows.
The last of the Florida cowboys, or “cowhunters” as they were known—that’s what he fancied himself. Newspaper people loved the guy because he was always good for a colorful quote, and more than one writer said Tuck resembled an older Robert Mitchum, but that had more to do with his attitude than his looks. He had the Jack Daniel’s swagger, the polar-blue eyes, the shoulders and scrawny hips, and lots of stories.
The trouble with Tuck was, there was no way to tell which of his stories were true, and which weren’t. Many of those stories were based on the fact that he’d spent a lot of years supplementing his income as a fishing and hunting guide. He’d started in his early teens and, with his natural gift for people and his knowledge of the back country, he actually did become one of the most famous guides in Florida. Tuck claimed to have fished such luminaries as Thomas Edison, who had a winter home in nearby Fort Myers; Colonel Charles Lindbergh; Harry Truman; Walt Disney; Clark Gable; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Dick Pope, who was one of Florida’s first promoters; Ted Williams; Mickey Mantle; and John F. Kennedy. Not only claimed to have fished them but to have been their friends—close friends with a few of them, which led to other outrageous assertions.
Tuck loved nothing better than to sit on his porch at sunset, chew tobacco, tell stories, and get drunk. I know because, as an orphan, the court had assigned me to live with him. I did, too, for a couple of years, which was all I could tolerate before I moved out, still in my teens, and lived alone until I graduated from high school.
Something else I disliked about Tucker was that he was prone to sloppy behavior and indifferent to shabby living conditions. His house was always a filthy massing of clothes, spittoons, garbage, and dirty dishes. Once, when Tucker’s old horse, Roscoe, cribbed himself into colic, Tuck moved the animal inside during three days of rain, stepping over islands of horse manure as if they were nothing more than soiled socks or someone’s old shoes.