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14

Returning alone from St. James City, I slowed to an idle as I approached the marina basin. Because his dinghy was tied off the stern, I knew Tomlinson had returned to No Mas, the Morgan sailboat that’s been his home for years. It floated water light on the bay, a gray shell attached to its own mirror reflection, a mesa of bare mangroves behind.

No Mas was a safe, familiar presence among the storm wreckage. Tomlinson had just rigged a new mooring anchor—a buoy chained to a submerged engine block not far from the docks. The storm had taken the previous one, and it was good to see the boat near her old spot.

People who live on boats tend to be nonconformists, often weird—especially sailors—and Tomlinson’s about as unusual as they come. He’s one of those rare beings who can wear bizarre clothes, say outlandish things, roam the docks with blazing van Gogh eyes while conversing with imaginary spirits, yet he still exudes a bedrock dependability and decency. He’s commonly described as “genuine” by people who love him but can’t figure out why.

The word applies. Normalcy requires varying degrees of pretense. We all create façades of one type or another. I have built my own walls high. But Tomlinson’s incapable. Genuine. That’s him.

The man wasn’t wearing bizarre clothing now—except for the Kilner goggles. Otherwise, he was naked, sitting on the cabin roof. Singing, too, judging from the way his head was tilted, mouth wide. He looked like an animated skeleton, skin over bones, gaunt, like something lost too long in the desert. His Woodstock hair, salt-bleached, was given form by the goggles’ strap. The boat’s white fiberglass hull darkened his tan.

He saw me and waved me over. I wondered if he’d noticed that my aura had a little more spring in it after witnessing Bern Heller being seasick.

I waved and shook my head. I’ll stop later. There was something I wanted to do while it was fresh in my mind.

It is understandable that sudden change—change visited by a hurricane, for instance—causes us to reflect upon more subtle changes that give texture to our daily lives. As I approached the boat basin, I thought about friends who’d been scattered by the storm, and other friends who’d rallied because of it.

Captain Alex had taken the storm as an omen, left the charter boat business, and moved to Virginia to look after his aging parents. Sally Carmel sold her palatial home near Miami, and moved to Coconut, where she’d grown up, and where my uncle Tucker Gatrell once owned a ranch. Greg Nelson gave up his fishing schools, married Laurie, and was concentrating on being a chef. Gene LaMont, one of baseball’s managerial greats, postponed buying a new Sea Ray because of all the cleanup work, and also because his daughter Melissa was about to marry her sweetie, Clay.

The list was long, I realized, perhaps because the change was profound: A young lady I’d helped not so long ago, Shanay Money, had entered University of Florida law school, leaving her trashy father and family behind. The nephew of a man I admired very much, the late Frank DeAntonio, had called Mack out of the blue after the storm, said he’d won the New Jersey lottery, and wanted to visit Dinkin’s Bay on his new boat.

Eddie DeAntonio had asked Mack if the “freakin’ island” had blown away, and said his late uncle mentioned a guy name Ford, and “some weirdo named Tinkerbelle.”

Eddie was expected to arrive around Christmas.

In the month since the storm, three friends had been hospitalized, one acquaintance had died, there were two marriages to attend, and my cousin Ransom had fallen in and out of love.

Small events and intimacies seemed more important now. I didn’t understand why.

S tanding behind the marina’s pole barn, which serves as a maintenance shed and warehouse, I told Mack, “The marina’s not the same without Jeth around. And now that Janet’s pregnant—”

Mack made a shushing motion with his hand. “I’m trying to count, darn it, Doc. Every time I get to twenty, you say something and I’ve gotta start over.”

Mack is Graeme MacKinlay, owner and operator of Dinkin’s Bay Marina. Mack, the transplanted New Zealander who is partial to white Panama hats and fine Cuban cigars.

He had a clipboard in his hand, checking inventory. Pawing through boxes of T-shirts, boxes of shell ornaments, rubber alligators, hats, and pink plastic flamingos. Pausing to write numbers on a sheet.

The storm had ripped away the barn’s roof, so there’d been water damage. He’d lost thousands in merchandise, along with part of his dock system, plus all the damage to the buildings.

Insurance agencies, we were all learning, bill promptly, but pay off reluctantly, and at their own pace—if they pay at all.

Jeth had asked him for his old job back a few hours earlier. Since then, Mack had showered, changed into fresh clothes, and he’d lit a new cigar. His mood hadn’t improved, though.

“I let Jeth live here, paid him decent wages even in the slow times when I didn’t need him. September, October? Might as well close the place. But I still paid him. So what’s he do after we get the guts kicked out of us by a hurricane? Goes north to a marina that didn’t get much damage. It’s business, Doc. Money. It’s got nothing to do with Janet being pregnant.”

Mack takes many things seriously, but nothing quite so seriously as money. He keeps a big wad of hundreds in a money clip, and likes to count it when he thinks no one is looking. He still has an old-fashioned cash register in the ship’s store because the ringing sound of a sale makes him smile.

Mentioning Janet, though, caused him to soften a little.

I said, “You know the story about her first child. Before she moved here from Ohio? Then that nightmare she went through when the boat sank, and those divers were lost.”

He made the shushing motion, then grimaced. “Damn it all, you made me lose count again. Besides”—he tossed the clipboard onto a table—“I don’t have enough business now to justify putting Jeth back on the payroll. Even with the docks we lost, I still have more empty slips than I want to think about. Every boat that sunk, or got blown away, I lost a customer. Lost the fuel sale, the bait and beer. Everything. Not to mention the tourists who aren’t coming because of all the baloney they see on the news.

“The storm was bad. But what happens after a hurricane, it’s worse. No one tells you that.”

The pressure was getting to Mack. It was the same with all who were dependent on the economic interlinkings of tourism. Resorts, restaurants, hotels, and retail shops were suffering, but surviving. So far. Other small business operators—fishing guides, tour operators—were already broke. There were no tourists, so cash flow was zero. Most had to borrow against their boats or property to pay bills. Which meant they had no money for new roofs, or windows, or whatever else they needed to stem damage done by rain and mold. So they stood helplessly, watching their homes disintegrate around them, as the rains continued.

In a disaster area, cash is king. Contractors have so much work, there’s no reason to do a job on the gamble that insurance will pay off months later. And the federal emergency agency, FEMA, had been more trouble than help. With its reams of forms, it leached valuable time from those who had no time, and provided nothing in return.

There were a lot of desperate people who, as weeks passed, were becoming more desperate.

Javier was one. Jeth another.

Mack added, “There’s a rage growing in people. Have you noticed? Not everyone. Just the ones who had property that got a direct hit. It’s been over a month, most of the state’s already recovered, but folks in this area are still fighting for their lives. It’s like they feel targeted. Shit on by God, by nature, the government, insurance agencies, everything. They’re snappy, like dogs, ready to bite. But bite who?”

I’d noticed. The bands of a hurricane may extend hundreds of miles, but the eye is narrow. If you’re not in the eye, a hurricane is just bad weather; sometimes, very bad weather. But the eye is different. The eye of a hurricane is a sustained and mobile explosion. It is an immense tornado, miles wide, preceded by a cavalry of smaller tornadoes.

Shit on by God, by nature, by the government, and insurance agencies. As analysis, it was as accurate as any I’d heard.

A wooden fence separates the marina parking lot from the area that lies behind the maintenance shed. We stood among junked outboards, boats on trailers, marine litter all around, Styrofoam, kapok, and trash hanging in the trees, blown there by the storm. To the northeast, I could see a patchwork of blue tarps. They covered damaged roofs: Mack’s home, the marina store, and the gift shop.

All across South Florida, blue tarps designated homes that had been in the storm’s path, thousands of them. They were government-issue, fifteen-by-fifteen-foot polyethylene. The tarps stunk of plastic, and similar materials that are transitory and disposable. Which is why I’d ripped my tarp off the second night, and used bits of scavenged tin and wood to plug my roof.

Something else I could see beyond the fence: Tomlinson in his dinghy, steering toward my house. Far behind, just poking through the westward opening into Dinkin’s Bay, was a green mullet skiff. It was locally made, marine plywood. A small man stood alone at the controls.

The man looked familiar, and so did the boat. Arlis Futch? Jeth had said he was working at Indian Harbor Marina as a night watchman.

What was Arlis doing in Dinkin’s Bay?

To Mack, I said, “You know what you can afford, and can’t. I hope you don’t mind me making a pitch for Jeth.”

“Don’t worry about it. Hell, Doc, I miss the kid, too. He’s been hanging around here since he was in high school. And Janet—she finally has a chance to have a baby…” He sighed, his smile weary. “See ya, Doc.”

As I opened the gate, Mack looked up from his clipboard. “Tell Jeth to call me, okay? Who knows. I might be able to find something. He really is a hell of a nice kid.”