Shark River

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.

Always orderly by nature, I retaliated by following my own instincts toward sanity. I became fanatically neat, driven by insistence on accuracy and a lifestyle that sought precision. It was the only way of creating distance between myself and the unfortunate genetic connection to my late mother’s brother.

I was even less tolerant of his wild lies and self-serving schemes. They were crazed and so constant that I refused to acknowledge or play a role in any of them. Tucker claimed to have found the Fountain of Youth in his pasture, and sold bottled water to tourists until the state made him stop. He got it into his head that, while guiding Walt Disney on a tarpon-fishing trip, he’d given the famous Californian the idea for Disney World. He’d filed a claim for damages in an Orlando court and was laughed out of town. He tried to make it as a country music singer and failed. Because he’d run guns to Cuba prior to the revolution, he’d tried to get Fidel Castro to assign him a massive land grant in Pinar del Rio, but failed at that, too, and damn near ended up in prison on the Isle of Pines.

Tucker became the living symbol of all the things I did not want my life to be. He was random and maudlin, an obnoxious drunk with a terrible temper who could be on the verge of violence one moment, on the verge of tears in the next.

The only thing I liked about living with Tuck were visits from his old friend and partner Joseph Egret, an Everglades Indian of mild humor and gigantic stature. Why Joseph put up with Tuck and his constant racist badgering, I never understood. The two of them were dedicated to each other, which was the only valid endorsement my uncle ever received as far as I was concerned. I liked Joseph a lot, but he wasn’t around enough to make a difference, so I left.

As punishment, Tucker tried to leverage me with guilt whenever he could, and he called me Duke, a nickname he knew I hated but used anyway.

What good would it do to explain the whole sad relationship, though, to Ransom, who really was the man’s daughter?

The band was playing again.

I worked around in the lab until there was nothing left to do, locked the door behind me, went into my house, and switched off the turntable.

Through the screen window, I could see the lights of the marina casting saffron columns across black water. I could see the Japanese lanterns aboard Tiger Lily, lucent paper blooms of green, strawberry, and blue. Could hear Danny Morgan singing another Buffett song: “Cowboy in the Jungle.”

Appropriate.

It was a song that always conjured up images of a cowboy who’d spent a lot of his life in one kind of jungle or another-Tucker Gatrell.

I went to the table, picked up the envelope and opened it. Inside were two sheets of yellow legal paper covered with the man’s sloppy block hand.

I opened a beer, poured it over ice, then cleaned my glasses. Finally, I took a seat in the overstuffed chair by the reading lamp along the north wall, and I read: Dear Duke, If you’re reading this, it means I’m dead and so is that black-hearted son-uva-bitch Sinclair Benton. I hope to hell I had a chance to piss on the gold-toothed bastard’s grave, but I got no way of knowing as I write this. So, if I didn’t, please piss on his grave for me. I’m serious. Throw some seed around and try to get the birds to shit on his headstone, too, while you’re at it. He’s got it coming. Something else it means if you’re reading this is you met my little girl. Ain’t she a dandy? I wanted to name her Roscoe after my favorite horse of all time, only her mama wouldn’t stand for it and changed it to Ransom ’cause that’s what the beautiful little girl was worth to her, a king’s ransom. Her mama’s name was Rumer and she liked the letter R. It ain’t easy for me to explain how it was I come to father a child I never claimed openlike. Maybe it is all men got a secret little place in their hearts, a place where we keep all the little lives we live but ain’t supposed to live. Not out of shame but because in some places we are one person and some places we are another, which is how men are. It was like that with me and Ransom. I only got to be with her eight times. The last five of them times Sinclair Benton and his goat-humpers tried to beat the fire outta me. I never had to break so many colored noses in my life but they weren’t quitters, I’ll give them boys that much, and they bout succeeded in killing me twice. Didn’t matter. I kept going back to see my little girl whenever I had the money and could. Sinclair Benton, he and me hated each other. When I met Ransom’s mama, she was bout the most beautiful woman I ever saw, white or colored. Almost as pretty as Munequinta, my little Cuban girl. Smart, too. Rumer, she could cipher arithmetic and write and read almost as good as me. I loved that woman and she thought the sun rose over my head, and I don’t blame her an ounce for giving up on me and marrying an islander, even if he was a no-account coconut-picker who spent most his time away and drunk. Which is why it was easy for Benton to catch Rumer when she was all alone, no one to help, and do what he did to her. Benton didn’t take to the idea of her having a blue-eyed child, so he cast spells against her and when the spells didn’t work and she wouldn’t stop seeing me, he used his fists. Understand now what I mean? Piss on that old witch’s grave a couple times for a purty lady who cared for your old uncle. Duke, there was only one way for me to hurt Sinclair Benton, and Joe and me worked it out slick as can be. We hurt him real, real bad. He knew it was me but could never prove it, which shows just what a smart plan I come up with and probably pissed him off every remaining day of his life. I surely hope so. Trouble was, after that, it got real, real dangerous for me to go back to Cat Island. Even so, I was the best daddy I could be to Ransom. Sent her and Rumer money when I had it and little doodad presents. I thought more than once of having them two brung over to Florida, but quit the idea each time. It ain’t no secret that I’m a rambling man, no husbandly good to any woman, but that’s the cards I drawed. It’s a short life and a dangerous world and as I told Joe more than once: Why’d the Good Lord give us tallywhackers and trigger fingers unless he expected us to use them? Trouble is, when you live the life I’ve lived, you lose the folks you love. One way or the other, you lose them all. Rumer died last year and it nearly broke my heart hearing about it. Nothing makes you feel older and smaller than when a woman you loved and bedded passes from her own aging. Here’s the thing: With me dead, that little girl’s got no one else in the world to look after her. Which is why I told her you’re her brother. That ain’t such a bad thing, is it? Why let someone feel lost and alone in the world if all it takes is a lie to make things sunnier? One thing that ain’t a lie, Duke, is that Ransom’s gonna need your help. I’ve tried my best to protect that girl, which is what I’m doing right now, writing this letter and giving it to Judge Flowers. What I’m doing is setting it up for her to get her inheritance in a way that Benton’s goat-humpers can’t steal it from her. I can’t risk them taking this letter or finding out in some easy way where it was I hid what I hid. There’s gotta be a couple safety stops in there to make sure it’s Ransom and you who find it, nobody else. I’m begging you to do this, Duke. I’m dead now and you got no more reason to hate me for what I did even though it has hurt me and haunted me every breathing day of my life. I wished I coulda come right out and say what I’m saying now, but I’m a lowlife, stubborn son-uva-bitch and I admit it. Everytime I tried to do something good in my life I ended up doing bad. The worst thing I know is, I am the cause of my own dear sister’s death, who was your mother and, if I burn in Hell for that, I will not feel no more pain than I did shouldering the guilt when I was alive. Please don’t blame Ransom, who is your own sister, for that. Good luck from the grave! Tucker M. Gatrell

PS-I think my horse Roscoe’s nuts have grown back because of water he drunk out of a spring that’s here at the ranch! I’m going to call you and see if you still hate me, cause if you don’t I could use some help to figure how much to charge for water that seems to have lots of strong vitamins in it.

I checked the top of the first page-it wasn’t dated. Typical.

I read one of the paragraphs several times before I folded the yellow paper and slid it back into the envelope. As I did, I noticed a smaller piece of paper inside that I’d overlooked. Took it out and saw that it was another handwritten note, but the handwriting was much different. It had the beautiful flowing loops and curvature that I associate with a people who learned to write before typewriters were common, a precise pencraft that is more like calligraphy. It was from Joseph Egret.

I read: Dear Marion, Your Uncle Tuck is drunk as usual and passed out, which took longer than most nights because it’s after midnight. He give me this letter to address and send, so I decided to write you a letter of my own. I’m sleeping out in the barn and it is a real pretty night here on the ranch with stars over the water and the shrimp boats in close enough I can hear them and there are lights in the windows of those little houses down on Mango Bay where Sally Carmel lives. I know you remember how it was and always liked it when the two of us went out in the pasture and looked up at the sky at night and we could hear the little diesels of them shrimpers working in shallow. Don’t that seem like a long time ago? Marion, I have been having powerful dreams. Most the frog-eaters I know would not understand but you were always different and might. My dreams tell me I am not going to be in this world much longer. I believe that I will be passing into the next world soon. This may be good because if it is an Indian afterworld there will not be so many frog-eater automobiles and I will be with people of my own kind. That is a good thing because I have become an old man and lonely. Your uncle has become an old man and lonely, too. We were partners all our lives and now we will soon share death, too, which may be the first time I ever heard Tucker quiet for more than a few hours. That is why I write. Judge Flowers is supposed to send these papers to Tuck’s daughter after Tuck and Sinclair Benton die. If my dreams have been wrong, and I am still alive when you read this, come get me right away so we can go straight to Cat Island, which will save you a lot of time. Your uncle cannot do anything the simple way. We both know that. This time he has a reason, though, and it’s not just some crazy trick. At least I think he’s got a reason and not just being tricky again. You will find out for yourself, and maybe we will find out together. If I am dead when you read this, good luck. There are a couple of things I’d like you to know. You have met your cousin, Ransom, who has a strong heart. I doubt if your uncle told you that you also might have a cousin who lives in Cuba. He fathered a son there. Or I might have fathered the son. We’ve never seen the child enough to be sure, but the boy’s mama was romantic with us both. That was often the way when we was on the trail. Something else you don’t seem to know is that Tucker Gatrell is like Ransom. He has a heart that is strong and good. He may be a drunken liar and half crazy but he is a decent man, plus my partner, and always will be. I hope you will honor his wishes, Marion. He’s always felt real bad about how things turned out. Sincerely, Your Friend

Joseph Egret

I stood when I’d finished Joseph’s letter. Took off my glasses and cleaned them, smiling. Frog-eaters-Joseph’s name for tourists and modern Floridans, white and black, because he knew them to eat the legs of Everglades frogs, something his people would not do.

I turned and went into the lab and filed the letter away before returning to my house and bolting the door behind me. I rummaged through the desk until I found the two silver keys on their ring, then got down on my hands and knees, pulled the fireproof lock chest from beneath my bed and opened it.

One key fits the door, the second key fits the lock on the drawer’s false bottom, which I also unlocked and removed, thus revealing neat stacks of folders and notebooks, five bogus passports, some clothing, and other detritus from a life I thought I had abandoned long ago.

For a moment I was taken aback when I realized that two very important manila envelopes were missing. Over the years, I’d grown used to seeing them each time I opened the little secret compartment. One was labeled OPERATION PHOENIX, the other with the words DIRECCION: BLANCA MANAGUA written on a label in red felt-tip pen.

I felt a mini-moment of panic because, in a very worst-case scenario, they are my only wedge against potential legal problems from which no statute of limitations would ever protect me.

Harrington had been right about that.

Then I remembered that the envelopes were presumably right where they were supposed to be: in the bank’s safety-deposit box where I’d stored them several months before.

My notebooks were still there, though, and I removed them carefully, pausing to linger over the names I’d written in precise block print on their covers, each notebook catalyzing visual memories, some good, many bad. Coast of Bengal

Borneo/Sandakan

Nicaragua/Politics/Baseball

Havana I

Havana II

Ox-eyed Tarpon/South China Sea

Masagua’s Ridley Turtles and the Magnetic

Mountain

Singapore to Kota Baharu (with 3rd Gurkhas)

The Hannah Smith Story

There were others.

All contained the carefully kept details of my most private life, much of that lifetime spent traveling alone through the Third World tropics, necessarily duplicitous years spent doing clandestine work as well as the work I still care passionately about: marine biology.

I set the notebooks aside and found what I’d unlocked the box to find.

I squatted there staring, for a time, at the nine-millimeter Sig Sauer P226 semiautomatic handgun that lay, in its shoulder holster, atop a black Navy watch sweater that I had not worn in a long time. I removed the Sig Sauer from the holster, feeling the weight of it. Popped the clip, flipped the slide lock and removed the barrel. The weapon had an industrial, black finish… the spring and metalwork, though, had gathered a couple of small spots of corrosion.

Why did I find the marring of this old weapon so distressing?

I took a can of WD-40 from the cupboard beneath the sink and polished until the rust was gone. Then I disassembled the entire weapon and cleaned every element to a mirror finish before I took up the clip again and layered in ten silver-jacketed nine-millimeter hollow-points, the slug of each round copper-bright and symmetrical. Each cartridge singular… dense.

I lifted up the sweater and found the brown case made of cowhide leather. Unsnapped it to see a six-inch custom-built sound arrestor resting on its own cradle so perfectly that it gave the impression of a surgical instrument.

I screwed the silencer onto the barrel of the Sig, aware of its frictionless threads and flawless pitch. Swung the weapon in a fast arc, the balance of it no longer as comfortable and familiar as it had once been. Recalled the amplified blowgun noise it made when fired.

Nothing comforting about that memory, either.

I stood and placed the weapon under my mattress. Hung the sweater in the closet. Then neatened everything and locked the door behind me before returning to the marina.

It was getting late, but the party was still spinning along. I noted that Tomlinson’s sailboat, No Mas, was under way, the little engine he seldom used straining to push the boat’s mass toward the deepwater opening of Dinkin’s Bay. I pictured him out there at the wheel, a Verner twin on each side, and wished him a silent good luck.

I had another beer. Mingled around listening to Ransom on steel drums, still playing with the band.

When she was done, I told her I’d go with her to find her inheritance. That I would help her if I could. First, though, I needed a couple of days to finish up some work. And that we couldn’t travel together. It was too dangerous.

She kept asking why.

I didn’t tell her why.