Ten thousand isles

Eleven

It was a small island just a quarter mile across the bay from Marco, maybe a hundred acres counting mangroves, with a nice little stretch of beach backed by a high tree canopy, vines and shadows.

Seen from the water, the mounds were a distinctive elevation, humpbacked like a turtle, with a dome of gumbo limbo trees above the mangrove hedge.

The gumbo leaves were parrot-green, amber branches showing through the foliage.

To Nora Chung, I said, "This is better than driving, isn't it?"

I was at the wheel of my skiff. She was beside me. Without much enthusiasm, she said, "I'll let you know when we're safely back on land."

That would be awhile.

When it comes to moving boats and cars, logistics are never easy. After the funeral, we'd stood in the parking lot discussing who'd drive what to where, and who would wait for whom until I said to Delia, "You three drive to Key Largo, don't worry about me. I'll run the boat across Florida Bay. Either way, land or water, it's about the same distance. I might even get there before you do."

Florida Bay is the waterspace which separates mainland Florida from the Keys; a tricky series of banks and twisting channels through water that is seldom more than waist deep. It was a nice day for crossing. Slick out there on the water. As if the Gulf was lifting and falling beneath a sheet of pliofilm.

I stood there listening to them sort it out, looking through the trees. There was Dorothy's casket. It appeared smaller in the filtered light, a distinctive shape; it reminded me of a box that had been abandoned in an open field.

Two city employees were erecting the canvas screen again, waiting for the funeral party to leave so they could finish then-day's work.

I noted that Delia took pains not to turn her head in the direction of the cemetery.

First things first, Betty Lynn said. Was the anthropologist willing to guide me to Dorothy's dig site in exchange for an interview with Delia?

Chung was reluctant, but agreed.

In that case, there was a way to get all the cars to Key Largo without anyone having to wait. Tomlinson would drive my truck, Delia would drive her own car, and Betty Lynn would drive Nora's little Honda Accord. That way, Nora could travel to Key Largo by water with me, ask Delia all the questions she wanted, then drive back at her convenience.

Which seemed to make the anthropologist uneasy.

"You don't have to worry a thing about Doc," Delia reassured her. "A friend of mine's told me about him for years. He's just a big ol' puppy dog. Wouldn't hurt a fly."

"I don't know… What about boating experience?" Asking JoAnn, Tomlinson, everyone but me.

"I get out when I can," I told her.

"Unless you know your way across Florida Bay, I don't think I should go. I hear those waters are very dangerous."

"They can be. I haven't made the run in years."

She didn't find that very reassuring. "I'd feel better if you went along, Dr. Tomlinson." Making it clear that she didn't want to be alone with me, either.

Lately, I seemed to be having that effect on women.

"I am always at Marion's side," Tomlinson replied. "Sometimes spiritually. Sometimes with the beer. Either way, it doesn't make a lot of difference. He's the one who runs the boat."

The anthropologist said, "Marion?" increasingly dubious.

We found a public boat ramp on 951, across the bridge and just north of the Marco Yacht and Sailing Club. Using our cars as shields, I changed into blue cargo shorts and a favorite old khaki shirt that had been sun-bleached gray. The woman stepped away from her car, wearing olive drab pants and shirt with button-down bellows pockets, sleeve tabs and epaulets, basic military issue BDUs, battle dress uniform.

"Shopping for clothes at an Army-Navy surplus store," I said. "Is that a new college fad?"

She replied, "Army ROTG has never been much of a fad," as she helped me shove my skiff off the trailer, then swung herself aboard, showing she knew a thing or two about boats.

Once we put a couple of miles of water behind us, she began to relax a little. The antagonistic tone vanished and she talked more freely. It is one of the effects of a small boat. A small boat reduces personal space while increasing interdependence, so it is impossible to maintain a formal relationship.

Well, not impossible. But rare and unlikely.

I handed her the chart book and she flipped pages until she found Marco and the Ten Thousand Islands. Without being asked, she'd assumed the role of navigator, which was fine with me. She seemed confident. Asked me the right questions about moon phase and draft. I complimented her and apologized for my own gruff behavior.

"Crowds and funerals rank right up there as my least favorite things," I told her.

"Crowds, yeah, I know just what you're saying. A rock concert or something like that? Forget it. Because of all the people bumping into each other, talking when they're supposed to be quiet. My gosh, I can't tolerate it, so I don't go."

She used expressions like that: My gosh, gee whiz, holy cow, I'll be darned. Midwestern, probably small town or the farm.

"So what do you do for recreation?"

"Movies. I absolutely love movies. The place I grew up, out there in the cornfields, there wasn't much else to do but read and watch the VCR. I love those action movies with all the suspense. Car chases, explosions. Escape from all that boredom, I guess. You know the ones I'm talking about?"

I'd heard of the actors she named, but hadn't watched their movies.

She said, "I bet you like the arty foreign films. The kind with subtitles that everyone pretends to understand but no one really does. Why're you smiling?"

"I've never been accused of being arty."

"Then what about the old action films? To Have and Have Not, Bogie and Bacall. In Harms Way- the Duke. Man, one of my favorites."

"The Searchers?" I said.

"I loved that movie!"

We talked about films for a while before I asked her what else she did for recreation.

"I get into boats with total strangers. Let them shanghai me to God knows where."

Which was a way of letting me know that she was willing to make peace.

I listened to her tell me that my chart book was at least a couple of years old. The way she could tell was, the place we were headed was an island named Swamp Angel Ways-swamp angel being a common cracker euphemism for mosquitoes, "ways" indicating the place where sailing boats were hauled out on rails and scraped clean.

The days of winching sailboats ashore were long gone. The mosquitoes, though, Nora had been told, were still terrible. Even so, certain local chambers-of-commerce types had battled to have the island's name changed. Anticipating development, a mosquito eradication program and perhaps even a bridge, newer charts were showing the island as Cayo de Marco.

"See what I mean?" she said, speaking not much louder than normal. No reason for her to. I was running at a comfortable cruising speed with a very quiet engine. "People don't care about history. Worse, they have no respect for it. Some of these greedy jerks would rename the moon if they thought it would increase their cash flow. Moon? That's an offensive word, right? Like teenagers sticking their bare butts in the air. So give it a new name and make it marketable. Call it Satellite de Lunar."

It seemed to please her that I smiled.

Chung had been born and raised outside Davenport, Iowa, a little place called Eldridge. She'd applied to the University of Florida on a lark with a friend, never really expected to come south, but the academic scholarship that Gainesville had made available was so enticing she'd accepted. That plus the ROTC scholarship made school practically free. But she'd dropped the ROTC program after a year because she was offered a work-study package through the Everglades University's new Museum of Natural History.

"So much for my career in the Army. That's one thing I could tell about you right off. You're not the military type."

I said, "Oh?"

"I'm right, aren't I?"

"It's amazing you can tell."

"That's what I figured. It's a hobby of mine, looking at people, trying to figure out who they are, what they do. You can tell a lot about someone if you pay close attention."

"No kidding. Give me an example."

"There's the obvious stuff like rings and watches and necklaces. But if someone doesn't wear jewelry-like you? — then you just have to read the person. From the way you handle yourself, I can tell that you're perceptive. The way you take things in, snipping little bits and pieces of what you see and filing it away. But not in an aggressive way. More the studious type. Like maybe a professor at a small college. Laid-back, passive except for the occasional zinger or two. The kind who has stacks of books laying around; always losing your glasses."

I said, "You've been talking to my friends behind my back."

I told her maybe it was because of what I did for a living.

"A marine biologist?"

That seemed to please her, too.

Her father was George Temple, a Yavapi Apache mix, who'd served with the 82nd Airborne in Vietnam. After returning home, he'd wired his wife-to-be money for a plane ticket and helped her get a visa out of Bangkok just before the fall of Saigon. Nora was born more than a decade later, less than two years before her parents divorced. Thus the maternal last name.

"Quite a coincidence, me, a transplanted Iowa girl, ending up down here in the land of coral." She gave me a knowing look. "Don't worry. I'm not suggesting there's some great significance to it or anything."

I sat at the wheel; made no reply.

"What I mean is, I don't believe in things like that. The pseudo-sciences. I don't believe in numerology, phrenology or providence. None of that."

I said, "See? We do have something in common."

"Amazing, huh? Numerology, that's the new thing. Go to a bar, at least one guy comes up and wants to add the letters in my name. It's a come-on, I know, but they really seem to take it seriously. Which is why I didn't much care for the guys I met in college."

I asked, "Oh, what kind of men did she like?" Just making conversation, but I saw in her expression that I had crossed a line. I was being a little too personal, so I wasn't surprised that she quickly changed the subject.

We'd run through Big Marco Pass into the open Gulf. We ran along the beach looking at all the tourists roasting in the sun, high-rise condos behind them. Lots of jet skis and a couple of inboards pulling parasails. Summer scent of coconut oil,

Coppertone and burgers. Pool bars seemed to be doing a booming business for hurricane season. The Marco Island Hotel had a big buffet going on, reggae band playing for several dozen men and women wearing name tags as they mingled around the pool. We were that close.

Then we cut north into Caxambas Pass; followed it inland through No Wake Zones where ranch-style houses, Spray-Creted white, sat in rows on irrigated lawns fronted by seawalls.

"That must be it," Chung said, meaning Swamp Angel Ways. She was matching the chart to the mangrove maze ahead and off to the right.

I could see the dome of gumbo limbos that are always indicative of mounds.

"Does the chart show any water?"

"There's a little cove this side, a little cove on the east side. Not much water in either one, so it doesn't much matter."

It mattered to me.

I wanted to take a look at both coves before wading ashore. Make certain someone wasn't already there.

It comes from old habit. I don't like surprises.

The mound islands of Florida's Gulf coast have a distinctive odor, a mixture of decomposing wood, skunk leaf and lime, dampened by rain and photosynthetic density, incubated by white shells that absorb sunlight then radiate heat.

I'd chosen the cove on the eastern side, shielded from the boat traffic of Barfield Bay. I poled my skiff in through the shallows, anchored off the stern and tied the bow to the limb of a black mangrove.

"Gosh almighty, do you hear them coming?"

I didn't know what she meant at first, but then I did. It was an electronic hum, like a wave of miniature bombers approaching.

Mosquitoes. A pewter cloud of them above the tree canopy.

Then they were on us, glittering mobiles orbiting around our heads, creating a cobweb feeling on nose and ears, collecting on my bare forearms and legs as if I'd been doused with black pepper.

"We should have brought some bug spray!"

I said, "You ever wear a bug jacket?"

"A what?"

From beneath the console, I took two Ziploc bags. In each was a hooded jacket made of wide cotton mesh, not unlike fish netting. I'd saturated the mesh with citronella oil; kept the jackets in bags so the oil wouldn't evaporate.

Nora opened one of the bags and made a face. "Smells like crushed-up orange rinds. Or really cheap perfume. You come home with this stuff all over you, what do the ladies say?"

I was buttoning my jacket. The mosquitoes continued their satellite pattern around my face, but didn't land. I told her, "Lately, they haven't been saying too much."

Nora told me, "Fifteen years ago, back when the Tallahassee group surveyed the island, this looters' pit was already here. Same as most of the ones we've already passed, too.

They took pictures; made a little map. The archaeologists from back then, they kept good notes."

There were dozens of looter pits. They reminded me of bomb craters, but were actually holes dug by men sweating over their shovels, miserable in the heat but determined to find treasure. What they'd found was what they created-a hole in which to throw their beer cans when they'd finally given up.

She was standing in one of the pits now. It was a square-sided trench that was chin-deep, the walls a mosaic of shells: whelks, and conchs and fist-sized tulips. Big shells that were bleached as white as the little grave markers back on Marco.

The entire island was like that, surface and substructure. Shells everywhere you walked. The shells had a resonance when weight was applied, hard and hollow, calcium carbonate grinding, so it was like walking on bone.

Now Nora was standing in one of the holes, studying the layers of shell. She had a sheath of papers in her hand and was comparing the old survey notes and diagrams to patterns of the shell wall.

"You see the sequence of sedimentation? The different layers, I'm talking about. See where there's a stratum of shell, then a layer of organic material beneath it, then another stratum of shell? It shows how the sea level's changed. This low stratum, I think it's related to the Holocene rise in sea level."

I was standing on the edge of the hole, looking through the trees, seeing nothing but jungle, glancing at her every minute or two to show she had my attention. "You lost me."

"I was talking about the Holocene. That's… well, it describes a period of time. The Pleistocene, the Holocene? They were right on the boundary of the Ice Age. It was toward the end of the Pleistocene that glaciers lowered the sea enough to create a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska. You see signs of it in this shell wall. That was fifteen, maybe twenty, thousand years ago."

"Which is when humans first came to North America."

"That's what most people believe; they migrated across and worked their way from north to south. But there's another theory."

I said, "I hope you're not talking about visitors from space."

Her expression told me she wasn't going to dignify that with a reply.

She had her notebook out, writing with the stub of a pencil as she said, "Some believe that a separate group of people came to the Americas at about the same time as the Siberian crossing, but a different way. That a small, advanced tribe island-hopped across the Pacific and worked their way north. They became the Inca, the Maya and the Aztec. All brilliant, all very violent, with similar religious ceremonies. A much different people than the woodland and western Indians. Some weirdos think the Calusa were a part of that group."

"All pyramid builders."

"Uh-huh. Not necessarily that they came from across the Pacific, but that they worked their way up from the Bahamas, moving south to north."

I told her I'd heard rumors of that before. I'd also heard that the Calusa had traded with the Maya.

"That's not what I'm saying. There may have been some occasional contact between the two groups. A thousand years ago, some restless kid gets in a canoe, starts paddling the coast and ends up in the land of stone pyramids. Or vice versa, ends up in the land of shell pyramids. Sure. That could've happened. But a few visits don't constitute a relationship."

I was looking down into the hole, when she pulled what looked to be a flat brown rock from the wall and studied it closely for several seconds. "I wouldn't have touched this, by the way, if the looters hadn't already made such a mess."

"What is it?"

"Pottery. You can see one side is black from being fired. Pottery's not my specialty, but it looks like it could be from the Glades Plain Period, or maybe Glades Tooled. There's not enough to say. It would date back a thousand years, maybe more. Here"-she handed the pottery to me-"the last person to touch that probably believed exactly what Dr. Tomlinson said. That she had three souls. That inanimate objects absorb energy. That's why, when she was done with this pot, she intentionally broke it to free her own spirit. These mounds are littered with pottery."

I was still looking at the shard. It was reddish-brown with a hint of a rim. "You and Tomlinson will have lots and lots in common."

"Oh boy, there's that tone again. Okay, most people think, hey, that's stupid. Objects don't have a spirit-bowls and rocks, metal and things. But stop to think about Saint Christopher medals and crosses, Rosary beads, Stars of David. Those are the obvious ones. They're not just symbols. People believe they have power. Tattoos and piercings? Same thing. The Nike swoosh mark-check out the ghetto gangs. Power objects."

"Animism."

"Yes, animism, you bet. It's the most consistent connection between religions."

She took the potsherd and fitted it back into the shell wall exacdy where she'd found it. "Connective religions, that's my specialty. I also happen to be one of those people who believes that the Calusa came from the Bahamas. Maybe South America. There's not a bit of artifactual evidence, but I think we'll find it."

"So you're one of the kooks."

For the first time, I was favored with her endearing smile. "Actually, I said weirdos. Yep, I am a weirdo. A hundred-percent weirdo. I believe that ten thousand years ago, people were just as motivated to roam and explore and pass along their personal religion as people are today. Isn't that crazy?"

"Quite the radical."

She began to fight her way through the brush again. "That's what my professors always thought."

"Then how'd you end up assistant director of a museum so young? What are you twenty-two, twenty-three?"

She wagged her eyebrows as if she were being tricky. "Until there's proof, I keep my weirdo opinions to myself."