The Man Who Ivented Florida

NINE

As Charles Herbott, the thirty-year-old environmental consultant, paused to stretch his back, to rest his arms, he said to Chuck Fleet, the thirty-five-year-old surveyor, "I've finally figured out why you keep lying about what day it is. You're trying to manipulate me, make it seem like it's not as bad as it is."

"What?"

"That's right. So I won't take care of you-know-who." Herbott motioned with his head toward the old man sitting in the shade of a ficus tree, shotgun in his lap. "Because you're so afraid. That's why."

Chuck Fleet didn't bother to look. He was hunched over, holding stalks of sugarcane with his left hand, cutting the stalks with his right. He'd cut for three or four steps, then bundle up the cane in his arms and carry it to the bamboo sled. When the sled was heaped high, he would harness himself into the rope and drag the sled to the old cane press on the other side of the mound. That's where the Captain kept the fire going, a huge black pot suspended over the buttonwood coals, boiling the cane water into syrup. Ten gallons of cane water made one gallon of syrup, after a lot of skimming, stirring, and more skimming to make the syrup clear.

Charles Herbott said, "It's Wednesday, not Monday. You're lying about that. I'll been on this goddamn island two weeks tomorrow. I've been keeping track. I know."

Chuck Fleet said, "Okay, it's Wednesday, not Monday. Whatever you say." Thinking, First Bambridge goes crazy, now Herbott. The difference is, Bambridge isn't dangerous. Herbott is potentially homicidal…

Herbott returned to cutting, hacking at the stalks with the rusty machete the old man issued him each day, then collected each evening. Cut-cut step, cut-cut step. Cut the base of the stalk, then lop off the top. Stalk after stalk after stalk. Christ, he was beginning to feel like an animal, his clothes rotten from sweat, his hair and face caked with the black sand. All the work he'd done, everything by hand. "The way I know you're scared is, you won't even listen to my plans anymore."

Fleet said, "Keep your voice down. The Captain's old, but he's not deaf."

"And quit telling me what to do!"

From the direction of the ficus came the old man's voice. "Yew boys got a job a work to do! Fuss on yer own time."

"Sorry, Captain!"

They chopped in silence for a while before Herbott said, "You're getting bad as Bambridge, the way you kiss that crazy bastard's ass. 'Least Bambridge gets something for it. Living up there in the old man's shack, cooking the meals. That fat asshole's happy as a clam now, acting like he's one of the guards instead of one of the prisoners. But you, hell… he's going to work you to death. Which I don't mind, only you're going to take me down with you!"

Fleet started to respond, but then thought, What's the use? He gathered two cane stalks into his left hand, then cut them at the base with a single swipe of the machete.

"We run off right now, at least we've got the knives. That's what we ought to do, just scatter. Catch him dozing in the shade."

Fleet shook his head, "These old-timers, crackers, they aren't like people today. They say they're going to do something, they do it."

"So?"

"So he'd shoot us. At least one of us. He'd have time for that, to get both barrels off."

"But he's never threatened to shoot us-you're the one who keeps saying that!"

"I know, but he means for us to do this work. He'll do whatever it takes. I think he'd get at least one of us with the gun."

"No way, man. We just dive for the brush, then we've got the whole island. We'd be free."

Chuck Fleet said, "I'm going to say it one more time: Then what? Huh? Then what? We're free on the island. Big deal. Even if we could find our boats, they're broken down. What are we going to do, walk across the water?"

"Couple of nights ago, I heard a powerboat-you did, too. We could flag somebody down. Couple of times, I've heard a boat."

"Twice, maybe three times in almost two weeks. Nobody comes back in here. It's so shallow, nobody in their right mind, anyway. Only novice idiots like us."

"I know, I know, it's shallow enough, we could walk. We could walk a lot of it-"

"Twenty miles back to Barron Creek Marina? All of it mangrove and muck. Just keep on walking and have a nice dinner at the Marco Island Inn. Might as well do that while we're at it. Get serious, Charles."

Herbott said, "We take his boat, I've already said that. Take his rowboat, use the mast and sail. He had it rolled up in there on the deck. I saw it. Or you could create a diversion while I've got the knife, and I could-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Murder him. Cut his throat." They'd been through this a hundred times. Every night, sitting in the pit with the mosquitoes clouding around them. Herbott talking about different ways to ambush the old man, saying just leave the rough stuff to him. Getting wilder and wilder, the way he talked. The heat, the bugs, the fear rendering what sensibilities the man had into a bedrock hatred that now scared even Fleet.

Herbott said, "You keep using that word, but I'm talking self-defense. It's not murder."

"What is he, eighty, maybe ninety years old? That's murder."

"You think what you want. But I've got enough connections in Tallahassee, they won't touch me."

Fleet had heard a lot about that, too-Herbott's connections. Out of college, Herbott had worked as a biologist for the state long enough to learn the system. Testified in suits against outlaw developers and provided input in the writing of some of the state's environmental-protection laws. But then Herbott had gone where the money was, set up his own consulting firm. That way, the outlaw developers could hire Herbott to circumvent the very laws he'd helped write. Environmental audits, water testing, permitting-his small company could take a development project from conception to ribbon cutting. Called himself an environmentalist, but what he was was a developer. Not that all developers were bad-it just irritated Fleet the way some of the new environmental consultant companies pretended to be one thing but in fact were something else.

"You're going to tell me about your buddy the governor again."

Herbott said, "That's right, a personal friend. I got permits for a condo project-almost all on wetlands-nobody else could push through. For his cousin. Why you think the state still hires me? For the tough projects, that's why. The Captain there puts a gun on me, nobody's going to say a word. No matter what I do."

"Just kill him. That'll solve everything."

"I'm getting a little goddamn tired of your attitude."

Chuck Fleet stood with a bundle of cane in his arms and yelled, "New load ready, Captain!" Then in a lower voice, he said to Her-bott, "We get his cane in and make his syrup, he's going to let us go. He salvaged our boats; we owe him. That's the way he sees it. If you talked less and worked harder, we could be done in a week. Maybe less."

Herbott took a wide swing with his machete, lopping the cane he was holding but also just missing Fleet's leg. Looking up at him, Herbott said, "Don't try to manipulate me! And when the time comes for me to take the old man down, don't you get in my way!"

The surveyor walked carefully away and dropped his armload of cane onto the bamboo sled. His heart was pounding; pounding from the work and the heat, but mostly from adrenaline, knowing how close Herbott had come with the knife. The man was nuts.

"Yew there! Tall'un." That's what the old man called him: Tall'un. Never used his name. He was Tall'un; Herbott was Short'un; Bambridge had been Fat'un before he'd gone to work inside and became the Cook.

"Captain?"

"Yew let Short'un take a turn on that there sled."

"Yes sir, Captain!"

"You can go to hell!" Herbott was suddenly standing, looking up toward the old man on the shell ridge. Holding the machete out like he meant to use it. "You can call me by my name, or you can drag the goddamn stuff yourself."

Fleet called out, "I'll pull it, Captain. I don't mind," as the old man got slowly to his feet, feeling around for his straw hat on the ground beside him, not taking his eyes off Herbott.

The old man said, "Mister man, you raise a knife to me on my island again, it'll be the last time," lifting the shotgun, pulling the two hammers back with his thumb but holding the barrel toward the ground. To Fleet's ears, the noise the hammers made, ka-latch, ka-latch, deepened the island's silence and turned the constant whine of mosquitoes into a long, steady scream.

Herbott's voice had a new unsteadiness: "You have no reason to call me… by anything other than my name."

"Yew workin' for me, I'll call you what ah want!"

"But it's not… fair! It's not fair, and it's not right."

The barest twitch of expression came to the old man's face. A smile? "Life ain't fair-that why yew short, boy! But the way I works my crews, that's fair 'cause I don't let one man do all the draggin'. Now get yo'self pullin' that sled!"

Fleet didn't want to look at Herbott. Didn't want to see the anger drained from his face, replaced by fear. Didn't want the burden of seeing Herbott's humiliation. The man was dangerous enough without sharing that.

"No more your sass! Move!"

Behind him, Fleet heard the metal sound of a machete dropped onto shell, and Herbott brushed by, headed for the sled, whispering as he passed, "I am going to kill him…"

Because morning was his favorite time, Tucker Gatrell was up before everybody. All his life, it had been that way. Now he was up before Joseph-or so he thought. Tuck put coffee to fire and added a handful of chicory for body. Outside, birds made their tentative first twitterings from the hush of jasmine and poinciana, and in the autumnal darkness the wind was freshening from off the bay, smelling of open sea and far islands. When the coffee was ready, he carried his mug to the porch, propped his boots on the railing, scratched Gator's ears to make sure he was there, then settled himself in that quiet time to watch the landscape change.

In the east, there was no sun, but an orange corona boiled over the horizon, throwing shards of westwarding light. The sky was a fragile lemon-blue, translucent as a pearl, and clouds over the Gulf absorbed the light in towering peaks, fiery, like snow glaciers above a dark sea. Birds flying… Tuck could see their gray shapes closing. A formation of ibis-curlew, he thought of them-glided across the bay and were briefly illuminated, combusting into brilliant plumes that produced an ethereal white light. Then the birds banked into shadow, silent as falling stars, and were gone.

Tucker watched them, feeling a strange sense of loss and a curious ache, like nostalgia.

Used to be thousands of them birds. Millions. Me an' a lot of other dumb butts chewed up this land pretty good.

From the mangroves arose the catlike buzz of raccoons fighting-or mating. Across the road, tail-slapping their way across the bay, a carousel of bottlenosed dolphins-porpoise, Tuck called them-foraged the grass flats, exhaling moistly while a pileated woodpecker thudded like a drum on the dead palm that leaned toward the junk pile near the barn.

He paused to consider the junk pile. In the dusty light, the rusted fenders and coils of wire, the sections of wood and discarded fencing, the broken bottles and rotted pilings and the tilted fly bridge of the wooden boat became a single unit, all grown over with vines-a single strange shape, like a sculpture-or a monument.

Every screwup in my life ended up in that junk heap. Surprised it's not bigger than the barn by now. Bigger than all the islands. Makes me tired just lookin' at the gawldang thing…

That's the way Tuck felt, tired. Not sleepy, just weary. All the running around he'd done in the last few weeks, all the planning, all the phone calls, all the reading, all the… thinking…

Used to feel like I was flyin', like them curlew. Now it's like gravity's got a hook in my butt, cranking me toward the ground.

That was the problem: gravity. Tuck crossed one boot over another and sipped at his coffee, musing. Gravity wasn't just a problem; it was the biggest problem. Tuck gave it some thought:

Moment you come outta your mama's belly, gravity's right there and the fight starts. A baby spends a year wrestlin' with it before that baby can finally get up on his legs. After that, he just keeps gettin' stronger and stronger until he thinks the fights over, gravity can't do nothin' to him ever more-but it's a lie. Get old, and gravity starts draggin' your shoulders down. Then it stoops your back. Then your brain starts gettin' heavy, like lead, 'cause the damn stuff's always there tryin' to pull you back into the dirt. Gravity don't like a man walkin' upright.

The novelty of the thought pleased Tucker. He still had the ache in his stomach, that nostalgic feeling, but thinking about gravity helped focus the feeling, made it something he could deal with.

If a problem ain't been solved, it's 'cause nobody's give it enough thought.

Same thing he'd told Ike the time Eisenhower'd come down to fish, out of the Rod amp; Gun Club in Everglades.

Tuck had liked Ike. Liked him better than Truman, the little man with the hat and the goggles, though it seemed to interest people more when he told them about Truman.

Course, Harry fished with me more'n Ike, too…

He caught himself-his mind was drifting--Which was nothing new, but it seemed to be getting worse and worse ever since he'd had what the doctor up to Fort Myers called a "little stroke."

"It's called old age," the doctor had said. "Do you understand what I mean by that?"

"You can kiss my ass," Tucker had replied with heat. "You understand what I mean by that!" Filled with anger-not at the doctor but at the damn circumstances. The feeling that his brain was a traitor, of having no control.

Now Tucker concentrated, forced his mind back to the topic and turned his full attention to gravity; thought about ways to neutralize it. Helium, that was an idea. Like the gas they put into balloons to make them float around-he'd seen how that worked at the fair in Miami.

Maybe take everybody when they were born and give them a squirt of it…? No… people would just burp it out, kids especially. Kids loved to fart and burp. So… maybe put the helium in a sack, a plastic sack, and have doctors sew it in.

Tuck pictured all the sack makers and the helium makers getting rich. The doctors, too. Nope, he wasn't going to give away any more great ideas. He'd done that enough.

Problem is, I'm thinkin' about this the way everybody else thinks about it…

There it was! The answer wasn't to neutralize gravity,- the answer was to get rid of it altogether. Go to the source!

But what the hell causes gravity…?

Tuck didn't know. He could send Sally to the library, have her look it up. But he'd been doing enough of that lately. Some kind of magnet in the earth, it had to be something like that. Yep, he'd read that somewheres. Big ball of metal in the center of the earth, boiling metal or some damn stuff, that's what made a compass work. So all you had to do was drill down and pump the stuff out. Pump it… where? Pump it… into spaceships, yeah, and send them off. Only thing was, you wouldn't want to pump all the gravity out 'cause then people would just float away. Pump out just enough to make things easier, so a man didn't have to fight so hard when he got old.

If we could dig a roadbed across the Everglades, diggin' a deep hole and settin' up pumps ain't nothin'. And hell, the spaceship place is just over on the other coast. Ain't far at all. Cape Canaveral.

Tucker sat up a little and pushed his cowboy hat back, pleased with himself.

All a man has to do is think big and advertise, that's all. Don't know why I've been so worried about this water business goin' right…

He finished his coffee, then leaned to get at the foil pouch of Red Man in his back pocket as morning spread itself into gradated light, from dusk to pearl to pale green-blue.

"Don't that air smell sweet!" Talking aloud, though no one was around to hear but the dog.

It did smell good. To him, nothing smelled so good as a cattle ranch on the sea. All those nice smells mixed together: brackish-water bay, cow pasture, big wet jungle leaves, hay in the loft, the shady smell of a wooden porch, mangroves, horses.

There had been only a couple other places in the world where those odors could be found in combination. Central America… Cuba. Always on the coasts, always with jungle growing right up to the pastures. Tucker had loved Cuba. Had almost gotten married there to that little black-eyed girl, Mariaelana, that sweet child with the soft brown breasts and the small blue tattoo on her hand, a sea horse. The only person he'd ever met in his life who was so kind and good that he felt gentler just being with her.

His mind was drifting again. He knew it, but the thoughts and the smells were so pleasant that he just let it go, let the memories take him…

Beside him, Gator lifted his big head and growled softly, looking toward the barn.

Tucker jumped slightly, startled. "I know what's wrong with you-you can't figure out why them damn chickens ain't been crowin' all morning."

The dog stood, looking at the barn, still growling… until Joseph exited through the open sliding doors, walking toward the porch.

To the dog, Tuck said, "Just ol' Joe. You ought to know by now them Injuns smell different!" Then in a louder voice, he said, "Thought you was still in the sack. Hell…" Studying the approaching figure. "You're soakin' wet. You been swimmin'?"

Joseph stopped at the steps and put his big hands on the railing. "Buster's got spots all over his butt!"

Tucker lowered his head, laughing. "That's what you're in such a sweat about?"

"No… I been running. What about them spots? White ones- and his mane's cut off, too!"

"Some woman's husband chasing you, that's the only reason an old fart like you'd be running. Been thimblin' the neighbor ladies again."

Joseph stood there glaring, waiting for an answer. Finally, Tucker said, "Damn right I painted that horse up. Turned him into an Appaloosa and give him four white stockings, too. While you was sleepin' last night, I was out there working my tail off. But don't bother thankin' me-"

"Buster don't like it and I don't, neither. He looks like a… like some circus clown owns him."

"Then that's good."

Joseph put a foot on the step, getting angry. "You got no right to mess with a man's horse. I liked him just the way he was."

"You like the idea of that Cypress Gate horse owner recognizing that horse on the television and having us thrown in jail?" Tucker leaned forward and spit over the porch railing to punctuate his point. "It ain't like that man ain't gonna have time to look. With them chickens around, he'll be up watching the television all night long."

"What're you talking about? I ain't being on no television. Buster ain't, either."

Tucker stood and stretched. "We'll see about that." He looked at Joseph's soggy T-shirt. "Hope you didn't run yourself outta energy. We got a long ride today. Next day, too, and the next day after that. Hey-" Joseph felt Tuck squinting at him. "What the hell happened to your hair? A big chunk missing…?"

Joseph let his breath out, some of the anger going with it. "The hippie come down, Marion's friend. He cut some of it with a knife. Pulled a couple out by the roots, too. It hurt."

"Jesus H. Christ, and you let him?"

"He don't make no sense when he talks, but he's. nice. Sure. He didn't take much."

"Probably using your hair to make a voodoo doll right this minute, sticking pins in it. Or rolling it in paper to smoke like mary-wanna. Don't you be givin' away your body parts to no hippie."

Joseph didn't reply. He was thinking about Buster, how silly he looked with those spots painted on his rump. But Tuck was right-there was no denying it was a smart idea to disguise the horse just in case the owner came looking around. He said, "Every day, I been walking up to the main road, then running back. Well, kinda joggin' back. I can't run too fast no more. Sally loaned me a watch. I been timin' myself."

"That's all I need-for you to die on me now." Tucker snorted, disgusted. "All the problems I got."

"You don't seem too worried to me."

"Hah! You ain't paying attention, that's why. I got a stolen horse, a couple thousand stolen milk jugs up in the loft-"

"You got the bottles?"

"No thanks to you." Tuck spit again and turned toward the screen door. "I got a woman cop snoopin' around askin' questions, callin' me on the phone. I got them state park people breathin' down my neck, helicopters flyin' all round like I robbed a bank. My tallywhacker ain't been hard since the night I fell asleep against the icebox, and Ervin T. Rouse was expectin' us yesterday. Now you're out trottin' around in the heat, seein' if you can get a heart attack. My schedule's too tight for funerals, Joe."

"I run my fastest time. Ran almost the whole way. It's because of the water."

Tucker said, "When the television people ask you, you tell 'em just that. Sell that water. Now you go saddle up the horses."

Agent Angela Walker, now driving one of the department's white Dodge Aries to save miles on her new Acura, slowed for the turnoff to Mango, scanning the narrow road ahead for passing cars or crazy drunks. This road across the Everglades had seen its share of carnage, and she had no intention of becoming one of its statistics. All along the way, there had been vultures on the wires, red-faced or black-hooded, as if they were just waiting for an accident to happen. Sitting on the PORT OF THE ISLANDS signs, the wooden AIRBOAT RIDE billboards. Gave her the shivers, seeing those evil-looking birds.

The turn was clear… the pitted macadam road to Mango empty, glittering in the morning heat as it curved into the mangroves and disappeared. But ahead, on the main road, she could see something-cars pulled off to the side… blue lights flashing… looked like a couple of figures on horseback, too. If it was a wreck, she didn't want to see it-not that it would have bothered her. At least not that she would have shown any emotion. She'd been through emergency driving school and the combat driving school in Pennsylvania, and they had shown the bloody films of highway accidents, complete with sound. She knew how a professional was supposed to react in those situations. But the Florida Department of Criminal 'Law didn't work accidents.

Still, her instincts told her to go have a look… something about those people on horseback.

She checked the rearview mirror to make certain some fool wasn't passing her at the last minute, then accelerated back to highway speed, past the turnoff to Mango.

The car with the flashing lights was FHP, Florida Highway Patrol, black and gold-they drove Fords-and there were other cars pulled off into the shade of a little roadside picnic area. A couple of vans with television logos on the doors. Three or four cheap compacts with PRESS plates.

Something must have happened-all these journalists, and no free booze.

No bottles she could see on the picnic tables, anyway, set beneath cypress trees beside a creek that had white flowers floating in it. Some kind of lilies, maybe-she didn't know. But there he was, right in the thick of it: the old man, Tucker Gatrell, sitting on a horse, with people standing around him, some of them holding cameras, looking up at him and talking. Another man beside him on a horse… an Indian-looking man wearing a cowboy hat that was even dirtier than the saggy felt mess Gatrell wore. And a sleepy-looking cow with horns, too, packs tied to its back. The Indian had the cow on a lead rope.

Crazy old crackers… probably drunk. And me with questions to ask…

Trying to access some of the cop cynicism she was trying to cultivate, but it didn't last. There was something about Gatrell that she liked, something that amused her at least. Then she realized what it was: He reminded her of her grandfather. Wild old man-Popee, she'd called him. Said a lot with his eyes but not much with his mouth. The relative she most favored, her father had observed more than once-always said it like a criticism too

Well, that was it, the thing that had been tickling at the back of her mind every time she saw Gatrell. He was a little bit like a southern Popee, with those narrow eyes and see-everything smile.

Not that it would influence the way she handled the investigation.

Walker parked in the shade and pulled on her blue blazer before getting out, touching the pocket to make sure her ID wallet was there.

She could see the state trooper: a short black man,^very thick shoulders, and with a belly pushing against his gray uniform. The straw patrolman's hat he wore made him look taller, but not much. He was standing to the rear of the small group of people that circled the old man's horse, shaking his head about something. Some kind of dialogue going on between the trooper and the old man. Or maybe he was just listening-yeah, that's what the trooper was doing, because when he saw her approach, he stepped away and said, "You might as well keep on moving, miss. I'm breaking this up right now. Show's over."

Seeing the look of acknowledgment in his eyes-one black person meeting another in this isolated southern place. That look, a brief softening of the facial features, was not so welcoming as some probably thought. Sometimes there was suspicion in the exchange, sometimes animosity. An "I know what I'm doing here- but what are you doing here?" look that Walker ignored.

"I didn't come to see a show." She took out her ID and flipped it open. "I stopped to see if you needed any help, Officer Cribbs." He had the silver name badge over his pocket, black lettering.

The trooper leaned to read. "Flor-dah Department-" Then he looked up at her, a little startled. "Florida Department of Criminal Law? What, you people driving around, checking up on the FHP?" as if he was joking, but he wasn't-she could read that in his expression. He looked guarded.

"No, just on my way to an interview and saw your flashers, these guys on horses. Thought I'd see if I could offer any assistance."

"Howdy there, Miz Walker! You lookin' particularly pretty this morning." Tucker Gatrell was calling to her over the heads of people. Grinned at her, teeth missing, then took his hat off in a respectful old-time way. "Don't she look pretty, though, Joe? That's Miz Walker." Tucker turned to the other man, the Indian-looking man, but the Indian hardly moved to stare. Just sat on his horse, glum-eyed, miserable, as if he hated being the center of attention.

Walker smiled, nodded.

Gatrell hollered, "Be with you soon's I'm done getting interviewed," while the trooper said, "You know these men?" Incredulous.

"The one, I do. I've met him. It had something to do with a case."

Trooper Cribbs said, "Running dope, I bet. These old guys down here that know the islands, I've worked a couple of those calls with the DEA. They call us in sometimes."

"No, not drugs," letting him know with her tone she wasn't going to say anything more about it. "What's going on here?"

"You tell me, if you know the guy. I got a call to check it out. Some motorists were complaining about men on horses backing up traffic. I came out of Marco Island and found them about five minutes later, 'bout one klick down the road. These two guys towing that steer. Not right out on the road, but close enough on the shoulder to slow things down."

The trooper's gun belt creaked when he leaned his weight on it-probably a Vietnam vet, Walker guessed, from his age and the way he said klick. Kilometer.

"That's why all these newspeople are here?"

"Wait, I was just telling you," Cribbs said. "The one guy there, the white, the Caucasian guy, he won't pull over when I tell him to stop. Can you see me? Driving along with my window open, about two miles an hour, and this old dude won't pull over." He was chuckling, looking at her to see how informal he could tell it. "I mean, what am I gonna do, run him off the road? Him and his horse. He says, 'I've got an appointment at the picnic place,' pointing up here. He says, 'Us cattlemen got a right to move our livestock, road or no road. Check the law books; they never took out the part about open range.' The old guy just chattering away, me listening, with the window down."

"Where does he say he's going?" Walker was listening to Cribbs but looking at Gatrell, who was still sitting on his horse talking nonstop and-gesturing with his hands to the men and women looking up at him.

"That's what he's been telling them about," Cribbs said. "Next thing I know, these news cars start pulling in. They're looking for some kind of protest cattle drive someone's called them about, and they are slightly piss-not too happy about finding only two guys on horses and one cow. But they stuck around and listened anyway, took a few shots. Figured since they were already here, I guess. One of them tried to get some quotes out of me, but we've got a no-comment policy; everything has to be cleared. Same at the FDLC?"

Walker said, "Yes, that's the same."

Cribbs didn't say anything for a moment, just stood there puffed out in his uniform, leather creaking. Then said, "You going to be around a while, maybe we could get some coffee together. Fve got a call in now, checking on that law thing, the legal aspects, I mean, of them riding horses and having that cow on the road. I've got some time, once I get this squared away."

Walker knew he had looked at her left hand, the bare ring finger, but she had pretended not to notice. This middle-aged guy hitting on her already, and she'd hardly said two words.

"I'd like to, but I'm in kind of a hurry-"

"Hey," Cribbs said, "that's the dispatcher calling now," walking toward his car. "Don't run off."

Walker stepped into the shade, closer to the horses. The mosquitoes were thick, buzzing around her head, covering her legs. Swat them and she'd have blood splotches all over her panty hose, so she shifted from one leg to another, trying to spook them away.

That's what the two horses were doing-the cow, too-moving their legs, swatting with their tails. She heard Tucker Gatrell say, "I don't want to tell you your business, but you television people want, you can follow us the whole way. Ervin T. Rouse, he won't mind. He's used to being famous."

One of the newspeople said, "I've never heard of that guy. The song 'Orange Blossom' what?"

"You tellin' me you never hearda the greatest bluegrass song ever been written?" There was something touching in the way the old man said that, genuinely taken aback. And Walker guessed from the look on his face, things weren't going too well. Whatever it was the old man wanted, he wasn't getting it. He said, " 'Special,' the 'Orange Blossom Special.' That's its name. I suppose you ain't never hearda Johnny Cash, neither."

"These goddamn bugs!" The newspeople were dancing around, too, flapping with their hands.

"What I was sayin', you television people can follow us right along. Meet Ervin T. Rouse, get him playin' the song on his fiddle. And I brought plenty of Glades Springwater along. Jugs of it on Millie there."

He must have meant the cow, Millie-as if he was introducing the thing.

But the newspeople were talking at the same time, no longer pretending they were listening. She could hear them.

"Christ, this is a publicity gag. Cure all your aches and pains."

"We could do a bit, like it's an old-time medicine show."

"I do journalism, not advertising."

"I've had it, man-"

"What we ought to do is a piece on all these goddamn mosquitoes! Why they should make the whole place a park, leave it to the bugs."

Swatting as they moved away, leaving Gatrell and the Indian standing there. Most of them jog-walking, slamming the doors of their vans and their cars, acting as if it had just begun to rain.

"Have you ever heard so much bullshit?"

"Got us out of the office, anyway."

"Sure, but we've still got to come up with two minutes and an intro. Maybe stop at Marco, do something on pelicans?"

"The National Enquirer, he should have tipped them. Weirdo stuff like this, they love it."

Walker heard a woman's voice, not very loud, say, "That's right, we do." Mousy little woman in a strange velvet jacket with lace facing and a little feathered box hat, as if she bought her clothes from one of those secondhand boutiques. She was the only one still standing there listening to Gatrell. Writing in a notebook and holding a tape recorder under her arm. Stepping back to take some photographs as Gatrell swung off his horse for a moment to point at his horse's underside.

"There they are," she heard Gatrell say. "Both of 'em. Get a picture if you want. Roscoe, he ain't shy."

Walker wondered why that made her feel good, seeing the old man poised and smiling.

She heard the old man say, "That's fine, but you move to the other side now, you'll get my good side. And make sure you got Chief Joseph in the background. He's an Injun, you know…"

Walker had spoken with Marion Ford a couple of times on the telephone, and he had that same quality, always holding something back, just like his uncle. Why did she find that attractive?

The old man talked a lot, but he said only what he wanted her to hear, never what was on his mind. Which would have been offensive, coming from most people. But with the old man, it was more like a game. He knew that she knew that he knew…

Dr. Ford hardly said a word, but there was an intensity in the way he did it. His way of holding back.

Walker's own grandfather had been like that; he'd had that reserve. A blue-eyed Belgian who didn't speak the language well enough to understand it was wrong to marry the woman he married, so he just went ahead and did it, anyway.

To Ford, on the phone, Walker had said, "I see what you mean about if all three boats looked alike. Somebody could have been laying for them and taken Bambridge by mistake. Or taken the two state guys by mistake. But Bambridge's boat was different. A flats boat? Says here a Hewe's Redfisher. So the whole thing falls apart. The state guys, Herbott and Fleet, they were in state-owned Boston Whalers."

Telling him a little bit so that he might tell her more in return. What she wanted to know about was his uncle.

Ford had said, "That's assuming one, two, or all of the disappearances aren't accidental."

"Of course-"

"It doesn't necessarily follow that if you find one, you find them all."

"I know. But what are the odds of at least two of the three being connected? Probably all three."

"Then you're talking about abduction. Isn't that an FBI matter? The infrared surveillance hasn't turned up anything? That's what surprises me."

Not asking her whether the Coast Guard helicopters had been using their infrared tracking system, or even inventing a reason why he knew about the systems.

So she had replied, "A couple dozen small brushfires or camp fires, a few boats fishing the park illegally and one cocaine bust, a sailboat crossing from Cancun. What, it would take the systems eighty-seven consecutive working nights to graph the whole area? That's what they told me, the Glades and those islands. It's the biggest single uninhabited and roadless landmass in the United States. That's the stat that really surprised me. I always thought of south Florida as crowded. Two choppers working different grids six hours a night still couldn't check it all." Being frank with him.

National Security Agency field-service people were familiar with the options. Same thing: She knew that Ford knew that she knew that he knew…

The second time she'd spoken with him, she'd said, "When they were doing the coordinated searches-" The logged searches had been called after seven days, which was policy."-they did those searches going just about everywhere their boats could go. I think they should have looked where their boats couldn't go."

Ford had answered, "Everywhere they could go south of Mango."

"Well, of course. The boundary of Everglades National Park is south of Mango, and that's where Fleet and Herbott were both headed. They wouldn't drive their boats north to reach a place that was south, for God's sake."

"Of course," Ford had replied. "Why would they turn north to go south? I guess I haven't checked a chart of the Ten Thousand Islands lately."

Something about the way he said that.

But she had pressed on: "Maybe that's what I should do. Try south and look at places where boats can't go."

She could picture Ford with the phone to his ear, standing in his wobbly house with all the books and vials and those pretty fish in the tank outside. She had left the observation vague enough so that he was a little confused. "What are you saying? That you plan to get hold of an airboat?"

"No, I plan to talk to your uncle again." Said that just as frankly. Then added, "You know, I'd hate to see him get into trouble. There's something about him… he's just got this likable way about him."

To which Dr. Ford had said, "Yes, but you can't allow that to interfere with'your work."

Walker was thinking about the way Ford had said it, a CIA kind of flatness in his voice, maybe telling her he didn't care about his uncle, or maybe telling her that she couldn't sweet talk her way into his confidence. Replaying it as she stood in the mosquitoes watching the strange-looking woman waddle back to her car with its Lantana plates.

Lantana on Florida's east coast, that's where the National Enquirer was?

Behind her, she heard trooper Cribbs creaking toward her. Heard him say, "Just like I thought. We can't touch him." Like he'd known all along.

Walker said, "You mean the stuff about open range, the old man was right?"

"No. Well, I don't think so. The lieutenant, he agreed with me. Looked it up, and all it says is horses and things. Bikes and wagons, that sort of transportation? They have to go by the same laws cars and trucks do." Cribbs tried to say something with his expression, one of those macho beer-commercial smiles. "So I just warn the old dude it'll probably be horse versus semi, he keeps it up. Then maybe I can follow you along to where ever you're going and buy you lunch. Professional courtesy."

Walker said, "Next time, maybe," walking toward the horses, where Gatrell was waiting for her, watching her with his hat off, smile fixed, calling out, "You got more questions for me, Miz Walker?"

She did, but Cribbs was at her elbow, listening. So she just said, "No, I happened to be passing by. Quite a coincidence." Playing it cool.

"Surely is at that. Wouldn't you say so, Joe?"

The other man was standing beside the cow now, messing with the ropes that held the packs it carried. As if she wasn't even there, the Indian man said, "Steers ain't made for this, but you wouldn't listen to me. We shoulda took two horses-" Then he seemed to notice her and abruptly stopped talking.

"You must be going on a trip."

Gatrell said, "We both was, but only one of us might make it," giving the Indian man an odd look. Then he said, "But if you need to talk, you can find us down off the Loop Road-'bout forty miles east of here?-or we'll be back home in 'bout three, four days. We got a friend down there, Ervin T. Rouse."

Walker thought, If Cribbs wasn't here, I'd ask him right now. Just come out and say it, see how he reacts. The old man likes games so much. Look him right in the eyes and say, "Where are they?"

But instead, she said, "The trooper here says you're absolutely right. Riding horses on the highway, there's nothing he can do-"

"It's not very smart. I need to advise these gentlemen that." Cribbs had to throw that in. Show everyone he was the one in control.

Gatrell gave her that innocent grin, said, "One thing about being my age. You remember all kinds of old laws."

Walker said, "I bet you do… I bet you do. I'll keep that in mind." Then got in her car, out of the bugs, and sat watching until Gatrell and the Indian rode away.