The Man Who Ivented Florida

TWO

When Tucker Gatrell hung up the telephone, he thought, That nephew of mine. I shoulda whacked his pants back when I had the chance.

He needed to get Marion Ford involved in things; needed an outside helping hand with a little respectability up there in the county seat. Not that Marion hung out with those shitheel politicians, but at least he was a scientist-or so Tucker had heard-and them dim bulbs who always got themselves elected might pay attention to a scientist. Give him a little time, at least. Which was something they wouldn't do for an old person who had no money to speak of. When politicians looked at old people, all they saw was saggy skin wrapped around a voting finger.

Tucker stood tapping his big worn fists together, then he pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. Little after seven, so what the hell? Why not just go ahead and keep things moving? Lord knows, he'd spent enough time talking to his attorney, old Lemar Flowers. And reading all that little bitty print in all them books and papers. Then flying all over creation with his buddy Ervin T. Rouse; 'bout froze his butt off in that ratty little plane. Now he had to start putting the rest of his ducks in a row, so to speak, find himself a helper, and he knew just the man-well, knew just the Indian, anyway. Joseph Egret, if he hadn't gone wacky up there in that rest home. Get Joseph and a few others,-hell, start having some fun for a change. He still had-what?- nearly four weeks before that meeting old Lemar had finagled for him.

Yeah, about that. Three weeks and a few days till the state park people came down and tried to take his land.

So there was plenty of other stuff to keep him busy while Marion came around. Marion would, too. Say what you want about that nerdy kid, he was dependable. Good man in a fight; always was-at least until the navy people sent him off to college and made an egghead out of him. Goddamn navy. Marines, now there was an outfit. Not that the marines weren't shortsighted at times-like not drafting him during the big war because of his age. But he'd joined up anyway just to have the chance to meet those hula girls down there in the South Pacific.

Tucker rambled across the plank floor of his little ranch house, into the room that had once been Marion's, back when Marion was in high school. Cramped room with a window. Tuck kept his own clothes there now. In a pile on the cedar chest or on the floor, where they were easy to get to. There was still plenty of time to make the thirty-mile trip into town, but he wanted to look presentable. Find some clothes that weren't wrinkled or didn't smell like his horse, Roscoe.

Sorting through the clothes, Tucker was thinking, It's about nigh damn time I start looking respectable and make something of myself.

He'd been moping around that damn ranch, dirt-poor and lonely long enough. Yep, get off his ass and make a last-ditch effort to get the upper hand on those wormy bastards trying to run him off his own land. And that's just about exactly what he was going to do.

He stopped for a moment and looked beyond the window glare outside. He could see the silhouette of his bam-that needed fixing!-and the silhouette of Roscoe standing beneath a gumbo-limbo tree, probably asleep. A little ways farther was the jumbled form of his junk pile: boxes, car parts, a busted refrigerator, trash… and the rotting fly bridge of an old boat.

I hate seeing that damned old boat, so why the hell have I kept it around so long?

Talking to himself, Tucker answered his own question. "Because I'm a screwup, that's why."

It was true enough. He'd been screwing up his whole life,- that's the way he felt. No wife, no children, no accomplishments, unless he wanted to count a bunch of inventions and other schemes that never worked out. Which he didn't. Didn't count any of them. They didn't deserve credence, he'd messed them up so bad.

Nope. Not a single accomplishment. He'd spent his entire life casting around like a pointer dog in search of anything that smelled even faintly of adventure. And what had it gotten him? Broad shoulders and bowed legs. Scars. Open real estate where his front teeth should have been. The stub of a right ear-the rest of which had been bitten off by a Nicaraguan lady in a moment of high spirit. A case of jungle epidermosis that lighted gasoline might cure, but nothing else would.

He had spent his life as a fisherman and a Florida cowboy, which was the same as saying he had pissed it away. He'd done everything there was to do on the water-and had invented some stuff no one had ever done before. He'd worked cattle in Cuba and Central America, spending his nights getting drunk by a camp fire or in some rat-hole bar, and his mornings fighting low blood pressure depression and hoping he hadn't promised to marry the stranger who slept beside him.

Tucker picked up a shirt, held it to his nose, and said aloud, "Whew-whee!" and tossed it aside. Well, one of his dreams had always been to be rich enough to have somebody to do his laundry. A big ranch house, too, with flush toilets. Yeah, and a cook who didn't give him any lip. Somebody who could cook Chinese and make tomato gravy. Maybe a couple thousand acres of land, too, with no fences and a string of good horses and, perhaps, one of those new pickup trucks with the great big tires. He could buy some bumper stickers for it.

Yeah, and a couple kids would have been nice, too, though Marion had come pretty close to being like that; a son, for a couple years at least. Only he never could quite figure out Marion. What the hell kinda boy was it that would hate the nickname "Duke"? Or spend his spare time catching bugs and fish and looking at them under a microscope?

Tuck had sniffed his way through the whole pile of clothes, then was about to go through them a second time when he figured, What the hell, he didn't mind smelling like a horse. Not Roscoe, anyway. Big rangy Appaloosa, white with charcoal spots on his rump, and he didn't smell half bad. Kinda sweet, really. Not like that fifteen head of cattle out there in the pasture beneath the coconut palms. Snot hanging from their muzzles, dropping pies all over the place. Made him not want to eat meat, and he wouldn't if he didn't like steak so much. Dumb cows.

But Roscoe wasn't cow-dumb; he was smart. Roscoe was so smart, he was kinda like a buddy. Hell, back in the old days, he'da ridden Roscoe into town. Did that plenty of times. But now there Was too much car traffic, which Tuck didn't mind, but Roscoe didn't like it. Not. that Roscoe was skittish, he just couldn't stand being passed. Made the horse real sour dealing with things faster than himself.

Tucker Gatrell dressed himself in jeans, boots, a blue guayabera shirt to match his eyes, then set his best triple-X cowboy hat on his head, a stained white Justin. From the icebox-he stilled used an icebox-he took out a bottle filled with silty black water, swampy-looking water he'd gotten that afternoon. He took a little drink, smacking his lips at the muddy, sulphur taste of it, and spit it out. "Man, that's rank!" Then he sealed the bottle and put it into a paper sack.

Goin' into town. Tucker thought, hit diggity damn. Getting that old Saturday-night feeling even though it was only Thursday. Carrying my ticket to fortune, fame, and maybe my own cook.

Then he pushed open the screen door, patted his old pit bull, Gator, on the head, and climbed into his Chevy pickup truck, roaring off into the October night, about to pay his first visit to Everglades Township Rest Home,- find his old partner Joseph Egret.

No one lived at Everglades Township Rest Home by choice. Joseph Egret, age mid-seventies, certainly didn't. Elderly residents lived there because they were homeless or because the local courts had deemed them dangerous-an unattractive situation that the local media condemned at least once a year, then promptly forgot.

Joseph had not spent the last eleven months of his life at Everglades Township because he was homeless.

Tucker Gatrell knew nothing about any of this because he didn't read newspapers or watch television and, furthermore, he hated old people. More specifically, he hated old age. The fact that he was no spring chicken had no mollifying effect on his prejudice; if anything, it was sharpened. As a boy, his hatred of aging had been seeded by his own grandfather, who took strange joy in stealing sips from Tucker's drinks, then washing back nasty specks of cracker or tobacco. It would have made most boys queasy, but not Tuck. It just pissed him off. And Tucker Gatrell was never the sort to forgive and forget.

The lobby of Everglades Township Rest Home was empty when Tucker walked in-empty except for a woman in a nurse's uniform sitting in front of the television. Fat woman on a folding chair. Huge breasts and wide hips draped in surgical white, spreading over the seat like rising bread dough. Tucker stopped behind her and cleared his throat loudly. The nurse seemed not to notice. So he went to the desk and signed his name into the visitor's book, thinking that's what she was waiting for. But nope, she was still hypnotized by the television. On the screen were two actors in fancy clothes, their hair fluffed as if they'd stepped into a wind tunnel, then plunged their heads into hair spray. "Dear God," the woman actor was saying, "it's true-you are prejudiced! You beast!"

Tucker cleared his throat again, and the nurse spoke for the first time, lifting her head briefly. "Stop making that noise-please."

Tucker took his hat off, trying to appear sociable and respectable. "It's visiting hours, ma'am. Says so right there on the door. I got a person I need to visit."

The nurse made no reply until a commercial came on. She looked up then, as irritable as if Tucker were a six-year-old asking for a glass of water. "What are you doing out of your room? And where did you get those awful clothes?"

Tucker said, "Huh?"

"And that bag-you better not be trying to sneak liquor in here!"

Tuck was in a good mood, and he really was trying to be polite, but he wasn't made of stone. After all, these were his best clothes.

"I ain't outta my room, 'cause I don't live here," he said with some heat. "And it's none of your goddamn business how I dress. Just tell me where my old partner Joe Egret is and I'll leave you be."

The nurse leaned her face toward him. "That kind of garbage-mouth language won't be-hey, just who do you think you are?" She lifted her bulk out of the chair. "If you don't get back to your room right now, I'll call the orderlies!"

Well, hell, enough was enough…

Tucker took two quick steps and kicked the television off its stand, really putting his leg into it. The television landed on the linoleum with a crack, and the screen went fuzzy, flickering and throbbing.

Tucker grinned at the new expression on the nurse's face. He had her attention now, by God! He spoke before she could get a word out. "Now you listen here, missy, you tell me that room number-or my boot's bound for hemorrhoid highway. Com-prendo? As in your backside."

The nurse's face had paled. "My God-you're terrible."

Tucker still had his smile. "Yes ma'am. I heard that before. Now where's my partner?"

"Our television set!"

"That's right."

"You… bastard!"

"You kiss your mama with that mouth?"

"Get out of here right now!"

Tucker took a step toward the woman. "I ain't gonna say it again."

The nurse took a quick step back. "The Indian? Egret, you said?"

"Yep, the Indian. A great big one." Tucker held his hand over his head. "About so high."

The woman's legs appeared wobbly. "I was watching my favorite show!"

"Just tell me where the old fool is, you can keep on watching."

"What I'm going to do is call the…" Then she paused, looking at the television. "Hey," she said, "it's working again."

"Not for long if you don't-"

"Oh, for God's sake! He's up the stairs.. One of the rooms toward the end of the hall. Find it yourself."

Tuck started to walk away but then stopped. "I know what's going on in that mind a yours, ma'am. You're thinkin' the moment I head up the stairs, you're gonna call the law. Or them whatever you call it-orderlies? But I'll tell you what: You give me ten minutes with my old partner Joe, I'll leave real quiet like. You don't, you can kiss that television of yours good-bye."

The woman flinched, some of her anger returning. "I won't tolerate threats against our television set! It's our only recreation."

Tuck was smiling. "Then you best not risk it. Ten minutes. Understand?"

The television screen faced the ceiling. The actors with the sprayed hair were tangled in an embrace, whispering to each other. The nurse said, "You leave me alone till this show's over, I don't give a damn what you do." She glared at him once more, then didn't look at him again.

The rest home's second floor was a catacomb of narrow bed pens, and Tuck pushed open one door after another until he saw Joseph Egret. Joseph stood at the far end of the room, by the window. He wore a hospital gown that tied at the back; black hair hung to his shoulders,- his head and his hands shook with a slight pathological tremor as he held his fingertips to the glass, as if trying to reach through to the outside.

Tucker stood at the doorway, looking in. Except for the window, the room was dark, and his eyes were having trouble adjusting. He was also trying to adjust to the room's odor. The stink hit him when he opened the door,- caused him to snort and cover his nose. The smell seemed to come from the beds, only one of which was occupied: A shrunken figure lay connected by tubes to a sack of clear liquid suspended from a stand. The smell was a potent mixture of urine and some other odor that, had Tuck been younger, he would have recognized as the malodor of age and dying. He was standing with his hand over his nose when a quivering voice said, "It's that damn Indian. The stink. He farts continually and smells like a wet dog." The figure in the bed was talking, an old man with tiny bright eyes.

Tucker said, "Well, you don't smell like no box of Valentine candy yourself, buster," and pushed his way through the stench. He reached up to tap Joseph on the shoulder, saying, "Hey, you old fool-you gone deaf or something?"

Joseph turned to face him for the first time, and Tucker had to step back a bit-that's how surprised he was at the way Joseph had changed… had changed more in a year than Tucker would have thought possible. The great wedge of a nose was the same; the same high Indian cheeks, too. But now Joseph's beamy shoulders swooped like folded wings, and the sharp, dark, humorous eyes Tuck remembered were a syrupy glaze. He didn't seem nearly so big, either. Once Joseph had been six and a half feet tall, weighed probably 250. What the hell had happened?

"Gawldamn, Joe," Tucker said gently, not wanting to hurt his old friend's feelings, "these vultures stick a pin in you and let the air out? I've seen road kill looked healthier than you."

Joseph looked down, blinking at him, as Tucker added quickly, "Course, I don't mean that in a bad way."

There was no reason to get Joe mad; they'd been friends too long for that. Friends for more than fifty years, ever since they were teenagers, a few years after the completion of the Tamiami Trail, which crossed the Everglades and connected Miami with the west coast of Florida. In those days, he and Joe had developed a mutual bond that ensured honesty, affection, and scrupulous concern for the other-that bond being a massive white liquor still that either would have shot the other for. That still had produced forty gallons of liquor week in, week out, with little labor or upkeep on their part, and earned for them enough money to buy most of the villages on Florida's west coast. Had they wanted to buy villages. Which they didn't.

It had taken the two of them the best chunk of a month in Havana to piss all that money away, but they had managed. And they had been secretly proud of the inventive methods required to do it.

After government men destroyed the still, Tuck and Joseph had joined talents in a variety of enterprises over the years, which included running rum, smuggling in Orientals from Mexico, smuggling in Mexicans from the Bahamas, and running guns to Castro's revolutionaries, for which they received absolutely nothing and were, in fact, just happy to escape with their lives.

In recent years, they had spent a few evenings each month together. Sometimes, they'd poach a gator or two, knowing full well there was no longer anyplace in America to sell an illegal hide. Or shoot a few white ibis-curlew, Tuck called them-and fry them up with rice and tomato gravy. Some nights, Tucker would let some of his cattle escape, blame the neighbors, and contact Joseph with a desperate plea for roundup help. Actually, it was just an excuse to ride and drink as they once had, and the bulk of their sentences began, "Remember that time…?"

Mostly, the two men drifted apart. All friendships begin on a chance first meeting and usually end on an equally unexpected last encounter. Friendship is more closely related to alchemy than to chemistry, so it is always a little bit of a surprise that the laws of mortality still apply. Joseph Egret retreated to a cypress strand a few miles north of the Tamiami Trail, where he lived in a shack with a thatched palmetto roof and a 1971 Playboy calendar on the wall. Tuck retired to his scrub cattle and mullet skiff in Mango.

The last thing Tuck had heard about Joseph was from a bartender at the Rod amp; Gun Club in Everglades City. The bartender told him that Joseph had been found, sick and near death, in his shack by some hunters, who had contacted the county welfare people. One of the welfare people had approached the sleeping Joseph with a rectal thermometer. Joseph had rallied sufficiently from his surprise to throw the welfare worker through the wall. The welfare worker contacted the Sheriff's Department, got a judge to sign the right papers, and now, the bartender told Tucker, Joseph was paying his dept at Everglades Township Rest Home.

"Serves 'im right," Tucker had said at the time. "Teach 'im not to throw white people around like that."

But that was before Tucker had descended into the despair of his own loneliness; before his horse Roscoe had discovered that sulphur spring; before Tuck had realized the spring's wonderful potential; before the state, those bastards, had tried to pin him to the wall.

Tucker was thinking about all of this when he touched the shoulder of his old and beloved friend. Well, he was thinking about it a little bit. Thinking that once he had been nothing more than a cow hunter with evil ways, but now he was elevating himself, coming to this nasty damn place to rescue an old friend.

"Joe, you okay?" Tucker asked. "Can you hear me?"

Joseph looked at Tucker, and his eyes seemed to focus for a moment. "Lordy God," he said, "I hope somebody locked up my wallet."

Tucker took the big man's arms and shook him slightly. "Hey, Joe, it's Tuck. Me, your best friend!" He'd expected a warmer reunion.

Joseph studied the face before him. His mind was a gauzy shambles of reality and dreams, and his eyes were milky. "I know who you are. We got another whiskey run to make? I want to count the money this time, you cheatin' bastard-"

Tucker was still shaking him gently. "Joe! Listen to me. We ain't run no liquor in fifty years."

"I don't care if it was a hundred. You shortchanged me on that run to LaBelle. Don't think I ain't got ways of finding out."

"How in the hell… I mean, damn it, Joe, you're talking nonsense."

"Say, Tuck," Joseph continued vacantly, "how 'bout we go jack-lightin' tonight. Kill some gators. They're giving Indians four bucks a hide over to Miami. Seven bucks to white men, so I guess you better handle the sellin', but goddamn it, I want to count the money before it hits your pocket-"

From the bed, a querulous voice interrupted: "Why waste your time trying to reason with that stupid Seminole? He talks gibberish. Nothing but gibberish. And I need my rest!"

Joseph shook away from Tuck and lumbered toward the shrunken figure in the bed. "I told you about that," he said.

To Tucker, the dim figure yelled, "Make him leave me alone!" Then to Joseph: "Go away, you red devil, or I'll buzz the nurses' station and have the orderlies tie you down again!"

Joseph found the plastic tube running from the sack into the old man and pinched off the flow. "Take it back. Say I ain't a Seminole."

Bright Eyes moaned, "Are you trying to kill me?"

Tucker was right there beside Joseph, and he whispered, "Hey Joe-will that really kill him?"

Joseph shrugged. "If it don't, I can choke him," he said.

Tucker turned to the figure and directed hastily, "Say he ain't a Seminole. Say it real nice like." He didn't particular care about the old man, but for Joseph to get mixed up in a murder trial now would completely screw up his plans.

"Okay, okay," hollered the man, "you are not a Seminole." His gaze swung to Tucker. "Now please get this stinking Indian away from me!"

Joseph released the tube, saying, "That's better." Bending over the man, he added, "I won't stand for disrespect." Then he turned and tottered back toward the window, which is when he noticed the sack Tucker was carrying. "Hey," he said, "you bring me a present? Nice can of snuff, maybe?"

Tucker pulled out the plastic bottle and held it up to the window. "Better than that. I got something here that's gonna fix you right up."

"Hum," said Joseph, clicking his tongue softly. "White liquor, maybe? Only, hey-this looks kinda yella. You ain't playin' no trick on me. It better not be-"

"It ain't whiskey, and I ain't playing no trick, you old fool." Tucker put his hand on Joseph's shoulder and began to whisper. "I got a favor to ask, Joe. Big favor that could do a lot of good for us both. Say-I bet they make you take a lot of drugs and stuff here, huh."

Joseph's mind drifted away, then drifted back again. "Nothin' any fun. I just take pills. All kinds a colors a pills. The fat nurse brings them."

"From now on, I don't want you to take another pill. Not a one."

"But it's my medicine."

"Hell, you don't look sick to me. You feel poorly?"

"Dang right I feel poorly. I'm old."

"I'd do it for you, Joe. I truly would. You wanted me to stop taking my pills, I do it in a second. Just 'cause we're friends."

Joseph said, "Sure, you can say that. But they stick 'em up your butt, you don't take them. They got about six or seven orderlies here, and I ain't as young as I used to be."

Tucker was shaking his head, a pained expression on his face. "Just pretend to take 'em. Gawldamn, you're stupid! No wonder you ended up in this shit hole, without me around to do your thinking."

Joseph gave him a flat look of warning. "I ain't that old, Tucker."

Tucker Gatrell said, "Okay, okay, okay," and began to whisper some more. After a few minutes, Joseph said, "Roscoe's nuts growed back? So what?" Tucker whispered again, and then Joseph said, "I'm the one they got locked up, but you're the crazy one."

Tucker said, "There ain't nothing in the world crazy about it. This water's got vitamins in it… minerals. Something. You know what they got now? Hell, they got whole stores now that sell nothing but vitamins. And you go to a grocery store, they got shelves and shelves of water. People actually pay money for it! This here's like two things wrapped up in one."

Joseph's mind drifted away for a moment, and he said, "My granddaddy, he used to tell me about that."

Tucker said, "Damn right!" But then he said, "Tell you about what?"

Joseph reached for the bottle. "Let me have a taste. I'll tell you if it makes me feel any healthier."

"Well, you ain't gonna notice it right off, ya idiot. Takes time." Tucker jabbed a finger at the side of his head. "I was drinking the water for only about a month when this here ear I lost in a fight started to grow back."

"You didn't lose that ear in a fight," Joseph said dubiously. "Some whore chewed it off down when we was in Caracas."

"Nicaragua," Tuck corrected. "And it was so a fight-sort of. But that ain't the point. The point is, it's growing back."

Joseph studied the pink stub of ear. It didn't look as if it had been growing. He tried to remember what Tuck had looked like the year before, but all that came to his mind was they way he had looked when they were young men.

"My granddaddy, old Chekika's Son, told me," said Joseph. "Water where the sick people could go and get better."

Tucker was nodding, sensing that he was winning Joseph over. Getting a little excited, too. If he could convince someone as stubborn as Joseph in only a few minutes, it wouldn't be hard at all to convince a couple of million normal people in the weeks he had left. He said, "Hell, I'll help bust you out of this place now if you want. Damn-wish I'd brought my gun." Tuck was patting his sides, just in case he had remembered.

Joseph said, "Nope. If I start feeling good enough to break out, I'll do it when I'm ready."

"But no more of them damn pills. I've been reading about that. Just drink the water."

"I'll see how it goes. I don't trust you, Tuck."

Tucker motioned to the walls, the ceiling. "I suppose you like living in this honey bucket."

Joseph looked at Tuck. "When I'm ready"-meaning it was not to be discussed anymore.

Tuck left, but Joseph kept the bottle of water.

In a rare lucid moment, Joseph Egret wrapped the bottle in his dirty underwear and hid it beneath his bed. The rest home's staff never looked under the beds, perhaps because to look was to acknowledge the existence of bedpans. They couldn't empty what they didn't see.

Joseph hid the bottle with the few valuables not already stolen by the staff (all they had left him was his deerskin boots and his old black Wyoming cattle roper's hat), and so the bottle was there every morning and evening when he wanted a drink from it.

He also followed Tuck's advice about the dozen or so pills he was supposed to take each day. Medications, the nurses called them, bringing the bright plastic capsules around on a cart in rows of tiny paper cups. Had he refused to take the pills, the orderlies would have been called-he'd already tried that. So what he did was toss his head back as if he was swallowing the pills, but he really transferred them into his big hands, to be thrown into the toilet later. The nurses didn't pay a lot of attention. They were busy making check marks on their charts so they could hurry and get back to their television programs downstairs.

On the third day, Joseph awoke, realizing that the numbness that had long deadened the left side of his body had disappeared. Like an arm that falls asleep and then slowly awakens, there was a strange residual itch, but it was not unpleasant. And the numbness was certainly gone. He also began to experience a growing restlessness, a sort of psychic itch-which was unpleasant. He had spent the bulk of his eleven months at Everglades Township Rest Home in a drug-induced reverie, never really coherent enough to realize or wonder how his life had degenerated to the point where he now carried a catheter bag on his hip as comfortably as he had once carried a. 38-caliber Smith amp; Wesson. This new itch filled him with a black depression that caused him to be feisty by rest home standards. He broke the tiny mirror in his room because he did not like the gaunt reflection that stared back at him. That did not assuage his despair, so he went from room to room breaking every mirror he could find. Joseph also discovered that he was desperately hungry, so he sneaked to the kitchen, threatened the head dietitian with a knife, and rummaged through cans of government surplus food until he found two pounds of hamburger, which he ate raw. On the way back to his room, he yanked out his own catheter tube, went to the bathroom, and, after enduring an initial burst of pain, found he didn't need the damn thing.

The orderlies had had more than their share of trouble with Joseph, and when they found him, they knew what to do. They tied his hands and feet with plastic tie wraps and threw him facedown on his bed. Four hours later, when he was released, old Bright Eyes in the next bed made an observation about Indians that Joseph found offensive. In his dark mood, there seemed only one honorable thing to do-beat the little bastard to death. He would have done it, too, if one of the fat nurses hadn't banged into the room, looking for the individual she referred to as "the perverted son of a bitch who stole our TV Guide."

The orderlies tied his hands and feet again; left him bound all night.

On the morning of the fifth day after Tuck's visit, Joseph awoke, finding a mature but attractive rest home volunteer standing over him. The woman had a sponge in her hand and a name tag that read MARJORIE. Joseph rubbed his eyes clear and saw that she was staring at him, a vexed expression on her face. Which puzzled Joseph until he noticed that the sheet over his hips peaked with the abrupt contours of a two-man mountain tent. He peeked under the sheet to see what created the tent, then returned from beneath the covers, surprised and pleased.

"Mr. Egret," the woman said, "I hope you're not hiding something under that blanket." She said it primly, but kindly, too. Her hair was gray-blond, she had nice brown eyes, and the pink volunteer's uniform brought out the color of her face. He had never seen this woman before; they rarely got volunteers.

"Please," the woman said, "I'm giving you a chance."

Joseph combed his fingers through his hair, hoping he looked as good as he felt.

"I'm scheduled to give you a sponge bath, but if that's a liquor bottle under the covers, I'll… well, I won't report you-just as long as you take it to the bathroom right now and dispose of it."

Joseph settled himself, folded his hands behind his head, and smiled rakishly.

"Please, Mr. Egret. If you don't cooperate, I'll have to notify the nurses, and you will be in a great deal of trouble." The woman tried to sound stern, but sounded nervous instead. Maybe it was her first day as a volunteer. Maybe it was her first sponge bath. Joseph wagged his eyebrows and said nothing.

The woman took a deep breath, reached up, and pulled the privacy curtain around his bed, then threw back the sheet that covered Joseph's hips.

The woman was astonished. Joseph would have known that from the expression on her face, even if she had not sputtered, "Goodness gracious!" Surprised and maybe a little bit pleased, too, for Joseph was guilty of hiding neither a wine nor a whiskey bottle. He was only in a romantic mood. "Why… I'm very sorry!" The woman's face was red, and she was smiling but trying not to, and he hoped he recognized a flicker of interest in her eyes.

Joseph didn't mean it, but he said, "I sure am sorry about this, too, ma'am. But a woman pretty as you, I just can't help myself." Testing the sincerity of her interest, watching her face.

"You don't have to apologize… I should have been more… then I was just so surprised…I mean, it's not like I haven't… I mean, I have a gentleman friend, but we don't… then to see that…"

She was stammering so badly, Joseph reached out and took the woman's hand. Then he held her when she made a unenthusiastic effort to pull away. Joseph was no bully, but it had been his experience that a woman came to a man's bed only for one reason.

"Please, Mr. Egret, I'm working."

He was pulling her closer, closer, then he pressed a friendly kiss to her mouth, tasting the lipstick.

"You can't do this, Mr. Egret… We can't… I don't even know you: I'm not well; I'm not. I have this heart condition… please!"

Joseph interrupted modestly, "Aw ma'am, I'm pretty sure your heart's outta my range."

But the woman would not consent, and so she sat and talked to him for nearly an hour. He told her stories. He made her laugh. He knew white people liked to hear the old stories about what it was like to be an Indian in the Everglades. A few of his stories were even true.

She gave him a hug and a little kiss before she left, and Joseph had the feeling she might be back. He was right. Long after dark, she leaned over his bed as if to see whether he was awake, and Joseph kissed her. The volunteer whispered, "Hi there yourself!" and immediately assumed the sexual offensive, attacking him with a vigor that startled Joseph and made him feel almost meek.

Later, she gave him a sponge bath and rubbed his back. The next day, when she was supposed to be at her gentleman friend's country club selling baked goods for the greenskeepers' fund, Marjorie returned instead to the rest home with a tin of Copenhagen snuff and a brand of chocolates that Joseph Egret said he loved.