The Man Who Ivented Florida

SIX

William Bambridge, Ph. D.-tenured professor of American literature at Oberlin College in Ohio, author of To an Unknown Tarpon, With Love, and host of the popular television fishing show "Tight Lines!"-sat in a shell pit looking at his blistered hands, his bare legs crisscrossed with cuts from hacking sugarcane on this godforsaken island, too physically spent, too emotionally exhausted to swat at the haze of mosquitoes that drifted around his face. His gray Tarpon Wear shorts were soaked from the muck floor; two of the buttons had popped off his green Tarpon Wear shirt, so that his belly protruded. A week of working like a slave, sleeping on the ground in the pit, had turned his clothes to rags. Even his leather Top-Siders were ripping at the sides from being wet all the time. Sitting there like a mud-smeared Buddha, Bambridge inhaled deeply-choked, spit, gagged, spit; could feel mosquitoes burning his pharynx and the back of his throat.

"Ah-h-hhg!" He slumped over, retching.

"Goddamn it, Bambridge, if you start crying again, I'll give you a reason to cry!" One of the Chucks talking. Charles Herbott, the environmentalist, and Chuck Fleet, the surveyor, were sitting on the shell floor with him, the pit so small that they couldn't move, couldn't even sit without touching one another.

The other Chuck, Chuck Fleet, said, "If he wasn't so damn… big, we'd have room to lie down at least, maybe get some decent sleep. I slept okay before he got here."

"You mean fat-just say it!"

"Ah, Christ…"

Bambridge began to sob, covering his face with his hands. "I don't want to be here any more than you do! It's not my fault I got lost, then came looking for help when my engine quit-"

"Quit crying!"

"Broke down, just like you two-" "None of us likes it, Bambridge. We just have to hang on until they find us. They will. You've heard the planes."

"He'll work me to death first. I'm not like you two. You're used to the outdoors. I can't take it anymore. The bugs and the heat-I just can't! I'm an educator, for God's sake!"

One of the Chucks, Charles Herbott, said, "Every morning, it's the same thing, him bawling and whining. I can't listen to much more of his crybaby bullshit, I'm warning you both right now!" Furious, threatening violence with the intensity of his voice.

Charles Herbott did that a lot, lost his temper.

Fleet said, "The old man'll be coming for us pretty soon. We ought to rest instead of argue. Hey-" He was ignoring Bambridge. The two Chucks had made a point of ignoring him since the evening of the first day he'd arrived. His first night in the pit, he'd broken down so totally that his hysteria had become contagious, a kind of emotional electrical current that had zapped them both and pushed them close to panic. Now, when he cried, they acted as if he didn't exist. Fleet said, "Hey, you know, I was thinking-"

"That and slap mosquitoes, what the hell else is there to do?"

"Naw, the old man, I was thinking about him." Fleet had a couple of shells in his palm, bouncing them like coins. "He may not be as crazy as we think."

"He's… just look at him-insane. Look at his eyes."

"Yeah, but listen. I was thinking, why is it he waits till late afternoon to make us work? 'Cause of the storms, that's why. See?"

"It's because of the heat. We've already talked about that. He works us in the full heat, he's worried we'll die and won't get his cane in. Son of a bitch is a slave driver, and him a-"

"Maybe, maybe, but look: The search planes only come in the morning. That's why. See? The storms build up every afternoon this time of year, so the old man knows it's the only safe time to have us out. Works us then."

"Yeah…?"

"So the planes won't see us."

"I see that, but I don't get-"

"I'm just saying if he's crazy, at least he's smart crazy. Too smart to kill us."

"That's what he's going to do! You know it is! Him and that gun!" Bambridge blubbering again.

Charles Herbott said, "Maybe… I don't know. He keeps saying he's going to let us go. And if he does, I'll tell you this, I ever get my hands on that old asshole-" Making a twisting motion with his hands. Herbott, the environmental consultant, was a little man with tight weight-lifter muscles, the kind made in a gym, doing reps in front of a mirror.

"But see, if he's rational, rational in his own way"-Chuck Fleet was thinking and talking-"then maybe all this really does make sense to him. Our boats break down-"

"They didn't just break down. I knock the prop off my engine, you tear the foot off yours, and him right there to help saying no use to call on the radio, the hand-held VHFs wouldn't reach-"

"See? He was right about that. I tried. We're out of range down here. The radio wouldn't reach."

"But that he'd tow us back to the shack, make sure we got help. He was lying about that, just tricking us."

Bambridge broke in. "There's the difference. He wanted you two. Me, my engine stopped, then I dropped my radio over and I had to paddle and paddle. He should let me go!"

Charles Herbott said, "Bambridge, I hear that story one more time, I'm going to kill you myself."

Chuck Fleet said, "If you two would just listen. Understand what I'm getting at? Us broken down-run aground, he sees it- then he really did have a right to salvage our boats. The instant we got out, anyway. In his own mind, he had a right, I'm saying. Not that any normal person would do that. But he's old, old Florida, understand? From the days of the salvage industry: old maritime law said it was legal to take an abandoned boat, and the owners had to pay a percentage of the manifest. That was the law. Hell, it might still be the law, for all I know. That's what he means when he says we got to work off our debt."

"But my boat hit something that shouldn't a been there. He laid a trap-"

"Maybe he did. Like the old-time wreckers. They'd move the channel lights, run boats onto the reef. Same thing."

Charles Herbott stood and put his hands against the shell wall of the pit. His first day there, Fleet had told him, don't try to climb out, he'd already tried. The shell was so loose, the walls could come down on top of them. But Herbott had tried anyway, and, sure enough, it was like trying to climb through a landslide. The idea of being covered with shell and suffocating-

Fleet said, "He's rational. That's what I'm saying. In his own way. I think he's going to make us work off our debt and let us go."

"He's a killer, and we all know it!" Bambridge again. "He pointed his gun at my head!"

"No, he's never done that, never pointed his gun at any of us. Never come right out and threatened to shoot any of us, when you think back."

"He's sure as hell implied it!"

"Think what you want, I'm just trying to look at it from another point of view."

Herbott said, "So he doesn't think he's doing anything illegal."

"That's what I'm saying."

"And he has no reason to kill us? Doesn't matter. If he ever gives me the chance, I'm going to shoot the old scumbag myself, or beat him to death with my bare hands." That was Charles Her-bott's favorite topic, how he was going to take the old man apart.

Chuck Fleet said, "The point is, he thinks things out. That's why he works us in the afternoons, when the storms blow through. No planes."

The two Chucks talked about that, passing time. They'd talked about everything, mostly how to get away. But when they weren't in the pit, they were working those thick cane patches planted in among the gumbo-limbo trees, or turning the cane press by hand like mules. And the old man stood within shooting range with his double-barreled 12-gauge, but never close enough for them to jump him.

"I've got to get out of here or I'll go insane!"

The two Chucks ignored him,- they always did. William Bambridge put his face in his hands, waiting for more tears, but he was all cried out. He could feel the blisters on his palms, spongy against his cheeks. The mosquitoes were all over him; he could feel their needle touch on his legs, could hear them whining in his ears, could feel their wings feathering the hair on his arms. The old man had said the pit was the only place they could sleep and still be out of the bugs, plus he'd built a thatched roof over it to keep out the rain. "Skeeters and sand flies," he called them. But the bugs were nearly as bad below as they were above. Worse, the maddening things were more attracted to him than to the other two men-of that Bambridge was certain. He'd read that somewhere, that mosquitoes preferred certain body chemistries to others. Where had he read that?

Thinking about it reminded him of his nice library in his nice little house back home-the library with all the books on chess and literature, a whole small section on the culinary arts, even a few books on fishing, including a dozen copies left of his own, To an Unknown Tarpon, With Love. Bambridge had spent a vacation week at Rio Colorado Tarpon Lodge in Costa Rica-never did land one of the damn fish-then spent two years writing the book because he had a federal grant, and if he didn't work on it for twenty-four months, he wouldn't get his quarterly checks, and what else was he going to write about? His dull life in Ohio? Then, wonder of wonders, the book won the UPLA-University Professor's Literary Award-which, in turn, had prompted The New York Times to invite him to contribute the occasional fishing column. And that had prompted several of the television news magazines to use him as an on-camera fishing expert. Which was probably why People magazine had referred to him as the "Dean of the American Outdoors" in the two-paragraph story about his book selling to the movies. Which had prompted the national television syndicate to contact him about doing the fishing show.

The show had done pretty well, too; got picked up by quite a few markets, and the numbers were pretty good. The sponsors came through with money and a lot of product, so he'd requested the sabbatical from teaching. Not that it would have mattered had the college refused. He had tenure-he could do what he damn well pleased. So he took the fall quarter off to take the show on the road, get the hell away from those tiresome shows on walleye techniques on Lake Erie. Brought it down here to Florida to check the place out, thinking maybe it was about time he moved from teaching into a full-time television career…

Only to stumble into this nightmare. Held captive in a hole with two strangers-one of them, Herbott, a violent bully-defecating in a bucket, surviving on nothing but water and some kind of greasy fish. Even the two Chucks didn't know what it was. Being worked to the point of nausea and beyond, waiting to die or go mad.

This is hell, this is hell, this is hell… Sitting there repeating it in his mind like a mantra.

It couldn't be happening, yet it was.

Bambridge stirred and swiped the mosquitoes off his arm, then smacked at his legs. Then he began to slap at his whole body in a growing frenzy, not unlike a drunk slapping snakes in the grips of delirium.

"Get them off me! It's not fair; it's not fair--"

"Knock it off, Bambridge. You're kicking me!"

"Hey-shut up, you two. He's coming, the old man."

"He's nuts! You kick me again, I'll beat the living shit out of you, Bambridge. I mean it!"

"Quiet!"

William Bambridge stilled himself abruptly; sat there trembling, knowing only that this horror couldn't go on. He had to end it, somehow, someway. He couldn't abide another day working in the heat, living with the insects. He sat looking toward the opening of the pit, like looking out of a well, and saw the silhouette of the old man appear, bent at the hips, peering down. The old man's raspy nasal twang: "You boys got so much juice, I'll put you to work early," which Bambridge heard as, "Yew baws gah so-o-o moch jews, ah'll putchew tah whark airr-ly."

Bambridge got to his feet, dusting the shells off his wet butt, watching the silhouette stoop over something-the long wooden ladder he lowered each day.

"Sir? Sir? I have to tell you something." Bambridge had his hands cupped around his mouth, trying to sound pleasant but authoritative. "I'm ill-sick. Very sick. I can't work today. I simply can't."

The old man was futzing with the ladder, talking to himself.

"Sir? Sir? Captain!" Which was what one of the Chucks called him-Fleet-like a chain-gang worker in a movie about the Deep South. "I'm trying to discuss something with you here, get something settled-"

The ladder began to slide down into the pit. The old man said, "Onliest thing you got to settle is the man's day's work you owe me."

"I can't! Don't you hear me?" And the tears came again. "I'm sick, I tell you. I can't work in the fields today. If you try to make me, I'll… I'll run away. I mean it!"

The old man's voice: "You do, you'll never make it off this island. I mean that." "You'll shoot me? That's what you mean, isn't it!"

"I mean a fat 'un like you ain't got the gumption to make it. Now quit your talkin'."

"Then why don't you shoot me? I wish you would! Shoot me now, for God's sake." Bambridge had his back to the shell wall, and he slowly rode it to the ground, collapsing in sobs. He didn't look up when he heard one of the Chucks, Fleet, say, "Captain, he's telling the truth. He's either sick or he's lost his mind. Either way, we wish you'd get him out of here."

"Me, too, old man. Do us all a favor." Herbott's surly voice.

The old man said, "You boys jes take it into your minds you don't want to work; you think that's the way things is."

"No sir, Captain. We'll do our work, all we owe you. It's him we're talking about."

There was a long silence, the old man muttering. Then: "You there!" The old man was talking to him; Bambridge could sense the focus of his attention. "Climb up outta that there hole, Fat'un."

"I'm not going to the fields." Bambridge said it flatly. The exhaustion had been replaced by a rock-bottom resolve. He didn't care anymore what the old bastard did, what the two Chucks thought. "Nothing matters," he said. "Go ahead. Shoot."

"Didn't say nothing about no fields. You owe me work-"

"I already said I'll pay you! Pay you anything you want if you get me back-"

"One of them there checks, no thanks. I had my money in a bank oncest and lost it."

"Then cash, for Christ's sake!"

"But you don't got it on you." The old man made a whoofing noise, cynical. "I tow you back now, I'll never see you or yer boats again."

"You will, too! We've told you a hundred times, we don't have the cash on us-"

The old man said, "Then you owe me work, and you'll by God do it. You can't do man's work, maybe you can do woman's work. Can you cook?"

"I'm not work-" Bambridge stopped, realizing what he was being asked. He looked up at the silhouette. "Yes… yes, I can cook. I like to… I'm a very good cook."

"Can you sweep and scrub and wash?"

"Inside your home, you mean?" Bambridge had never been inside it, a bamboo thatched hut beneath trees, but at least it had walls to keep the bugs out. "I can do that, yes. Scrub, cook, anything. And stay there, out of the bugs?"

The Old man was holding the shotgun now. Bambridge could see it as he squinted up at the bright Florida sky. "Get yo' big butt up the ladder, then."

Just like old times… That's what Tucker Gatrell was thinking. Sitting on the porch with Joseph Egret, the wooden chairs kicked back and their feet propped on the porch railing, swatting mosquitoes and spitting chewing tobacco.

Could be forty years ago… could be ten years… hell, could all be a dream… That's what he was thinking.

Mango Bay spread out before them, and the tin roofs of the abandoned fish shacks caught the morning sun like mirrors and flung the light obliquely, in dusty yellow rays, back onto the little curve of fishing village. In the strange light, coconut palms leaning in feathered strands were isolated along the road, set apart from the mud beach upon which they grew. They seemed fragile and singular, gold and gray, as if shaped by a hurricane wind, then marooned in stillness. Small portions of Mango caught the light and were elevated from the mundane because of it: wedges of cypress planking, a lone piling, the bow of a sunken mullet skiff, the rust streaks beneath the COKE sign hanging outside the deserted store, Homer's Gas and Sundries.

There was a sweetness in the air, too. Tuck sniffed, sitting on the porch. The cloying perfume of jasmine mixed with the sulphur and protein odor of the bay. He lowered the paper in his hand-there was a whole box of papers and folders beside his chair-and inhaled deeply. "Smells good, don't it?"

Joseph nodded his agreement. "That's bacon frying. Maybe down at the organ lady's house, Miz Taylor's."

Tuck turned his nose upward expertly. "No-o-o-o, don't think so."

"Next place down, then. Sally Carmel's?"

Tuck said lazily, "More likely. Wouldn't hurt for us to walk down and check up on her. That Sally, she's the independent sort, but I can tell she misses having a man around. Always something to lift or move for a woman living alone. I worry about that girl."

"Yeah," Joseph said, "and she might be cooking hotcakes, too."

The two men were quiet for a time, languid in the fresh morning heat. Then Tucker said, "I tried to fix Duke up with her, had it all arranged just right. But he messed it up. Peeked at her through a telescope when she didn't have no clothes on. She's mad. Oh, she's real mad."

Joseph said, "A telescope, huh? I'd a never thunk of that."

"Yeah, Duke's smart, no denying it. He got the Gatrell brain"- Tucker glanced at Joseph out of the corner of his eye to see how that was accepted-"but he never got my gift for dealin' with people. You know how people just naturally love me."

Joseph turned and spat.

"But Duke, he's always been kinda a cold fish. Say, you remember why he moved out on me?"

Joseph hesitated for a moment. Did Tuck mean the real reason Marion had moved out? Or did he mean one of the excuses Tuck had given? After a moment, Joseph said, "Sure, I remember. Marion had to do all the work around the place while you sat around drinkin' beer. I don't blame him."

"Naw, that's all wrong. Well, it wasn't just that. You don't know the reason?"

Joseph knew. He waited, wondering whether Tuck would talk about it.

But Tucker said, "I come home one day after being off someplace. Okeechobee?" Tuck was trying to remember. "Naw, it was forty-mile bend, down on the Trail, 'cause that was the year the gators came up the creeks thick. Anyway…" He scratched his head. "What was I talkin' about? Oh-I come home one day and the whole kitchen table was covered with bugs. All kinda bugs laid out on this cottony sort of material. Hell, palmetto bugs big as my fist, so I throw'd the whole mess out-"

It wasn't the real reason, but Joseph was nodding his head, playing along. "That's right, you threw out his bug collection."

"Packed his bag, stormed out, and moved up to the islands off Fort Myers. Him just sixteen years old, rented his own place, made his own money, and still found time to play ball. Only seen him about a dozen times since. He was off with the government, doing some kind of work. Going to college. I'm going to have a hell of a time getting him back down here."

Joseph said, "Sometimes a place has bad memories. After living two months with my first wife, I never wanted to see Miami again."

Out on the water, a little bay shrimper headed out Wilson Cut. Its outriggers were folded like the wings of some bony pterodactyl and smoke spurted from the exhaust stack, out of synch with the delayed pop-poppa-pop that reached them across the water.

"That's little Jim Bob James growed up," Tuck observed. "No smarter than his daddy, trying to shrimp during the day. Oh, I tried to tell 'im."

Joseph sat and listened, hoping Tuck wouldn't get started on how he had discovered that shrimp came out at night, because that would lead him into the first stone-crab trap they had built- well, actually Joseph had figured out the trap and about the shrimp, too, but Tuck always took credit-and that would lead to all the things Tuck'd done first, before anybody else in Florida caught on, which would lead to his long, sad wondering why they'd ended up so poor when everyone else had gotten rich. Joseph didn't care anything about money-he never had-but he hated to see Tuck depressed, because that caused him to talk even more than usual. Joseph had his mind on that bacon frying down at Sally Carmel's place.

Instead, Tucker said, "You know old man James was mad at me till the day he died just 'cause Duke tossed that cherry bomb into their privy."

Joseph said, "It was you that threw it, not Marion. Did Mrs. James ever recover?"

"Oh, hell yes. She was always a little deaf, anyway. Course, they blamed it all on Duke, that and some kinda constipation they said required hypnotics or hydraulics or some damn thing. How was I supposed to know she was in there? Most folks have a sign, but not them Jameses. I never did like that woman, anyway. Too dull."

"Not so dull in some ways as you might think," Joseph defended mildly.

Tucker sat up, interested. "You mean you and Mrs. James… you two?"

Joseph shrugged. "Lavinia was a lonely woman. She'd leave the porch light on for me sometimes when old man James was out in the boat. Said he smelled of fish."

Tucker shook his head in amazement. "If I had any respect for womanhood at all, I'd left you right where you was, dying in that rest home."

"Women like me," Joseph said simply.

"Hey now, Joe"-Tucker leaned toward him-"tell me true about something. Would you've ever tried to thimble my wife?"

"You never had no wife."

"I know that. I'm just asking, would you of messed with her? If I'd gotten married."

"But you never did. You never did get married. Almost did- that Cuban girl, the one with the little blue sea horse on her hand, a tattoo-"

"Jesus H. Christ, Joe! I'm just askin' a simple question. Would you've thimbled my wife? Gawldamn dense Indian-"

Joseph considered the question for a time. He rolled his chew from side to side and slapped at a mosquito. "I guess so-if she had nice skin."

Tucker's face described contempt. "I'll be go to hell. And after all I've done for you."

"I like nice skin," Joseph said. "You want me to lie?"

"That woulda been the polite thing to do! Friends is supposed to do things for each other." Tucker simmered for a moment before he sighed and added, "Know what's sad? I couldn't be trusted with your wife, neither. Not if she was in a loving mood." Tuck caught the sharp look Joseph gave him, so he added hastily, "Which she never was. Either of them."

Joseph said, "That the truth?"

"God honest, my right hand on the Book."

"Hum-m-m-m. Your timing musta been off then, 'cause the second one run off with that bird-watcher from Long Island. Skinny man that wore things around his neck. 'Noculars? Or maybe he had somethin' you didn't."

Tucker started to react to the implications of that, then decided to drop it. He ruffled the paper he was holding, then picked up the box of papers and put it in his lap.

The shrimp boat was out of sight now, behind the scattering of mangrove islands that was the first green gate to the maze of the Ten Thousand Islands southward.

"You know something," Tucker said, his voice sounding tired, "we're both just a couple of low-life sons a bitches."

Joseph nodded his agreement. There was a big bluebottle fly buzzing around, and he was waiting to get a shot in with his load of tobacco juice.

Tucker said, "Pitiful, that's what we are. Makes me want to get down on my knees and pray for forgiveness, all the bad things we done." He looked over briefly at the bigger man. "Least you're an Indian. You got an excuse."

Joseph was listening but not giving it his full attention. He had his eye on the fly, watching it like a cat.

Tucker said, "Me, I got no excuses. I lived a bad life and I admit it." He raised his voice, looking up. "Hear me God? I admit I ain't been worth a deuce all my life. Coulda done good. Instead, I done bad." His voice became reflective. "Course… some might say it was a little stupid to send me down here with a trigger finger and a tallywhacker if You didn't expect me to use 'em." He paused and looked toward the sky again. "But I ain't the kind to second-guess, Lord!"

The fly was buzzing, soaring, descending, its circles getting smaller and smaller. Joseph waited.

"It's the damn truth. I been a sinner my whole life. I've lied, cheated, messed with married women, drank liquor, and, God forgive me, even killed a man, shot him dead-"

The fly landed on the railing, and Joseph spat, a real zinger, which hit the fly-but also Tuck's foot.

Tucker lifted his boot, studying the slime with disgust. "Jesus Christ, Joe, I been bad, but that don't give you the right to spit on me!"

"Wasn't spittin' at you. There was a fly."

"Well, you hit my good boot! Gad-"

Joseph pointed at the struggling fly. "That look like I missed? Besides, you never shot no man."

"Did, too. Shot lots of Japanese. What ya think us marines was doing over there in Hawaii?"

"That was the war. It don't count. I meant you never shot no one else."

"Hell I didn't-That one-eyed fish buyer down in Campeche."

"You didn't shoot him; you shot at him. I was there. You missed. You never could shoot."

"That's right, I shot at him. Out there on the docks that night, it was cold as hell, and he jumped in the water. He got pneumonia and I heard he got complications and died only about a year later.

Same thing as me holding the gun to his head." Tuck folded his hands and looked out over the water. "That good-for-nothing beaner haunts me to this day."

Joseph stood and stretched.

"Hey," Tucker said, "where you going?"

"That bacon smells done. I was gonna go down to that girl's, see about breakfast."

"Sit yourself down. I'm talking about something here."

"If I always waited till you stopped talking, I'd starve."

"I'm talking about what to do with this here discovery of mine-the vitamin water. I'm saying we got a chance to do something good for a change. I got a plan."

Joseph said, "You always got a plan. But ain't none of 'em ever worked."

"And do you know why that is, Joe? Have you put any thought at all into why it is that all the things I discovered, all the smart ideas I had, that they all just kinda floated away from us and made somebody else rich?"

Joseph thought for a moment. "'Cause you're a fuckup?"

"No!" Tuck made a face, genuinely offended. "No, the only difference is advertising. The whole kit-n-caboodle right there. I never advertised my ideas-I just gave 'em away. And you want to know why?"

Joseph didn't want to know, but he didn't say it. Tuck was going to tell him, anyway.

"The reason I give the ideas away was 'cause I never took 'em seriously enough. Never realized how important they was at the time. When I had Dick Pope out fishing, I said, 'You like to tow people on boards behind boats, just fence the place in, charge admission. Like a circus that doesn't move. Maybe even a restaurant.' He says, 'Cap'n, I like that-a circus that doesn't move. Call it Beautiful Cypress Gardens' Ski Show.' Joe, that's just what I told him." Tuck snapped his fingers. "Next time I turn around, he's making thousands on Cypress Gardens and he's showing what's his name, Mr. Disney, around, saying he should do the same. My idea, Joe. Same with the shrimp and the stone crabs. And when I told Mr. Collier to build a boat around his dredge, it just didn't seem important at the time. Hell-" Tuck's face had softened, his smile a little dreamy-"you know how it was. Florida was so big and wild, there didn't seem no need to grab hold of any particular piece of it. There was plenty for everybody. But now they got her carved down into just a little bitty thing. 'Bout got the juice all sucked out of her. That's why I come up with this plan. Thought Florida would last forever, but she didn't. Been thinking the same thing 'bout my life, tell you the truth. Water or no water, we ain't getting any younger."

Which cut right into Joseph's thoughts: thinking about his grandfather, Chekika's Son, holding the door of the Cadillac open.

You telling me to go ahead and die, Grandpa!

Nope. Tellin' you to get in the damn car. You already dead.

Joseph hesitated… sighed… said, "Okay, okay, I'll listen to your plan. But couldn't you tell it over breakfast?"

Tomlinson was telling Ford, "The old dude's been spending some time at the library… the courthouse, too. You look at this stuff?" He was sitting in Ford's lab, on the steel stool near the stainless-steel dissecting table, while Ford hunched over the dissecting scope. Tomlinson had the contents of the envelope Tuck had given them spread out on the table.

Ford said, "If he was at the library, it was the first time. More likely, he had someone else do it for him."

On the transparent base plate of the microscope, Ford had mounted a cross section of a piece of loggerhead sponge he had taken from one of his sea mobiles. Ford could see the spongin fibers of the sponge's osculum magnified by the scope-its excur-rent water opening-as well as the opening vascular wall of the spongocel, where food and oxygen were filtered from the constant flow of seawater. And there was a curling flagellum, the hairlike structure that pulled the water in. Most striking, though, was the cross-thatched symmetry of the animal's silicate skeleton. The skeleton was an intricate pattern of fluted ramps on a curving honeycombed infrastructure. Enlarged a thousand times, what Ford saw might have been an extraordinarily modernistic painting. Enlarged a billion times, a single filament might have been a stairway designed by Dali.

Sponges consisted of a cooperating community of different cells, and Ford was remembering something he had read. A biologist had done a census on a loggerhead sponge, counting more than sixteen thousand animals, most of them snapping shrimp and crabs, living in the canal system of that single sponge.

He looked up from the microscope and readjusted his wire glasses. "I don't suppose you could bring the pitcher of iced tea in here? It's so damn hot for October."

"No lie, October's always hot. Just as soon as I finish sorting these papers."

Ford was nodding his head. Hot, hot, hot. Through the window, the noon sky was a white haze, the bay greasy flat. The marina baked at the water's edge, the boats immobile in their slips, gray and blue and fiberglass red. Except for Mack sitting on his chair in the office and one of the live-aboards standing on the dock hosing the deck of his boat, there wasn't much movement. Everybody off at work, or maybe sipping beer at the Lazy Flamingo, trying to stay cool. Ford said, "I don't know, maybe I should get air conditioning. I keep thinking about it."

"You've got the ceiling fans, and you get the nice breeze off the water. Air conditioning's not natural, man. We've raised a whole generation of canned-air zombies. My daughter, Nichola, that's not going to happen to her. You know the type: Give me Freon or give me death. It goons up the brain cells. I know about that stuff." Tomlinson had separated the papers into little piles, patted them, then went out the screen door.

Ford heard the volume on his Maxima marine stereo system kick up, Jimmy Buffett singing "Cowboy in the Jungle," which flashed Tuck Gatrell into his mind. Wiry man with great big brown wrists and wild blue eyes… he looked so damn much older than Ford had expected.

Tomlinson came back with the iced tea and a can of beer for himself. He picked up a packet of papers to show Ford. "These are all newspaper stories. You look at them?"

Ford said, "Nope," returning his attention to the dissection scope, the Wolfe Zoom binocular system. He loved the feel of it, the finely machined parts and the superb objective system, solid beneath his cheek and big right hand.

Tomlinson said, "These stories are all about miraculous cures, about healing waters and mineral springs. Some of these stories are from the… yeah, from the National Enquirer. Then some other newspapers-"

"Are they all Xeroxed?"

Tomlinson said, "Let's see… yeah, all but a couple. How'd you know that?"

Ford said, "Because I know Tuck."

Tomlinson was reading, not aloud, but making a noise with his mouth, skimming the stories one by one. He said, "There's a well near Lourdes, in the south of France, where people go to be healed by drinking… hey, I know that place. It's where Saint Bernadette saw the Virgin." Tomlinson grinned. "Chalk one up for parochial schooling, huh?" He was reading again. "Here's another about a pond in Quintana Roo-that's Mexico, right? Cured a bunch of people with yellow fever. A river off the Zambezi, a stream in County Galway, Ireland… here's one about a lake in Mongolia where people bathe and live to be two hundred years old. All these places, like local treasures. That's what this one's about-"

Ford said, "Uh-huh," using surgical scissors to clip open another tiny section of the sponge. The sponge was air-light, almost hollow. The animal seemed to be all fiber and air. What kept it alive?

Tomlinson said, "Now here's a couple of stories about the state planning to acquire land around Mango to create a park that adjoins Everglades National Park."

Ford said, "They're originals, not copies."

"Right! You did look at this stuff. Let's see"-he was leafing through the piles-"and here's a plat map of your uncle's property. He had… one hundred twenty-seven acres-'more or less,' it says-and he sold off all but twenty-five to a company called… It was right here, the copy of a letter on legal stationery."

"Who's the attorney?"

"Wait a minute… he sold it all to a company called Development Unlimited, which it says is part of some kind of enterprise- Kamikaze? Geeze, that's what it says. Sounds Japanese."

Ford said, "I wouldn't think they'd name a company that."

"Why not? Kamikaze means 'divine wind.' You know, I speak quite a bit of Japanese-oh, here's the attorney. Lemar Flowers, that's the man's name, the guy who handled the deal for your uncle. Sounds like your uncle sold off his property, but now he's found this spring, he wants it back."

Ford was removing the slide from the microscope, thinking that if he transferred more sponges and tunicates into his big tank, he might not need such an elaborate filtering system. They were perfect cleaning systems, perfectly designed. He said, "What's the date on the newspaper story about the state planning to acquire the land?"

Tomlinson picked up the papers again. "December of last year."

"And when did he sell his property?"

"Ah… February this year. Three months later."

"Are there any dates on the copies about those places, the different springs around the world? Not on the stories, but on the photocopies themselves?"

Tomlinson said, "No-o-o, but he had to start collecting them after he sold his land. If he'd known about the spring and believed he could make a lot of money on it, why would he have sold?"

Ford said, "Yeah. Why would he?"

A few minutes before Angela Walker pulled into the drive, Tuck and Joseph were walking homeward along the bay road after eating a late breakfast at Sally Carmel's. Tuck's dog, Gator, and his old Appaloosa, Roscoe, followed along behind, and every few yards the horse would nose up and butt Tucker in the back.

Finally, Tuck turned and said, "Dang it, Roscoe, if I'd wanted to ride, I'd a brung a saddle!"

The horse shook its head, mane flying. To Joseph, Tucker said, "The old fool's been acting like a colt ever since his cojone-e-es growed back." Like he was complaining, but smiling because he was pleased. "Wants to head out on the trail, see if he can find a friend."

Joseph recognized the manipulative tone; knew this was not just some innocent comment, and he replied to the declaration it was. "I ain't got a horse. I can't go on no saddle trip-and I ain't riding double with you."

Tuck began to protest but then dropped the pretense. Joseph was too suspicious for it to be any fun. He said, "I can get you a horse. They got a bunch of them up to Cypress Gate Acres."

Joseph thought for a moment, couldn't place the name-Cypress Gate Acres-then remembered the big development they'd built in the north part of Everglades County with all the houses and canals and even a nice shopping center with a store where Joseph had once stopped to buy beer. He asked, "They sell horses up there, too?"

"A few of them people keep horses. I reckon one of them's bound to be overstocked. Little five-acre ranches with corrals where they teach the horses to jump. Jumping horse, that'd be nice to ride, huh?"

"If I had enough money for a horse," Joseph said, "I wouldn't 'a been at that county rest home. I'd a been at the other place, that Sunset Retirement place, the one that plays church bells every night. I heard they got a sauna bath there."

"First time I ever heard you worry about money."

Joseph knew what that meant. "Uh-oh," he said.

"Uh-oh what? What's that supposed to mean?"

"You plan to steal it. The horse. That's what it means."

"Not steal, just borrow it. Take it for a test drive, then pay when we're flush. I'm no horse thief."

"Just long as it's not some kid's. I'm not gonna make some kid cry by stealing his horse."

Tucker said, "We'll find one with a fat owner. Do the horse a favor. Besides, we used to graze cattle up that way and I don't remember giving anyone permission to build a dang city. 'Bout time we got a little payback."

Joseph was thinking about the last horse he'd owned, a tall chestnut gelding, seventeen hands high, worked cattle on free rein and would hold until dawn. Buster, that was the horse's name. But then Joseph had gotten married the second time, moved to Miami with the woman who sold real estate and who apparently liked bird-watchers, and Buster had jumped the fence at the place he was being boarded and got hit by a cement truck. That was… twenty-five years ago?

Tuck was talking about the trip, taking horses and bedrolls, saying how they'd ride right across the Everglades, pick up Ervin T. Rouse, Tucker's fiddle-playing friend, bring him back to live in Mango. That was part of his plan. Find about a half dozen of their old friends, get them to drinking the water. Then when the government people said the water was a fake, Tuck would say, "Look at these old-timers. They don't look spry to you?" Make enough money to buy his land back that way. Only why the state would want to give up its park idea, Joseph didn't know. Not that it mattered. Joining up with Tuck was better than going back to his chikee hut in the Glades, staring at the old Playboy calendar on the wall.

Tuck had been naming names, people he wanted to see again. Then he said, "The only one we can't take horses to is Henry Short. That little mulatto bastard's still alive. Must be ninety-five. I hear he's squatting down in the islands again, that patch of mound. Hell, it's so far back in, I doubt you even know it. No Name Mound, that's what I used to call it when I was fish guiding."

Joseph asked, "The mound back in from Lostman's River or the one north, closer to Loser's Creek?" When Joseph was little, in the years before his grandfather died drunk in Immokalee, the old man had taken him to all the mounds to camp and fish. All told, it took the whole summer. But the one near Lostman's was so jun-gled up, they hadn't stayed more than a night, and his grandfather had refused even to stop at the other mound-it was a "power place," his grandfather had said-whatever the hell that meant. "Indians, we never stay here. Too many spirits. And the mosquitoes are bad, too."

"The Loser's Creek mound?" Joseph said. That would be just like Henry Short, staying on a bad mound.

"That's the one. The water's so thin, you can't even use a motor. Hell, maybe we could ride the horses!"

Joseph was thinking about Henry Short, wondering whether he really was alive. Sometimes Tuck talked just to talk, making up things, but it was interesting to hear Henry's name after so many years. A long time ago, a bad man by the name of Ed Watson had lived in the islands. Henry Short was supposedly the man who shot him. Shot him first anyway, before the whole island of Chokoloskee joined in, shooting the corpse so they could all say they did it. Watson had supposedly murdered a lot of people-shot Belle Starr out west before running south-but then he ran into Henry. As a boy, Joseph had seen Henry once, a small, creamy-skinned man with funny-looking eyes, like his body was there but his mind was off living someplace else. Him carrying a shotgun in the crook of his arm, standing there beside the Smallwood General store in Chokoloskee, quiet among the white people, and scary-looking because of it. At least he had scared Joseph.

Joseph started to say something about Henry Short, ask whether Tuck was joking, but instead he said something else, figuring Tuck wouldn't tell him the truth, anyway.

"Tuck?"

"You keep interruptin', Joe, how you gonna learn anything?" Tucker had stopped at the shell drive to his ranch house, studying the small white car there sitting in the shade and the woman in the nice clothes standing beside it.

"Tuck, when I get my horse, I think I'm gonna call him Buster."

"Well now, that ought to bring us some luck." Tuck was walking again, fixing a friendly expression on his face. "Ought to attract every cement truck for a thousand miles." Then he said, "Keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking." Meaning the woman.

As if Joseph wouldn't have done that, anyway.

Tucker was on his best behavior-Joseph could see that. Smiling at the woman policeman, saying, "Yes, ma'am," "No, ma'am," "Wish I knew, ma'am," to almost every question, looking at the ground, his thumbs over his belt, his face shaded by the brim of his cowboy hat. The two of them standing, leaning against the porch railing after the woman said she'd been sitting for two hours, the long drive down, so she didn't feel like taking that chair on the porch. To which Tuck had said, "Ma'am, I hate to see a young woman pretty as you out in the heat. So why don't we move to the shade and I'll bring you a nice glass of sweet tea."

Oh, he could be charming… and the way he acted even older and more hobbled-up than he was. Grandfatherly-that was it, the way he was behaving. Which made Joseph think the old bastard knew more than he was saying, the woman asking him about three men she said had come to the islands and disappeared.

Tuck hadn't mentioned that before. Some famous fisherman and two men hired by the state, sent down to check out Tuck's land, or what was once his land, so they could present the information at some meeting so the government could get its permits and do whatever it had to do. That hearing Tuck had told him about, only now the state was having to hustle around, do a lot of retesting because nobody could find the men who had done the original testing.

"There's an element of law called the chain of custody," the woman, Agent Walker, said, looking right at Tuck. "There's a strict procedure for taking samples and having them tested. The bottles, the envelopes-whatever-they have to go straight from one person's hands to another person's hands, everything sealed, labeled, and signed for. Now those men have disappeared, the chain of custody has been broken because some of those sam-pies-I don't know what, soil and water, maybe?-they disappeared with them."

Tucker looked real serious and concerned. "Makes you want to move to Canada, don't it?" he said.

"Something else," Walker said. "I understand the state is having trouble finding the principals who purchased your land. What was it, some kind of blind land trust when you sold it? The hundred acres. So legally, I guess there's no way they can find out for sure who owns it. At least not yet."

"You know, ma'am, I think I heard somethin' about that."

The woman waited for Tuck to say something else, but when he didn't, all she said was, "I'm sure you have."

"Word gets around. Even in these parts."

Joseph felt the woman about to say, "I'm counting on it," but she didn't. Looking around, she said, "This little place is so pretty.. . those old streetlights, the little houses… so pretty I wouldn't blame anyone for trying to come up with a way to stop the park."

Tuck was right with her. "Stop it, ma'am? Who the heck would want to stop it-forgive my language."

"You mean you like the idea?"

"I think it'll be da… dar… awful nice when they get that park built. Maybe they'll kill off these skeeters so they can put out their picnic tables and camping places for trailers. Be nice to have some folks from Michigan and O-hi-ho runnin' around. You think they'll be a swimming pool?" He slapped a mosquito on his arm and flicked it off with his finger.

The woman said, "I wouldn't know about that, Mr. Gatrell. I'm trying to find out what happened to those men."

Tucker started walking toward the woman's car, saying, "Just wish I coulda been more help," handling her so easily that Joseph had to admire him. Tuck had his talents, there was no denying.

But getting into the car, Walker said, "Oh-there was something I forgot to ask."

"You name it, ma'am."

"Are you familiar with Barron Creek Marina just south of here?"

"I should say I am. Used to work for Barron Collier when I was just a sprout. You ever wonder how they figured to build a road right across the saw grass-" "Yes, you told me that story, Mr. Gatrell. The floating dredge. When I called you on the telephone last week."

"I did?" He chuckled as if befuddled. "I gotta tell you, old age is 'bout the most unexpected thing ever happened to me. Now my brain's gotten leaky-"

"What I wanted to ask was, were you at that marina on Thursday, October first, and Monday, October fifth? The Barron Creek Marina?"

Tucker had his hand on his jaw, thinking. "Is this October we're in now?"

"You know Larry Baker, don't you?"

"Larry runs the marina, ma'am. He's a regular peach. I knew his daddy-"

"Mr. Baker told me that you were at the marina those days. The morning, both times. He said he saw Chuck Fleet and Charles Herbott talking with you, going over a map. Nautical chart, I mean. He said you might have been giving them directions."

"Now those two names don't ring a bell. Those men, the two you mentioned, are they from around here?"

"Herbott is an environmental consultant and Fleet is the surveyor you said you met working in your pasture-"

"That's why the names sounded familiar!"

"You talked with each of them the day they disappeared. That's what Larry Baker told me."

Joseph was thinking, Look who's handling who now, watching Tuck smile as if he was a confused old man. Tuck said, "Ma'am, I was a fishing guide in these parts prob'ly before your daddy was borned, so I can't go near a marina without people hauling out their charts, askin' me this or that. Where the snook? Where the tar-pawn? How you get to so and so? Don't want to brag on myself, but I'm kinda famous in these parts as a waterman."

"I realize that, Mr. Gatrell."

"You ever wonder why President Truman come to these islands to fish? He come to see me."

"Last week, on the phone, that was one of your most fascinating stories. But what I need to know now is, what did Charles Herbott and Chuck Fleet ask you?"

"Wish I knew, ma'am. Like I said, there's always so many. But if Larry Baker said I talked to 'em, you can bet it's the truth. If he wasn't drunk."

"Do ybu remember anyone asking you the shortest route to the boundary of Everglades National Park? What is that, about twenty miles from the marina?"

"When people ask that, I always send 'em to the outside, down the coast in open water. They get back in those islands, it's awful tricky and dangerous, ma'am."

"I guess Mr. Fleet and Mr. Herbott found that out." The woman started her car, adding through the open window, "You try to remember, Mr. Gatrell. I'll be talking to you soon. Or perhaps someone from the local Sheriff's Department."

Tucker was waving, smiling. "Look forward to it. Company's better'n cold beer at my age."

As the car pulled away, already going fast along the bay road, Joseph said, "If it was you who messed with those men, I hope you tried to shoot 'em. That way, I'd know they're still alive."

Tucker said, "Joe, sometimes you remind me of a lost ball in tall grass."

"That woman'll be coming back-I ain't lost about that. She sees something in you. Did you do it?"

"Hell no. You think I'd a been seen in public with men I was about to kill?" Then walking up the steps to the porch, Tuck said, "Better get your gear together. We go horse shopping tonight."