Twelve Mile Limit

8

And it still wasn’t over. We stopped at the Green Flash because it’s a good place, then walked along the narrow beach road to ’Tween Waters Inn, the Gulf off to our left, a vast lens of starlight and black water without horizon.

Everyplace we stopped, we collected people; old friends and fishing guides and islanders out for a Friday night, more than willing to help us honor Janet. On the islands even a bad reason is good enough for throwing a party, and this was a great reason. So by the time we got to the Crow’s Nest at’Tween Waters, there were more than twenty of us, and the place was already crowded.

One look told me why. The bar has an extended dining area that can be partitioned off from the elevated dining room. The partition was closed except for a door-sized space through which I could see tables of men and women wearing name tags. A sign on an easel read: “Save All Manatees.”

Welcome SAM members!

Damn.

I remembered Camphill saying he was the national spokesman, which meant that he was bound to show up sooner or later. In fact, they probably had him housed in one of the little cottages out back. I took Rhonda and JoAnn aside and told them, “I think we ought to collect our people and get out of here.”

But Rhonda was already locked in animated conversation with Wally, the chef, and Janice behind the bar, so, as she hurried back to them, she said, “Doc, you worry too much. You think Mr. Hollywood is going mess with you again after you put him in orbit? I don’t think so.”

That wasn’t what I was worried about. I didn’t think there was much of a chance that Camphill would give me another try, but the dining room was filled with SAM people, and there was Jeth in his barbecue-a-manatee T-shirt, plus most of the Dinkin’s Bay family.

Something I saw underlined just how irrational and mean the issue had become. The Crow’s Nest is built around a hardwood bar in the shape of a broken L. At three corners of the bar are hand-carved manatees-a classy, ornate touch in a classy sportsman’s bar. Really beautiful pieces of work. On the belly of one of the manatees, though, someone had recently used a black marker to draw a bull’s eye, complete with an arrow. Above the arrow were the words, “Save a Fishing Guide, Kill a Sea Cow.”

A disturbing bit of graffiti.

I worked my way through the crowd and finally found Tomlinson holding court next to the fireplace beneath a mounted tarpon. When I tried to talk to him, though, he was slurring his words so badly that I gave up.

I decided that, if there was going to be trouble, there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Turned out I was right.

Frieda Matthews, one of Florida’s best biologists and field researchers, motioned toward the lighted building and told me, “I’m supposed to be in there speaking tonight, but they fired me.”

I said, “You’re kidding.”

She smiled. “Nope. But I still get paid. In our line of work, that’s what counts, right?”

Feeling claustrophobic among all those people, I’d stepped outside and spotted Matthews leaning against a palm tree, sipping a fresh beer. I’d met her years ago at a symposium near her office in Tallahassee and had come to respect her work-particularly her articulate field-research papers. She’s a fine observer and has a gift for precise, lucid, declarative sentences. Unlike an unfortunate and growing number in our field, Matthews is an advocate of science, not a scientist who advocates a particular point of view. She is generally regarded as a leading expert on Florida’s sea mammals. Thus the manatee connection.

I asked, “They canceled your talk? Why?”

She was still smiling, a healthy-looking woman with a good jaw and short hair wearing a dark business suit with a pale blouse. “Why do biologists and expert witnesses usually get fired? Because their employers doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. The thing that really irks me is, their so-called experts in there obviously haven’t read my recent papers. If they had, they could have fired me by telephone, and I could’ve saved myself a trip. We’re swamped in Tallahassee, plus I had to leave my husband alone with our four-year-old.”

The implications of her sudden dismissal were interesting. Suddenly, I wished I’d brought a notebook.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “The SAM people paid you to come here, but now they don’t want you to speak? I don’t get it.”

So the lady explained it to me. I stood there fascinated, listening, as Frieda listed the accumulated data as she knew it. She spoke softly, but as articulately as any of her fine papers.

She and her staff had spent the last five years collecting manatee data, she said, performing necropsies, doing manatee counts by plane and helicopter on both the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of Florida, yet it was only in the last three months that her team felt they had sufficient information to publish their partial conclusions.

“All valid biological data,” she told me, “indicate that the population of our West Indian manatee is increasing, not decreasing. Not only that, the population has been increasing for the last twenty-five years. The manatee should be taken off the endangered species list. It doesn’t belong there, and our research proves it. Florida has plenty of environmental problems, and that’s where the money should be spent. But the manatee people don’t want to hear that.”

I listened to her explain that the minimum manatee count has increased at a rate of 6 to 7 percent per year but that it was really probably closer to 10. “You know me, Doc. I always use the most conservative figures possible. I take my work damn seriously. I’m not going to manipulate or exaggerate the figures for anyone. At the cost of what? My professional reputation? No way.”

She went on to explain the data in detail, and the bottom line was that the sea cows were back and doing well. I didn’t say what I was thinking, though: I’d recently read a report issued by one of the federal agencies that said exactly the opposite. Boat-related manatee deaths had risen from 25 percent ten years ago to 33 percent now, and the increased death rate far outstripped the slow-growing manatee population. Furthermore, in that same ten-year period, Florida had registered more than a hundred thousand new boats-bad news for anything in the water that was big and slow moving. But here was Dr. Frieda Matthews telling me about her own work, her own observations. It was not the time to debate.

Instead, I said, “That’s great news. So why’s this the first I’ve heard it? There ought to be headlines. Instead, they’re trying to close down whole hectares of the water around here.”

She shrugged. “I’ve got a private theory about that, but I’d hate for you to get the impression I’ve gotten old and cynical. Don’t get me wrong, Doc. Manatees should continue to be fully protected, but they’ve recovered to a level where, clearly, they’re no longer an endangered species. Fish and Wildlife ought to down-list them from endangered to threatened, at most.

“This afternoon, I expected SAM’s board members to clap and cheer when I told them what I was going to talk about. They’ve done a hell of a good job getting the word out, educating boaters on what to look for and how to avoid contact. They deserve a fair share of the credit, right along with another club, Save the Manatee. I was going to tell them congratulations, score a big win for the good guys. Instead, I watched their jaws drop open, and they looked at me like I was a heretic. They couldn’t get me out of the room fast enough. The club’s president-get this, Doc-she’s afraid of big bodies of water, won’t get on a boat, but there she is, running the whole show. She actually screamed at me. Called me a liar and… what was the phrase?” Matthews tilted her head, thinking about it. “She called me a ‘stooge for the boating industry,’ that was it.

“Doc, we don’t get a cent from private enterprise. You know that. She has to know it, too, but it was like, because she said it, that made it true. So now a couple hundred people in there are convinced our entire project was bought and paid for by boat manufacturers. Their president has spoken, and that’s that. I had to be discredited, and that was the only way she could do it.” Matthews was shaking her head, frustrated and angry.

“God spare me fat, middle-aged, neurotic do-gooders!”

I said, “So why are they doing it?”

I watched her take a sip of her beer, eyebrows furrowed. She said, “Just between you and me? After they booted me, I went back to my room and used my laptop to do a little online research. The question seemed obvious to me: Why would any group continue to manufacture and promote an endangerment crisis that simply does not exist?”

“Money,” I said. “Group survival or some political agenda.”

“Probably all of the above,” she said. “You catch on quick. Save All Manatees was started by two people who had good reasons to be worried about the well-being of that animal. They worked their butts off raising money and expanding the membership. So now, fifteen years later, the membership’s grown to about half a million nationwide. It’s got an annual budget of a couple million. They’ve got a paid staff and a stable of attorneys on retainer. SAM isn’t just a club, it’s a growing industry. Same with a couple of state and federal jobs created to keep tabs on this particular animal. The department heads now employ assistants to the assistants of their assistants.

“So what happens if the manatee is all of a sudden taken off the endangered species list? They’re all out of business. So SAM, at least, has stayed aggressive. They file lots of lawsuits. People are going to stop donating if Fish and Wildlife down-lists the manatee, so they keep them on the defensive-that’s my guess, anyway-and, to get new members, they base their arguments on emotion, not science. Most of the bay areas they want to close to boat traffic have never had a manatee fatality in the thirty years we’ve been keeping records. That’s a fact. I went back and checked.”

“Like Dinkin’s Bay?”

“Like Dinkin’s Bay.”

“So you’re saying they don’t need to close down the marina and kick us all out of there. The trouble is-and I’m sure you’re aware of this-there are a number of very good biologists around who are going to disagree with almost everything you’ve just told me. People I know and respect. So who am I supposed to believe?”

With her hands, she made a nothing-I-can-do-about-that gesture. “I’m just giving you the data, Doc-which are now part of public record. Look ’em up. From everything our team has learned-this is my opinion, of course-but closing Dinkin’s Bay is absolutely unnecessary. I wouldn’t tell you that if I didn’t believe it was true.”

She went on. “I used to think that I was as radical and green as they come. Not anymore. I don’t know the board members in there well enough to say, but lately I’ve been meeting more and more so-called environmentalists who aren’t really pro-environment. What they are is anti-human. Anything that has to do with people, they hate. They want to rope it all off, exclude everyone-except for themselves, of course. They’re enviro-elitists, not environmentalists. And just like SAM’s leaders, hysteria is their favorite tool. So see, Doc? I have gotten old and cynical.”

I smiled at her and said, “Join the club, pal.”

“I know, Doc, but it still bothers me. I’ve worked so damn hard all my life to get it right, to do my science properly-follow the data faithfully and without expectations wherever they may lead. Isn’t that what the really good professors taught us?” She looked at me and snapped her fingers. “One thing they didn’t teach us, though, is- that quick- one big, public lie can completely taint the work. I don’t doubt that most of SAM’s members are good people and honestly care about protecting the environment. But who are they going to believe, our science or their own president? See my point?”

I was about to say I did, but instead, we both stopped talking because of a growing noise coming from inside the Crow’s Nest-raised voices and screaming. Then we watched as the double doors came flying open and out poured a running, tumbling, shoving mob of people, a many-headed pointillist swarm that seemed to have one frantic body.

It took me a moment to understand what was going on. Because they were both a little taller than most of the others, I saw that Jeth and Gunnar Camphill were at the center of the crowd, shoving each other and swearing, the familiar preface to a bar fight.

Already moving, I told Matthews, “I need to see if I can break this up. But do me a favor. Don’t get too close.”

Studies have been done on multigroup violence, and the template is fairly standard and shares an odd and surprising symmetry with tornado storm cells, of all things.

As fighting between the combatants intensifies, little skirmishes will begin to occur on the outskirts of the main fight, much as large tornadoes at the center of a storm spawn a minion of smaller tornadoes on the borders. Like the smaller tornadoes, the skirmishes are energized, concentrated, but dissipate quickly, only to reappear at another place along the outskirts.

Which is why I told Frieda to keep her distance, and why I didn’t go charging right in.

We followed the mob down the sandy drive, past the pool bar, and then under the condo parking to the beach where rental kayaks and canoes were neatly stacked by the water. I kept looking and looking, and finally picked out JoAnn, Rhonda, Ransom, Claudia, and Amelia moving along with the mob, in their own tight little group. I ran up behind them, grabbed Ransom and JoAnn by the arms, and yelled to them above the noise, “You ladies come with me. We’re going to watch this from the docks.” Meaning I didn’t want to risk some drunk taking a swing at any of us.

Ransom wouldn’t budge, though. “Mister pretty man and his friends, they all jump on Jeth at once. Know how it started? One of their guys, he drunk, and he find out who Amelia was, and he ask her, right out loud, ‘Tell us the truth about the drug deal that got your buddies killed. Everybody in Florida know you’re lying.’ That’s when Jeth step in. Then their women friends, they try to rip Jeth’s shirt off him. You think I’m gonna let them city trash get away with something like that?”

“Ransom, please! As a favor to me. Okay?”

She didn’t want to follow me, but she finally relented, allowing the mob to move away from us, and I led the five of them-Frieda had wisely vanished-up the ridge to the docks where we could watch the scene from the aspect of open water.

It was not a pretty thing to watch.

They’d torn off all of Jeth’s T-shirt except for the collar and a patch of material down his back. He was faced off against Camphill while a few men but mostly women stood around them in a ragged circle, screaming. In peripheral skirmishes, I noticed that a couple of our guides, big Felix Lane and Javier Castillo-a Cuban immigrant-were moving from fight-cluster to fight-cluster, separating the combatants until they could tell who was who, then systematically cold-cocking anyone they didn’t recognize as one of us, an islander-something else that was not pretty to watch.

But the main event was Jeth Nicholes, the local fishing guide who’d just lost the love of his life, and Gunnar Camphill, the film hero.

So far, it looked as if Jeth had gotten the worst of it. His face was swollen, and blood was pouring from his nose. I watched Camphill use his nasty side-kick to batter Jeth into the canoe rack, then almost drop him with a spinning back elbow to the ribs. Jeth staggered, nearly fell, but managed to keep his feet.

I badly wanted to help him, but I couldn’t. You can’t fight another man’s battle. Jeth wasn’t going to quit, and he would have taken my intrusion as an admission that he was beaten.

But he wasn’t.

I watched him take a deep breath, charge Camphill, and manage to wrestle his arms around the man’s chest. The actor knew all the pressure points, all the dangerous places to hit. But Jeth held on and, with the slow determination of a boa constrictor, worked his way upward until he got Camphill’s neck cradled in his strong right arm, then used his left hand to apply pressure-a headlock.

That’s when the momentum began to turn.

Jeth grabbed a fistful of Camphill’s hair and levered him over his hip onto the sand-a weird thing to see because a cap-sized patch of the actor’s hair actually came off in Jeth’s hand. Jeth looked at the thing, shocked, and then flung it into the water.

It made no sense at first, but then I realized-a small crown toupee. Camphill wore a hairpiece.

Maybe the psychological impact of being exposed had something to do with it, or maybe Camphill was just exhausted. Whatever the reason, Jeth ended it quickly, using his fists to pound away at the man’s face until Camphill rolled into a fetal position, hands protecting his head, calling, “Enough! Enough! I quit, goddamn it!”

Jeth stood shakily; he seemed a little surprised that it was over and he had won.

But it wasn’t over yet. He still had a small mob to deal with, pointed-face and tennis player among them, plus a couple dozen women and men. The little mob began to walk toward Jeth as he retreated, backing away faster and faster until he was running as they pursued him.

He chose exactly the right escape route. I watched him vault over the railing of the dock where we stood, then sprint toward us, not realizing, at first, that we were there-he probably had planned to jump into the water to get away.

His expression, when he saw us, was touching. It’s a frightening thing to have a mob after you, and his face registered panic, then puzzlement, as his brain scanned to identify us and analyze the situation. Then his expression changed to pure relief.

I pushed him past me, saying, “You okay?” not expecting an answer. Then I began to walk shoreward, toward pointed-face and tennis player, who were leading the mob.

Both men stopped abruptly when they realized who I was. The men and women behind them suddenly went quiet, perhaps sensing pointed-face’s uneasiness. They saw the way he was looking at me, seeming to get smaller as he took a step back, then another, retreating as I continued to walk toward him, his little mob bunched up behind him now, blocking his escape.

When I was just a couple of paces away, hearing sirens warbling in the distance, he yelled, “Stay away from me, damn you! Don’t you touch me!”

He looked at me blankly when I asked, “Can you swim?” Then I lifted him and vaulted him into the bay.