Chester appeared next to Fern. “Don’t leave her,” Junior said to him. He ran to the quarry and flung himself over the side. His boots weighed heavy on his feet, threatened to drag him down. The water swirled around him, impossibly cold and dark. He swam in circles, dove as deep as his breath would allow. He found no sign of Ora or the baby, but he knew he was not alone in the water. Evil lived there, a beast beneath the water’s surface. Junior felt it pulling him deeper, urging him to open his mouth and lungs. He resisted, but he knew Ora and Fern’s baby had not been strong enough to fight this beast. He kept diving well past the point when he knew it was futile. He couldn’t stand the thought of facing Fern and Clementine and Chester. As long as he dove, he figured, they had hope. By the time he pulled himself over the lip of the quarry, his hands were puckered and his lips had turned blue with cold.
The men were gone. While Junior dove, Chester had shot the man in the red cap, sending a bullet into his left arm. One of the other men threatened to bring the law. Chester told them to go ahead. He said he figured he was justified in shooting every one of them. The man in the red cap told Chester the law would never be on the side of nigger lovers and white trash. “We’ve done what we came here to do,” the man said. He held his bloody arm against his chest as he walked into the woods. The other men followed him.
“I should have killed him,” Chester said. “I should have killed them all.”
Junior knew the man in the red cap was right. The law didn’t exist to protect people like him and Chester, like Fern and her baby, like Clementine and Ora. The law would always take the side of men with power and money.
Chester and Junior carried Fern through the woods and back to the house. Clementine walked behind them. His boots squished and felt heavy with quarry water. Soaked and cold and shivering with fear and rage, he tried to think of what he could do to make things better for Fern, but he knew there was nothing to be done.
TWELVE
WE TOOK WILLET’S STACK of photos and headed out for the day. Just as the woman at the grocery warned, the boat rental places were unmanned. There were signs on the door about booking tours or boats for the next day. We took our photos to City Hall, where the woman in the records department would barely look at us. Willet asked if we could find out about a former resident named Earl Watkins.
“Name doesn’t ring a bell,” the woman said. “What do you want to know?”
“I’m not sure,” Willet said. “Any addresses under that name? Arrests?”
“You gotta be more specific than that,” she said. “And there’s a fee to search public records.”
“How much?”
“Depends on the record.”
Willet asked if the fee applied even if she didn’t find anything.
“Yes, and in that case it ought to be doubled,” the woman said. “For wasting my time.”
We left without any information. We made our way across the town, stopping at every open business.
No one recognized Daddy. No one wanted to recognize him. At the Tote-Sum store, we showed our photos to the clerk, a skinny man with a beer gut and a dirty ponytail who flipped through the latest edition of Penthouse with one hand and ate a bag of pork rinds with the other. The man gave us the stink eye and told us he was too busy to help anyone who wasn’t a paying customer. Willet bought a soda and a pack of cigarettes. The clerk glanced at the photos, but barely.
“Nope,” he said. “Can’t say I know him.”
“Come on,” Willet said. “You hardly even looked.”
The clerk slapped the pack of cigarettes on top of the photos and settled back with his magazine and pork rinds. “Can’t help you,” he said.
We got the same treatment wherever we went. At the end of the day, Willet caught one of the boat captains coming off the water. We followed him to his office next to the marina. He told us we ought not be snooping around.
“But he’s our father,” I said.
“Maybe he is,” the man said. “But I can’t know that for sure. I don’t know you.” The man shuffled through a pile of paperwork and refused to look at the photos. He hardly looked at us.
Willet shoved the photo of Daddy with the fish on top of the man’s paperwork. “Jesus Christ! The man’s dead. We can’t hurt him. We just want to know what he was doing here.”
The man pushed the photo off his pile of paperwork and said, “I’m not a real religious man, but if I remember correctly, even Jesus Christ was allowed to go missing for a few years.”
The next day at the alligator park a beet-faced man refused to look at the photos but tried to sell us tickets for the afternoon tour. “You’ll hold a live alligator in your arms, little lady! Where else can you cradle a fearsome beast?”
Maybe people with no tragedy in their lives longed to cuddle with fearsome beasts, but I did not. Anyhow, there was a wall of photos with visitors holding the small alligator. Nothing about it struck me as fearsome. It was pitiful. The gator’s mouth was taped shut, its skin a sickly pale gray. The tourists who held the gator grinned wide or pulled faces of horror, but I saw shame in their eyes. It is one thing to trap something wild for the sake of survival, and quite another to breed and keep a living thing for the sake of entertainment.
At the Wild Catch Cafe we showed our photos to a waitress who was friendlier, but no more helpful. She served us strong coffee and took time to look at the photos. She didn’t recognize Daddy. I told her about the men who’d turned us away and she laughed. “What you’re getting there is an Everglades welcome,” she said. “They don’t trust strangers and they sure don’t trust strangers asking questions. People like to keep to themselves around here.”
I couldn’t understand why a whole community would be suspicious and secretive, but I was used to dealing with secrets. The women of White Forest kept plenty of secrets from their husbands and their fathers, and I wondered how friendly they’d be if a couple of strangers showed up and started poking holes in their lives. Daddy could turn five-dollar bills into hundred-dollar bills, so he could surely turn himself into someone new. He could dye his hair or grow a beard or shave his head. There might be a hundred reasons why no one recognized our father from those photos. And there might be a hundred reasons why someone wouldn’t admit to recognizing him. We couldn’t know how Daddy lived during those years when he was missing, but we knew how he lived when he was with us. Daddy was a con artist, a criminal, and a thief. When I was younger, I didn’t question the things Daddy did. He provided for us and I didn’t care how. As I got older, I wondered what would set a man off on such a dishonest life. Was it one terrible thing or a series of small injustices? What if we uncovered something terrible? What if we found something we’d rather not know?
After three days of traipsing all over town asking questions, we’d learned nothing new about our father. We were frustrated and I figured it was time to head home. Willet wasn’t ready to give up just yet. “Let’s go check out that canoe rental spot,” he said. “The one the grocery clerk told us about.”
We took a few wrong turns before finding the gray wooden building with canoes stacked up outside. An old man snoozed on a rocking chair on the front porch. He wore a pale blue baseball cap pulled low over his forehead. He opened his eyes as we tromped up the porch steps.
“Tour’s just left.” He rubbed his gray beard with a hand marked by red scars and swollen with arthritis.
“We’re just looking for some information,” Willet said.
The man spat a long stream of tobacco into an old coffee can. “Name’s Iggy.” He leaned forward in the chair. “What kind of information you need?”
Willet showed him our stack of photos and Iggy flipped through them. He didn’t tell us to stop snooping around or to mind our own business.
“I can’t say I ever seen him,” he said. “Who is he now?”
“He’s our father,” I said. “We think he lived around here.”
Iggy shook his head, spat into the can again. “He don’t seem
familiar, but that don’t mean much. Lot of people come here and work pretty hard to disappear.”
“What does that mean?” Willet asked.
Iggy stood and gestured for us to follow him inside. The store was small, but packed with books and camping gear. He pulled a map from a wooden display case and spread it across the counter. “We’re right about here.” He put a fat finger on the map. “Now most folks figure this is about it. You could head out to the Keys, of course, do some fishing, but we’re pretty well situated at the edge of things. But you see all this here?” He dragged his finger lower on the map and pointed to a cluster of dots. “Well, you’d be surprised at how many men manage to pass a season or two on one of these little islands. Most of ’em aren’t even on the map.”
“You mean people live out there?” I said. “Without food or shelter?”
“Plenty of both if you’re smart about it and know your way around.” Iggy dug the tobacco from his lower lip and deposited the plug in his spit can. “Calusa Indians lived on these islands for generations. Some of these places wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the Calusa shell mounds. We got more than one hermit living out there. They come in every now and then for supplies, but they’re pretty self-sufficient. Plenty to hunt and there’s no better fishing in the world.”
“How would you find someone living out there?” Willet leaned over the map and scanned the area where Iggy had pointed.
“You won’t find no one if they don’t want to be found,” Iggy said. “That’s what makes it such a great place to hide.”
“Could someone live out there with a child?” Willet asked.
“Could they?” Iggy scratched his beard and looked toward the ceiling. “I guess so. But I never heard of anyone doing it. Can’t imagine why anyone would. It’s not an easy way to live.”
“There’s no way,” I said to Willet. “Daddy wouldn’t do that.” I didn’t want to go into too much detail in front of Iggy, but I didn’t believe Daddy would take Pansy out to some remote island. He might have reason to hide, but what reason could he have to take Pansy with him?
“There’s not but about five hundred people in this town,” Iggy said. “With Chokoloskee, maybe it’s six hundred. Everyone knows everyone else. Tourists come and go, but if your father lived here for any time someone is bound to know him.”
We’d made the rounds of every business in town and not one of the people we spoke to recognized our father either by his photographs or by his name. I wondered if Daddy came to Everglades City to die rather than to live. Maybe he’d lived elsewhere. Maybe he’d lived on one of the no-name islands as Iggy suggested. But if so, why come to this town to die in a crappy motel room? What could be the reason for that?
Willet shook Iggy’s hand. “Thank you for taking the time to talk with us.”
“Wish I could have been more help,” Iggy said.
“So do I,” Willet said. “But you’ve been a damn sight more helpful than anyone else in this town.”
Iggy laughed. “It isn’t a real friendly place at first. I promise it gets friendlier.”
Iggy folded his map and we turned to leave. We were almost out the door when Iggy said, “You know, if you want to get a real sense of this place, you ought to get on the water. You’ll see what I mean about how easy it is to disappear.”
Willet looked at his watch. It was nearly noon and we didn’t have much planned for the day. Iggy’s shop was about the last place we’d left to visit. “Can you take us out?”
“I can set you up with a canoe and tell you where to paddle,” Iggy said.
“I don’t want to get lost,” I said.
“No, you don’t,” Iggy said. “But you’ll be okay if you stick to the river.”
Iggy led us to the boats stacked beside the store. He put his hand on a short gray canoe. “This one ought to work for you.”
Willet helped him pull the canoe from the stack. “First day here a girl at the grocery said something about the mangrove tunnels.”
“Oh you’ll go through plenty of those,” Iggy said. “Launch is just across the road. Water’s pretty shallow at the mouth. Dig in and get past it. Go ahead and use your paddles like push poles in the shallowest sections. If you get stuck, hop out and pull until you’re floating. There’s an old gator who suns himself at the launch spot. He ain’t gonna hurt you. Just swing wide around him. You’ll get to a fork with a bridge to your right and a strand of cedars to your left. If you head toward the cedars, you’ll hit the bay soon enough. I’d head under the bridge and stick to the river. And don’t be afraid to use your monkey arms.” Iggy held his arms overhead and mimed pulling himself forward. “Grab onto the branches and pull. It was good enough for your ancestors. It’s good enough for you.”
We paddled through the shadowy tunnels and shallow, murky water of the Turner River. A large turtle perched on a stump. It pulled its head in when our paddles came too close. Cypress knees jutted out of the brown water and plants seemed to grow right out of the air. Birds landed in the trees around us, squawking and flapping. I later learned to identify the swamp chicken, the osprey, and my favorite, the anhinga. I liked the way it perched on a branch with its wings extended, like Jesus on the cross.
We took Iggy’s advice and used our monkey arms to pull the boat through the low canopy of branches. The mangrove trees grew sideways as much as they grew tall and in places where the water was shallow, I could see the roots were a tangled, vinelike mass. We floated for a moment in a still pool surrounded by grass. It was hot for the middle of January. Mosquitoes buzzed. A fish splashed up from the water. A bird called out from the trees. A spider spun a golden web across a fallen stump. Everywhere I looked, the air was thick and heavy and full of life. We floated through a swarm of gnats and I nearly dropped my paddle to swat them away. Leaves and branches and bits of hanging moss seemed to reach out and caress us as we paddled by. Tree trunks crawled with fluorescent patches of green moss. We were a few paddle strokes from the Gulf of Mexico, where the brackish waters swam with blacktip sharks, stingrays, barracuda, and jellyfish. There were alligators in the river and snakes along the bank. The water smelled ripe and alive. The way forward and the way back seemed familiar and brand new at the same time. With nothing more than a shift of light and shadow, everything became transformed. Was that the same strand of cedars we’d passed on our way in or had the trees sprouted up in response to some strange prayer? I reached out to touch a jutting cypress knee and when I pulled my hand back, the tip of my finger swelled with a bead of blood. I didn’t know if I’d scraped against a thorn or been stung by one of the hundreds of swarming, buzzing insects. Iggy was right. It would be easy to disappear into the swamps or into the Gulf. Who would search for you out here, where everything was beautiful and dangerous and strange?
By the time we returned the canoe, my shoulders were sunburnt and sore from paddling. Iggy told us to come by anytime we needed a boat or had any questions. He said he hoped we found what we were looking for.
That night Willet said we should get out of the motel and eat something decent. We’d been living off cold fish dip and crackers in the motel room and it would be a treat to go out. The motel never felt like any place we wanted to be with its gritty floors and mildew in the corners and thin scratchy sheets. The lamps flickered at odd times. A large papery spider and a pop-eyed lizard lived in the shower. I was happy to leave it behind for a few hours.
We ended up at a local bar. There weren’t a lot of options for eating out in the evenings. The crab shacks stopped selling when they ran out of crab around midafternoon. The local gun club dining room served up fancy plates for a price we couldn’t afford. That left the bar, which was attached to a family restaurant called the Crab House. The bar offered cheap beer and generous plates of fried food. We ordered the local sampler to share.
In the corner of the bar a small band set up instruments and tested the sound system. A screech of feedback echoed through the room. The wooden plank walls of the bar we
re studded with fishing poles and lures and photos of men hauling bulging nets into boats. It was early and there weren’t more than a few customers in the bar. Willet and I sat facing each other in a vinyl booth against the wall. An old woman with orange hair chain-smoked Pall Malls and studied a pile of papers she’d spread across her table. At the bar a bald man hunched on a stool and slammed back rum-and-cokes. When the waitress brought our food, Willet ordered another round of beers. We dug into the strips of grouper, the crab fritters, the alligator, and the hush puppies. Daddy used to make hush puppies whenever he came back from fishing and the fried cornmeal and onion melted like a memory against my tongue.
Soon the bar began to do a business. Most of the customers streaming in were young and seemed to be there for the band. A few older folks settled at the bar and greeted the rum-and-coke man with a nod or a slap on the back. The clerk we’d met at the grocery store on our first morning walked in wearing a turquoise tube top and a pair of tight white jeans. Her tanned shoulders sparkled with some sort of glitter and she’d rimmed her eyes with blue shadow. She spotted Willet and came over.
“I wondered if you guys were still here. Did you get on a boat?” She gestured to a guy standing behind her. “This is my big brother, Audie. I’m Cheryl.” She scooted in next to Willet, her white-blonde hair swinging across her shoulders. I suddenly felt mighty plain in my blue jeans and T-shirt.
Willet shook Audie’s hand and introduced me as his little sister. Cheryl said, “I knew y’all were brother and sister. You look alike. Me and Audie don’t favor so much.”
It was true. Audie’s dark brown hair curled around his neck and ears, and his eyes were nearly black where his sister’s were blue. When he smiled, his lips barely revealed his teeth. Cheryl was all smile, all flash and sparkle. Audie was dark and serious. He slid into the booth next to me and ordered iced tea and a basket of clam strips.
The Past Is Never Page 19
