The Past Is Never

by Tiffany Quay Tyson

  “Talk to me about the ape suit,” Earl said.

  The man didn’t answer right away. He lit a cigarette and stared past Earl. He looked embarrassed. “I found it,” he said. “In a Goodwill bin after Halloween. I thought I could use it to scare people off.”

  “You get a lot of visitors out here?”

  The man shrugged. “Sometimes the tourists bring their boats out. I don’t want them camping on my land.”

  Earl knew the island didn’t belong to the man. No one owned the land in these waters, though the government was trying to lay claim to it and regulate it to death. But Earl knew what he meant. The man had staked this place out as his home and he didn’t feel like sharing it.

  “I’m Grandin Bell,” Earl said. He held out his hand. “I have a proposition for you. If you don’t like it, I’ll go away and you’ll never see me again. That’s a promise.”

  The man looked him in the eye for the first time, seemed to consider his trustworthiness. Finally he shook Earl’s outstretched hand. “Jonathan Biggums,” he said. “I’m listening.”

  Earl poured them both a drink and laid out his plans for the Skunk Ape tours. “The legend already exists. People want to believe it.” Earl said he would split the earnings with Jonathan, but Jonathan pointed out he didn’t have many places to spend money. “I can bring you what you need,” Earl said. “Booze, smokes, gas, fresh water, books. You could live more comfortably.”

  As they worked out the details, Earl learned how Jonathan came to be living at Dead Man’s Key. When he’d returned from his tour in Vietnam, he’d camped on the island and planned to stay for a few weeks. But he liked the peace of it and as the years rolled by he could think of no good reason to leave. “I can stand anything but people,” he often said. Jonathan came to stand Earl, though. They became friends.

  The tours were popular. Tourists were willing to pay good money for a cheap thrill. He nearly abandoned the scheme when the reporter contacted him. The girl wasn’t much older than twenty and she didn’t identify herself as a reporter until they were on the water. He’d thought she was just a tourist with a lot of questions. She’d taken his picture without his permission while he chatted with a man from Arizona. He’d been smiling and the snapshot looked like something posed. When the article came out, he feared someone might recognize him from before. For weeks, he looked at the people on the boat and wondered if one of them might be a local detective or an FBI agent. He thought he might need to disappear again, but no one came for him.

  Earl liked working with Jonathan, but Jonathan liked his liquor. For years, the isolation and lack of resources had kept his cravings in check. He’d go on a bender twice a year, when he traveled inland to cash his benefits checks and stock up on supplies, but he didn’t have the resources to be a drunk. With the tours, though, he had more money than he’d seen in years. When he sent Earl for supplies, he requested more liquor than food.

  In June of 1980, Earl found Jonathan sprawled facedown on the floor of his cabin. His pants were stained with dried urine and his face was caked with vomit. He clutched an empty pint of rum in his right hand. His feet were bare and the left toes were purple and swollen from an infected cut along the sole. Earl hated to see his friend in such a state, but it gave him an idea. The men were roughly the same height and weight. Jonathan was a good bit younger, but he didn’t look it. All those years of hiding and lying and hoping no one recognized him; Earl could put an end to it. No one was looking for Jonathan and no one would miss him.

  Earl wrapped Jonathan’s body in a tarp and loaded it into his boat. He rowed through the shallow, mangrove-tangled inlets. It was early evening when he reached the dock where he kept his truck. Light began to leak from the sky. He caught his foot on a tree root while carrying the body from the boat to the bed of his truck. He pulled on a wide-brimmed hat and a pair of sunglasses despite the falling dusk. At the Glades Motel, he paid cash—real cash, not the fake stuff. The trickiest part was getting the body into the room without being seen. Anyone might peep out of one of the motel windows and wonder what was being hauled through the door of room seventeen. He relied on the innate discretion of the sort of men who stayed in such motels.

  Inside, he removed the man’s boots and socks, gagging at the rotten odor wafting from his feet. He placed a few empty bottles of rum around the room, hung a couple of shirts in the closet. The idea was to make it look like the man had spent at least a couple of days there before dying. He wasn’t sure how accurately the police could figure time of death, but he knew it wasn’t an exact science. Everything would be tougher to calculate once the body decayed, and, by the smell of things, that process had begun. He placed the wallet on the bedside table. It contained his expired driver’s license from Mississippi. He double-checked the man’s pockets for anything that might identify him. He found nothing. When they found this body, they would believe it belonged to Earl Watkins and if Earl Watkins was dead, he could stop running and worrying. No one would search for a dead man.

  SEVENTEEN

  DEAD MAN’S KEY LAY about seventeen miles southwest of Everglades City, according to Iggy’s map. I loaded up with supplies including a plastic tarp for shelter, granola bars, and beef jerky. I filled empty milk and soda bottles with fresh water. August wasn’t the best time to make such a trip. It was when the weather was most unpredictable and the waters were high, but I couldn’t wait. I’d been waiting for five years. I needed answers. Maybe I wouldn’t find anything at Dead Man’s Key, but the newspaper article said my father had traveled there. Maybe by following in his wake I would uncover something important.

  I didn’t tell anyone about my plans. Iggy would have tried to talk me out of it. Willet and I weren’t speaking. I left a note at the apartment for Willet, though he rarely came by anymore. It didn’t say much: “On the water for a few days. Back soon. Don’t worry.”

  I waited until the weather forecasters announced a string of clear days. Maybe an afternoon thunderstorm, they said, but it would be mostly clear and dry. Hot, as always. Good weather for barbecues and picnics and swimming. I filled the dry bag on the kayak with my supplies. I figured I could be gone for two days, maybe three, before anyone started to worry.

  I launched the kayak at the Barron River just after sunrise. The early morning sun spilled white light across lapping waves and the breeze smelled salty and fresh. I dipped my paddle into the warm sepia-colored water near the river mouth and propelled my boat toward the deep green expanse of Chokoloskee Bay. A large piece of sun-bleached driftwood jutted from the water like a giant arm reaching toward the sky. I stepped out to pull the kayak across a narrow sandbar and my bare feet sucked against the soft damp surface. Soon I reached deeper water. As the sun rose higher, I pushed south, paddling with the current, though I knew I’d have to turn west at some point. I’d been nervous about venturing out so far alone, but it was a beautiful morning and the tides were in my favor. I avoided high-traffic channels where fishing boats sped across the bay, bringing in the evening’s catch. I wondered if Willet and Audie were on the water. I paddled through the rookery, beneath the shadows of the mangroves. It was oddly quiet and I assumed the birds were off hunting food, but now I wonder if the birds knew something I didn’t. Maybe they were trying to warn me.

  The heat rose quickly. There were a few white clouds scattered across the bright blue sky, but those puny clouds were no match for the blazing sun. Sweat poured across my face and chest. My hands felt slippery against the paddle. If I were out paddling for fun, I’d rest or turn back on such a warm morning, but I pushed through, unwilling to get off schedule so early in the trip. I planned to stop somewhere along Indian Key Pass in the middle of the day to rest and eat something. There were islands there with sandbars and decent shelter, and there were chickee huts scattered through the waters—elevated wooden shelters with thatched roofs in the style of old Seminole houses. During the tourist season the shelters might be occupied by campers, but I suspected most would be empty in the s
ummer. It was hot but clear. I hoped the good weather would hold, but storms came most afternoons no matter what the forecasters said, just as they had in White Forest five years ago, during the summer of Pansy’s disappearance.

  I kept my strokes low and smooth, like Iggy had taught me, and rowed in the direction of a wide low-slung string of islands in the distance. A pod of dolphins danced ahead of me and I followed in their wake, knowing the water would always be deep enough where they swam. I imagined those dolphins were guiding me toward my father. I made good progress the first morning, traveling farther and faster than I anticipated, but after noon the sky turned gray and the breeze turned to a strong wind. I pulled my boat toward a small island. The water bucked beneath me. I felt very small all of a sudden. I leaned into the paddle and dug hard toward the narrow strip of sand on the edge of the island. When the kayak scraped against the sand, I jumped out and hauled the boat to higher ground. I tethered the kayak to a sturdy root and rested on a large piece of driftwood. I watched the gray sky darken through the thick canopy of silvery-green leaves. I didn’t mind getting wet. It was the wind that worried me. I’d read stories of men being swept out to sea and never heard from again. I knew tropical winds could blow in without warning, but it had been a calm storm season. We’d had plenty of rain, but nothing destructive. Still, as I crouched beneath the shelter of the mangroves, I wondered if I should turn back. I ate one of the granola bars and drank a bit of water.

  Rain fell through much of the afternoon. I was chilled and tired by the time the storm passed but determined to keep moving. There were still a few hours of daylight left. I launched the kayak and pressed forward. It was rough, but I did as Iggy taught me and kept the nose of my kayak pointing into the chop. It was easy to see how a strong wave hitting the side of my boat might flip me over. The heat rose again. The tides shifted. I set my intentions toward the west, but the tides kept urging me north.

  Iggy had taught me to read channel markers and there were a few signs along the water. I consulted my map and turned toward West Pass. Soon I was paddling through a thick grove of trees, my route no wider than a large stream. According to the map, I should have been traveling west through a wide channel, but my compass said I was traveling east. It made no sense. East was exactly the wrong direction. I thought something must be wrong with my compass and I was damn sure going to give Iggy a piece of my mind about his crappy equipment.

  After an hour in the pass, though, I realized the sun was dipping behind me and I knew the compass wasn’t to blame; the map was wrong or I’d misread the channel markers. I spun around and retraced my path. I found myself back at the same island where I’d sheltered earlier, exhausted and frustrated. I decided to camp for the night and start fresh in the morning. It was getting late and I didn’t want to be on the water in the dark. I knew predators were most active at dawn and dusk. Shark attacks were rare, but they happened.

  And there were more aggressive predators to worry about. I’d heard the stories. I knew about the mother who fished on the banks of the Allen River, the same place she’d fished for a dozen years, a place where she felt as safe as she felt in her home, until an alligator crawled out of the water and clamped its massive jaws around the torso of her two-year-old son. She didn’t have time to scream before the creature dragged the boy beneath the water’s surface. I’d met the woman. She told the story to anyone who’d listen, and there always came a point where it seemed it might turn out okay, where you hoped she would tell you the boy got away, or the gator was killed by a passing hunter, or the whole thing was some big misunderstanding, but the story always ended the same way. She never saw the boy again, never saw a splash or a struggle. Her son disappeared into the muddy waters and it was like he’d never lived.

  “I couldn’t even tell him goodbye,” she’d say, as if that were the big tragedy.

  And I knew the story of the fisherman who’d sliced open his hand with a boning knife and dropped his bloody palm into the Gulf of Mexico for a rinse. The shark must have already been swimming beneath his boat to strike so quickly. He made it to the hospital on his own, though the doctors said he should have been unconscious with the loss of blood. They chopped off his arm above the elbow, leaving a web of purple scars around the stump. The man said he figured it was the worst boning knife injury in the history of mankind.

  And I knew about the teenagers who’d sneaked off from a church picnic to make out in a copse of cypress trees alongside a canal. They never saw the nest of water moccasins, but the whole congregation came running when they heard the girl scream. The doctor joked about the effectiveness of the cottonmouth contraception.

  There were stories of coral snakes and bears, of crocodiles and panthers, of quicksand and poison plants. I did not want to become one of the stories people told.

  I ate a granola bar and doused my neck and ankles with bug juice. The sun set over the water and turned the blue sky yellow before fading to black. I made sure to fix the direction in my mind. When I set out tomorrow, I’d head west no matter what the map said. Even with the bug juice, mosquitoes buzzed against my face and neck. I pulled the tarp tight around me and lay back on the sand. A bird squawked, a frog croaked, and water lapped against the shore. I tried not to think too much about the wild animals all around me. Iggy always said most animals wouldn’t bother you if you didn’t bother them. I hoped he was right. The night sky filled with stars and I watched a few thin clouds float across the moon. No matter how I turned, I couldn’t get comfortable. The sand beneath my back felt like concrete. Between the hard, unforgiving sand and the strange noises, I didn’t believe I would ever sleep. I must have dozed, because I woke to a stabbing pain in my right shoulder as the sky was just beginning to take on the first gray light of morning. I massaged my aching shoulder and hoped it was nothing more than a muscle cramp.

  Mosquitoes packed my nostrils and ears. I spat on the ground to clear the bugs from my mouth. When I rolled from my tarp, I felt something slither across my calf. The bottle of bug juice I’d brought was half gone already, but I squirted a liberal amount in my hands and rubbed it across my face and neck. My back and legs ached from sleeping on the hard sand, and my shoulders were sore from paddling. My hands were stiff as claws from gripping the paddle and I desperately wished for coffee. But my mood rose with the sun, which seemed to levitate from the water like an orange balloon on a string. It washed the sky with coral and pink, brighter than any neon sign. It was almost enough to make up for my breakfast of warm water and beef jerky. When the sky was fully lit, I launched the kayak. I didn’t know what time it was. My watch had quit working.

  I paddled through shallow water. Several times I had to climb out and pull the boat to deeper channels. I twisted my ankle stepping across the mangrove roots and coral. Sharp shell fragments tore at my feet. My arms and shoulders ached and the tops of my legs were burned bright red. A few times I thought I heard a motor in the distance, but I didn’t come in contact with anyone. By midday, the water level rose and I navigated the channels without getting stuck. I nearly dug my paddle into a manatee, which I mistook for a mottled rock until it opened a lazy eye and scared the bejesus out of me. Most of the islands I passed were small and inaccessible, the roots of the mangroves like a web of hands clasped tight against intruders. Herons marched along the shoreline, watching for signs of prey. Osprey hovered in the sky. A saw-toothed crocodile no longer than my forearm eyed me from its resting spot in a shaded cove. The mosquitoes grew more aggressive. They swarmed around my face in an angry mass and it took every ounce of courage to hang on to my paddle. Iggy said every creature had a divine purpose, but I could see no reason for mosquitoes to live.

  By late afternoon, I was a mess of stinging welts and sunburn and frustration. Frankly, I was lost. None of the markers I searched for were where I expected them to be. No matter which direction I turned my kayak everything looked the same. I’d been paddling for so long, it seemed impossible I wasn’t there yet, but the landmarks I looked fo
r didn’t appear. It’s like my map was created for a different Florida, one that no longer existed.

  I spotted a dilapidated chickee shelter off the shore of a small island, not much more than a mudflat beneath a hammock of hardwoods. I decided to stop for the day. I didn’t know where I was, but the elevated wooden shelter meant I could sleep off the hard sand that night. My feet sank into the mud and I fell to my knees when I disembarked. The kayak felt heavy, as if it were taking on the weight of my worry. I tied it to a wooden piling and climbed the ladder to the chickee. The thatched roof was worn, but it provided some shade from the brutal sun. I slathered my neck and shoulders with the bug juice and tried not to think what would happen when it ran out. My sunburnt skin felt raw and tender. I hadn’t eaten in hours, but I wasn’t hungry.

  It was sometime in the late afternoon, the sun still well above the horizon, when I lay back on the wooden platform and closed my eyes. I woke with a start a few hours later when something crawled across my leg and burrowed beneath the elastic band of my shorts. I ran my hands around my waist and flicked away a large spider. It was only the beginning. Creeping, burrowing, biting, stinging insects seemed to crawl across every inch of my body. I was outnumbered. I cursed and screamed, though no one could hear me. I wished for a tent, something with a zipper and a screen. I used more bug juice, knowing I’d be out come morning. I hauled the tarp up to the chickee platform and wrapped it around me as a defense against the bugs. I tried not to cry. I’d been stupid to make this trip alone. The next day I would turn back. Maybe I could try again with better supplies.