Ten thousand isles df-7

by Randy Wayne White

  That night, cuddled together to stay warm, Nora said into my ear, "I don't know which part of it's a dream, which of it's real. It's the drug. I can still feel it, but it's wearing off. I can't believe what I did to him."

  I said, "I think you're imagining things. What do you think you did?"

  After she told me, I pulled her closer and said, "You're not the one. I did it. Your brain mistranslated. It happens all the time in dreams. When I ate those mushrooms, the same thing happened to me."

  "Are you positive?"

  "I'll swear to it. Besides, he deserved it."

  She moved her face onto my chest. "I would love to believe that."

  "Then do."

  Hurricane Charles hit the next morning. Stick your head out the window of a car doing sixty, then imagine what it would be like to try the same thing at a hundred-twenty. Once and just once, I poked my head up above ground level. It was like being sprayed with an industrial sand blaster. Lips and cheeks flutter; the eyes blur. I got a momentary glance at boiling storm clouds. High overhead, I saw a full-grown Australian pine go tumbling past. The tree had to be a couple hundred feet or more in the air. Mostly what we did was hold tight to one another, soaked and cold from driving rain, our eyes closed in the freight train rush of wind.

  The sound is what surprised me most. The sound of wind was deafening, numbing.

  Then, at a little after eleven, it stopped; everything stopped. The wind, the noise all gone. I crawled out of our threadbare tent and looked through broken trees. In the eye of a hurricane, there exists an illustrative calm, as if to underscore the energy of the storm just passed, the power of the storm to come.

  I looked down into a bay that had been drained of water. Along with beer botdes and the lapstrake of ruined boats was a litter of pottery shards, whole bowls and shell tools: the detritus of a people who'd survived storms on this island for thousands of years.

  Then I looked up into the sky, pausing to study the unexpected cirrus formations. The clouds formed concentric circles within concentric circles. At the center of the smallest circle was a starburst cross of sunlight that illuminated ice crystals in the high ionosphere.

  I took the gold medallion from my pocket, handed it to Nora. She looked from the sky to the medallion, then back to the sky. She was nodding. "I think so. Yes. I can see it. The designs, they're like a storm etching. But how could Dorothy have known? Someone with that kind of gift, I wish I could have met her."

  To the west, drifting above Ten Thousand Islands, was the ghost of a crescent moon.

  I said, "Me, too."

  Epilogue

  On Friday, a little more than a week after Hurricane Charles joined the ranks of Donna, Andrew, Floyd and other killer storms that have hit the Florida coast, I sat in the reading chair by the north window of my stilt house, next to my telescope and shortwave radio.

  I was listening to the pretty lady say, "Know what we should do, Ford? Load the boat with enough supplies for two weeks, and sail down the coast to the Keys. Do it up right. Jars of caviar. Cases of beer and wine packed in ice. We'll make a survey of deserted islands. Find some private little coves to anchor. Bake ourselves in the sun during the day. Look at the stars at night until we feel dozey. Do lots of swimming and running. I've got a new red thong bikini that you won't believe. In fact"-her smile was well known and good to see- "in fact, I won't need to wear much of anything most the time."

  I'd begun to reply when I felt the familiar vibration of big feet slapping on the walkway outside. I'd been sorting my mail as I listened to the lady, had finally gotten around to the big, unopened stack. At a marina, the week following a brush from a major hurricane is a busy week, indeed. I was placing bills in one pile, correspondence in another. Now I put the stack aside and stood. I looked through the window to see Tomlinson approaching. He was wearing a new blue Hawaiian shirt-it had surfboards all over it-and he was carrying what looked to be a rolled-up newspaper.

  Coincidentally, I'd just opened a letter addressed to me in Tomlinson's unmistakable hand. The postmark was dated September twenty-first, which made no sense. He'd left for Key Largo on the day of the fall equinox, September twenty-third. Why would he put something on paper when all he had to do was boat over and tell me what he wanted to say? I glanced at the first paragraph:

  Dear Doc. I write to you from the future because, skeptic that you are, it will be years before you are sufficiendy enlightened to understand why, very soon, I hope to introduce you to the mushroom goddess. She is the only path back to your own lost love…

  More New Age ramblings. That was all I needed to see. I folded the letter, dropped it on the table for later, then went out the door to intercept Tomlinson. I paused on the way to stoop and give the lady a kiss on top the head, felt her give me a pat on the backside in reply.

  "Doc, you read the paper today?" Tomlinson was already talking as he came up the steps to the top platform.

  I waved him into the lab as I said, "I never read the papers. You know that."

  As he brushed past me, taking a seat at the stainless steel dissecting table, I could smell the strong odor of patchouli and the must of cannabis. "The cops finally sent divers down. They found the bodies, just like you said. You were the anonymous source they mention, right?"

  "Of course."

  I was also the anonymous source who'd told authorities to search Ronrico Key for the remains of Frank Rossi. If there were remains to be found after the monkeys got through with him. I did it for his relatives, not for him.

  Tomlinson shook the newspaper. "Then you ought to read this. They got a whole piece about it in here. And still no sign of Ted or Ivan. The boat, nothing. Vanished. Both their estates flattened, all those animals roaming the 'Glades. At least it's stopped them from developing that island, the one with the Indian mounds. For now, anyway." He looked at me with his wise and haunted blue eyes. "You hear about the two park rangers attacked by hyenas? Man, Florida is some wild state. Just keeps getting crazier and crazier."

  I held my hand up, palm out. "I don't have time right now. There's a lady in there waiting on me. All I asked you to do was talk to Dieter, find out how Nora's doing."

  Dieter Rasmussen had arranged for Nora to spend two weeks of treatment at a state-of-the-art rape and trauma retreat that was among the finest in the south.

  "He said she's doing great. Getting stronger every day. They don't let them call out the first week, so she should be able to call you on Monday or maybe Tuesday. Hey, Doc-" Tomlinson turned his eyes to the floor, then cupped his forehead in his hand. "I need to keep saying this till you know I mean it. I want to apologize again."

  "You already have, and that's enough. Forget about it."

  "I can't, man. I feel like crap. I was so wrong about Ted. I feel responsible and guilty as hell. My intuition is almost always right. I was sure he was a good man."

  "It was the drugs. I told you before all this started. They're screwing up your judgment. You've cut back, right?"

  He smiled, then began to chuckle; a warm, weary chuckle as if amused by himself. "Oh, sure, you bet. But I'm still drinking beer. You coming to the Cotillion?"

  Through the lab's big windows, I could see Jeth and Mack lugging a big Igloo cooler out to the docks, getting ready for the traditional Friday, end-of-the-week party.

  As I held open the door for Tomlinson, I said, "I wouldn't miss it. I told JoAnn I might actually try dancing. Who knows? Maybe I will."

  I went back into my house to find the pretty lady standing, waiting for me. Dr. Kathleen Rhodes, tall, chestnut-haired and articulate, and without football player. The two hadn't lasted long, just as O'Rourke had said, and when Pete had told her how pitiful I'd looked in his office, she'd decided that maybe I'd learned something, after all. And she was right: I had.

  She took me into her arms, holding me, then turned her face in a way so that she would be easy to kiss. But I did not. I hated what I as going to say next, but I knew if anyone was going to understand, it woul
d be Kathleen.

  Instead, I took her by the shoulders and steered her back to her chair. "Kathleen, I am flattered beyond words that you drove all this way just to surprise me. And I would like to get together again. But not now. Not for a while. For one thing, I have a friend who's… who's been sick, and I need to be here in case she calls. Plus, I had Tomlinson release all my fish before the storm hit. So now, I've got to restock my aquarium, and that's going to take weeks. It's weird, but-" I stopped, wondering if I should tell her. Then decided, what the hell, why not. "The weird thing is, I didn't realize how attached I'd become to those animals. My bull sharks, especially the immature tarpon. They're just fish, I know, and I'm not speaking of any great emotional investment, but still-"

  The woman stood and touched her finger to my lips, silencing me. She had a nice smile on her face and gorgeous brown eyes. She was shaking her head as if perplexed but pleased, as she said, "Ford, you've changed. There's something very different about you."

  "I don't know what that would be, Kath."

  "For one thing, look at you. You're wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a hula dancer on the back. Never in a thousand years would I expect to find you wearing something like that. That's just not you."

  "It's Cotillion night, big party. Plus, we're going to 'Tween Waters, sit around the pool bar and talk to the guides. I borrowed it from Tomlinson."

  The woman stepped toward me and touched her hand to my chest. "And this. You don't wear jewelry. Marion Ford wearing gold around his neck? You told me you despised jewelry."

  On a woven rope cord, covered by my shirt, I wore a golden locket in the shape of a smiling full moon. I touched my hand to the pendant now, feeling its warmth; a thing to be worn occasionally as a reminder of someone.

  I said, "This? It was a gift from an old friend."

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