Ten Thousand Islands

by Randy Wayne White

  Della handed out two bottles already mounted in Styrofoam coolie cups. She was wearing a pink tank top and cutoff jean shorts and had a hawk’s feather in her hair. All the waitresses dressed like that.

  “He said he’d be here sooner, but he’s bringing the boat up from Marathon.”

  She was still talking about Ted Bauerstock. She was smiling, the first time I’d seen her smile since I’d met her. With her narrow chin and black hair, she reminded me of a country-western singer. She had the underfed look of coal mines and sawgrass. “You know how politicians used to go by train and make what they called ‘whistle-stops’? Teddy, he’s doing the same thing by boat. He started in Key West and he’s gonna work his way up the coast. Stops at marinas, talks to the fishermen, the real people, then meets with reporters. He said he was actually thinking about dumping the whole plan and have his boat taken out of the water. But he’s so upset about what you say his daddy’s doing, he’s on his way right now.”

  I said, “The marina stops aren’t getting enough publicity?”

  “No, they’re going just fine. It’s not that at all. Haven’t you listened to the weather this morning? There’s another couple tropical storms forming. One’s down off South America someplace, the other’s off Africa. Weather people say they probably won’t head this way, but they could. Teddy, he’s bringing the boat anyway.”

  Since there is only one road that links the Florida Keys—Highway A1A—and since the road effectively divides the Atlantic from Florida Bay, all directions are given in relationship to the mile marker nearest the destination and to the body of water it sides. Mandalay Marina, Tiki Bar & Restaurant (rental apartments available, according to the plywood sign out front) was on the ocean side at mile marker 97.5, meaning it was ninety-seven and a half miles from Key West, the geographical and social equivalent of Florida’s Ground Zero.

  The Mandalay was next door to Road Hog Harley Service, both businesses squeezed in between two trailer parks off 2nd Avenue, which intersected Marina Street near Calusa Campground and Shell World, two miles south of the Kmart Plaza on A1A.

  I knew about the Kmart because Tomlinson and I drove there in my truck. I carried the wooden totem with me in a black canvas briefcase. Everywhere I went, the totem went.

  I carried the thing around Kmart, where I bought duct tape, electrical tape, clothesline, a spool of cheap six-pound-test fishing line and a small cassette tape recorder plus several tapes.

  I had fishing gear on my skiff, but I didn’t want to waste it. This cheap line wasn’t going to be used for fishing.

  Tomlinson gave me a very odd look when I picked up the package of clothesline. I am fussy about the kind of line I buy for my boats, and he knows it.

  “Planning on doing some laundry, are we?” he asked wryly. When I didn’t reply, he said, “Oh Lordy, you’ve got that look. That if-I-told-you-I’d-have-to-staple-your-tongue-look. Alcohol. I need alcohol!”

  His way of reminding me what he’d already mentioned a half-dozen times: he was in a mood to go barhopping. “We need to get out, trade a few lies and meet the locals. Absorb some local color. Maybe absorb a few mojitos while we’re at it. Frankly, my friend, I’m tired of the company of the same familiar women.”

  I said that was fine with me, but first I wanted to stop at the police station, introduce myself and try to set them straight on Della Copeland. She wasn’t crazy. She was having real problems and they needed to keep an eye on her. But give it a few days. Couch it so they’d wait until I was gone.

  The woman cop at the desk told me I’d have to stop back, the man I needed to see wasn’t there.

  “It’s Sunday,” she said. “In the Keys, not much gets done on Sundays.”

  Tomlinson said, “When you drift off like that, the way your eyes lose focus, I can tell you’re thinking of her.” Meaning Dorothy.

  “Enough, enough,” I said. “You’re wrong, as usual.”

  Actually, he was right. The girl’s image would flash like a camera strobe, then vanish.

  We’d stopped and had a drink at Sharkey’s, talked to some of the local dive masters; heard about how good the reef-diving had been, and how they sure hoped that big blow off South America didn’t keep coming because it’d been a hell of a season up to then.

  I saw a satellite picture of the storm on the TV above the bar: a red swirling shape at latitude 15.4, longitude 83.4, which put it south of Cuba. It had been out there building for a week, sitting over many thousands of acres of super-heated water. It had already reached wind speeds of sixty knots, which meant it was still a tropical storm, not yet a hurricane. Florida dodges a half-dozen or more a year. This was only the third, and it was huge: it blotted out a massive patch of water between open ocean and Jamaica.

  Mostly, we sat around and talked about our own home, Dinkin’s Bay. We did a lot of laughing. I sometimes forget how insightful and witty Tomlinson really is.

  We stopped at Snappers and I stood on the dock, studying schooling tarpon while Tomlinson pounded drinks and entertained the waitresses behind the bar. At the Caribbean Club—the old Key Largo Hotel from the movie—I knew it was time to get him home when I overheard him tell the girlfriend of a Harley rider, “Know what scares me most about reincarnation? That I won’t be hung as good next time around. The Buddha said not to grasp, life is so transitory, but damn it, some things a man gets used to grasping!”

  Now we were back at the Mandalay, sitting outside beneath raw wood beams and ceiling fans, looking across the water at deserted Ronrico Key and Mosquito Bank Channel beyond.

  Della was sitting with a Bud Light within easy reach, the three of us off by ourselves, while the two other waitresses, Betty Lynn and Salina, took care of the busy bar. It was the first chance we’d had to sit down and talk since my arrival. Della’d apologized earlier, saying, “I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to answer your questions, sugar, but I’ve got to cook and wait tables till Salina shows up at four.”

  She told me that when I’d asked her about the gold medallion. Nope, she didn’t have it. Told me that I’d have to wait to hear how she lost it. “That’s a long, sad story.”

  Now Della took a sip of her beer and said, “You’re gonna call me an idiot, everyone does. Because of what I did. The way I gave the medallion away.”

  I said, “Idiots don’t have women like JoAnn Small-wood for friends. There’s no need to be ashamed of anything. Not in front of us. We’re on your side.”

  She reached across the table and patted my hand, “That girl, she’s like a little sister to me. She’s absolutely wild about you, hon. Thinks the sun rises over your head. Only she says you two can’t never be more than friends. I guess I’d have to move to Sanibel and live at that weird little marina of yours for me to understand that.”

  Della had the easy familiarity of the longtime waitress. Called everyone “babe” or “sugar” or “hon.”

  “JoAnn described the medallion as being very beautiful.”

  “Oh, it was. It truly was. Kind of took your breath away looking at it, the way it glittered and shined. Got to feeling hot in your hands if you held it too long.”

  Tomlinson hadn’t heard that before, I could tell. “You actually felt heat?”

  “No, probably not. I’m sure it was just my imagination, but Dorothy, she said the same thing. She found it. She was real proud she found it. But she didn’t like it much. She didn’t spend a lot of time touching it or looking at it. Not like some of the other things she found.”

  Della nodded at the black briefcase that lay on the picnic table near me. “She loved that thing there. She’d sit on her bed looking at it, tracing the designs with her fingers. Told me she loved the way the wood felt, so smooth and old.”

  As Tomlinson asked, “Did she ever tell you what the designs meant?” Nora Chung walked toward us, smiling, then touched her hand to my back as she took a seat beside me. She was already listening; didn’t say a word.

  “Dorothy’s ideas about the designs were c
ompletely different than what the archaeologists said. She said … well, here, let me show you—” Della unzipped the briefcase, took out the wooden totem and pointed to the face of it. “See these circles within circles? Dorothy said that’s the way the clouds look at night during a bad hurricane, only she called it something else, an Indian word. She knew lots of Indian words. She said those people were terrified of hurricanes; they were the most dangerous things in their lives. These teardrop shapes? These are really raindrops, only they’re inverted because they want to send the storm back to the sky. It’s like a charm against hurricanes, understand?”

  It seemed reasonable, but I said nothing. Much of religion is a reply to fear.

  Della said, “The cross, it’s not like a Christianity thing, but it represents all that’s good. These doors within doors, they’re like the doors to heaven where those big storms come from. Plus they also represent something else, some ancient place. I can’t quite remember where she said it was, but it was a place that had stone pyramids.” Della turned the totem toward me. “From that angle, see how the doors resemble one of those squarish pyramids you see in the Geographic?”

  It was true. They reminded me of the entrance to the Temple of the Jaguar at Tikal in Guatemala.

  Now Della turned the totem over. “On the back, the gold medallion had the same thing, these crescent moons. Dorothy said they represented endless hope. She called them Tortugas moons, just like she called a nice balmy breeze a Tortugas wind. Living on Marco, both were from that direction, the southwest.

  “Then there’s these two square holes, side by side. If I hold it up, see how they’re black? Dorothy said they’re like the pupils of God’s own eyes. That’s what the Indians believed, that our souls are in the pupils of our eyes—but wait, you already said the exact same thing at the funeral.” Now she put her hand on Tomlinson’s arm; gave it a squeeze. “I know I already told you, but you did a real good job. I loved what you said. It was a lot better than the first sermon the preacher gave over her.”

  Della finished her beer and stood. “I don’t know how Dorothy learned all that she did, or knew all that she knew. In ways, she was like a stranger. But I loved her more than my own life. You folks ready for another round? I’ll get it.”

  I watched her walk away, a woman accustomed to pain. It happens sometimes: a parent and child so dissimilar that it seems one could not be related to the other. I saw nothing of Della in what I imagined the girl, Dorothy, to be.

  Tomlinson nudged me and said, “You’re doing it again. Drifting away.”

  The person who’d found Dorothy’s body was Ted Bauerstock.

  I sat a little straighter when Della told us that; sat listening very carefully. It was a couple hours or so before sunset, the westward light already illuminating reflective markers out on the channel.

  Across the water, mangroves on Ronrico Key were black; the hulls of anchored boats were a lucent white.

  “Mr. Bauerstock and Teddy, they were out hiking on their property. Indian Hills was right behind where we lived at the time, and they found her on the highest mound. She had her favorite dress on, the one I buried her in. She had a rope around her neck, hanging from a branch so low that her feet still touched the ground.”

  Della stopped for a moment to regain control of her emotions. Took a drink of her beer, lit a cigarette. Her hands were shaking. “That’s why I think she was experimenting with unconsciousness. Haven’t you heard of kids doing that? Shut their air off until they hallucinate or have visions. She was having such terrible dreams by that time—and always about that damn medallion—I think she was just looking for some relief. Didn’t leave a note, didn’t tell me goodbye. Dorothy would of never left me like that. She was too kind, too loving.”

  “What did Ted and Ivan Bauerstock do when they found her?”

  “They did the best they could, I guess. She was still warm. She hadn’t been gone long. Him and Teddy both did mouth-to-mouth. But no use. I know it was real hard on both of ’em. They both knew Dorothy because she spent so much time poking around their Indian mounds. She always had permission, anytime she wanted. They knew about her gift. Everybody on Marco knew. Teddy was one of the few who didn’t make fun of her or talk about how weird she was.” Della smiled, eyes glazed with introspection. “He was quite a bit older, four or five years. But I think Dorothy had a kind of crush on him. Her first crush, and I think Teddy knew it.”

  “You and the Bauerstock family, you’ve remained close ever since?”

  Della shook her head. “Finding her upset Teddy so bad that he left Marco right afterwards. Went off to some expensive boarding school. The place they sent him was more like a monastery, very strict—there was just a story about him in the Herald. It had him saying how it improved his life, going to such a strict school. Lord knows, he could have turned out bad instead of being such a good, successful man. His mama died when he was real young, and his daddy, he’s such a rich, busy man he didn’t have much time for kids or dirt-poor neighbors like me. I thought Teddy’d forgotten all about us until he called just a couple days ago, asking if there was anything he could do to help. He read about Dorothy in the papers.”

  I touched the wooden totem. “Did you ever tell Ted or anyone else about this? Where you’d put it.”

  “I don’t think I ever saw Ted Bauerstock again until yesterday. I may have told some other people. I can’t remember. The months after Dorothy’s death are a blur. There’s a lot of it I don’t remember. I remember despising that damn gold medallion. It’s what killed my little girl. I believe it to this day. It’s got all those good, godly signs on it, but it’s not good. It’s like the fallen angel, that’s what I think.

  “One night, when I was ’bout half crazy, I damn near threw the thing into the ocean. There was a big rainstorm going on; lots of lightning. I stood there on the beach at Marco, holding the medallion up at the sky, hoping God would strike me dead and put me out of my misery. Throwing it into the ocean, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. But I didn’t. What I did made even less sense than that. At least throwin’ it into the water would’ve been just between God and me.” Della’s thin laughter was very old, very tired, but it still had a spark of life and amusement. “Us country women, we never seem to miss a chance to show how dumb and trustin’ we can be.”

  What Della did was give the medallion away.

  A month after Dorothy’s funeral, a man had contacted Della at the chickee bar in Goodland where she worked. He’d just moved down with hopes of getting into the construction business, he said, but collecting Indian artifacts—pot hunting, he called it—was his hobby. He was from New Jersey, had a wife and kid, and he seemed trustworthy.

  He told Della that he’d met Dorothy and had actually helped steer her toward the water court on Swamp Angel Ways. He’d known it was a likely spot because of his more mature knowledge, but he was happy to let the young girl take the credit because publicity meant nothing to him.

  “I should’a knowed right then he was lying. Dorothy didn’t need no help from Yankee trash like that. The guy made it sound like he’d been so much help to Dorothy, but always staying in the background, that he could make a claim on the medallion if he wanted.”

  I’d guessed the man’s name before Della said it: Frank Rossi.

  Fifteen years and forty pounds ago, though, he’d been a very convincing fellow. Della described him as a big talker, loud voice, very dominant.

  That made sense. Obnoxious fathers tend to raise obnoxious sons.

  Rossi finally worked the conversation around to psychic powers. He had none, but he knew a woman from Immokalee who did. He’d attended one of her seances and was very impressed. She was like a gypsy woman, only she wasn’t a gypsy, and had amazing powers. Why not contact the woman, ask her to hold a seance and see if they could speak to Dorothy from the grave?

  A parent who has lost a child will do anything on just the chance of meeting with that child one more time.

 
Della said yes. Sat at a table in candlelight, her and Rossi and a dumpy old woman, who smelled like a drunk. She listened to the woman ask questions as if speaking to Dorothy’s ghost. The table shook and rattled and Dorothy’s “ghost” rapped on the table in reply.

  “I knew it was either her or Rossi knocking on that table. I had the sickest feeling in my stomach because I wanted so bad for it to be Dorothy. To kiss her sweet face one last time, to tell her I loved her. I pretended to believe for the same reason we all do—because I wanted to believe.

  “When the woman asked Dorothy if I should keep the medallion or give it away because it was cursed, I knew what the answer was going to be. But know what?” Della swirled the beer in her bottle, looking at its amber sparkle. “That was the only time I felt Dorothy really was in the room. I could feel her there. She really didn’t want me to have it. I could almost hear her say, ‘Don’t keep it!’

  “So I gave it away. Gave it to him, Frank Rossi. Made him real happy. We’d gone to my little place to get it, just the two of us alone, and he went out to his car to get a bottle of wine. He said why not have a couple glasses, help us relax after dealing with the spirit world. But I know he went to the car to hide the medallion so’s I couldn’t change my mind.”

  Della looked from me to Tomlinson to Nora, the sad, bemused expression still on her face. “Know what Frank Rossi said to me yesterday at the funeral? Same thing he said to me after strippin’ me out of my clothes that night and forcing me to bed years ago. After getting me fallin’- down drunk the night of the seance. He didn’t say nothin’. Not a goddamn word. Just turned his back and walked away.”

  17

  Just before sunset, Ted Bauerstock brought his 36-Hinckley cruiser through some invisible cut west of Ronrico Key, running at speed through water I would have guessed was way too shallow for a boat that size. He had to be doing at least thirty knots, throwing a wake as streamlined as the Hinckley itself, one of the most beautiful yachts in the world.