The Man Who Ivented Florida df-3

by Randy Wayne White

  On the rebound? That's what she was thinking about-Ford could almost feel her cerebral electrodes zapping the possibility back and forth. She had loved her husband. She had already told him that. So the conflict was understandable, though Ford could have never brought himself to push the subject. That was Sally's life, her private realm, and small caches of private experience were becoming rare these days.

  But there was something he could talk about, something else, he suspected, that had motivated her brief withdrawal.

  "Staying here, having to use a rainwater shower and an outhouse. I've been thinking that that must be hard on you. You probably got enough of this when you were a girl?"

  Ford had been surprised at her surprise, at the wide-eyed look she'd given him. "How do you do that?"

  "What?"

  "Break in on my thoughts like that? That is exactly what I was thinking, the instant you said it. And you did it yesterday, too. About the camera mount. How? How do you do that?"

  Yesterday, he had seen her looking at his telescope. Then she'd gone over to check the calendar, and he had said, "If you need a camera adapter to get shots of the full moon, there's a photo supply on the island."

  But standing alone with her on the deck, Ford had said, "Just a guess."

  "I was hoping it was something more. The Spanish have a word for it. Simpatico."

  Ford had said, "I'm familiar with the word," but offered nothing more.

  A while later, breaking the silence, Sally said, "You love this house, don't you?"

  "It's a good place to work."

  She had stood then and kissed him. "Then it's where you should be."

  That brief uneasiness was gone Wednesday morning, and Sally had dressed to go grocery shopping while Ford worked on the two big glass tanks he was building to do the procedure with his filtering sea mobiles.

  Then she had returned with the new issue of the National Enquirer, still reading it now as Ford moved around putting groceries away. He heard her say, "Uh-oh, you're not going to like this."

  He stopped. Now what? He leaned against her to read over her shoulder. She was pointing to a bottom section of paragraphs, which Ford skimmed. The state was trying to take Tucker Ga-trell's property to make a park. But how could the state set a price on something as valuable as the artesian well Gatrell had found? Were they willing to pay him what it was worth? Not that he wanted to get rich off it, no; Mr. Gatrell was a simple man. Just a regular working guy. He wanted to share the water with anyone willing to come to Mango to get it. Naturally, he would have to charge a small price-bottles, handling, that sort of thing. He had to make a living, after all. But he was going to sell the water cheap. Help people, that's what Mr. Gatrell wanted to do, the story said. Help people feel young again.

  Then the story quoted Tuck: "A number of scientists are already studying the composition of the water. A Florida biologist, Dr. Marion Ford, has already assured me that the water contains unusual properties."

  That wasn't Tuck talking; it was the reporter. But Tuck had used Ford's name. How else would the reporter have gotten it?

  Ford said, "Damn him. He's gone too far."

  "He's trying to get you involved, Doc."

  "Of course. But to have my name associated with something like this!"

  "I know. He's wrong, he is. But I think he's desperate."

  "All the years he's owned that land and done nothing but make a junk heap out of it. Suddenly he's desperate to keep it?"

  "I don't think that's the reason he's desperate. I think it has something to do with you." Sally leaned back so that her head pressed against Ford's stomach, a warm physical prompt, asking whether he wanted to talk about it.

  Ford kissed her on top of the head. "I'll put the last of these groceries away."

  "He's not a bad man. And you certainly aren't."

  "Yes, but only one of us is crazy. No, make that two. It must be catching, because now Tomlinson's got it. I have to hunt through some more papers on his sailboat and Federal Express them this afternoon."

  Tomlinson had been in Boston since Friday. "Might as well, man," he had told Ford privately. "I can't even stop over at your place for a beer anymore, the musk is so thick. I'm afraid it'll peel my tan off."

  Right. What he really wanted was an excuse to go and see his daughter, Nichola, and use a research facility he knew about near Cambridge. "They've got the new Genesis machine for DNA testing, and the head honcho owes me a favor. An automated sequencer that pops everything up on the computer screen, no fuss, no muss. Du Pont makes it. Same folks who gave us napalm. This world, it just keeps getting wackier and wackier."

  Even so, Tomlinson had called Ford nearly every day he had been gone. Sounded oddly troubled, too. Sort of deflated, as if running on low batteries. Not at all like Tomlinson, but Ford wasn't the type to press for explanations. Tomlinson told him what books and papers he wanted, and Ford said okay. He was getting to be pretty good friends with the Fedex lady.

  Now Ford folded the last of the grocery bags, saying, "I have to find the papers and get them off by three, or they won't make Boston's morning delivery. The way Tomlinson keeps his boat, they could be anywhere."

  "Hey… hey." Sally had him by the hand, turning him toward her. "You're upset."

  "Nope. I'm not."

  "You're tense. I can feel it in your shoulders." She was kneading his neck with her strong fingers, looking up at him, the two of them standing so close, and Ford recognized the gradual transformation of her mood, her body: knees bent, breathing more shal-lowly, the sleepy sag of her eyelids.

  "Seriously. I told Tomlinson I'd do it. I don't know why, but I told him, so-"

  She pressed her lips to his, sliding them back and forth, back and forth, her tongue moving to lubricate his lips as her right hand slowly moved to her own chest for a time before she began to unbutton the jade blouse, pulling it open to show him the translucent cotton bra full to bursting, stretched taut, holding her. "I can't let you go off like this," she said.

  Ford hesitated-he really had promised Tomlinson-but then his hand found the little coupling at the front of the bra. It was automatic now; didn't even have to stop to think about how the tricky thing worked. Then, as he stooped to kiss her, he felt her hands on his belt, sliding down to grip him, and he didn't think about Tomlinson or Tuck or anything else for quite a while.

  TWELVE

  The reason the package didn't make the Thursday Fedex delivery, Tomlinson decided, was because Doc had probably gotten caught up in his work, forgot all about the time. Tomlinson could picture the man hunched over his microscope or peering through his thick glasses at some vial, doing-what was it now?-yeah, research on nutrient pollution in water. The projects changed, but Doc's intensity didn't. Ford was compulsive about work. Probably sat there in his lab and forgot all about the clock. Tomlinson could just see him, down there on Florida's Gulf Coast in the autumn heat and tropical squalls, oblivious to the world. All the man's sentient energies being poured into linear problem solving, which wasn't healthy. Really murked up the aura. Made it opaque as used dishwater, like this Boston weather…

  Now it was Friday, and Tomlinson was walking along the north bank of the Charles River on the bike path from Watertown to west Cambridge, and he glanced up at the sky. There was no sun, just a pale smear without borders-a cold pale light in a gray meld of smog and haze. Simon and Garfunkel kind of day, that's the way he had once thought of it. Everything gray and black: oaks and maples, mossy wet, twisting in a November wind that swirled down the Charles. In the high trees, a few remaining leaves fluttered, their glow of first frost weeks gone, solitary as brown flags.

  Cold, man. Should have stopped in at Musashi's to give Nichola a quick kiss and borrow a coat. Can't be more than thirty-five, forty degrees. Should have just walked right up and pressed the doorbell, let Musashi know I can be assertive, too. Musashi may be the girl's mother, but I'm the father, and fathers have rights, too.

  Tomlinson walked along, thinking
about what he should have done, carrying the Federal Express envelope under his arm. His hair was pulled back into a pony tail and he wore old frayed jeans and a black oiled wool sweater a friend had brought him long ago from Northern Ireland. Made a present of the sweater to him back in the days when there was so much energy in this town that an outsider could touch the grass on Harvard Commons or stick a toe into the Charles and he would feel a sort of electrical shock. Nothing negative, just a wild kenetic energy that flowed through the whole scene, Cambridge and Boston, even the MIT campus-a kind of kick-butt tribal power created by the coming together of thousands of young souls fired by Beatles music, first-rate intellects, social consciousness, the outrage of Vietnam, and some damn fine drugs. A truly inspiring venue for experimentation and social revolution that grew and fermented, getting stranger and more wonderful until about… what, 1970 or '71?… until the killings at Kent State seemed to stick a pin in their beautiful balloon and reversed the momentum. That was peak tide, and the ebb had been running ever since.

  A few nights before, roaming the old section of Harvard's campus, distraught, depressed, nearly loony with Musashi's combative behavior, Tomlinson had fallen into the grips of nostalgic despair, and it seemed he could see the high-water mark of his generation's youth: a faded paisley stain at limb level on trees beneath which he had once made speeches and made love.

  I'm the outsider now. Students, they seem all of a type. Snobby and full of themselves, but without grace or tolerance. All they care about is What Bo Knows. Pricey cross-training shoes, MTV, Walkmans, and paying lip service to causes-usually the Environment, capital E-to which they bring anger without understanding. They're all style, man. Style without substance.

  He had said essentially the same thing to Musashi, and her cutting reply had hurt and confused him: "Were we any different, Tomlinson? Do you really believe that we were? That we had understanding without anger? That we were substantive and graceful and tolerant? Think back and tell me then if you really believe that."

  He had said to her, "But at least we had an honest cause. Vietnam. Vietnam as an issue wasn't substantive?"

  And her reply to that had been shocking. "I remember anger. That's what I remember. I remember being angry as hell, absolutely sure that we were right. But now, when I think about it- and I try not to think about it-but, when I do, I have a very difficult time reconciling our self-righteousness with the fact that four or five million Vietnamese and Cambodians were slaughtered when we finally got our way. When we finally made them bring the troops home. It's hard for me to feel righteous about that."

  "My God, you're not saying we were wrong to protest-"

  "No, of course not! I'm saying that now I see clearly enough to know that the world does not tolerate clarity. That, in those days, maybe we had a lot more anger in us than understanding. Simple answers require the simplicity of youth. We despised complexities-don't you remember? So we took all the hated unknowns and cloaked them with our certainty. We were children, Tomlinson. We were no different."

  Replaying the conversation over and over in his head as he walked, Tomlinson caught himself. He was getting hung up in a flow of negative vibes. A whole negative, destructive trip that seemed to be sweeping him along, and Musashi was right at the heart of it. The woman who had asked him to father her child but who now seemed intent on squeezing him out of her life and, worse, their child's life. How could motherhood have changed her so much? Or perhaps she had changed gradually in the years prior to their joining to make the child, but he had been too enamored of their past to recognize her new reality. But one thing was certain: Each trip he made to Boston, Musashi seemed to get a little colder. A little more abrupt. And more obvious that he was not welcome.

  She was going by the name her parents had given her at birth now, refusing to answer when Tomlinson slipped up and called her one of the names she had chosen from the old commune days. "Moontree," that had been his favorite. But she couldn't abide it now. Gave him a boiling look when he used it. It was one more way, he thought, for her to cut away the strings of their relationship.

  He had hoped it would be different this trip. Instead, it was worse. Started on Friday night when he had called from the airport.

  "You expect me to drop everything, open my home to you, just because you arrive on a whim to see Nichola?"

  Two days' advance notice was a whim? He had called from the marina on Wednesday and left a message on her answering machine that he was flying in.

  "No, two days is not enough notice! Two weeks, perhaps. Two months would be better. Yet you take it for granted that your wishes have first priority. Not everyone lives on a boat, Tomlinson. More to the point, not everyone lives in the past! Some of us have jobs. I have classes to teach. Nichola has her own schedule at the nursery and the day-care center. And the election is only four days away!"

  That was the main thing. For now, anyway-the election. Musashi was campaigning for a friend of hers, a man named Niigata, one of her professor buddies who was running for the state assembly. Because of the baby, Musashi didn't have time to be Niigata's campaign manager, but she was one of his first lieutenants. Perhaps the man's lover, too. At least that's what Tomlinson was beginning to suspect. The way Musashi tensed up whenever he mentioned the guy's name. Got so nervous when Tomlinson suggested that he and Niigata meet. Something was going on, and Tomlinson wondered why she didn't come right out and say it. He felt no jealousy-well, not much. But as he had told Musashi, "Because we created one flesh doesn't mean we can't live separate lives."

  To which Musahi had said, "I know, I know: Saints don't marry. And please don't be confused. I'm not asking you."

  "Bitch!" The word slipped out as he walked, and the nastiness of it stopped him. Tomlinson glanced around. Bare trees, wind, people jogging, people roller-blading, people hurrying through the late-afternoon gloom toward dinner or a late class, or the dorms. If anyone had heard, they made no sign. He might have been invisible, a rut in the bike path to be swerved around. Tomlinson pushed his hands into his pockets, hunched his neck into the sweater, and continued on. Never in his life had he used that word in reference to a woman. Well, not a woman whom he knew, anyway. That word wasn't an oath or an assessment; it was a short cut, a way of avoiding difficult realities. To say it was a piggish stupidity.

  Tomlinson thought, Somehow, I've gotten railroaded into destructive currents. I feel as gray as the weather. Feel like my cell walls have sharp edges, cutting me a little every time I move.

  A few blocks later, just across the street from the modern marble and steel two-story office complex that was Massachusetts Research Labs, Tomlinson thought, What I've got to do is get my work done, try to help Joseph and Doc's uncle. We've all been karmically linked, and it's bad luck to ignore such things. I'll get my work done, kiss my daughter as much as I can, then get back to Florida on the first flight out. There's something growing in me. Maybe sunlight can cure it.

  Tomlinson's friend at Mass Labs-that's what they called it-was Ken Kern, a buddy from the old days, one of the university's founders of Students for a Democratic Society, SDS. Back then, Kern had had hair to the middle of his back, wore a silver cross of infinity along with the Star of David, and smoked unfil-tereds. Now, Kern was nearly bald, wore a Freudian black beard and a white smock. He was the lab's senior geneticist, and Tomlinson's daily visits were beginning to make him uneasy. Tomlinson could tell. The way Kern tapped his fingers at the security desk, waiting for Tomlinson to get his own smock buttoned and clip the visitor's pass to the pocket. Kern's habit of saying, when they were alone together, "You know, I'm going out on a helluva limb for you." The way he checked his watch when Tomlinson was around, using body language to say he didn't have a lot of time to spend on private projects. A project they had been working on after hours, four or five hours a night for the last week. A project that could go on for another two weeks, or even a month. That's what Kern was worried about.

  Tomlinson never reacted to Kern's uneasin
ess. Always just smiled kindly-Kern had been one of his closest confidants in college,- a great man with a great brain, but always worried about something. The nervous type, so he and Tomlinson had balanced nicely through five years of weirdness and revolution. What Kern probably remembered as clearly as anything was that Tomlinson had willingly taken the rap on twenty-two counts of possession of illegal substances: fifteen blotters of acid and seven dime bags of truly fine Jamaican ganja the campus cops had found in their dorm room. All Kern's. But as Tomlinson had said at the time, "No sense involving you, Kenny. This is the seventh time I've been arrested, and seven's my lucky number."

  Now the two men were walking down the hall toward Lab Room C-the tile and stainless-steel room where they had been working. That's where the PCR machine was kept-PCR for Polymerase chain reaction, the key apparatus used for amplifying specific units of DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid. A second machine, an ABI 4800, automatically sequenced the base pairs.

  From his reading, Tomlinson already knew the basic procedures and objectives. But, talking on the phone before Tomlinson left for Boston, Kern had put it even more simply: "All living organisms derive from a single unit that generates complexity. That unit is DNA. From a single strand of DNA-the way its base chemical pairs are sequenced-the researcher can, theoretically at least, determine not only an individual's sex and race, but what that person looked like, how he sounded, and, to a degree, how that person behaved. Take a strand of DNA two to three centimeters long, and it's all there, little dots and dashes. Like a fingerprint, only more telling. Life is nothing more than an expression of the DNA instructions encoded in the genes." Kern had chuckled after he said that, knowing that Tomlinson still saw all things as spiritually fired, constructive or destructive. Kern had said, "Remember that freeze-dried food we took the time we went looking for mushrooms? In those tinfoil packages? It's kind of like that. To create life, you just add water."