The Man Who Ivented Florida df-3

by Randy Wayne White

  Which Tomlinson didn't believe, not for a moment. Though Ford would like it-and would probably accept it-when he told him.

  To create life, just add water.

  But what interested Tomlinson most was that Kern said it was possible to take the root of one of Joseph Egret's hairs and to isolate a cell that contained strands of DNA. He had also said that if Tomlinson could come up with at least thirty separate specimens of bones from Calusa burial mounds, he might be able to find a DNA sequencing pattern-flags, he called them-found only in that race of people.

  "We don't need much," Kern had told him. "Maybe a gram or two from each bone, but they have to be good bone from the femur. If we don't get that, we might end up isolating the DNA of the archaeologist who dug them up and put them in the sack. The outside part could be contaminated by the archaeologist's hands."

  So, prior to leaving for Boston, Tomlinson had spent five full days going to Florida's universities and museums, calling in favors from old friends, humoring scientists he'd never met, collecting little nubs of bone-something archaeologists didn't part with easily. Sometimes he nearly had to beg: "Only a gram. Only this much-" Holding his thumb and index finger a quarter inch apart. "And I'll send you all the data we produce."

  Even so, it was tough going. Tomlinson had even considered driving back to the mounds at Mango to do a little digging himself. But just the thought of that outraged his personal standards of the human ethic. Defile the sacred artifacts of fellow human beings? It made no difference that they had lived and died hundreds of years before him. They were still people. People who had walked and wept and worried and laughed, people who had scratched their butts and hugged their babies and made love in the same subtropical milieu he called home-Florida. Only scum would impose upon the dead. Someone with a black hole for a conscience.

  In the end, Tomlinson gathered nineteen specimens of Calusa bone. Not enough for an ideal survey population, Kern told him, but it would have to do.

  "If you had a hundred specimens, we probably wouldn't find anything, anyway," he had said. "Like that saying: Everyone knows what race is, but no one can define what race is. They're always so mixed. The most Irish Irishman in Boston is probably at least twenty-five percent ethnic something. Spanish or Italian or Swede, or any mix in between. The blackest black in Harlem averages about twenty-five percent Anglo-Saxon. A thousand years ago, or today-people mix. That's one thing that makes race su-premicists so laughable. We're not the same people our great-great-great-grandfathers were, genetically or otherwise. Our species is in a constant state of flux. Historically, when strangers of the same sex meet, they make war. When strangers of the opposite sex meet, they make the creature with two backs."

  But Kern's enthusiasm for the project had faded as the repetitious nightly work continued. He said his wife was badgering him to get home earlier. He said if they continued to work after hours on the project, it was just a matter of time before the lab's management found out. Kern said that, with just nineteen specimens, there wasn't much hope, anyway.

  In reply, Tomlinson only smiled.

  Now, on this Friday night, Tomlinson and Kern put on surgical booties, gloves, and masks before unlocking Room C. Kern switched on the lights and said, "Well, the crapshoot continues."

  The light in the room was cold white, as sterile as the tile floors and walls.

  In the far corner of the windowless room was the PCR machine-Genesis II, it was called. Genesis was a little high-tech box not much bigger than a stereo turntable, at the center of which were fifty uniform holes punched into aluminum stock to hold bullet-sized test tubes. There were wires and plastic programming keys. Cables connected the machine to computer monitors.

  Kern found another key and knelt before the stainless specimen locker. "I'll get the samples out and you can set them in the machine. I think you know the procedure well enough."

  Tomlinson said, "Sure, man. In fact, you want to go home to your wife, I think I can manage the wh amp;le thing. Except for maybe identifying the anomalous gene markers right off-"

  "No kidding," Kern broke in dryly. "It only took me-what?- three or four years to get the hang of that."

  "Hey, no doubt. It's a complicated gig. I'm not saying I don't need you, Kenny."

  Kern took a rack containing twenty test tubes from the locker, stood, and said, "I know… I know. Same old Tomlinson. It gets to me, that's all."

  "Like preparing the samples," Tomlinson said. "I didn't have a damn clue about that. Drilling to the bone cortex before taking samples. Doing all those little steps so neatly. Purifying, separating, all that stuff. Taking the strands and making them soluble in a water-based buffer. Like you said: Just add water, huh? Even from reading the books, I didn't know about any of that."

  "The way you catch on to things so easily," Kern said. "That's what I mean." He was carrying the rack of test tubes across the room so carefully that the tubes might have been filled with hot tea. "It used to bother me. It did."

  "Naw…"

  "I don't mind being honest about it now. It's not a big deal anymore. Back in college, the way you always just cruised, but I had to work my ass off to keep up."

  Tomlinson was surprised to hear that; a little saddened by it, too. "You were brilliant, man! Come on. Everybody said so."

  "No, I'm gifted. And I'm a worker. At least, I was when I wasn't hanging out with you eating drugs." Kern was positioning test tubes in the Genesis machine as he talked, thinking in fragments as he did: Why am I telling this man these things? We were students together; now we're strangers… And maybe that's why…

  Kern said, "But you, it was like you were born with a trillion bits of data and just needed your memory refreshed every now and then. Like writing all those papers for the journals when you were-what?-just a sophomore? Hell, I've got colleagues now who hold dinner parties when they're lucky enough to get published."

  Tomlinson had the main computer on, checking the hardware before punching in the program they'd be using. "You think back, Kenny, you'll remember there was no cable television in those days. Sometimes a guy wakes up at three A.M. and just doesn't feel like watching static. And you always had that typewriter ready to go by the window. No shit, if we'd had 'Gilligan's Island' reruns back then, it woulda been a whole different story. The Skipper? Maryanne?" Hunched over the keyboard, Tomlinson snorted through his gauze mask. "My left hand pretended to be Maryanne so often that-when I hear the theme song?-the damn thing still jumps around like a cat. You shouldn't feel bad about that, Kenny."

  "I don't. That's what I'm telling you. I look at what we ended up doing, the way we turned out. My life compared to your life." As the words left his mouth, Kern thought to himself, That's a damn cruel thing to say. Where is all this bitterness coming from? The pressure of running this damn department… the pressure of begging funds and grants every year… the strangeness of living with a woman I no longer even know… And he instantly felt miserable, wishing he could take it back. Wishing he could take back so many, many things.

  But Tomlinson was nodding his head, dark goat's beard bobbing up and down as he threw an arm over Kern's shoulder and said, "Don't you be jealous about that, Kenny. You want to live on a sailboat, you should do it. This little bay where I'm anchored, Dinkin's Bay, there's plenty of room. I could introduce you around. Every day, when the fishing guides get back, we sit around the docks and drink beer. Me and this friend of mine… you'd like him. A dude named Ford. He's got a little lab, and he'd probably let you use it when you got the urge."

  Kern touched the power button of the Genesis machine, and it began the slow work of cycling temperature up, then down, in preface to decoding the basic life structure of nineteen ancient lives. As he sat himself in the chair, Kern smiled a little and said softly, "Same old Tomlinson."

  Four hours later, Tomlinson was taking a break. Sitting on the floor outside Room C, going through the papers he'd received from Ford that afternoon. Among the papers was the memoir of Do. d' Escalante Fontan
eda, copied in the original archaic Spanish. In 1545, at the age of thirteen, Fontaneda had been shipwrecked off the southwest Florida coast and captured by the indigenous peoples-indios, or yndios, Fontaneda called them, though they later became known as the Calusa, or Caloosa, for they were dominated by a warrior chief the Spaniards called King Carlos. These were the people who had built the mounds.

  Fontaneda lived among Carlos's people for seventeen years before he was finally rescued. Returned to Spain, he had produced the thin monograph from which Tomlinson's copy had been transcribed.

  Through other reading, Tomlinson knew that Fontaneda had spent time on the mounds near what was now Mango-if not Mango itself, for it was possible that Mango had been that ancient nation's small capital, and home to Carlos. What Tomlinson wanted to determine was the approximate population of the Calusa in the year's Fontaneda had lived among them. Kern had hammered at the problem of crossbreeding, how it muddled up the genetic flags. Tomlinson hoped to present him with evidence that, year to year, the population of the Calusa was small, probably not more than a few thousand. Which meant there had to be a lot of inbreeding, generation after generation. To a geneticist, that would be good news. Maybe it would help renew Kern's interest in the project-the man seemed so irritable lately.

  Legs crossed on the floor, Tomlinson translated as he read, going very, very slowly, sometimes checking other reference books to help him transcribe a line or a single unfamiliar word. Fontaneda had been a bright man, but he'd had little formal education because of the shipwreck, and, worse, he didn't have a writer's sense of sentence. The memoir was convoluted, a bear to read. So far, there had been no estimate of the population, only long lists of the food the Calusa ate (they were hunters and fishermen and divers, not farmers) and descriptions of the thatched common houses built atop the mounds-houses with woven walls upon which were hung the bizarre-looking masks of Calusa demons. It made Tomlinson smile, thinking that atop one mound a thatched house decorated with demons had been replaced by Tucker Gatrell's little ranch house with its rickety porch, brass spitoons, and empty beer bottles. Where the only demons on the wall were a few old photographs-one, a photograph of Marion Ford as a high school football player.

  But then Tomlinson's attention vectored as he came to a surprising part in the memoir. The archaic Spanish began: "El Rio jordan que dizen Es bucion de los yndios…" Tomlinson translated the poor spelling as he read: "The River Jordan [the River of Life?] is a superstition of the Indians of Cuba, which they embrace because it is holy. Ponce de Leon, giving credence to the tale, went to Florida in search of that holy river so that he might earn greater fame and wealth… or so that he might become young from bathing in such a river. [Many kings and chiefs, Tomlinson guessed) sought the river which did this work, the turning of old men and women back to their youth. To this day they persist in seeking the water…"

  Tomlinson stopped reading, amused. Every school child knew that Juan Ponce de Leon had been mortally wounded by the indigenous people of Florida. Probably by the Calusa, for the attack had occurred on the southwest coast. Sitting on the floor, Tomlinson imagined the pompous little Spaniard, his armor glinting, being rowed to shore, only to be confronted by the physically huge Calusa (not all accounts agreed, but at least some Franciscan priests took time from their religious diatribes to note the unusual size of the Calusa people). Maybe Juan Ponce had tried to land at what was now Mango. Wherever it was, the explorer who had helped destroy the lives of thousands of native people found death on that shore, not life.

  Most interesting to Tomlinson was that Fontaneda, who had lived with the Calusa, said plainly that the belief in the River of Life had originated with indigenous peoples. Tomlinson had always assumed the story was one more assault by Hollywood on American history. Or had been invented by some superstitious Spaniard. But not this time. Fontaneda had lived it; he would know.

  Tomlinson continued to read. There was more about the River of Life, so he made notes. He had just translated a portion of script that read: "… many people sought this place in the province of

  Carlos, so they formed a settlement…" when Kern gave a muted call from inside Room C. "Tomlinson? Hey? Get your ass in here!"

  Tomlinson swung the door open, to see Kern's face bright in the glow of the computer screen, his attention fixed. The man didn't even glance at him when he ordered, "Get your mask on; there's something I want to show you."

  "You find something?"

  "Get in here!"

  Tomlinson returned, still tying on the gauze mask as he bent over Kern's shoulder. "What you got?"

  Kern touched a gloved finger to the screen. "Take a look at this."

  The fluorescent green pixels formed a scrolling line of vertical letters that read: TT-AA-TG-CT-TG-TA-GG-AC-AT-AA…

  Kern highlighted the letters. "This sequence," he said. "The double T, double A, TG-CT-TG sequence. We're looking at a mitochondrion D loop. Do you know what that means?"

  Tomlinson started to answer that he did know, but caught himself. He said, "Nope. What the hell is it?"

  "Its characteristics are passed on only through female lines, and those characteristics vary rapidly from generation to generation. But ten of the last eleven specimens have had this exact sequence. There was a similarly unique sequencing in the HLA genes- which are passed on by both female and male. They might be the flags we're looking for. The genetic marker." Kern returned his attention to the screen. "These people must have been inbred all to hell, I'm telling you."

  "It didn't help Juan Ponce de Leon."

  "What?"

  Tomlinson was following the scrolling screen. "I said, you know, the explorer. Ponce de Leon? All that inbreeding didn't help him. The people we have mushed up in the test tubes, they could have been the ones who killed him." That's the way Tomlinson thought of the specimens, as people. Tiny somnolent lives suspended in time but indifferent to the drops of water that had temporarily freed them. "And you found the same pattern in Joseph?"

  Which was how they refered to the strands of DNA Kern had isolated from Joseph Egret's hair: Joseph. A test tube with a name, for it contained all the codes and biological keys that had choreographed the man's living form.

  Kern said, "I haven't got to that yet. Joseph's still waiting." He turned to look at the lone test tube remaining in the rack, then looked at the digital clock on the desk. "That'll take. another two, three hours. And I've still got to do the remaining eight unknown specimens. We don't have a large-enough population as it is; we can't skip any."

  Letting his enthusiasm hide his disappointment, Tomlinson said, "Oh yeah, for sure. We've got to do it right. And it is getting late. Let's go. I'll buy you a beer or two, then hit it again tomorrow afternoon. Oh… hey, wait-"

  "Lab's closed," Kern said. "Tomorrow's Saturday."

  "Exactly. That's just what I was going to say."

  "Sunday, too. I'd have to explain why I wanted in."

  "Whenever you can get to it, Kenny. I'll plan around you, and glad to do it, too."

  Kern sat silently for a moment, looking at the clock but no longer thinking about the time. "You were hoping to be back in Florida by Monday, weren't you?"

  "I booked the red-eye out for early Monday morning, just in case. But no big deal. I've already said that. There's this meeting I'd like to go to-I tell you about that? Yeah. But you can't hold discovery to a schedule. And you need to get home to your wife."

  Kern tapped his fingers on the desk, looked at the screen again, then looked at the clock. Then he looked into Tomlinson's eyes, and he was reminded of something he had once pondered in college: How can such a happy man have such sad, sad blue eyes? Kenny Kern started to agree. It was much too late to continue. But then the words slipped out: "Hey, man. When's the last time we pulled an all-nighter together?"

  Had he said that? Yes, undoubtedly. Kern recognized an old and almost forgotten energy in his own voice.

  "You mean it?" Tomlinson had his hands on Kern's shoulders, shaking
him a little, excited.

  "Hell yes I mean it. But you know what we need?"

  "Damn right, man." Tomlinson was almost shouting now. "Mescaline! Just a couple of blotters to add some nice backlighting. Keep us interested. Hey-" He stopped for a moment, scratching his head. "I don't even know where to buy that kind of stuff anymore. But beer-I know where to buy beer! They sell it almost everywhere!"

  Kern had a high, dry laugh, as if he was having trouble getting air. He had almost forgotten what that sounded like, too. "No. No beer. Not in the lab, anyway. I need coffee. That's what I meant. You go get us some coffee. A lot of it. We've got eight or nine more hours of work to do."

  Two nights later, Sunday night, Tomlinson found himself sitting in his rental car outside Musashi Rinmon's neat brownstone apartment. Dr. Musashi Rinmon, respected professor, the woman to whom he had once written poetry during their on-the-road hitchhiking and back-to-the-earth commune days. The woman who had popped in on him out of the blue decades later, and who was now the single working mother of their child-Nichola, a daughter. That's the way Musashi described herself: single-working-mother, saying it as if it was a one word declaration of pride, but tinged a little with anger, too.

  Tomlinson sat at the wheel exhausted, bleary-eyed. The radio was on, AM, the tail end of a jazz program. He sat listening to the final set, trying to decide whether he should go up and see Musashi and Nichola. Say good-bye. Risk one last scene before he caught the early-morning flight back to Florida. Since Friday morning, he'd had-what?-maybe three hours' sleep. Which would have been okay if he'd had time to do his meditation, let his brain cells settle down and catch a whiff of universal energy. But he and Kenny Kern had been too hard at it for even that. All night Friday, then right into Saturday, and finally finishing late that afternoon. Kern broke only to call his wife, then again to hop into Tomlinson's rental car to track down food or a few beers for breakfast. The two of them sitting in the parking lot of a Circle K, the one just across from Joey's Used Car sales at the corner of Kennedy and Beacon. Little paper bags around their sixteen-ounce tall boys, giggling like kids and talking about old times. Then back to the lab and more work. "I lied about not being able to come in on Saturday," Kern had admitted. "You know, it's weird. I never used to lie much at all, back when I was a bum and not respectable. Now that I'm important, I find myself doing it all the time.