The Man Who Ivented Florida df-3

by Randy Wayne White

  "The price?" she had asked.

  "Uh… no, the year. But me, I'm feelin' younger every day."

  In return, she had tied a red scarf around his head. "A wind ribbon," she had told him. Then, standing back to look at him, said, "Oh-aren't you handsome!"

  The whole way back to Mango, Joseph had wondered about the way she'd said that. Maria was a big, healthy girl-and such nice skin.

  Before he rode off, Jimmy Tiger had told him, "When the signs is right to bury your grandfather, Joe, let me know. We'll do it in the old way. Get the drums out and maybe have some whiskey. Chekika's Son would like that."

  Joseph had thought about that, too. He had felt good, sitting in Jimmy Tiger's chikee, with kids running around and the smell of food cooking over a wood fire. It would be nice to spend more time there. But Joseph wondered what kind of signs the old man meant. The sky still had its fiery look at night, only not so bright-but maybe that was because the moon was now full. There was still a strange red haze at sunrise and sunset, but now the haze touched the earth, drifting down in the form of fine brown sand.

  Well, maybe that was a sign in itself.

  Frustrated with himself, Joseph had told Buster, "Damn it, you'd think that was somethin' I'd be naturally good at. Knowin' what a sign is and what it ain't."

  He had been puzzling over that-and thinking about Maria, too-as he approached the curve. But when he saw Tuck, he reigned the horse out into the road so he could cross at the curve… but then Tuck started making an odd swinging motion with his arms; had a strange pinched expression on his face, too.

  "What the hell's Tuck runnin' toward us for, Buster-"

  Joseph didn't finish the sentence… or it was drowned out by the squeal of tires as the white van careened around the curve, still accelerating.

  Joseph sat numbly in the saddle-not frightened, just numb, seeing nothing but the glare of the vehicle's windshield and grill, it was on them so fast, and he felt his body relax, his mind calming because the collision was inevitable and there was no escape.

  Beneath him, though, the horse was not calm. Buster seemed to buck once, lunged right at the van, and then, Joseph realized, they were both airborne, flying. Looking down, Joseph watched the horse's hooves clear the vehicle's hood by a good six inches as they sailed across the road, and then he had time to catch Tuck's eye among the blur of faces, feeling very high and proud… until Buster jolted, untouched, back to earth and Joseph lost a stirrup.

  The last thing Joseph thought before impacting with the asphalt was, What kind of a sign is this?…

  ***

  The only time Ford had ever heard the same mixture of horror and hurt in his uncle's voice was long, long ago on a night that had been lost along with his own childhood.

  "Duke! Get over here-make these vultures back off. He's hurt real bad!"

  Tucker Gatrell shouting to him over the heads of a massing crowd and a hundred yards of mangrove beach.

  Hearing that voice, that tone, again gave Ford chills. Made him want to walk the other way and just keep walking.

  But he didn't. Instead, he began to jog toward his uncle.

  Christ, now what?…

  Ford hadn't seen any of it. Hadn't seen Walker chasing Charles Herbott, didn't see Herbott speed off in the van. He'd been down by the water, off alone, testing himself to see how he felt about being used by Tuck one more time.

  That bastard knew all along about the water. Probably had the analysis done in Georgia or someplace, one of his redneck buddies up there, but needed an outsider to introduce the data. Me, the outsider.

  Well, that sounded just about right.

  Ford had been going through all the possible scenarios in his careful, obsessive way. Didn't want to think about it, but he couldn't help it. Tried to shift his attention to Sally Carmel, but that didn't last; even allowed himself to consider Agent Walker in a less than professional way-the woman had impressed him.

  But then he saw something out in the bay that did focus his attention: a jade green flats skiff, poling platform like a roof over the outboard, hunched down and throwing a rooster tail as it planed toward Mango.

  "That's my boat."

  It was, too. No mistaking it as it drew nearer. He could read the stenciled name on the side: SANIBEL BIOLOGICAL SUPPLY.

  Ford began to walk quickly toward the dock, squinting at the figure above the wheel. He didn't recognize the man… still didn't recognize him as the man tied off and stepped out of the skiff, though there was something familiar about the way he moved: tall, gangly guy with a military haircut and carrying a briefcase- which was right in keeping with the wrinkled gray suit he wore.

  As the man strode toward him, beaming, Ford said softly, "Tomlinson?"

  "Hey, Doc!" Same childlike grin, but it seemed broader because his face was shaved smooth. "Man, am I glad to see you-no shit, compadre! Sorry I'm late, but my flight got delayed, just one damn thing after another. So I borrowed your boat."

  "Tomlinson!" Ford stood nonplussed as the man wrapped him in a bear hug, pounding his back.

  "I know what you're going to say. In fact, consider it understood. I'll never do it again, use your skiff without permission. Even if you do go off in our truck without leaving me a note."

  Ford wrestled himself free and stepped back. "What happened to you?"

  Tomlinson said, "What? Oh-my hair! So you noticed."

  "And a suit?"

  "Strictly temporary. A one-trick deal. I took a flier in the real world. Sheer desperation, understand. But the vibes, man, it was like pissing in a Vegematic. I didn't have a single comfortable moment. But that can wait"-Tomlinson held up the briefcase-"because I've got something important here."

  Ford was about to tell him the meeting was over, but that's when the screaming of tires drew their attention… and that sound was followed by a sustained tumult, crashing metal and shattering glass, the noise of an automobile rolling through mangroves.

  "What the hell was that?"

  The abrupt silence that followed was broken by the low, slow wail of a woman crying out, then the gabble of people running.

  An instant later: "Duke! Get over here-make these vultures back off, he's hurt real bad!"

  Fifteen minutes later, the off-duty paramedic looked up, a little teary-eyed herself, and said, "I think he's gone. I think his neck's broken."

  Tucker Gatrell was on his knees beside her, his composure regained, dabbing water on Joseph's face, trying to force a little down him. "Don't you stop that mouth-to-mouth business till the helicopter gets here! Keep working on him. We'll bring him back yet."

  "But Mr. Gatrell, the man in the van, he's hurt pretty badly, too-"

  When Herbott had swerved to miss the horse, the van had plowed into the mangroves and flipped.

  Tuck smacked the water jug down to emphasize his point. "Lady, you lift a finger to help that peckerwood, I'll get my gun and shoot him dead myself. Keep breathin'! Joe just ain't got the hang of it yet."

  Joseph Egret lay on his back on the asphalt, eyes closed, a mild smile fixed on his face. Except for the blood, he might have been asleep and dreaming.

  Buster grazed patiently near by, as if waiting.

  Every now and then, Ervin T. Rouse would pat Tuck on the shoulder, begin to say something, then turn and walk away. Finally, Rouse returned to the ranch house, sat on the porch with his fiddle, and began to play and sing very softly:

  "I'm a goin' down to Flor-dah, get some sand in my shoes… I'm goin' down to Flor-ee-dah, get some sand in my shoes. I'll ride the Orange Blossom Special, and shake these New York blues…"

  Just before the helicopter returned and the paramedics agreed, privately, that Joseph was dead, Tomlinson held up the sheath of research data he still carried, and he said to Ford, "All these people staring at him, but not a one of them realizes what he represents.. . not a one of them understands who this man was-" then his voice faded to a croak, and he couldn't say any more.

  Much later, very drunk, Tuck
would say, "Who doesn't understand? You know what it was? You know what it was that man invented?"

  EPILOGUE

  During the first week of November in that year, from the high regions of the Earth's atmosphere, a great volume of polar air, ascending because of its own density, caught the jet-stream push of what meteorologists call the five-hundred-millibar surface, and it began to drift southward toward the 26th parallel. By the evening of November 9, the polar edge had gathered sufficient momentum to gravitate toward and then displace the warmer, lighter air of the tropics, and it arrived in south Florida as a blustering cold front driven by a wind that seemed to howl down out of the full moon.

  Dust particles, a month ago transported by the Sahara High and still lingering in the stratosphere, were swept away.

  On the morning of November 14, a Friday, the gale was still blowing when they buried Joseph Egret in the shell mound near the spring on Tucker Gatrell's land. Jimmy Tiger, who beat a skin drum throughout the ceremony, felt the wind rip the thumping notes from his hands and shoot them skyward.

  Same thing when they placed the bones of Chekika's Son in the hole beside Joseph.

  Later, over tumblers of whiskey, Jimmy would confide to Tomlinson, "I don't expect a frog eater to understand-but that strong wind, it was a very good sign."

  The few days between Joseph's death and Joseph's funeral had been neither peaceful nor easy-a circumstance that privately pleased Tucker Gatrell. The first problem was, the State of Florida refused to allow them to bury Joseph on Big Sky Ranch. It was private property.

  But Lemar Flowers went to work and got that settled. In a conversation with one bureaucrat, Flowers, genuinely vexed, had said, "You people still don't realize the kinda men you're dealin' with, do you?"

  The next problem was that archaeologists employed by the state petitioned the governor to block the burial because, as the petition read, "Digging in or excavating what may be a pre-Columbian burial mound is an outrage against basic human rights, as well as history."

  Presumably they meant it was an outrage against basic human rights and history when done by anyone but themselves.

  Using his connections, and data gathered during his work in Boston, Tomlinson swayed enough people to have the petition withdrawn, but for more than a year, a splinter group of amateur archaeologists would continue to fight through the courts, seeking to have the bodies exhumed and moved.

  As Ervin T. Rouse would tell an audience during the first of several appearances on David Letterman's show, "Me and my partners, Henry and Tuck, we're kind'a glad about it. Come summer, it gets so hot and sweaty down in those Glades, a man's 'fraid to scratch his cheek for fear he'll slip and poke his eye out. But with them curs yapping at our heels, we'll be too busy to think about the heat."

  Otherwise, the funeral went smoothly. The lone uncommon feature was the disproportionate number of female mourners compared to male. In chorus beneath a winter sky, the muffled sobbing of women is an icy sound, and when Angela Walker remarked upon it, Tucker Gatrell replied cryptically, "Ma'am, if their husbands just knew Joe a little better, you'd hear men crying, too."

  By the evening of the first of December, though, the gale had blown itself out; the cold front had dissipated. South Florida was itself again, which is to say that it was a humid, muggy night when Marion Ford returned to Mango for the first time since Joseph's burial. In his old truck, he drove around the curve of the bay, elbow resting on the open window, feeling heat radiate out of the mangroves, taking pleasure in the familiar odors.

  At Sally Carmel's house, he slowed-the lights were off, no car in the driveway-and he thought to himself, She must be enjoying Miami.

  He hadn't heard from her, not once. And Miami information had no listing for her.

  Probably staying in a hotel, enjoying indoor plumbing.

  A thought that Ford neither explored nor allowed to linger. The catty cruelty of it didn't match his mood, or the way he felt about Sally.

  She's been through a lot. And I know what it's like to try and break away from this place. She'll call when she's ready.

  He drove on.

  Along the bay road, moon-globe streetlights bloomed citreous yellow, casting their reflections into the water. By their pale light, Ford could see that a great change had come over Mango. The fish houses were no longer falling; the stilt shacks were no longer dilapidated. Each had been rebuilt with raw wood; some were already painted white, or pastel blue, or conch shell pink.

  There were flower boxes on all the porches.

  The only house that looked the same was Tuck's, though there were signs of change there, too. As Ford pulled up the drive, he could see, in the sweep of his truck's headlights, that there were ladders up against the barn-probably putting on a new roof. And the fence near Tuck's yard had been ripped down to make way for a flatbed semi. The truck had been backed into the pasture, and it was now loaded with junk-among it, the superstructure of the boat that had been abandoned there.

  Ford sat for a time, studying the boat, finally finding some sense of order, if not peace, by confronting it. In his mind, he replayed what he had said to Angela Walker the night of Joseph's funeral, after she surprised him standing by the junkyard:

  "Two people were killed when this boat exploded, but the local sheriff's department couldn't figure out how it happened. I was only ten at the time, but I spent the next two years going through it inch by inch. You know what I discovered? In the fuel line, someone had replaced the brass shut-off valve with a plastic butterfly plate, then moved it above deck."

  Walker had asked him, "Was that a dumb thing to do? I still don't know anything about boats."

  Speaking very softly, Ford had said, "For a long time, I thought it was idiotic. But it was actually pretty smart-in theory, at least. Being above deck, the fuel line would be easier to maintain, and the butterfly plate was damn clever. It automatically filtered out sediment. The trouble was, plastic was pretty new to the person who designed it, and he didn't realize that gas would gradually dissolve it, then drain into the bilge by the engine."

  "You were only ten?"

  "Twelve by the time I narrowed it down to what had happened and who had done it-redesigned the fuel line, I mean. I had to use tweezers and a magnifying glass to reassemble the burned parts."

  "And no one else figured it out?"

  "No one who would admit it, anyway. Right."

  Now, when Ford punched the truck lights off, the boat vanished momentarily while his eyes adjusted. He stepped out into the yard and whistled for Gator, only to hear his uncle's voice calling from the beach: "That you, Ervin T.? Get your butt down here and help!"

  Without answering, Ford walked down the mound, where he found Tucker and Henry Short bending into Henry's boat, placing jugs on the dock.

  When Tuck saw who it was, he stood up quickly, wiping his hands on his jeans. "Gawldamn, Duke, I thought you was Ervin back from New York. Not that I ain't glad to see you, no sir! Just wasn't expectin' you, that's all."

  There was something odd about the way the man was behaving… Henry, too, shifting around on the deck, fingering the lone gauze bandage on his face. They seemed uneasy, as if caught doing something they shouldn't be doing.

  Ford said, "Tomlinson wanted me to bring you these." From his pocket, he produced a Ziploc bag filled with nubs of bone-the specimens from the DNA lab. "He wants to know if you'll bury them. In the mound with Joseph, when you get time."

  Tuck hesitated for a moment, then continued off-loading the jugs. "You know, I'm gettin' to kinda like that hippie. Surprised he didn't tag after you down here. If you want-" Tucker stepped into the boat to get a better lifting angle-"you can drive on home to Sanibel, get him, and we'll have a little party. Tonight, I mean. Give me and Henry time to get cleaned up."

  Ford wondered about that for a moment before he said, "No, Tomlinson's busy packing. We're leaving on a trip tomorrow, Central America. A friend of ours is-" Ford started to say a friend was sending a government plane
to fly them south, then assigning them a government Jeep to drive them anywhere they wanted; two weeks of jungle and beach and cold beer, trading stories with Jeth Nicholes, on the Caribbean, while Ford's new sea mobiles grew in Dinkin's Bay. Instead, Ford finished, "A friend of ours down there is expecting us."

  "Just you and the hippie?"

  Yes, although there probably could have been a third in their party. At the Florida Department of Criminal Law, agents received special leave as a reward for promotion. Angela Walker had called and, after telling him the good news, added, "I've always wanted to see Central America." An inducement that Ford had gently deflected by promising to take her skiing when he returned.

  Now Ford said, "Yep, just Tomlinson and me," as he picked up one of the jugs and popped the lid. Then he said, "Water? Why are you and Henry boating in water?"

  He watched Tuck turn to Henry, saw Henry look down at the deck again. Tuck said, "Well… you remember that Bambridge fellow? The professor guy on TV? He wants to write a book about me. Well, actually, he wants to write it 'bout Henry, he just doesn't know it'll end up bein' about me. That's what we was doin' out on Henry's island. Huh, Henry?"

  Henry Short said gruffly, "You're the one with all the words, Tucker."

  Tuck said, "See? That's what we was doin'. Makin' notes for this guy Bambridge."

  Ford smiled. What was going on here? "I was asking about the water, why you're going to all the trouble of-"

  But before he could finish, the sound of a woman's voice interrupted him; a nice Spanish voice speaking broken English, getting closer and closer as her silhouette moved toward them on the dock. "Tucker? Oh, Tucker? The dinner, I have it ready like you say. The Chino food, not from a box."

  The woman stood illuminated by a streetlight now: a pretty woman with olive skin, blue-black hair and young brown eyes. Her eyes moved shyly from Tuck to Henry, then back to Tuck while Ford looked on, amused, at first, but then with a dawning fascination-his mind scanning through remnants of all the old stories his uncle had told him about Cuba-as he watched the woman reach to brush hair from her face, her smooth hand marked by the tattoo of a small blue sea horse.