Bone Deep

by Randy Wayne White

  “There’s a fine line between fantasy and obsession,” I said, then used Fallsdown’s story about a mastodon graveyard as an example.

  “I’ve heard that one, too. Right out of a Tarzan movie.” He sat back, as if deciding something, then finally spoke. “You’re right.”

  “About . . . obsession?”

  “About collectors. We kept a list of names. The kooks, the harmless ones, and another list of guys who’d cut your throat. Bone hunters—some of them are no better than street thugs. One of our night watchmen was hit in the back of the head so hard, it was a year before they took him off life support. My dad sold out not long after he was attacked.”

  “Because of what happened?”

  “That, and some other things. It played a role.”

  “Did they catch the guy who did it?”

  “They never arrested anyone. My grandfather was also shot at a couple of times. Back when the mine was open, I got more than a few threatening calls. That’s why I don’t believe anyone’s story if it has to do with fossils or artifacts.” He sipped his drink.

  “If that’s a warning,” I said, “relax. I’ve got photos of the pieces in the boat. I’ll get them.”

  Albright motioned for me to stay seated, went to a desk, and returned with a legal pad. “A rough sketch will do.”

  “Why? I can be back in five minutes.”

  “Humor me,” he said. “It’s my way of confirming if a story’s legit or not.”

  “Nothing I can draw will prove that,” I said, but gave it a shot. When I was done, I handed him the pad. “There were two carvings, very similar, made of black soapstone. They have ceremonial value to a member of the Crow tribe. This isn’t about buried treasure.”

  Albright studied the sketch and seemed satisfied. “The bullshitters always added artistic touches—probably because they made it up in their heads as they went along. Shading, lots of swirls. Didn’t matter what they claimed to be after, I could always tell. This is more like a schematic.” He looked up from the sketch. “Are these owl faces? You’re no artist, by the way.”

  I said, “Thank you. Charmstones, is what Fallsdown calls them. Were you serious about me visiting a phosphate mine?”

  He replied, “Possibly,” and set the notepad aside. “Why did your Indian friend send you? He could have come up here and asked me himself.”

  Through the window, beyond the columned terrace and in firelight, the three blondes were dancing in a line, their shadows huge against the trees. Tomlinson had the drum now. Duncan Fallsdown, hands on hips, was staring up at the house—possibly seeing my silhouette.

  “Because my Indian friend is smart,” I replied. “You be honest, Leland. Would you be more likely to talk to someone like me or to a couple of long-haired drum gurus?”

  FOUR

  It was almost ten-thirty when I said good-bye to Albright and the drum partiers and returned to my boat. I planned to drive straight to Dinkin’s Bay but looked at my phone to discover a text Hannah had sent two hours earlier:

  Is your prop okay? Call if you need a tow.

  I grimaced. No mention of the Brazilian, of course, but Hannah and her visitor had obviously witnessed my boat snag the crab trap. Which meant they had also watched me go over the side into the water, had seen me fumbling and thrashing, in a hurry to cut my propeller free, so I could sneak away.

  Embarrassing. Proficient watermen pay attention. Adult males don’t spy on women they are dating—or had dated.

  What to do?

  For starters, I chastised myself with descriptive names but kept my voice low—until I was in open water, where I shouted, “Dumbass!” I got no argument from my roaring engines, so yelled it again, and added a directive so impossible that even I had to crack a smile.

  People screw up, I’m no exception, so why add to our misery by belaboring it?

  Irrational, Ford. You can apologize tomorrow.

  End of temper tantrum, beginning of a pleasant ride home. I checked the gauges, placed a night vision monocular—a MUM-14 made in Arizona—within easy reach, then nudged the throttles up to 4000 rpm. It was a black June night, the breeze heated by mangroves, but not strong enough to stir the stars over which my boat skimmed. To the west, a quarter moon was setting beyond the Intracoastal Waterway, a line of robotic flashers, red, white, and green. Gasparilla Island pulsed with micro towers. In the black void that was Boca Grande Pass, boats pursued tarpon, their stern lights mimicking slow meteorites.

  I banked south toward Sanibel, my attitude improved. It got better when, on the console, my cell phone blinked: a new text from Hannah:

  If you’re not stranded, you better have a good excuse for not answering.

  The woman was mad because she was worried about me. I grinned. The pleasure I felt was mildly perverse, but there it was. The right thing to do was call. The wrong thing to do was show up unannounced at Hannah’s dock. That would be a new low in dumb, even for me.

  Use your head.

  I did. I backed the throttles and slowed. Ahead was Useppa Island, a ghost town of foliage and dark houses in June, but a few lights showing on the highest mound. Sulfur Wells, where Hannah lived, was only two miles east, a halo glow above the mangrove gloom. I pictured the woman alone inside her little cabin cruiser . . . Hannah’s long legs, her black hair mussed from reading, the fine angularity of her face, and a weighted decency about her that was real, like an aura—but it was a weight she could toss into a heap, along with her clothing, when we were alone, the two of us, in a bedroom.

  At least give the lady some warning.

  That was a must. So I called and said, “I’m in my boat off Useppa,” when Hannah answered.

  “I was worried about you.”

  “You deserve an apology,” I said, then explained I had detoured past her dock earlier hoping to say a quick hello, not to spy. It was one of those gray lies that nags at the conscience, so I added, “It won’t happen again.”

  “Marion,” she replied, “the Coast Guard makes up boating laws, not me. It never crossed my mind a man like you would spy.” There was a pause. “What time is it?”

  The relief I felt was tangible. “Early enough to say hello,” I said, and soon pushed twin throttles forward.

  • • •

  THE CHANNEL INTO SULFUR WELLS is a minefield of rocks and thin water, so a careful approach is required. Even so, Hannah didn’t poke her head out of the cabin until I was tying up.

  “No need to get out,” she said softly. “Mosquitoes aren’t too bad tonight. We can talk on the dock.”

  On the phone, she had sounded warm in a sleepy sort of way, the Southern rhythms of her voice an invitation. Now she was guarded. I asked, “Is something wrong?”

  “Of course not.” Hannah looked shoreward, where an old Cracker house, windows dark, was elevated on a shell mound. Then whispered, “For all I know, Loretta’s on the porch with her binoculars. She pretends they got lost, but I know where she hides them.”

  Loretta was Hannah’s mother, an invalid since her stroke but still a spunky woman. Even so, the dock extended two hundred feet into the bay and was screened from the house and road by mangroves. No one else around in this isolated fishing settlement, so prying eyes weren’t the problem.

  Hannah’s uneasiness remained a mystery until I talked myself onto the deck of the vintage Marlowe that is her floating home. Esperanza, she had named the vessel, in honor of a legendary fishing guide, a woman who had lived on nearby Tarpon Bay. I sat on the little yacht’s transom. Hannah stood facing me, barefoot, wearing jeans, plus a robe pulled tight despite a night so warm that air molecules, laden with water, dripped from the cabin roof. Mosquitoes had found us, too.

  Finally I said, “If you want me to leave, just say so.”

  “It’s not that. I thought we were having a nice conversation.”

  We were, bu
t one-sidedly. I had described Albright Island and the museum of photos I’d seen, photos that tracked the history of phosphate mining in Florida. But I had yet to open the bag I’d brought aboard, photos of the two owlish-looking stone artifacts therein.

  I bloodied a mosquito on my hand, swatted a dozen away from my ears, and said, “It would be cooler in the cabin. Hannah, I can hear the air conditioner.”

  She pulled the robe tighter around her neck. “Marion . . . we can’t.”

  That’s when I understood the problem but feigned innocence. “Can’t what?”

  “You know what happens when we’re alone.”

  I swiveled my head for effect. “We’re alone now, aren’t we?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “We were alone last night after dinner and nothing happened.”

  She responded, “Only because I drove my SUV and I wouldn’t unlock the doors when we said good night.”

  That was true, but I pressed ahead. “I’ve got pictures of the stone carvings.” I picked up my canvas case, which had a shoulder strap. “I was hoping to get your opinion. Some say they resemble owls.”

  Hannah liked owls, often spoke of a great horned owl that lived in the oaks behind her mother’s house. Profanity, on the other hand, seldom escaped her lips, but she came close, saying, “Daa-darnn it, Ford. If I let you inside the cabin, those pictures had better look like owls, not arrowheads.”

  “They do.”

  “You’ve got to promise.”

  “Yes . . . owls,” Hannah admitted when we were below in the coolness of the cabin, Fallsdown’s photos spread on a settee table of oiled teak. She had finally released her choke hold on the robe, her long, sun-dark fingers free when she picked the photos up one by one to examine them.

  I said, “Tomlinson claims the charmstones are actually people who’ve turned to stone. He says the Crow Indians call them Little People.”

  Hannah’s eyes drifted upward. “The Indian fellow, Duncan, does he believe that?”

  “No, but he plays along. There’s a close-up in there that shows the eyes and what sort of looks like a beak. Could be owls. What do you think?”

  Hannah leafed through the glossies. I stood behind her, playing the role of a disinterested observer. After a while, I leaned against the bulkhead so that our faces were cheek to cheek. When I did, her hands gradually began to shake. I pretended not to notice and moved closer, close enough that our thighs touched. Upon contact, Hannah’s breathing changed. My lungs felt the weight of her presence and my breathing changed, too. Dopamine, released by the brain, fuels what is known as sexual tension. Spell it dopeamine and never in history has a chemical been more accurately named.

  “Marion . . . ?” She said it not looking at me, her question also a warning.

  I put my hands on Hannah’s waist, an invitation to face me, but she resisted.

  “We . . . can’t. We . . . We agreed we’re going to date other people.”

  Gently, gently, I tried to turn her. Finally, Hannah pivoted and squared her shoulders, nose and lips a few inches from mine. “We promised we wouldn’t.”

  Through a misty tunnel, all I could see was the woman’s dark eyes, the angularity of her face. Pheromones, neural sensors—something—fused, and our bodies abruptly collided, lips seeking. We parted for an instant, then collided again. But then she put her hands on my shoulders to ensure distance and said, “Marion, please,” a woman who was weakening but serious.

  I stepped back and tried to blink the fog away. It took several seconds to regain control. Somehow, I had dropped my bag on the floor, scattering two Fenix flashlights and a notebook. Kneeling to retrieve the stuff allowed me to break eye contact. “Sorry,” I said. “Geezus . . . I was way out of line.”

  Deafened by a pounding in my ears, I heard Hannah mutter what sounded like, “Pointless . . . you can’t be trusted . . .”

  From my knees, I could only reply, “You’re right.”

  When I looked up, though, I saw that I was wrong. Hannah’s robe was on the table, and her face was obscured by her blouse, which she was stripping off, her movements heated but sure, a woman who seldom went braless but was braless now above a rim of blue jeans when her face reappeared. Through pouting lips—or swollen lips—Hannah slung the blouse away and scowled. “Damn it, Doc, I told you this would happen.”

  The lady extended her hand to help me to my feet, so we started our night together on the floor.

  • • •

  THREE A.M. BIRDS TITTERED in summer darkness until the boo-boo-booming of a predator silenced all but the water slap beneath the cruiser Esperanza’s hull.

  “An owl,” Hannah murmured, “that’s exactly what I was thinking about. This very instant. Now there he is.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  My chest was a pillow. I felt her nod. “On the mound behind the house. He stands about waist-high, I swear.” When my chest bounced a couple of times, Hannah scolded, “It’s true. Did you know he ate the neighbor’s Pekingese?”

  I said, “Why don’t you come home with me? I have a dog of my own to check.”

  Fingers tapped my hand to encourage patience. “I couldn’t resist seeing those photos. You knew it, didn’t you?”

  “I’m manipulative. Always a little surprised when it works, but, yeah, I was hoping.” I raised my head. Gray porthole curtains revealed Hannah’s face in profile. “Are you sorry?”

  “Hush. If Indians in Montana think owls are special, maybe the Calusa did, too.”

  The Calusa were indigenous people, contemporaries of the Maya. Centuries ago, they had built ceremonial mounds of shell along Florida’s coast, including the mound behind the house where Hannah’s mother lived.

  I said, “I’ll make pompano for breakfast. We can go for a run first. I’ll serve you pompano and eggs in bed.”

  A long finger drew circles on my hand. “That’s sweet. I was talking about owls. At first, it didn’t make sense those carvings being in Florida. Now maybe it does. Charmstones, you said. Or did you make that up?”

  I started to reply but was preempted. From a distant tree, the great horned owl thrummed again: Boo-boo-boom.

  “See?” Hannah said, sounding sleepy but excited. “Like he’s telling you it’s okay.”

  My chest bounced until her finger became five ready fingernails—a gentle warning.

  “I wasn’t laughing at you,” I said.

  “It’s okay if you were. I know you don’t believe in things, spiritual connections and all. But sometimes you have to wonder.” A hint of concern . . . or was it disappointment? Then I was reminded that Hannah seldom missed church when she added, “Reverend Nyman doesn’t give sermons, he just talks like a regular person. That was his topic on Sunday.”

  “Spiritualism?”

  “Not the way you mean it. No wonder either—Tomlinson could make a person gun-shy. He takes it way too far sometimes.”

  An opportunity to blame Tomlinson was so seldom offered by a woman, it took willpower to ignore. But I used it as a segue. “Tomorrow, I was going to drive north with Tomlinson and the Montana guy, but we could take my boat instead. Come with us or I can drop you here.” I had already told her about Venice, fifty miles up the coast, where, according to Fallsdown, there was a flea market frequented by an antiquities dealer.

  “I’m glad you’re helping your Indian friend,” Hannah said. She yawned and stretched, the porthole showing her breasts in profile, an undulant lift of hips . . . a glimpse of pubic hair. “Wish I could go, but I’ve got a fly-fishing trip in the morning.”

  All evening, I’d been wanting to ask about the man from Brazil and this was my chance. “One of your regular clients?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “Why’s it matter? Don’t be nosy.”

  “I was just making conve
rsation.”

  “No you weren’t.”

  She was right, of course, but I said, “I can’t think of a more innocent question: How was your day? Catch any fish? It’s the sort of thing people say, Hannah. Christ.”

  “Please,” she said. “No need to swear, sugar,” and returned to massaging my palm.

  Sugar. It was an endearment Hannah seldom used, yet I felt a sudden claustrophobia along with a pointless jealousy. “I withdraw the question,” I said.

  “Don’t be mad. Those two weeks you disappeared in Venezuela—once I knew you were safe, I didn’t ask for details about who you saw. Lots of attractive woman down there, I’m sure, but not a single e-mail. Or why you came back with that cut on your face.” Her fingers detoured to explore the faint scar . . . raised her head to kiss my cheek, then settled back, hair warm against my chest.

  “I was working in a remote spot,” I explained, although disappeared was more accurate. The Venezuelan Guardia—special police—had been after me, so I had vanished into the rainforest—four days on foot to the Colombian border.

  The sudden stillness of Hannah’s fingers expressed doubt and prefaced what came next. “I’d rather not ask you than risk hearing a lie. And the way our relationship is, it’s none of my business anyway.”

  A door appeared in my mind. Open it, Hannah would be there, waiting, the two of us joined, obligated to speak honestly about our lives. I couldn’t do that—not yet, probably never—but I attempted to explore what lay on the other side of the door.

  “Ask away,” I said.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Try me.”

  Stillness . . . more doubt, so she chose a playful escape. “Did you hear about the party last night—those women skinny-dipping at Dinkin’s Bay? Jeth told me. All blondes, he said. I figure they must’ve been pretty because he stuttered so much.”