Bone Deep

by Randy Wayne White

  I certainly didn’t, and Duncan only shrugged.

  Mick said, “Okay—but this is between us. Ford’s already heard some of it. There was a place Finn talked about. I pictured a big lake; a spring that had been dug into a lake for phosphate—that’s the way he described it. Which could have been to throw me off, which was just like Finn. But there was this one night—he’d had some wine—he told me about a landmark. A great big boiling pot, he said. A pot that weighed at least two hundred pounds, otherwise someone would have carted it off. I never forgot that because that’s what he called the lake: Ivory Pot. He found a fifty-pound tusk here, if this is the same place.”

  The man from Montana and I exchanged looks. We had held that exact tusk, although Mick didn’t know it. Fallsdown had seen photos of the saber cat petroglyph, too. We both knew its value.

  Mick stood on his toes for elevation. “Doesn’t that look like a big boiling pot to you? Turned upside, see the way it curves?”

  Dunk, wanting to believe, said, “Gold miners are like that, closemouthed bastards. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a two-hundred-pound boiling pot . . . But, yeah, I guess it could be.” Then thought for a moment. “What about the elephant?”

  “Before electricity,” I reasoned, “they used cauldrons to boil sugarcane into molasses. A tractor tire, is what it looks like to me. Now . . . Well, the size is about right.”

  Mick was convinced. “If Albright will give you the combination, I’ll risk going in there.”

  I also wanted to believe in the Ivory Pot—embarrassing to admit but true. Sometimes our hunter’s instinct takes over. Mine was now arguing with my own good judgment. “There might be another way,” I said.

  Mick brightened. “Then what are we waiting for, mate?”

  The analytical nerd in me responded, “There are legal considerations.”

  “And that elephant could crush us like a grape,” Dunk added.

  I walked to the solar panel. On the post, written in pencil beneath the bracket, were four numbers. End of argument.

  I said, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to take our snorkel gear and do a bounce dive—if the combination works.”

  Mick was so excited his hands shook when he lit his pipe. Cannabis smoke trailed me to the gate.

  When the lock popped open, Duncan asked again, “What about the elephant?”

  TWENTY

  What about the elephant?

  Mick paid no attention to Toby as he jogged ahead of me and found a cauldron the size of a truck tire rusting in the weeds. He squatted and tried to lift the rim. “Can’t budge this bastard,” he hollered.

  The analytical nerd in me did double duty: watched Toby and noted that, even before electricity, there was a lot of sugarcane in Florida, which meant there had been thousands of rendering pots. No guarantees this was the right one.

  “Two or three hundred pounds easy,” Mick called.

  I shushed him. “Keep your voice down.”

  On the other side of the pond, the elephant chewed and watched. Then he began to sway, shifting his weight from side to side. Nervous behavior I’d witnessed in Indonesia and Africa. Duncan, standing outside the fence, was doing something similar, shifting from one boot to another. He had been relieved when I’d told him to stay where he was, just be ready to open the damn gate if we had to run.

  “Mate”—Mick was grinning again—“this could be the most amazing day in my life. First, I think I’m gonna die from snakebite. Then I stumble onto the freakin’ Ivory Pot.”

  He sounded feverish, not high. Then became a Mick Jagger look-alike, as he stripped off his shirt and flung it aside: a bony man with braided pirate hair, a meg tooth dangling from his neck. But there was a bandage on his wrist that proved, when the fever was on him, he was careless enough to get us both killed—if Toby didn’t kill us first.

  I placed my dive bag on the cauldron while Mick hurried to the edge of the pond. Toby, a football field away, pivoted slightly to watch. Then squared his ears when the tour guide yelled, “Shit!” and jumped back from the bank.

  Snakes, two big ones, skated onto the water, their heads swaying like cobras as they swam. Cottonmouths, no doubt this time. The elephant saw the snakes and lifted his trunk in a warning display, tusks like marble spears. He lifted a rear foot while his ears slapped flies.

  “Not so loud,” I told Mick.

  The tour guide looked like he was having another meltdown. “I don’t want to get bit again . . . those sonuvabitches. But, man . . . I can’t pass up a chance like this.”

  I said, “Snakes are the least of our worries,” while I scanned the perimeter—clumps of cattails, cypress trees, and lilies—a couple of gator slides, mud vents that angled into water—while, on the surface, the snakes were still gliding toward the opposite shore.

  I decided it was time to pull the plug. “We’re leaving. We’ll walk to the gate together.” Then added, “No matter what happens, don’t run.”

  Mick agreed, at first, but then fever took control. Fossil addiction—I had underestimated its power. He mumbled to himself, then finally said, “Can’t do it, man. I told you, I’ve dived with thousands of moccasins, never had the first problem. I might not get this chance again.” He had packed his gear but emptied the bag on the ground.

  “We’re leaving,” I said.

  “No. I’ll do a quick look-see. You can stay here. Really, I don’t mind.”

  Mick didn’t want me in the water, I realized—the fever in him talking, a fever that included greed.

  I said, “Hang on a second and let’s see what the elephant does. He doesn’t like snakes.”

  “He saw them?”

  Toby still did. Or could smell them. He had elevated his trunk like a periscope and was scouting the air. One cottonmouth had submerged. When the second snake disappeared, the elephant’s head bobbed a few times, then he trumpeted a flatulent All clear signal—at least, I hoped that’s what it meant.

  The animal returned to grazing. I walked to the bank, telling Mick, “You’ve got an open wound. Let’s see what we’re getting into first.”

  The tour guide understood, but reluctantly. “Yeah, take a look and see how clear the water is. Could be gators, too—always give them at least ten minutes to surface. That’s what I do.”

  It wasn’t just water clarity and alligators that worried me. This might not be a natural pond. Man-made water holes, even big ones, become cesspools if not connected to an underground spring or a creek. Cattle dung, fertilizer, decades of carrion and waste are cumulative. Elephant spoor—a distinctive musk—was also in the mix. It was a hot afternoon in June. In the muck of overheated lakes, bacteria thrive. Filamentous amoeba can enter the nostrils, or a cut, then burrow into your brain. Even the young healthy ones can die within a few days.

  I was wearing boat shoes but didn’t remove them before I waded out to my thighs. Mushy bottom. Water was cooler than expected—a good sign. It suggested fresh water was flowing in from underground, but hard to judge the water’s clarity, because of the sun’s angle. I took another step and the bottom disappeared beneath me—a better sign.

  Sculling, I immediately checked the elephant. He didn’t like snakes but appeared indifferent to swimming primates. Toby was a full-grown Asiatic bull but was near the end of his years, I rationalized. He had also been castrated, according to Owen. A tragic but common precaution. Testosterone and a chemically charged cycle called musth make bull elephants dangerous in the wild and deadly in confinement.

  Male elephants have no scrotal sacs, so visual confirmation meant nothing. I checked anyway and decided it might be okay. I stuck my glasses in my pocket and called to Mick, “Toss my mask.”

  The tour guide already had his fins in hand and was approaching the water, but warily. With all the foliage, another snake might be waiting.

  “Wait until I see if it’s worth diving,�
� I said.

  Mick was torn but did it anyway.

  I use a heavy U.S. Divers tri-view mask, reconfigured with prescription plates and a mounting platform for night optics. The thing hit the water like a rock. I intercepted the mask underwater, cleared the glass, then jackknifed and let the weight of my legs push me down. Like the river I’d dived earlier, the water was tannin stained but even darker. The bottom—wherever it was—was black. I stroked with my arms. Midstroke, a tree limb appeared, and I buried my face in silt when attempting to dodge it.

  I surfaced, grabbed a breath, jackknifed again and angled toward the middle of the pond. Below me, black water gave way to fragments of gray. Rocks . . . or a ledge. I swam toward the color change. Fins would have covered the distance easily, but I was wearing shoes so used a mild dolphin kick.

  Visibility improved. Pressure on my ears told me I was about ten or twelve feet deep. As I approached, instead of surfacing for another breath, I went more slowly to conserve air. It was because of what I saw: a limestone shelf, objects protruding from it. A large jar, maybe, near a shaft of waterlogged wood.

  Or was it wood? No . . . a tree limb is seldom curved like a scythe.

  When I was close enough, I grabbed for a handhold. The rock ledge broke away. No . . . a piece of roof tile, it appeared to be. As the chunk swayed toward the bottom, I grabbed at the ledge again. This time, limestone withstood my buoyancy. When I plucked the large jar fragment from the muck, a cloud of silt bloomed around me, so I waited. That’s when I felt an odd percussion banging at my eardrums: THUMP-A-THUMP . . . THUMP. Several refrains in the space of seconds.

  A big bull alligator calling, possibly—I had seen their mud paths. Even a choir of bullfrogs could produce such a sound underwater. Impossible to identify the source if it was an animal. At night, beneath my stilthouse, pistol shrimp no bigger than my pinky crackled like gunshots.

  Silt caused my other senses to sharpen. Beneath my fingers, limestone vibrated, too. Limestone is skeletal matter compressed with sand. The image of bone china rattling in synch with a big man’s footsteps popped into my head. That’s when I knew.

  Toby was lumbering toward the pond.

  Instinct told me to surface and get the hell out, but the jar fragment had hooked me. It had the heavy feel of pottery. Once the silt cleared, the long rib-bone-looking object I’d seen might be close enough to grab. The piece of what could be tile also deserved inspection. In my two dives combined, I’d been under less than a minute so still had some air. How much ground could a sixty-year-old elephant cover in thirty seconds?

  A lot, it turned out. When I finally surfaced, Toby was in a stomping rampage at the water’s edge, and Mick was on the run . . . sprinting toward the gate. Fallsdown was there, waiting, while also waving to me and yelling what sounded like, “Get your ass out of there!”

  Impossible to hear because of the elephant’s wild trumpeting . . . or to even make sense of what had transpired. The elephant wasn’t chasing Mick. Not now, he wasn’t. The animal was focused on a clump of cattails near the abandoned barn . . . No, something hidden in the cattails that lay between me and the gate.

  I sidestroked to shore, carrying the jar fragment and what I’d thought was a piece of tile but wasn’t tile.

  I watched the scene unfold. Toby, ears spread wide, charged the spot again and again while cattails thrashed. Then he reared on hind legs and slammed his feet down—a thunderous sound accompanied by more trumpeting.

  Whatever was thrashing in the cattails ceased its thrashing. Yet, the elephant wasn’t satisfied and his rampage continued. Beneath the flesh and muscle of five tons, the earth registered his seismic weight. Cypress leaves twirled to the water’s surface.

  Scary. No wonder Mick had left his dive gear and ran. Too late for me, however, to slip past Toby without being seen, but . . . maybe he would allow me to circle the pond instead of passing between him and the barn.

  Keep the water between us—that’s what I did. Eyes fixed on the elephant, I slipped what I’d found into a bag, collected Mick’s gear, then backed along the bank in the opposite direction. No problem until I reached the fifty yards of open ground separating the gate from the pond and the storage building. That’s when the elephant used his tusks to prod at something in the cattails, then turned and squared his body, his full attention on me.

  Silence. Not a sound from Fallsdown or the tour guide, who, until then, had been calling advice. I would have ignored them anyway. For several seconds, the elephant and I exchanged eye contact, then he snorted and ambled toward a spot that would block my escape.

  I reversed my course. If Toby charged, I would spend the night in the pond. Not a pleasant option because of the snakes and alligators, but better than being stomped to death.

  But Toby didn’t charge. Nor did he block my escape. The elephant turned his butt to me . . . jettisoned a mountainous pile of dung . . . then lumbered past guava trees and citrus to graze, once again, on wild sugarcane.

  • • •

  WHEN THE GATE WAS PADLOCKED, I stood and watched Toby feeding. There was a lazy rhythm to his movements. Sniff . . . gather stalks into a bundle . . . then swing the bundle, roots first, into his mouth.

  “Sugarcane,” I murmured. I was wondering how many years the Albright elephants had been penned on this acreage. No connection with what was in my bag, but it might explain a two-hundred-pound cauldron.

  Mick, jabbering away, didn’t hear; Fallsdown misunderstood. “They’re cattails, not sugarcane,” he corrected. “When that alligator crawled from behind the barn, that’s where the elephant caught him. Just as you went under. Scared the hell out of my Fawnee brave here.”

  Mick heard that but waited for me to ask, “How big was the gator?”

  “That’s not what scared me,” Mick said. “He was only a six-footer, but Jumbo there would’ve done the same to a twenty-footer. I thought the bastard was coming after me. Screw the gator. I’ll take a gator anytime.” He smacked his pipe against his hand. “Goddamn it, I wanted to be the first to dive this spot.”

  What I’d thought was flooring tile was in my bag with the jar fragment. Both were obscured by fins and dive gear. I opened the bag and handed the flat object to Mick, saying, “You’re too late.”

  I had found a dive slate—a sort of underwater clipboard, but erasable, with a pen attached on an elastic cord. At the top was a mesh tab and a tiny compass.

  I said, “This didn’t belong to your buddy Tovar. Divers don’t carry slates if they’re diving alone. So at least two divers were here—and recently.”

  It took the tour guide a while to process. “Shit . . . it looks practically brand-new. Did you see anything else?”

  “A lot of mud,” I answered, which was accurate but not the truth.

  Mick sensed it. “Yeah? Be straight with me, man. You wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t told you about the boiling pot.”

  I shrugged the way people do when they’ve lied and aren’t going to talk. “I was only under for a couple of minutes.”

  His eyes found my mesh dive bag. “Then what’s that—a piece of an old jar? Might be Spanish, mate. Let me take a look . . .”

  Before he could bend down, I blocked his way and said, “That crazy biker you warned Tomlinson about? I caught him robbing our car, and he said to give you my phone number. You set us up, Mick.”

  The tour guide’s reaction: guilt, contrition, then a slinking eagerness to please. “But that was before Dunk saved my arm—maybe my life. I was going to tell you . . . really.”

  Fallsdown and I exchanged looks while Mick added, “You saw ivory down there, didn’t you? Now you’re looking for a reason to cut me out of the deal.”

  I said, “What I’m looking for is a reason not to feed you to that elephant. Why are you and the biker working together?”

  “Working? No . . . the dude is crazy, man. He showed up in Ve
nice maybe two weeks ago and he’s already beat the shit out of half a dozen guys. What was I supposed to say when he told me to keep an eye on you two?”

  “Showed up from where?”

  “Like, I’m gonna ask? I don’t know, someplace out west with the cactus. He calls people cowpoke, buckaroo, shit like that. Nevada, someone said; one of the cowboy states.” Mick turned and appealed to his Indian brother. “Talk to him, Dunk. Something changed in me back there at the river; you know it. And the three of us had an agreement.”

  I said, “Had is the operative word,” then signaled Fallsdown to leave, saying, “You mind starting the car? It’ll be an oven in there.”

  The good-cop medicine man walked away, which made Mick nervous. He loaded his pipe and avoided eye contact until I spoke. “You might be right about this place.”

  “Yeah . . . ? Then you did see ivory.”

  No, I had found the tip of a curving rib bone too big and heavy to dislodge from the mud. A prehistoric elephant, or whale, but said, “Duncan might trust you but I don’t. Duncan doesn’t dive. That’s what I want to talk about.”

  A glow returned to the tour guide’s eyes. “Then he doesn’t need to know. What did you find down there?”

  I said, “Without me, Leland Albright won’t let you through the front gate. Were you telling the truth about being booked all week?”

  Mick appeared lost for a moment, then said, “Oh, fossil trips—yeah, every afternoon. Old clients of mine, plus Shelly asked if she could—”

  “I’m going with you,” I said. “Duncan can come along, but we keep this between ourselves.”

  “Come as part of my group?” he asked. “No, you can’t do that. They’re paying for a private trip. But if you mean when we come back here to dive—”

  I stopped him with a hard look. “I don’t care what they’re paying you. Figure out a story. Before I let you dive this pond, you’re going to show me how bone hunting is done.”