The Mangrove Coast Read online

  Tomlinson talks like that; he really does. He says it is because he has evolved spiritually after years and years of study and meditation. I think it’s because his thought processes have been chemically altered during years and years of abusing marijuana and hallucinogenics.

  But it was also Tomlinson who, after cracking a cold bottle of Hatuey, told me, “Amigo, if it’s got tits or tires, you’re sure to have trouble with it down the road. Face it, man, she’s committed to Central America. Nothing you can do is gonna change that. So, the way I see it, it’s time for us to find you a new ride.”

  He was talking about a woman I knew, a woman I shared history with, a woman named Pilar. Pilar was a former lover.

  I had to keep reminding myself of that: Pilar was my former lover.

  It was not an easy truth to acknowledge.

  So, yeah, I’d entered a reclusive period. For weeks, I worked in the lab. I listened to my shortwave radio. I lived alone in my little sea-cabin house. At night, I’d sit on the porch listening to the mountain-stream gurgle of tide rivering past the pilings beneath me. I’d listen to the snap-crackle-pop of pistol shrimp and the bee-whah groan of catfish.

  I looked at the comet.

  Daytime was different. When the sun’s out, it seems reasonable to pursue goals. I defined mine by writing them each and every day in one of my notebooks. They were simple goals.

  Twice a day, seven days a week, I rededicate myself to getting back into shape. It was none too soon. I’d let myself go over the last several months, and in that very short time I’d gained maybe fifteen pounds. I felt soft and slow and grainy. I felt as if age and gravity were vines that were working their way up my legs, taking control. I was eating too much, drinking too many beers, sleeping way too much.

  So the rules were simple: beer on Fridays and Saturdays only. Absolutely no food of any kind after 8:00 P.M.

  It was time to take charge of my own life once again.

  Every year, getting into shape seems to be a tougher, slower, more painful process.

  Each year, my knees and shoulders and ankles seem to hurt a little more.

  Tough physical work was exactly what I needed. Pain is good. Extreme pain is extremely good. I punished myself with it and then I used it as a purge.

  I lost the fifteen pounds of fat, and then I lost five more for good measure. I spent so much time running up and down the beaches of Sanibel that I began to recognize the condo owners and individual vacationers at resorts such as Sundial, Casa Ybel, Sand Castles and Sonesta.

  They’d wave; I’d wave back.

  Gradually, I began to come out of my shell a little.

  On one of my runs, I was passed by a lean blonde with a ball nose and the thighs of a high hurdler. She had a good grin; a kind of jaunty we’re-both-distance-junkies attitude.

  I caught up and introduced myself. Her name was Maggie. She was married; lived in Tampa, but she and her husband were having problems. She’d taken a place at Breakers West for the week to be alone and think things over.

  We had a nice run. Same thing the next day and the next. She appreciated the insights of an objective man. I appreciated her humor and her strength. We became friends. We agreed that, considering her circumstance, it had to be a nonphysical friendship … which took all the pressure off both of us.

  We stayed in touch after Maggie returned to her life in Tampa. We decided that, as friends, we should meet a couple of times a week in some neutral place and work out together.

  She chose Pass-a-Grille, an off-the-track beach village south of St. Pete that, with its Mexican tile and palm-lined streets, reminded me of the best parts of southern California. Pass-a-Grille was a small town with history and humor and texture. People there were amused by their own isolation. It made them easy to meet. Maggie and I would run four or five miles, swim a mile along the beach, then we’d eat shrimp or crab at the Seahorse Restaurant. Sit there talking to Gary the bartender while we ate, then walk up the street to Shadrack’s and have a beer with Big Al, the owner.

  Big Al also owned Harleys.

  I was surprised to hear that Maggie the housewife had always wanted a motorcycle.

  It gave them something to talk about.

  Maggie and Pass-a-Grille were a good break for me. Getting away from Dinkin’s Bay and Sanibel reminded me that there was a big wide world out there. Other lives were going on whether I was reclusive or not. I have been in love only twice in my life and have gradually come to the conclusion that love is not a condition, it is a dilemma. Love, I believe, is chemically induced; created and maintained by the little-understood and complex chemistry of the brain. How we target and connect with our partners is anyone’s guess, but the resultant response has more in common with addiction than with rosy emotion.

  Realizing that helped me feel better, too. Chemistry is something I understand. It is chartable, predictable. Withdrawal from a chemical dependence would take time, but the chemical’s hold must necessarily grow weaker day by day by day.

  It made sense that the same would be true of Pilar’s hold on me.

  So slowly, surely, I began to resume my old life at Dinkin’s Bay as well as my old role as willing confidant, sunset cocktail buddy, dependable big brother, dispenser of cold beer and heartfelt advice and of confidential favors.

  In short, I was making the return to the quiet and peaceful life I’ve always wanted.

  Which is when Tucker Gatrell called….

  3

  The thing that first surprised me about Amanda Calloway (Amanda Richardson, as she told me to call her) was that she looked so unlike her father.

  Didn’t have Bobby’s perfect features, that’s for sure.

  No, he’d been tall and golden haired; of a type you sometimes hear women say, “He’s too good looking,” as if, by dismissing him, they could distance themselves from a man who was probably beyond their wildest hopes anyway.

  Bobby knew it, too. Was very, very careful about his hair and his clothes. On R&R in Singapore or Bangkok, he had his favorite barbers, his favorite masseuses, his own personal tailors.

  Vain, yes. But a womanizer, no. He was committed to Gail, his wife. We spent four months together in Asia; he’d been there a couple of months before I arrived and there was not a single lapse. Not that he ever mentioned to me. No joking around about being “separated,” no locker-room winks and nudges. The man loved and was dedicated to the woman with whom he’d already had one child and hoped to have more. And half a year is a long time to be alone in a region we called the Back of Beyond.

  So it wasn’t women. No … Bobby just liked it; liked being healthy and handsome; the expensive life. The same way some men and women enjoy bodybuilding, he took pleasure in the details of an elevated lifestyle and the way he looked.

  “This is why I need to make lots and lots of money,” he’d tell me. Or: “Man, I was born to be rich. I got no other choice.” He might be modeling some silk suit; looking at himself in the mirror, being critical and enjoying it. “There’s no way I can afford this kind of stuff—a tailored Armani? Even a copy like this. Are you kidding? Not back in the States on what I make. I need to get the hell out of this work and start my own business. Or maybe the movies. What’a you think?”

  I told him he’d made a very strange choice, getting involved with Naval Intelligence and Naval Special Warfare, if he had aspirations of being a film star.

  He’d said that he couldn’t help himself. He was hooked, out of control or something like that—which was bullshit. He was playing a standard role, Mr. Adventurer, for standard reasons: “I’m a dead-on adrenaline junkie and where else can I get paid to skydive, scuba dive and sneak around at night wearing tac-paint while bad guys try to pop me? Carry a weapon, allowed to kill people? Jesus, anyplace else, what I do’d be illegal.”

  No argument there.

  It was that way with most men who were involved in that peculiar and dangerous line of work. They had talent, brains—name a field, they would have probably exc
elled in it. And Bobby seemed to have more going for him than most. He had looks, taste, style … and that peculiar light that one associates with certain politicians who have the knack of inspiring affection rather than creating envy.

  Bobby Richardson had it all; seemed to have been born under a lucky guardian star. Until one night, 100 klicks north of Phnom Penh, he was vaporized by a mortar round and was sent back to the States in a sack not much bigger than a cigar box which contained a hand, a foot, bits and pieces of hair and bone, with no space at all left over for ego or hopes or vanity….

  Bobby’s only child, however, was very plain in comparison to the way he had looked….

  I was on the lower deck of my stilthouse working on the fish tank when they arrived. Felt the familiar wooden tremor that told me someone had mounted the walkway that connects my house to the mainland.

  Looked up to see a woman wearing pleated white shorts and baggy gray-blue T-shirt striding toward me, the female variation of the Generation X look. It was a style that implied limited body-piercing, maybe a small tattoo or two, an affection for MTV. The anachronism, Tucker Gatrell, walked behind, western hat in hand … clomping along in cowboy boots, for God’s sake. A man who was always on stage, always in costume.

  Saw that the woman was a rust-blonde redhead with one of those boxy haircuts so that her large brown eyes looked out at me from beneath a shield of bangs, hair squared heavily over hunched bookworm shoulders.

  The way she walked, the way she carried herself, she reminded me of that: the type who escaped into books. Athletic-looking; she had a rangy, cattish quality, but also bookish. Or maybe it was computers these days. The studious variety of loner, isolated by self, maybe a little self-conscious, judging from the way she moved, knowing I was watching her; aware of it and not comfortable being the center of attention.

  It tightened her movements. Added a mechanical stiffness. She had the gauntness, that hollowed quality, of the ultra-long-distance runner.

  But no glasses. Not like the little girl I’d seen in the photograph. And … as she drew closer, I could see that the wandering eye had been straightened.

  The disappointment I felt was surprising. I’d liked the face on that child from long ago.

  Had Bobby’s eyes been brown? I couldn’t remember … more likely, I’d never paid enough attention to know. But there was something familiar in her eyes … could see it as we shook hands—“It’s nice of you to meet with me, Dr. Ford”—as she held my face with her gaze, then allowed it to wander.

  Got a glimpse of something tougher than suggested by her averted eyes. A little bit of Bobby in there peering out. Then could hear that toughness in her voice when she said, “You’re the man in my father’s letters, right? You knew my father.”

  I thought, Letters? but answered her by saying, “Years ago, I knew a man named Bobby Richardson. If he was your father, then you have a lot to be proud of. He was a fine man.”

  Her expression softened momentarily. “Then I’m glad I found you. I don’t know if you can … can help me. But I know it’s what my father would have wanted. My real father. Talking to you, I mean. It’s what he told me to do in his letters, so that’s why I’m here.”

  Letters again.

  Turning to Tucker, she added, “So, if it’s okay with you, Mr. Gatrell, I won’t waste any more of your time. I can talk to your nephew alone.”

  Not asking permission, but telling both of us where she stood, just what she wanted.

  But she obviously didn’t know Tuck very well. Not if she expected to get rid of him so easily. He touched his hand to her back, steering her onto the deck and then up the stairs toward my house, saying, “Miz Richardson, I come this far with you, I kinda hate to let you sail solo now. Besides, Duke here’s not the quickest on the draw, if you know what I mean. I’m not talking ’bout brain power, understand. Let’s just say he’s not the type to let sympathy get in the way.” Maybe joking but maybe not; hard to tell from his tone. Then he replied to the look I gave him as he brushed past me, saying, “Excuse me. I meant Marion.”

  Wearing Levi’s and a rodeo shirt, he smelled of rank hay and whiskey and chewing tobacco. Like horse, too. An old horse.

  The man did not change.

  I watched Amanda watching Tuck as he rambled on and on, dominating space and conversation as he always did, Tuck and the woman sitting with glasses of iced tea at the galley booth, me leaning against the door frame in the small room, taking it in.

  The night before, on the phone, Tuck had tried to tell me what her problem was, but he had it so convoluted, so confused, that I’d finally told him to keep quiet, let her tell me and I’d judge for myself.

  So now I stood there listening, waiting, looking at her. What I was thinking was: Not attractive, yet something solid about her and … troubled. Yes, a troubled young woman.

  It gave me a pang. How would it make Bobby feel, seeing that his little girl had apparently grown up to be gawky, lacking confidence and seemed to be unhappy?

  She was what? Twenty-four, maybe twenty-five years old. About the same age as Bobby when I knew him. But gaunt as she was, she did not have the look of health, only endurance. Had dull, brittle-looking hair—it didn’t get much attention—and long wading-bird legs with calves traced by varicose veins. Runner’s legs. And the way she dressed: everything baggy; clothes that were chosen not to look good but because she could hide in them. Shirt and shorts were feminine and casual like “Who cares?” but also vaguely defensive, with maybe a hint of aggressiveness. A T-shirt that read: Thirty-Second Rule Strictly Enforced.

  What the hell did that mean?

  But a good face. Strong nose, but a little too much of it; solid jawline but flat cheeks that made her lips seem thin, pale. Bits and pieces of her mother and father bonded together, no doubt about it, but the proportions were just a tad off. It was hard to believe that two people as attractive as Bobby and Gail Richardson had produced someone as plain as this girl who now sat in my house. Gail was Latina by birth, mother and father both from … South America? Maybe Mexico or Central America, I couldn’t remember. Bobby had bragged to me more than once that his wife was a direct descendant of pure Castilian royalty. Her great beauty, he claimed, had been handed down through the blood.

  There didn’t seem to be a hint of Latin blood in Amanda. Well … perhaps a touch in her dark eyes. No place else, though. But the vagaries of genetics are ever-surprising and cannot be predicted.

  Or maybe … maybe it’s just the way that Amanda Richardson chose to look.

  Some makeup, maybe. A decent haircut. Some clothes chosen to set off her lean lines; better posture.

  I wondered….

  Every now and again she’d glance up and catch my eye—a searching look of appraisal—then return her attention to Tuck.

  Tuck had been talking about his years shipping and working cattle in Central America with his old partner Joseph Egret: “But the Indian bastard up and got hit by a car. Killed him deader than two smoked hams, which taught me once and for all, no more Injuns for partners. The poor fools got no brain for modern times. Took me fifty years with Joe to learn that an Injun can’t be trusted, but I finally did. These days, ma’am, I work strictly alone.”

  Which is when I finally made a move toward the table, planning to tell Tuck, enough, for God’s sake, take a walk so the woman and I could talk.

  But Amanda intercepted me. First, it was with a look—Don’t hurt his feelings—and then by touching her fingers to the back of my hand—Let him talk for a little longer.

  So I did. Listened to the old man ramble for another fifteen or twenty minutes before she finally cut him off. Asked him for half an hour alone with me so she could share the contents of a letter—“It’s confidential,” she explained—and Tuck left as meekly and amenably as I had ever seen him, charmed by her or manipulated by her, it was difficult to say which.

  I studied the girl’s face, thinking maybe she wasn’t as troubled or as defenseless as I’d beli
eved.

  “The rule has to do with this idea some friends and I came up with. The thirty-second rule. The way it goes is, a guy comes up—this is usually at a bar, a concert maybe, someplace like that. Nothing to do with business, but like at a party or something. So a guy comes up and he’s got exactly thirty seconds to prove he’s not plastic or full of crap or a fake. If he doesn’t say something honest or worthwhile in thirty seconds, what’s the sense of wasting your time?”

  Trying to keep things relaxed, trying to ease her into what she’d come to talk about, I’d asked her about her T-shirt: Thirty-Second Rule Strictly Enforced.

  I said, “And the guys know there’s this time limit? It’s a new thing now … or—?”

  “You mean do a lot of women use it?”

  I was nodding. “Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.” There were enough years between us that this might have been some generational fad. If it’s not on shortwave radio or on the VHF weather stations, I have no way of keeping up.

  She said, “I just told you, some friends and I, it’s our idea. But yeah, it’s getting around. Like the university towns. Gainesville, Tallahassee, Miami. I heard some girls down on spring break took it back to Michigan, University of Iowa. Some other places, too. But it was all our idea.”

  Proud of that.

  I had taken Tucker’s seat at the galley booth facing her until she scooched a little closer to the wall to create an extra couple of inches of distance between us. That slight movement stirred the air enough so that she left a few scent molecules lingering. Body powder. Shampoo. Woman. The thirty-second rule, I guessed, was like her baggy clothes, her hair: a place of her own creation in which to hide.

  I said, “I’ve been talking to you for a couple of minutes and I don’t feel like I know very much at all about you. A lot longer than thirty seconds, but I wouldn’t presume to make any judgments.”