The Mangrove Coast df-6 Page 9

  I waited for the girl to nod before I continued. I had no trouble remembering: “Okay, here it is: ‘In any conflict, the boundaries of behavior are defined by the party that cares least about morality.’”

  She thought about it for a moment before she spoke. “Repeat that one more time.”

  I did.

  “My father, he thought of that?”

  “We batted it around for a week or so. We were bored as hell during the daytime. I remember we spent an hour debating whether the last word should be morality or ethics. Your dad won.”

  “He had to be a smart man. Very wise to put something so clearly.”

  “Yeah, he was. But what I’m saying is, if your judgment of Merlot is correct, we’re going to have to adapt. Does he strike you as the type to play fair?”

  “Of course not. I wouldn’t be worried about my mom if he were.”

  “Then we have to play by his rules, not ours. If we don’t, he’s at a big advantage. But what I’m hoping is, we can track your mom down by phone. When she realizes how worried you are, she’ll either fly home or agree to meet with you down there. Or better yet, you’ll hear from her in the next day or two; get a phone call or a letter saying she’s come to her senses and she’s leaving the guy.”

  Amanda looked up at me with burrowing brown eyes; eyes that, in their reluctance to stand fast, illustrated the painful memory that she had once been different. Her eyes had once been unlike the eyes of other children and so were things of which to be ashamed.

  But I liked those eyes. I liked them in a long-ago photograph seen in the waxy light of a military lantern, and I liked them now. The awareness of individuality is implicit in the face of anyone who, as a child, is forced to stand apart from the crowd. The reason doesn’t much matter. It might be because of skin color, problems at home, clothing that doesn’t come up to the expectations of peers, perceived differences in social worth, acne… or one wayward, lonely eye.

  That strength was in Amanda’s face.

  Something else I liked was the attitude she’d brought with her to meet me, the stranger who had once been a friend of her late father. She was businesslike, tough, but she wasn’t one of those women who plays the cast-iron role of feminist, thereby sacrificing her own personality along with her credibility as an individual. Nope, I liked her. A good woman; one of the private people who sat back, watched carefully and thought about things.

  Standing beside her car, I listened to her say, “Doc, for the first time in about a month, I feel pretty good about the chances of helping my mom. My confidence, I’m talking about. Just talking to you, it’s made me feel better.”

  I leaned to give her a quick hug good-bye-felt her body go tense as I did, so I did not prolong it-as I told her, “You have a safe drive across the Glades. And just to make a nerdish, middle-aged bookworm feel better, why don’t you give me a call when you get to Lauderdale? Let me know you made it.”

  “Okay, okay, I guess I deserve that. I shouldn’t have judged you so quickly. By the way you look. Me of all people, I mean…”

  “Why not? I read lots of books and I’m kind of a nerd. Ask anybody.”

  Which earned me a sheepish smile, a quick little peek at the girl who lived behind the barriers.

  6

  Tuck’s spackle-gray Dodge pickup, the one with the buckle-high tires and a bumper sticker that read A COWBOY’S WORK IS NEVER DONE, was still sitting in the heat of the marina parking lot as I watched Amanda exit through the gates onto Tarpon Bay Road, headed for the toll bridge and then Alligator Alley, Lauderdale bound.

  The man was probably still regaling Mack and Jeth with stories about Old Florida; probably attracting an audience of tourists with his tales about fishing with Ike Eisenhower and teaching Ted Williams how to fly-cast in the early bonefish days, down on the Keys with Jimmy Albright and the other pioneer guides.

  Or maybe he was using his Deep South voice to describe to listeners how he helped train Cuban troops on nearby Useppa Island for the Bay of Pigs invasion, or how it was him and Dick Pope, founder of Cypress Gardens, who took Uncle Walt Disney around and convinced him Florida was a can’t-miss choice for a second Disneyland.

  “Disney, he favored the east coast,” Tucker liked to add, “all those hotels, all those built-in customers. But I says to him, I says, ‘Walt, in the last twenty years, just how many hurricanes you figure has tore the east coast its own new asshole? And I’m not just talkin’ about them official whirly-girls, neither. I’m talkin’ about the no-name gales that you folks in California never hear about; the ones your fancy lawyers ain’t gonna find in the record books. From Miami to Palm Beach, they get more heavy wind than a Puerto Rican chili parlor, so, you build her on the east coast, you better nail Mickey’s ass to the deck ‘cause Minnie ain’t gonna be the only bad blow job in town.’”

  Tucker Gatrell’s explanation of how he personally brought Disney World to Central Florida. It was a story I’d heard, didn’t much believe and didn’t care to hear again… so I walked along the periphery of mangroves, out of easy sight of the marina, back home.

  Before Amanda left, she’d hurried off to say good-bye to the old fraud and returned to tell me how kind he’d been to her, what a gentleman he was, which proved that the girl was not foolproof when it came to strangers. Same with her mother, apparently.

  Few of us are.

  She said she hated to just go off and leave, because she felt sorry for him, after all he’d been through that week.

  I said, “Huh?” but was thinking, Now what?

  She said, “About his horse dying. He didn’t tell you?”

  I said, “Tucker’s horse died? You mean Roscoe?”

  “No, he didn’t mention anyone named Roscoe. It was the morning I called him at his house. When he told me, he got so upset I thought he was going to start crying. He called the poor thing his cow pony. ‘Just went out and found my cow pony laying dead in the stall.’ You know the way he talks. ‘My cow pony, he’s hit the high trail.’ Like that. Kind of tough, like nothing much bothers him, but he’s really so sentimental.”

  For fifteen years or so, pretty close, Roscoe had been both horse and human to Tuck. Big gray appaloosa that Tucker treated like a house pet. Even when I was around, he maintained a running monologue with the animal. Rode him everywhere, strip malls, busy streets, drive-through banks, it didn’t matter to Tuck. His way of showing off, of demonstrating who he was.

  I told Amanda, “Roscoe, that was his name. The horse’s name. But I wouldn’t worry about it. He can always buy another horse.”

  Which didn’t elevate the woman’s opinion of me, no mistaking her reaction. But there it was. I had to listen to her say, “People can become very close to their pets, you know. Animals aren’t like car tires or bad lightbulbs or something that can be easily replaced. He really cared about that horse. I could tell.” A very chilly edge to her voice.

  I said, “Yeah, the man wears his heart on his sleeve.”

  “Okay, okay. You two aren’t exactly close. Like there’s this constant friction. I can feel it. But he’s an old man. All that talking he does, wanting attention, I think it’s because he really is sensitive. So why not be nice to him?”

  She was right.

  I decided the nicest thing I could do for Tucker Gatrell-and myself-was avoid him. Save us both some wear and tear. Besides, it was a Sunday on Sanibel… which meant that I had better things to do than hang around my lab waiting to be cornered by my idiotic old uncle.

  Of late, Sunday meant baseball, then chicken wings and beer.

  So there was no reason to talk to the man… or even say good-bye.

  I am not a baseball fan, but I am a fan of baseball. That’s not the paradox it seems. I have never followed teams and box scares, but I love to play the game. Which is why I was not unhappy that Amanda had to leave early and get back to Lauderdale. I had a game that afternoon.

  What a strange thing to remind myself of after all the years since I’d played co
mpetitively: ave a game this afternoon.

  Actually, it was a doubleheader.

  A month or so earlier, Tomlinson had signed us both up to play in a baseball league; the Roy Hobbs League it is called, a national organization named after the fictional hero in Bernard Malamud’s valuable book The Natural. Not Softball, baseball, a game where players steal bases and slide and wear helmets at the plate for a reason.

  It was the real game. Rules required that players had to be over the ripe old age of thirty, and a solid baseball background was requisite. The league attracted a lot of former college players and a few ex-professionals, but mostly the teams were made up of an eclectic bunch of amateurs who, in their spare time, were attorneys, surgeons, plumbers and teachers or followed other vocations that were not as much fun as putting on spikes and playing nine.

  Without asking my permission, Tomlinson signed us up because he said it would do the both of us good, getting off the island. No… what he actually said was, “It’ll be good for our heads, man. Get out there between the lines where the karma is purer. Keep in mind, amigo, that the shape of a baseball diamond is nothing more than two pyramids joined at the base. And I suspect that you’ve read about the electromagnetic vibes generated by pyramids. Very powerful, man. A very heavy mojo.”

  Which was Tomlinson-speak that meant playing baseball would give us something to do that wasn’t based on boats or water… a nice change that might help get my mind off such things as the sexual transformation of grouper and my own failed love affair with Pilar.

  Maybe Tomlinson was right, because I’d come to look forward to playing baseball on Sundays. Sometimes on Thursday nights, too, under the lights. And I wasn’t about to let Tucker Gatrell hold me up or make me late. So I hustled around my cabin, dressing myself in cup and supporter, stirrups over long white socks that were still known by the odd, antique name of “sanitaries.” Pulled on gray stretch baseball pants that buttoned tightly where white pinstripe jersey bloused at my waist, then settled my team’s ball cap on my head with no less care than knights of old who once added crowning balance to their personal armor-work.

  Presto. Marion Ford, Ph. D. and purveyor of biological specimens, was now a simpler man of purer purpose. I was number 13, proud member of the West Florida Tropics, catcher and occasional relief pitcher. Dress a seventy-year-old man in a football uniform and he’ll look idiotic. Put him in a baseball uniform, though, and he’ll look like he can play nine and steal a base or two. That is one of the sport’s mysterious qualities… so maybe Tomlinson deserves more credit than I give him when he speaks of baseball’s nonlinear aspects.

  Once dressed, I peeked out the window to make certain Tucker wasn’t on his way. Then I picked up the VHF microphone and hailed Tomlinson on channel 12, our personal channel of contact, saying, “No Mas, No Mas. This is Sanibel Biological Supply, Whiskey Romeo X-ray six-seven-nine-six. Copy?”

  Waited a few beats before I heard, “Got you good, Doc. I plan to drink a few beers after the game, so maybe you’d better drive.”

  Which was no surprise. I always drove to our Sunday games and Tomlinson always drank heavily afterwards. Besides, Tomlinson had no car.

  Then he said, “But we’ve got to stop at my farm on the way home.”

  Tomlinson’s farm: a small portion of rented lot off Casa Ybel Road where he was pouring a lot of time and energy into a new passion-growing chili peppers. Jalapenos, habaneros, Thai, Scotch bonnets, you name it. He grew them all. “The history of Anglo trade and corruption can be read in the pericarp of the humblest chili,” he was fond of saying.

  What that meant, I have no idea.

  Another claim: “The world chili market is dominated by the same three species that Columbus brought back to Europe from his first couple of voyages.” Talking like some first-rate ethnobotanist.

  I found that interesting: three species of wild plant had been spread singularly, hand to hand and generation to generation, among all races and cultures. There were now, of course, hundreds of varieties, but nearly all were descended from those same three species of wild chilies that had probably evolved in the Amazon valley.

  It was an unusual pastime for a man who’d spent most of his life at sea, but Tomlinson had apparently entered a back-to-the-earth phase; a revisitation, perhaps, of his commune days, when he lived on some California ranch with similarly long-haired kindreds who went by names like Moon Dance and Autumn. For a year or two, long ago, Tomlinson himself had assumed a name of choice. An “Earth name,” as he described it. He’d gone by the name of Lono, he claimed, out of respect for some Polynesian god he admired.

  He’d worked on the communal farm and now he’d been called back to the earth, or so he said. He liked to get his hands and knees black with the commercial growing humus he trucked in because of Sanibel’s poor, salty soil. Growing chilies suited a certain need in him, and I was beginning to find it interesting, too, because he had planted seeds from all over the world. Plus I love to eat chilies.

  “We can stop at the farm,” I radioed back. “I’m about out of jalapenos.”

  “Then after the game,” he said, “we stop at Hooters for chicken wings and beer. Or hey-we can boat over to St. James City and listen to John Mooney play.”

  John Mooney, one of the great blues guitarists, lived on Pine Island. Every baseball Sunday, we always did that, too.

  On the way into town I told Tomlinson about my conversation with Amanda Richardson. Glancing from the road over to this strange vision: cattle rustler’s face, hippie hair, goatherder sandals and baseball uniform.

  He smelled of primo glove leather (he was breaking in a beautiful Wilson A2000 infielder’s glove) and patchouli, the favorite perfume of dope smokers. Probably had a joint hidden somewhere on his person, too, for he had embraced some of his old habits. By unspoken agreement, he pretended not to know that I knew.

  Yet, for all his weirdness and his flaky spiritualism, Tomlinson is an attentive listener and he possesses an intellect of the first magnitude. I wanted his assessment of the situation. In hindsight, I realize now that I was not as open-minded as I generally pretend to be. Yeah, I wanted Tomlinson’s opinion, but I had already come to a conclusion about the so-called disappearance of Gail Calloway. My old buddy’s widow was being taken advantage of by one of the common cast of chubby, middle-aged Casanovas that infest every Florida beach town from Jacksonville to Pensacola. True, there were a couple of elements in Amanda’s story that I found unusual, even troubling. But the chances of Gail’s being in genuine danger were very slim indeed.

  Not that I wasn’t interested and not that I wouldn’t help. I’d do what I could, no questions asked. Bobby would have done the same for me. Besides, I liked his daughter a lot. Yeah… nice woman with an outsider’s gift for observation and a no-nonsense intellect.

  We all prioritize, and I had already put the problem on one of the middle burners: important but not so pressing that I needed to drop everything and go charging off to the rescue.

  So, also in hindsight, make note of another screw-up by the kindly, well-intentioned dumbass, Doc Ford. Add one more M ^ 2 to a growing list. M-squared as in double M-which stands for Major Miscalculation. It was not my first nor, unfortunately, will it be my last, for I seem to have a limitless gift for failing to heed my own instincts… particularly when the welfare of an innocent person is at stake.

  Why that is true, I cannot fathom. It hurts me. It makes Why that is true, I cannot fathom. It hurts me. It makes me furious. But the fact that I so seldom seem to meet my own expectations is probably the main reason why I hang in there and keep banging away, trying to get it right. I can forgive myself for being dumb or for lacking insight. I could never forgive myself for quitting.

  So, in truth, all I wanted from Tomlinson was for him to validate my view by echoing my opinion. Isn’t that what we ask most often from friends?

  Tomlinson, however, is not your run-of-the-mill friend.

  As I drove across the causeway, then north
into Fort Myers, he listened patiently as I spoke. He grunted and humphed and made attentive listening sounds while he chewed at a strand of his scraggly blond hair, a nervous habit.

  He questioned me closely about certain details of Amanda’s story. At one point he asked, “Old photographs? Why was she going through her mom’s stuff looking for old photographs?”

  “Sentimental value? I don’t know. She wanted a picture of her mom and real dad.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Of course I do. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Which she said she found in her mother’s hope chest. The photographs. That was the only place?”

  “No, what she said was, she was looking for old photographs and was about to give up. There’s a difference. Her mother had apparently packed them all away. Amanda said she’s a neatness freak.”

  Now Tomlinson was twisting his hair into a braid. “You don’t find that odd? I find that very odd.”

  “You find it odd that a woman who’s been a widow for nearly two decades has put away photos of her late husband?”

  “And of her own daughter, too, apparently.”

  “The girl did that herself. Because she once had a crossed eye. A lazy eye and she’s probably still ashamed of it.”

  “She told you that?”

  “You drive me nuts sometimes, Tomlinson. You know that? Yes, she told me that she’d put the pictures away. Hid them, that’s what she said. I’m guessing at the motive. But it’s a reasonable assumption based on circumstantial evidence.”

  “Like you said, man, sentimental value. A guy like you, a guy who doesn’t feel much emotion, it’s something easy to miss. But to a spiritual headbanger like me, it stands out like a sore beezer.”