The Mangrove Coast Read online

  “If you weren’t there, then how do you know what they said is true?”

  I could have said that I saw the hand, the foot, the flesh detritus of what remained. Instead, I said, “They would have lied to protect your father, but they had no reason to lie. With your father gone, they had no one they needed to protect. So why make up stories?”

  She was asking some pretty good questions. Not suspicious, but careful—checking up on this and that to let me know she was keeping track.

  “Something else you said, it bothers me. Not that I don’t believe what you’re saying, I’m just trying to be clear. The business about his being an intelligence officer. In every picture of him, he’s wearing a Navy uniform, but now you’re telling me he was like some kind of CIA person. What were you guys, spies?”

  “I was what I am now, a marine biologist. Your father was with Naval Special Warfare, the SEALs, and attached to Naval Intelligence. He was a very gifted man. We became close friends quickly. Bobby was smart, funny, tough … a good person; a good guy. He had a photograph of you, a Polaroid, that he loved. At night, just sitting, talking, he’d bring out this picture and pass it around. We had Coleman lanterns for light. It was you in a yellow party dress.”

  I thought that would please her. Instead she seemed momentarily flustered. “You mean a picture of when I was an infant.”

  “Uh-uh. You were four, maybe five, years old. There were a couple of people in the background, maybe your mother.”

  “Oh, that old.” She had her face turned away, looking out the window. Then I realized what the problem was: seeing the photograph meant that I had seen her before a surgeon had straightened her wandering eye. I knew what she had once looked like … probably what, in her own mind, she was supposed to look like … and the fact that I knew made her uneasy.

  So I decided to confront the subject: “I remember telling your father that you had a wonderfully wise face. I loved your eyes.”

  “You said that?”

  “I did.”

  Which earned me a snort of cynical laughter. “You’re telling me … you’re saying that you liked the fact that I was cross-eyed? I’m supposed to believe that? Maybe you have us confused. My mom’s the one with the gorgeous eyes.”

  “Nope, I liked yours. A lot.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that, just like I’m supposed to believe that the reason you were with my dad in Cambodia was because you were a marine biologist? Jesus.”

  “Both true.”

  “I’m sure.” Her tone said: bullshit.

  “Cambodia’s on the Gulf of Thailand. There’s a species of fish there, the ox-eye tarpon that I was studying. There are only two species of tarpon on earth. And there are some interesting islands off a place called Saom Bay. Rain forest and thatched huts built on poles. Every afternoon at sunset, these giant fruit bats would drop down out of the high trees. When they extended their wings, you’d hear a popping sound, like parachutes opening. That’s how big they were.”

  “You sound so reasonable.”

  “I try to be. I was associated with a thing called the Studies and Observations Group.”

  “I bet.”

  “That happens to be the truth, too.”

  “Oh yeah? So, if you worked near the ocean, then how did my father happen to be in the mountains when he was killed in a mortar attack? You said it didn’t happen too far from camp. You remember saying that?”

  Smart woman. Not looking around at the boats now; was looking right at me, showing me with her expression that she wasn’t a child and she wasn’t a fool. Not angry, but stony; chilly and a little judgmental.

  I said, “Not all mountains are inland. Some rise out of the sea.”

  “And that’s where you’re saying your camp was.”

  I thought about it a moment before I replied. “I guess if you were applying the thirty-second rule I’d be in big trouble, huh?”

  “Unless you come up with something convincing in the next five or ten seconds. But yeah, it would have to happen pretty quick.”

  “What I told you … it’s true, like I said. Factual, anyway. But it’s not entirely honest.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Fact only requires accuracy. Honesty requires disclosure.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Except the part about the Studies and Observations Group. And your eyes. The way you looked in that photograph, very wise for a little girl. I really did like your eyes. And they weren’t crossed, just off center.”

  She said, “Uh-huh, a thing of beauty,” her tone saying once again: bullshit.

  Her little white Honda Civic was parked in the feather-duster shade of a coconut palm. She said it got great mileage and had a decent sound system.

  Two necessities of Generation X: music and considerations of mobility.

  As I escorted her across the dusty parking lot, I told her to give me a few days; time to check with some people, think it over, maybe come up with a simple and productive course of action.

  “What we might have to do is hop on a plane, fly to Cartagena and have a look around,” I said, “but let’s hope I can fit a few pieces together and narrow down the options.”

  My saying it—we may have to fly to Cartagena—seemed to make the prospect real, and I could tell that it set her back a little. “Colombia,” she said, her tone a little less vivid. “That’s like one of the drug countries, right? Do you know anything about the place?”

  “Some,” I said. “A little.”

  The less she knew about my years in Central and South America, the better.

  Something else I told her to keep in mind was, If we did find her mom, and if Gail still refused to leave Merlot, there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.

  “I know, I know,” she replied. “All I want is a chance to get her alone and talk some sense into her. If we go, I can cover our expenses. I’ve got some money in savings and there’re some bonds I can cash in. Plus, Frank’s offered to kick in if things get expensive. The big spender, he’s so damn worried. Right. “She let that settle before she added, “The point being, I’m not asking you to pay your own way.”

  I told Amanda that her offer was premature. What I didn’t tell her was that, if we could find Merlot’s sailboat, I didn’t think I’d have much trouble prying her mother free. Not if it seemed like the right thing to do.

  Probably wouldn’t have to do much more than scare Merlot a little. Get the guy off alone for an hour or so, tell him some tough-guy story about Gail having family ties to the mob. Or maybe say she had ties to some drug cartel; that would make more sense. And how she doesn’t even know it, but she’s under the personal protection of some honcho with an Italian or Latino name. Watch the guy, Merlot, turn white and start shaking, then sit back and wait while he raced off to tell Gail to leave him alone, get the hell out of his life forever. Sneaky predatory types are also usually very predictable cowards.

  The problem was, finding a lone sailboat with all that coastline, all that water.

  But I didn’t go into any of that. Instead, I gave the girl a job to do. I asked her to visit her mother’s house, gather all the mail from the neighbor who was collecting it, then open and read it, just to see if she found anything interesting. And while she was at it, I told her to try to find any old letters from Merlot or photographs of the guy just to give me a better handle on who I was dealing with.

  The idea offended her. Open her mother’s personal letters? She didn’t think she could do that.

  I said, “You had to hunt around to find your father’s letters, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but they were put away in her hope chest. I’d been looking for old photographs, and I’d just about given up. For some reason, my mom had packed them all away.”

  “Old pictures of you?”

  She made a snorting noise. “No way. Those were hidden away a long time ago, and I’m the one who did it. I’m talking about a picture of my mom with my real
dad, that’s what I wanted. But they were packed. Every single one of them, she’s such a neatness freak. So I wasn’t prying, it was more like researching family history.”

  I said, “What’s the difference? Look, Amanda … if you’re serious about locating your mother, we may have to do some stuff you wouldn’t normally do. Behavior-wise, I mean. You used some kind of saying when you were describing your mother’s face; some Hindu maxim. Well, there’s a truism that your father and I came up with while we were in Asia. One of the Great Laws, we called it. Just for the hell of it, we wrote it on a piece of paper and passed it back and forth, each of us trying to take out or replace words. Like editors, see? We were trying to make the law just as simple and precise as we could. You care to hear what we ended up with?”

  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?”

  Sh
e 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 competitively: 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.