by Tom Lowe
In the broadcast remote-control room, a balding director stood behind a large electronic console with a half-dozen technicians seated, a wide panel of TV monitors in front of them. He said, “Stand by. Camera one coming to you. In five seconds … four … three… two … and we are live.”
A silver-haired man stepped on stage. He smiled. “Welcome everyone here in the audience and to you watching at home. This may be the first of its kind in Florida politics, and that is one of the reasons we are thrilled to present an evening with gubernatorial candidate Hal Duncan and contender for state senate, Joe Duncan. Without further ado, let’s have the candidates come on stage for a conversation with us all. As my granddaddy used to say, this ought to be a doozy.”
FORTY
Max and I were walking down L dock when Dave came from Gibraltar’s salon to the cockpit. He waved to us and shouted, “Join me for a cocktail with the candidates. The tube is alive with Florida politics at its finest, and I don’t mean that as an oxymoron.”
Max picked up her step, tail twitching. We joined Dave on his trawler, the sound of conversations coming from the salon. He said, “I’ve been watching Joe Thaxton and Hal Duncan live on the telly, and I must confess … Thaxton appears more like a candidate for governor rather than the state senate. Both are good, but Thaxton is compelling because he’s relatable and a natural born communicator. You and Miss Max come join me. There are a few minutes left. Let’s see how they wrap it up. This should be interesting.”
I took a seat in one of Dave’s canvas deck chairs. He sat on his couch with Max next to him. He used his remote control to adjust the sound coming from his large TV above the bar. The camera was on Hal Duncan who said, “Should I win the governor’s race, and should my friend, Joe Thaxton, do the same in the state’s senate race, I’d welcome an environmental reform bill drafted by Joe and his colleagues in the senate. The environment here in Florida, especially our precious water, is absolutely on the top rung of my agenda. I have campaigned hard on this issue, and I will be relentless in seeing it through as governor. The first thing I’ll do … and it’s something I don’t need a legislative bill to do … is replace the current members of the South Florida Water Management Board.”
The crowd in the amphitheater applauded. The host nodded and said, “We’re down to our last few minutes of questions from the audience.” He shuffled though some index cards and read. “This question is for you, Mr. Thaxton. One member in the audience asked, ‘You’ve suggested that Big Sugar can hire the most expensive lobbyists, not only because of their deep pockets, but also because of the federal subsidies they receive. Should the subsidies end?”
The camera cut to Joe. He nodded. “Absolutely. In my opinion, they’re not fair to the American taxpayers. Here’s why …” He paused, glancing at the audience in the amphitheater and the audience through the lens of the TV camera. “The federal program began in 1982, and today it’s costing American taxpayers close to three billion a year. The U.S. sugar program doesn’t work on a natural supply and demand economy. It is basically a supply control set-up that limits imports using a quota system while restricting domestic production through what the federal government calls marketing allotments. This means that Big Sugar, here in Florida, can reap up to 150-million dollars a year, per each of the big four growers, from the program. Six hundred million—that’s a sweet deal, folks. And that’s one of the reasons their lobby group is very well funded. It all boils down to plenty of money to give Big Sugar pretty much the run of the table in Florida. This has got to change. Let’s do the right thing and demand clean water in our Everglades, rivers, and beaches. I will be taking water samples from the glades and report to you what I’ve found.”
The audience in the amphitheater burst out in thunderous applause, the TV cameras getting shots of people applauding, Jessica and Kristy clapping and smiling.
Dave looked at me and said, “He’s done his homework and knows how to articulate in a way that resonates with the crowd.”
We watched as Joe Thaxton stepped out from behind the podium, removing the microphone from the stand and holding it. He held up one hand above his eyebrows to shield his eyes from the bright TV lights. “There is someone here tonight I’d like you all to meet. A few weeks ago, her husband, Johnny Nelson—a combat veteran, cut himself on the shin in knee-deep water while he was tossing his cast net. Not far from where he grew up on Pine Island near Fort Myers. Unknown to Johnny, a vicious water-borne bacterium, entered the cut. Ten days later, he died. There weren’t any drugs strong enough to combat what some doctors call flesh-eating bacteria. It spread like wildfire through his system. His widow, Amber Nelson, is here with us tonight. She is here to endorse what Hal Duncan and I want to see—clean water in Florida, so people can wade and swim in our waters without fear of having a horrible bug, something in the water that they can’t see, end up killing them. Amber, please stand up.”
Amber, wearing a dark blue dress, stood from her seat near the center of the audience. The crowd rose to its feet in a loud ovation. Amber smiled, wiping a tear from under one eye.
Joe motioned to Amber. “Thank you so much for joining us tonight.” He scanned the audience. “I’m not suggesting that Big Sugar had anything at all to do with Johnny Nelson’s death. I’m not putting the blame on agriculture. I’m not even blaming the septic runoff from old and antiquated systems. What I am blaming is the gatekeepers—the water management boards and to some extent … all of us. Why us? Because, for too long, we sat back, complacent, allowing the cronies to control our waterways and beaches, receiving the composite onslaught of pollution from a lot of factors. Lake Okeechobee, with its polluted runoff, certainly adds to this toxic mix, as do failing septic systems. What are we going to do about it?” He pointed to Hal Duncan. “The biggest step is to elect this man as your next governor. He will, flat out, get the job done. If you chose to send me to Tallahassee with him, we’ll start the changes. We’ll put ‘em in motion. And we’ll be relentless. That’s a campaign promise you can bet the ranch on!”
Dave and I watched the scene on his TV, Dave sipping a gin over ice. He said, “That’s powerful stuff. In a way, he reminds me of John Kennedy in front of an audience.”
“I’m too young to have seen that.” I smiled.
Dave chuckled. “Well, surely you saw some of his speeches on the old newsreels. If not they’re available for viewing online. On the Internet, no one stays dead.”
“It gives the word obituary a rather expanded definition.”
“Do me a favor, Sean. When I shed this skin, remind my daughter not to post the life and times of her old man on the Internet.”
“When your rent’s up, I’ll let her know. Assuming I’m still here after you. In my line of work, longevity can be the first of the conditions that’s compromised.”
He nodded, looked at the screen. “It appears that the evening’s event is done. I see credits rolling over the exterior shot of the amphitheater and the two candidates shaking hands, working the crowd.” Dave muted the sound. “You mentioned longevity … I hope that Joe Thaxton didn’t compromise his political longevity by drawing a line in the sand with some of the most powerful and politically connected companies in the nation.”
I stood and looked out the open sliding glass windows at the harbor beyond the transom. A fifty-foot Irwin sailboat, sails wrapped and stowed, motoring silently into the marina.
“What’s on your mind?” Dave asked. “You look like your thoughts are aboard that big sailboat. I forgot to ask you how it went sailing Dragonfly.”
“It was good. And Wynona is right. I shouldn’t sell her.”
Dave propped his feet up on his coffee table. “Wynona’s right about a lot of things. She’s a young woman with an old soul. Smart. Tenacious. Beautiful. And, for some reason that escapes me, she really likes you, Sean.”
I turned around. “It’s mutual. I’ll leave it at that for now.”
“Indeed. Is that what hi-jacked your thoughts fr
om my old trawler to that sailboat that just passed?”
“I was thinking about what Joe Thaxton said.”
“You mean Thaxton’s talent at making environmental science relatable?” Dave grinned.
“Yes, but not that specifically. He mentioned he’d be in the glades collecting environmental data. That could be risky.”
“The candidates have their schedules posted online. They zip around their districts. Wouldn’t be hard to follow them since they’re out in the open.”
“In the glades, Joe won’t be out in the open like in some shopping center greeting voters. He’ll be in the center of a million acres.”
FORTY-ONE
Joe Thaxton remembered the first time he “saw” the wind. As he drove east on Florida’s Tamiami trail, he started thinking about the first time he looked out from above the Everglades, and it was not from staring out of a window in an airplane. That day in July he could actually look out over the glades. He was high enough up to see the vista, but not too high, giving him a perspective to take in the effect that an approaching storm was having on the sawgrass.
It was his junior year of college. A friend of his, who specialized in landscape photography, Roy Fitzgerald, had secured permission to take pictures from an old fire tower that stood overlooking the headwaters of the Everglades. He invited Joe to join him.
When they climbed the hundreds of wooden steps to the top, a few of the timbers partially rotted and in need of paint, there was sawgrass in every direction. In some areas, he could see palm hammocks of thick vegetation, that looked like small tropical islands in the river of grass. He remembered standing with Roy at the top of the tower’s observation deck, the windows propped open, the smell of rain in the distance, a wasp buzzing in a corner of the humid tower. Roy, a lanky man with thick, black eyebrows, pale skin and fingers that seemed to caress his camera, snapped pictures of dark clouds and lightning, rain streaking from purple skies miles away at the horizon.
But it was the wind across the Everglades that Joe enjoyed. It was how the gusts of wind caused thousands of acres of sawgrass to move in waves similar to the swells at sea beyond the breakers. It was as if a hand—a life force, caressed the sawgrass, causing it to bow to an unseen power in long, billowing rows. Joe smiled, remembering how it reminded him of an enormous Van Gogh painting, dramatic brush strokes from the wind whipping a palette of colors, a sense of urgency, that visceral feeling that something was alive above and below the sawgrass, art in motion.
Joe glanced at his watch. Plenty of time, he thought. As much as he enjoyed the campaign, the volunteer staff, the difference they were making in drawing attention to water pollution in Florida, he missed being out on the water—out in the glades. He missed the outdoors because of the connection it had to his soul. It spoke to him in the wind, the birdsong, the roll of a tarpon in the bay—its wide scales reflecting the glint of the morning sun. He reminisced about that as he glanced up in his rearview mirror, spotting a dark car a half-mile behind his truck.
He sped up a little, glancing at his drone on the seat beside him, anxious to get out into Big Cypress and the glades. After another five miles, he slowed down and turned north off the Tamiami Trail onto a dirt road that led far up into Big Cypress Preserve. He looked in his rearview mirror. The black car went by, not slowing down. Or at least it didn’t appear to slow down. Regardless, unless you had an all-wheel-drive vehicle, something like a Jeep or Range Rover, the trek north on this road would be quite a challenge.
It was called 15 Mile Road. The locals referred to it as Gator Gully. It was carved through the swamps in the mid-forties when lumber companies cut and hauled a million board feet of cypress trees from the area. The road twisted and turned for fifteen miles north of Highway 41 into Big Cypress Preserve. Dirt. Mud. Pot holes. Just wide enough for one vehicle.
Joe’s truck had four-wheel-drive, and he figured he’d use it today. The water levels were not what they’d been when he was a young man. He knew the area well—the sloughs, cypress and palm hammocks, the lakes, gator holes and the grassy prairies. His goal today was to get in some of the of most remote spots and use his drone to capture video of the water levels and the condition of the glades, Big Cypress Preserve, and the Fakahatchee Strand if he had time.
As Joe followed the winding trail, he could no longer see back to the entrance through his rearview mirror. He couldn’t see that the black car had returned and entered 15 Mile Road. And he couldn’t see that the car was an SUV, a BMW X-1 with all-wheel drive.
Joe drove around and sometimes through potholes, many the width of trashcan lids, all partially filled with water. The road was slick with dark mud. He could see deer and wild boar tracks in some areas. He looked to the east, black vultures rode the air currents, circling over the swamps, the sun white hot in the near cloudless sky.
After another six miles, the road meandered toward the west, but just north of the westward turn, was another road. This one was more like a trail. Narrow. Thick brush on each side. Joe pulled his truck onto that path and drove slowly, the scrape of limbs sliding down the side panels of his truck like the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. He managed to drive a little more than a mile before the route came to an end. It just faded out as if the brush had enough encroachment and reclaimed the land.
Joe picked up his drone and its controls, a bottle of water, still camera, phone, mosquito spray, and a ham and cheese sandwich Jessica had made him at dawn. He put everything into a backpack, got out, locked his truck and began walking through ankle-deep water the shade of sunlit tea.
He could see five large snowy egrets feeding in the shallows, a spit of wet land between him and the birds. One spotted him, made a shrill cry and flew, the other four following, the beat of their big wings making a heavy whoomp, whoomp. The sound reminded Joe of his grandmother using a steel road to beat dirt from a small rug she had hung from a clothesline in her yard.
In the distance, beyond expanse of sawgrass, and the final glimpse of the birds in flight, he heard the sound of a vehicle. He tried to see if it was the noise of an airboat or an off-road-vehicle. Like the clatter of the birds in flight, the sound faded. He started walking, mud sucking at his boots. And then he heard the noise again, just barely, engine whining as if it was revved up to get through ruts and mud on a road that led to only one place.
Right where he stood.
FORTY-TWO
As Joe sloshed through knee-deep water, about a mile from where he’d left his truck, his thoughts focused on the interaction between water and land. One of the many things he loved about marine biology was the symbiosis between land and water. Whether it was studying the beaches where the sea met the coast, the shore of estuaries, rivers or lakes, the relationship between the land and water often revealed the health of both, especially the water.
A red tide literally spilled its guts of dead fish and crustaceans onto the beaches. The banks of winding rivers were often similar to human arteries. Some were partially blocked with trash or tainted from open drainage pipes causing changes in and around the river’s path.
But there was no place on earth like the Everglades, aptly called the River of Grass. Nowhere else on the planet, including the vast swamps of Africa, was there a terrain like the one surrounding him. He splashed through it, thinking about how the interface between water and land in the glades was a heart and soul relationship of pure survival. For thousands of years, vast sheets of fresh water constantly covered the Everglades, moving slowly from north to south, supporting plant and animal life unique in all the world. But, when the glades were ditched, drained, flooded, dried, and reflooded with phosphate and nitrogen, heavy water from manmade sources, the delicate balance of water and land, a million-year waltz, dramatically changed as if someone had stopped the music. Stopped the birdsong. Drastically changing the synergy and collective harmony of life in the glades.
He walked north more than two miles, stopping to fill test vials with the water flowing around his high
boots. He used his phone to record the stops, hitting the video record button and holding the phone in one hand as he took samples. “I’m about seventeen miles northwest of Highway 41. This is the first of a few water samples I’ll be taking. We’ll get these to a lab for analysis. I’m seeing more cattails out here than I’ve ever seen. That’s not a good sign because they’re an invasive species, sort of like the python. But the cattails don’t kill rabbits and deer … they just choke the Everglades to death. Lots of dry areas, too. And that only breeds wildfires.”
He ended the video recording, slipping his phone back in his pocket. He marked the vials, date and location, placing them in the side pockets of his backpack. He pushed on, entering a dry area, the former marshland like a ceramic bowl splintered in hairline cracks. The air smelled of dead insects and wood smoke somewhere in the distance.
He walked northwest, the terrain now taking on a blend of the Everglades and Big Cypress Preserve, sawgrass and cypress, water and mangroves, thick growths of cabbage palms and slash pines. He found an area of relatively high ground, about a foot above the water, removed his backpack, setting it in a dry spot. Joe took a sip of water, the air now more humid.
He retrieved his phone again and hit the auto-dial for Jessica. The call didn’t connect immediately. He looked at his phone screen. One bar struggling to stay vertical. The cell tower coverage was spotty at best. He thought about the old fire tower he’d climbed twenty-five years ago. It’s probably still there. He continued walking.
Joe took out his drone, readied it for flight. He hit the start button, the tiny propellers buzzing. But they were not loud. The newest models could fly with relative quietness. He guided the drone slowly above the landscape. Within half a minute, the drone had gained an altitude of three hundred feet. He watched the monitor and flew in a due north direction. After another minute, he lowered the drone and its onboard camera to about two hundred feet. He flew it slowly, capturing the images on video—images of areas almost depleted of water. Dead and dying sawgrass. The bloom of cattails in the glades. A skinny deer bolting through the brush. He monitored and documented the locations with GPS coordinates.