My wineglass was empty by then. This freed my hands for the occasional subtext of an accidental touch. Nothing so obvious I could not pretend it was innocent. Beneath the table, however, our feet were bolder. Soon, I felt perfectly at ease resting an ankle against his—this under the guise of his leg being part of the table. But when his shoes came off and he reinitiated contact, skin on skin, it was too much to ignore. That’s when I called a halt to the evening.
The grove manager had apologized his way up the steps to the stern deck outside. I’d made sure the dock lights were out, of course—another sneaky decision—which only softened the man’s soft brown eyes when he turned to me to say good night.
“I don’t know what got into me, Hannah. Wait . . . that’s not true, either. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long, long time, or felt so at ease. If things were going better at home, maybe . . . And then there’s my job—hell . . . if I still have a job. Mostly, though”—he had placed his hands on my wrists to say this—“it’s the feeling I got when I first saw you. You are so damn beautiful, and not in the typical hair spray, lipstick sort of way. Believe me, I’ve never done anything like this before.”
If he had only said “attractive,” I might have allowed him to kiss me, for I knew that was coming. I wanted to be kissed; I wanted to be held. The word striking might have worked, too, for I’d like to think I am striking in the right dress and soft lighting, but no man has ever called me beautiful—not with honest motives or without irony.
The exaggeration brought me to my senses yet did not slow my breathing. I had to step free of his touch to find air. “That’s sweet of you, Kermit, but you can’t say such things if we’re to be friends. Follow the dock; I’ll switch on the lights. I think you can find the way to your own truck.”
I didn’t expect him to leave without another attempt. He didn’t disappoint me.
“Are friends allowed to give each other a hug good night?”
“Of course,” I said, well aware of the ledge I had just stepped off.
Time is sometimes difficult to gauge, but it wasn’t much later when he whispered in my ear, “Pretend like this never happened. Both of us. We’ve got no choice and we both know why. But, Hannah? I can’t pretend I don’t want this to happen again.”
Only then did the married man return to his truck.
All this replayed in my head after I dropped off the Gentrys and pointed my skiff home. It was nearly four; I was in a rush and distracted or would have been quicker to notice a boat trailing too close in my wake.
I looked back and did a double take. It was the black catamaran hull. Yes . . . the same boat, but only the driver aboard, with his green visor and wild, red handlebar mustache. His shirt was open, flapping in the wind.
I swung around and pretended I hadn’t seen him. We were on the east side of the Intracoastal Waterway. It was busy on this winter afternoon. Lots of cruiser traffic, yachts that plowed a wake, so I couldn’t be certain of the man’s intentions. Not yet anyway. I increased speed, sledded down a series of waves, then banked into shallow water. Ahead lay three miles of shoals separating me from the dock my Uncle Jake had built and home.
The tide was flooding. Oyster bars and limestone jetties and snags caused by hurricanes would be masked by water, but that was okay. I’d been skidding boats through that maze since childhood.
Behind me, the man with the mustache turned, too.
No doubt now. He was following me, coming fast, and way too close.
• • •
In the 1980s, when Florida banned traditional mullet nets, fishermen forced out of business were offered water leases and the chance to raise clams commercially.
It was a high-risk, low-profit “opportunity.” What else could they do?
As a result, west of Demere Key is a vast acreage of Styrofoam buoys and stakes that mark the clam leases and the bags of seed clams that grow beneath. It’s an area I avoid out of respect for people whom the government has seldom treated fairly. They didn’t deserve the added burden of property damaged by propellers, but that’s where I headed . . . until my conscience got the best of me.
Why not stop and have it out with the guy right now?
I tried, but, when I slowed, Yosemite Sam—that’s what Mrs. Gentry had called him—nearly rammed his boat over the corner of my transom. He would’ve if I hadn’t jammed the throttle forward. When I glanced aft, he towered above me at the controls and wore the same idiotic grin, his hair and shirttails flapping like flags. To acknowledge eye contact, he flashed the peace sign, then used the same two fingers to throw me a kiss.
The man was crazy.
I had no choice but to run. My skiff is a 21-foot Maverick, built for thin water and over-powered with a 225-horse Mercury OptiMax. Seldom did I invite the eye-watering discomfort by exceeding 40 mph, but the speedometer climbed to 50 as I raced away.
Behind me, the black catamaran had no trouble keeping up; in fact, it could have passed me, which cartoon Sam threatened several times by nosing close to my stern, then jumping my wake, before dropping back.
A mile of water lay between us and the clam beds.
Beneath the console was a VHF radio I seldom use, and also my cell phone. I chose the radio. I contacted the Coast Guard at Fort Myers Beach. After the duty officer had me switch to Channel 22-Alpha, I told her what was going on. Because of the noise, I had to shout, and repeat my location several times.
“Do you feel your life is in danger?” she asked.
Yes, I did, which is why I phoned my sheriff’s deputy friend next. Birdy Tupplemeyer is a high-octane woman—a three-year veteran of the force who does not share my reluctance to use profanity or hop into bed with married men. The time would come when I could confide to her about Kermit, but that could wait. I gave her the same information—still shouting, and forced to repeat details, but in a less formal way.
“The crazy fool’s gonna get us both killed,” I yelled.
“Are you packing?” Her tone was judgmental. I could picture her in a two-piece, pacing by her aunt’s Palm Beach swimming pool.
“Packing a gun?”
“Hell yes, you ninny. This dude—you ever seen him before? Doesn’t matter. If you’re packing, stop your damn boat and threaten to put a couple rounds up his ass. Warn him first—all the standard bullshit. Then do it! Go ahead. Put your phone on Speaker so I can testify the scumbag had it coming.”
“Only fishing gear,” I hollered. “Isn’t there someone you can call? It’s Saturday. The marine division—there has to be a police boat out here somewhere.”
“Jesus Christ, Hannah. Carry; always, always carry. How many times have I told you! And it’s not like you haven’t already rung that bell.”
Shot a man, she meant.
This was true; an incident I rarely discuss.
“Call somebody, for heaven’s sake,” I said, and stowed the phone.
Racing toward me was a blur of buoys and floating bamboo poles, a few with rags attached to make them visible. They were tied to nylon ropes from which bags of clams were suspended, each buoy anchored to the bottom. The incoming tide held the buoys taut. Ripples showed me the direction the ropes lay and created hundreds of narrow channels to choose from. Stray even a foot, it meant trouble: a mile of nylon rope would snag the propeller and strangle an engine dead.
I waited until the last possible instant to make my turn, then cleaved an angling course. Rows of white buoys scattered to make room. Until then, Yosemite Sam had been taunting me from both sides of the boat, but he realized the danger and fell in line, so close that the nose of his boat shadowed my transom.
Crazy or not, the man was no stranger to water. I began to doubt my plan to lose him here in the lonely backcountry. Maybe it was wiser to return to the main channel, where a hundred witnesses might dissuade him from whatever violence he had in mind.
Road ra
ge on the bay. It is rare among fishermen, but it happens.
I snuck another glance back. Standing high above me, he responded with the peace sign and blew me another kiss. He appeared to be enjoying himself. Scared as I was, that made me mad. On my throttle is a trim switch that can tilt the engine clear of the water. I used it and held tight. The chines of the Maverick threatened to break free when the engine lifted. Soon my propeller was shooting water like a fire hose into Sam’s boat.
I didn’t see what happened, but the finesse worked. When I looked again, the catamaran was dolphining wildly off course, kicking a wake of Styrofoam and mud. It gave me some breathing room. I kept watch while exiting the clam lease and got my boat trimmed, the whole time expecting cartoon Sam’s engine to stall in a tangle of nylon.
It didn’t happen. Somehow he’d dodged enough lines to keep going and was circling back. No idiotic grin on his face now. He reached for something and came up with a short-handled gaff—a stainless hook attached to a pole. It was a threat; he wanted me to see it. I acknowledged the threat with a middle finger, not the peace sign. His gravelly voice was oddly high-pitched for whatever it was he hollered. Then he buried the throttle and came at me full speed.
I was already moving, but not in the direction of my dock. Enraged people lose their ability to reason. I was counting on that; wanted him too mad to think or see clearly. At the wheel with my back to him, I used a middle finger again as if I, too, were having fun—and, truth is, I did feel a wild moment of abandonment.
There was no time to gauge what effect my taunting had. Ahead was a jumble of islands, all uninhabited. Between lay a mile of thin water, the bottom pocked with potholes and oyster bars, some visible, some not. I knew those bars well. So did my Uncle Jake back in the days when he’d taken Katharine Hepburn oystering. The winter months are best, always on a spring low tide. Jake would equip me with boots and gloves so I could wade those jagged shoals without getting cut to ribbons.
As I knew, the biggest oysters lay in troughs between the bars on the bottom that was never exposed. One of those troughs was half the width of my skiff. That was wide enough.
I steered toward it and ignored Sam, who was angling to cut off my escape. I triangulated the distance by instinct. Unless he actually intended to ram me, he would have to reduce speed, then turn sharply, to stay on my tail.
That’s what happened. I flew past him, flipped another bird, and let my wake mask a trough through an oyster ridge that was also masked by water. Sam swung too wide. I didn’t see what transpired, but I heard it. The howl of an outboard slamming aground is as distinctive as a braying donkey. The staccato Hee-haw-haw is similar, minus the metallic edge if a propeller is sheered.
When I heard metal, I knew I was safe yet didn’t slow until I found a pothole deep enough to drop off plane.
I looked back.
The black catamaran, with its tower and twin Yamahas, sat exposed in a foot of water. It looked like a trophy on a pedestal. At least one of its propellers had been bent. Yosemite Sam had managed to stay aboard, but that would be hard to prove because he was wet and mud-splattered from the soaking my engine had given him.
“If you stopped to gather oysters,” I yelled, “it’s better when the tide goes out. By then, you’ll need a boat with wheels.”
I expected profanity, untethered rage. Instead, the man shrugged in a sheepish way and replied, “You ever have one of those days? Some of the dumb things I do, I swear, there’re times I don’t think I got a brain in my head. Especially when I’m trying to impress a pretty woman.” He commented on his bent propeller, then asked, “You ain’t mad, are you?”
My lord . . . the guy was deranged. Or was he acting? There was some nasal Cracker in his voice, but the accent had a guttural tinge. German, Pennsylvania Dutch . . . no telling. Maybe this was satire, his parody of Southerners and other hicks.
The possibility implied a slyness—and an intellect—that scared me, as did his size—a huge head, chest, and hands. Yet I did my best to show a brave front.
I switched off my engine. “What’s wrong with you? This morning, you saw we had a fish on and intentionally cut us off. Then you pull a stunt like this? If I wanted to press charges, I’ve got my clients as witnesses.”
“Uh-oh, I knew it. You’re mad. Serves me right, I guess.” This was said in the glum way of a child who’d been scolded. He swung down to the deck with surprising agility. The catamaran hull tilted beneath his weight. “All I wanted was to get a closer look.”
“At a fish? We lost a big snook because of you. Then you nearly swamped us.”
“Sure am sorry,” he said, “but you’re wrong about my reasons. My clients catch plenty of fish. What I wanted was a closer look at you.”
Good God. Now he was hitting on me?
I said, “How many beers have you had today? If you’re not drunk, you’ve lost your mind.”
“Hell, I’ll admit it. Probably a little of both. Here, I’ll prove it”—he began pawing through a console drawer—“I got a fishing magazine someplace with your picture on the front. A real pretty one. I was bragging to my clients about it. Then there you were, stealing one of my best snook holes. Not that I minded, ’cause of who you are. Like fate, you know?”
Snewk, he pronounced the word, but with difficulty. Maybe I was right. It was an act.
“You claim to be a guide? You should buy a bus and stick to bridge fishing. I’ve never seen you or your boat in my life.”
“Starstruck, I guess some call it,” he replied. “Then I go and make a damn fool out of myself after you gave me the finger back there. Flirting—you knew what you was doing. How you expect a man to act?” He gave up on the drawer and opened a cabinet. “That dang magazine’s here someplace.”
I said, “You stay away from me, understand? I reported this to the Coast Guard. Next time, I’ll swear out a warrant.”
“Ain’t there some way to make this right? I’ll buy you dinner. Champagne, the whole works. Or do you like to dance? I’ve been taking lessons. Big as I am”—he did a waltzing two-step across the deck to illustrate—“tango is a specialty, but I prefer swing dancing.” He spun an invisible partner, then was done with it and peered over the side, seeing scuttling crabs and a mountain range of oysters. “I don’t suppose you have a shovel I can borrow?” After a beat, he added, “Or a bottle of Tabasco?”
No twang when he said this, which confirmed it was all a charade. Same with his slow, sinister smile, teeth bared, beneath a mustache the size of a boomerang. “Know what might be fun? Sit here with a case of beer and eat oysters, just the two of us, until we’re both so damn horny that, later, down the road, you won’t mind when I tell you to stay out of my goddamn snook spots.”
I said, “What?”
“You heard me. Chartering’s just like any other business, honey. Sex and marketing.” He glared for a moment, then slammed a hatch open, done with me, too.
Eerie, the feeling I got, the two of us out here alone, separated only by a few yards of water and walls no higher than the gunnel of my boat. What if he had a gun inside that hatch? What if he came after me on foot or bulled his boat off the bar faster than anticipated?
I started my engine, snuck a few photos of him, and the boat’s registration numbers, then sped away.
It was half past four. I was late.
TEN
Kermit’s daughter, Sarah, appeared on the dock as I was tying up. She had an orange in her hand. “Daddy said I’m supposed to give you this. He seems in a hurry to leave, but he’s always like that. And to thank you for letting us take samples from your trees.”
Through the mangroves, I could see a white pickup truck parked, or waiting at the side of the road, with a tarp tied over the bed. The mix of relief and disappointment I felt was blurred by the adrenaline still pumping through me.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “You can tell your
daddy that for me. Did you have fun?” I was positioning bumpers so my skiff wouldn’t bang against the dock.
“Guess so. I like your hair. I wish Mama would let me cut mine like that. It’s hard enough just to talk her into letting me wear jeans. Short hair’s better, don’t you think?”
I smiled. “Not if I had braids as pretty as yours. How about a cold bottle of water? Or do your parents let you drink pop?”
The girl, a skinny little thing in coveralls and a T-shirt, showed her missing front tooth. “What’s that?”
“Soda drinks. Pop’s the sound the bottle makes when you open it. That’s the way it was explained to me anyway.” I stepped down into my skiff and opened the cooler. “I might have some juice in here somewhere, too.”
“As long as it’s not orange juice. I’m sick of it. My whole life, everything’s smelled of oranges. Even my room, because we’ve always lived in citrus groves. Oh—and I’m supposed to call you Miss Smith or Captain.”
I told her that using my first name was perfectly okay, and traded her a bottle of water for the orange in her hand. “I like the tanginess,” I said, holding it to my nose. “But I understand. I didn’t grow up in the citrus business like you. Did you get this off one of the old trees out back?”
The girl shook her head no, but her attention was on my boat. “I’d love to go for a ride sometime. I bet it’s fast.”
To the south, distant islands shielded the black catamaran and its driver from view. I said, “Opinions about that might vary . . . but I guess it’s fast enough. I’ve always liked boats, too.” I pointed to the 37-foot Marlow that sat prettily, with its dark blue hull and white trim, moored on the opposite side of the dock. “I live on that one.”
“Really? I’ve never met anybody who lived on a boat before. I bet it’s nice. Can I see inside?”
“Not if your daddy’s in a rush. Come back, though, and I’ll take you for a ride. Maybe we could even fish a little—as long as it’s okay with your mother. Better yet, invite her along.”
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