Cutting Loose in Paradise

by Mary Jane Ryals

  “That could cause a lot of trouble,” Jackson said. “That could get any number of people upset.”

  “The video caused a stir. Fishermen began to stand up and say, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, I’m having trouble breathing,’ or ‘I have chemical burns I don’t know how to treat,’ or ‘I don’t know how I’m going to pay the rent this month without an income if I’m sick.’ ” He was nodding.

  “She sounds like someone who didn’t fit the standard female role down here,” Jackson said. “But Laura’s not exactly a prototype either.”

  “What the hell ever,” I said. “It got BP to our community and setting up a clinic for anyone who needed chemical testing or counseling.” I wondered if he thought I was a St. Annes prototype. Like Mary, for example, eccentric, crazy. Meeting my family would put the nail in that coffin.

  “Who did Trina do accounts for?” he asked. I didn’t know. “And how about Mac?” he said. “Who doesn’t like him? Customers? Bad business deals? Anyone at the capitol?” I shook my head no. We passed the Stewards’ place where the pinto and palomino stood out front warming their sleek bodies. I loved the swamps, home. The sun had begun to relax my tense muscles.

  “Okay, I’ll check Mac’s history,” Jackson said. “You seem to know most residents around here. Why don’t you listen out for anything unusual. Find out who does business with whom around here, underground or above.”

  “Yeah. Everybody,” I said sulky. “Lawmakers in Tallahassee, in the whole greedy state. And builders, big business, all those people.”

  “Fletch Lutz. What kind of business does Mac have? Or Fletch, for example?”

  “I don’t know. They buy and sell boats and real estate. The two have a small enterprise downtown. They take turns being captain and boating folks out on a pontoon. They charge too much, let tourists walk on an abandoned island where the pelicans and ospreys, turtles and frogs, poisonous and non-poisonous snakes are trying to survive.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “Have you taken that boat ride?”

  “Of course not,” I said with scorn. “Locals can borrow a boat any time to go out on any island of their choice.” He didn’t let scorn ruffle him.

  “Is this the place?” He slowed at the Panther Pit sign with the two stone horses at the gate.

  “Sorry,” I said, a general Southern ‘I’m sorry’ that’s supposed to cover everything: Sorry I’m bitching at you, sorry for bad directions, sorry for slavery, sorry sorry, sorry. The British are sorry, too, I noticed while there on scholarship as an undergrad. If you bump into an English person, they say ‘Sorry.’ I went into a slight panic as we slowed to turn into the family property.

  “Sorry, yeah, turn in right here, and realize it’s nothing fancy. Sorry. And please don’t tell Dad I’m the leading suspect. And don’t tell him—anything. He’s got heart trouble.”

  Jackson shook his head, a one-sided smile on his face. The man knew a high-strung Southern woman when he heard one. That alone earned him a few points.

  We turned in and drove straight to the pine cabin, to the right of the entrance. He stopped the car and looked around the twenty acres including the water, which sat in the middle of the property, two acres of spring-fed pond. All around pines, cedars, and scrub oaks grew. A meadow sat between Dad’s and Grandma’s places. Across the pond, the woods stretched for miles into pine forest. The water held a clarity that made the colors aqua and bright green. Lime rock made water look dazzling.

  “Wow. This is the prettiest place on the west coast of Florida,” Jackson said. Oh, boy, wait till you see Grandma’s trailer, I thought. I did cherish the property, or I wouldn’t be working so hard to pay the mortgage. We climbed out of the car, and Dad met us at the screen door. Jackson stuck out his hand immediately and introduced himself to Dad, who slowly opened the squeaky screen door and stared at Jackson’s feet. “Nice boots,” he said. I’d forgotten Dad’s affection for boots and hadn’t noticed Jackson’s shoes. Since Dad had grown up on the reservation herding cows, where boots counted, he liked Jackson straight up, no matter what I thought of the guy. Dad offered us soup and grilled cheese for lunch.

  “That’s okay, Dad, we just ate,” I said. We shuffled onto the big porch that looked out on the pond. It shaded us not just with roof, but also with Virginia creeper vines climbing up and down every screen. The leaves now had turned red and yellow, and we could watch them falling off the trees as the wind gusted through. As a kid, I had slept on the porch in late fall after all the fierce no-see-um bugs, who could squeeze through screen holes and bite, had died off for the season. I could listen for hours to the whippoorwills across the pond. I’d dream to the frog songs and an occasional alligator growl. These sounds were a comfort.

  The porch furniture included old metal patio sitters and four green wooden rockers. We gravitated towards the rockers, pulling the wool blankets on the backs of the chairs over our shoulders. Dad leaned down and turned on the electric heater by our feet. The weather had grown too severe for porch sleeping this year. Dad made three cups of tea, and we settled in to talk.

  “You were at the wedding reception last night, right Mr. Panther?” Jackson asked. Dad nodded, looking confused. “I just need to ask you a few questions. I assume you don’t know that Mac Duncan was poisoned there, do you?”

  “No. Didn’t know.” Daddy looked my direction.

  I shrugged.

  “How about that. Did he live?” Dad was still looking at me for cues about what to say.

  With that, I couldn’t take sitting around and listening. “I’ll go untie the boat and get the oars,” I said to Jackson. “It’s okay, Daddy. He’s safe.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the boat rope sat wound in my lap as the boat floated in the water. Jackson hadn’t showed up, and I’d grown tired of squinting at the sun flashing diamonds off water. I decided to warn Grandma Happy that Jackson would pay her a visit next and why. I threw the rope back over the dock post and wandered to her trailer.

  “There you are,” she said, standing with her billowy and multicolored Seminole skirt and the necklaces piled high on her neck. Striking woman. This always surprised me about her. TV was blaring. “Come in. Too cold out there.” Once we were settled in her sagging sofa, Grandma said, “Did it work?”

  “Did what work?” I was irritated with her, but it wasn’t as if she could know about what was poisonous and what the antidote for that poison was.

  “The tea. Protect you?”

  “Well, yes and no, Grandma.”

  “Huh?” she said, so I turned down the TV. I proceeded to tell the whole story of how Mac was poisoned by a cup of coffee I gave him, and that now I was the prime suspect in the crime. And that an investigator at Dad’s would talk to her next. And that the detective knew the tea Grandma had given me was the antidote.

  She gave a high-pitched belly laugh. She was tough. She had taken everything that came her way and had survived anyway.

  “So the tea saved you.” She grinned, and the gaps where her teeth used to be showed. Then she laughed again. “The fancy policeman’s gonna try to take an old Indian lady to jail?” She chuckled again and shook her head. “I told you it was a day of opposites. You didn’t believe me. You don’t listen to your Granny.” She shook her head and then sat still. “You need to step in that man’s shoes.”

  “What man’s shoes?” I said.

  “Policeman’s shoes. You have the know-how. He’s a match.”

  “A match?”

  “A pair. Not opposites, a match. You do it together.”

  “Do what?” I said, frowning.

  “You know the answer to that, not me.”

  “I’m trying, Grandma,” I said. “I’m trying to get him to find the person who poisoned Mac, but you’re not really helping. So this investigator. He’s coming over here, but don’t tell him too much, okay?”

  She leaned over into me. “Indians been fooling white men for centuries. Don’t you worry about me.” She stood with a cou
ple of ouches and ooches. She walked slowly over to the pot boiling on the stove. “Want some tea?”

  “No, Grandma! And don’t offer him one of your remedies. He’ll think you’re a witch or something.”

  Grandma turned around pointing with the wooden spoon in her hand and said, “He thinks that, that’s his problem. I’m gonna make you some kava. Or maybe a new recipe, chamomile and lavender. Passionflower. You need to relax.” So she made herbal tea and offered ginger cookies while we watched “Sponge Bob Square Pants.” The cartoon entertained Grandma to no end. I caught her up on the kids, avoiding anything that might make her want to create a new tea.

  Finally, Jackson and Daddy came pounding on the door. Jackson acted a little reverential towards Grandma, bowing and saying what an honor to meet an Indian, which she used to her advantage, bossing him around. She pointed to the lumpy sofa.

  “Sit over there next to your partner,” she said, pointing in my direction. I moaned. Jackson did as he was told. Grandma went on. “Maybe I should be an investigator. I know things.” Jackson gave me a half smile.

  “Mrs. Panther?” he said. “I assume?” He looked at me and said, “Matrilineal culture, right? Children take the mother’s name, so hers is Panther?” I nodded, surprised he knew.

  “That’s me,” she said, sitting in the rocker. “What do you want to know?”

  Dad sat in the easy chair, winked at me, and then latched onto Sponge Bob’s dilemma of the day.

  Jackson launched into what had happened the night before. All but the accusations against me. “And I have a few questions I need to ask you, Mrs. Panther, because the tea LaRue says you gave her kept her from getting sick.”

  “That Mary is crazy. She lives with them two brothers,” Grandma said out of the blue. “Bad brothers. That one man named after a turtle,” she said, “Cooter. A turtle name. Indians don’t like white people taking Indian names. They’s better names than Cooter, anyway. Panther or water or tiger names.” Jackson looked at me. Jackson had not mentioned Mary’s name. I shrugged.

  Jackson cleared his throat. “Did you know anything about Mac Duncan’s being poisoned, Mrs. Panther?” he asked.

  “No. It was a day of opposites. I made the tea the Little People told me to make for my grandchild, LaRue. She needs a lot of strength, raising those two kids alone. Working. By herself. I do what I can.”

  “Little people?” Jackson said. I groaned, louder this time.

  “The Little People.” She walked to the window and pointed outside. “They likes the pine trees best. Sometimes they is mischievous, sometimes they helps.”

  “Do you see them?” Jackson said.

  “Oh, sometimes. But mostly I hears them. Something bad in the water out here. They telling me. Killing everybody here. People needs to honor the water. Thank it for being there for us. It’s more gold than gold.”

  I stood up, embarrassed. “I’ll see you when you’re done with your anthropological study, Jackson,” I said. “I’ll be at the boat, waiting.”

  “Damn,” I said when I got to the dock where Daddy had followed me. I didn’t usually curse in front of my father. “Grandma’s on one of her tears, this time about honoring water and the Little People and—”

  “Honey, she’s who she is,” he said. “And that man, he’s okay. He’s honest, I think. Hard to find these days.” We walked to the boat.

  “I know you’re a suspect,” he said. “And I know you didn’t want me worrying. But I need to know things like this. I can find work if you’re concerned about the payments. I’d work at the Seven-Eleven,” he said. Then he contradicted himself. “Just wish I could work.” He’d retired from the gunpowder plant five years ago. His doctor up in Tallahassee was emphatic. The stress was getting to his heart.

  “No, you don’t need to work,” I said. “I just hope they find out who poisoned Mac soon. Need to get to the bottom of things.” The mid-afternoon was warming us on the rickety wooden dock. A bass blooped on the surface of the water. An osprey swooped in, over and back across the pond, eyeing the water for fish. I sat down and said, “Whatever she’s saying to Jackson, I just have to hope he’ll accept Grandma as she is.”

  “That’s my girl.” Dad put his hands in his pockets, turned, and walked back to his place. I stretched out on the dock. What was our town coming to, that someone would try to kill the guy who invited them to a party and then frame some innocent person there. Eventually, I just tried to think about nothing.

  When Jackson came out to the dock, his footsteps vibrated down the walkway. He held one Miami Dolphins baseball cap and one that said Just Fishin’. He was grinning. “You’ve got the coolest family.” He walked the dock to stand next to where I lay and handed me a hat. “And your grandma wants us to wear these.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” I said. “My ex told me how bizarre Grandma was, so just don’t.” I sat up, put on the hat and glared.

  “I’m not patronizing you. Your family’s feisty. They’re doing what most of us wish we had the wisdom and acceptance to do. No pretentions. It’s refreshing.” He shook his head and put his hat on. I sighed.

  “They don’t have any money,” I said. Still, I was grateful a city guy appreciated this simplicity. We stepped into the small rowboat. I sat in front, holding a paddle, and he in back with the other paddle. We weren’t rowing anywhere, this was just a cruise around the pond.

  We let the boat glide us to the center of the pond, the boat’s movement lifting us from so much gravity. Gliding like birds in air. I leaned over and scooped up the cold water and splashed my face. Neither of us moved much for a long time. Bass swam near the surface, swam away. The smallest breezes passed through the pines.

  “I haven’t relaxed like this in forever,” he said.

  “Well, you have a secure job and aren’t a suspect in a crime.”

  “Would you lighten up?” he said.

  “Have you ever been the lead suspect in a crime of poisoning? Or seen a dead woman’s real cause of death when everybody in control is lying about it?” I was muttering in complaint, but the smell of mud and earth, the fresh scent of pine and rainwater, the mineral hint of lime-rock pond did lift me.

  “No, I’ve not. But I’ve seen plenty.”

  “Like what?”

  “My mother,” he said. “She had a terrible drinking problem after my dad died. She lived a few blocks from me in Tallahassee. She’d set the house alarm, then forget, and walk out and back in, setting off the alarm. The cops were forever coming to rescue her from herself,” he said. “Eventually, they threatened to Baker Act her. I had to put her in a home. She died of a heart attack the day after she was admitted.”

  “I’m sorry. That sounds—really hard,” I said, turning to glance at him. He stared into the water.

  Then he looked over at the woods. “It was. Is that where the alligator lives?” He pointed toward the piney woods.

  “The alligator mama and her babies.”

  “Whew,” he said. “I’ve had to track down some dangerous people in dangerous places, but never an alligator mother.” He half-smiled and adjusted his hat. “Once I was investigating this heist in Miami for the Herald—that’s the paper where I started my career. Suddenly, I’m on Atlantic Avenue at the end of South Beach back in the day, when Miami was called the murder capital of the country. Before they cleaned up Miami Beach. Remember that time?”

  “Oh, yeah. Blood and guts capital, we fondly named it,” I said.

  “And I’m walking,” he said. He was gesturing now, and the boat began to sway back and forth. “And suddenly there’s this car, a black limo, speeding down the street my way. From every window of the limo a machine gun is sticking out.” The boat was swaying wildly now. “It sounded like small bombs going off, one after another, the gunfire. Somehow I had the sense to lie down just as the limo was passing me, so I didn’t get hit.”

  “Wow.” I held onto the side of the boat. He hadn’t noticed the swaying boat, so caught up in his story. “Scary.
Did anybody die?”

  “Five people,” he said, grim and sitting still, resting the paddle on his legs now. The boat slowed its sway. “All innocent. Just—” he shrugged and swallowed, “going about their day. Two kids.” He sighed. The osprey floated high over the pond, coasting, surveying for food. Something in the day shifted. We’d passed mid-afternoon.

  “Sorry,” I said. I supposed journalists and investigators lived in a war zone of sorts. We went quiet. A breeze came up and turned into wind. The clouds moved in like a heavy smoke, so we paddled back to the dock and tied up. Grandma was sleeping when I walked over, so we told Dad goodbye.

  We drove down the county road, where on either side we passed the salt grasses, tolerant of tidal flooding and salinity. The home and food of so many wild animals. The swamp thistle was in bloom, bold purple with wicked thorns. They didn’t like being touched, and they let human skin know it by biting back with those thorns.

  Nature can level anyone, in good and bad ways. I had a new respect for Jackson because he seemed to know this. I hoped nature had the power Grandma believed it did. She said it would always come back, even stronger sometimes, from human ways. I wondered where we fit into that picture on the Gulf.

  Jackson reached over and pinched my elbow slightly. “Relax,” he said, his eyes amused. I shrugged and looked away. My stomach flipped. What was I to do with this feeling I had falling over me? His decisions would be killing my business. And I still liked him.

  My mind wandered. I was figuring already when I’d call people about their haircuts. Maybe I could get Madonna to let me sub for her some nights at the bar. And maybe Mac would let me clean his condos. If he didn’t think I had tried to poison him. And who left that plant on my stoop?

  Jackson Woodard parked and walked me upstairs to the door again. He gave me a long gaze. He seemed to be struggling with something.