But that was the mock. The turtle proved to be a pair of siege gates—beamed and barred and sparred and overpowering and over there, and reaching away on each side a great bank—the thirty-five-foot levee a hundred and fifty miles long that kept back the inland sea, so it did not overflow again and kill us all.
Port Mayaca lock, said Monica into the VHF, Port Mayaca lock, narrowboat Phyllis May requesting lockage.
Fizz fizz squawk, said the VHF, fizzy fart, wroosh wroosh spit, and we eased forward into the throat of the lock. The gates began to open and through them was the lake, a white hole in the side of the world.
The fizzers and wrooshers—three Good Ole Boys—came out of their cabin as we passed the seaward end of the lock and stood thirty feet above us—Did you make it yourself?
As we are in America the query was without irony. No, I shouted, it's an English narrowboat—first one to sail in the US.
Now y'all take care out there, shouted the Good Ole Boys, and waved.
You bet your asses, Good Ole Boys, I thought. I wonder if they were trying to warn me? They looked as if they would have liked to tell us something.
It was eight in the morning and the sun had come up somewhere else and the fog had lit up and the water was smooth and white. On each side high poles and on each pole a pelican, following us sideways with his eyes, looking sad—they would have liked to go fishing but they couldn't see where to go.
Neither could I—there was no up, no down, no in, no out, no forward, no back, only the whiteness—the whiteness and the nostrils.
THE NOSTRILS WERE A FOOT APART AND THERE were black bumps a couple of feet behind them that I took for the eyebrows, and six feet behind that the tips of a dragon crest. Monica ran along the gunwale and got behind me on the tiller, lest she would be snatched off the boat and tossed into the air and caught square in the jaws and then the twisting and the drowning. I headed away and the nostrils sank into the lake, rather slowly.
I could still see the shadow of the lock behind me but ahead just cotton wool above and white satin below. On the GPS screen there was the beetle boat and the route across the Okeechobee marked with the magenta line, my tightrope across the inland sea. The beetle boat was square across the line—I was heading north instead of west. I had to get straightened up and moving before the wind came up and overwhelmed us—we needed action. I leaned on the Morse handle and the prop seized the water and I rushed on, round and round, in circles.
The trouble was that the beetle boat on the screen was ten seconds behind me—when I turned it turned too, but later. I suppose it had to send a message to its satellite in outer space and then wait for it to come back. And the screen was small—only four inches—a tiny coloured diagram of a large white world. I was overreacting to the image on the screen and the boat would touch a straight course and then head off the other way and I had to pull it back and I pulled too far and so I was crossing the line this way and then that and lucky not to lose it altogether. When I had used the GPS before I could always see something real to steady my hand—here when I looked up there was nothing—the lock had melted and I was adrift in whiteness, swimming through nothing.
I was scared but too busy to worry. I had to get control quickly—we would be lucky to get across at all if this went on—I must be doing three times the necessary distance—and by the time we got into the middle of the lake the wind would have come up, and the Okeechobee would have us in its jaws.
I kept working with the tiller and the screen and by slowing my reactions I stabilized the path of the boat. We still wandered, but in slow curves, and were a little way out into the lake already. At least it's calm, I thought—let's take it one at a time—let's get to the first daymark, seven miles out. Monica came up from the saloon—You are on your way, she said—I can see you on my laptop.
All we need is a belt to break or dirt in the fuel or the GPS satellite to stiff I thought and we are buggered, literally. But what can I do—we are committed—we have to blast on and hope that this little screen keeps telling us where we are in our cotton-wool universe. I tried to get some more revs out of the engine. I hope Colonel Frank was right—he said you could sail at night with one of these, and that's what we are doing—sailing in a night of white satin—flying blind.
I wasn't frightened now but rather thought I should have been. The first daymark was more than an hour away but the time passed quickly as I worked the screen and the tiller.
I saw the mark sooner than I expected—we had visibility of a couple of hundred yards now, but since there was nothing to see I had not known that. Anyway there it is, bless its little red triangle. As I saw it my course stabilized—a few precious minutes of normal sailing.
Look at the chart—my word we are a long way out into the lake now—I hope it stays calm, I hope it stays calm. Perhaps the mist will keep the wind down—at least it shows there is not much wind about. The boat moved a few inches sideways and I nearly jumped off the back counter—it's the wind getting up, it's the killer chop—but the sea was almost still. We passed the daymark and were back in our white night.
This was the decisive part of the crossing—if we could make the next daymark seven miles on we would be into the system of marks leading us along the channel to Clewiston, and nearer to the shore with less room for the chop to build up. Keep the revs hammering—God bless the engineers of Bordeaux who marinized this engine, thank heaven for the little GPS—don't worry, don't let fear stiffen your reactions—every turn of the prop gets us nearer safety. Oh, I'm losing the course and heading south—back on the line, steady now, steady.
The lake was staying calm and I was beginning to feel we could make it, and began to enjoy the warm mist and the pearly water and the little beetle going ahead in tiny steps. Even the attack by flies did not affect my mood—or the antlike creatures running over my jacket and across the GPS screen and shitting on it.
I was no longer surprised by American wildlife—I knew that every ecological niche was full of something dreadful—even the niche occupied by frightened Welshmen trying to cross an inland sea in fog has its special parasites and bearers of venom and disease, lying in wait—Here we are lads, here he comes—it's the Welshman on his boat—our time is here!
Have they flown out of the mist, I wondered, or did they lie in wait under the flower pots on the roof? There are all different sorts of them, but they are not biting me—oh goodness me there's the second daymark—we are two thirds across!
We had reached the marks heading into Clewiston, and Monica took over—You horrible old man, covered in flies—where did all these nasty little insects come from? Look, they are running all over you—don't let them get on Jim, they might bite him.
I had been on the tiller nearly three hours. Now the mist cleared and the wind got up but we were near the shore, and soon Monica was steering us through the wilderness of marsh grass and into the open lock out of the lake.
We had made it—we had beaten the terrible Okeechobee, and we had done it on our own, and there was only the Gulf of Mexico left and even if we went down in the Gulf we would still have made the end of our journey. A great peace came upon me, and I looked over my shoulder for a last sight of the lake.
My God, Monica, I said, look at that!
A tower of cloud, a black and grey continent of cloud, wider than the Florida peninsula, more vast than the inferno when the oil tanks at Pembroke Dock went up in the war. Billow upon billow, each curve and eddy defined by the sun, bursting upward and upward—an Oppenheimer catastrophe moving across the lake towards us.
I am become death, the destroyer of worlds
CLEWISTON MARINA WAS A VERY RELAXED place, with mobile homes parked in rows in the grass and agricultural machines standing about and a little motel and notices saying Richard's Rattlers, and Charlie's Worms. There was a floating pontoon, and a Tiki Bar ten feet above us, and a café and a restaurant and a marine store and good showers and a dockmaster called Little Man. He was not that little but you
knew he was called Little Man because it was in letters a foot high on his back and each time he saw you he would say They call me Little Man, and I'm having a great time!
Little Man had bright blue eyes and they were crossed like mine but you knew he was smiling in your general direction and he could tie a rope to a cleat by snapping his wrist from six feet away and I had never seen that before.
There was no wireless connection for our laptops at Clewiston but it seemed like our sort of place and we decided the world could do without us for a few days.
There were only seventy miles left to Fort Myers, and all the great crossings had been made. We marked our traversée blanche of the lake by singing an old Seminole chant, and dancing around the saloon with Jim, who howled rather out of tune.
You put your whole self in, your whole self out–
In out, in out, you shake it all about.
You do the Okeechobee and you turn around—
That's what it's all about.
Whoa-o—the Okeechobee,
Whoa-o—the Okeechobee,
Whoa-o—the Okeechobee,
That's what it's all about.
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN GRAND TO BREAKFAST next morning off the little silvery slippery guys around the quay, but I lacked the skill and anyway Charlie's Worms was shut. So an American breakfast to go from the café—fresh pancakes, eggs, crispy bacon, sausages, maple syrup, coffee. Here's your silverware said the old lady at the counter, giving me a plastic knife and fork in a paper napkin.
Carrying our meal back to the boat—there in the yard was a Great White Egret. She was tall and graceful, her eyes heavily made up with green, and thin black legs and feet that spread out to hold her steady, each spider toe six inches long. She was beautiful, and she was kinda eyeing me. I went closer but she backed away. No, I have had no egrets.
In the bar that evening Little Man was incognito—he had put on an embroidered jacket without sleeves and he came up to me on my stool and put his arm round me. Perhaps he felt we stood more chance if we faced as one the level gaze of a hostile world. We both coughed lightly in the haze and looked north, as best either of us could look in any particular direction.
I don't know what a Tiki Bar is supposed to be, apart from a bar, but it is usually a shed without walls, so we could see the whole expanse of the catastrophe in the sky from one horizon to the other. It's fire, said Little Man—forty thousand acres of it, up the north end of the lake. It's not meant, but it happens and it's part of the cycle of trees and vegetation and things.
I suppose our mist and fog on the lake was partly smoke, I said. We could have been lost or suffocated or eaten by ants. But the insects were fleeing the fire—that's why they were different types of little insect, and why they did not bite me. They were refugees. Always something new in the Land of the Free, plenty of surprises on the narrowboat Phyllis May.
It will take them a month to put it out, said Little Man. Did I tell you I used to be a cowboy?
NEXT EVENING IN THE TIKI BAR A BAND WAS tuning up, and after a while the lead singer and the two other guitars and the keyboards and the drummer set off into a tale about a Louisiana Saturday night, involving a single-shot rifle and a one-eyed dog.
It was not a tight band—more a group of well-meaning people planning to stay as far as they could in the same key. As most country tunes are based on a similar chord sequence and are at dance tempo, the band sounded better than you might expect. When we closed all the windows the music was at just the right level, with a slight intensification of the bass notes, which wandered around the beat and from time to time closed on it, arriving just before the drummer.
An ideal moment for a Dogfish Head IPA. To show that I bear no malice about the trash offered as beer in the Home of the Brave I would report that Dogfish Head IPA is as tasty a brew as has graced the inside of a brown bottle. It seems to be available only in the biggest supermarkets, and I haven't seen much of it south of the Carolinas. It should be sold by law in every bar and restaurant in the Union, and in every wig shop and nail bar.
They have cold rooms in the big supermarkets full of nothing but beer. I am often to be found inside them, showing early signs of exposure. One day I was pulling out a couple of cases of Dogfish Head 60—6 per cent. A geezer came up—Nothing wrong with the 60, he said, but the 90—that's the one.
He had five cases in his trolley and looked in good shape for someone who drank beer with 9 per cent alcohol. I bought a case and it was OK but the alcohol rather dimmed the taste of the hops, and two Dogfish Head 90s that night dimmed everything else and Monica had to wake me up to go to bed. You really don't need more than the Dogfish 60—the hops alone can give you hallucinations.
Anyway this evening I settled down with a free magazine I had picked up in the marina store, a 60 at my lips. The magazine comes from Tampa, Florida. It is called Full Throttle, and I commend it to you. It is full of young women with full breasts and empty eyes, lying on Harley-Davidsons, often backwards, and huge men in leathers with bald heads, and obituaries for bikers recently passed over to the other side of the carriageway. There were advertisements for lawyers, mainly lovely young women on motorbikes, who specialize in injury and wrongful death cases, offering in-home and hospital appointments. There are pictures of customized bikes—art at its most high—and tattoos with humming colours, and calendars of events including co-ordination with Hooters restaurants and biker church and treasure hunts and of course cole slaw wrestling, always a big one with the Florida Bikers.
And jokes—
A southern biker was visiting a Yankee relative in Boston over the holidays. He went to a large party and met a pretty co-ed. He was attempting to start up a conversation with the line—Where does you go to school?
The co-ed, of course, was not overly impressed with his grammar or southern drawl, but being polite she did answer his question. Yale, she replied.
The biker gave her a strange look and took a big deep breath and shouted—WHERE DOES YOU GO TO SCHOOL?
I don't get it, said Monica, and then she did and laughed. Let's go up to the Tiki Bar for a drink and a meal, she said—Gulfstream Rose doesn't feel like cooking tonight.
IN THE BAR THE BAND WAS AT FULL THROTTLE and there was a Dancing Dick. He was tall and slim, with a seventies afro hairstyle and spectacles and a tartan shirt. He was white—everyone was white. He was jumping up and down on the spot and jerking his arms and kicking up his knees. He looked awful. There were others dancing but the Dancing Dick had centre stage. The funny thing was that he seemed to know what he was doing, and only an athlete could keep jumping like that for ten minutes. He had a partner some of the time, and each knew what to expect of the other. Most of the others on the floor were dancing like normal civilized people, but some were doing rather the same sort of dance as the Dick. My God, Monica, I said, I think he means to dance that way—it must be a local dance—do you think he is doing the Shag?
Shagging was an important part of southern culture (stop sniggering that boy) during the depression in the thirties, when there wasn't much else to do, and in 1984 the Shag was named as the official dance of the state of South Carolina. At the end of the set the Dancing Dick had gone, no doubt for a shower and a massage and some isotonic drinks and a bit of stretching and a day in bed.
One old big man and two young big men made room for us at the bar and I tried to attract the barman, who was talking to a girl a few feet away. After ten minutes I penetrated his consciousness and he came over—I'm off duty, he said, but I'll serve you.
Very kind, I said, and the barman smiled.
It is easier in some ways to live in a society without irony.
I am Burl, said the old big man. This is Merle, my nephew, and that is Carl, his friend. I worked in real estate with my father who became very rich. I can afford to come down from Michigan, where there is six feet of snow, and stay in my condominium here in Clewiston, and drink all night in the open air. I have been much blessed. All my life I have followe
d Jesus, and taken with thanks what He has seen fit to grant me.
Merle his nephew came to look over the balcony at the Phyllis May ten feet below. I'll call in tomorrow and have a proper look, he said.
No he won't, said Burl, he's drinking tonight. He won't be up all day.
Carl his friend was about twenty. He was as big as the rest of us put together and had a baby face and a camouflage hat. I've always wanted to go to Europe, he said. I've always wanted to go to Amsterdam. But my hobby is watching videos and I saw this film. In Amsterdam they find out you are American and then they drug you then they cut off your legs and cut out your eyes and torture you to death.
I've been to Amsterdam quite a lot, I said, and I must say I have never been tortured there myself.
But I'm American—there's the Iraq war—everyone hates us.
Sixty years ago the Dutch were starving, I said, and your air force dropped food. People haven't forgotten Operation Manna, and if they have you can remind them.
I understand you can have a good ole naughty time in Amsterdam, said Carl, apart from the torture.
They have cafés, I said, where they don't mind what you smoke.
I like a smoke, said Carl. I'm not a criminal or anything—some people think I am a wicked criminal because of my camouflage hat, but I'm just a guy who likes a joint after work. What about the prostitutes—I believe they are in shop windows?
That's true, I said.
How much would it cost to have a prostitute in Amsterdam?
I'm afraid I don't know.
If I took five thousand dollars would that give me a good time?
Oh I think so, I said.
Oh I think so, said Monica.
I would take my mother, said Carl. We are always together. You must watch The Hostel, the film about the torturing. And have you seen National Lampoon's European Vacation? And Deuce Bigalow, European Gigolo? They tell you all about Europe.
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