Mangrove Lightning

by Randy Wayne White

  Barlow didn’t have to think. He knew. There was something he wanted to discuss.

  A little after six, they were staked off Black Betsy Keys where a crevice of sand crossed the shallows. Leopard rays had lured enough bonefish within range that Barlow put down his fly rod and got to it. “You might be the one person Gracie will listen to. She’d be dead if you hadn’t jumped in, and she knows it. You know what I’m worried about, don’t you?”

  Ford said, “The court arraignment. If she doesn’t change her story, they might set bail for Lambeth and he’ll walk, depending on how much evidence they have in the other cases. Probably keep walking, if someone’s dumb enough to post it. Or, is it that other thing?”

  “Between me and Gracie?”

  “It crossed my mind,” Ford said to keep the man talking.

  “That bothers me, too, what she and her so-called boyfriend did. I could use it against her, I suppose, tell Gracie I’ll go to the police if she helps that prick again. Hate to do it. She’s family, you know? But her mother’s near ’bout had a nervous breakdown.” He got up, intending to say more, then realized Ford had been trolling for information. “I’ll be damned. Tomlinson didn’t tell you what she did, did he?”

  “Just that he arranged a meeting and your niece admitted something she feels guilty about. Confessed, I think was the word. No details. But if you want me to talk to Gracie, don’t you think I should know the whole story?”

  The old man needed time to decide. He wore sleeves, fishing gloves, and a face stocking to keep off the sun. He pulled it down to his mouth and studied an area to the northwest. “That squall’s got some fire in it, but we’re okay for now.”

  “Every afternoon,” the biologist said patiently.

  “How do you like her so far?” Meaning this skiff, with its teak trim, wooden ribs, and strakes that breathed in a rough sea. The deck was white, the hull polished jade.

  “Impressive,” Ford said.

  “It’s a lot more doodadded up than my old one, but she’ll plane on dew and track true as cable. The builder—Willy Roberts—he used to say, ‘Until someone brings me a fiberglass tree, I’ll stick with wood.’ A purist, you know? He made some damn fine boats before he passed. That was in ’93. I remember because he’d just started my second skiff, a low freeboard twenty. His son, Myrnice, had to finish ’er up. Now that Willy’s grandkids are building boats again, I like to stop by. Makes us both feel good. Say”—Barlow moved aft, still very nimble—“how about we run north? There’s another spot I want you to see.”

  Ford, smiling, said, “Gracie will expect me to know, Tootsie. I’m pretty good at keeping secrets, too.”

  The man’s attention turned inward while he got under way, him standing at the wheel, the biologist sitting to his left. A quiet four-stroke Merc made it easy to talk, yet not a word about Gracie until the north shore of Florida Bay, in the mangroves where the water was red as whiskey.

  “Do you think she’s telling the truth about that guy or lying to save his ass? I should have known the moment I laid eyes on him he’s Walter Lambeth’s spawn. Bastard. Gracie was a good kid until she met him.”

  The engine was off, the boat staked within range of a pool where the tide eddied, but no fish thus far. Ford said, “Tomlinson believes she’s convinced it wasn’t him. Either way, she’s wrong. Tell me something. She went missing the day they stopped by your cabin. What did you talk about?”

  “This and that. Family, mostly, and the bad luck we’d been having. It wasn’t comfortable talking with that overgrown skunk listening in, him sitting there with his attitude and freak show tattoos. I remember thinking that Gracie was nervous, which wasn’t normal. Now, since we had our private talk, I understand better.”

  “You two have always been close?”

  “Closer than most uncles and nieces, and there’s a reason for that.” Barlow backed up to when his niece was a child, saying how sweet she was, fairly good grades, but a big girl prone to pudginess, which was why, years ago, he’d laid down the law with the girl’s teachers about no more bullying on the playground. After that, Gracie had turned to him if there was trouble. Her father was a shiftless drunk, either following construction jobs or in jail, which is why her mother had never taken his name.

  “Gracie’d call every now and again. I could always tell if there was something wrong, or if it was just to talk. She doesn’t have enough tomboy in her to like fishing, but if she saw my picture in a magazine, she got a big kick out of it. Like this one time she was getting her teeth cleaned and the dentist says to her, ‘My god, Captain Tootsie Barlow’s your uncle?’ You know, like I was famous. She couldn’t wait to call. It meant a lot to her, I think, what with her family situation. But girls change when they get into their teens, so I hadn’t heard from her in a year or so, then that first funeral come along. It was February. Us Barlows are spread all over the state, but we’re still family when it comes to burying our dead.”

  He talked about that, a cousin killed by lightning, and an RV fire that took his grandson’s wife. Then a month ago, there’d almost been another funeral after his nephew’s truck hit a tree—a blown tire, the police were now convinced.

  “Gracie came to both but fell off the chart after the second funeral. She acted different, too. The Lambeth guy wasn’t there, and she didn’t mention a boyfriend, but that had to be it. Is Slaten his real name or did he lie about that, too?”

  Barlow waited for confirmation, then continued, “I didn’t meet him until a month ago, when the two of them showed up out of the blue. The first time I’m talking about, not the day she disappeared. I almost didn’t recognize Gracie because of the way he had her painted up like some . . . I won’t use the word. First thing I said to her was, ‘Those damn things aren’t permanent, are they?’ The conversation sort of went downhill from there.”

  Ford asked about the RV fire and the truck accident, more interested in Barlow’s reaction than the details. Then asked, “Why did they stop by twice? Not the reason she gave, but why do you think? That cabin’s not easy to get to.”

  The cabin was the reason. Everyone in the family knew the feds would take the property unless one of them made it their legal residence. On their second visit, that was Gracie’s offer: she and Slaten would get married, move in, and even pay a little rent, if Tootsie would convince her mother to sign a consent form. She was underage, but marrying a forty-year-old husband would satisfy federal requirements. A win-win all around.

  Except for one thing.

  “First time I laid eyes on the guy, I smelled trouble. It wasn’t just the tattoos or his age. It was the smooth way he had of making his ideas come out of Gracie’s mouth. He’d nudge the conversation this way or that, depending on what he wanted her to say. He tried the same with me. Of course, I didn’t know he was a Lambeth at the time, so some of what he said seemed to make sense. They both knew I wanted to move back onto the Keys, so he played that card, and a couple of others. You know, to convince me.”

  Ford, making eye contact, asked, “Is that why they futzed the tire on your nephew’s truck?”

  Barlow looked away.

  “I don’t expect you to answer, Tootsie, but here’s what I think happened. Slaten wanted the cabin property for himself, so he tracked Gracie down. Probably took a few days to figure out her habits, and how to work it once he realized she was an easy target for a guy like him. Your niece told him about you, that you’re a religious man, or maybe what was written in your family Bible. That’s a guess, but Slaten is a sociopath. They have to be shrewd or they don’t survive long. He hoped another dead relative would convince you to wash your hands of the whole business, so he duped her into helping. Now he’s got something on your niece. And he had something else—your family Bible—until it burned. Did Tomlinson tell you what he found?”

  “This morning,” Barlow said. “Some worthless Lambeth bastard threw it in the furnace
. My god, all that family history gone.”

  “Slaten did it. He broke into your cabin for a reason. You know it was him, right?”

  The old fishing guide suddenly looked older. “Doc, you haven’t said anything that hasn’t gone through my mind a hundred times. Today, though? This might be my last chance to fish with a fine skiff under my feet. Mind if I just enjoy—” He stopped and stiffened like a setter. “We got a school of reds coming. Look’a there. See the silt? They’re working their way to a little patch of oysters uptide, but they’ll turn soon enough.”

  A creek eddied into this shallow pocket circled with mangroves, a glassy drop-off where a spiral of mud exited like smoke. Ford didn’t see any tails with black dots, but decided not to ask, How do you know they aren’t bonefish?

  Barlow followed the tangent anyway, which was okay. Enjoyable, in fact, to the biologist, who’d heard stories and learned some subtleties, during three stops on the trip across Florida Bay. Tern Keys, Fan Palm Hammock, and Samphire Crossing—the famous guide knew the cuts, every wheel track; had acquired so much knowledge over the decades that his memory covered the bay like a grid.

  Like now, Barlow saying, “Rainy season, reds will follow sweet water ’til their bellies bust. Bones, they want salt. Check your tippet and get ready.”

  Ford handed him the rod instead. “Your turn. Maybe it’ll improve my technique.”

  “Bushes too tight for you, huh?”

  “All I’d do is snag trees.”

  The old guide cackled like a witch, and went to work when a gang of reds began to forage their way out of the creek. He released a small one, then a ten-pounder, after Ford said, “Show me again.”

  Spey-casting, Barlow called the graceful technique he used to avoid the trees. Then took a chance by saying, “There’s a woman guide out of Captiva, I think, who can teach you better than me. Florida Sportsman did an article, so I watched her video on the computer. That woman can, by god, throw a fly.”

  Captain Hannah Smith. No need to say the name, from the look on Ford’s face.

  Tootsie did anyway, adding, “I’d sure like to meet her.”

  —

  Harold Barlow got his nickname when he quit cigarettes and took up chewing Tootsie Pops to get him over the nicotine hump. It was something he seldom thought about, but it came to mind when he threaded the cut south of Eagle Key and turned north toward Little Madeira Bay.

  Right here, almost sixty years ago, his career had started, and almost ended. His first charter out of Bud N’ Mary’s, he’d gotten a last-minute call because they’d double-booked Jimmie Albright, who, even in those days, was a big name in the field. Jimmie, a fine man and a crackerjack angler, had a stellar list of clients, wealthy folks who could make or break a newcomer if he did something really stupid.

  Young Harold Barlow had. He’d lit a cigarette just before attempting to bring a big tarpon to gaff—a two-hundred-pounder, his pissed-off clients would later claim. As he was babying the fish in, the cigarette touched the backing. Good-bye, tarpon; good-bye, one hundred feet of primo fly line; and good-bye to a possible world record.

  Christ, what a way to start.

  Jimmie also had a temper. Him and Jack Brothers ruled the flats in those days, so they’d asked the rookie dumbass why they should risk their overflow if he wasn’t serious about the trade.

  “I’ll never smoke another cigarette in my life,” he’d vowed, already chewing one of those chocolate-filled suckers that he still enjoyed, but not as much as a good cigar.

  He’d been Tootsie ever since. Not in his head, though. Not always. During private moments, especially sleepless nights, he was still Harold, a hick from the Everglades who’d rubbed elbows with the rich and famous and learned a few things along the way. Blue water or thin, fishing was damn hard work. Clients didn’t pay good money to be yelled at or treated like fools. They deserved an enjoyable day, so a smile and a good story could be as important as putting fish in the box.

  The biologist, sitting to his left, wasn’t an easy audience. Stubborn, too, especially since he’d figured out the truth about Gracie. Tootsie tried anyway, by making himself the butt of the joke regarding his first charter. It went over pretty well.

  “I’ve read what there is about the early guides,” Ford replied, “which isn’t much. Tell me how it was back then.”

  Tootsie did; talked about men who hadn’t aged a day in his memory—Buck Stark, Bill Hatch, Cecil Keith, and Earl Gentry—all out of Islamorada or Key Largo at one time or another. The stories flowed easily. Tootsie saying, “Ted Williams, the baseball player, was as good a flycaster as he was a hitter, so he tracked down Jimmie Albright. This was back when folks claimed tarpon wouldn’t hit a fly. It was all new then. What the early guides couldn’t buy, we had to invent.”

  Saltwater fly-fishing required different knots, reels with drag systems. Bamboo rods and push poles gave way to fiberglass. Shallow water required a whole different fishing etiquette than blue water. Blast the fish off a man’s flat, and the day might end in a fistfight back at the docks.

  “There were some doozies. Want to hear about the best fight I ever saw?”

  Nope. What the biologist wanted to know was, “I recognize some of the names. What happened to those men?”

  The question made Barlow feel depressed. He’d fished and been friendly with actors, sports stars, and politicians, even one American president. The same with some of the others, including Albright, who, late in life, fell on hard times but was too proud to let Ted Williams pay to have his roof fixed.

  The baseball player did it anyway.

  “They all died doing what they loved,” Tootsie replied to avoid the topic. He wanted to get back to stories he’d told twenty thousand times.

  “That history needs to be saved,” Ford said. “It might give your niece something constructive to do, you and her sitting down with a tape recorder. Better yet, have her write it all out.”

  Christ, right back on Gracie again. The temptation was to re-visit the subject of Hannah Smith until Ford, focusing on an inlet ahead, said, “This looks familiar. Is that Madeira Bay?”

  Barlow was impressed. “Little Madeira, and that cut’s the opening to Taylor Creek. Not many sportsmen get back in these parts. You know the area?”

  “I wasn’t fishing. I was with a crocodilian expert, Dr. Jim Mazzotti. This was years ago. I helped catch a couple, and Jim would mark their scutes and record the markings. We didn’t use tags. I imagine some of those crocs are still around. Hope so anyway.”

  “Saltwater crocs, I’ve seen ’em in here now and again,” Tootsie said, “but the biggest one ever? You’ll be surprised.”

  Ford was. A huge female croc had lived in Chino Hole, and Barlow claimed to have a photograph to prove it. The picture had been taken days before the animal was finally killed and skinned.

  “That was before I was born, but I never heard that she bothered anybody. Crocs tend to be shy. Now, a big gator, he’ll track your skiff. Not that he wants to eat you. The smart ones wait until you get a good fish on and then have themselves an easy meal. What that tells me is, there are too many damn boats around. Personally, a gator pulls that stunt, he needs to be put down. To hell with the rules. Think about some kid falling overboard.”

  The biologist sensed the old guide was opening up a bit. He talked about saltwater crocs he’d seen in Australia and Africa, the differences in aggressive behavior compared to the Florida variety, then circled back to the subject of Gracie. Slaten Lambeth had to be put down, too, or the girl wouldn’t live long enough to have children.

  Those words hit home, but Barlow didn’t address the issue right away. That came later, near sunset, as the tendrils of a squall angled toward them from the northwest. He swept a hand along the horizon, and said, “Back in the day, I used to think this patch of water belonged to me. Every little ambush hole I stumbled on. Fifty
-eight years, I fished these flats. Know what I finally figured out? I don’t own a damn thing. None of us do.” He nodded to the distant squall. “Us fishermen, we’re just rain crossing the bay. That’s all. But family, Doc. Family lasts. Or at least it’s supposed to. That’s why I can’t talk about what that girl claimed she did.”

  Later, tying up in Tavernier Creek, he added, “I don’t want to risk any more trouble for Gracie. Let me think about it, okay?”

  15

  It had been years since a stoner had looked at Tomlinson like he was some pathetic opium wretch, but that’s what happened when he asked where to score an ounce of flakka. This was at a biker bar somewhere south of Islamorada.

  Next stop, Key West. The street freaks were more open-minded yet still treated him with the tender indifference befitting the walking dead.

  “I’m not a junkie, I’m conducting an experiment as a social scientist,” he explained to a fetching young woman with green hair.

  Her reply: “Right.”

  Geezus, “herpes simplex” was a better opening line, so he played it cool after that. Checked into the Cypress House, went for a swim at Dog Beach, and was back in time for happy hour.

  The next morning was spent at May Hill Russell Library, which felt cooler inside because of its conch-pink stucco exterior. Newspaper and public records dated back to the 1800s. He focused on the Prohibition years, particularly those when much of South Florida was still part of Monroe County. Smuggling liquor and “foreign undesirables” dominated headlines, but the Marco Island war had gotten some ink, too.

  Finally, he had all the pieces of the story. In 1912, a Memphis advertising tycoon brought his money and big ideas to Florida’s Gulf Coast. His name, appropriately, was Barron Collier. Sunshine and the new sport of tarpon fishing were untapped gold mines, so he built hotels, and a railroad to keep the rooms full.