Ten thousand isles df-7

by Randy Wayne White

  "I barely have time to eat. If I don't get those snook to Mote by Saturday, they may not renew my contract. Getting permits from the state was a nightmare."

  "Then I'll go to the library for you, maybe tell you about it. The history stuff, I think it's interesting."

  I nodded, staring at JoAnn's profile. It's surprising, but if we interact with a person day after day in a benign setting, we cease to see them as a specific, physical being. Their physical characteristics are blurred by familiarity.

  Now, for the first time, it seemed, I noticed that JoAnn had an elegant nose and chin. In the sunset light, her eyes were iridescent jade and she had good, clear skin beneath the smile lines and wrinkles of thirty-some years in the Florida sun.

  I believe that sexual awareness is chemically induced and the dialogue necessary to catalyze that reaction takes place on many levels. Through eye contact or body positioning, an interrogative exchange takes place: Are you? Would you? May I?

  But first, the synapses must open the door to whatever chemical it is that keys sexual interest.

  I sat there staring at her, then she was staring at me, her eyes making cursory contact, then deepe" contact. We sat there in a momentary trance, the two of us, before we realized what was happening. Still looking at me, JoAnn touched her fingers to my wrist. "Doc? I think I probably shouldn't stop here for a while."

  I smiled; leaned to kiss her, then paused, undecided. Then I kissed her on the forehead and stood quickly. "I'll make it easy on both of us. I'm taking my boat up to Mote tomorrow. It'll give us both a break."

  The next morning, a Monday, I packed my skiff with castnet, ice, food, water and beer, plus a tent with sand fly netting, just in case, and set off on what might be a two- or three-day expedition.

  To paraphrase an old-time Key West writer and fisherman, Florida's hurricane months, June through November, have the finest kind of weather when there's not a blow. The weather during this particular autumn was fine, indeed. So why not vanish for a little while? Furthermore, to quote Tomlinson, I needed to get some boat beneath my feet.

  Just after first light, I idled into the marina docks and kibitzed with the skiff guides as I topped off the oil reservoir and fuel tank.

  Captain Felix called over that he'd found some small chunk of wreckage about seven miles off the lighthouse. "Maybe some old World War Two plane, one of the trainers they used to fly out of Buckingham," he said. "We'll have to dive it when the water clears."

  Dieter Rasmussen, a retired Munich psychopharmacolo-gist, was up early as usual. He and his gorgeous Grand Banks trawler, Das Stasi, were a recent addition to A Dock. He's a big guy with a shaved head, good-looking-judging from the reaction of local women-brilliant, rich, and he apparendy loves the kicked-back, happy life of Dinkin's Bay. He called out a greeting. I nodded in reply.

  Then Jeth stopped to talk. Recently turned thirty, he's a big, good-looking guy with straight black hair, all shoulders and narrow hips. He'd just taken delivery of a 20-foot Shoal-water with a console tower that was light years nicer than anything he'd ever run before.

  I complimented him, adding, "From the tower, I bet it's a lot easier for you to spot fish."

  "Man-oh-man, that's the truth! Dave Godfrey, up to Cap-tiva, he told me this boat would increase my fish production thirty percent and I bet he's right!"

  Early morning at a fishing marina has a fresh, anything-can-happen mood that is cheerful and frantic and full of expectation. The guides hosed their skiffs after catching bait, then loaded on drinks and ice for their anglers, while coffee in big Styrofoam cups steamed within their hands.

  One by one, they waved at me as I idled toward the channel.

  I should have felt better than I did, but I was still fretting about how close I'd come to kissing JoAnn. That was a line not to be crossed, and we both knew it. I told myself that the uneasiness between us was temporary, but I knew that it was a lie and that it would be awhile before JoAnn and I would feel comfortable together. There is no such thing as casual sex. It can elevate one's sense of self-worth or diminish it proportionally. It always, always changes a relationship, sometimes for better, often for worse. Each and every new partner extracts some thing from us; a little piece of something that is innermost and private. Sadly, it is one of the most common ways of ending a friendship.

  Four

  Water is a dependable antidote for nearly anything that is troubling, including regret, so I did not stay upset at myself for long.

  I flew my little skiff out the channel from Dinkin's Bay, past Woodring Point, then banked northwest into Pine Island Sound, running a golden rind of sandbar that was the demarcation of mangrove and turde grass.

  It was a powder-blue morning, summer-slick but with a September horizon. The meld of sea and sky created a translucent sphere into which I seemed to be traveling at speed; a liquid void on which floated dark islands that were as solitary as I.

  Before me, black diving birds flushed to desperate flight while, behind, an arrowing wake expanded in slow proportion to the velocity of my fast boat. I stood at the wheel, feeling the wind, feeling the water beneath me.

  Water is a mirror until you learn to use it as a lens. Through Polarized sunglasses, the sea bottom was iridescent. Beneath and beyond me were green fields of turtle grass that were vein-worked by riverine trenches of deeper water and craters of sand. On a low tide, I could use those submerged creeks and rivers to cross the flat as if traveling a mountain road.

  There were valleys and hills and ridges below me, too, where lives were being lived. Tunicates and sea hydroids and sponges flew past in a blur. I spooked a school of redfish that angled away as a herd, pushing an acre of waking water. A stingray flapped off in an explosion so abrupt that I could feel the shock wave through the fiberglass skin of my skiff.

  I stood for a while, then I sat behind the wheel in the heat and light, comfortable and alone, on the move.

  Jeth was not the only one at the marina who'd recently taken delivery on a new boat. I am not a gadget person. No one has ever accused me of being faddish, nor am I normally attracted to gaudy, big-horsepower machinery. My old Chevy pickup truck has a tough time making it up steep hills and it may be one of the last vehicles in Florida that doesn't have air conditioning. I am, however, very picky about boats. So when it came time to get rid of my old skiff, I researched my options as carefully as I would have researched fine optics before buying a microscope.

  There is no such thing as a perfect boat, so selection is a process of reasonable compromise. There were my own quirks to consider. The number of cars in Florida has nearly doubled in the last ten years, and many of those vehicles, it seems, end up touring Sanibel and Captiva. Traffic is terrible and I hate to drive.

  As a result, I use my boat the way most people use their car. Nearly all of my shopping is done through the mail or a couple of blocks from the marina at Bailey's General Store. Otherwise, if I can't get there by water, I usually don't go.

  So I needed a skiff that could take a sea. It had to be comfortable, dry and fast. Because of my work, it also had to be capable of running in very shallow water.

  I spoke to a bunch of fishermen, I test-drove dozens of hulls. I ended up buying one of the great little boats in the world, an 18-foot Maverick, which is built over on the east coast, Fort Pierce. For power, I added an equally classic engine, a 200-horsepower Yamaha V-Max. To avoid attention from the Marine Patrol, I'd opted for a cowling that read: 150. Why advertise?

  The stunning and sometimes scary result of this volatile combination was an engine that was ghostly quiet on a boat that steered like a BMW. If the crunch was every really on and I needed to get someplace in a hurry, I could run seventy miles an hour in a foot of water. Which I sincerely hope never happens. At fifty, my eyes begin to water; at sixty, the world begins to flutter like film from a bad projector. But seventy-plus was there if I had to outrun a storm or if there was an emergency.

  On this calm Monday morning, though, I ran north a
t a comfortable forty miles per hour, enjoying myself, taking in the scenery. I stopped and took a quick swim at Useppa Island. Stopped in at the Temptation Restaurant on Boca Grande for lunch; sat at the bar and talked with Tina while Annie the fortuneteller read my Tarot cards.

  "Says here, you're due to have some women problems," Annie told me.

  I replied, "Really? Gee, that's uncanny. Those cards say anything about me getting another beer?"

  The weather held, so I cut through into the Gulf at Gas-parilla Pass and ran the outside beaches along Don Pedro Island. Just south of Englewood, off Stump Pass, I got very lucky and spotted two large balls of spawning snook working their way up the beach.

  The word "ball" is appropriate because the spawning ceremony consists of many, many male fish twisting and turning around one or more much larger females. These fish were so focused on their reproductive mandate that they didn't notice as I used the push pole to swing my skiff into position above them.

  I made two throws of my gigantic cast net and put six fine gravid females into my live well. Just looking at them gave me pleasure. A snook is an impressive animal, both in terms of behavior and physical beauty. It has a cartilaginous jaw that flares anvil-like beneath black carnivore eyes. The eyes are ringed with gold, its skin is pewter-bright, fringed with yellow, and there is an armorwork of scales covering a dense coniform body. It is a heavy, functional, predator's body. Beauty is secondary; a stroke of hereditary luck. Such creatures evolve over thousands of years, refine a perfect genetic design, then prosper for thousands of years more, unchanged. The black lateral line is a sporty touch, not unlike a racing stripe. It is appropriate for this very fast animal.

  Trouble is, snook are not fast enough to outrun nutrient pollution from thousands of Florida golf courses. They are not fast enough to outrun illegal stop nets. They are not fast enough to outrun high-tech fishing machines such as mine. A million years of evolution did not anticipate the previous busy, brilliant and sometimes destructive century. Which is why I was so pleased to play a role in Mote's superb stock-enhancement program.

  So I was feeling pretty good as I sped along the beaches past Englewood, Siesta Key and Lido Beach on my way to the docks of Mote Marine. Every now and again my mind would slip and I would think about JoAnn, the unexpected sexual charge at her touch, and I would scold myself, using Jeth and Janet as an example. See what happened when marina people dated?

  I also thought about Tomlinson down there on Key Largo. Someone had been breaking into the trailer of a waitress to loot the mementos of a child. The mother had been sufficiently upset to allow Tomlinson to box her remaining valuables and ship them to a stranger.

  It couldn't be important. Some freak on the prowl. There are so damn many freaks on the prowl these days. Still, I have a logical mind that probes and prods when behavior, human or otherwise, does not follow sequential, rational patterns.

  I kept asking myself a simple question: Why?

  Three days later, I would ask it again when I learned that someone had dug up the grave of the late and long-dead Dorothy Copeland.

  Mote Marine Lab is one of a very few independent marine research facilities that still survive in the U.S. The lab and aquarium consist of a half-dozen modern buildings and several deep-water holding pools on an eleven-acre campus fronted by sea grapes, palms and Sarasota Bay. About fifty scientists work at the lab, plus hundreds of volunteers. Because it is privately funded, the imperative of private enterprise is very much in effect: if Mote Marine does not excel, it is out of business. If Mote Marine's employees do not excel, they are out of a job. As a result, this unusual lab is a busy and productive place.

  But it wasn't the lab that was on my mind.

  Kathleen Rhodes's pretty trawler, The Darwin C., was moored at Mote's L Dock, just down from the Salty Dog bar and restaurant. The windows of its mahogany wheelhouse were dark: no one home. Tied astern of the trawler was Capt. Peter O'Rourke's collecting boat, Ono III.

  I thought I'd put Kathleen out of my mind and out of my life. If she wanted to take a break from what had become an intense physical and emotional relationship, that was just fine with me.

  Or was it?

  Seeing the trawler brought back memories of the nights I'd spent aboard. It brought back the shape and scent of her; the memory of her intellect and her lucid, scientist's view of life. Independent people seem to be increasingly rare. She was one of the few.

  Add self-reliant to the list, too.

  After getting her Ph. D. from Stanford, Kathleen had spent two years bringing her trawler down Baja through the Sea of Cortez to the Panama Canal, then along the Gulf of Mexico to Sarasota. It is not an easy trip for a single-handed sailor, female or male, but she'd made it without incident, collecting specimens and data the whole long way.

  The sons and daughters of wealthy parents can be a troubled, undependable lot. An unfailing financial safety net does not contribute to character. But Kathleen was not affected by her family's money. She was a spectacular woman, indeed, and seeing her empty boat produced an unexpected stab of disappointment.

  If I didn't care, why was I already inventing reasons to contact her while I was at Mote?

  I tied off my skiff and found Pete O'Rourke in his funky little waterside office. Pete is in charge of collecting for Mote, and he is the perfect choice because he is an unusual combination: a first-rate fishing guide who possesses the clear eye and intellect of a scientist. His office reflects the same dual personality.

  We sat talking for a few minutes amid stacks of fishing gear, lures, stuffed fish, scuba tanks, test tubes and journals. Through the front window, beyond the file cabinets and ratty green carpet, I could see the New Pass swing bridge and the cabin of Kathleen's boat.

  It took some effort to look away.

  Then I didn't have to think of it because Pete and I were busy transferring the snook I'd brought. We put them into what is essentially an oxygenated wheelbarrow and rolled them, two at a time, to the massive brood tank. In the tank were male snook. By carefully controlling temperature and lighting, the Mote scientists could trick the fish's biological clocks into believing it was eternally spring with many, many moonlit spawning nights.

  Before releasing the females, though, Pete and I carefully stripped them of eggs. A big female will carry a million and a half eggs, each not much bigger than the head of a pin. Touch their bellies, and roe flows as if from a dispenser.

  We captured the eggs in bags of seawater, then mixed them with milt from male fish. Then we deposited the fertilized eggs into 2,000-gallon incubator tanks.

  At some time during the next day, thousands of tiny snook would hatch, none much bigger than mosquito larvae. They would feed on algae and rotifers, then brine shrimp. In a couple of weeks, they would look like the truly remarkable animals they are.

  Back in Pete's office, he caught me looking at Kathleen's trawler. By not mentioning her name, I had, apparendy, underlined my interest in her, which is probably why he looked so uncomfortable. Finally, he said, "A guy as smart as you, it's hard to believe you can be such a big bonehead."

  I said, "Pardon me, Pete."

  "Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. Kathleen. Or maybe you're back to calling her Dr. Rhodes now. A woman like that, a fine scientist and a hell of a talented musician. All the brains and class in the world, plus legs up to her shoulders and you're about to let her get away? Or maybe you already have."

  I shrugged, letting him know that it was no big deal. "We decided to take a break, that's all. Give ourselves some time to think things over. It was mutual. Besides, I was already involved with a very nice woman when Kathleen and I met."

  "The one from Tampa, you mean."

  How did he know that? I said, "There aren't many secrets between you scientific types, I guess."

  "You know better. But fishing guides tend to be talkative. The Tampa woman who was separated but ended up going back to her husband. I know the one you're talking about. You stopped se
eing Kathleen for her?"

  "There were other reasons, too."

  "What bullshit." He was smiling, shaking his head. "The moratorium was all Kathleen's idea. She told me. She also told me that she hoped like hell you'd miss her and call and insist that you get back together again. It was a test. You don't know by now that people in love give each other little tests?"

  "Nope. Apparently, it's not the sort of thing you can study for."

  He said, "We'd sit here talking, Kathleen and me, and I'd catch her staring out the window, the same expression you had on your face a few seconds ago. Hoping to see you pull up to the dock, just like you were hoping to see her."

  The man was infuriating, but he also happened to be right. I said, "Okay, so I was hoping to see her. I was also dumb and stubborn and not particularly perceptive. When it comes to women, what else is new? So maybe what I should do right now is stroll over to Dr. Rhodes's office and apologize. Then maybe Kathleen and I can take you and your pretty wife out to dinner. How's Chinese sound?"

  O'Rourke wasn't smiling now. "It sounds great but you're not going to find Kathleen in her office. Or anywhere else around here."

  I said, "Huh?"

  'Just what I said. She waited, what, nearly three months? A couple times I told her, 'Hey, think of some excuse, drive to Sanibel and visit the guy! Let him know how you feel.' But you two, you're both so damn logical and analytical. She made me promise not to call you, either. So what I'm getting to is, she met a guy. He plays football for Tampa Bay. Not at all her type, but at least he was smart enough to figure out how a telephone works. He's on injured reserve, so they flew to Mexico last week for that sawfish project she's been doing, plus so steroid man can see what life is like in the true tropics. The football player, I'm talking about."