Her only hope of finding her friends, and safety, she realized, was to somehow make it to the light tower. So, once again, she turned eastward and started swimming. Once again, though, because of her inflated vest, the waves kept knocking her back. Still terrified and panicked, Amelia Gardner then did a very brave thing-not that she described it to us as brave or gave herself any credit. What she did was take a leap of faith. She decided that she might well die, but she was going to make at least one last and final best effort to find a way to survive. She jettisoned her vest, her only guaranteed way to stay afloat. Then she turned into the waves and began to swim again.
Four hours or so later, she washed into the girder-sized pilings of a 160-foot light tower, far off the Everglades coast of Florida. It took her a while to locate the service ladder, and then she climbed up onto the tower’s lowest deck. “I laid down on the platform just to sort of reassure myself that I’d really made it,” she told us. “It was still like some terrible dream. But, after a while, I got up and started calling for the other three. As the night went on, I kept thinking I heard their voices, heard them calling to me for help. The wind makes strange sounds out there. I kept getting up and calling back, calling their names.
“I expected them to arrive at any minute,” she added, once again struggling to keep her emotions in check. She paused, took several slow breaths, before finishing, “They… the three of them… those three good people… they never did show up. I was there alone for another day and another night, and I kept screaming for them, calling their names. But they never answered, they never came.”
Tomlinson stood, suddenly, walked to Amelia, and touched his palm to the back of her head as she sat there, face now in her hands, still taking slow, controlled breaths. The woman needed a break. Her voice had gotten softer and softer, as if revisiting that tragic night, the horror of it, was once again leaching the strength out of her. There was no way she could continue to talk without breaking down completely. For reasons I don’t understand, the stronger a person is, the more painful it is to watch them founder.
Which is why we were all a little relieved when Tomlinson said, “That’s enough for now, Amelia. And thanks for the courage it took and the love it took to come to us and tell us what happened.”
He stood there, patting her head, as he then looked to us and said, “This woman’s our guest and we need to take good care of her. So here’s what I suggest. She can tell us more later, if she feels like it, or maybe tomorrow, if Ransom or the good ladies of the Satin Doll can talk her into spending the night with us here at the marina. But I warn you right now, Amelia, stay at Dinkin’s Bay tonight, and you’re in for an evening of blissful excesses…” He smiled at her, his haunted eyes telling her something, offering comfort, perhaps, as he added, “Blissful excess or maybe even some wholesale debauchery. We’ll have all the food and drink you can handle.”
Right on cue, people hooted and applauded.
That quick, he’d changed the mood. Amelia lifted her face from her hands. He’d earned a little smile.
6
Later that night, what started as a typical bar fight nearly escalated into a riot, and, as I told Tomlinson later, we should have both seen it coming and found a way to put a halt to it before it got started.
“How was I supposed to stop anything?” he asked me. “I had a pitcher of margaritas in me, four Singapore slings, three grande mojitos made with delicious fresh mint, a six-pack of Corona, plus two joints of very fine Voodoo Surprise. There also may have been pills involved-I remember very distinctly speaking to that lady anesthetist from Englewood. We both know she tends to be overly generous with her recreational pharmaceuticals. No telling what poison that Asiatic brute may have put into my hands. My friend-” he was shaking his head, being serious, “it is impossible for one to impose social order when one is lying facedown, puking, in the sand next to the totem pole at Jensen’s Marina.”
Then he pointed out: “I do remember that you seemed a little drunk yourself, Marion. That’s not something we see in these parts very often, Doc Ford out of control. I don’t think you were in a position to stop what happened, either.”
Well… not out of control, but I did have too much to drink. Tomlinson was right. It’s something I rarely do. Alcohol poisoning makes it impossible to do the quiet, articulate work in my lab at night or to enjoy my run or ocean swim the next morning.
But like everyone else at the marina, Amelia’s story had ripped the emotional bottom right out of me. I’d believed everything she’d said, which is why in retrospect her confidential assertion to me that a boat might have picked the others up really knocked me off my own personal tracks.
I’d already accepted the fact that Janet was lost. She was dead and gone, and I’d said good-bye to her in my own private way.
Now, though, Amelia Gardner had opened a tiny little corridor of uncertainty and hope. I was so shaken by it that I immediately understood her wisdom when she asked me not to share the information with the others.
There is nothing in life so unsettling or so painful as the unknown.
Alcohol is a favorite analgesic for both.
The traditional Friday parties at Dinkin’s Bay are usually relaxed and conversational, with pauses for music and maybe a little dancing. Fifteen or twenty people mingling on the docks, discussing esoterica that would be of interest only to those of us who live on the islands.
This party was different, though. It had a different attitude and a different feel, probably because of the stress we’d all been under-not just because of Janet, but because, for the last many months, we’d all been living with the knowledge that Dinkin’s Bay soon might be closed to all powerboat traffic.
If that happened, the feds would come in, rip down the old Florida fish camp that is Dinkin’s Bay, and replace it with some sterile, pressure-treated, and poured-to-form clone of the government’s idea of a marina. They would equip it with regulation buildings and docks. It seemed unlikely that, on Sanibel, they’d be able to find and hire the breed of seniority-system employees such buildings required, but that was a sad possibility, too.
For one or both reasons, everyone at the marina that night seemed more intimately aware that life is brief and that our interaction with the people and places we love is temporary. Those feelings caused the party to move with a complex intensity and at a much faster pace.
A final contributing factor to the near riot that occurred may have been presaged earlier that day by Dieter Rasmussen, who’d told us that the fourth stage of mourning usually included anger with a potential for violence.
What began as a celebration of a good woman’s life later turned very violent indeed.
By the time the limbo contest started, I’d had four or five tumblers of fresh grapefruit juice and vodka and was enjoying myself very much. First time I got a chance, I went up to Amelia Gardner and apologized for apparently suggesting that she had some guilty secret to confess, explaining, “It’s not that I was suspicious of you, I just don’t know you well enough. When someone asks me to keep something confidential, I need to know who and what I’m dealing with for a very simple reason-if I give my word, I will keep the information confidential.”
It seemed to mollify her, put us back on friendly footing again, which pleased me more than I expected. I liked her rangy looks, her private, businesswoman’s grin, the way she moved from group to group, socializing comfortably. Liked her plain, handsome face, her Irish hair. Liked the way she stood, hands on hips, one knee bent slightly-a cattle wrangler’s stance-and the way her expression narrowed, focusing, when people spoke to her, giving them her absolute attention. She was a person alone among strangers, but one who could take care of herself, no problem.
One thing I was unable to do was get her by herself long enough to ask about the boat she said she’d seen. At one point, I tried, and she touched a finger to her lips very briefly, and said, “Later, okay? I’m going to spend the night with your sister. She said she has a
house near here?”
True. Along with her Hewes Bonefisher, Ransom had used the inheritance from her father, Tucker Gatrell, to buy a tiny little bungalow just down from Ralph Woodring’s place, off Woodring’s Point, near the mouth of Dinkin’s Bay. Ralph let her keep the skiff at his dock, so she could run back and forth to the marina anytime she wanted.
“Okay,” I told Amelia, pleased that she was staying. “We’ll get together late tonight. Or tomorrow, maybe, for breakfast.”
The big fight began at Sanibel Grill, moved to the Crow’s Nest at ’Tween Waters Inn on Captiva, then spilled out onto the deck of the pool bar, spreading to the little beach that angled into the bay.
It started an hour or so after the limbo contest, which Tomlinson won, though I did not see the finish for the simple reason that I preferred not to watch. When Tomlinson limbos, he wears nothing but his sarong, which is why Mack, Jeth, and I, along with most of the other fishing guides, made it a point to stroll out on the docks and talk among ourselves-unless it was Ransom’s turn. Except for me, there wasn’t a man at the marina who didn’t want to watch her.
Which is why I tend to be overly protective of her, and overly suspicious of any man who shows an interest in her.
There is no denying that Ransom is a stunning-looking woman. I’m not certain of her age. She refuses to confide even in me. With her long, sprinter’s legs, dense muscularity, and skin the color and texture of chocolate toffee, she could be thirty-two-or forty-five. No telling. What I do know is that, a few years back, she got tired of being overweight and out of shape and, in her own words, decided to take back her “womanly life.” She started working out, watching her diet, and now she is mostly muscle and sinew, but with all the appropriate angles and curves, and she has become my devoted running and weight-lifting partner.
Tomlinson often refers to her as living proof of his own private theory: The world’s most beautiful women are always well into their thirties, forties, or fifties because only the experience of living and prevailing day after day can provide the necessary emotional texture and depth of understanding that Tomlinson’s definition of “beauty” requires.
Ransom is smart and beautiful and funny, too. But she is no man’s toy and no person’s fool. So there’s something I have to keep reminding myself: My cousin is very capable of taking care of herself.
By the time the limbo contest ended, it was a little after nine. Still early, so we decided, as a group, to walk along Tarpon Bay Road to Timber’s Restaurant, which is just a couple hundred yards from the shell lane that leads to Dinkin’s Bay Marina.
In late November, there’s a little post-Thanksgiving tourism lull. Even so, the restaurant was busy-people standing in line at the fresh-fish counter-so we pushed tables together at Sanibel Grill, the adjoining sports bar, and sat together, a dozen of us crowded in tight. Nice bar with dark wood, good ventilation with palms outside the windows and a Gulf wind breezing through, orange Converse basketball shoes holding condiments on the tables-yes, basketball shoes-ceiling fans, walls a museum of sports memorabilia and photos of the restaurant’s gifted, idiosyncratic owner with a garden variety of famous jocks.
Jeth and I exchanged our empty plastic cups for fresh beer, and he said to me, speaking very softly, “I don’t know why, but I feel a lot better after listening to Amelia. It kind of shook me out of my funk about what happened and the way it happened. She talked about me, Doc. Janet, I mean. The night their boat sunk, I was the one she was thinking about.”
After a long pause, he said, “I miss her like crazy. I never realized what a prize I had until she was gone, but the fact that she told the others about me-the guy I thought she was dating, Michael-the fact that she told him and the two women that she loved me, it makes me feel closer to her than I maybe ever felt before.”
He thought about it for another moment, the noise of the bar shielding us from people sitting nearby, and then added, “I believe the story Amelia told us back at the marina. At least, I want to believe her. Or maybe… what kind of worries me is, you think she’d make up some of that stuff just to make me feel better?”
I told him, “I think she’d probably stretch the truth to make it easier on us as a group. Sure. But lie just to make you feel better? When they were in the water, unless Janet really talked about you, how else would Amelia know your name, that you and Janet were lovers? No. She wasn’t lying. I know Janet… I knew Janet, and I know how much she cared for you. I don’t doubt for a moment that Janet’s last words, her last thoughts, were about you.”
Jeth was holding a bottle of Bud Light in his big right hand. I watched his fingers fade bloodless, white as he squeezed the bottle, showing the frustration, all the pent-up sorrow and anger in him, seeking release. “I was an idiot,” he said, then repeated what he’d already told me many, many times. “She asked me out that weekend. She wanted the two of us to go to Palm Island, rent a beach house there, wanted to talk about our future. So what do I tell her? I tell her I’ve already got a date, and she should go find a date of her own.”
He banged the bottle down on the table, and I could see then that he was drunker than I realized-it was a gesture that was far out of character for this man I knew well.
It was then that JoAnn reached across the table and tapped me on the wrist. “Hey, Doc, you recognize the guy Ransom’s talking to?”
Sitting near the end of the table, next to Tomlinson and Claudia, Amelia said, “I do. I recognized him right away.”
I followed her eyes to the bar, where Ransom was speaking to a group of three men sitting on stools. Successful professional types dressed in clothes chosen to make a statement about wealth, leisure, style. Chambray and Ralph Lauren, pleated khakis, waxed Topsiders, watch bracelets by Rolex and Tag Heur, something theatrical about the careful, windblown hairstyles of all three. Either actors, politicians, or realtors, I decided-although the best people in those fields wouldn’t have pushed the look so hard, made it so obvious. So I wasn’t surprised when JoAnn added, “That’s Gunnar Camphill. As in the Gunnar Camphill. The film star.”
When I didn’t respond immediately, she shook her head, her expression suggesting that I was hopeless, a hermit alien out of touch with the modern world.
Amelia said, “You’re kidding me. You don’t know the name? The guy’s been in only like four or five absolute box-office smashes.” She waited for a moment before adding, “You really don’t know what I’m talking about. I can see it. Know something, Ford? You are an unusual man.”
Then Amelia named some titles, a couple of which seemed familiar, but I don’t have a television and don’t go to movies, so I’d never seen the films. I sat there as JoAnn, still staring at the actor, explained to me, “He does these great action-adventure movies. Lots of car chases, or he’ll be like a Navy SEAL trapped on a hijacked airliner, only no one knows who he really is. I read this article. He actually is some kind of martial arts expert, only I don’t remember the Japanese name for whatever it is, and he pisses off a lot of people because he’s a big political activist. Environmental stuff mostly. He speaks at rallies and led some kind of boycott a couple months back. You know, very outspoken.” She paused, smiling. “Damn, he really is good-looking, isn’t he? And a lot bigger than I thought. Actors, I’ve seen a bunch of them, they’re almost always a lot shorter than you expect.”
Rhonda was listening now, the two women leaning shoulder to shoulder, having fun with it, ogling the film star. Claudia was right there with them. Fresh from Ohio, her first night in the tropics, and here was this movie icon. JoAnn said, “So out of all the women in the bar, who does the famous actor pick out to hit on? Ransom, of course. That sister of yours, Doc, we love her, you surely know that-but, speaking for Rhonda and me, we marina women don’t exactly need any more competition.”
Beside her, Rhonda laughed, nodding. “We’re not getting any younger-” she nudged me with her elbow, then whispered so no one else could hear, “not that we’re exactly over the hill. We still
got some bounce in us. Which I guess you’d vouch for, huh?”
I smiled- no comment- pleased that these two friends of mine were happily starstruck. On the islands, we get a lot of vacationers from films, television, sports, music, and politics, men and women who are famous nationally and internationally. You get used to seeing them at Bailey’s General Store, or on the beach, or in the little shops and restaurants. No big deal. People who come to the islands can depend on their privacy being respected. So I was surprised that JoAnn and Rhonda were impressed, and I took it as a measure of the actor’s fame.
I was still smiling when JoAnn said, “Maybe we should stroll up to the bar and see if Ransom will introduce us. I’ve never asked for an autograph in my life, but…” which is when I stopped smiling and JoAnn stopped talking because we both saw the actor, Gunnar Camphill, reach out and touch Ransom’s arm, saw Ransom pull away. Then we watched Camphill reach again and this time catch her arm and try to pull her to him, but Ransom yanked her elbow back once again and said something to him, her expression cautionary, not yet angry but getting there.
I was pushing my chair back, but Jeth was already on his feet, moving across the bar toward Camphill as the actor held both hands up, palms out to Ransom-he was surrendering-laughing at Ransom, a concessionary posture, but Ransom wasn’t smiling back.
I got there just behind Jeth, whose eyes were moving from Camphill to the men at his side, and I heard him say, “What’s the problem, this guy giving you a hard ta-ta-tah-time?” Nervous, his stutter had suddenly returned.
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