“Buddy ruff, you either can’t read or you one dumbass Yankee! You didn’t see them signs at the mouth of the river you just come up?” He had a coarse, curiously high-pitched voice, a fried-okra twang; an accent that was intentionally emphasized to communicate his contempt for me, an outsider.
I’d seen the signs. Saw one at the mouth of the deepwater mangrove cut-No Trespassing! This Means You!-and a second sign just before I rounded the bend at dead idle and saw the two CBS houses through the oaks elevated above the river, an airboat and a couple of ATVs, a junked GTO, another GTO gray with Bondo up on blocks, a bunch of new pickup trucks parked in the shade, dog cages in the back, men with ball caps milling around as country music played, and a hulking, rusted shrimper tied adjacent a machine shop, Nan-Shan in white letters on her stern.
He’d been by the house when he noticed me, a foot or more taller than the other men. He turned, then ambled down the hill to intercept me. Now here he was, Dexter Money, a big man and a bigger disappointment-a disappointment because he was not one of the two men in the satellite photos. I would have recognized him. Did he hire people to run his boats?
I fixed a smile on my face as I turned the bow of my skiff toward the riverbank, Money still walking toward me, the two of us separated by only ten or fifteen yards, as I called to him, “I saw the signs. I thought they meant don’t come ashore. What I’m doing is, I’m scouting for snook spots, won’t harm a thing.” When he didn’t respond immediately, I added, “I didn’t know a person could own a river.”
He stopped at the bank, and his tone was without inflection, his eyes were glassy, drug-bright, fierce: “That’s where you wrong, buddy ruff. This river’s mine -and you just had your last warning.”
I started to reply-“In that case, I’ll…”-but didn’t get a chance to finish because Money pivoted, cocked his arm, and rocketed his beer bottle at me. I ducked as it shattered against the console, glass shards everywhere. Heard him scream, “Get the fuck outta here! Now! ”
I have dealt with enough Dexter Moneys in my life to know there is no point in dealing with them. But I’m not immune to anger, either. I stared at him for a moment before I jammed the throttle forward as if to run my skiff ashore, then spun the wheel hard so that the stern skidded toward him. The hull of the boat dug deep as it turned, plowing a high, waking wall of water that washed over Money and sent his two pit bulls running.
I stopped the boat, engine still idling, and looked over my shoulder. His clothes were soaked, his cigarette smoldering. Christ-he had his revolver drawn but was pointing it at the ground-a man who could snap that quick. “Motherfucker!” he said, his voice trembling. “I have killed men better than you!”
Before I touched the throttle again, planing away, I said in a voice low enough to force him to listen: “Mister, I hope that’s the only thing we have in common.”
I came back that night just after 3 A.M., the graveyard hour, when even the worst of insomniacs are asleep.
To the west, magnified by the horizon’s curvature, the moon was huge, the size of a setting sun, a disc of platelet orange, a scimitar fragment missing in earth shadow. The river reacted to contact with the moon, becoming a lighted corridor in the darkness, its water red.
I shut the engine down far from the mouth of the river and poled my way in, no noise at all, just the creaking of mangroves and water dripping onto reflected stars. A dog barked somewhere. There were owls conversing in the shadows beyond.
That afternoon, I’d argued it back and forth in my head. Stay or not to stay. How important was it that I got aboard the Nan-Shan and had a look around?
Could be pretty important, I decided. Even the most poorly run vessel keeps some kind of log. And if the operators were too sloppy to maintain records, they were usually sufficiently sloppy to leave behind some form of identifying spore aboard.
Yeah, I needed to have a look around.
With my evening free, I considered finding an open stretch of beach and camping. December’s a good time to be outside in Florida, looking up at the stars. But I was feeling sociable and in need of a hot shower, so I ran across the bay to the backside of Anna Maria Island. The Rod amp; Reel Marina was booked full, so I found a slip among the liveaboards at Bradenton Beach Marina and walked two blocks to the Pelican Post Inn. A rental cottage was available: a little place on stilts with knotty pine paneling, kitchen, couch, swivel chair and TV, plus an independent bedroom with a mattress that seemed firm enough. I called Amelia on the chance she was free for the evening, and I got lucky.
“Doc?” she said. “You don’t know how great it is to hear your voice! Damn, am I glad you’re here.”
We met for a drink at the Bridge Tender, then walked to the Gulf side for seafood at the Beach House.
I was touched by the fact that Amelia appeared to have taken special care in the way she dressed for the evening. Black dress and stockings, red hair brushed to a sheen, and makeup, too, a touch of eyeliner, peach gloss lipstick. The first time I’d ever seen her wear makeup.
She seemed surprisingly glad to see me. A lot of warm eye contact, a lot of brief nudges and illustrative touching after we’d greeted each other with a long hug.
At first, I thought the most frustrating part of the evening would be that I couldn’t tell the lady about the satellite photos I’d seen, about why I was there. No one was more deserving than Amelia to know there was a slim chance that Grace, Janet, and Michael might still be alive.
Wrong. There was an entirely unexpected source of frustration. When the relationship between a man and a woman changes, or there is a potential for change, there begins a multilevel variety of communication that is unmistakable but not easily pinpointed. Because there is a risk of embarrassment, the form of communication requires that one meaning must necessarily be concealed by another, more innocent meaning. Some of the exchange is verbal, some physical.
At the Bridge Tender, we sat at a table overlooking the bay. The moon was high and bright, and the lady looked very attractive indeed. Once, she used her index finger to tap the back of my hand before she said to me, “I’m so glad you called. I’ve been dating a couple of different people off and on, and just this week, I made the decision, no more, that’s the end of it. Nice guys, but the attraction isn’t there, and I found myself feeling lonelier when we were together than when I was off by myself. Life’s too short to waste it pretending.”
A little later, she said, “Something happened to me those nights when I was stranded. After being on the tower, I don’t even have patience for my own lies. I’m a healthy, physical woman. I’ve finally admitted that to myself, too-not easy for a single Catholic girl.”
Was there a hidden message there?
At the restaurant, she told the waiter she wanted a half-dozen oysters, but the waiter didn’t hear.
“A dozen, miss?” he asked.
Amelia was looking at me when she replied, “No, a half dozen. I just want sex. I mean… six. ” Laughing at herself as the waiter walked away, her eyes averted now, blushing, too-maybe the first time I’d ever seen an attorney blush-as she dabbed at her face with a napkin and said to me, “My God, talk about Freudian. I’ve got to start getting more exercise, go for a long run. Something. ”
It set up a fun, unspoken sexual tension. When she’d finished her wine, we walked out onto the Bradenton Pier. It seemed the most natural thing in the world when she slipped her arm through mine and then, later, when I placed my hand on her waist as we walked. I could feel the pivot of her hips, the sharp blade of her pelvic bone. There were men fishing, lovers tangled together in the shadows.
Near the end of the pier, we stopped, me looking down into the water, fish moving through the circles of light, her with her head pillowed against my arm. It surprised me when she said, “I don’t want to be obvious here, but there’s something we’ve never talked about.”
I said, “Oh?”
“Yeah, it’s your social status. There used to be little symbols. Wedding bands
, bracelets… tattoos.” She chuckled. “Who belongs to who. But now you have to ask. So I’m asking: Do you belong to anyone, Dr. Ford?”
“Nope. Never been married, never been engaged. I have a long list of female friends who are just that-friends. Nothing serious going on right now.”
“Does that include JoAnn and Rhonda from Dinkin’s Bay? I got the impression there was something special between you and… well, frankly, both of them.”
An insightful, perceptive lady. But I said, “No, we’re all three buddies, that’s all.”
“Ah, the independent type, the male rogue.”
I turned to look at her, smiling. “I used to tell myself that, and for a time I believed it. Like you, the thing you said about lying to yourself? I don’t have much patience for my own lies anymore, either. I’ve come to the conclusion that I live alone because I am, at the core, an essentially selfish person. It’s taken a while for me to admit it. My lab, the work I’m doing, it always comes first. All loving, devoted relationships require compromise in terms of how time is shared, and I’m too self-interested to compromise. No woman’s going to put up with that for long, and I don’t blame ’em.”
“My God, and you’re honest, too.”
I thought about the lie I told her, explaining why I happened to be in the Sarasota area-research at Bell Fish Company-and replied, “Just because I’ve lost patience for my own lies doesn’t mean I don’t tell them to others. Nope, I’m not particularly honest, either.”
That seemed to touch her on some deeper level. “I can relate to that, my new friend. One thing I’ve learned is, you can’t pray a lie, which maybe, in a way, makes sinners of us all. So, from one sinner to another, how about I walk you back to your cottage?”
In the darkness of banyan shadow near the motel, Amelia stopped, and I turned her toward me, looking down into her face. Then I kissed her softly, feeling her lips move against mine, feeling her rib cage pressing washboard-like against my stomach. As her hands moved up my sides, her mouth opened, tongue searching, my hands began to move, too.
Open-palmed, exploring with fingertips, I felt body heat radiating through the sheer material of her dress, felt the stricture of latissimus cordage beneath her arms, swimmer’s muscles. Then felt her mouth open very wide, heard her moan softly as my fingers found eraser-hard nipples, her breasts flat over bony sternum. Felt her pull away long enough to whisper, “I hope you don’t like the busty type. If you do, you’re in for a disappointment.”
I found the self-deprecation touching, almost sad. If we men were required to wear sized penis stockings outside our pants, our discussions of women’s breasts would be markedly less frequent and our preferences more vaguely defined.
I wrapped my arms around her hips and lifted her chest high as I whispered my reply: “The way your body feels, I like just fine. There’s less distance between my lips and your heart.” Then I kissed her neck, and each nipple, feeling her swell and arch beneath the black dress, breathing heavier now, making soft sounds.
“Doc… we have a perfectly nice cottage right there. If you keep doing what you’re doing, I’m going to rip those shorts off you. Indecent exposure-the cops’ll arrest us both. Me, an officer of the court.”
Which is when it finally dawned on me that I couldn’t allow this to go any further. I do so many stupid things so often, it should no longer surprise me. Sometime that night, way after midnight, I had to go a’calling on Dex Money’s shrimp boat, the Nan-Shan. If Amelia went upstairs to my bed, there was a good chance she’d stay over. How would I explain a lengthy disappearance?
I lowered her to the ground, held her away from me. “You are one spectacular woman,” I said.
Her voice had an unmistakable huskiness. “I can barely hear you, my heart’s pounding so loud.”
She took my hand and pulled me out of the shadows, into a circle of streetlight, toward the cottage. I hated the way her expression changed when I stopped, refusing to follow her, and I said, “Amelia, let’s… let’s not do this. Not tonight, anyway. Let’s give it some time, date for a while, see what happens. Why risk the friendship?”
She said very slowly, “Give it… some time? You’re kidding, right? Please tell me you’re kidding.”
I badly wanted to tell her just that, but couldn’t. “I’m trying to look down the road, anticipate what’s best for the both of us.” Then added lamely, “We really don’t know each other that well, when you think about it,” and I hated myself for sounding so prudish and insipid.
“Uhh-h-h, excuse me.” She laughed, an attempt to mask embarrassment. “I’m looking at you, not believing what I’m hearing, but you do mean it. You really don’t want me to come up to your room. Sorry, Amelia, request for service denied, Amelia. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“No, no, absolutely, it’s not like that at all. It’s just that I don’t want to rush you into something you might regret.”
Her face had gone from flushed, swollen, and sleepy to a pained look of surprise. “What you really mean is, you don’t want to risk doing something you’ll regret. Well, Doc, just for the record… let me put it this way: I want to set you straight about something, just so you don’t get the wrong idea about me. Before I get in my car and drive away, which is what I’m about to do.
“When it comes to men, I’ve never rushed into anything in my life. I don’t go around hopping from bed to bed. This is as close as I’ve ever come in my life to throwing myself at someone, and, believe me, sir, it’s something I’ll never risk again. It’s been nearly a year for me, and it may be another year before I find a man I like enough and trust enough to join in bed. But that’s one thing you don’t have to worry about, Dr. Ford, it won’t be you.”
The woman had a temper. I tried to call her back as she walked away. She never turned, never looked, never replied.
18
There’s an alarm on my watch, which I set, and I set the alarm in the cottage’s bedroom, too-both for 2:45 A.M.
But I didn’t need either one of them because I couldn’t sleep. I laid awake in the darkness with a Gulf wind blowing through the screen, berating myself for my insensitivity, my stupidity. Why hadn’t I the foresight to come up with a more plausible, less insulting lie?
Twice I dialed Amelia’s home number, got the machine each time.
Clearly, she didn’t want to talk to me. The woman had taken enough cheap shots over the last few months, and now I’d added to her pain and humiliation.
At 2:30, I dressed and checked the duffel I’d packed for the boat. Inside were military BDU pants with tiger-stripe camo, my old black watch sweater, Navy blue stocking cap, leather gloves, mask and snorkel, Rocket fins, and a small waterproof flashlight. Back in Dinkin’s Bay, I’d decided against packing my 9mm SIG Sauer semiautomatic handgun. That was before I’d seen Dexter Money and his pit bulls. I regretted that decision now.
I carried the bag to the marina, stepped into my boat. On one of the liveaboard yachts, I noticed a silhouette pass across the disc of the porthole-someone in there awake-and so I didn’t risk poling my skiff away from the docks. At that hour, people who try not to make noise are suspicious people. Instead, I started the engine and idled out into the bay.
There was still sufficient moonlight to read the markers, so I didn’t use a light. I ran north, then turned my skiff east toward Mead Point and Perico Island.
Somewhere out there, beneath the blackness, beyond the flashing markers, I hoped that Dexter Money and his dogs were asleep.
I pushed my skiff upriver, staying close to the bank, where the water was shallow. My push pole is made of fiberglass, similar to a vaulting pole, and it bent beneath my weight as I levered it against the marl bottom. Standing above the engine, pole in hand, I watched the moon flatten itself over a black plateau of mangroves. Then the moon vaporized in a striated cloud of rust.
Nearing the final bend, I could see the yellow glare of sodium lights reflecting off the water. Security lights. I’d noticed t
he poles on my first visit, which was why I brought my swim gear.
Time to get wet. I moored the skiff’s stern to a prop root and stripped off my T-shirt and shorts, ears straining to hear: tidal drainage and wind in leaves. Nothing else. I continued to listen as I dressed myself in BDUs, sweater, and stocking cap. I had a pair of Five-Ten rubber-soled climbing shoes and fit my Rocket fins over them. Wearing mask and snorkel on my arm like a bicep band, I bellied over the side into the water. Brackish water, just a hint of salt and oil. This far up in the swamplands, the river felt earthy, warm.
I swam with my eyes above surface level. When I rounded the bend, I could see the big shrimper, the Nan-Shan, motionless beneath the security lights. Could see rooftop angles of the two blockhouses through the trees, part of an outside wall. No lights showing in the windows, no sign of life. I stayed close to the bank, in the shadows.
Once, I stopped, held myself erect, treading water. Was that a log floating on the surface up ahead of me? Or maybe an empty fuel drum?
I decided that my eyes were playing tricks and continued on.
When I was beneath the docks, I held on to a crossbeam, looking up through the deck, listening. Now I could hear something unusual. It was a faint whining noise, a weak animal sound. Maybe the sound of an injured bird… or a pump with a bad rotor. I wasn’t certain if the noise came from near or far, but it couldn’t have been human.
I pulled myself up onto the dock. Stood there crouched long enough to feel confident I was alone. Then I removed my fins, walked along the dock, and stepped over onto the deck of the shrimp boat.
The odor of an ocean shrimper is distinctive: petroleum-based net coating, diesel and paint, the protein rot of sea animals stuck in nylon mesh or in small crevices that are impossible to clean thoroughly.
This vessel smelled of shrimping, but of something else, too. I have been in places of war where battlefield sanitation required that personnel attempt to destroy the stench of death with disinfectant.
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