Everglades df-10

by Randy Wayne White

  Now, though, windsurfing in moonlight seemed a superb idea.

  I tripped going up the steps; nearly tripped again when I banged my shoulder against the wall, entering my lab. I touched the wall switch, and stared at the rows of aquaria; could smell the sweet ozone odor created by the systems of aerators. I was aware that, from within some of the glass tanks, certain animals-octopi and squid-were staring at me just as intently as I stared at them.

  A couple of months back, at a party, Tomlinson and I got into one of our complicated debates. It was about the mandates of scientific method. The debate was unusually heated and, at one point, I told him, “It’s the way I’ve been trained. I’d rather be precisely wrong than approximately right about almost anything.”

  He found that hilarious. A week later, he’d presented me with a wooden sign with the silly phrase engraved on it. I’d tacked the thing on the north wall of my lab.

  Now I looked at the sign, reading it-I’D RATHER BE PRECISELY WRONG THAN APPROXIMATELY RIGHT-and the welling heartbreak I felt earlier was transformed inexplicably into fury. An absolute cold and loathing fury.

  That’s when it happened. That’s when I snapped. It was like a flashbulb going off behind my eyes. I took the rum bottle, hurled it hard at the sign, and turned away, hearing an explosion of glass.

  In that isolated space between what I was, and what I had become, the stranger within spoke for the first time: You are insane.

  I wobbled back down the stairs, strapped a harness around my waist, then rigged my surfboard. I chose my favorite board-an ultrawide Starboard Formula 175. It’s built for big, clumsy people like me. I locked on my largest, fastest sail, a 10.4-meter Neilpryde Streetracer.

  It took me lots of fumbling and falling to get the sail up. When I had the boom under control, I tilted the mast forward to gain speed. Then, as I sheeted in, I walked the board beneath the sail, feeling the wind on my face, feeling the board lift itself off the chop as I accelerated onto plane, the elastic up-haul line thumping rhythmically against the mast. Thumping, it seemed, as if my heart were echoing off the far stars, beating fast enough to explode.

  With a little kick, I arched my hips and belted myself to the boom. With my bare feet, I searched the board until I found the foot straps. I wiggled my feet in tight.

  Board, sail, boom, mast and I were now a single, connected unit. Tomlinson once told me that the wind does not push a sailboat, it pulls it. I could feel the wind’s inexorable pull now as I flew across the water, sailing toward the moon at close to twenty miles per hour.

  Then the moon disappeared behind clouds, and I was speeding through mangrove shadow, hearing wind and water in the caverns of my ears. The bioluminescent wake I created was an expanding silver-green crescent. The sensory combination was that of riding a comet across a liquid universe. Off to my right, I saw a mobile galaxy of green streaks: a school of fish. I watched the school explode in a firestream of color; then explode again.

  Something big was beneath the fish, feeding.

  I turned my board downwind, jibbed, popped the cams to fill the sheet, accelerated quickly and sailed toward the school.

  They were mullet-a silver, blunt-headed fish with protuberant eyes. Thousands of them in a tight, panicked herd in waist-deep water. Three or four pounders. As I approached the edge of the school, they began to jump-gray, arching trajectories in the darkness-banging off my board, hitting my legs, landing on the board, then flopping wildly until they were free.

  As I sailed through the school, I saw something else. I saw the predator that was feeding on the mullet. It appeared beneath the water as a submarine-shape, outlined in green. It cruised with a slow, reptilian movement as if crawling, tail and head shifting, always at apogee.

  It was a shark. In this brackish mangrove lake, it was almost certainly a bull shark judging from its girth. It was the fish that I’d traveled the world studying. It was the fish I often used as an excuse for clandestine work.

  The shark was big. Probably nine feet long, three or four hundred pounds. As I passed near it, I watched the shark turn in a whirlpool of light. I saw the shark pause, as if reviewing its options. Then it began to trail me, pushing water in a vectoring, sparkling blaze as it increased speed.

  Drunk as I was, I could feel my heart pounding, my knees shaking. A cliche often repeated is that sharks are unpredictable. Seldom true. Like most predators, sharks have a strong pursuit instinct. If something runs from them, they chase it. What this animal was now doing was perfectly predictable: It was tracking me. If I was fleeing, there was a reason. I must be prey.

  Watching the fish, my head was turned toward the rear of the board-not a smart thing to do when windsurfing day or night. I could see the shark’s bulk creating a column of water as it swam faster, closing the gap between us. I applied pressure to the board and sheeted in even tighter to get maximum speed-an absurd thing to do, because there was no way that I, a land mammal, a novice surfer, could outrun the muscled culmination of a million years of perfected genetic adaptation.

  Then the shark was on me, behind the board, its fin cleaving the water, tacking back and forth with every thrust of its tail. I pulled my back foot out of its strap in an attempt to kick at the thing, and nearly lost control of the boom; almost went flying over the sail.

  For several seconds, the shark matched my speed, both of us streaking through darkness, stars above, bioluminescent stars below. Then I felt the board jolt beneath me once… twice… then a third time.

  The bull shark was bumping the board with its nose. It was testing, feeling, sensing what I was, interpreting the why of me.

  Few know that a shark’s most powerful sensory organ is not its sense of smell, even though the sensory apparatus is located on the animal’s nose. If you ever get a chance, take a close look at shark’s head. You will see that the snout area is covered with tiny black dots. These are, in fact, pores that are filled with a complicated jelly. The jelly accurately detects bioelectric impulses. Quite literally, a shark can sense the precise location of a human heart beating from many hundreds of yards away. It is a remarkable sensory ability, and I know of no other animals that are equipped with it.

  By touching its snout to the board, the fish was monitoring my physiology: pounding heart, electrical circuitry on panicked overload, mammalian blood pressure lowered by alcohol then spiked by fear.

  I was flesh. I was eatable.

  For a micro-instant, I felt a tremendous weight on the back of the board-perhaps the fish had mistakenly bitten the skeg. Then the fish passed beneath the board at twice my speed, its tail-slap creating an unexpected wake.

  In the same instant, my big sail was hit by a gust of wind.

  I was drunk. My balance isn’t great to begin with. It was enough to catapult me over boom and board. I landed atop the slowly sinking sail, still hooked to the boom.

  My hands were shaking as I fixed my glasses back on my face and tried to free myself. Frantically, I looked ahead: The shark, turning, had created a swirling green vortex with an exit streak like an arrow.

  The bull shark was returning. Its sensory receptors were attuned. The sound of my pounding heart had to be unmistakable, nearly deafening. It knew exactly where I was, what I was.

  Windsurfing sails are made of see-through plastic, a kind of monofilm. I watched the shark cruise toward me, and then beneath me-me atop the thin skein of plastic, it below. I could feel the pony-sized girth of the animal lift both the sail and me briefly; could hear the rasp of its rough skin abrade the boom. I sensed a rolling movement-had it turned to bite?

  Then the shark exited from beneath the sail. Confused, it cruised a few meters beyond, and turned toward me again.

  I was free of the sail now, standing in waist deep water, trying desperately, pathetically, to right my board and get back atop it. But I was drunk and disoriented. I was too fat, too winded, too slow. I kept slipping, falling off.

  That’s when something in my brain ruptured once again. It was the s
ame sensation: a flashbulb exploding behind my eyes.

  And, once again, the result was a cold and loathing fury.

  “Fuck it!”

  I shoved the board away from me, and turned to face the shark. I could see the column of water rising as the animal gained speed, coming at me. I could see the silhouette of its dorsal fin trailing star-bright streamers. In my crazed state, there was a single, stabilizing truth that fueled my rage: Why run? We are both predators.

  I began to walk toward the shark. Then I charged it, creating my own wake as the stranger in me screamed aloud, “Come on, you big bastard. Hit me. You’re doing me a favor!”

  When the bull shark was three or four body lengths away, I dived hard toward it, both fists extended. I expected to collide with the fish; to feel its jaws crush my arms.

  Instead, my fists touched only soft bottom.

  I came up, searching the surface through blurry glasses.

  I could see that shark’s wake plainly.

  It was swimming away at top speed. Spooked.

  I took my time sailing back. I’d not only sobered; I felt as if I’d experienced some elemental transformation. What had occurred was powerful beyond any encounter I’d anticipated or imagined.

  I thought about it on the long reach home, trying to figure out what had happened, why I felt changed. The lights of the marina glittered in the near distance. The windows of my house and lab were yellow rectangles, uniform and solid. My tin roof appeared waxen.

  To live fearlessly, one must first invite death. It’s one of Tomlinson’s favorite maxims. That may have been a tiny part of what I was feeling, for I had certainly accepted the inevitable when I charged the shark. If the shark had rolled and locked, I would have been killed. I would have died quickly or gradually, but I certainly would have died. I would have bled to death.

  It was a strange disconnected feeling, as if I were suddenly free of all emotion, fear included.

  It was unexplored territory. I felt energized.

  What I felt was more than just the absence of fear. I’d spent the last year or so reacting to past mistakes, punishing myself-or so my inner voice claimed. After my shark encounter, though, self-flagellation seemed an absurd justification for allowing the circumstances of my life to control me. We’ve got to be suspicious of that little voice. Our innermost voice sometimes lies to us. It is a necessary revelation if a man or woman is to take the occasional leap of faith and invite the courage necessary to live an aggressive, creative and satisfying life.

  I’d known that before. How had I lost the thread?

  Maybe it happens to us all, sooner or later. Maybe we all stray off the path, driven by incremental events, great or small. Or maybe it’s just a secret laziness that seeks an excuse to escape the daily discipline, bravery, endurance and plain hard work that it takes to live up to our own idealized image of self.

  I’d certainly strayed from the path.

  I despised what I’d become. I didn’t like the way I looked, didn’t like the way I felt. There had been growing in me a bedrock unhappiness and discontent that I could never quite define.

  Now, though, I was struck by what seemed to be a rational explanation: For the last many years, I have been at odds with my own past. In my previous work, in what I think of as my former life, I’d been required to demonstrate what I prefer to define as extreme behavior.

  I was ashamed. Ashamed of what I’d done. I’d hidden it from others, which was not just understandable, but a legally binding mandate. However, I’d also attempted to hide the truth from myself.

  Why? What did I have to be ashamed of?

  Alone, beneath stars, buoyant, water light and moving with the wind, the answer to that question seemed to ring like crystal in my innermost being.

  Nothing. You have absolutely no reason to be ashamed.

  It was a transcendent moment. A few minutes before, I’d confronted what is truest in me- We are both predators.

  It was true. I am predatory by nature. I also like to think that I am ethical, kind, selective and generous. But, at the atavistic core, I am a hunter, a killer.

  I am a collector.

  It has always been so with me. It will always be so.

  In accepting that truth, I felt a delicious sense of freedom.

  I steered my surfboard home. I hung the sail, washed the board-a kind of workmanlike penance. The bottom half of the skeg was missing: Ragged fiberglass in a half-moon shape. No surprise.

  Then, after a quick glance at my fish tanks, a quicker hello to Crunch amp; Des, I went to my galley and placed upon the cupboard every bottle of booze I owned. It was an impressive stash. Five unopened bottles of Flor de Cana, two unopened bottles of Patron, which is a superb tequila, plus a complete stock of other whiskeys, gins and vodkas.

  I also stacked up two and a half cases of beer… thought about it for a moment before deciding to keep the beer for Tomlinson’s visits.

  I put the bottles in boxes. It took me two trips to carry it all to the marina. It was a little after 2 A.M. Aside from the hiss of the bait tank aerator, and the flapping of sail halyards against masts, all was still. I opened the ice machine and buried fourteen bottles therein.

  Finders, keepers. If someone wanted the bottles, there they were for the taking.

  I’d brought a flashlight. The marina’s commercial fish scale is out back behind the marina office, next to the cleaning table. It had been more than six months since I’d last weighed myself. I stepped onto the scale, touched my fingers to the poise counterweights, moving them.

  It took awhile. Was the damn thing broken?

  When the suspension bar was finally balanced, I whispered, “Jesus Christ, this can’t be right.”

  I was still wearing my wet T-shirt and shorts. I stepped off the scale, stripped naked, then stepped back onto the scale plate.

  After a few more seconds, I whispered, “You fat son-of-a-bitch.”

  I walked back to my stilt house.

  Every human being should have at least a half-dozen people that he or she can call day or night when they are sleepless, goofy drunk, feeling lonely or in emotional need.

  Dewey Nye is on my short list.

  When I got back to the house, my rubber wristwatch said it was 2:39 A.M.

  Feeling totally sober, now, I dialed the lady’s number. The phone rang twice before I heard her groggy voice answer, “This better be fuckin’ good, Walda.”

  She expected it to be her longtime, off again-on again roommate and lover.

  I said, “Dew. It’s me.”

  I could picture her sitting up a little, focusing. “Doc? What time is it?”

  I told her.

  “Are you drunk? You’ve got to be drunk.”

  I said, “In the morning, seven A.M., I’ll meet you on the beach at the end of Tarpon Bay Road. We run, then swim. Three miles, then swim a half mile. No-make it a mile. You don’t have to swim the whole way.”

  I listened to the lady yawn. “Oh, Doc, you are drunk. Go to sleep, sweetie. I’ll stop by around noon. We can go for a walk.”

  Not raising my voice, I said, “You need to listen to me, Dewey. It’s important. I’m not going to explain it to everyone, but I’m going to tell you because I need your help. Starting tomorrow, we work out at least five days a week. And no more alcohol. Period. Not for me. Twenty, twenty-five pounds from now, maybe I’ll reconsider. Or maybe I won’t. I’m making you that promise. Hold me to it.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “Yep. It’s time I quit feeling sorry for myself. Seven A.M. on the beach. I’ll see you there.”

  “What time’s the sun come up?”

  I said, “Seven-oh-one.”

  “Our own private sunrise service. I’ll be there.”

  I hung up, found a pencil, then walked to my outdoor shower. On the outside wall of my house, I wrote my weight: 247.

  Then, in parentheses, beside it, I wrote my minimum objective: 220.

  It seemed to formalize the c
hange that had taken place in me. Because I had written it, I now had no choice but to achieve it.

  I showered, walked into the lab and looked at the stranger in the mirror for a long moment before I said, “You’re done.”

  Then I went to bed.

  For months, I’d been plagued by nightmares or dreams of frustrating inabilities. On this night, though, I dreamed of the face of a child whose photo I kept in a moon-shaped locket. Then, in my dream, the child’s face became the face of an old, old love.

  She was a woman with waist-length blond hair, dressed in white crinoline. Her face was luminous and comforting, a woman so beautiful that seeing her caused me to linger upon detail: lighted portions of chin and cheek, strong nose creating shadow, perceptive eyes unaware and uncaring of her own beauty.

  Her voice was a kindred chord as she said, “I have waited so long for you, my dear. So many, many years. Now, once again, you’ve come back to me…” chapter twenty-seven

  Tomlinson said, “The way these people are behaving, it’s more like a rock concert for fascists. Or a magic show. I’d say a kind of Grateful Dead deal, but that’d be an insult to Jerry. They’re giving me the creeps, man.”

  He meant the several hundred Church of Ashram members who were moving along the boardwalk, filing toward the outdoor amphitheater, Cypress Ashram, on this Easter Sunday late afternoon. They were men and women of various ages, but there did seem to be a strange, almost mechanical, similarity in the way they moved, the way they behaved.

  Many wore robes: orange or white or green. There were far fewer orange robes than green, and fewer green than white, so the colors were suggestive of rank. Others were dressed in neatly pressed slacks or skirts, hair trimmed short. They traveled in tight groups, sometimes creating human chains by holding on to each other’s waists-slow conga lines-or walking in step, calling odd phrases back and forth as if in some cheerful competition:

  “We’re running Thetan Three over here.”

  “We’re running Thetan Four over here!”

  “Bhagwan Shiva’s version of Scientology,” Tomlinson told me when I asked. “Don’t worry about it.”