Radical tree hugger to some, river swamp savior to others, Mother Earth was an environmental activist before the term was coined.
Sunbaked skin.
Dark-tinted glasses.
Strings of mouse-gray hair dangling out of a faded camouflage bandana.
Dull black military boots.
Well-worn army fatigues.
Layering.
Long undershirt, flannel button down, dark camouflage hoody. Mother Earth looks like an elderly river rat, but has done more to preserve the rivers, land, and lifestyle of old North Florida than any other living person.
Originally meant as a dismissive, if lighthearted insult, the nickname stuck, and eventually Marshelle adopted it herself. Mother Earth stenciled on the side of her boat in bold black letters.
Growing in popularity over the years, Mother Earth eventually founded a not-for-profit organization named Friends of the Apalachicola. Its mission, to provide stewardship and advocacy for the protection of the Apalachicola River and Bay and all its tributaries, including the Chipola River.
Locked in a nearly lifelong battle with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over their dredging of the river, the creation of sand mountains, and their blockage of sloughs and tributaries, she has also fought against Georgia and Alabama’s overuse and pollution, the loss of floodplain habitat, and explosive growth and development along Florida’s once forgotten coast.
Often caught talking to the river and actually hugging the trees that line its banks, Mother Earth is as eccentric as she is effective.
He waits until the last possible moment, then stands and begins to jump up and down and wave his arms, attempting to catch her attention without alerting Gauge and his men to his whereabouts if they happen to be in the vicinity.
She doesn’t see him.
Though the small outboard motor on her boat is not very loud, he doubts she could hear him even if he yelled.
Should I try anyway?
Risk revealing your position to Gauge when odds are she won’t be able to hear you?
Yeah.
You stupid or just suicidal?
So you’re saying not to?
Being a smartass with a voice inside your head makes you as crazy as Mother Earth.
She’s not crazy. She’s a hero.
Heroine. And I rest my case.
As she passes directly in front of him, he starts to yell to her, but reconsiders.
Looking along the banks to make sure he hasn’t been seen by Gauge or his men, he quickly ducks back into the hole hewn out of the root system.
Depressed.
Disheartened.
And not just because he missed a great opportunity for rescue. He thinks about Mother Earth riding up and down the river, watching over, patrolling, helping, loving. All she’s done. Dedicated her life to conserving one of the greatest rivers and bays in the world.
I’ve done so little. So little that matters with my life.
Hearing a boat motor approaching from the other direction, he looks up to see that Mother Earth is headed back toward him, this time much closer to his side of the river.
How appropriate, he thinks, that I should be rescued by a woman.
She’s gonna pass by without seeing me again.
Maybe he had waited too long to motion for her like he had the first time. Maybe this time he needs to yell.
He starts to, but stops.
Looking up and down along the banks, he sees no one. Go ahead. Just hurry.
He tries, but just can’t bring himself to do it.
As she’s passing by directly in front of him, he thinks, You’ve done it again. Do you want to get killed, is that it?
But in another moment, she turns her head, as if catching a glimpse of something in her peripheral vision.
Decelerating quickly, the bow dropping down instantly, the small boat bobbing forward as its own wake catches up to it.
By the time she’s turned around and approaching the bank, Remington is wading out into the water.
Placing his things in the boat, then pulling himself up the moment it’s close enough, he doesn’t wait for an invitation.
—Break down? she asks.
—Thank you so much.
—Sure, honey. It’s no problem.
—No, I mean for all you do for the river.
—Ah, sugar, you’re gonna make Mother cry. You’re welcome. Thank you for thanking me. You get lost?
—We’ve got to get out of here as fast as possible.
—Why?
—I saw a game warden named Gauge kill a woman and now he and his friends are after me.
—What? I’m not . . . I know Gauge. He works over in Franklin County. Are you sure he—
—Please, let’s just go.
—Okay. Don’t fret. Mother’ll get you out of this mess, but are you sure it was Gauge? I just can’t believe—
—It was. I have proof. Pictures of him doing it. Please. Let’s just go.
She shakes her head.
—Gauge. I just . . . it’s just so . . .
As she whips the boat around and begins to head back down the river, he’s flooded with such relief and emotion, he begins to cry.
—Let it out, baby. Let it all out. You’re okay now. Everything’s gonna be all right.
Saved by Mother Earth. He can’t get over it.
Glancing back at her, he finds her weathered brown face beautiful, her camo do-rag, hoody, and fatigues stylish.
—What is it, honey? she yells over the whine of the engine and whish of the wind.
—I thought I was going to die.
53
Now
* * *
In the early afternoon, we lose the inmate county work crews, and a few hours after that, Mike’s construction crews.
We’re back at the vehicles to regroup and regather.
“I’ve been thinking,” Mike Thomas says. “We’re searching this area where it all happened, and that’s great—hell, we found the crime scene and body and all—but what if Gauge and his men were over here—both to bury the body and then to hunt Remington because what they were actually protecting was somewhere else? I don’t mean like a completely different place—just like farther east.”
“It’d make sense that they wouldn’t want to kill the victim and bury her where their crops were,” I say.
“We’ve been focused on this area and the tip of the island because that’s where the murder and chase and shootout were,” Heather says, “but . . . you’re right . . . it could easily be a little or a lot farther down.”
“I’m not saying we’ve completely covered this area,” Mike says, “but we have had a lot of people over it the past few days—and seen nothing. What if we expand our search to the east? We know there are houses and businesses to the west and south, so why not go a little north and east?”
“Especially since there’s so few of us searching now,” Hank Felty adds. “In fact, I think we should put a boat in and have one group look from the river side while the other searches from the land side. And that’s not just me tryin’ to get out of this fuckin’ swamp. Truly ain’t.”
“Actually makes more sense to search from the river,” Mike says. “If we find something, then we know approximately where to enter from the land.”
“We could go farther down river by boat this afternoon and if we find anything, come in by land tomorrow,” Hank says.
“Sounds like a plan,” Heather says. “Let’s do it.”
* * *
Letting everyone else leave, Mike, Hank, Heather, and I board a boat at Douglas Landing and head down the Chipola River toward the tip of the island where the Chipola flows back into the Apalachicola, passing the swamp we’ve been searching through as we do.
When we reach the point where the Little River flows into the Big River, Hank slows the boat and rides much closer to the wet sand and clay bank along the right side.
“Hank, what do I have to pay you to not drink while you drive u
s down the river on this little trip?” Mike asks.
“They ain’t made that much money,” he says, raising his bottle of beer toward him.
“Why don’t you let me drive, then?” Mike says.
“Just keep your seat and your panties on, old man. I drive better drinking than I do sober. That’s a fact.”
“If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a drunk say that,” Mike says.
“Probably do, you rich bastard.”
Though Mike seems serious in what he’s saying, there’s a playfulness and good-natured tone in the way both men are communicating.
“Everybody keep your eyes peeled,” Hank says. “Look for any good-sized slough that cuts back up into the land high and wide enough to get a boat into it.”
“River’s high right now,” Mike says. “Most of the sloughs and little tributaries should have plenty of water. We should be able to get back into them without much problem.”
He’s right.
We enter every one of any size that we come to.
And everyone is about the same. Canopy of branches overhead covering tannic water below filled with fallen trees, hanging vines, and low-hanging limbs.
Darker and more twisty than the river, each slough feels like a slow boat ride back into an ancient, untouched land time forgot.
Though the water is high, the narrow channels still have many trees and stumps just beneath the surface, the outboard motor hitting and popping up over each one, slowing our already slow progress.
Along the banks, trees, many with exposed root systems, lean out over the water, their trunks covered with thick vines, their branches host to Spanish moss and kudzu.
Beyond the shallow tree-lined banks, a thick, damp and dank jungle-like swamp extends toward an unseen infinity. Or so it seems.
In each slough we wind and twist our way around and beside and under jagged fallen tree trunks and hanging limbs and thick branches. Each time I think we will stop and turn around far sooner than we do, but somehow Hank manages to both fit the boat into impossibly small looking spots and get it out again.
About half a mile back in the fourth such slough, Hank cuts the engine and points to a huge gnarled cypress tree on the left side of the bank.
Heather, Mike, and I follow his extended arm, but can’t make out what he’s trying to direct our attention to.
“Six feet up,” he says. “On the right side, just below that big knot right there.”
We look again.
Just below the knot he’s referring to is a barely visible notch, looked to have been made by a pocket knife in what might be the shape of a crude hornet—though I could be imagining that part.
“What is it?” Mike asks.
“Grower’s mark,” Hank says. “Been there a while, but . . . that’s what it is. Y’all want to get out and have a look?”
“Of course,” Heather says.
“How dangerous is it?” Mike asks. “Promised Miss Jean I’d make it home for dinner this evening.”
“You never know,” Hank says, “but my guess is nobody is up here. It may even be an old site. The mark looks pretty weathered.”
* * *
We find the remnants of a once-major operation about half a mile walk in.
Cleared and tilled patches of land hidden beneath the ancient oaks and pines where rows and rows of post plants once thrived.
Stacks of plastic five-gallon buckets, hoes, rakes, and shovels. An irrigation system that pumped water out of the river.
Now it looks like an abandoned farming operation, but it’s obvious that at one time it was a massive grow field.
“This is a very smart setup,” Hank says. “See how they planted in patches—a little here, a little there. And how the trees hide it from airplanes or helicopters but the sun still reaches the rows.”
“This has got to be it,” Heather says. “It was massive. And it’s on Cole’s land.”
Mike nods. “Has to be.”
Hank says, “You think Cole was involved?”
“No,” Heather says. “No way.”
“To pay for his wife’s illness,” he adds.
“Absolutely not,” Mike says. “You of all people should know growers always plant their crops on somebody else’s land.”
Hank stops walking suddenly and stares in the distance. “Look over there.”
We follow his gaze but don’t see anything but thick green forest.
“See that?”
“What?” Heather says. “I only see trees.”
“Look closer. That’s a greenhouse.”
“Huh?” she says.
We follow him over to the area he’s talking about and find a series of portable camouflaged buildings with military-looking green-and-camo netting covering them. Even a few feet away they are indistinguishable from the trees and underbrush surrounding them.
Gathering back the netting and finding a door, he pushes it open to creaks of protest and leads us inside.
Filled with wooden shelves, plastic pots, bags of potting soil and fertilizer, below a green-tinted skylight and a hanging PVC irrigation system, whatever once grew here is long gone, but the scope and sophistication of the operation is obvious.
“Pure genius,” Hank says. “The whole set-up. And almost totally invisible. Bet they had generators out here, too. It’s simple yet sophisticated. Water from the slough, light through the trees, hidden as hell. I’m not easily impressed, but this is . . . I’m impressed.”
“Why abandon it?” Heather says.
Hank shrugs. “Not sure. I wouldn’t if it were mine. Probably too much heat from the shootout or . . . maybe the boys who were killed were the ones running it.”
Mike says, “But if it was theirs and they were killed and never got to come back to it, there’d still be plants all around—and the generators for the hothouses and the pump for the irrigation.”
“True,” he says. “Maybe somebody stumbled upon it and took everything. Maybe it has nothing to do with Gauge and the rest of them, but it’d be a wicked, ungodly coincidence if that’s the case. Who knows?”
“If someone else was behind the operation and Gauge and the others just worked for them, it’d make sense that they’d keep it going. It might even make sense that they’d leave this site, but why leave so much behind?”
“Too much heat,” Hank says. “Took what they could in one trip. Plants were the priority. I don’t know. Just guessing.”
“The more pressing question is where did they move it to?” I say. “How is such a massive operation still happening right under our noses?”
“Why do you think it is?” Mike says.
“We have it on good authority that North Florida is supplying a big part of South.”
“Really?” he says. “Damn. That’s hard to imagine.”
“Think about how long this one must’ve run without anyone ever knowing,” Hank says.
54
Then
* * *
The boat bounces, its front end bucking up and down, slapping the hard surface of the river. The spray from the water feels like tiny shards of ice pelting his face, the cold wind causing his eyes to water, then blowing the tears out on his temples.
—I thought we were closer to the foot of the island, he says.
—It’s about another mile, mile and a half.
He nods.
—I want to join Friends of the Apalachicola.
—We’d love to have you. There’s so much to be done. Right now the state refuses to give the Corps the permits they need to continue dredging, but they’re fighting it—and we’ve got so much to undo from all the damage they’ve already done. Between them and what Alabama and Georgia’re doing with pollution and damming, they’re destroying an entire ecosystem.
He nods again.
—It’s the way of the world, she continues. The folks downstream are always at the mercy of the people upstream. All this begins in north Georgia with the Chattahoochee. It has five major dams o
n it and supplies the water for metro Atlanta. Atlanta’s polluting like a bastard, but they’ve decided to pay fines rather than fix their problems. That shouldn’t be an option.
—How can I help?
—Well, first—
Her throat explodes, then the side of her head, and she slumps over dead in the bottom of the old bateau.
At first, he’s so shocked he can’t move, but as rounds continue to whiz by him and ricochet off the boat and the motor, he drops down into the hull, his frightened face inches from Mother Earth’s lifeless one.
What have I done?
Terror.
Panic.
Futility.
Rounds continue to ricochet around him, but he doesn’t move. He can’t.
Numb.
Despondent.
Lost.
He can’t think, can’t move, can’t—what?
Death.
Despair.
Distance.
He feels himself coming untethered again.
Adrift.
Are you going to die right here?
It looks like it.
Just give up? Give in? All you’ve survived and now you’re just going to quit?
I can’t . . .
You can. Come on. You’ve got to make Gauge pay for this. You can’t let him get away with killing Mother Earth—he can’t believe she’s really dead—and who knows how many other people.
She’s dead because of me. I got her killed.
And set back the environmental movement in ways you can’t even comprehend.
Circles.
Without Mother’s hand to guide it, the spinning propeller of the outboard motor has turned, and the boat is making large clockwise circles in the middle of the river.
How long before it spins around too fast and capsizes?
Bullets continue to pock the aluminum sides of the bateau, some of them piercing the hull, and the small craft begins to take on water.
You’ve got to make your move now. Wait much longer and it’ll be too late.
Searching the boat as best he can in his prostrate position, he finds a small blued snub-nosed .38. Clicking open the cylinder, he sees it has all five rounds.
The Remington James Box Set Page 35