But I was wary of my own reaction because I am wary of emotion as a motivator. Emotion is energy without structure, without reason. Emotion can be a dangerous indulgence.
I finished the last of my tea; rattled the ice cubes in my glass as I said, “What you want me to do is go to Colombia and try to find your mother. That’s the point of all this, isn’t it?”
Amanda was shaking her head. “I won’t say I didn’t come here hoping you’d offer. Yeah, that’s what I was hoping. I really was. But the main reason I came is because of the letters I found, my dad’s letters. It’s like he knew what was going to happen and he was giving me directions what to do. But I don’t expect you to try to help, Doc. Not now. Not after meeting you.”
What the hell did that mean? I said, “You just lost me.”
The girl stirred from her seat, stood away from the table and tugged at the T-shirt with its terse warning message. Through the window, near mangroves at the back entrance to the marina office, I could see Mack at the fish-cleaning table filleting a couple of pompano. Tucker Gatrell watched, yammering away. Suspended from the porch overhead was a cast net. It looked like a gigantic spider’s web. Jeth was enmeshed in the thing, carefully inspecting its elemental network, using a spool of fishing line to mend holes.
Amanda swiped a wisp of copper hair from her eyes and said, “I hoped you’d volunteer to go help my mom because of the way my dad described you. But the thing is, I pictured a… well, let’s just say I pictured a more adventurous type of guy.”
“More adventurous?” I said. “Is that right?”
“What was that line in my dad’s letter? ‘The man’s got special skills.’ He was talking about you, so I pictured one of the soldier-of-fortune types. One of the tough guys you see in films. But not somebody like you, Doc. As big as you are, I didn’t picture somebody who looks like they spend all their time reading books and looking through a microscope.”
“I like books,” I said agreeably. “And it’s true that my work requires a microscope.”
“Don’t take that the wrong way. It’s not a cut. I don’t like the macho types. Not at all, so no offense. Really.”
Listening to Amanda’s story, her tone, her tough logic, I could hear the faintest echo of a good man who was lost long ago and far away. It was a frail thin chord that was the voice of an old friend. I fought the urge to allow myself an ironic smile as I replied, “Gee, no offense taken, Amanda. Really.”
“But any advice you have to offer,” she added, “it could be very helpful.”
“Advice, sure. If I can help, you bet I’ll try.”
“I’ll give you my number in Lauderdale. If you have any ideas, you can give me a call. I figure what I’ll have to do is just fly down there-Colombia, I mean, maybe get a friend to go with me-and have a look around.” The smile she then allowed me was one of those bright, meaningless smiles of dismissal; the kind of smile we all use when we are dealing with people who are attempting to sell us something we do not want, or who have not met our initial expectations.
I hoped my own bright smile mirrored hers. “Give you a call in Lauderdale, Amanda, you can count on it. Boy oh boy, I’ll give it some thought, too. Maybe try to figure out a way to locate your mom and the guy she’s traveling with. What was his name again?” Said it with false gusto, as if I hadn’t been paying attention.
“His name? You mean after listening to the whole story, you’ve already forgotten-” She stopped and eyed me closely, thinking it over.
I said, “Isn’t it handy to be able to take one look at a person and know what he’s like? And you’re so right! I’m the big, gawky, absent-minded-professor type. My brain’s so jammed with research material I just can’t seem to remember that guy’s name. The big fellow you described. Boy do I feel like a dope.”
I watched her expression: Is this an act? Then her face narrowed: Yep, it was definitely an act… but why?
“His name’s Merlot,” she said slowly.
“ Merlot. That’s right. You know, something that may account for my bad memory is when your dad and I were living over there in the jungles of Cambodia? It was almost too darn stressful. About half the time these little black-haired people were sneaking around trying to kill us. Well… I say ‘kill us,’ but what the Khmer really wanted to do was cut our heads off and carry them around on a pole. Know why?”
Her expression changed, but she didn’t answer.
“The reason they wanted to cut our heads off is because they believe a man remains conscious for nearly a minute after his head’s been severed. Which makes sense if you stop and think about it. Sure, you can’t breathe, you can’t walk, but your eyes and your brain are in the same place, right? To them, it’s like the perfect punishment. They’d cut off our heads and then position us in such a way so that the last thing we saw before we died was our own headless corpse. You talk about having a bad memory? The strain of worrying about that probably killed off some my brain cells.”
Her expression changed again. “Oh my God. You’re not exaggerating, are you?”
“Wish I was. So, yeah, I can understand why you wouldn’t trust someone like me to deal with a guy who might be taking advantage of your mother. This… what’s his name again?”
Reevaluation time: Maybe I wasn’t such a bookish, nerdish type after all. “Jackie,” she said. “Jackie Merlot.”
I was still smiling when I said, “Gee, a guy like that, I’d just love to meet.”
5
I got a fresh notebook from the lab and, in my small, blocky print, jotted down all the useful phone numbers and addresses that Amanda could provide.
Someday, if the notebook became important, I would attach a label, give it a file name, then lock the notebook away with the others I’d kept and saved over the years. There were some interesting titles in that fireproof box: Coast of Bengal Borneo/Sandakan Nicaragua/Politics/Baseball Havana I. Havana II Ox-Eyed Tarpon/South China Sea Masagua’s Ridley Turtles and the Magnetic Mountain Singapore to Kota Baharu (with 3rd Gurkhas)
There were others.
All contained the carefully kept details of a lifetime spent traveling alone through the Third World tropics; necessarily duplicitous years spent doing clandestine work, as well as the work I still care passionately about: marine biology.
The notebooks added order. They allowed me a sense of purpose, even though much of what I’ve done in my life now seems absurd, nearly existential because of the violence to which I’ve contributed.
Tomlinson knows a little bit about it. Not much, but enough to attempt to comfort me one beery evening when he said, “You’re not the Lone Ranger, Doc. Take the seventies, for instance. It wasn’t a decade, man. It was a damn crime scene. And you worry about the little bit of political stuff you were involved in?”
As I said, Tomlinson doesn’t know much about it.
So Bobby Richardson’s ladies were allotted their own notebook. When I’d finished with phone numbers and addresses, I asked Amanda if she’d thought to bring the four postcards she’d received from her mother. She had. They were in the envelope that contained her father’s letters. She paced around studying my overloaded shelves of books while I studied the postcards.
All the cards were postmarked Cartagena, Colombia, and onto each was pasted a hundred-peso stamp that paid tribute to emeralds, the gem for which the country’s jungles are famous. Cartagena is an ancient seaport city built like a fortress during the 1500s, when conquistadors shipped gold and silver to Madrid. I’d been there a number of times, but that had been years ago.
Three of the cards were photographs of sites I recognized as Cartagena tourist attractions: the clock tower entrance to the old walled city; a busy street vendor scene; a small Spanish garrison (stone walls with gunports overlooking Cartagena Harbor) that was now a restaurant, according to the card, called Club de Pesca.
Had I once eaten at that restaurant? It was possible. There was a little marina close to that old Spanish garrison. I’d maybe stopp
ed at the marina for a beer, but I couldn’t remember the name of the place.
Who could I check with to find out? I’d have to think about it.
The fourth postcard showed a roomful of polished ship’s bells-“a magnificent nautical museum,” according to florid Spanish on the back of the card. The place was apparently a private museum near Cartagena called CoMarCa.
The cards were not dated, but they were postmarked: 6 January, 12 January, 16 February and 20 March, respectively.
On the back of each postcard, in flowing, ovoid script, were typical tourist inanities: “Everything is so different here!”… “The weather is very warm because we are so close to the equator!”… “Miss you, wish you were here!”
They contained nothing more personal than that.
There was no mention of Jackie Merlot, of where they were staying, or of where they planned to travel.
Each card was written in black ink from what might have been the same rollerpoint pen. I also noticed that each of the last three cards had suffered a few water smears, as if the wet ink had been splattered with random raindrops… or maybe beads of sweat.
I found that very odd. But still… there was a benign explanation. Wasn’t there?
I said to Amanda, “Are you absolutely certain this is your mother’s handwriting?”
“I’ve seen enough of it to know, yeah. Everything about her is so beautiful; even her letters are rounded and neat and perfect. It’s definitely my mom’s writing.”
“You mind if I hang on to these, maybe give them a closer look later?”
The woman shrugged. “They’re not exactly what you’d call private and personal. She could have been writing to a stranger instead of her daughter.”
“It’s one of the things that bothers me.”
That stopped her. She glanced up from the book she was leafing through. “Which tells me there are other things about them that bother you.”
I said, “Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I smiled. “It means I’m not sure. Relax. I’m on your side. I’m not hiding anything. But give me some time to think about it.”
She wanted to talk some more-I could tell, but she was also getting restless. Maybe she was uncomfortable in the close quarters of my little ship’s cabin cottage. The spartan furnishings and the near-absence of decoration make some women uneasy. Tomlinson says that it is because my lack of creativity strips away all pretense and therefore reduces sexuality to its most basic and unromantic components.
Personally, I think the soft but constant gurgle of the many aquarium pumps keys a urinary restlessness.
While I was questioning her, she happened to mention that she liked boats; hoped to one day buy a sailboat and do some cruising through the islands. So I said boats? She liked boats? Then how about the two of us go roam around the docks, do some window-shopping?
Dinkin’s Bay is among the last of Florida’s old-time fish camp marinas: wobbly docks, bait tanks, tackle shop, fish market, some deep-water dockage on the bay side and lots of shallow water slips along the mangrove shoals. Everything built of wood, everything sun-leached gray. It was a Sunday in April: busy day with lots of Sanibel day-trippers roaming around, lots of cars coming and going in the shell parking lot. And all the slips were full.
People with the boat bug-and it was apparent that Amanda had a bad case of it-are never happier than when they are poking around marinas, fantasizing about owning other people’s boats. It’s a disease that costs more to cure than any other single common learning disability.
So we crossed the walkway to shore, skirted the hedge of mangroves and the two-story marina office, where we saw Jeth walking down the steps from his apartment. Heard him call to me, “Your uncle Tuh-tuh-tuck… he’s inside speaking with Mack.”
I waved him off-let Mack deal with the neurotic old fool-and steered Amanda past the Red Pelican clothing shop and down the long main dock so that she could look at sailboats to her heart’s content. I stopped only briefly to say hello to a couple of the fishing guides who were in for lunch, and then to introduce Amanda to JoAnn Small-wood, who lives aboard the soggy old Chris-Craft, Tiger Lily. Stood there listening to the two of them talk, then, as we parted, JoAnn gave me a little wink-a private sign among our small marina community that indicates approval of an outsider.
It spoke well of Amanda… and it also said quite a bit about the quick assessment process common to women in general and to the ladies of Tiger Lily specifically. JoAnn had inspected, interviewed and evaluated Amanda as quickly, as efficiently, perhaps as accurately, as two dogs unexpectedly met on a sand road. It is something most of us pretend that we don’t do. But the ladies of the Tiger Lily do not posture. They are precisely what they seem to be. Not that I pretend to understand their own particular reality. They are honest women; they speak their minds. It is a rare thing and enough for me.
As we moved off by ourselves, Amanda said, “I like her. There’s something very… solid? Yeah, solid about her.”
I said, “I’m glad to hear that. JoAnn and Rhonda-Rhonda Lister, that’s her roommate-they’re two of my closest friends.”
“Do you mean roommate as in someone who shares the rent? Or as in ‘Roommate’?”
“The former. Not that I’d ever impose by asking.”
“I wasn’t being judgmental. Just curious. In fact, I’m surprised it even crossed my mind.”
“From the signals they give out, they’re happy, healthy heterosexuals. A nice change in this day and age, huh? Mostly they’re nice people… good ladies. Men come around sometimes. If the guides approve of them, sometimes the men even spend the night. I’ve watched a couple of those guys leave. The smile on their face, it’s hard to describe. Do people still use the word dreamy?”
She seemed amused. “People your age probably do.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“I didn’t mean to offend. It’s what I was thinking.”
“Well, it’s an eloquent word, dreamy, and it fits. What goes on when Rhonda and JoAnn don’t have men guests is none of my business.”
“The tone of your voice, I can tell you’re protective. You look after the both of them.”
“More like the other way around. They treat me like their slow-witted brother. And for good reason.”
“You strike me as being anything but slow-witted. But what I meant was, you guys take care of each other. I’ve got friends like that. Not many but, yeah, I’ve got them. That’s why she was giving me the eye, trying to figure out what my intentions are toward you.”
“This is a very small marina, and it is a very large and dangerous world outside the marina gate. We’re careful about who we let in.”
Amanda said, “A safe place, that’s good.”
I said, “Yeah. They’re getting harder and harder to find.”
I could tell that she’d been thinking about it, how to get me back on the subject of her father. Looking at her, seeing the intensity-being so careful about how to bring it up-it crossed my mind that her unanswered questions about Bobby were nearly as important as telling me about Jackie Merlot.
I listened to her soften me up before risking the subject: “It explains a lot,” she said, “meeting you. I can see now why you and my dad were buddies. About why he said to come to you if I needed help. It tells me a little. I look at you, his friend, and I think, okay, that’s the kind of man he was. This is the kind of man he was.”
“I guess I’m flattered,” I said.
“It’s been strange thinking about him so much lately. I mean, I’m an adult now, close to the same age he was when he died, and finding these old love letters to my mother, it’s like he’s become a real person. It’s like meeting the man for the first time.”
“He was a good one.”
Me saying that, it meant something. I could see it in her face.
“You wouldn’t lie about a thing like that, would you?”
I thought for a moment b
efore I said, “Yeah, I would. A guy I knew nearly twenty years ago? His daughter shows up out of nowhere and she asks me what he was like? Yeah, he could be the biggest jerk of all time and I’d tell her he was a nice man. But Bobby was something special. He was a friend. And a good man. A very good man. I don’t say that lightly.”
She was nodding, letting the subject build its own momentum. “We’ve got a lot of unanswered questions about him. My mom and I, we used to talk about it. Not much and not very often. She married Frank, started a whole new life, plus it hurt her, remembering him, because they were so much in love. But the times we did talk, she didn’t know a lot. About what happened, I mean. My father never said what he was doing or where he was doing it, and the Navy never gave us much of an explanation.”
I waited for her to ask and she finally did: “So… maybe you know. At least you have to know more than they told us. You were there. You were the military guy he was closest to when he was killed.”
Feeling increasingly uneasy, I said, “It’s a minor point, but I wasn’t in the military.”
“You weren’t? But he wrote about you. You had to have been there with him-”
“I was there. Yeah, we were together a lot. All I’m saying is, I was over there for a different reason.”
“See? I don’t even know where ‘over there’ is. It’s with little things like that you can help. Fill in some of the holes if you don’t mind talking about it. Bobby Richardson was killed in an explosion during a training exercise, that’s all my mom was told. A couple of times in his letters he mentioned Thailand, so we assume it was in Asia. She wrote and made phone calls, but never got another speck of information. Something else she said was that she tried to get in touch with an old buddy of his. She musta meant you. Who else? But that she never heard back.”
The Mangrove Coast df-6 Page 7