"I like nice skin," Joseph said. "You want me to lie?"
"That woulda been the polite thing to do! Friends is supposed to do things for each other." Tucker simmered for a moment before he sighed and added, "Know what's sad? I couldn't be trusted with your wife, neither. Not if she was in a loving mood." Tuck caught the sharp look Joseph gave him, so he added hastily, "Which she never was. Either of them."
Joseph said, "That the truth?"
"God honest, my right hand on the Book."
"Hum-m-m-m. Your timing musta been off then, 'cause the second one run off with that bird-watcher from Long Island. Skinny man that wore things around his neck. 'Noculars? Or maybe he had somethin' you didn't."
Tucker started to react to the implications of that, then decided to drop it. He ruffled the paper he was holding, then picked up the box of papers and put it in his lap.
The shrimp boat was out of sight now, behind the scattering of mangrove islands that was the first green gate to the maze of the Ten Thousand Islands southward.
"You know something," Tucker said, his voice sounding tired, "we're both just a couple of low-life sons a bitches."
Joseph nodded his agreement. There was a big bluebottle fly buzzing around, and he was waiting to get a shot in with his load of tobacco juice.
Tucker said, "Pitiful, that's what we are. Makes me want to get down on my knees and pray for forgiveness, all the bad things we done." He looked over briefly at the bigger man. "Least you're an Indian. You got an excuse."
Joseph was listening but not giving it his full attention. He had his eye on the fly, watching it like a cat.
Tucker said, "Me, I got no excuses. I lived a bad life and I admit it." He raised his voice, looking up. "Hear me God? I admit I ain't been worth a deuce all my life. Coulda done good. Instead, I done bad." His voice became reflective. "Course… some might say it was a little stupid to send me down here with a trigger finger and a tallywhacker if You didn't expect me to use 'em." He paused and looked toward the sky again. "But I ain't the kind to second-guess, Lord!"
The fly was buzzing, soaring, descending, its circles getting smaller and smaller. Joseph waited.
"It's the damn truth. I been a sinner my whole life. I've lied, cheated, messed with married women, drank liquor, and, God forgive me, even killed a man, shot him dead-"
The fly landed on the railing, and Joseph spat, a real zinger, which hit the fly-but also Tuck's foot.
Tucker lifted his boot, studying the slime with disgust. "Jesus Christ, Joe, I been bad, but that don't give you the right to spit on me!"
"Wasn't spittin' at you. There was a fly."
"Well, you hit my good boot! Gad-"
Joseph pointed at the struggling fly. "That look like I missed? Besides, you never shot no man."
"Did, too. Shot lots of Japanese. What ya think us marines was doing over there in Hawaii?"
"That was the war. It don't count. I meant you never shot no one else."
"Hell I didn't-That one-eyed fish buyer down in Campeche."
"You didn't shoot him; you shot at him. I was there. You missed. You never could shoot."
"That's right, I shot at him. Out there on the docks that night, it was cold as hell, and he jumped in the water. He got pneumonia and I heard he got complications and died only about a year later.
Same thing as me holding the gun to his head." Tuck folded his hands and looked out over the water. "That good-for-nothing beaner haunts me to this day."
Joseph stood and stretched.
"Hey," Tucker said, "where you going?"
"That bacon smells done. I was gonna go down to that girl's, see about breakfast."
"Sit yourself down. I'm talking about something here."
"If I always waited till you stopped talking, I'd starve."
"I'm talking about what to do with this here discovery of mine-the vitamin water. I'm saying we got a chance to do something good for a change. I got a plan."
Joseph said, "You always got a plan. But ain't none of 'em ever worked."
"And do you know why that is, Joe? Have you put any thought at all into why it is that all the things I discovered, all the smart ideas I had, that they all just kinda floated away from us and made somebody else rich?"
Joseph thought for a moment. "'Cause you're a fuckup?"
"No!" Tuck made a face, genuinely offended. "No, the only difference is advertising. The whole kit-n-caboodle right there. I never advertised my ideas-I just gave 'em away. And you want to know why?"
Joseph didn't want to know, but he didn't say it. Tuck was going to tell him, anyway.
"The reason I give the ideas away was 'cause I never took 'em seriously enough. Never realized how important they was at the time. When I had Dick Pope out fishing, I said, 'You like to tow people on boards behind boats, just fence the place in, charge admission. Like a circus that doesn't move. Maybe even a restaurant.' He says, 'Cap'n, I like that-a circus that doesn't move. Call it Beautiful Cypress Gardens' Ski Show.' Joe, that's just what I told him." Tuck snapped his fingers. "Next time I turn around, he's making thousands on Cypress Gardens and he's showing what's his name, Mr. Disney, around, saying he should do the same. My idea, Joe. Same with the shrimp and the stone crabs. And when I told Mr. Collier to build a boat around his dredge, it just didn't seem important at the time. Hell-" Tuck's face had softened, his smile a little dreamy-"you know how it was. Florida was so big and wild, there didn't seem no need to grab hold of any particular piece of it. There was plenty for everybody. But now they got her carved down into just a little bitty thing. 'Bout got the juice all sucked out of her. That's why I come up with this plan. Thought Florida would last forever, but she didn't. Been thinking the same thing 'bout my life, tell you the truth. Water or no water, we ain't getting any younger."
Which cut right into Joseph's thoughts: thinking about his grandfather, Chekika's Son, holding the door of the Cadillac open.
You telling me to go ahead and die, Grandpa!
Nope. Tellin' you to get in the damn car. You already dead.
Joseph hesitated… sighed… said, "Okay, okay, I'll listen to your plan. But couldn't you tell it over breakfast?"
Tomlinson was telling Ford, "The old dude's been spending some time at the library… the courthouse, too. You look at this stuff?" He was sitting in Ford's lab, on the steel stool near the stainless-steel dissecting table, while Ford hunched over the dissecting scope. Tomlinson had the contents of the envelope Tuck had given them spread out on the table.
Ford said, "If he was at the library, it was the first time. More likely, he had someone else do it for him."
On the transparent base plate of the microscope, Ford had mounted a cross section of a piece of loggerhead sponge he had taken from one of his sea mobiles. Ford could see the spongin fibers of the sponge's osculum magnified by the scope-its excur-rent water opening-as well as the opening vascular wall of the spongocel, where food and oxygen were filtered from the constant flow of seawater. And there was a curling flagellum, the hairlike structure that pulled the water in. Most striking, though, was the cross-thatched symmetry of the animal's silicate skeleton. The skeleton was an intricate pattern of fluted ramps on a curving honeycombed infrastructure. Enlarged a thousand times, what Ford saw might have been an extraordinarily modernistic painting. Enlarged a billion times, a single filament might have been a stairway designed by Dali.
Sponges consisted of a cooperating community of different cells, and Ford was remembering something he had read. A biologist had done a census on a loggerhead sponge, counting more than sixteen thousand animals, most of them snapping shrimp and crabs, living in the canal system of that single sponge.
He looked up from the microscope and readjusted his wire glasses. "I don't suppose you could bring the pitcher of iced tea in here? It's so damn hot for October."
"No lie, October's always hot. Just as soon as I finish sorting these papers."
Ford was nodding his head. Hot, hot, hot. Through the window,
the noon sky was a white haze, the bay greasy flat. The marina baked at the water's edge, the boats immobile in their slips, gray and blue and fiberglass red. Except for Mack sitting on his chair in the office and one of the live-aboards standing on the dock hosing the deck of his boat, there wasn't much movement. Everybody off at work, or maybe sipping beer at the Lazy Flamingo, trying to stay cool. Ford said, "I don't know, maybe I should get air conditioning. I keep thinking about it."
"You've got the ceiling fans, and you get the nice breeze off the water. Air conditioning's not natural, man. We've raised a whole generation of canned-air zombies. My daughter, Nichola, that's not going to happen to her. You know the type: Give me Freon or give me death. It goons up the brain cells. I know about that stuff." Tomlinson had separated the papers into little piles, patted them, then went out the screen door.
Ford heard the volume on his Maxima marine stereo system kick up, Jimmy Buffett singing "Cowboy in the Jungle," which flashed Tuck Gatrell into his mind. Wiry man with great big brown wrists and wild blue eyes… he looked so damn much older than Ford had expected.
Tomlinson came back with the iced tea and a can of beer for himself. He picked up a packet of papers to show Ford. "These are all newspaper stories. You look at them?"
Ford said, "Nope," returning his attention to the dissection scope, the Wolfe Zoom binocular system. He loved the feel of it, the finely machined parts and the superb objective system, solid beneath his cheek and big right hand.
Tomlinson said, "These stories are all about miraculous cures, about healing waters and mineral springs. Some of these stories are from the… yeah, from the National Enquirer. Then some other newspapers-"
"Are they all Xeroxed?"
Tomlinson said, "Let's see… yeah, all but a couple. How'd you know that?"
Ford said, "Because I know Tuck."
Tomlinson was reading, not aloud, but making a noise with his mouth, skimming the stories one by one. He said, "There's a well near Lourdes, in the south of France, where people go to be healed by drinking… hey, I know that place. It's where Saint Bernadette saw the Virgin." Tomlinson grinned. "Chalk one up for parochial schooling, huh?" He was reading again. "Here's another about a pond in Quintana Roo-that's Mexico, right? Cured a bunch of people with yellow fever. A river off the Zambezi, a stream in County Galway, Ireland… here's one about a lake in Mongolia where people bathe and live to be two hundred years old. All these places, like local treasures. That's what this one's about-"
Ford said, "Uh-huh," using surgical scissors to clip open another tiny section of the sponge. The sponge was air-light, almost hollow. The animal seemed to be all fiber and air. What kept it alive?
Tomlinson said, "Now here's a couple of stories about the state planning to acquire land around Mango to create a park that adjoins Everglades National Park."
Ford said, "They're originals, not copies."
"Right! You did look at this stuff. Let's see"-he was leafing through the piles-"and here's a plat map of your uncle's property. He had… one hundred twenty-seven acres-'more or less,' it says-and he sold off all but twenty-five to a company called… It was right here, the copy of a letter on legal stationery."
"Who's the attorney?"
"Wait a minute… he sold it all to a company called Development Unlimited, which it says is part of some kind of enterprise- Kamikaze? Geeze, that's what it says. Sounds Japanese."
Ford said, "I wouldn't think they'd name a company that."
"Why not? Kamikaze means 'divine wind.' You know, I speak quite a bit of Japanese-oh, here's the attorney. Lemar Flowers, that's the man's name, the guy who handled the deal for your uncle. Sounds like your uncle sold off his property, but now he's found this spring, he wants it back."
Ford was removing the slide from the microscope, thinking that if he transferred more sponges and tunicates into his big tank, he might not need such an elaborate filtering system. They were perfect cleaning systems, perfectly designed. He said, "What's the date on the newspaper story about the state planning to acquire the land?"
Tomlinson picked up the papers again. "December of last year."
"And when did he sell his property?"
"Ah… February this year. Three months later."
"Are there any dates on the copies about those places, the different springs around the world? Not on the stories, but on the photocopies themselves?"
Tomlinson said, "No-o-o, but he had to start collecting them after he sold his land. If he'd known about the spring and believed he could make a lot of money on it, why would he have sold?"
Ford said, "Yeah. Why would he?"
A few minutes before Angela Walker pulled into the drive, Tuck and Joseph were walking homeward along the bay road after eating a late breakfast at Sally Carmel's. Tuck's dog, Gator, and his old Appaloosa, Roscoe, followed along behind, and every few yards the horse would nose up and butt Tucker in the back.
Finally, Tuck turned and said, "Dang it, Roscoe, if I'd wanted to ride, I'd a brung a saddle!"
The horse shook its head, mane flying. To Joseph, Tucker said, "The old fool's been acting like a colt ever since his cojone-e-es growed back." Like he was complaining, but smiling because he was pleased. "Wants to head out on the trail, see if he can find a friend."
Joseph recognized the manipulative tone; knew this was not just some innocent comment, and he replied to the declaration it was. "I ain't got a horse. I can't go on no saddle trip-and I ain't riding double with you."
Tuck began to protest but then dropped the pretense. Joseph was too suspicious for it to be any fun. He said, "I can get you a horse. They got a bunch of them up to Cypress Gate Acres."
Joseph thought for a moment, couldn't place the name-Cypress Gate Acres-then remembered the big development they'd built in the north part of Everglades County with all the houses and canals and even a nice shopping center with a store where Joseph had once stopped to buy beer. He asked, "They sell horses up there, too?"
"A few of them people keep horses. I reckon one of them's bound to be overstocked. Little five-acre ranches with corrals where they teach the horses to jump. Jumping horse, that'd be nice to ride, huh?"
"If I had enough money for a horse," Joseph said, "I wouldn't 'a been at that county rest home. I'd a been at the other place, that Sunset Retirement place, the one that plays church bells every night. I heard they got a sauna bath there."
"First time I ever heard you worry about money."
Joseph knew what that meant. "Uh-oh," he said.
"Uh-oh what? What's that supposed to mean?"
"You plan to steal it. The horse. That's what it means."
"Not steal, just borrow it. Take it for a test drive, then pay when we're flush. I'm no horse thief."
"Just long as it's not some kid's. I'm not gonna make some kid cry by stealing his horse."
Tucker said, "We'll find one with a fat owner. Do the horse a favor. Besides, we used to graze cattle up that way and I don't remember giving anyone permission to build a dang city. 'Bout time we got a little payback."
Joseph was thinking about the last horse he'd owned, a tall chestnut gelding, seventeen hands high, worked cattle on free rein and would hold until dawn. Buster, that was the horse's name. But then Joseph had gotten married the second time, moved to Miami with the woman who sold real estate and who apparently liked bird-watchers, and Buster had jumped the fence at the place he was being boarded and got hit by a cement truck. That was… twenty-five years ago?
Tuck was talking about the trip, taking horses and bedrolls, saying how they'd ride right across the Everglades, pick up Ervin T. Rouse, Tucker's fiddle-playing friend, bring him back to live in Mango. That was part of his plan. Find about a half dozen of their old friends, get them to drinking the water. Then when the government people said the water was a fake, Tuck would say, "Look at these old-timers. They don't look spry to you?" Make enough money to buy his land back that way. Only why the state would want to give up its park idea, Joseph didn't know
. Not that it mattered. Joining up with Tuck was better than going back to his chikee hut in the Glades, staring at the old Playboy calendar on the wall.
Tuck had been naming names, people he wanted to see again. Then he said, "The only one we can't take horses to is Henry Short. That little mulatto bastard's still alive. Must be ninety-five. I hear he's squatting down in the islands again, that patch of mound. Hell, it's so far back in, I doubt you even know it. No Name Mound, that's what I used to call it when I was fish guiding."
Joseph asked, "The mound back in from Lostman's River or the one north, closer to Loser's Creek?" When Joseph was little, in the years before his grandfather died drunk in Immokalee, the old man had taken him to all the mounds to camp and fish. All told, it took the whole summer. But the one near Lostman's was so jun-gled up, they hadn't stayed more than a night, and his grandfather had refused even to stop at the other mound-it was a "power place," his grandfather had said-whatever the hell that meant. "Indians, we never stay here. Too many spirits. And the mosquitoes are bad, too."
"The Loser's Creek mound?" Joseph said. That would be just like Henry Short, staying on a bad mound.
"That's the one. The water's so thin, you can't even use a motor. Hell, maybe we could ride the horses!"
Joseph was thinking about Henry Short, wondering whether he really was alive. Sometimes Tuck talked just to talk, making up things, but it was interesting to hear Henry's name after so many years. A long time ago, a bad man by the name of Ed Watson had lived in the islands. Henry Short was supposedly the man who shot him. Shot him first anyway, before the whole island of Chokoloskee joined in, shooting the corpse so they could all say they did it. Watson had supposedly murdered a lot of people-shot Belle Starr out west before running south-but then he ran into Henry. As a boy, Joseph had seen Henry once, a small, creamy-skinned man with funny-looking eyes, like his body was there but his mind was off living someplace else. Him carrying a shotgun in the crook of his arm, standing there beside the Smallwood General store in Chokoloskee, quiet among the white people, and scary-looking because of it. At least he had scared Joseph.
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