The Man Who Ivented Florida df-3

by Randy Wayne White

  "Tuck Gatrell."

  "Mr. Gatrell."

  Another of the ladies said, "You know, that does sound familiar." Now she was searching their faces, thinking about it.

  Tucker said, "My friends and me, we just stopped to get a bite to eat and rest our horses. See what kind of ranch you folks had here." Chuckling a little as he said that, as if he'd known all along it wasn't a ranch.

  John Dunn said, "If you're interested in a lot… or maybe a complete unit?"

  "Naw," Tucker said, "a place this nice, we couldn't never afford to live here. Could we, Joe? We got ourselves a run-down little place called Mango. A shack on the water, that's us."

  "You might be surprised at how affordable it is," Dunn said. "And the facilities… well, they're just great. Aren't they?"

  Behind Dunn, heads were nodding up and down. "Just great," the people repeated, but Joseph didn't hear much enthusiasm in their voices.

  Tucker said, "We got all the time in the world. Why don't you tell us a little." But Joseph knew he was trying to get them friendly, maybe get some free food.

  "About prices? I can take you over and introduce you to-"

  "No, 'bout the way things are here. What you do. There're things to keep you busy enough here?"

  Dunn said, "Oh, plenty. Here at the ranch? Why, everyone's got a full schedule. The whole thing's planned out. We've got the pool, the clubhouse, parties, shuffleboard, crafts. You name it. Lawn maintenance? They do that, too. And a weekly schedule printed up, so you know what to do and when to do it."

  "It goes by streets," one of the ladies said. "People on the same street, we're like a family. This is our shuffleboard time."

  "Yeah," said one of the men, a stubby guy with glasses, "we get two hours to play, even if you hate the goddamn game. Which we do." Laughing like it was a joke, only he wasn't joking. Tuck found that interesting. Joseph knew by the look on Tucker's face-a mild expression, but kind of sly, like his brain was going real fast.

  "But the other stuff," Tucker said, "I bet you sure love the other stuff."

  Joseph thought, Just so long as he doesn't keep them talking too long. I'm hungry, as the others responded, "Of course we do. It's great."

  But another man said, "Except for those damn crafts."

  "Lloyd, you don't have to do crafts if you don't want."

  "What the hell else is there to do?"

  Tucker looked at Joseph, then at Ervin, showing that same mild expression. As if to say, "Forget about lunch. Let's listen to them squabble."

  "You know what I don't like?" The stubby man was talking again. "I don't like not being able to plant more trees. Two palms, two citrus-what the hell kind of rule is that?"

  "You have to have some control-"

  "No, I agree with Bill on that one. We should be allowed to plant trees on our own property if we want."

  "That's the thing. It's not our property. Sure, we bought our lots, but the Association retains all rights so that-"

  "Let people plant trees, next thing you know, they'll be planting tomatoes."

  "What's wrong with tomatoes?"

  "Nothing's wrong with tomatoes, that's not the point."

  "I wanted to build a little place for my orchids, but they told me no."

  Another lady said, "You know what I miss? I miss having a cat. I've always loved cats, and just having one nice little cat doesn't seem like it would bother anyone."

  "Cats?" Tucker said it so loud, people jumped. "Ma'am, you ever want a cat, you just come on down to Mango. We got about a jillion cats roamin' around. Well, the ones the chickens didn't run off, anyway." To the stubby man, he explained, "The tarpon come onto the flats. By my shack in Mango? They come in and purely tear up the mullet. What the tarpon don't eat washes up on the beach, so cats have an easy time of it. Yes ma'am"-he was speaking to the lady again-"you ever want a cat, just come on down and help yourself. I'll have my dog catch a couple for you."

  "No, they'll never let me have a cat. I tried."

  "One person has a cat, the next thing you know, someone will want a kennel."

  But most of the men were focused on Tuck now. "You say the tarpon feed right by your house?"

  "Only in the spring and summer. This time of year, it's the snook, isn't it, Joe? Gets so noisy at night, it's kinda hard to sleep. All that splashing."

  "That's why I like redfish," Ervin said, giving Tuck a look, showing him that he was in on whatever joke Tuck was playing. "They're quieter. Let's you hear the owls at night, so you can go out and look at the orchids growing wild."

  Joseph thought, Put two frog eaters together, and they'll fight over who can tell the biggest lie. Back at Mango, all Tuck did was complain about how the fish had disappeared.

  John Dunn said, "It sounds awfully nice. I don't think I've ever heard of the place. Mango?"

  "Just a run-down old fish camp, most the places abandoned-"

  "It took me awhile, but I found it!" The nice-looking woman, Thelma, was hurrying toward them, holding up some kind of paper in her hand. Tuck seemed irritated by the interruption, but he waited politely as she came closer, listening to her say, "I bought it at the supermarket this morning, but Jenny wanted to borrow it, and she loaned it to Mrs. Butler over on Nevada. But here it is! Now I know where I saw you." She was beaming at Tuck. "There's a whole story about you here. The National Enquirer. "

  Tucker said, "The National what?"

  The lady who had been studying them said, "That's where I heard the name."

  Thelma held the paper out to him. "You mean you haven't seen it? It just came out. It's brand-new, every Sunday-"

  Tucker flipped the pulp magazine open, holding it out at arm's length so that he could see. "Say, now… say! Looka that there headline!" He was reading to himself, moving his lips a little. "This paper-many people buy it?"

  "Of course, millions. All over the nation. Everyone I know reads it." Thelma was beside Tuck's horse, the others crowded around behind her, trying to get a look at the paper. "You're a celebrity, Mr. Gatrell. And we're not going to let you get away without having some lunch and telling us if it's really true or not. I've always wondered about those stories! Lloyd, don't we have some sandwiches left over from the party yesterday?"

  John Dunn said, "I don't care what the story's about, I want to hear more about those fish."

  Joseph thought, I could eat three or four sandwiches, and I bet they won't charge us a cent. Tuck swung down off his saddle and held the paper up for Joseph to see. "What you think, Joe. Is that the best damn picture of me and Roscoe you ever seen? And you look pretty good yourself."

  In the photo, Tucker stood grinning beneath his cowboy hat, pointing at Roscoe's withers while Joseph, on Buster, looked on. Buster looked nice, Joseph thought. Real handsome, except for the cut mane-and those crazy spots on his butt.

  Beneath the photo, there was a line that read: "Native Floridian Tucker Gatrell has proven that an artesian well found on his ranch has amazing regenerative powers."

  While Joseph read, he heard Ervin, behind him, say, "Hang on, let me park the truck. Say-you folks like fiddle music?"

  ELEVEN

  Ford said to Sally Carmel, "You mean you buy this kind of newspaper? Or, what is it-a magazine?"

  They had the new issue of the National Enquirer spread out on the table, opened to the full-page story about Tucker Gatrell.

  The headline went across the top of the page: FLORIDA'S FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH DISCOVERED!

  Standing beside Ford, her arm folded over his shoulder, Sally said, "No, it was like I told you. I was standing in line at the grocery-at Bailey's Store?-and I happened to pick it up and leaf through because there were people ahead of me, everybody writing checks. And there it was. I just started laughing when I saw the picture."

  All around Ford's living quarters were sacks of groceries-stalks of celery sticking out, the tops of two wine bottles, Asti Spu-mante. There was a twelve-pack of Coors Light with condensation beads showing on the cardboard as the ceili
ng fan whirled overhead. Sally had been in such a hurry to show him the story that she and Ford hadn't taken time to put the groceries away yet.

  "I can't believe he'd pull a stunt like this. No, I take that back. Of course I believe it. Vitamin water, that was hard enough to believe. Now it's the Fountain of Youth."

  Sally touched a finger to the paper, reading. She said, "Maybe he didn't tell them that. You know how these papers exaggerate. Maybe he said vitamin water, and they just blew it up to make a better story."

  The story read:

  Why is native Floridian Tucker Gatrell smiling? Because he has discovered the long-sought and legendary Fountain of Youth, that's why. Gatrell is a Florida cowboy and he and his best pal-his horse, Roscoe!-found the little artesian well bubbling on a forgotten corner of his own cattle ranch in the bayside village of Mango on Florida's southwest Gulf Coast.

  According to Gatrell, he and his best pal, along with several other of Gatrell's friends, started drinking the water months ago. All of them have noticed amazing changes in their health.

  "I know what it's like to be young again," Gatrell told the Enquirer. "Not only that, but I had Roscoe gelded years ago. Now his reproductive organs have grown back. You would have to be a man to understand what news like that would mean to someone my age!"

  Sally said, "See? That's not the way Tuck talks. He'd never say something like that. 'Reproductive organs?' Come on."

  "No, I see what you're saying. But that's Tuck. This is exactly the sort of thing he'd do. Do you remember me saying how tricky he was? That's why I didn't want to have any part of it." Ford stepped away from the table and began to put away groceries while Sally continued to read.

  "Don't be mad at him, Doc. The old guy's trying so hard."

  "Uh-huh, that much is true." He looked over at her briefly. Pretty woman in her go-to-the-grocery jade blouse and Land's End slacks that were pleated, belted up around her lean waist. Brown toes sticking out of her sandals, and that hair of hers, bright as liquid copper, swinging in the light as she bent over the table to read. It made him smile, looking at her. Knowing he could go over to her if he wanted and put his arms around her and hold her, touch her if he wanted, and that it would be okay… and it also made him a little uneasy, knowing they had become much more intimate than he had planned, far faster than he had hoped. Ford told her, "I'm not saying I would change anything."

  She looked at him, a soft expression on her face, her eyes moving to his eyes. "Thanks, Doc. Me, neither."

  That's the way it had been. For four days? Five days? No, it was Wednesday, so it had been more than a week now. Since… the night after he'd driven to Mango and she'd fixed dinner. Nice dinner, with a candle on the middle of the tablecloth, her face and hair flickering in the shadows, sitting across from him. Moving her food around but not eating much, holding the fork in her long fingers. Ford had had no appetite, either. Being that close to her alone in the same room. They had talked but didn't say much because of that feeling. Like something pressing on his abdomen every time he tried to breathe. Then they were standing over the sink, washing the dishes, talking about something, and the next thing Ford knew, his hand was on her's, then she was in his arms, soapy or sweaty-he didn't know or care-and then they were kissing, their faces wet.

  It had almost happened that night, but not quite. Sally had said she wasn't ready yet, because of the marriage. The divorce, she meant. But then they were holding and kissing again, touching, yet it still didn't happen because of something she said they had to talk about.

  "I don't know how to… what I'm trying to say is… we should talk about our backgrounds. It's so terrible even to have to worry about it… Do you understand what I mean?"

  Ford had understood. He and Tomlinson had spent enough time talking about it. "The Modern Specter," Tomlinson had called it. "The Dark Gift. Because of it," Tomlinson had said, "the human race will never again know total spontaneity. Never again will we know a moment free of the knowledge of our own vulnerability. Or our own mortality. The last retreat has been taken from us."

  Which, Ford had thought at the time, was just more spiritual wailing in the face of a serious biological anomaly: a fatal virus, sexually transmitted. But in that instant, in Sally's arms, Ford realized that Tomlinson was close to being right.

  So they had talked. Talked all night, nearly. Coyness couldn't be tolerated; discretion became a necessary casualty-one more ghost of romance that had to be abandoned to hard reality. In ways, that kind of complete disclosure seemed to Ford as demeaning as being marched naked through a crowded laboratory. To betray so many past confidences

  … to impose upon the privacy of other women he had known. Even though their names were never mentioned, it seemed an intrusion upon the essential privacy of whatever time they had shared, and Ford felt diminished by it. Even so, there was also something oddly sensual in that kind of total honesty. It demanded a complete letting down of facades that at once mocked their frailties but also brought them very close in a very short span of hours.

  The next night, after a sunset boat ride at Ford's place, it had happened. The next morning, too. And the late morning. Then again in the early afternoon, the late afternoon, and most of the next night. Once they started, it had seemed, they couldn't stop.

  Their first joinings had been enthusiastic but wary, a little self-conscious, and slightly mechanical-he and the woman trying to do everything just right. But then their couplings escalated into a strange kind of binge behavior. They couldn't get enough of each other. The touching, the exploring, the freedom of being naked and alone, just the two of them, free to please the other in any way at any time. Lying spent, sweating, all Ford had to do was look for a moment at her breathing form, the slow lift of abdomen, the pale blue veins of her breasts, the slow pulse of color in her nipples, her deep-set eyes holding him… and his body stirred, ready again.

  "You're going to think terrible things about me. The insatiable woman. The way I'm acting."

  "No. Never that."

  "I'm not like this. I'm really not. I just… feel like I've known you for such a long time-"

  "You have."

  "And now. To finally let go. I don't know what it is…"

  Ford had thought, Lust is what it is, but at odd moments he too had wondered about their behavior. It had, he thought, the flavor of revolt. A kind of wild insubordination in the face of the Dark Gift. Like captives who flipped hand signs through the bars at their captors, the two of them had lunged around, bare-skinned, in an insurrection against the latex shield that ultimately separated them. And it always did. It was always there, the subject of many bawdy jokes that unfailingly brought laughter because the only alternative was to weep-or so Sally had said. The blood and bones make-up of their own bodies could not be trusted. No human's body could ever be completely trusted again.

  "We should both get blood tests. I mean… if you think… or would like the relationship to continue."

  Ford had almost said something about already driving vials of water to Tampa for testing (he had; a buddy of his would drop the results back in a couple of days) and now she was asking for blood. But he didn't. The subject was too serious. He had answered, "Of course. It's something we should think about," because any less evasive answer would, to him, have seemed like a commitment.

  And he wasn't ready for that… and he hoped to hell she wasn't either.

  They had split their time together, staying at Ford's place then at Sally's, then back at Ford's again. On Sunday, though, she had arrived with a flight duffel of clothes and her big camera-equipment bag, telling Ford that she had arranged for her neighbor Mrs. Taylor to feed her cat. And Mr. Rigaberto had agreed to take care of Tucker's dog and cattle. Having sold most of his chickens, he had little else to do.

  "If you don't mind," she had said. "This way, we can both get some work done."

  Ford had thought, She already wants to live together? but he had said, "Great, stay as long as you want," convincing himself th
at it would be a mistake not to at least give it a try. She was an attractive woman; he enjoyed her company… and hadn't he spent the last few months damning his own loneliness and wallowing in self-pity?

  So, for the last three nights, she had stayed with him. She used his skiff to probe the rookery islands in Pine Island Sound, shooting rolls of film. He worked in the lab, shipping off specimens and doing research for his paper on the effects of turbidity and nutrient pollution on sea grasses. Every other day, he checked his sea mobiles, weighing the dripping mass of growing sponges, tunicates, and sea squirts.

  They made love. They talked a lot. Each morning he made breakfast for her. Eggs with mango slices. Fish poached in coconut water.

  Yesterday, though, Tuesday, she had made a comment that, Ford suspected, foreshadowed an inevitable conflict. He had entered his lab to find her photography equipment, cameras and lenses and filters, spread out on all the tables while she cleaned them. It wasn't unexpected. He had offered her the use of the room, any time. But looking up at him, she had smiled softly and said, "I'm in your way."

  "Nope. There're other things I can do."

  "We don't have a lot of room here, do we?"

  "It's like living on a boat." He had almost added, "That's why I like it," but he didn't.

  Last night she had disappeared, and he had walked out to find her sitting on the deck, looking at the water. He had touched his hand to her shoulder, and she had taken it, without looking at him, and held it to her lips. "A lot has happened very fast, huh?"

  "Yeah, it has. Are you getting homesick?" Ford hoped he hadn't sounded as wistful as he felt.

  "No. Well, I miss my cat. But being with you, that's what I want now."

  "It's… been fun."

  "But you know. I was sitting here thinking"-she had turned to him, still holding his hand-"I was wondering. Those things you read… about the way people act after a divorce?"

  "I've never read them."

  "Oh."

  "You think we're going too fast?"

  "Maybe. I don't know." She had made a fluttering sound with her lips. Frustration. "I don't know what to think. I know I've felt good, being here."