Everglades Assault (7 page)

For as much as I am on the sea, the love of heading for open water aboard a boat you trust has never left me.

Away from the cumulous buildup of a landmass, the sky opens clear and blue and flawless. The wind birds and the dolphin that run before the boat are your only company, and it somehow recharges your respect for them, knowing they live and hunt and reproduce upon the far reaches of water, where few men ever go.

With nothing else to do, Hervey got one of the light-tackle Penns out. He rigged up a trolling leader, added a big silver spoon, and trailed the artificial seventy yards behind us as we cruised.

The big lion of a dog slept comfortably at his feet.

“Fish on!” Hervey yelled after a quiet twenty minutes.

At the speed we were going, I knew it could only be one of a very few species: a king or cero mackerel, or a barracuda. Or maybe even some wild-eyed amberjack.

But it was a 'cuda—and a big one at that.

I cut the throttle back and took some time to enjoy watching Hervey play the fish.

People who only fish freshwater miss a lot. We have the jumping monsters—tarpon and billfish and snook—which come out of the water much like giant bass.

But there are also the greyhounding pelagic fish which make long skipping jumps beyond belief.

The big 'cuda made a veeing oblique run away from
Sniper,
then made a twenty-yard skip that had all the velocity of an arrow. Hervey tried to bring it up short, but the fish got the best of him and stripped off more line.

“Case of beer that he's more than four feet long!” Hervey yelled as he worked the fish.

“You're on,” I yelled back—not altogether sure that he wasn't right.

It took a sweating, back-creaking twenty minutes for him to get the barracuda alongside—and there was no doubt that it was well over four feet long. It gasped on its side looking for all the world like the blade of some ancient king's sword: the chrome bulk of it blotched with black, its yellow cat eyes blazing, and its mouth a slash of stiletto teeth.

“You want 'cuda for supper?” Hervey asked.

“I don't know. This far away from the reefs, he's probably okay, don't you think?”

It wasn't a matter of taste of which I was speaking. Barracuda is an excellent table fish. I was talking about the danger of eating a fish especially prone to ciguatera, a disease toxic to man. For many years it was commonly believed that fish like this great barracuda became poisonous because of their feeding habits around tropical reefs. The truth is, no one really knows why certain fish can cause the tingling numbness of lips and throat and, in severe cases, total paralysis. The old wives' tales will tell you that small barracuda are safe to eat—but that's not always true. Another story tells you to place a penny on the'cuda's flesh overnight. If the penny turns green, the fish is poisonous. It's a very strange disease. In the Caymans, they eat only the barracuda from the south side of the island, where it is highly prized table fare. Supposedly, only the barracuda on the north side of the island are poisonous.

But like so many things about the sea, few “facts” are sure to be true.

“Guess we just ought to let him go, huh?” Hervey said.

“Sounds good to me.”

But before he had a chance to snip the wire leader, the great fish gave an awesome slap of its tail and freed itself.

I hadn't noticed the dog. He had been watching the fish in the same way a cat eyes a bird.

And when the leader gave way, the big Chesapeake didn't hesitate. He jumped full-bodied directly onto the fish. He gave a loud roar, then dove under after it.

But the 'cuda was way too fast for him. It disappeared torpedolike through the clear water.

The dog wasn't convinced. He dove again and again, eyes wide open, searching the bottom in water twelve feet deep.

He looked and swam with the grace of a mammoth otter.

“You're right, Hervey. That's no ordinary dog. He's shark bait disguised by a fur coat.”

“I'd rather let him take the chance than rob him of the pleasure,” Hervey answered sagely.

“You mean he actually catches fish?”

“He's pure hell on small sharks in the shallows. And every now and again I'll cut a fish loose, and he'll jump in and catch it again.”

“I think that 'cuda might have taught him a lesson had he caught it.”

“You never know. He's caught 'cuda before. Never one as big as that—but, like I said, you never know.”

Finally convinced the fish was gone, the dog surfaced, blowing water through its nose. He barked once in frustration, scanned the horizon, then defecated with imperial concentration. He climbed back aboard on the dive platform, his yellow wolf eyes bloodshot with diving.

“Mind if we get under way?” I asked the dog.

He gave me a sour look, then collapsed by Hervey's feet.

“I think he's ready,” Hervey said, chuckling.

“How nice,” I said. “I'm honored.”

I climbed back atop the flybridge and headed for Nine-mile Bank.

 

The water was so clear, you could see the shoals of Bamboo Banks long before they became a hazard.

In the turquoise distance, heat shimmered over the shallows, and the darkness of them looked like a gathering of gigantic creatures.

On the swollen expanse of sea and sky, I felt very small indeed aboard
Sniper.

After a steady hour of running, I picked up the markers at Schooner Bank, and just off intercoastal marker 12 I saw the first thin landmass since we had left the Keys: Sandy Key and Carl Ross Key.

Someone in a yellow bonefisher casted toward an oyster bar nearby. The mangrove islands were like trimmed hedges.

“Just about there?” Hervey yelled up from below.

It was a rhetorical question. He probably knew as well as I that Flamingo wasn't far away. He had spent his boyhood exploring the offshore reefs and the shallows of Florida Bay.

But it was his way to let the man running the boat serve as the source of all knowledge.

“Not far,” I answered.

Once safely away from the crescent expanse of banks, I brought
Sniper
around marker 4 below the white sweeping beach of Cape Sable and headed east.

There were more mangrove islands now. They looked frail and desolate on the open sea. Pelicans and frigate birds roosted on the islands, and there was the harsh guano smell as we cruised past Murray and Oyster keys and the distant silhouettes of Johnson and Dildo keys.

The little settlement of Flamingo at the very tip of Florida proper was, in early times, a fish ranch and charcoal center. The pioneers there made charcoal by cutting buttonwood, piling it in neat stacks, then burning it. The boats would come across Florida Bay from Key West with food and supplies, and return with a load of coal—or cane syrup, with which the Flamingo pioneers supplemented their income.

No one seems really sure how the place got its name. Some seem to think that the big pink flamingos used to come there in large numbers from Cuba, going strangely northward out of their natural range. Others think early settlers there just mistook the pink roseate spoonbills for flamingos.

As I said, no one really seems to know for sure.

But in 1893, the first post office established the name—even though the rare flamingos you will see there now are probably escapees from the racetracks in Miami.

I brought
Sniper
along through the dredged channel, raising the concrete buildings and palm trees before us.

The people of Flamingo once lived at the water's edge in wooden houses built on stilts. But that all ended when the national park system took the place over in 1947. Now Flamingo looks like vintage government national park issue: cement block motel, restaurant and marina, with American flags flying and plenty of khaki trash cans with plastic liners.

I brought
Sniper
up to the fueling docks and shut her down while Hervey worked the lines.

Because we had gotten a late start, the sun was closing toward dusk. There were a few tourist cars in the parking lot, and several small flats skiffs and charter boats were tethered to the fine government-quality docks. I looked for the boat of a friend of mine, and saw that it was there.

Hervey came ambling up. He wore faded jeans and a button-up shirt that made him look more like a cowboy than a sailor. “This place has sure changed since I was here as a boy,” he said.

“I don't doubt that.”

He shooed a covey of mosquitoes away from his face and smiled.

“Bugs are just as bad, though. They're the one thing no government on earth can chase away.”

I looked off across the water toward Key West, where the freaks and street merchants would be gathering at Mallory Square for the sunset.

“If we hustle, we can make it up to Whitewater Bay before dark,” I said. “We can anchor there, or just keep on going toward Shark River. There'll be some tricky water, running at night, but once back into the Gulf, we could be off Chokoloskee in a few hours.”

Hervey put his hands on his hips and stretched as if his back hurt. “With me handling the spotlight all night, right?”

“Right.”

He grinned and spit an amber stream into the water. “You know, if we could cut straight through the 'glades here, my ma's place ain't but about twenty-five miles away. As it is, we got about eighty miles to go.”

“Doesn't sound like you much care for the idea of running all night.”

“And the look on your face tells me you ain't too crazy about it either.”

“You're right. So let's get a room at the motel so we can grab a shower, have a drink and a hot supper at the restaurant, and head out early tomorrow.”

“For an old married man like me, it'll seem like a vacation.” He gave me a wink. “They tell me the waitresses here tend to be real pretty.”

“And if one so much as smiled at you, you'd break a leg running away.”

“Hah! I ain't that old!”

I let Hervey take care of the refueling while I tried to hunt up my old friend. Hervey was right. If—through some strange vehicular combination of canoe, swamp buggy, and airboat—we could head straight cross-country, our final destination was very close indeed.

There aren't many roads in south Florida, and only two good ones in the Everglades—and they both go east and west. So travel is not easy. Even in these times, it makes the few rural settlements there even more remote—and more than occasionally lawless.

But however far apart they are, people who live in the Everglades are a community unto themselves. They know each other and take care of each other, and feel it almost a duty to pass on the bits and pieces of fact and gossip they have heard when they meet.

And that's why I wanted to find my Flamingo friend. If there was some shady business going on in the heart of the 'glades, he just might know about it.

I stopped at the little concrete office of the houseboat concession. Outside at the cement quay, the thirty-six-foot houseboats were lined, neat and gleaming. Tom Healy, who runs the concession, sat in his cramped office doing paperwork. He looked up when I came in, hesitated, then smiled in recognition.

“MacMorgan, you old pirate!”

“Why is it you keep all your boats in perfect condition, yet your office always looks like election day at a campaign manager's house?”

We shook hands, made small talk. On the wall of the office were charts and plaques and letters from the happy people who had rented his boats.

Finally, after we had talked awhile, I asked him about my friend.

“Is Grafton McKinney still around these parts?”

“Graff? Sure, sure—Graff will never leave. You know that. He was born here and I guess he's planning on dying here—if he's not too mean to die.”

“I was kind of hoping to see him before we pulled out in the morning.”

Tom Healy peered out the window toward the parking lot.

“I don't see his jeep out there. He may have gone into Homestead for something.”

“Any way to find out if he'll be back tonight?”

“Oh, he'll be back tonight. He's never spent a night away for as long as I've been here—and that's a while.” Tom eyed me for a moment. “You look like you have something on your mind, Dusky.”

“Nothing important.” And when I saw that he wasn't convinced, I added, “It has something to do with some people I know up in the 'glades. I figure only an old hermit like Grafton would know anything about it.”

Tom Healy grinned. “For a minute there, I thought you were the bearer of bad news.”

“When I have bad news, I always write. It saves wear and tear on the nerves.”

He laughed. “Well, if anybody can tell you about the Everglades, Graff can. He knows everything there is to know—and probably some things he shouldn't. . . .”

Hervey and I paid cash for our motel room. Even though I had no plans of sleeping there, I tested the beds, found them comfortable, then lounged back while Hervey sluiced the day away with a hot shower.

Completely out of character, he sang “No Business Like Show Business” in a cracking bass as he washed.

There was a cheap seascape painting on the wall, and I found it did not come even close to the beauty of the seascape out our motel-room window.

The sun dissipated into molten gold upon Florida Bay, and the mangrove islands nearby looked frail but steadfast upon their small base in the whirling order of things.

“Dusky,” he yelled out suddenly, “I sure appreciate your coming up here with me.”