The Man Who Ivented Florida (14 page)

Ford didn't feel as if it was where he belonged, and Tuck didn't look so good to him. He looked old, as if he'd shrunk down smaller after so many years of rough use. Bowlegged old man with skin stretched tight over a bony face, as if it had been soaked in salt water, then sun-dried until just before it split. What hadn't changed was Tuck's eyes; politician's eyes, robin's egg blue, always set on wide focus, taking in everything, picking out angles and calculating approaches. Ford could sense him calculating now and wanted to beat him to the punch; keep him from getting started so he could say what he had to say, then get out.

"I'm going to make this quick," he said.

"Hell, boy, you just got here!"

"A woman stopped to see me today—"

"Bet she was a good-lookin' thing. Hah!"

"A woman agent from the Florida Department of Criminal Law."

"Oh. You ain't in some kind of trouble?"

"She was asking questions about you. You heard the name Angela Walker? Agent Walker?"

"Can't say as I. . . Wait a minute, now—"

"Woman asking questions about the three men who disappeared down this way."

Tuck had his cowboy hat off, wiping his hands over his hair. On top, there were only a few wisps of thread, almost bald, but the sides were still sun-bleached, not much gray. He put the hat on the table. "Now that you mention it, seems I did talk to a woman like that, only I got to telling stories and she didn't say much about nobody disappearing. It was on the phone."

"She will tomorrow. She told me she was coming to see you."

"Always good to get company, specially female. Is she a looker?"

Ford said, "She's a cop, and you better not forget that. Now here's what I want to ask you." He leaned forward, trying to get his uncle to pay attention. "Those men, did you have anything to do with it?"

"The men that disappeared?"

"Damn it, you know that's what I'm talking about! A surveyor and an environmental consultant; had something to do with connecting Mango with the national park. Is the state trying to condemn your property?"

"Condemn my property?" Tuck appeared offended. "This house is solid as a dollar. Why'd they condemn it?"

Ford stood up so fast, his chair fell backward. "Don't pull this act on me! Your dumb and innocent act, Christ. I don't have time for it, and my guess is you don't, either. You know exactly what I'm talking about."

"Okay, okay, sit yourself down—"

"For once in your life, try being straight."

"You're right, you're right. Hell, Marion, you're always right. Always were. Never seen such a boy for being right all the time. Used to drive me nuts, the way you was always right. And here I am acting like the original shitheel."

Ford had righted the chair and was sitting down, adjusting it to the table. "Okay then. The three men."

Tuck said, "The three what disappeared, yep. I heard about them. I got a radio, don't I? I listen to the country station WHEW, the Country Giant, and they talked about it. The surveyor. And something they call a state ecologist. Environmentalist? Something like that. The one man was, and third was that fat television fisherman. They all got lost down in the islands and never made it back. But what you're askin' me is, did I make them disappear? Answer to that is no damn way."

"You never saw them?"

"I didn't say that." Tuck had the foil pouch of Red Man out, then got up to rinse his Styrofoam spit cup in the sink. He wadded a paper towel and put it in the cup, saying, "The surveyor and the ecologist man, they came here. Boy named Charles and a boy named . . . something else, I don't know. Hell, my memory. But they was here, but not at the same time. The one named Charles, he did the ecology stuff. He called it an environmental survey, only it wasn't really surveying. He just took little samples of this and that across my property. Looked at the birds and wrote things on a paper.

"Now, most surveyors, they're okay. Boys who like to get outside and found a way to get paid doing it. But this Charles was a asshole, got right up on his high horse just 'cause Gator tried to take a chunk outta him. But, hoo—you know about that!" Laughing, thinking about Ford up the tree.

Tuck said, "I'd a run him off, but me and Lemar Flowers—did you ever know Lemar? Well, me and Lemar worked out a kinda deal where I had to let them do their damn tests, taking water samples and looking at the birds. That sorta thing. I had to let 'em, or they'd put my butt in jail. And I been to jail. So he come down and looked at the water, took little bottles of it, and then this other man come and put down a bunch of stakes with little flags, and that was that. As far as the fat fisherman, I seen him on the television down at the Rod Gun,- they got a TV in the bar. Catch a fish, and he'd read poetry. Least he said it was poetry, but it didn't even rhyme. Great big fat boy with a pink face. Way I see it, good riddance. One television fisherman down, only about three hundred more to go."

"If the state took water samples, why do you want me to test it?"

Tucker said, "Because them state boys might be liars. I want my own tests." He winked. "You want a level playin' field, it's best you do your own rakin'. Besides, that Charles man, he's one of the ones disappeared. Him that took the water samples."

Ford said, "The lady cop, Agent Walker, she's trying to find people who'd have a motive."

"Anybody with a TV's got motive to kill a TV fisherman. Hell, there ought to be a bounty."

"Did you ever see them in their boats? If I knew what the boats looked like—"

"Never saw the state boys in boats. The TV guy, they was always boats too small for a boy his size. But them disappearing, hell, people been disappearing in the islands my whole life, Marion."

"Well, yeah. But not three."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh, I hear what you're saying, but listen to me." Tucker sat up straight and leaned across the table to make his point. "To them, it looks real safe sitting home, drinking tea with their pinkies out, studying the charts. But then they get out there in a boat by themselves, everything looks the same, 'bout a million islands. The water's black, not blue, and the bars will rip a motor right off the transom. Maybe about twenty or thirty of those islands, people used to live on and farm, raised their babies and buried their dead. Gravestones still out there, growed wild with weeds, like Fakahatchee. 'Cause they had a few Indian mounds on them. High land. The rest of the islands, which means about nine thousand nine hundred, nobody's ever even been on 'cause it's all mangrove swamp and the skeeters is so bad, you suck them down your lungs." Tuck sat back, held the cup to his lips, spit, then took a drink of beer. "That's how I growed up, Marion. Joseph, too. Hell—your mama, she told you what it was like, making a living down in these islands. And she came along way late, the youngest of the litter, never had to go around dipping stump water outta air plants for something to drink, never had to sleep out in the mangroves, huntin' enough skinny birds to feed a family. Every day of our lives, we had to scrape and scratch to live, and that's no bullshit. These modern timers, they'd cry like babies if they had to spend one night out there. You'd think they'd give us a little credit, let us be. We're the ones who toughed it out and settled this place." Tuck was getting angry.

Ford didn't like the man mentioning his mother. Didn't want to hear any more of it. He said, "Agent Walker doesn't care about how tough you had it. Nobody else does, either."

Tuck said, "If she thinks I give a good goddamn about three pussy-assed outsiders went and got themselves lost, I'll set her straight right off. Come down here waving their college dee-plomas around, think they can take our land away—" Starting to lose a little bit of his control. Ford watched him, thinking, If he's not a suspect now, he'll be a suspect when Walker gets done with him.

Tuck said, "That's the hell of it. They can take my land, do whatever they want, 'cause they got the law on their side. Or what passes for law. Come down here high and mighty, snot-nosed kids working for the government, bossing us old-timers around, the ones gutted out the pioneer days, and, mister man, that's not exactly what Harry had in mind when he talked to me about making the Everglades into a park."

Ford thought, Harry—Harry Truman. Tuck sitting there talking like he and the President were best buddies, used to toss back beers together. Well, maybe they had. There was a black-and-white photo Tuck used to keep in his wallet, him and Truman with about thirty snook and redfish strung on a bamboo pole, each of them holding an end. Truman with those wire glasses glinting beneath the brown fedora, Bess smiling in the background in a flowered dress. Taking out the photo, Tuck would always say, "Here's Harry and me when I got back from fighting Japs in the Pacific. My way of thanking him for dropping the bomb."

Now Ford said to Tuck, "You lose your temper with Agent Walker, she puts you on the list of suspects, they'll take you in for questioning. That means getting a lawyer, sitting in a room—"

Tuck said, "I already got the best lawyer around. And you don't tell me about sweet-talking cops. If she asks my address when we're done, it'll be to send me a Christmas card."

"What she's going to ask is where you were October first, October fifth, and last Wednesday, the days the men disappeared."

Tucker started to say something, but then the phone rang and he got up, saying, "I'll try to make up something good." Grinning, with teeth missing, back under control again. Into the phone, he said, "Big Sky Ranch."

Ford had forgotten he called the place that. Thirty-some feet above the bay, house and barn built on shell mounds, made it one of the highest points in the southern part of the state. Tuck's little joke.

Tuck said, "Hey, it's you. . . ." He listened, then said, "Yeah, I got a nephew—hell, you know him. Right, yeah ... that's the one.

It is, too. I wouldn't lie....Naw, he didn't. Peeked at you through a telescope? I can't believe he'd do something so low. . . ." It went that way for a while, Ford fidgeting in his chair, then before hanging up, Tuck said, "Come on down and tell him yourself." He turned and looked at Ford, tilting his head and smirking. "You've been bad, Marion. Got my neighbor all riled."

Ford took the offensive. "That's another thing. Tricking that woman into anchoring in Dinkin's Bay, hoping we'd get together and I'd have a reason to come to Mango. Just so you could get me involved in your little scheme. Geeze!"

"Tell me true now"—Tuck was taking his chair, rocking back— "what's she look like in the all together? I been tempted myself, but I known her so long, it'd be like peekin' at my own daughter. A telescope—hoo, that's fancy!"

"Where the hell's Tomlinson? I've got to go."

"I got to walk you back and see the spring first. You ain't give me a chance to tell you what's goin' on, what they tryin' to do to this place."

Ford was at the screen door, cleaning his glasses with his shirt-tail. He said, "You want me to stay so I can meet your neighbor," as he cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, "Hey—Tomlinson! Let's go!" He could see two dim shapes, Tomlinson and Joseph, coming back through the pasture.

Ford heard the chair screech on the wood-slat floor, heard Tuck's boots and knew he was standing right behind him. "Meet her? Hell, boy, you already know her. You known Sally Carmel most your life. You didn't know that's who it was?"

"That's not . . . wait a minute—" He paused, considering the hazy memory of a strawberry-haired child in jeans, skinny-legged, teeth missing, following him around asking lots of questions. What kinda bug is that? Why do you keep those fish in jars if you're not gonna eat 'em? Ford said, "My God, that's her?" Feeling Tuck's hand on his shoulder as he said it, then heard Tuck's voice: "Been a long time since you come home boy. I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever get you back to Mango again—"

Ford cut him off. "Tucker, I'm not back. I'm just delivering a message."

"You say that like a man who still holds a grudge."

"Can you think of a single reason why I shouldn't?"

"I can think of about twenty. Twenty years, that's a long time."

Ford turned to look into the man's face. "Yes. Yes it is. Twenty years is a lifetime to some." Then he called, "Hey, Tomlinson! Let's get going."

Tomlinson's voice: "Sure, man. But you got to see the spring, taste that water. I got a jar of it, Joseph gave me." Tomlinson bouncing along behind the bigger silhouette of Joseph Egret, the mean dog, Gator, trotting out front.

As Ford started his truck, Tuck came hurrying up to the window, his cowboy boots clomping in the shell drive. He thrust in a brown envelope, papers inside. Ford could tell by the feel. "You get some time, read this. It'll help you get started on your research."

As Ford's truck backed down the mound, Tuck called, "Next time, don't let it be so long between visits. Hear?"

SIX

William
Bambridge, Ph.D.—tenured professor of American literature at Oberlin College in Ohio, author of
To an Unknown Tarpon, With Love,
and host of the popular television fishing show "Tight Lines!"—sat in a shell pit looking at his blistered hands, his bare legs crisscrossed with cuts from hacking sugarcane on this godforsaken island, too physically spent, too emotionally exhausted to swat at the haze of mosquitoes that drifted around his face. His gray Tarpon Wear shorts were soaked from the muck floor; two of the buttons had popped off his green Tarpon Wear shirt, so that his belly protruded. A week of working like a slave, sleeping on the ground in the pit, had turned his clothes to rags. Even his leather Top-Siders were ripping at the sides from being wet all the time. Sitting there like a mud-smeared Buddha, Bambridge inhaled deeply—choked, spit, gagged, spit; could feel mosquitoes burning his pharynx and the back of his throat.