Late Monday morning, October 19, Ford was standing over a half dozen five-gallon buckets, all of them filled with seawater. Along with the seawater, each bucket held odd-looking mobiles made of wood and rope. From each of the five wooden crosspieces hung nine short lengths of rope knotted into another wooden crosspiece on the bottom. And each strand of rope was alive-or so it seemed to Ford. Each was a solitary host to a small world of living, siphoning jelly masses and sea growth: sponges, soft corals, tunicates, sea squirts, barnacles, oysters, and tiny skittering crabs.
"Biofouling assemblies," the books called the strange mobiles. Ford had made these himself, then set them out in the bay beneath buoys to attract sea life. One month later, this was the result.
Ford bent over the buckets and looked into them. A few of the crabs had jettisoned from the hanging mass and now crawled around the bottom. He wanted to weigh each assembly so that he could calculate how much growth the units might be expected to attract on a week-to-week basis. Later, after they had spent more days and nights floating in the bay, he wanted to be able to arrive at the optimum growth potential for each assembly. Set up a cubic-inch ratio.
For the research paper he wanted to do, such bits of datum would be important.
He stared at the buckets, hefted the weight of the sea mobiles experimentally, then gently returned them to the water. He scratched his nose, then hefted another.
I'm wasting time, he thought.
His notebook and pencil were at his right on the stainless-steel dissecting table. But the screened window was on the left-a window through which, if he bent just a little, he could see the lone sailboat out there near the mouth of Dinkin's Bay. So his mind kept wandering; kept thinking about the woman. Not consciously thinking of her-not much, anyway-but a steady undercurrent of musing and projecting going on in the cerebral layers that should have been considering the biofouling assemblies.
Not that he wasn't interested in his creations. He was. It was a new hobby, a fresh little project. Ford always had a short list of new projects and a long list of old ones. He was compulsive about it, as if he didn't want a free moment in which his mind might be allowed to wander. It was always one species or phenomena after another: bull sharks or tarpon or redfish or red tide. Filling notebooks with diagrams and observations in his tiny fine print. Dissecting or photographing or collecting and cataloging. Spending orderly hours in an orderly day interrupted only by his nightly timed runs (from Dinkin's Bay Marina to Sanibel Island Elementary and back), calisthenics, and a swim in the bay.
But Ford's mind was wandering now. Taking the lithe brown shape he'd seen through the telescope and giving the woman a more detailed face,- supplying her with a cool, sure personality. Putting himself on the boat with her, relaxed and lost in interesting conversation. She'd be intelligent, of course. Many sailors were, though their egos too often were proportional to their intellect, which was a sign of immaturity. But that wasn't an absolute; no proof that she would be that way. And sailing a boat single-handedly along this shallow-water coast implied a rogue spirit that he liked. And to strip off her clothes like that and dive into murky water where lesser, prissier people worried about sharks and stingrays…
Ford threw down the pencil he was holding. "Concentrate, damn it!" Talking to himself, trying to get his mind back on the project at hand. "You're acting like some moon-eyed adolescent. Get to work!"
He pulled a yellow legal pad to him and wrote: "Reversing the Effects of Turbidity and Nutrient Pollution on Brackish Water Littoral Zones."
There, he was started.
He wanted to demonstrate the impact of murky water on sea-grass beds and, hopefully, find out for himself just what effect the siphoning animals-sponges, sea squirts, and tunicates-had on murky water. That's why he had built the sea mobiles. That's why he had set them out in the bay to attract the kind of growth that boaters and dock builders despised.
He touched the pencil to his tongue, then wrote:
It is generally accepted that there has been a decrease in the population of finny fishes in the coastal waters of Florida. It is also generally accepted that the growing pressure of commercial fishing and sportfishing have had an injurious impact on the fishery. In Florida, for instance, more than 40,000 commercial fishermen and more than 5 million sportfishermen access the resource annually.
Ford stopped and reread what he had written. He would have to footnote the statistics, but the sources were from his own library and he could look them up later. And he didn't like the word injurious-to him it implied a sentimental, or at least a sympathetic, interpretation of an observation. He struck a line through it, replaced it with adverse, then continued:
However, it is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate that gradual changes in the water quality- i.e., increased turbidity from loss of ground root structure, and the increase of nutrient pollution from sources generally thought to be benign-i.e., the fertilization of lawns and golf courses-play an equal, if not greater, role in the reduction of the population of finny fishes in shallow water zones.
He stopped again. Jesus, he was beating around the bush. What he wanted to say was that Florida's coastal regions had lost more than half of their sea-grass beds because of fouled water. Hundreds of thousands of acres of sea meadow gone because there was too much phosphate and fertilizer from too many mine pits and developments draining daily into the estuaries. The fertilizer caused phytoplankton to bloom wildly. Saturated with the microscopic algae, the once-clear bays turned a murky, milky green. The murkier the water got, the more grass beds that died because sunlight couldn't get through the murk. No sunlight, no grass. That simple. When the grass died, the shrimps and crabs disappeared. So did the fish. So did the sponges, the tunicates, and the sea squirts that filtered the water and had once ensured that it would remain clear.
There were other factors, of course. Fluctuating salinity-many saltwater fish couldn't tolerate that. By building the Tamiami Trail, by digging the Buttonwood Canal through to Florida Bay, by dyking Lake Okeechobee, just to name a few, the state and federal governments had inexorably altered the flow of water through the Everglades. Then the state biologists, who were notoriously shortsighted, brought in an exotic tree called the melaleuca because it was a fiend for water and they felt it would help drain breeding areas for mosquitoes. But melaleuca trees were also fiends for reproduction, and even fire wouldn't destroy them. Now the melaleuca-just as the exotic kudzu had in Georgia-was taking over the Everglades. Out of control, it competed with other exotics like Brazilian pepper and casuarina trees to sap the land dry.
Oh, there were many other factors. But Ford had settled upon the question of turbidity because it was so seldom considered.
In his paper, he wanted to demonstrate that it was a terrible, destructive cycle. No, not a cycle, because that implied a return to course. It was more like a cancer. It just kept getting worse and worse. In the meantime, the sportfishermen blamed the commercial fishermen. The commercial fishermen blamed the sportfishermen. A passionate argument requires that issues be black and white, a straight path of cause and effect. Too few could look beyond the logged weight of fish corpses to see what the real problem was. Even fewer wanted to understand, because to acknowledge the real problem was also to acknowledge that banning cottage-industry netting was not a solution, only a delay. And the water just kept getting murkier, suffering gradual and insidious changes not only in turbidity but salinity, as well.
It all came down to water…
Ford began to write again, but his pencil tip broke. He spent five minutes sharpening it, using a lab scalpel to get it just right. When the point broke again, he stood and threw the pencil across the room.
"You're not getting any work done at all!" Reprimanding himself, but unaware that he had spoken aloud, just as he was not aware that he sometimes spoke aloud to the fish in his big tank. "You're farting around, wasting time."
Yeah, and that troubled him. Ford hated interruptions in his workday. Now he was the interruption-his imagination, anyway. Which was frustrating as hell, frustrating to the point where he felt like banging into the wall a few times, like the horseshoe crabs he kept out in his big tank. Maybe that might clear his head a little bit.
It's her, that's the problem. The woman out there on her boat.
Finally, he gave up. He put his notebook and pencil away, then carried the buckets outside so he could return the sea mobiles to the bay. As he lugged the buckets, he thought to himself: By definition, she's your neighbor, and neighbors are supposed to be friendly. So just go out there and introduce yourself.
Oh sure. Had he gone out and introduced himself to Ralph and Esperanza Woodring, who lived out on the point? Nope. It had taken him a year to meet them. Had he gone over and introduced himself to Tomlinson, who was anchored just across the channel? Nope. They'd finally met at the marina, both in to buy cold quarts of beer.
"You're not only acting like an adolescent, Ford, now you're lying to yourself." Talking again as he returned to his cabin and began to change into a fresh knit shirt and khaki sailcloth shorts. Thinking, What's happened is, you've created a fictional personality for a woman. You want to meet that woman because you hope she might be just a little bit like you want her to be. But you're afraid, too, because she may be a disappointment, plus you might make an ass of yourself, going out there uninvited.
Ford sat on his cot and began to put on clean socks. You pride yourself on honesty, so at least try to be honest with yourself. You have no interest in welcoming a new neighbor. You're lonely. Hell yes, admit it-you're lonely living out here by yourself.
He was putting on talcum powder, thinking about it all. At least trying to put on talcum powder-he couldn't find the damn stuff. Ford was hunting around, moving things on tables. He found a box of baking soda. Well, maybe he didn't have any talcum powder. So he looked for cologne, but all he could find was a bottle of vanilla extract that he used in eggnog at Christmas.
"Goddamn it, what the hell kind of bachelor am I? No talcum powder, no cologne. No wonder I live alone."
Might as well be a hermit, like Tomlinson said. Hesitating over the box of baking soda, he poured a little into his palm, sprinkled in a few dashes of vanilla extract, and mixed it between his palms. I used to get invited places. Key West for Hemingway Days. To Greek Epiphany Day at Tarpon Springs: the sponge diver thing.
The Gasparilla Festival at Tampa. All sorts of places, and I always said no.
He patted the baking soda beneath his shirt and around. Homemade talcum powder. Pathetic!
Going out the door, he stopped to pet Crunch amp; Des, thinking, About time I started getting out and meeting people. Unless I want to end up all by myself, crazy as Tucker Gatrell. Which was a connection he preferred not to ponder: the genetic nexus,- the cellular linkage between himself and his wild relatives, disorderly people of balmy humor and mad blue eyes. Antecedents from which he'd been trying to distance himself all his professional life.
Stepping down into his flats skiff and starting the big outboard motor, he thought, Show a little courage. Go out and meet her. Then you can get some work done, get back to the routine. As he threw off the lines and idled toward the sailboat at the mouth of the bay, Ford said aloud, "Next thing you know, I'll be talking to myself."
Every day for a week, Sally Carmel returned to her sailboat around noon to clean and store her camera gear, then pack the day's film, carefully dated and catalogued, in the cool plastic lock box she always carried. The light was bad from late morning to early afternoon. Way too bright in Florida, it burned great shards of shadow into the film, so it was a good time to get organized-to soup the film when she was shooting black and white, or to do the daily back-cracking, knuckle-barking maintenance work all saltwater boats required. There was always something to scrape or polish or sew or paint, and she'd been having problems with the engine, too, a normally dependable little Atomic 4 inboard that lately had been having fuel-line problems. Or fuel-filter problems; it was difficult to tell on a diesel. What that meant was, after the engine sat idle for a time, she had to tap all the lines, bleed them, then reprime them-a hell of a job that she normally would have hated but now, oddly, enjoyed.
Well, not so odd, really. Working on the engine focused her attention, blotting out all other worries or personal hurts, so it was a pleasant thing to do while recovering from a divorce. A tough divorce, though not violent. Just cold and disappointing and empty, like her two-year marriage to Geoff. Geoff, who had grown up rich and made a show of living simply, though part of his›charm was money. She could admit that to herself now. Money was a part of the reason she had married him, that and the chance to be a part of the things he wanted to build. That's what he was, partner in a firm of consulting contractors and architects-builders who specialized in the big, mirrored high rises and modern malls. Creators of beautiful places with indoor gardens and fountains, and she had convinced herself that she could be a part of that by marrying him. After all, she had minored in design and interior decoration in college.
But Geoff had also been funny and serious and shrewd, a modern-day hero, or so she had thought. Which appealed to a small-town girl like her. And it wasn't until they were married that she began to see him for what he really was: a spoiled little boy who'd had his own way his whole life and who would not tolerate a partner with independent ideas and her own way of doing things. So he had bullied and denigrated and tried to undermine her confidence, taking her apart piece by piece. Which worked the first year, because she loved him-she truly did-but didn't work at all in the final year. Or at least that's the way she saw it. She could be a headstrong bully herself. A ball breaker, that's what Geoff had called her. That and a lot of other things. And he was probably right in some ways.
She had sorted out a lot on this sailing trip; had had some startling insights and revelations while she gave Geoff the month she'd promised to get his stuff out of their little house and find a new place to live. Her house, really. She'd inherited it from her mother and they'd redone the whole house together. Yet even though they'd been separated for more than a year, he was just now getting around to hiring movers to crate his things-the television, some of the furniture. That was fine with her. Lazy child, that's what he was. Lazy but shrewd, and he scared her a little bit. She could admit that now, too.
Which was why she was on this trip-to give him time to get his stuff out. She'd been cruising for more than a month, clear up Florida's west coast to Panama City, now nearly all the way back home, taking photographs for an assignment she'd received from the Audubon Society. Making a photographic record of the progress of immature pelicans on seventeen island rookeries along the coast where ornithologists had counted nests and eggs ten months before. Actually, sixteen rookeries that had been counted, and this seventeenth in Sanibel Island's Dinkin's Bay, which her crazy old neighbor had told her about. Except he called it Tarpon Bay, which was how the old-timers knew it. He had told her it was one of the prettiest little mangrove bays in Florida, and he was right, plus there were five tiny island rookeries in the middle of the bay, trees sagging with pelicans and cormorants and great blue herons. So she'd stayed here nearly a week, taking photographs, working on the boat, and swimming each day at sunset. Swimming nude because she liked the feel of the water on her body; the skin and marrow intimacy of being naked in dark water. Swam nude until, one morning, sitting with her powerful binoculars watching birds, she noticed that pervert who lived in the stilt shack futzing with a telescope. Saw him steering the barrel toward her boat, and she'd ducked out of sight just in time. If he watched her in the morning, he probably watched her at sunset, too, so that was the end of the nude swimming. The creep. A couple of times, he'd come puttering around in his boat, pretending that he was fishing. Didn't even have the courage to pull up and introduce himself.
But there would be no swimming today. Today she was packing, getting things squared away because she was leaving. Would pull the anchor about noon and catch the outgoing tide, headed home. Probably have to anchor off Marco Island for the night, find a lee shore in the Ten Thousand Islands, then motor on in through the islands to the long dock near her little house. Not her dock, but it was her house,- now it was. It was Tucker Gatrell's dock. Her crazy old neighbor. Down there in Mango, where she'd grown up.
By noon, Sally Carmel had everything packed and lashed and stowed, but she couldn't get the engine started. It had fired perfectly that morning; she'd started it and let it run. But then, with the tide just right, the motor had gulped, spit, and quit. So now she was wedged into the stern pulpit, half her body in the engine hold, upside down and hair dangling. Up to her shoulders in grease and diesel fuel, bleeding air out of the fuel filters.
She had a 7/16-inch wrench in her hand, trying to loosen the purge nut. To do it, she had to put her left hand in the bilge to balance herself, which made it tough to put any torque on the bolt. Now she mounted the wrench on the nut, took a deep breath… applied pressure… but the wrench slipped and her fist smashed into the exhaust manifold.
"Ouch!"
Sally righted herself. Oil was dripping off her from somewhere-darn it, from her hair. It must have swung down into the bilge when she slipped. Oil was trickling down her face. Her arms were already a slick black mess, and now her hand was bleeding. She studied the white crease on her knuckle,- could see blood beading from the tiny capillaries.
She put her knuckle to her lips and sucked. Feeling frustrated and thinking, I ought just to sail this thing out. Which she would have done, but she had to run the narrow channel out of the bay, then take the Intracoastal beneath the Sanibel Causeway in a running tide. She pictured her pretty twenty-seven-foot Erickson smacking into the cement pilings. Pictured the keel plowing into a turtle-grass bank on this falling tide. Nope. She had to get the air out of the lines and get the engine going.
She couldn't work with this goop all over her. She rose to get a towel, which was when she noticed the green flats boat flying toward her. Coming out the marina channel, dolphining across the water-slick bay until the guy standing at the wheel got it trimmed out.
Oh no, the pervert from the stilt house.
That's all she needed now. Him plowing around gawking at her.
Well, she would ignore him. Pretend as if he just wasn't there. She cleaned off her face, toweled off the wrench, and leaned into the engine hold again, turning her attention to the purge nut. But she could hear the boat getting closer and closer; heard the pelicans in the nearby mangroves drop down off the limbs, laboring to flight on creaking wings. Could hear the boat slowing to idle, could feel her own boat rise and roll in the skiff's wake, then heard the skiff's motor shut down.
The bastard was stopping.
Then she heard, "Hello the boat. Anyone home?"
She blew through her lips, a fluttering noise of irritation, and sat up.
"I'm home. What do you want?" Which sounded even sterner than she'd planned, but what the hell. She didn't have time, and this guy had ruined her sunset swims.
There he was, standing at the wheel, drifting along in his boat, and she could see that her tone had taken him aback. Could hear it in his stammer when he answered, "Uh-I thought- Well, I just stopped… stopped to say hello. Being neighborly. I live in the stilt house." He motioned with his head. "Off the south mangrove bank-"
Sally interrupted. "I know, I know. By the marina-" But then she stopped herself. What in the world was wrong with this man's face? Splotches of white on it, like clown makeup. Or like he'd been baking and sneezed into the flour. She didn't want to stare, but gad.
He said, "You need some help working on your engine?" He smiled a little. "Looks like you're up to your elbows in it," meaning the grease.
Kind of an interesting-looking guy, really-healthy, with muscles and wire glasses, but he had that gook on his cheeks. Maybe he had poison ivy or something. But then she thought about him looking at her through the telescope and got mad again.
"You think you know more about my own engine than I do?"
"Not at all, I-"
"You think women can't work on engines?"
It took a moment, but his smile disappeared. On the skiff, Ford was thinking, Her face isn't as pretty as I thought. Eyes too sunken, cheeks too narrow. What is that, grease in her hair? as he said, "I think you're overreacting just a tad to a-"
"Or maybe you were studying my engine. Back there in your little house with the telescope." She made an airy gesture with a black hand. "Maybe you weren't peeping at me."
The man said, "Ahem," as if he'd been stuck with a needle but didn't want to show it.
Sally said, "That's right. And I don't have much time for sneaky people."
The man said, "You assume too much," in a flat way that surprised her a little. She expected him to be defensive. She sat looking at him as he started his skiff and touched it into gear, idling away. Then over his shoulder, he said, "If you need help with the engine, give me a call on the radio."
Not wanting to let him off so easy, Sally answered with heat, "I won't. Don't you worry."
The man leaned on the throttle of his fast skiff. He didn't look back.
It was late afternoon before Sally Carmel got her own boat running properly. And she didn't raise Mango until late afternoon the next day.