Randy White - The Mangrove Coast

But Amanda intercepted me. First, it was with a look- Don’t hurt his feelings — and then by touching her fingers to the back of my hand- Let him talk for a little longer.

So I did. Listened to the old man ramble for another fifteen or twenty minutes before she finally cut him off. Asked him for half an hour alone with me so she could share the contents of a letter-“It’s confidential,” she explained-and Tuck left as meekly and amenably as I had ever seen him, charmed by her or manipulated by her, it was difficult to say which.

I studied the girl’s face, thinking maybe she wasn’t as troubled or as defenseless as I’d believed.

“The rule has to do with this idea some friends and I came up with. The thirty-second rule. The way it goes is, a guy comes up-this is usually at a bar, a concert maybe, someplace like that. Nothing to do with business, but like at a party or something. So a guy comes up and he’s got exactly thirty seconds to prove he’s not plastic or full of crap or a fake. If he doesn’t say something honest or worthwhile in thirty seconds, what’s the sense of wasting your time?”

Trying to keep things relaxed, trying to ease her into what she’d come to talk about, I’d asked her about her T-shirt: Thirty-Second Rule Strictly Enforced.

I said, “And the guys know there’s this time limit? It’s a new thing now… or-?”

“You mean do a lot of women use it?”

I was nodding. “Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.” There were enough years between us that this might have been some generational fad. If it’s not on shortwave radio or on the VHF weather stations, I have no way of keeping up.

She said, “I just told you, some friends and I, it’s our idea. But yeah, it’s getting around. Like the university towns. Gainesville, Tallahassee, Miami. I heard some girls down on spring break took it back to Michigan, University of Iowa. Some other places, too. But it was all our idea.”

Proud of that.

I had taken Tucker’s seat at the galley booth facing her until she scooched a little closer to the wall to create an extra couple of inches of distance between us. That slight movement stirred the air enough so that she left a few scent molecules lingering. Body powder. Shampoo. Woman. The thirty-second rule, I guessed, was like her baggy clothes, her hair: a place of her own creation in which to hide.

I said, “I’ve been talking to you for a couple of minutes and I don’t feel like I know very much at all about you. A lot longer than thirty seconds, but I wouldn’t presume to make any judgments.”

“But this isn’t social. So the rule doesn’t apply, see?”

I said, “It’s not business either, though. Or is it?”

Amanda was sipping her tea, hands very steady, eyes and eyebrows showing just above the rim of her glass. “It’s neither,” she said. “What it is is personal.”

She had handed me a sheaf of letters, all of them getting brittle and yellow, they were that old. Written on airmail onion-skin paper, so they were slightly brittle to begin with.

As I leafed through them, she said, “He wrote my mom almost every day. That’s how much in love they were. The whole time he was in Asia or wherever he was. Those APO return addresses, you’ve got no way of knowing. But he mentioned Bangkok quite a bit, so that’s what Mom figured. And he mentioned you. Your name’s in there a lot.” Amanda looked at me, let her eyes linger for a moment, then looked away before adding, “One of the reasons I wanted to talk with you was so you could maybe tell me more about my dad. About where you two were when he was killed, what you were doing. It’s weird, but, my own father, I know almost nothing about him”

I said, “I’ll tell you what I can.”

“I’d appreciate that. Maybe more than you realize.”

“My pleasure. And Tuck said something about you having a problem. Maybe a favor to ask.”

“That’s why I brought the letters, because I wanted you to see how I came to know about you. So… what I’d like you to do now is read this-” She carefully unfolded another letter, placed it in front of me and tapped a paragraph midway down, knowing the letter so well she didn’t have to read it again because she knew where the paragraph was. “This will tell you why I’m imposing on you. Why I went to the trouble of finding you. Because, well, I had to. It was like it was an order from my father or something. Go ahead, take the letter and you’ll understand.”

It was very strange reading words written by a friend who had been dead for nearly twenty years. About the dead we often say that their spirit remains in our hearts. But that’s seldom true. Not really. We abandon the dead as quickly as our emotions will allow, and Bobby had been dead for a long, long time. Now here he was speaking to me from paper that his hands had touched, through ink that was a direct conduit to what he had been thinking and feeling at that time.

I could picture him hunched beneath a gas lantern, jungle moths fluttering around, writing. I’d probably been there when he’d put it on paper. Yeah, I probably had. Now his words created a voice that resonated as if it came from his own mouth:… Gail, darling, there’s something else that’s been on my mind. I don’t know why, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about. I’ve mentioned my buddy Doc a couple of times in these crazy letters of mine, but what I want you to have is his whole name and how to get in touch with him just in case. I’ve been asking him for a week, but the stubborn bastard only just now told me where he can be contacted back there in the world. Here it is, I think it’s the phone number and address of some relative-

What followed was the address of Tucker Gatrell, Mango, Florida, just south of Marco.

I looked up from the letter and turned to Amanda, who was staring at me, watching me read. “I remember your father bugging me about it now. He wanted a permanent address. A hometown address, he called it. So he could always get in touch. I’d completely forgotten that he’d asked. This is really weird.”

“Keep reading,” she said. “It’ll seem weirder.”… Don’t go getting superstitious on me, babe. That’s not why I’m telling you about Doc. I’m not going to die over here. I don’t know why I’m so sure, but I am. But what I’m thinking is what happens if you or Mandy ever get in trouble when I’m not around? Like you always say, I’m a worrier. But that’s why I want you to know about Doc. This letter makes it official. You get in trouble, Doc’s the guy to call. I’m talking about the kind of trouble where the police or a lawyer can’t or won’t get involved. Like a spot where someone’s giving you problems or scaring you or taking advantage of you-something I’d normally handle. Or maybe someone’s trying to take advantage of Mandy, like some asshole boy. That’s when I want you to contact Doc. Maybe I’m being silly, but you two are the only girls I got, and I always want someone nearby you can count on. So no screwing around, you talk to him. You can trust him, take my word for it. Let’s just say the man has special skills. If he can’t handle it, then he’ll know someone who can. And when Little Miss Mandy’s old enough, I want you to tell her the same thing. It doesn’t matter how many years have passed, not to guys like Doc and me. After what we’ve been through, a couple of decades or so don’t mean a damn thing…

I removed my glasses, cleaned them with a paper napkin, then fitted them back over my nose. “I see what you mean,” I said.

She was leaning toward me, voice lower, intense. “It’s like he knows. Like he’s talking to us. I found these letters not quite two weeks ago, and that’s just the way it seemed.

Like he knew exactly what was going on.”