Randy White: Ten thousand isles

People naturally think that Sanibel runs north and south, like most barrier islands on Florida's Gulf coast. It doesn't. It curves from east to northwest. The north windows of my house look over the bay, and that is where I went. Putting one hand on the deck, the other on a floorbeam beneath the house, I lowered myself into the water. The water was warmer than the air; a mixture of salt and fresh.

I released air until my feet touched bottom a few feet below, leveled off, and used the pilings to pull myself along. I did everything by feel, seeing only the bioluminescent streaks of fish as they spooked away; hearing the crackle of their fast-twitch muscle fiber as they exploded to speed.

Unexpectedly, my face pressed into thick netting. It took me a moment to realize that it was the deep-water pen where I keep big fish. Already, my navigation was off.

I used the netting to pull myself along. Took my time, moving slowly to conserve oxygen. I'd been down for less than a minute. I wanted to surface far from the house.

The darkness of the innermost core of the brain would be a similar darkness. It was a darkness given occasional dimension by sparkling green light: bioluminescent plankton.

How many times had I used that darkness to travel unseen? The unexpected is defined by the fears of our enemies. Always choose the unexpected route. THUNK

I nearly panicked when I felt a creature of great mass punch me in the side. I floundered momentarily for control, then it hit me again, thunk. Not hard, but in a measuring, experimental way.

It took a moment for my brain to compute what had happened.

On the other side of the thick mesh I kept two big bull sharks. There was a torpedo-sized female over two hundred pounds, plus a male close to a hundred. I do ongoing research on these unpredictable animals; animals that can be found three hundred miles up a freshwater river, or a mile below in the purest blue sea.

Now they were doing their own investigation. I could picture them circling inside the mesh, pectoral fins drooping into attack position as they touched deticles to flesh. It was an ancient interrogative: Was the thing alive? Was the thing edible?

True predators prefer darkness.

I pushed away from the netting, toward shore.

I was no different…

When I surfaced, someone was whistling…

It wasn't a normal, cheery kind of whistle. It was a thin, absent-minded sound, made through clenched teeth, no louder than a series of harsh breaths.

We all do it. A tune gets into our brain. We don't know it's there. During moments of deepest concentration, it slips out, a subliminal backdrop to the work at hand.

This man must have been a romantic. It was one of those old country-western torch tunes. I could hear little bits and snatches of it, as I drifted toward him through the fog. Couldn't identify it. Kept listening.

He was standing on the bank, near the steps of the boardwalk. He was a black, vertical shape in the drifting plateaus of mist. I knew he was trying to decipher the obvious: Was the house occupied? Would someone awaken if he crept out, cut the lines to one of my boats and paddled it away?

Was he wearing something over his face?

The cloud parted momentarily. Yes. A tall man. Perhaps wide. A ball cap backwards on his head, a dark scarf tied over his nose.

The curtain closed and he vanished.

But I could still hear his absent-minded whistling…

The reason we remember song lyrics more easily than poetry is that music is stored in the cleaner, mathematical side of our brains. Poetry is shoveled into the cluttered, creative side.

Some of the lyrics came to me as he whistled: In the dah-dah glow I see her, dah-dah cryin' in the rain…

It took me a moment. Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. That was the song. Willie Nelson sang it; maybe a woman country singer, too.

My hands were on the bottom now, pulling me along toward my visitor. Fingers touched muck and broad-bladed turtle grass. Only my back and the top of my head were on the surface of the water. I knew the silence of a saltwater croc; knew expectations no croc would never comprehend.

Love is like a dyin' ember; only dah-dah remains…

Now I was nearly under the base of the boardwalk. Only a couple meters from the man. Staring up at him in darkness, he was still a charcoal shape. I floated there, belly touching the warm bottom, the toes of my shoes dug into the mud for quick traction.

I waited. I waited.

On the banks of billabongs in Australia's Northern Territory, I'd watched massive crocs wait for feral water buffalo to take just one step closer. Move too soon, the quarry runs free.

I'd learned from the best.

The whistling stopped. I watched the man take a step toward me; saw him turn slowly, slowly to check his backside. Watched him stumble slightly, disoriented by the fog, perhaps.

At that instant, I lunged from the water in one smooth motion, grabbed him chest high and held him, consciously fighting the urge to slam him to the ground. He made a screaming, gurgling sound; a cry of pure terror. Screamed loud enough to awaken people at the marina a hundred yards away. It was such a frenzied, feminine sound that it froze even me momentarily.

I released him; pushed him away. "Take it easy, fella." I squinted at him through the mist with my poor eyesight. The screaming stopped, punctuated by a series of rapid, suctioning breaths. He began to back away from me.

I dismissed the old, old voice in my head which told me to immediately take physical control, to force him into some kind of painful come-along hold, bury his face in the mud and lock his arm up behind his shoulder blade until the bone grated. Instead, I took a long, slow breath and said, "A little early to be playing Halloween, isn't it?" Meaning the scarf over his face.

No reaction.

"Okay… let's make it real simple. You picked the wrong place to rob. But we talk it over, I get the right answers, maybe I won't even call the police."

Kathleen Rhodes would have been surprised and pleased by that.

The dark shape continued to back away slowly. I kept pace with him for a few moments, but then I stopped. "Hey-listen to what I'm saying. If you run, I'll catch you. So what you're going to do right now is follow my orders. You're going to throw your wallet on the ground; put your hands behind your head and drop to your knees." I gave it a few seconds. "Do it!"

Nothing. Which is how I knew he was going to make a break.

He backed away two more steps, then crouched slightly. It was like a telegraph signal. I was already moving when he pivoted. I jumped onto the boardwalk to cut off his angle of escape… and saw him stumble when he realized that he couldn't get past me. I stood there looking down at him, and heard a falsetto whine of frustration, a precursor to his shriek.

People on the verge of panic are more apt to react to words spoken softly. Nearly whispering, I said, "If you scream again, I'll shut off your air."

The whine became a sob, nothing more.

I stepped down and reached for the scarf that covered his face, then grabbed him roughly by the shirt when he stepped away… which is when I sensed a tremendous rush of wind from behind me that culminated in a withering impact. The force of it drove me away from the boardwalk into the water.

I rolled groggily, feeling starbursts in my head, expecting to be stomped at any second. I was down. I was hurt. They'd certainly come after me.

I pulled myself toward deeper water. For me, there is always safety in deep water. I lunged and dolphined until I was underwater, swimming hard. Then I surfaced.

He was gone. They were gone…

Sculling on the surface near my shark pen, I heard an automobile engine start and tires spinning in the loose shell.