Randy White: Ten thousand isles

In the bowels of certain agencies, Florida's bureaucrats maintain a superior attitude of bored disapproval. I wanted to help save the snook population? Well, I'd have to jump through their silly hoops first! Which is why I'd missed the annual June spawning run and would now have to hustle to catch up.

I told JoAnn, "I'm supposed to deliver twenty brood snook to Mote by Saturday and, this late in the season, they're going to be very hard to find. I'll be working day and night. But if you want, I'll drive down to the Keys after that."

"I'll go." Tomlinson was standing. He found the trash bag nailed to the wall and carefully placed his empty bottle therein. " No Mas is loaded and ready. I'll leave this afternoon with the outgoing tide. I'll need Delia's phone number. There's gotta be a place to anchor near her trailer park. You said she lives on Key Largo? That's a pretty big island."

JoAnn gave me a searching, nervous look. One more private little exchange. "But Tomlinson, you've probably got stuff to do, too. Why don't you wait until Doc-"

"No reason to wait. I've been wanting to take a trip, just couldn't decide where. Now I know. Besides, I'm restless as hell. The equinox, that's the problem. And now I've got this full moon thing to deal with."

"I don't know…"

"Only plans I had was playing harmonica for Jimmy Louis at the Hardware Store, then spend Sunday sitting around the pool bar at 'Tween Waters. So what else is new? That and I've got a monograph due to the International Academy of Sociology and Science-but screw it, they waited this long, they can last another month."

I received another visual inquiry. What should she do?

I told her, "You can trust Tomlinson. If he leaves today, he can be on Key Largo by tomorrow afternoon. Let him check it out, talk to people. If he thinks I can help, I'll drive down next week."

"You're going to sail all that way? It's got to be a hundred miles down to the Keys. I'll pay for a rental car if that would be easier."

Tomlinson was looking around, seeing if he'd forgotten anything, patting his pockets for sunglasses, getting ready to leave. "Nope, a thousand miles of water is easier than a hundred miles of land. Know what? It's exactly what the doctor ordered. Blue water, lots of clean air. Get some boat beneath my feet. Yeah, that's the ticket. Then roll a couple of Maya Mountain fatties to cleanse the receptors." Now he was going out the screen door. His John Lennon sunglasses were still lying on the bookcase in plain sight. "I'm already getting some very strong vibes about this one, and not totally unexpected. Delia and Dorothy, those two ladies have both keyed into Karma 9-1-1. As of now, I'm on the job."

JoAnn was watching, listening, trying not to seem worried. "Jesus."

I told her, "He's actually not as airheaded as he seems. Your friend will love him. Almost everyone does."

"If you say it's okay, Doc, I guess it must be."

"Then you'd better call Delia. Tell her she's about to get company."

I spent the next three days working fourteen hours a day, trying to fill the order from Mote. I was up every morning before first light, cruising the beaches of Captiva Island and Gayo Costa, looking for spawning snook. They are a hardy species but delicate in their way. Most conventional nets will injure them, so I had to use a castnet. A castnet is a circular web of monofilament with lead weights seeded along the perimeter. It is ancient in its design and very effective. Three thousand years before Christ was born, men wading in water were throwing castnets at fish, and we still throw them pretty much the same way.

I'd had this net custom-made just for snook. It was huge: twenty-four feet in diameter. It was woven of much heavier, finer mesh than most nets. Because there was more mass and resistance, the net required twice the lead weight to make it sink fast enough. Throw a castnet properly and it will open like a parachute, trapping everything beneath. Throw it improperly and it will spook every fish around. A standard bait net weighs maybe fifteen pounds. This monster weighed nearly thirty pounds dry, and so, good throw or bad, it was like tossing a small refrigerator. And I was making forty to fifty throws a day, without much success.

It's tiring enough to spend all day in the heat of a September sun, poling a boat, stalking fish, anchoring and re-anchoring. Add this man-killer net to the equation and you are toying with debility.

So, at the end of each day, when the work was finished, I would limp up the steps to my little house, strip off my sodden, filthy shirt and shorts, and stand under the outdoor shower for half an hour, my muscles quivering, threatening to cramp. Then it was into fresh clothes, maybe some snapper or grouper on the grill if I could manage, or else hobble over to Timber's Restaurant for dinner. After that, I would sit on the porch, my feet propped up on the railing, beer in hand, and wait for sunset, because it is inappropriate for a grown man to go to bed before it's dark, and I do have some pride.

A couple of days after I watched No Mas make the tricky jibes out the channel, bound for the Keys, JoAnn stopped by with a snack of sandwiches and one of those collapsible coolers filled with ice and bottles of beer.

It was a Sunday. Beyond the mangroves, the sunset horizon was a lemon sphere streaked with blue. On Sanibel's beach side, the Gulf of Mexico absorbed light and deflected colors skyward.

She asked me, "Did you talk to Tomlinson last night?"

I was in a porch chair as usual. One more tough day behind me in which I'd managed to fall off the poling platform and damn near drown with thirty-some pounds of net tied to my wrist. But I'd also added five good brood snook to my holding tank.

I sipped the bottle of beer she'd placed in my hand and said, "For the last three or four days, I haven't answered the phone, returned messages, nothing. Haven't checked my mail or paid bills. I'm on autopilot. So the answer is no."

"He said he was going to try and call. Something else, he took the other stuff Dorothy found, all the remaining artifacts, put them in a box and mailed them to you. So the thieves wouldn't know where to look. So now I understand why you haven't gotten it yet."

"Like what?"

"That Egyptian-looking cat I told you about? He mailed it insured, priority, plus some other things Delia wanted to protect. Nothing really valuable, except for maybe the cat, but Delia's lost enough. You don't mind, I'll stop at the post office tomorrow and pick it up. I'll get your mail while I'm at it, drop it all by tomorrow morning."

"Does he want me to open the box?"

"You can ask him when he calls. But I wouldn't mind seeing that cat again."

"If I talk to him, I will. Just before I fall into bed, I unplug the phone. The idea of waking up to Tomlinson on a talking jag is not pleasant. I've been through that too many times."

She pulled a chair close enough to the railing so that she could prop her feet up beside mine. I got a whiff of shampoo and subtle, indefinable female odors.

It was a calm evening. The saltwater lake that is Dinkin's Bay spread away in shaded increments of brass and pewter and pearl. Pelicans roosted heavily in nearby mangroves, while white ibis crossed the bay in gooselike formation.

The moon, one day past full, would soon balloon up over the bay.

She watched the ibis for a moment before she said, "I figured there was a reason he couldn't get you. Last night, he kept me on the phone for more than an hour. And it's not easy to call him because he and Delia are either at the bar-where she works or he's aboard his boat. There's a lot of stuff he wants to tell you about the gold medallion that Dorothy found. The wooden paddle thing, too. What he calls the totem. The medallion and the totem, that's all he talked about. He says it's related. The break-ins, Dorothy's death, everything. There's some books he wants you to find and read."