Randy White - Everglades

In large letters it read: ALL NATIONS CHURCH OF GOD OF PROPHECY.

Below, in letters that were only slightly smaller, someone had recently added, Pray for our Sister Sally!

I teared up when I saw the sign. I slowed, staring at it, until a line of cars behind me began to honk.

Then, for absolutely no rational reason, I drove north to Miami Springs and found the Pink Palm Apartment complex where Frank had lived: four rows of stucco condos with numbered carports, speed bumps, a miniature swimming pool, and a couple of kids riding tricycles outside near trash Dumpsters and a mulched playground.

It seemed important to find DeAntoni’s apartment. I thought it would take me awhile. It didn’t. His was the one with the yellow Crime Scene tape across the door and combination padlock on the doorknob.

I stopped at the door. Peeked through the blinds and saw a vinyl couch, no other furniture, and the kind of double-handled exercise wheel that people use to do abdominal crunches.

A bachelor fitness freak.

I checked my watch. A little before five. I hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch, but wasn’t hungry. I decided that, if I got in my truck and left now, I could be back at Dinkin’s Bay while there was still enough light left to get out in my skiff.

Then maybe I’d find Tomlinson, and make a few bar stops by water before watching the moon rise.

That night, something inside me snapped. Something within the core region of my brain. It was ignited by a growing, withering pressure without vent. Intellectually, emotionally, I felt the scaffolding that defines me fracture, then break.

The moment of its occurrence was so precise that I felt it move through my nervous system like an electric shock.

I’d gotten back to Sanibel a little after eight. Lights were already on at the marina, but the sky was still bright with sunset afterglow. To the east, cumulous towers were layered in volcanic striations of rust, Arizona purple and peach.

I checked my main fish tank, the aquaria in my lab, fed Crunch amp; Des, then took a quick shower.

By the time I idled out of the marina harbor, the clouds had changed to shades of pewter and pearl. I saw that Tomlinson’s dinghy was tethered off No Mas -he was aboard. I headed toward the sailboat, then decided, no, I didn’t feel like company.

I’d made myself a traveler in an oversized plastic cup: ice, rum, fresh lime. With the big Mercury rumbling, I pushed the boat up onto plane, then throttled way back, traveling at a comfortable 2,600 RPM-“wine speed,” Dewey Nye calls it, because it’s fast enough to get you to dinner, but slow enough so it’s still possible to sip a glass of wine. I ran across the flat past Green Point, then Woodring Point.

My cousin, Ransom Gatrell, was out on Ralph Woodring’s dock, wearing shorts and a pink bikini top, a sunset beverage still in her hand.

I waved. She waved.

Ransom has Tucker Gatrell’s blue eyes, but she’s a caramel-colored woman, a color she calls “Nassau chocolate.” She wears her hair in braids, tells fortunes, believes in Obeah-a variation of voodoo-and is already making a small fortune selling real estate on a part-time basis. During the day, she works behind a cash register at Bailey’s General Store, or at She Sells Sea Shells on Periwinkle.

Ransom tells people that she’s my sister. I no longer bother to correct her or them. We’ve become that close.

Even so, I ignored her beckoning wave- Come talk for a spell! -and turned beneath the power lines, then beneath the Sanibel Causeway, seeing the bright high-rise lights of Fort Myers Beach to the south.

One of my favorite places to eat and drink is a bayside cafe that almost no one knows about, and where only locals go. It’s in the old shrimp yards of Matanza Pass, a funky, quirky outdoor restaurant and bar built beneath the sky bridge that joins Fort Myers Beach with tiny San Carlos Island. It’s called Bonita Bill’s, and it may be the only restaurant in Florida with an unlisted phone number.

Kathy and Barb were working the bar. I sat beneath tiki thatching, drinking rum, staring out at the dark water, seeing the development glare of Fort Myers Beach beyond.

At one point, Kathy said, “You don’t seem real talkative tonight, Doc. Something wrong?”

Yes, there was something wrong. Frank DeAntoni had moved into my head and would not leave. His voice had become a refrain:

I’ve got to have someone who knows how to take care of himself. A guy who can bust a head or two if things get tough.

I told Kathy, “Sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

Around ten, a bunch of the guys from the Fort Myers Beach Coast Guard station came in. They’re a good group. Well trained. Dedicated. I tried to force myself to be jovial, conversational, but my heart wasn’t in it.

I bought one more rum for the road, then idled out toward Bodwitch Point, the Sanibel Lighthouse flashing in the darkness beyond.

My next recollection was of standing in my house, staring into the little mirror that is tacked to the wall near my Transoceanic shortwave radio.

The face in the mirror seemed the face of a stranger, even though it was my own.

The Nicaraguan rum I drink is Flor de Cana -Flower of Sugar Cane. It is a superb rum; hard to find. I held the bottle in my hand and amused myself by drinking from the bottle, my eyes never leaving the mirror.

See the stranger drink. See the stranger swallow. See how ugly the stranger is with his thick glasses, crooked nose and scars. See what an absurd and meaningless little creature the stranger is.

Still holding the bottle, I walked outside and stood on the deck.

It was after midnight. The lights of the marina created conduits of shimmering brass on the water, linking my stilt house with the darkened trawlers, sailboats and houseboats, and to the solitary lives within.

To the east, a bulbous moon, a week past full, was illuminating far mangroves, creating silhouettes and shadows. With the rising of the moon came a freshening northwest wind. It was blowing an uneven fifteen, gusting out of a high-pressure-system blackness domed with stars-the frail, ancient light of distant suns, incalculable solar systems.

Standing there, I felt as if I were staring into a funneling abyss that began within my own dark soul and expanded into the infinite. I took another gulp of rum, unzipped my pants, and pissed into the darkness below, watching the bioluminescent sparks my stream created; sparks that, in shape and brilliance, were not dissimilar to the starscape above.

For some reason, I found the parallel heartbreaking.

The wind gusted, messing my hair, blowing harder now.

That gave me an idea.

I started windsurfing a little less than a year ago. I keep my sails rigged, hung beneath my house so they are always ready when I want them. On other moon-bright nights, I’d considered windsurfing-but always dismissed it as idiotic. Too many oyster bars, crab pots and old pilings out there to hit.

Now, though, windsurfing in moonlight seemed a superb idea.

I tripped going up the steps; nearly tripped again when I banged my shoulder against the wall, entering my lab. I touched the wall switch, and stared at the rows of aquaria; could smell the sweet ozone odor created by the systems of aerators. I was aware that, from within some of the glass tanks, certain animals-octopi and squid-were staring at me just as intently as I stared at them.

A couple of months back, at a party, Tomlinson and I got into one of our complicated debates. It was about the mandates of scientific method. The debate was unusually heated and, at one point, I told him, “It’s the way I’ve been trained. I’d rather be precisely wrong than approximately right about almost anything.”

He found that hilarious. A week later, he’d presented me with a wooden sign with the silly phrase engraved on it. I’d tacked the thing on the north wall of my lab.