Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

Behind me, I heard the man with coarse black hair say, “First Gilligan with an Afro Mary Ann, and now the Professor. Where the fuck’s Skipper and Ginger?”

Jeth was looking past me. “Hey… wait a minute, did that guy just call me Gilligan? You jerk, I don’t look anything like Gilligan!”

“Drop it, Jeth. Let it go.” I was herding him gently away from the bar. Behind me, I heard pointed-face say, “Watch out for that razor intellect of his, Gunnar. He’s a sharp one, very sharp.”

I turned and, over the noise of their laughter, said to Ransom, “What happened? Why’d the guy grab you?”

Camphill said, “I was chatting with the lady-”

Angry myself, and feeling the alcohol in me, I leaned and put my index finger within an inch of the actor’s nose. Held it there for a moment before I told him, “I’m talking to her. Not you.” Stared into his eyes.

It took all the noise out of the bar. I stood and listened to a shuffling of feet, heard someone cough. I expected Camphill to knock my hand away. Instead, he took a huge breath, making a show of controlling himself, letting everyone around know this wasn’t easy for him, still playing the peacekeeper’s role, as the man to his right-a slim blond tennis player type-said, “He doesn’t know who you are, Gunnar. Better drop it. We know in twenty, thirty seconds, you could put him in the hospital, kill him, whatever, but you’re the one with the career-not the Professor here.”

I lowered my hand slowly, looking at Ransom, who was already talking, her voice easy to hear because the bar had gone so very quiet. “The way it happen, my brother, this pretty gentleman, he start a conversation with me. Very nice at first, then he say he give me two, three hundred dollars, whatever I want, if I come to their hotel and make his friends feel very good tonight. Told me his two friends, they’d never had them a black girl. It so good he wanted them to know what it like.

“I told ’em he and his friends, all three of them, they probably used to trading blow jobs with each other. Or maybe little boys-” Several people at the bar laughed at that. “So why they want to bother a nice colored woman like me?” She was shaking her head, smiling, giving them a dose of her contempt before she added, “That’s when this pretty gentleman, he grab me.”

I turned once again to the actor, some inner awareness reminding me that I’d had too much to drink, that I needed to be careful, cognitive, keep things cool, so I said, “You’re right, mister. You need to apologize to her. Now. Then we go our separate ways.”

He thought about it, staring at me with his tough-guy eyes, nodding, creating drama because he knew how to do it, and then threw his head back and laughed. “Okay, Professor! I’ll blink first!” He stood, took Ransom’s hand, bowed at the waist, and kissed the back of her hand regally. “Lovely lady, I was wrong to say what I did. I hope you’ll accept my apology.”

Then he stood there as if maybe expecting to hear some polite applause, but there wasn’t any. Everyone around the crowded bar was staring at him, mostly locals, their expressions saying he was a jerk, maybe they were a little embarrassed for the famous man, too.

Which got to him. I could see it in his expression. So he had to get the last word, contrive a dominant gesture, so he leaned and put his index finger near my nose-payback time-and said loudly, “And you, my friend, you don’t know how very, very lucky you are that I’m in a good mood tonight.”

Looking into his eyes, I let the words hang there for a moment before I answered softly, “Just for the record-I am not your friend.” I waited for something to happen, and, when it didn’t, I shrugged and turned away.

I thought that was the end of it.

It wasn’t.

Because then Gunnar Camphill focused on Jeth’s T-shirt. It was a T-shirt that had quickly become popular with Florida’s sports fishermen. On the back is a silk-screened cartoon of a dead manatee lashed to a spit, roasting over a fire. Beneath the cartoon are the words: Any Questions?

The irony of the T-shirt-and the situation-is that Florida’s sports fishermen have, for years, been among the state’s most vocal and powerful environmental advocates. Now they were being labeled “antienvironmentalist” by groups pushing to get fishing boats off the water. The long and careful defense required to disprove broad, buckshot accusations, such as “racist” or “communist,” is incapacitating-exactly the reason such charges are so commonly made and why they are so effective.

Thus the popularity of this angry T-shirt.

“What the fuck is that?” said Camphill, pointing.

Jeth looked down, looked up, and said, “Yeah, what about it?”

Camphill made a blowing nose with his lips-was this guy really so stupid? “You’re kidding. You really don’t know why I’m here? SAM-the Save All Manatees group-flew me in for the conference on Captiva. They’ve got about a half million members, and I’m their national spokesman, which is why, Gilligan, you either need to strip that T-shirt off right now or get the hell out of this bar.”

If Matt, the owner, hadn’t intervened, it would have started right there. Jeth was ready to go at him, and as for myself, this guy, Camphill, his behavior really was noxious, and I was drunk enough to bypass the obvious, rational options-as most drunks will-and had decided to see just how far he was willing to push it. It’s a truism: Almost all bullying behavior is symptomatic of bedrock cowardice, and there was plenty of evidence now that Camphill was a bully.

But then Matt was there. After twenty-some years in the business, dealing with drunks and pissed-off tourists, he knew just how to handle the situation. First he went to work on Camphill with adulation-“You’re really the Gunnar Camphill? My God, I love the work you do”-as he positioned himself between Camphill and us. Then he fed him some man-to-man stuff, first giving us a meaningful look- Stay calm, he’s an asshole, but let me deal with it. “Don’t worry about Jeth. Our locals, they tend to be… different. Just goofing around-the manatee roast? It’s kind of a local joke. We’re all very pro-environment on the islands.” Matt was steering him away, toward the bar. Then he added a bribe, saying, “I just got in a half dozen jars of Russian Malossol caviar. Gray beluga. My own personal stock. Would you and your friends mind trying a couple of ounces, giving me your opinion?”

That quick, Matt had Camphill’s full attention. “Malossol? How did you know I’m a connoisseur of caviar?” Close enough to the bar now for his friends to hear, he added, “When I was studying aikido in Japan, I fell in love with the stuff. My master, Ueshiba Morihei, he got me hooked on the gray beluga. Had it shipped in once a week from Vladivostok, just across the Sea of Japan. Unpasteurized, the finest. There’s an art to serving it, of course.”

Truth is, Matt has an amazing memory for trivia. He probably saw the bit about the caviar in some magazine and filed it away.

Meanwhile, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tomlinson stand up, use his fingers to comb his hair back. He gave Amelia a reassuring wink before he walked toward Matt. Tomlinson had been uncharacteristically silent during the confrontation, and now I watched him place his hand on Matt’s shoulder-this was a friendly intrusion-then stand there in his flower-print sarong and black Hawaiian shirt, smiling mildly. Looking at Camphill, he spoke briefly in what, after several slow seconds, I finally realized was fast Japanese. Friendly tone. Very animated. He might have been welcoming him or extending an apology.

Pointed-face grinned toward Tomlinson, saying, “Ginger! Finally, here she is. I knew Ginger would make an appearance!” For the first time, Camphill seemed momentarily at a loss. But he recovered quickly, also looking at Tomlinson. He placed his palms together and gave a slight oriental bow, saying, “My friend, I think it’s very rude to converse in a language that others in the room don’t understand. We’ll chat in Japanese another time,” then turned away from Tomlinson, using Matt to emphasize the new focus of his attention.