Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

Now I felt the rubber boat bump my inside dock, then felt and heard the clomp-slap sound of Tomlinson’s bare feet as he swung up onto the deck. Heard the heavy rustling of paper bags, so I flipped on the outside flood, then held the door wide as he came in, arms filled with two bulging grocery sacks. I don’t have air conditioning-don’t like it, don’t need it. Just ceiling fans and lots of big windows with screens. Even so, Tomlinson came in pushing a pocket of mangrove-dense air, hotter than the air inside, and rich with sulfur, iodine, and the oil fragrance he always wore, patchouli. Something else, too: the sappy sweet odor of marijuana clinging to his baggy surfer shorts and tank top, plus a hint of a familiar woman’s perfume, Opium. Opium was my sister, Ransom’s, favorite perfume. Apparently, they were keeping company again. I fanned the air away as I pulled the door closed and hooked it tight.

“Dinnertime, compadre. You eaten yet?”

I looked at my watch. It was more than an hour past sunset, nearly 7 P.M. Through the west window, I could see a quarter moon, coral pink among December stars, drifting seaward. I’d checked the Farmer’s Almanac: Moonset was at 10:46 P.M. A good, black night for stargazing if I decided to break out the superb Celestron Nexstar 5-inch Schmidt-Casselgraine telescope that stood angled on its tripod by the north window, next to my reading chair and lamp. It is an amazing piece of optics. With its built-in computer and GPS, all you have to do is point the barrel of the scope north, punch in the approximate lat and long, and you can then select from a menu of many hundreds of celestial objects, stars, and planets. Choose any one of them, touch a button, and the telescope will automatically find it.

I said to Tomlinson, “Amelia didn’t head back to St. Pete until after four, and I just finished working out. So the answer’s no, I haven’t eaten.”

He was taking objects out of the sacks, bunches of fresh herbs-parsley, basil, cilantro-a handful of Persian limes. “Did you run? Or go to the school and swim laps? They’re keeping the pool open late, I hear.”

“Both. Kind of. I went down by the old landing strip and ran a couple of miles along Algier’s Beach, then swam out to the jet-ski buoy and back.”

“You’re shitting me. This time of year, man, the water’s getting cold. Has to be in the mid, maybe low seventies.”

I said, “I don’t care. After the Gulf, the water in my cistern shower seems warm. I like it.” I looked at the counter as he unloaded his sacks on to it, noting that, along with food, they contained a pilot chart of the Gulf of Mexico, wirebound, plus a sheath of what looked to be printed material from the Internet. I picked up the pilot chart, then looked into Tomlinson’s deepset and sad blue eyes. “You called your buddies at Blue Water Charts in Lauderdale.”

“Yep, Rick and Dorie. They knew just what I needed and FedExed it over.”

“So explain. Are we making dinner or doing research?”

“You got any fish? Maybe some shrimp, something like that? I’m going to make a Panamanian chimichurri sauce.”

I loved Tomlinson’s chimichurri but could never seem to duplicate it exactly: diced bunches of parsley and cilantro, one clove of diced garlic, one small diced chili pepper, a pinch of kosher salt, a little drizzle of balsamic vinegar, the juice from half a fresh lime, plus a cup or more of olive oil. Sometimes he added tomatoes, sometimes he didn’t.

I nodded. “Jeth dropped off a couple of nice kingfish steaks. He says the mackerel are running two-ten off the light-house in thirty-five feet of water.”

Tomlinson was at the sink now, washing the greens, the veins in his biceps implying the tubular network linked beneath his skin, the complicated hydraulics of human physiology. We are delicate machines, indeed, fleshy pumps, electrodes, and cartilaginous wiring. He said, “In that case, we’re making dinner and doing research.”

Tomlinson and I discussed it, going back and forth until we agreed that there were only three possible explanations for why Janet and the other two weren’t found. One: The people aboard the planes, helicopters, and search vessels missed them. Two: Someone, something, or some incident had removed them from the surface of the water before or during the search. Three: They were never adrift to begin with.

Sitting at the little teak table on the porch outside, an oil lamp burning between us for light, Tomlinson took a bite of his mackerel in chimichurri, and said, “Okay, but the working premise is that Amelia Gardner’s story is mostly true. We start with that, then presumably eliminate the other possibilities as we go along.”

“Agreed,” I said.

Tomlinson was getting into it, his brain firing, generating enthusiasm. We’d had the memorial service for Janet that afternoon at Jensen’s Marina. It was an emotional affair. Some crying, some laughter, the ceremony-like all funeral ceremonies-underlining the fact that our lives are brief and that the impact an individual has on the life of another is never realized until the association has forever ended. Apparently, Tomlinson had converted his own sense of loss into a determination to salvage Janet’s reputation. It’d been a while since I’d seen him so focused and lucid. Now he said, “Our job is to compile all the data we can. Objectively, I’m saying. If we go into this as advocates, hermano, we forfeit our credibility. We’re both scientists. We both know that.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t do it any other way.”

“Not that I don’t have my own biases. Some of the crap they’ve been saying about what happened out there? It was a drug deal gone bad. It was murder. It was some military snafu that the right-wingers are trying to cover up-that one, at least, I’m willing to consider. Like maybe the three drifters were out there and saw the military doing something top secret. Whatever happened, we need to collect all the data we can and just have faith that Amelia’s story is mostly true.”

That word again: mostly. It surprised me. “Did I miss something? I didn’t find any holes in her story. Everything seemed consistent. An emotional event that was tough to talk about, but she seemed to do her best to lay it all out there. To be honest.”

Tomlinson started to speak, hesitated, choosing his words carefully before he said, “It’s just a feeling I’ve got, man. You know me. I collect information on a whole different level. Let’s face it. I’m clairvoyant. Psychic, whatever small label you want to use. Clairvoyant, anyway, ’til it comes to love affairs, then I turn into a hundred percent numb-nuts fuck-up. But, if I’m not in love, I know things about people without them having to say a word. I just have a sense that Amelia didn’t tell us everything. Intuition. But it’s more than that.”

“If you think she’s lying, you need to tell me. What’s she have to lie about?”

He said, “I think it has something to do with the way she got separated from the others. Something she’s ashamed of. Not that she should be. Under those kind of circumstances, your boat sinks, you’re set adrift at night, no one has a right to question or criticize someone else’s behavior.”

“But that’s exactly what you’re doing right now. Did you catch her in some kind of factual error in her story? Or are you just guessing?” I said.

I felt relieved when he said, “Intuition, just like I said.”

“Okay, your concern is noted. But let’s stick to the facts. You’re the one who brought up the importance of credibility.”

“Just because it’s anecdotal doesn’t mean it’s not factual. There are all kinds of ways to collect data. When I was out there alone aboard the No Mas, three extra days searching, I dropped into a very deep meditative state. It was a heavy scene, man. I was right there with them the night the boat went down. Janet, Amelia, Michael, and Grace. I saw what happened. I saw what happened afterward. The whole dark vision. Like an electric current pouring into my brain. My own little movie running, close enough to them to see their faces, hear their voices.”