Randy White - Shark River

I told him, “Most people, the honest ones, would like to go back and change a few things. Some of the dumb things we do, some of the idiotic things we say. I’m talking about myself, by the way. You’ve got your demons, who doesn’t? Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

He turned to face me. “You mentioned guilt, man. It’s like you just tuned right into my brain frequency. Your intuition, it just keeps getting better and better, which, if you don’t mind my saying, is a good thing for someone who started out with no more emotional sensitivity than a meat thermometer. No offense.”

I was smiling again. “None taken.”

“But this guilt thing… what might be bothering me, is some of my old screwups have come back to mess with my brain. Like in my dreams. Bad stuff I did, I mean really bad stuff. Just in the last few months the memories have come back, so yeah, maybe that’s what’s taking the lead out of my pencil. Doc…” I watched his fingers search and find another strand of hair to tug, the tremor even worse. “Doc… there’s something I’ve been wondering about, but never had the balls to ask.”

“Ask away.”

“I’ve always kinda wondered if… well, do you know about some of the shit I got involved with? A long time ago, I’m talking about. It worries me that you’ve always known, and I’ve never taken the time or had the courage to try and explain.”

I don’t often lie, particularly to friends, but sometimes it’s necessary. “Nope. I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t want to know. Whatever you did, whatever you think you did, all the good you’ve done for people-all the good I’ve seen you do-that should more than make up for it.”

Beyond the tennis courts and the palms, I made peripheral note of two yellow Scarab-type high-performance boats idling in the direction of Guava Key’s small back dock. I recognized the boats as being from the Mercury engine test center at Placida, fourteen miles north. All day long, those yellow boats could be seen flying up and down the Intracoastal Waterway, logging hours on experimental engines. Why were they out this late in the day? And why were they now idling into Guava Key?

Another little alarm bell went off in my head.

I stood and said, “It’s time for my run.”

“That’s it? No more advice? No encouragement?”

I smiled. “I encourage you to take the lady home, sit her down, and tell her exactly what you’ve already told me about your so-called problem. If she’s as bright as you’ve described, she’ll understand and she won’t blame herself and she won’t blame you, either. I then encourage the two of you to drink a bottle or two of wine and have fun-whether your equipment works or not.”

I stepped through the French doors into the master bedroom, where I changed to shorts and Nikes. I stretched for a couple of minutes, then headed out along the island’s conch-pink sidewalk. From above me and behind, I heard Tomlinson call, “Hey, I almost forgot-did you get your message from the front desk?”

I turned to see him still balanced cross-legged on the roof, a curious scarecrow shape, sitting as if he were, indeed, levitating. I answered, “I didn’t get any messages. But then, I don’t expect any messages so I never stop to check.”

“Exactly what I figured. I was at the office this morning and the lady gave it to me to give to you. Someone called from the mainland-wanted to come over on the boat taxi to see you. The island’s got to give permission, you know. Someone named Ebanks.”

I said, “Ebanks? I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“They left a number to call.”

I told him, “Maybe when I get back,” and jogged away.

Guava Key is contoured by high hills and valleys, which are really the remains of pyramidlike temples built of shell by contemporaries of the Aztecs, a people known as the Calusa. After a couple hundred years of neglect and detritus rot, the shell base was now covered by loam and trees and designer landscaping.

I jogged down the highest hill through a grove of citrus trees, limbs heavy with tangerines and little yellow Spanish limes, then north along the beach. Ran past rows of modern vacation homes that were careful imitations of tin-roofed Cracker houses, and so thereby emphasized their newness. Where the pink sidewalk looped and ended, I cut toward the bay side of the island, picking up the pace as my lungs seemed to expand and become more efficient.

Guava Key once had a grass airstrip on the narrow, southern point of the island, but it had been recently closed and platted for building. On an island where property values are astronomical, a half-mile strip of open land was an impossible indulgence. I turned south on the strip, running hard on the straightaway. On either side was mangrove fringe. Through hedges of black limbs, I could see patterns of shadow and light and the brassy gold of water at sunset.

At the very tip of the island, ahead of me but not yet in sight, was a canal for small boats and a boardwalk that wound through the trees to a dock. It is the only deserted part of the island. No houses, no golf cart trails, too many mosquitoes for foot traffic. Yet, I knew that if I followed the boardwalk to the dock, I would find the girl joggers I’d seen earlier, the two of them standing there, cooling down from their run, watching the sunset.

I also knew from our few previous encounters that the blonde’s greeting would be slightly cheerier, more inviting than Ponytail’s grim nod.

I am reluctant to impose on anyone’s solitude, so I’d decided to do what I’d done for the last two evenings: turn around at the boardwalk, thereby avoiding the women.

But, as I ran, something happened that caused me to change my mind. Nothing dramatic. It was a very small thing, indeed. What happened was, ahead of me and to my right, a flock of parrots flushed out of the mangroves, screaming and cawing their way into clumsy flight. Parrots aren’t indigenous to Florida. Birds escape, meet, breed, reproduce, then tumble around in groups like feral outlanders. From my years in Central and South America, however, I am very familiar with the warning alarm that parrots make, and that was the sound I heard as the birds flushed.

Someone or something was in those mangroves.

Not that I suspected anything sinister. I have an orderly mind that naturally seeks explanation for the unexplained. This was an oddity, a small incident that did not mesh with the expected pattern of cause and effect. A mangrove fringe is an inhospitable area. Those swampy borders stink of muck and sulfur. They’re a breeding ground for mosquitoes. People avoid mangroves for good reason.

So what had spooked the birds?

As I approached the boardwalk, still running, I heard a voice call, “’Scuse me, mister big man. Hello? Could you maybe give me some information?” A female voice with the breezy, singsong rhythm of the Bahamas. When she said “maybe,” I heard “maw-be.” When she said “big man,” I heard “beeg mon.”

I glanced to see a tall, coffee-brown woman pulling a canoe up onto the bank of the little canal. Late twenties, early thirties, wading-bird legs, heavy breasts without bra that swooped and strained, defining themselves. She wore a tie-dyed T-shirt, scarlet and blue, over canvas shorts that emphasized her legs and muscular rump. I noted that her hair was braided cornrow-style with red beads at the ends and her gaunt, chocolate-colored skin stretched tight over athletic cheeks, bones, and jaw. A striking figure.

I held up an index finger-“Back in a minute!”-and mounted the boardwalk, ducking beneath mangrove limbs, feeling my own weight in the vibration of wood.

The boardwalk tunneled through the mangrove fringe for more than fifty meters, then made a sharp right toward the bay. When I made that turn, I saw what had frightened the parrots. I also knew immediately that the two runners, Blonde and Ponytail, were headed for a very nasty fall. Not that they realized it. Nope, not yet, and not surprising. Targets who are about to become victims seldom see it coming.