Randy White - Shark River

“Absolutely not. The only reason you’re interested in her is because of the way she looks, that body of hers, and because you’re hoping she knows some kind of island spell, Obeah I’m talking about, that’ll make your equipment work. Which is bullshit, and I don’t want her to be a part of something like that.”

“Am I really hearing this?”

“You bet you are.”

“I don’t get it. Yeah, Ransom’s spectacular, but not just because she’s great-looking, man. It’s because of her age, her personality. It’s the whole far-out package. There’s like this truly karmic gig going on between us, not the least of which is that we’re both worried shitless about you. About what the hell kind of crazy, dangerous thing you are up to now.”

“I’m not going to listen to this, Tomlinson. You two are not sleeping together. You just met! End of story.”

“But why?”

“It’s not obvious? I don’t want you to sleep with her, damn it all, Tomlinson, because she’s my-” I caught myself. I’d almost said because she was my sister. Instead, I said, “Because she’s a blood relative, and the potential for complications is just too great. It would be like dating someone from the marina. And we both agree about the dangers of that.”

“I’m sorry, I really am, Doc, but no promises,” he said. “I just can’t. The attraction’s too strong, man. Very heavy vibes, which I think she feels, too. Ransom’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met; that’s just the way it is. But I’ll let you know.”

Which really infuriated me.

After I hung up, I worked around the lab. I got everything I could packaged and mailed off.

I waited until an hour after dark to trailer the skiff behind my pickup, then I drove it south toward the Everglades, Mango, and the islands beyond.

I pulled into Everglades City at a little after 8:30 P.M. It was a half-moon night with stars. Everglades is a mangrove town built at the border of sawgrass and sea by a turn-of-the-century visionary and power baron. It was to have been the political seat of a great county. The village’s fortunes ascended briefly, but isolation and swamp are formidable consorts, and it ultimately returned to being the outpost it was destined to remain.

Everglades had changed much, though, in just the last year or two-lots of new tourist facilities, several new restaurants, and a billboard near the village circle advertising a trailer park on the narrow road to Chokoloskee. There were authentic Seminole souvenirs, gator tail sandwiches, birding tours and airboat rides, all the tacky, touristy standbys that are the historic mainstays of tacky, touristy South Florida.

Like Mango, the modern world had finally moved to within reach of Everglades City and begun the slow, osmotic process of change and homogenization.

I crossed the elevated river bridge and dropped down onto a slow boulevard of palms. The village has had the same streetlights since the 1930s, glass moon-globes on ornate iron stems. The streetlights were set apart at incremental distances, creating theatrical islands of light as I toured slowly through town. I was tempted to stop and have dinner at the Rod amp; Gun Club. I remembered, fondly, a nice lady I’d once overnighted with in one of the little cottages there. We’d spent it holding one another, nothing more, two friends providing comfort. One of the few and truly good ones. I remembered her good eyes and strong heart, and I wished her another private, silent farewell.

I make it a rule not to linger in sentimentality, however; I seem to have less and less tolerance for it. Tomlinson insists that the opposite is true. He says that I have grown both spiritually and emotionally since I opened the lab at Dinkin’s Bay. He doesn’t seem to understand that I don’t consider that a compliment.

I decided not to waste time ordering dinner at a restaurant. I had canned goods in the boat, drinks, too. Instead, I turned back through town and stopped at the Circle K, where I loaded on more ice and fuel, then launched my skiff at the boat ramp.

The tide on the Baron River was ebbing. At idle, the black current swept me southward through the village and into the night. I stood at the wheel of my boat, big engine rumbling, and looked at the lights of the village. I could see people moving across scrims of windows, framed by leaves and vines, a micro-snapshot of lives being lived in this isolated Florida place.

Then, far off to the left, I could see the glow of Chokoloskee as I powered to plane across Chokoloskee Bay, running the flashing markers out Indian Key Pass, the moon following along behind me, its blue light strobing through the limbs of mangroves. The tops of the trees were individualized and set apart in starlight, a primeval canopy against the brighter sky. Then the mangroves thinned, fell away, and disappeared so that it was like breaking some gravitational hold, and I was suddenly free, running straight into blackness and a horizon of stars.

When I was well offshore, clear of coral rock and oyster bars, I banked southwest. Sea and sky were lucent spheres joined at the horizon. I sledded across, down the surface of one sphere, then up the surface of another.

In a few minutes, I picked up the gloom of Pavilion Key, the westernmost of the Ten Thousand Islands, and an effective range to deep water.

Twenty miles or so beyond, I knew, was Shark River.

I stopped only once. I calculated that I was slightly south of Lostman’s River. I took a whiz off the stern, looking up at the sky. No boats, no lights, nothing. The coast-line was all darkness here. I might have been the only human being left on earth. I switched off the engine. I sat drifting there, in no hurry now. I stripped off my clothes and swung over the side, my only way to bathe for the next few days.

The February ocean was chilly, in the low seventies, nearly cold.

Back in the boat, I dried myself and checked the cut on my left arm. It seemed to be closing nicely. I squirted antibiotic cream onto gauze and taped it into place. Then I put on fresh clothes. I hadn’t worn these clothes in so long that their use suggested ceremony. I put on camo BDUs, the dense Navy sweater over a T-shirt and the black watch cap.

Finally, I tied on my old and comfortable jungle boots before firing the engine and heading down the coast.

Look at a map, and Cape Sable is the massive riverine promontory that forms the southwestern boundary of the Florida peninsula. It is uninhabited, isolated, seldom visited-many miles of beach fringed by strands of coconut palms, accessible only by boat. It is known for silence, mosquitoes, and some of the most stunning sunsets on Earth.

There was good moonlight, but it was still too dark to see the stand of royal palm trees Tuck had mentioned, so I had to guess. I stern-anchored off Northwest Cape, and muled my gear up the beach. I pitched my red dome Moss tent, collected wood, and built a pit fire for light and as a smudge to sweep some of the mosquitoes away.

Down on the Cape, mosquitoes are distressing in winter. In summer, they can be existential-a peppered cloud that swarms and attacks, a billion winged lives competing for mammalian blood.

With pants, sweater, and headnet, though, I was protected, and worked away without much trouble. I wanted a big, public camp with lots of light and color, something easily seen from miles away. I thought about hiking up to Little Sable Creek to see if there was one of those tall, rope-straight mangroves growing there-a trunk adaptation associated with the Cape Sable area. I had the idea of putting up a little flagpole, something no one could miss.

I decided that seemed a little too much. If they wanted me, they would find me.

A frightening realization: Of course they would.