Randy White - The Man Who Ivented Florida

Tuck kept talking about the spring he'd found, about his horse, Roscoe, about Joseph's miraculous recovery-the point being Ford should help out by testing the water, give the stuff some credibility-and every few minutes he'd look at Ford and say, "You're looking good, boy. By gad, it's good to see you. Back here where you belong!"

Ford didn't feel as if it was where he belonged, and Tuck didn't look so good to him. He looked old, as if he'd shrunk down smaller after so many years of rough use. Bowlegged old man with skin stretched tight over a bony face, as if it had been soaked in salt water, then sun-dried until just before it split. What hadn't changed was Tuck's eyes; politician's eyes, robin's egg blue, always set on wide focus, taking in everything, picking out angles and calculating approaches. Ford could sense him calculating now and wanted to beat him to the punch; keep him from getting started so he could say what he had to say, then get out.

"I'm going to make this quick," he said.

"Hell, boy, you just got here!"

"A woman stopped to see me today-"

"Bet she was a good-lookin' thing. Hah!"

"A woman agent from the Florida Department of Criminal Law."

"Oh. You ain't in some kind of trouble?"

"She was asking questions about you. You heard the name Angela Walker? Agent Walker?"

"Can't say as I… Wait a minute, now-"

"Woman asking questions about the three men who disappeared down this way."

Tuck had his cowboy hat off, wiping his hands over his hair. On top, there were only a few wisps of thread, almost bald, but the sides were still sun-bleached, not much gray. He put the hat on the table. "Now that you mention it, seems I did talk to a woman like that, only I got to telling stories and she didn't say much about nobody disappearing. It was on the phone."

"She will tomorrow. She told me she was coming to see you."

"Always good to get company, specially female. Is she a looker?"

Ford said, "She's a cop, and you better not forget that. Now here's what I want to ask you." He leaned forward, trying to get his uncle to pay attention. "Those men, did you have anything to do with it?"

"The men that disappeared?"

"Damn it, you know that's what I'm talking about! A surveyor and an environmental consultant; had something to do with connecting Mango with the national park. Is the state trying to condemn your property?"

"Condemn my property?" Tuck appeared offended. "This house is solid as a dollar. Why'd they condemn it?"

Ford stood up so fast, his chair fell backward. "Don't pull this act on me! Your dumb and innocent act, Christ. I don't have time for it, and my guess is you don't, either. You know exactly what I'm talking about."

"Okay, okay, sit yourself down-"

"For once in your life, try being straight."

"You're right, you're right. Hell, Marion, you're always right. Always were. Never seen such a boy for being right all the time. Used to drive me nuts, the way you was always right. And here I am acting like the original shitheel."

Ford had righted the chair and was sitting down, adjusting it to the table. "Okay then. The three men."

Tuck said, "The three what disappeared, yep. I heard about them. I got a radio, don't I? I listen to the country station WHEW, the Country Giant, and they talked about it. The surveyor. And something they call a state ecologist. Environmentalist? Something like that. The one man was, and third was that fat television fisherman. They all got lost down in the islands and never made it back. But what you're askin' me is, did I make them disappear? Answer to that is no damn way."

"You never saw them?"

"I didn't say that." Tuck had the foil pouch of Red Man out, then got up to rinse his Styrofoam spit cup in the sink. He wadded a paper towel and put it in the cup, saying, "The surveyor and the ecologist man, they came here. Boy named Charles and a boy named… something else, I don't know. Hell, my memory. But they was here, but not at the same time. The one named Charles, he did the ecology stuff. He called it an environmental survey, only it wasn't really surveying. He just took little samples of this and that across my property. Looked at the birds and wrote things on a paper.

"Now, most surveyors, they're okay. Boys who like to get outside and found a way to get paid doing it. But this Charles was a asshole, got right up on his high horse just 'cause Gator tried to take a chunk outta him. But, hoo-you know about that!" Laughing, thinking about Ford up the tree.

Tuck said, "I'd a run him off, but me and Lemar Flowers-did you ever know Lemar? Well, me and Lemar worked out a kinda deal where I had to let them do their damn tests, taking water samples and looking at the birds. That sorta thing. I had to let 'em, or they'd put my butt in jail. And I been to jail. So he come down and looked at the water, took little bottles of it, and then this other man come and put down a bunch of stakes with little flags, and that was that. As far as the fat fisherman, I seen him on the television down at the Rod Gun,- they got a TV in the bar. Catch a fish, and he'd read poetry. Least he said it was poetry, but it didn't even rhyme. Great big fat boy with a pink face. Way I see it, good riddance. One television fisherman down, only about three hundred more to go."

"If the state took water samples, why do you want me to test it?"

Tucker said, "Because them state boys might be liars. I want my own tests." He winked. "You want a level playin' field, it's best you do your own rakin'. Besides, that Charles man, he's one of the ones disappeared. Him that took the water samples."

Ford said, "The lady cop, Agent Walker, she's trying to find people who'd have a motive."

"Anybody with a TV's got motive to kill a TV fisherman. Hell, there ought to be a bounty."

"Did you ever see them in their boats? If I knew what the boats looked like-"

"Never saw the state boys in boats. The TV guy, they was always boats too small for a boy his size. But them disappearing, hell, people been disappearing in the islands my whole life, Marion."

"Well, yeah. But not three."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh, I hear what you're saying, but listen to me." Tucker sat up straight and leaned across the table to make his point. "To them, it looks real safe sitting home, drinking tea with their pinkies out, studying the charts. But then they get out there in a boat by themselves, everything looks the same, 'bout a million islands. The water's black, not blue, and the bars will rip a motor right off the transom. Maybe about twenty or thirty of those islands, people used to live on and farm, raised their babies and buried their dead. Gravestones still out there, growed wild with weeds, like Fakahatchee. 'Cause they had a few Indian mounds on them. High land. The rest of the islands, which means about nine thousand nine hundred, nobody's ever even been on 'cause it's all mangrove swamp and the skeeters is so bad, you suck them down your lungs." Tuck sat back, held the cup to his lips, spit, then took a drink of beer. "That's how I growed up, Marion. Joseph, too. Hell-your mama, she told you what it was like, making a living down in these islands. And she came along way late, the youngest of the litter, never had to go around dipping stump water outta air plants for something to drink, never had to sleep out in the mangroves, huntin' enough skinny birds to feed a family. Every day of our lives, we had to scrape and scratch to live, and that's no bullshit. These modern timers, they'd cry like babies if they had to spend one night out there. You'd think they'd give us a little credit, let us be. We're the ones who toughed it out and settled this place." Tuck was getting angry.

Ford didn't like the man mentioning his mother. Didn't want to hear any more of it. He said, "Agent Walker doesn't care about how tough you had it. Nobody else does, either."