“Last time around, I helped the do-gooders all I could.”
“That’s good, boy. They’ll want more help. Try to give it to them.”
Jimmy Wing stared at the commissioner. “Maybe I’m not getting through. I agree with what they’re trying to do.”
Elmo finished his drink. “So do I, in more ways than you might imagine, Jim boy. If this whole coast could be just as it was when I was a boy, I’d be happy. Right in the middle of all those hundreds of little houses Earl Ganson built in that Lakeview Village of his, I used to get me my quail with an old single-bar’l Ithaca sixteen-gauge when I wasn’t as high as it was long. Had a busted stock wrapped with wire, and every time you fired it you had to bang the butt on the ground to make the trigger spring back to where it belonged. Hell, you’re old enough to know how it was around here.”
“Remember that old dock on the north end of Cable Key, the long one on the bay side at the old Esterly place?”
“Sure do.”
“I must have been about eight years old. It was a Sunday in May. There was a school of mullet in there like nobody has ever seen since. I’d say they were schooled up six miles long, a mile wide and ten feet deep.”
“Say, I remember that! God damn! We gigged all day long until our arms like to fell off.”
“Everybody did. Half the town was out there.”
“And the fish house price fell off to two cents, finally, and then they wouldn’t buy at all because they had no room. I remember we run a truck of them down to Naples, but it was a hot day and we had no ice, and the man down there didn’t like the look in their eye by then. So we dumped ’em damn near in the center of town and took off fast.”
“The whole town here stank for a week. That was the last big school, the last one on this coast, Elmo.”
“It’s a sad thing to think about, surely. And so are a lot of other things, Jimmy. All those miles of dead empty beaches. I was at a party at a big motel on Cable Key the other night. A political thing. Out at that Blue Horizon. I bet you Gidge Tucker put a million bucks into that, all told. And it’s got places on either side of it damn near as big. I was standing out on the beach where they had a bar moved out there, and lanterns strung and all, and grass-skirt music going on, talking to a committeewoman from Tampa, and I looked at the way the shoreline curves right about there, and knew where I was at, and all of a sudden I had to laugh and I couldn’t tell her what I was really laughing at. I had to make something up. You see, right about where we were standing, I’d spread me a blanket maybe twenty years ago, with a bottle and a fire and a little darkhead waitress from Estero, and we stayed right on there through most of the next day, the only time putting our clothes on to go all the way to town to get something to eat and some more wine. We had a game we were shipwrecked on a desert island, and we didn’t see a soul all day, or expect to. Gidge paid three hundred a foot for that same shoreline we blanketed on, and it’s worth more now, but if it had been three dollars a foot back then, I couldn’t have bought enough for a grave, except maybe lengthwise from the water. It’ll all be a sad thing the way it changes, all the wild things and wild places going, one by one, but you and me, we can’t change it or keep it from happening. All we can do is get in there and get our piece of it. Hell, I know why you went along with those folks. Vance Hubble was a good friend, and I know for sure that the people who fought the fill the last time and will fight it this time make better people to be around, for a man like you, than the ones over on my side of the fence. But you did it to help your friends and be with them, not out of any great big complex about saving the world. You don’t give enough of a damn about things like that to make it any great jolt for you to work against them instead of for them.”
“I wouldn’t want them to know what I’m doing.”
“They won’t know unless you tell them. I won’t. Leroy won’t. Sandra won’t. And let me tell you something else. Once it’s filled, the ones who were against it won’t give a damn either. Maybe they’ll feel regretful they lost, and maybe they’ll scowl when they look out onto that fill and the houses going up on it, but after they’ve seen it fifty times they won’t notice it any more, and they won’t miss the bay unless they stop and remember how it used to be. The only thing left of that bay will be some old memories and some old photographs hanging around. And after it’s filled there’ll be thousands and thousands of folks coming down here who won’t even realize it was open bay water, and will be bored if you try to tell them it was. Because they won’t give a damn. Jimmy, what the common man wants is television, air conditioning, a backyard barbecue, healthy kids and a normal sex life. If it was the last bay left in the world, he might get agitated. But there’s always more bays. And when he goes fishing, he doesn’t compare how good or how bad he does to what he could have done ten years ago or fifty years ago. If he gets two runty little trash fish last week and three this week, he’s happy to do better. If he sees one pelican and one blue heron all week, he’s glad there’s wild water birds around for him to look at. If they don’t look at him, he’ll yell and wave his arms to make sure they do. He likes nature to notice him. And that bay doesn’t notice him worth a damn. It just sits there, and when it’s gone he won’t miss it. Neither will your do-gooder friends. But I would sure as hell miss the money I’m going to make out of it. I’d want to lay down and cry if it went bad on me. I got to have it, and it’s not an abstraction, fella. It’s the most actual thing there is in the world, and I mean to have it, because I got just the right use for it. And now listen close. Name me one son of a bitch in this world who can prove which is the best thing to have out on those grass flats, eight hundred houses, or eight million minnows. It’ll be a nice high-class development, and the people who’ll live there’ll be happy they found such a pretty place to call home.”
“I’ll take the fish, Elmo.”
“If I had any choice in the matter, I would too. But if I chose fish, boy, somebody else would choose to fill it, because it’s close in, it’s shallow enough to fill cheap, and the state is still in the business of peddling land belonging to the people.”
“Which is a violation of trust.”
“Maybe it’s morally wrong, but it’s as legal as marriage, boy. When there’s next to nothing left worth saving, they’ll put it all under the Conservation Department where it should have been put years ago. But so long as the door isn’t locked yet, I’m walking through it before somebody else does. And I don’t want any long-drawn-out law fights either. That’s where you come in. And the first one I want nailed is Dial Sinnat. We set to go now?”
Jimmy Wing waited the space of three slow exhalations. “It should be interesting work.”
“You’ll get to like it, as soon as you break the ice.”
“Elmo, I don’t want to like it or dislike it. I just want to do it and get it over.”
“Where will you start?”
“I don’t know.”
Elmo reached and thumped Jimmy Wing on the knee with his fist. “You’ll figure it out. Boy, we’ll find time to talk this way often. We’ll get to know each other. The better I know you, the better I like you, Jimmy. You got a cool streak, but maybe that’s a good thing. I got plenty of people can get too damn hot and excited. You lay back and keep account on how we’re doing, huh?”
“Won’t you know?”
Elmo laughed. “Hell, I’ll know it when we go so slow on this thing I get nervous. Then I’d have to tell Leroy to get you some outside help on those folks. You’d still be in charge, sort of. But they’d be helping you dig. Leroy knows a damn good Tampa outfit with some smart ex-cops working for them.”