“I tell the poor guy he’s too much, that he’s ruining me. Here is a great triumph. We were walking on the beach there, making dumb jokes. All of a sudden he gave me a great wallop across the fanny with the flat of his hand, laughed like a maniac, and ran like a kid with me chasing him and cursing him, just because, you see, all of a sudden he felt good. It made me want to cry. That sweet guy, he’s a sexual convalescent. I don’t demand. I take it as it comes and fake it when it doesn’t, because right at this stage he has to feel that he’s terrific. And another thing, that’s the same for man or woman. When it’s good, it doesn’t drag you down. It refreshes. When it’s a bad thing between people, bad in their heads and bad in their hearts, maybe hating a little, that’s when it makes you drag around afterward, feeling sour and old. This way, you have a little nap, you wake up starved, you go around humming and whistling. So don’t give me this quack about zombies, Trav. Maybe I’m being a damn fool. I don’t know. I don’t love him. He just isn’t… quick enough, maybe, the way he thinks, and we don’t really laugh the same way at the same things. But I am terribly fond of him. He’s so decent. Now it’s like watching a kid grow up. Maybe it’s penance for me. I’ve bitched up some guys, sometimes meaning to, sometimes not.”
She gave me a rueful smile and shook her head. “Oh, hell. I sound as if I was making such n big fat sacrifice, huh? Yes sir, old girl, it’s a terrible chore, isn’t it? Such dull work. McGee, if you’ve earned one of those beautiful Mexican beers for yourself, I’ll open one for each of us. And you can tell me your adventures. Believe me, we did worry about you.”
“Every minute. Get the beers.”
As she came back with them, the rain moved on away from us as quickly as it had come, making the night silence more intense. She listened intently, her face still, as I recounted events, facts and the resultant guesses.
She shook her head. “That club part. You’ve got a lot of gall, you know that?”
“People take you at the value you put on yourself. That makes it easy for them. All you do is blend in. Accept the customs of every new tribe. And you try not to say too much because then you sound as if you were selling something. And you might contradict yourself. Sweetie, everybody in this wide world is so constantly, continuously concerned with the impact he’s making, he just doesn’t have the time to wonder too much about the next guy.”
She frowned. “You want to move fast, and find out as much as you can in a hurry. Right?”
“Right.”
“Then I think this Boone Waxwell might be more up my alley.”
“You have just one job, and you’re doing it nicely.”
“Do you want to be efficient? Or protective?”
“Both, Chook.”
“But you’ve got no approach to Waxwell.”
“I didn’t until this moment.”
“Like what?”
“The simplest thing in the world. Crane Watts happened to mention him. Watts won’t ever be sure he didn’t. Let me see. Watts said Waxwell might know where to locate the woman they’d used last time.”
“But if he does, that’s no good. Wilma knows you.”
“I have a feeling he won’t take me at face value.”
“He’ll get in touch with Watts, won’t he?”
“And raise hell. Hell conditioned by the idea that maybe there’s another pigeon to be plucked. Myway, it never works to line it all out ahead of time. It’s better to stay loose. And go in any direction that looks good.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I’ll run over to Goodland in the reliable Ratfink. Alone.”
Nine
IN THE milky early mist of Sunday morning, the Gulf was placid, so I went out the pass. I looked back as the Busted Flush dwindled, looking smaller and smaller against the beach, blurring into the mist. Her lines are not lovely. She is a burly lady, and she waddles. But she has, on some intensely festive occasions, slept more than I bothered to count. In fact I have a treasured memory of one leisurely trip up the Intercoastal-destination, a big birthday binge for an old friend at his place at Fernandina Beach. On the third morning out I came across a sandy little girl up on the bow, sunning herself in a cute little suit, painting her toenails, whistling with great precision a series of riffs I recognized as Ruby Braff improvisation. She had a great figure, and an ugly charming buggy little face, and I had never seen her before in my life. She looked up at me in pert inquiry and asked me who in the world happened to own this darling boat, because she had just decided to buy it.
There was a crowd aboard again. A crowd of two, and I had left Chook to brief Arthur when he got out of the shower.
I turned south, running a half mile off shore, watching the day brighten as the mist began to burn off. I again had the clothes and gear of the fisherman and almost became one when I saw an acre of water being slashed white ahead of me and further off shore, birds working over it. I ran at it, killed the motor at the point where momentum drifted me to the outer fringe of the activity. I peered down into the green and saw, a few feet below the surface, a combat squad of big bonita wheeling to hit back into the bait school.
School bonita run all of a size, and allowing for the magnification of the water, and my momentary glimpse of them, they had to be upwards of six pounds. All they would do would be tear up my light spinning gear on the chance of boating something inedible. They are the great underrated game fish of the Gulf coast. On light gear, a six pound bonita is the equal of a twenty pound king mackerel. There is one thing they all do. Work them, with great effort, close to the boat, and they give you one goggle-eyed stare, turn and go off in a run every bit as swift and muscular as the first one. And they will keep doing that until, on light tackle, they die in the water. It seems a poor reward for that much heart in any living thing, particularly when the meat is too black, bloody, oily and strong to make edible. Bonefish quit. Barracuda dog it. Tarpon are docile once they begin to show their belly in the slow rolls of exhaustion. But the only way you can catch a live bonita is to use gear hefty enough to horse him home before he can kill himself.
I continued south, past Big Marco Pass, and put on dark glasses against the increasing glare. I have ample pigment in my hide, but a short supply in the iris. Pale eyes are a handicap in the tropics. I passed what was Collier City once upon a time, then cut inside around Caxambas. The dozers were working even on a Sunday morning, orange beetles making expensive homesites upon the dizzy heights of the tallest land south of Immokalee-bluffs all of fifty and sixty feet above sea level. I checked my chart, went around the indicated islands, and came in view of the mild and quiet clutter of Goodland, houses, trailers, cottages, shacks spread without plan along the protected inner shore, beyond a narrow beach of dark sand and rock and shell.
I cut to idle and went pooting in toward a rickety gas dock. Beyond it was an improvised boat yard with so many pieces of elderly hull scattered around the area, it looked as if they had spent years trying to build a boat by trial and error and hadn’t made it yet.
I tied up. The pumps were padlocked. A gnarled old party sat mending a gill net with hands like mangrove roots. “Do any good?” he asked.