If he wasn't too preoccupied to think about it. . . .
When I got back to my fish house, Janet was just finishing up. By my reckoning, she had notes on four separate hours of tarpon observation, those hours spaced between ten a.m. and five p.m. She looked pretty proud of herself, standing there in baggy jeans and brown sweatshirt. Stood by my side as I went over her field notes on the clipboard; had a nervous habit of licking her lips whenever I paused over an entry or seemed even mildly confused.
"At this point—" She was pointing to one of the field sheets I had composed. "That's when the man showed up to see you. Uh—"
"Ron Jackson," I provided.
"Yeah, but what happened was, I lost my concentration, so I was unsure if I'd seen Green Flag roll first or the Red Threat, so I just—"
"The Red Threat?" I asked, smiling at her.
She whacked me on the sleeve and said, "You spend four or five hours watching a bunch of fish, I'd like to hear the names you'd give them! You know, from history class? The red threat?" As if I were being dumb. "I'm a teacher, for God's sake. You think they only let us teach one subject at a school with only four hundred kids? But what I was telling you about was that entry—"
"The other fish is Green Flag? Is that like Greenpeace or—"
"As in the green flag Moslems? In Egypt, but after the decline? Geez, Ford, you must read nothing but journals."
Now I really was beginning to feel dumb.
"Okay, okay, they are very . . . well thought-out names."
Janet lowered the clipboard. Had a nice little energy in her laugh. "You think it's silly, don't you? Naming the fish. Honest now, all the time you spend with them, you've never gave them names?"
I had never even named my boats. "Let me think here—"
"Because to me, they seem to have individual. . . It's like they behave differently, one not like the other. The Red Threat, he's the mobile type. He doesn't wait for the others to act, he just does it. Swoops around in there when he's in the mood, and the others follow." She paused, looking at me. She was serious. "You never have favorites?"
"Well. . ."
"But don't think it influenced any of my observations," she added quickly; she'd realized what I might have been thinking and wanted to put my mind at ease. "Everything's there on the field sheets, just how I saw it."
I took the clipboard from her, leafed through the sheets. "You know what you've done here? When Breder and Shlaifer did their work back in the forties, they observed their tarpon for one hour a day over a period of twenty-two consecutive days. Today alone, you've broadened the standards."
On the field sheets were entry columns for: "Time; Water Temperature; Rises per Fish Hour; Greatest Time Between Rises; Percent of Minutes with No Rises." Each column was neatly filled with her penciled entries. Four pages—one for every hour of observation. I said, "I don't expect you to spend every day sitting with those fish. . . . What I'm saying is, you've already done four days of work here." I glanced at the clipboard again. "Looks like very good work, too."
She was pleased. Made self-deprecating remarks about how she had been a little sloppy here, could have done a little better there. I put my hand on her shoulder; felt her pull away instinctively, then relax enough to lean briefly against me. "It's all fine. Hell . . . it's great."
"I can keep working on the project?"
I told her, "Lady, it is now our project. If I get around to publishing something on it, instead of saying Breder-Shlaifer it'll say Mueller-Ford."
"Nope—you've got to at least take top billing."
"If I ever get to know the fish on a first-name basis, then we'll discuss it."
We stood there talking about the project. We shouldn't be surprised, I told her, if our results differed from Breder-Shlaifer, because we were doing the procedure in January. They had done it in June, when the water was much warmer. Then we talked about the possibility that at least some tarpon behavior was social behavior . . . and of course, mature fish might behave differently than immature fish . . . and Janet said it might be interesting to see what happened if a glass plate was suspended at the water's surface so that the fish could not roll.
"That procedure's been done," I told her. "Even in water that was heavily oxygenated, the fish died. Might be interesting to duplicate that one, too, try to find out why—"
"Oh, no-way," she said with feeling. She glanced toward the tank: the Red Threat, Green Flag, and the others were in there. "I couldn't be a part of that."
I dropped the subject. Mostly what I did was wrestle with my own conscience. It was getting late. The sky had taken on the slate-gray and raspberry hues peculiar to the Gulf Coast in January. High, high up in corridors traveled only by tourist jets and the combat jockeys, wispy cirrus clouds showed the pathway of global winds. But down in Dinkin's Bay it was balmy, warm. ... It was also dinnertime. I owed Janet a dinner . . . owed her a lot more than that for all her work. But I also knew that if I left, I risked missing Hannah. Why hadn't Tomlinson offered a time? Why hadn't I asked? Or he could have had Hannah call me on the VHF . . .
Caught myself and thought: You're a dumb ass, Ford. A familiar charge from a familiar source.
I looked at Janet standing there: solid, pudgy, plain face, short mousy hair, good eyes. Saw that a little light had come back into them after her day with the tarpon.
"You want to go get something to eat?" I was saying it before I had even decided to speak.
"Are you sure you have the time? There's not something else you'd rather—"
I took her by the elbow and steered her toward the boardwalk. "Mueller, just give me time to grab a shower and change. Twenty minutes?"
Nice smile; a touch of irony in it. "Make it twenty-five, Ford. I'm the one who's been working. Remember?"
We chose the Lazy Flamingo, near Blind Pass. One of the few restaurants on Sanibel or Captiva that had a kicked-back, shorts-and-thongs, out-island quality to it. Since they'd closed Timmy's Nook, anyway. Heavy raw wood furniture, ceiling fans whirling, some palm thatching for effect. Go to the bar and place your own order, then sit in your booth while the waitress brings beer that is served from buckets of ice.
I chose the raw conch salad, lots of onion and lime juice. Also ordered the grilled grouper sandwich, plus a large Caesar salad—heavy on the anchovies—an order of fries . . . and garlic bread.
Janet said, "Is that for both of us, or just you?"—her tone pleasantly sarcastic.
I told her that a day spent on a chair watching fish was slothful compared to the day I had had. She ordered the grilled grouper . . . canceled it, just asked for the Caesar—the extra weight she carried was probably on her mind—then we found an open booth by the window. She sat there looking around; I guessed she was wondering what to talk about— there's a limit to how much can be said about fish. So, when I felt the silence become strained, I told her about the Ford-Jackson hell run. Which got her laughing. She said she could just picture us out there, two huge kids lumbering along, both of us too stubborn to quit. I told her about Tomlinson's icebox. She made the appropriate grimace of disgust, but had to add: "Have you ever looked into his eyes? Tomlinson has the most wonderful eyes. I know he's . . . unusual. Where I'm from? He'd be considered some kind of eccentric up home."
I said, "I've yet to find a place that wouldn't consider him eccentric. That's on his quiet days."
"I know, but... he has the most. . . gentle way about him. Don't you think? You meet him, you feel as if you've always known him. He . . . empathizes with people. No, that's not the word." She puzzled over it for a moment before saying, "He feels for people, that's what he does. Not just empathizes, but gives you the impression he actually feels what you are feeling. I don't know how he does it. Telepathy? I'm not sure I believe in that. But somehow he does it, and he seems like . . . such a nice and gentle man."