It wasn't much; I told him I would try to do more. In return, Jackson had promised to ask the Sanibel police to keep a close eye on my place.
So I was sitting there mulling over different methods I could use to gather information. Legal methods, I had to keep reminding myself. I was so involved with the novelty of that, plus my slides, that I had almost . . . almost. . . forgotten that Hannah was coming. Which is when I heard the outboard whine of an approaching boat. Heard the boat slow to idle, then felt my house jolt slightly as the boat swung up against the pilings of the dock. Heard a twangy, alto woman's voice calclass="underline" "You coming out, Ford? Or you want me to come in and get you?"
I turned on the big deck spotlight, pushed my way out the screen door . . . and there was Hannah. She was wearing yellow Farmer John-style rain pants and a damp green T-shirt. The pants bib was cinched up with suspenders. Her black hair was frazzled by the wind, and she had used a red ribbon to tie it back into a ponytail. She stood toward the bow of her little boat, one arm thrown lazily over the PVC tube she used to steer it, and was grinning up at me: wind-burnished skin, dark eyes, white teeth, creases of dimples running from cheek to chin.
"Tell you the truth," she called up, "I liked the way you were dressed better last time." Referring to my outdoor shower.
"Are you always so dirty-minded, Hannah? Or just with me?"
"Not always," she answered wryly. "And not just with you." She was tying her skiff to the pilings; using a very simple quick-release knot that very few boaters seemed to know anymore. Stood there for a moment, hands on hips, before saying, "I've already had a pretty good night. You want to see?"
I clumped down the steps and swung onto her boat. She kept things neat. There was a wooden push-pole stowed along the plywood-thin gunwale, a bailing can, and a couple of bottles of outboard motor oil wedged into the stringers so they wouldn't bounce around while she was running. An orange gas can was placed out of the way, just behind the tunnel of engine well. Pretty new engine: ninety-horsepower Yamaha. Toward the stern was a big fiberglassed icebox. Astern of the box was a bundle of nylon gill net. The net's brown foam plastic floats were buried among the folds of translucent nylon, like Christmas ornaments.
"I caught a pretty good mess," she told me as she hefted up the lid off the icebox. "About eighty head of blacks, and maybe a dozen silvers."
I looked into the box to see a slag heap of cobalt-silver fish, most of them close to a foot and a half long. The black mullet—known around the world as the striped mullet—is a strange-looking creature. It has a blunt, bullet-shaped head and big saucer eyes. It is as aesthetically pleasing as an old Nash Rambler automobile. Because a mullet feeds mostly on detritus and other vegetable matter, it has a gizzardlike stomach that pre-grinds food before passing it into a freakishly long digestive tract.
Earlier in the century, a Florida court once ruled that the mullet, because it had a "gizzard," was actually a bird—thus freeing a commercial fisherman who was charged with fishing out of season. The incident is but one measure of what a strange fish the mullet is.
As I peered into the box, Hannah said, "I did a strike off Cape Haze and did okay. You know that point just before you go into Turtle Bay?"
That was a little north of my normal cruising area, but I was familiar with it.
"I took most of them there. Then I struck this little sandbank I know near White Rock and got the rest. I'd have more, but I know Tommy needs his things, so I run down here to see you." Big smile. "Didn't want to get here so late I had to haul you out of bed. That wouldn't be polite."
Tommy? It took me a moment to translate: Tomlinson.
I told her, "We don't want to keep Tommy waiting. I've got his stuff sacked, ready to go."
"You going to invite me in?"
I hesitated, then said, "Sure."
She closed the ice locker and followed me up the stairs to the house. Oohed and aahed at my fish tank. Asked me questions about the telescope—"That planet with the rings around it. Can you see those?"— then focused her attention on the bookshelves. Because I have the volumes arranged alphabetically, by author, she had to get down on hands and knees to search. I knew what she was looking for—one of Tomlinson's books. But instead of helping, I stood there and watched. It was hard not to watch: big woman in slick yellow pants, haunches poked up into the air, the pendulum swing of loose breasts against damp T-shirt. She seemed to fill the room; filled it with her size, and with a musky odor of girl-sweat, fish, strong soap, and salt water. Felt the urge to change the music on the tape player—get rid of that damn Gregorian chant stuff—and offer her some of that finely aged wine in my refrigerator. i
"Here's one!" She had one of Tomlinson's books. Was opening it as she stood. "Even got his picture in the back. Isn't he a cutey?" Now she was leafing to the front. "Whew, this one's a little heavy, though, huh? I've only come across four or five words that I understand."
"Not what you would call easy reading," I agreed. "It has to do with the concept of infinity ... I think. Something about all motion and change being an illusion. That reality is actually static and immutable."
Hannah had an index finger to her lip, trying to follow along. Said, "That's why I like you two guys. You're smart, both of you—not that I'm not. I'm probably just as smart, only sometimes I wished I'd gone to college."
"With Tomlinson, a college education is no help. I'm just repeating what he told me. It's like . . . if you drop a rock, the rock has to fall half the distance to the ground before it can fall the remaining half. Right? But then the rock must fall half the distance of that. So on and so on. Logically, the rock should never reach the ground. What his book does is question the existence of distance and motion."
She closed the book and looked at the dust jacket. The title was: No End in Sight.
"How many copies you think it sold?"
"I think Tomlinson probably gave away more copies than he sold."
She thought that over. "Well, my book is going to sell. I want people to know about the kind of people we are. And the mullet fishermen, what's being taken away from us. So I don't want any of that falling-rock bullshit in my book. I'll remind him when I get back. Oh yeah, I almost forgot—" She reached down into her Farmer Johns and handed me a folded sheaf of papers. "It's the first chapter. Tommy's already working on the sixth or maybe the seventh. He wants to know what you think. He said you'd be a good . . . what'd he call it? ... a good barometer for the average reader."
I took the sheaf of papers. Said, "What a nice thing for Tommy to say."
I opened the papers and looked at the cover page. It read: People of the Same Fire.
Hannah was watching over my shoulder. "That's Tommy's title idea. He says the Indians up in the Carolinas and Georgia—the ones who moved down to Florida and net-fished?—that's what they called people from . . . not exactly the same tribe, but who were related. Yeah, related. The Creeks, I think he said."
I started to fold the page over, but she stopped me. "I was thinking maybe just call it 'The Hannah Smith Story.' Real simple, you know?"
Turning the page, I said, "You may want to trust Tomlinson's judgment on this one," and I began to read:
"I am the direct descendant of Sarah Smith, one of four incredible giant Smith sisters who did as much to settle this Florida wilderness as any eight men half their size. They may have not been net fishermen, but they had fishermen's blood in their veins.