As I idled over to the marina, Tomlinson jogged over by land to see if anyone knew where, exactly, Jimmy Darroux had lived. It wasn't his idea, it was mine. Sulphur Wells is a big island. There are several waterfront settlements; five or six commercial fish houses, and unlike Tomlinson, I didn't trust karma to steer us to the right one. I nudged my skiff around the oyster bar off the T-dock, then along B-dock where Janet's houseboat was moored. She had it bumpered nicely, stern to, curtained pilothouse windows clean, lines coiled. I glided in and caught the safety rail, calling, "Hello the boat!"
I felt the little houseboat's trim shift slightly; then she poked her head out of the pilothouse door, grinning. She was wearing a terrycloth robe, scrubbing at her hair with a towel. She had just gotten out of the shower. For absolutely no logical reason, I had the terrible feeling that she had washed her hair and was about to get dressed up just for me. She said a little shyly, "I didn't know you wanted to go so early. You want to come in for a drink? Or I can . . . geez, just give me ten minutes and I'll be all ready. I promise. I'll put on some music."
I said, "Well, that's not exactly why, uh . . . Something's come up, you see and ... I know I said earlier that we would, uh . . ." the whole time wondering how a grown man could sound so stupid.
Her smile began to fade. "We're not going?"
"Sorry, can't. I have to do a favor for a friend."
The smile disappeared. "Oh. Well ... I know you're awfully busy."
"It's not that. It's just that this thing came up."
"Honest, don't worry about it." She said that in a soothing way, as if more concerned with my feelings than her own. The smile was back in place, but she had withdrawn, eyes avoiding me, casting around as we continued to talk; those green eyes reminding me of some shy small creature that had retreated to the safety of its cave, peering out.
"We'll do it another time."
"Sure we will, Doc, sure. Or maybe just go for a run."
When her door closed, I punched the throttle, wheeling my skiff around on its own length. Looked up to see several of the fishing guides— Jeth Nicholes, Nelson Esterline, Felix Blane—staring at me, probably wondering why I was kicking up a wake. Jeth used his hand to signal me, and when I'd swung into the dock, he said, "You muh-muh-mad about something?"
"Yeah, I guess I am. Have you seen Tomlinson?"
Nels said, "What'a you got to be mad about? They didn't burn your boat. I'm the one's got a right to be mad. Me and Felix both. Jesus Christ, I've got charters booked and my wife, she just bought a new washer-dryer!"
I'd meant to talk to them about losing their boats. "How long before you get your checks from the insurance company?"
"They said two, but it'll be more like four. Weeks, I mean. A whole damn month at least, which will ruin a big chunk of the prime season for us."
I said, "I don't have any orders right now. Well. . . I've got one for sea horses, but I can catch them with my drag boat. What I'm saying is, any way you two want to split it up, you can use my skiff for a while."
Jeth looked at Nels. Said, "See? People don't loan their boats, buh-buh-but here's Doc doing it."
Which seemed an odd thing to say, until I took a look at the faces of Mels and Felix and several other men who had gathered around them in a tight little pack. A kind of physical hostility emanated from them, directed it me. I couldn't understand it. We were all friends, Jeth a close friend. Just :wo months ago, Nels and I had placed our boat orders together to get a setter price: each buying a twenty-foot Hewes Light Tackle flats skiff, a kind of maximum-length fishing sled, beautifully designed and built, huge live wells and plenty of storage, rigged with jack plate, power trim, and a big Mariner outboard. Mine was gray. Before the explosion, his had been teal green.
I looked at Felix, then back to Nels. "You guys want to tell me what's going on?"
Felix shifted from one foot to the other, stared at my skiff for a moment before he said, "That's up to you, Doc. We got something we want to ask."
"Yeah?"
Nels said, "What we're wondering is where you stand on all this."
"All this . . . what?"
"Those goddamn netters, that's what. They think they can come over here and screw with our livelihood, they bit off more than they can chew. The voters kicked them out of their jobs, that sure as shit don't mean we're gonna stand around with our thumbs up our ass while they take it out on us. They want a war, they got it."
"As of tonight," Felix said, "we're doing shifts. Guarding the place. It's the same with the other marinas on both islands, Sanibel and Captiva. I didn't get into the guide business to carry a gun, but that's what we'll be doing, by God."
What the hell were they talking about? "I'm going to ask you one more time: What's this have to do with me?"
"We know you spoke at some of those meetings," Jeth said softly. "That's what it's about. Some of the guys think you were on the nuh-nuh-netters' side. And Tomlinson was just over here asking about the guy who buh-burned up, where he lived, saying you two were goin' up there to help his family, some woman."
"We're asking how you voted," Nels said. "That's what we're asking. Whether you're on our side or theirs. That's what we're talking about."
I was in my skiff; they were on the dock. I looked up at them: big men in fishing shorts, ball caps, pliers on their belts, their faces scorched black from three hundred days a year out there on the flats, burning up their lives to make a living. You don't try to manipulate this kind of men and you can't finesse them. Not that I would have tried. So I did exactly what they expected me to do—I told them the truth. It wasn't a question, I said, of me being for the netters or for the sport fishermen. Yes, netting was an indiscriminate and destructive method of fishing. And yes, the netters were their own worst enemy. They had used spotter planes to exterminate the king mackerel. Once snook and then redfish had been protected, the netters—pushed into a corner—had competed to exterminate the mullet. Each winter, migrant netters came down and trashed the beaches, trashed the islands, and trashed the canals, outraging equally hardworking home owners. I knew all that too.
But had the state legislature done anything to stop it? No. As usual, legislators shied from making the tough decisions. They could have implemented a lottery system to control the fishery and drastically reduced the number of netters. Or they could have legislated riparian rights, allowing netters to fish only where they lived.
There was an incontestable fact that pro—net ban advocates conveniently ignored: Every netter who fished Florida waters was issued a commercial saltwater-products license by the state. The state did not hesitate to sell those licenses to any wandering, itinerant fisherman who could plunk down the money. They sold the licenses to out-of-state netters as eagerly as they sold them to native Floridians whose families had fished the same waters for a hundred years. While the state stamped out licenses, state bureaucrats sat back, brows furrowed, expressions aloof, and made dire, but curate, predictions about the imminent collapse of the fishery.
The irony was lost on legislators, who chose an uncharacteristic haven—silence—then watched safely from the background as special in-rest groups battled it out and finally brought the net ban to the ballot.
Would the ban revitalize Florida's shallow water fishery? Absolutely. But there would be a long-term price. When disturbed, water oscillates far beyond the point of contact. The same dynamics apply to the environment—and to society. With netting banned, many of the back-bay fish houses would be forced to close. Most of them were located on the rater in delicate mangrove littoral zones. They were already zoned for commercial use, they already had docks and dredged canals. Who would uy them out? Big condo developers and marina investors, that's who. No permits required, no environmental hoops to jump through. And where would Florida's banished netters go? They would join the growing numbers of migrant fishermen and thereby contribute to the decimation of fisheries in states—such as the Carolinas—that still allowed netting.