“Arlis Futch. He’s lived around here forever. He’s a pal of Javier’s, so…well, I guess Arlis let him have a look.”
Heller’s face was wide as a box, and his jaw muscles flexed when he was irritated. “I suppose the Cuban came other nights, too. Did he?”
The boss was asking if Javier Castillo had seen the bulldozer working in the dark, in the rain, flattening the Indian mounds to fill what had been mangrove swamp.
“It’s possible.”
Heller’s jaw was flexing now. A pit bull on a leash. “Jesus, I tell you to do something, it still doesn’t get done.”
“I had to evacuate the island. It was mandatory.” Moe’s tone asking: What was I supposed to do?
“The colored guy, though, he stayed here. He didn’t run. And the old fart.”
Moe said, “I guess. Them and a few others.” His tone flat now. “Javier lives south, where the eye came ashore. His house was totaled; now his wife’s run off. Javier told me he was coming back with a gun because he had nothing to lose.”
“Bullcrap,” Heller said. He was picturing the skinny Cuban with a gun, cops yelling Freeze, before shooting him.
Good. He hoped it happened.
“Everybody’s got something to lose,” he told Moe, stealing one of his grandfather’s lines. “Find out what it is—and that’s how much you can take.”
LABORATORY LOG
MARION D. FORD
DINKIN’S BAY, SANIBEL ISLAND, FLORIDA
14 August, Saturday
No sunrise
Returned two days ago, near midnight, 12 hours before a hurricane made landfall. Direct hit on Gulf islands, winds 150 MPH, gusts higher. The marina, my house and lab badly damaged.
When windows imploded, roof began to go, I grabbed a piling, watching whole trees, a canoe, sections of dock, a bicycle tumble skyward, cauldroning like birds.
The storm’s northwestern wall was a phalanx of tornadoes. Tornadoes have a signature sound. A diesel scream that ascends on approach…
15 August, Sunday
Picking through wreckage, Javier Castillo asked about the stitches in my forehead. I told him I was hit by something during the storm. “God plays with us, sending a hurricane like that,” he said in Spanish. I am tired of his shitty jokes.
16 August, Monday
Sunset 19:53 (7:53 P.M.)
Moon waxing
Low tide 7:21 P.M.
Trees are leafless, like nuclear winter. Last night, I watched stars through my open roof, head throbbing, as I replayed the worst of the storm. The wind accelerating past my ears, blowing so hard that it was as if I’d fallen out of a jetliner. No possibility of establishing control, so analysis was pointless. A shadow vanishing into itself. That’s how I felt. Released.
19 August, Thursday
Sunset 7:50 P.M.
Low tide 8:18 P.M.
No power or phones. Islanders with million-dollar homes barter in new currency: water, generators, fuel. National Guard has arrived, trailing insurance adjusters, imposters, contractors, politicians in helicopters, lawyers, land speculators with cash. A few marinas are price gouging—or worse.
A hurricane leaves residual odors: bloating fish and trash fires. The scent attracts vultures, human variety. Bloated prices. Con men.
Greed has an odor, too.
WEEK THREE
30 August, Monday
Sunset 7:41 P.M.
Full moon rises 7:32 P.M.
Low tide 6:54 A.M.
Greed…
Tomlinson says a hurricane is like a beam of light. It exposes decay, and reveals unexpected strengths. Celestial light—his phrase. Cleansing.
He was stoned, as usual. Behavior even more bizarre. Irritable, too—as if he’s been injecting testosterone. Hormones might play a role. Most nights, he vanishes to visit a woman he seldom mentions. She lives in a beach estate, an antique gray house that was hidden until the wind stripped the trees away. I discovered it by accident; was unaware the house even existed until the storm.
1 September, Wednesday
Working late in lab
Winds transformed sea bottom, exposing some structures, covering others. Off Key Largo, in 130 feet of water, a sunken Naval vessel, the Spiegel Grove, was uprighted by storm currents. Off Key West, an underwater forest of petrified wood was uncovered in an area once sand. The forest dates back to the Pliocene.
Yesterday, Jeth Nichols found an unfamiliar wreck—40 feet of water, 240 degrees off Lighthouse Point. He’s been fishing out of another marina where damage was minor. One of those gated condo places, Indian Harbor Resort.
5 September, Sunday
Sunset 7:35 P.M.
Low tide 12:03 P.M.
The hurricane that hit us was the third of the season; more forming in the Caribbean basin. Storms of closed circulation are tropical cyclones. When winds exceed 38 MPH, they are termed “tropical storms” and assigned a name—grating, because a name implies human qualities, intent or malice.
A storm is a mobile dynamic, not a being. Homo sapiens is a mobile being, not a process. The principles of physics and man are diminished by anthropomorphic baloney.
Go to the beach and name waves. Name a lightning bolt. It makes as much sense.
7 September, Tuesday
Sunset 7:34 P.M.
No low tide
Autumn in subtropics: Heat. Jittery wind. Hint of storm darkness even in daylight.
Moon waning; fireflies in mangrove shadow.
Still no phone.
3
16 September, Thursday
Sunset 7:28 P.M.
New moon sets 11:49 P.M.
Four tropical cyclones developing in Caribbean, one a tropical storm, another hurricane force, winds over 74 mph.
I told Jeth, “Your pal, Augie Heller, makes me regret emptying my shark pen before the hurricane hit.”
Jeth Nichols stutters when he’s nervous or mad. He was stuttering now. “I know, Doc, I know. Sorry. I was stuh-stupid to ever leave Dinkin’s Bay and work for another marina. Javier warned me. I shoulda listened.”
Javier Castillo—a Sanibel fishing guide until he moved his family across the bay. Jeth had followed because he was desperate for cash after the hurricane.
I was bending over a tray of salt water, my back turned so it was difficult for Jeth to observe. My left hand was submerged, holding a brooch-sized object encrusted with barnacles. With a surgical probe, I’d removed enough to see that a portion of the object was studded with clear stones.
Diamonds?
With the object cupped, I looked away from the tray. “You said Javier would meet us here.”
“That’s what he told me. He said he was gonna get his boat this afternoon. He was sure of it.”
I pictured a lean man with muscles, a broad African nose. Javier was a good father, a good fisherman. Years ago, he’d floated over from Cuba in an inner tube, which tells you all you need to know about Javier Castillo—he crossed the Florida Straits in a tire.
As if reading my mind, Jeth said, “I wish he’d show up. It’d be nice to see a friendly face.”
True. This place was decidedly unfriendly.
Jeth, Tomlinson, and I were off by ourselves, strangers on strange turf—what had once been a fishing village I’d known well but no longer. Developers had transformed it into an overpriced marina community, on the island of Sulphur Wells, twenty-five minutes by boat from our home base, Sanibel Island, Gulf coast of Florida.