This was after I’d insisted that we both take an outdoor shower and then used the rest of the tequila to kill whatever microbes that might have been searching our skin for an entrance.
At the trailer where Tula was staying, we had found some of her extra clothing-boy’s jeans, a shirt-a book titled Joan of Arc: In Her Own Word s, plus a family photo in a cheap frame. The photo showed a six- or seven-year-old Tula, an older brother, her father and mother standing in front of a thatched hut somewhere in the mountains of Guatemala.
Like Tula, the mother wasn’t short and squat like many Guatemalan women-which, to me, suggested aristocratic genetics that dated way, way back. The mother wore traditional Indio dress, a colorful cinta, or head scarf, and a blue robozo, or shawl. The lady had a nice smile in the photo, but there was an odd anxiousness in her expression, too. She was an attractive woman, slim, with cobalt hair and a Mayan nose. Not beautiful but pretty, and looking way too young to have borne two children.
If children had not been in the photo, I would have guessed the mother’s age at less than seventeen.
Tula might have gone away and left her clothing, but she wouldn’t have left the photo. It suggested that the girl was still in the area. I also found it reassuring that the people with whom she was staying were less concerned than Tomlinson. They were among the few who knew that the unusual boy was actually a girl.
“It is something the maiden does at night,” a Mayan woman had told me in Spanish. “She goes to a secret place where no one can find her. She says she goes there to be alone with God. And to speak to angels who come to her at night. Every night the maiden disappears, so tonight is nothing new. Sometimes during the day she disappears, too. We respect her wishes. She is very gifted. Tula is a child of God.”
I found the woman’s phraseology interesting and unusual. The translation, which I provided Tomlinson, was exact. Doncella is Spanish for “maiden.” Hadas referred to woodland spirits that are common in Mayan mythology, the equivalent of Anglo-Saxon faeries or angels.
It is a seldom used word, doncella. In Spanish, “maiden” resonates with a deference that implies purity if not nobility. Again, I was struck by the respect adults demonstrated for the child. It bordered on reverence, which was in keeping with the small shrine the locals had erected outside Tula’s trailer. The shrine consisted of candles and beads placed on a cheap plaster statuette of the Virgin Mary.
“Tula has been in the States just over a week,” Tomlinson had explained to me, “but already word has spread that a child lives here who speaks with God. Tula didn’t have to tell these people anything about herself because she’s a thought-shaper. One look at her, her people knew that she’s special. Word travels fast in the Guatemalan community. Their survival depends on it.”
“In that case,” I’d said, trying to get the man off the subject, “park residents will naturally keep track of her movements. They think she’s special? Then she’ll attract special attention. Someone around here is bound to know where her secret place is.”
But no one did. Finally, Tomlinson and I started going door-todoor, but the neighbors were so suspicious of us, two gringos asking questions, that they probably wouldn’t have told us where the girl was even if they had known.
My guess, though, was, they didn’t know.
Now, two hours later, as Tomlinson and I walked toward my rickety old fish house, we discussed what I was going to make for dinner. It was my way of changing the subject. I was hungry, and it had also been several hours since Tomlinson had had a beer. It was an unusually long period of abstinence for the man, so it was no wonder his nerves were raw.
I was relieved to be home. My house and lab are more than a refuge, although they have provided refuge to many. The property, buildings and docks that constitute Sanibel Biological Supply are a local institution, second home to a trusted family of fishing guides, live-aboards and an occasional female guest.
Of late, though, I’d been going through a period of abstinence as well-not the liquid variety. So I was ready for a few beers myself. It had been one hell of a crazy night, and Tomlinson wasn’t the only one who felt a little raw.
There are fewer and fewer houses like mine in Florida. The place is an old commercial fish house built over the water on stilts. The lower level is all dockage and deck. The upper level is wooden platform, about eight feet above the water. Two small cottages sit at the center under one tin roof, and the platform extends out, creating a broad porch on all four sides.
I use one of the cottages as my laboratory and office. The other cottage is my living quarters, complete with a small yacht-sized kitchen and very un-yacht-like wood-burning stove that is a good thing to have on windy winter nights.
When we got to the first flight of steps, I paused to turn on underwater lights I had installed near my shark pen. Underwater lights, to me, are more entertaining than any high-tech entertainment system in the world. The drama that takes place between sea bottom and surface is real. It is uncompromising. There is no predicting what you might see.
Tonight turned out to be a stellar example. Even Tomlinson went silent when I flipped the switch, and the black water beneath the house blossomed into a luminous translucent gel.
Simultaneously, a school of mullet exploded on the light’s periphery, and we watched the fish go greyhounding into darkness.
Beneath my feet, under the dock, spadefish the size of plates grazed on barnacles that pulsed in feathered ivory colonies like flowers, raking in microscopic protein. There were gray snappers and blackbanded sheepsheads, circling the pilings.
In a sand pocket beyond, I noticed meticulous shadowed bars-a small regiment of snook, their noses marking the direction of tidal flow. I also saw a lone redfish, with copper-blue scales, dozing next to a piling, while, above, dime-sized blue crabs created furious wakes as they sprinted across a universe of water, oblivious to the danger below.
“Doc… you see that? Over there-see it? There’s something moving.”
For some reason, Tomlinson whispered the question, and I followed his gaze into shadows of mangrove trees at the shore’s edge. My friend’s tone communicated curiosity, not danger, so I took my time.
I removed my glasses and cleaned them before replying, “I don’t see anything.” But then I said, “Wait,” and began walking toward shore because I saw what had captured the man’s interest.
There was something lying on the sand between mangrove trees and the water. It was a man-sized shape, gray and glistening in the ambient light. Then another shape took form, this one animated and suddenly making a lot of noise as it crashed through foliage.
The shapes were alive, I realized. They were animals of some type.
Red mangroves are also called walking trees because their trunks are balanced on rooted tendrils that create a jumble of rubbery hoops growing from swamp. Whatever the animal was, it was having trouble getting through the roots to the water.
Tomlinson whispered, as if in awe, “My God, Doc-this can’t be happening!” Apparently, he had figured out what was in the mangroves, but I still had no clue.
I jogged down the boardwalk as my brain worked hard to cross-reference what I saw with anything I had ever seen before.
Nothing matched.
At first, I thought we’d surprised two stray dogs, from the way one of the creatures tried to lunge over the roots. But no… the shapes were too big to be dogs.
Feral hogs? A couple of panthers, maybe?
No…
For a moment, I wondered if I was seeing two large alligators. They often strayed into brackish water, and we occasionally even find them Gulf-side, off the Sanibel beach.
Wrong again. Gators don’t lunge like greyhounds. And they don’t make the clicking, whistling noises I was hearing now.