He took my elbow while our flashlights led us to the oldest citrus trees in the field. They were as squat and gnarled as Halloween, but loaded with fruit, beneath a starry sky with clouds.
That was a high point-the surprise of seeing oranges plump and ripe, not withered with disease.
“I’ll be darned,” Kermit said. “You might be on to something, young lady. Hang on… I’ve got a knife.”
I said, “The leaves don’t look so good, but you’re the expert.” By then, I could recognize the telltale yellowing and see for myself that psyllids were matted like ticks on the undersides of the leaves. There were signs of canker, too.
“It’s the fruit that matters. Whoa-lots of juice in these. That’s a good sign. Here, have a taste.”
He handed me a freshly cut wedge, then pawed around in the limbs, using his light for a closer look. “Once the bacteria enter the tree, they attack the inside layers of the bark. The phloem-that’s the tree’s vascular system; what blood vessels are to us. The trunk can’t transport water or nutrients the tree needs. It’s like being starved to death and strangled at the same time. After five or six years, they’re dead, but the fruit’s no good long before that.”
I took a taste. The pulp was tart as a lemon and caused me to pucker, but good. “They’re called sour oranges for a reason, I guess. My mother used them for marinade on the rare occasions she cooked, and I’ve had chefs ask permission to pick a bushel. Do you really think this older rootstock might help in what you’re doing?”
“Dunno.” He stepped clear of the branches. “This one has the disease. No doubt about that, but it seems to be holding up a lot better than our modern trees. Did you say some original Spanish seed stock grows on an island around here? From now on, I need to listen when you have something to say.”
That pleased me. So did the intensity of his interest, but he had misunderstood. “Not if you’re talking about trees planted by Ponce de León, explorers like him, who brought the first citrus to Florida. That was four hundred years ago, for heaven’s sake.”
“Longer,” he said. “It’s not the age, it’s the purity of the genetic stock that matters.”
“I’m not sure what that means. The places I know, they’re islands that used to be farmed, but they’re deserted now. Always where there are Indian mounds. There has to be high ground. I look for gumbo-limbo trees; that’s the first sign citrus might grow wild in the backcountry. I’ve found sour oranges, and key limes, and there’s at least one place where there are good white grapefruit.”
“Indian mounds?”
We started back, and talked about history for a while, before returning to the subject of citrus planted in the 1500s. The Spaniards had done it to provision returning ships in a land where they’d hoped to find gold.
Kermit said, “I was picturing some remote spot where trees reproduced without being grafted, or cross-pollinated, or genetically altered in some way. Even those back there”-the old trees, he meant-“are varietals and hybrids. They’re old, don’t get me wrong, but they’re at least four hundred years removed from the original stock. It’s a silly idea, probably. The idea of seed banks came way too late-why save something you’ve made better? Now there’s no going back… unless you believe in time machines.”
“I don’t,” I replied, “but there are a couple of spots on this coast that might be just as good. My uncle used to load up the boat, and we’d go camping for a week at a time. Machete islands, he called them, because we had to cut our way in.” I thought for a moment. “Years ago, he brought back seeds-a sour orange, and some guavas, too-from a place that was pure hell getting into. I know they sprouted; a couple were doing pretty well, but I haven’t bothered to check in a while. My mother sold that piece of land a while back.”
“Wow, that would be something to see.” He sounded enthusiastic. “Tomorrow, when I bring Sarah, would you mind pointing those trees out?”
We were near the house by then, and I could see his face in the porch light. Not a handsome man in the Cary Grant way, but solid-looking and healthy, a man who was at the peak of his confidence after forty years of earning it.
In hindsight, I would like to believe it was the threat of melancholy on a Friday night that caused me to do something I normally wouldn’t.
“It’s not even nine o’clock yet,” I said to the married man. “How about something to drink while we talk? I can show you around my boat.”
EIGHT
In the morning, my charter got off to a rocky start-which is only fitting, I suppose. My clients, a husband and wife, were staying at Jensen’s Twin Palms on Captiva Island, and it wasn’t until I arrived that I realized I’d gone off and left the lunch I’d packed and my landing net behind.
“You seem distracted,” the man, whose name was Gentry, observed. “Is everything hunky-dory in your world?” He and his wife said things like this; old-fashioned and humorous, always in a caring way.
My world wasn’t hunky-dory, but I wasn’t being paid to discuss personal affairs.
“I’ll buy you lunch at the Collier Inn,” I said, which was on nearby Useppa Island, one of the most beautiful places in the world. I borrowed a net, and shoved off, for I was eager to leave my self-recriminations behind.
I had fished this couple before. They were both competent with fly rods in their hands-not always the case in the charter business-and I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. It was one of those rare days when a fishing guide wants be at a dozen different spots at the same time, which is exciting. The air was cool but warming beneath a high blue sky. After a week of wind, it had flattened, and the bay was slick as glass, and as clear.
An hour later, my internal distractions were knocked flat, too. I was standing on a platform above the motor, poling the skiff along, when a massive shadow appeared in a sandy basin ahead; the shadow black, four feet long, the sand beneath golden in the morning light.
It was a log-had to be. This wasn’t the season for tarpon, and a shark would be on the move, not lying stationary in this low, falling tide.
“Quiet,” I whispered, and crouched low.
The shadow seemed to drift backwards, as buoyant as light. The shadow turned a degree with the slow flick of a yellow-glazed tail.
It wasn’t a log.
Mr. Gentry saw the shadow, too. “Whoa, look at the size of that thing. What is it?”
“Snook,” I said. “Twelve o’clock,” meaning directly in front of the boat.
“Can’t be.”
“Twelve o’clock,” I repeated, “but too far to cast. I’ll tell you when. Who’s up?”
Casting a fly rod requires room, so anglers take turns when a fish is spotted. Mrs. Gentry had already missed a shot at a redfish, yet I asked anyway out of politeness.
“Darn thing’s as long as my leg,” the man whispered. “Are you sure that’s a snook? Never seen one so big in my… Oh my god”-he turned to his wife-“she’s right, Hannah’s right, it’s a snook. See there, Dolly?”
He liked to call her “Dolly,” or “Dollface,” although his wife’s name was Sherry.
The push pole I use is eighteen feet long. It’s so hollow and light, the pole vibrates like a reed when I auger its tip into hard sand. I skated the boat forward, saying, “I’ll swing the bow around when we’re in range. Go ahead, start stripping out line. Mrs. Gentry, watch for knots when your husband casts; then, if you don’t mind, come sit back here by the wheel.”
They were a nice couple, the Gentrys. Retirement age, or close, vacationing from Tennessee, where they’d just sold their business that had something to do with science-the biotech industry, they’d said. They had money and their health, and treated each other with an easygoing deference that was fun and showed their relationship still enjoyed some spice. The pair had fished all over the world-rainbows in Argentina, bonefish in the Yucatán-but never again would they get a shot at a trophy fish like this.