I pulled myself up onto the dock, found my glasses and took a towel from the stack near the outdoor shower, then I went into the lab and switched on a light. I thought about calling the Sanibel police, then decided against it. No laws had been broken; I hadn't given the intruders time even to get to my boat, which had certainly been their intent. I couldn't blame them. I've got a great boat.
Or was there another possibility?
I stood there for a moment, letting my mind clear. I took my glasses off and cleaned them. Along the west wall of my lab, there is a stainless steel dissecting table. Scattered on the table were the contents of a box recently delivered by a friend. There was a package of blue glass beads, dozens of arrowheads and a stunning impressionistic wooden carving of a cat; an Everglades panther, perhaps. The cat was upright in a kneeling position, its front legs pressed into its lap. The legs were suggestive of human arms. The carving was surprisingly heavy and there were still traces of paint to be seen if you used my good magnifying glass.
Only traces of paint because the thing was ancient, made by an American Indian artist many centuries ago, then found in a recent decade by a gifted child.
The child was the daughter of a friend of a friend who was now in trouble.
Okay, so what if the guys I'd surprised hadn't come to steal outboard motors? Was it just possible they knew the artifacts had been mailed to me, and they'd come to take them?
No, not likely. The artifacts were valuable, but not that valuable. To try something so risky for so little return wasn't rational. Even thieves tend to behave rationally.
Right? Right.
One
The lady came asking for help on one of the most glorious autumn Fridays in the history of Sanibel Island. I was hunkered down, working in the engine well of my 24-foot trawl boat, up to my elbows in gas and oil and goo, when the familiar vibration of piney wood told me that someone was clomping along the dock, approaching my little house and lab.
It was just past noon. The September sun was bright overhead. I squinted upward to see chunky legs metronoming from within khaki safari shorts and the shampoo bounce of copper hair. Then a familiar silhouette was standing above me, hands on hips, boat shoe a-tappin'. So say hello to JoAnn Small-wood, part owner of the old Chris Craft cruiser, Tiger Lily, one of Dinkin's Bay Marina's gaudier floating homes. JoAnn is a heavy-hipped, busty lady with the sort of wide, handsome face that I associate with wheat fields or Wisconsin steetlights. She was already talking before she reached the mooring dock.
"I've got a problem, Doc. Can you spare me a minute or two?"
JoAnn's voice modulates an alto clarity. Women who are successful in business, trusted in politics, or who are very, very good teachers, speak with similar definition. But there was lots of anxiety in there, too. She was upset. No doubt about that.
I had a ratchet in my hand, and I was cleaning the ratchet head with a towel. As I fitted a spark plug into the rubber gasket, I said, "Mind if I finish this first?"
"Take your time." She looked toward the house. "Is Tom-linson inside?"
"Yeah. He's going through his record collection. He stores it here because he says his boat's too damp."
"Good. I'd like him to listen, too. He's weird, but he's smart."
"Right on both counts."
"No kidding. Did I tell you this? Rhonda and I cruised by his boat the other night and he had candles sticking out of each ear. Lighted candles. He was sitting naked on the bow, flames shooting up, his legs crossed. Inner ear purification, he told us. They were special hollow candles. The heat melts the earwax, or maybe it's the smoke that purifies the inside of his brain. Who knows?"
I said, "You just explained his sudden interest in listening to old records."
My net boat has an old standard six-cylinder engine. The name brand is "Pleasure Craft," but it is actually made by Ford. Plugs and points, and no computer gizmos of any kind. The engine had developed a nasty little miss and the habit of stalling when I attempted to dock. Boats that stall around the dock cause irritation and embarrassment, particularly flat-bottomed boats with wheelhouses and nets that act like sails in a wind.
This one was built of heavy cedar planking and brass screws; an old workhorse that I'd bought in Chokoloskee a couple of years ago and chugged up the inland waterway and used to dredge specimens for my business. She is solid as a slab of concrete and just about as nimble.
Thus the ratchet and a box of brand-new spark plugs.
I threaded the plug carefully, gave it just a tad of torque, swore softly when I clunked my head on the starter motor, then found the towel and began to wipe my hands.
"You're bleeding."
I looked at the rag. "Um-huh. Blood and oil. Mexicans say it's good luck. The blood, I mean-if you scrape your knuckles or something when you're working on an engine. So I'm lucky."
"And I called Tomlinson the weird one." The woman had a nice smile. "You two guys, you're really characters. You hold this whole crazy marina together."
I swung out of the boat and headed up the steps. "So come tell a couple of characters your problem."
Dinkin's Bay Marina does, indeed, attract its share of characters. Most of them arrive by boat, turning south off the Intracoastal at Marker 5 just west of the Sanibel Causeway and past the power lines. By car, they follow Sanibel's Tarpon Bay Road into the mangroves, through the gate to the bay.
Beyond the gate, in the shell parking lot, there's a community of wooden buildings that extends out onto the water via a latticework of wobbly docks. It is an unexpected anachronism on an island known for designer homes and elegant restaurants. There are plank tables for cleaning fish, a bait tank, and benches beneath a tin roof, so visitors have a place to sit while they eat the marina's sandwiches and chowder.
There is a gift shop, the Red Pelican, that offers sarongs and knickknacks and paintings by local artists. There is the marina office and store. Along with items that you might expect-fishing tackle and suntan oil-there are also items for sale that may be unexpected: strange ball caps in the shape of sharks or manatees, used books, foreign beers.
Inside the office, behind the glass counter, you will find stocky, pragmatic Mack, owner and manager. Jeth Nicholes, the fishing guide, lives alone in the efficiency apartment upstairs.
The other fifteen or twenty full-time residents live aboard boats: a garden variety of sailboats, cruisers and chunky little houseboats. They are umbilicaled to civilization via hoses and electrical conduits, and a couple have tiny satellite dishes. Toss off the umbilicals, though, and they are free again, alone and underway.
That is the illusion, anyway, and one reason they probably live aboard.
There are two exceptions: Tomlinson and myself. Tomlin-son anchors his sailboat away from the docks, refusing what he calls "the poisonous delusion of self sufficiency." I live on the other side of the channel, occupying two weathered cottages under a single tin roof and separated by a breezy throughway, all built on stilts and connected to shore by ninety feet of old boardwalk. One house is my lab. The other is where I live.
Toss in a couple of other fishing guides, Captain Nels and Captain Felix, a cook, two clerks, plus a fluctuating number of wives-boyfriends-girlfriends-lovers, and you have the entire population of Dinkin's Bay.
The point to all this is that the marina is small enough to create the same dynamics and interdependencies as an extended family. The men are protective of the women in a brotherly way. The women chide or organize or comfort the men, depending on the situation or their sisterly mood. The metaphor is carried to the logical, responsible conclusion: romantic involvement is discouraged.