For some reason, that made her think of Ford. She stopped packing and wondered for a moment.
Oh, the bathroom…
She could see herself trying to live in Ford's little house. Taking outdoor showers, using a chemical toilet. An outhouse, really; just like when she was a little girl. Well, she'd worked too hard for that, and Doc would just have to understand…
Then… unexpectedly, Sally found herself oddly close to tears, overcome by a profound sense of being untethered. All that passion, getting so close in such a short time. Why? And for what? It had been like an explosion, all mixed together with nostalgia and loneliness, what she was as a child, what she was now… that plus the wildness of her own body, which almost no one knew about but her.
Well, Ford knew now. And it wasn't as if they couldn't still see each other on weekends. This was just a job, for God's sake.
So why had he been so damn distracted and impersonal on the phone?
Then she remembered: He had yet to call back!
She checked the clock on the reading table beside her bed. It had been more than an hour. She stood to pick up the phone, make certain that she hadn't left it off the hook in the kitchen.
Nope. Doc was just too busy to call.
Sally threw the second case on her bed, yelling, "Goddamn men!" and was instantly worried that she had spoken so loudly, because, in the same instant, she heard someone tapping at the front door.
There stood Tucker Gatrell's old friend, the tall Indian with the long hair and the wide, slumped shoulders. She wiped her face, hoping he wouldn't see that she had been crying, as he said, "I'm real sorry to bother you, Miz Sally, but there's something I'm needin' to find."
Sally showed him a big smile. "Why aren't you up at the party, Joseph?"
"There's too many people there for me, Miz Sally. Ever'body asking me questions, wanting to talk. Figured it was a good time to ask you. What I need is a nice sack. A pillowcase, maybe. Some-thin' real plain."
Behind Joseph, from the shadows, the voice of a mature woman called, "I told him I had pillowcases, but he insisted on coming to you."
She could see the shadowed form of a woman there, and Sally's smile broadened. "Why, Joseph! You shouldn't leave your new friend standing out there in the dark."
The big man sighed, his face forlorn. "If I asked all my new friends to come in, there wouldn't be no room for us. Besides"- his soft voice became even softer-"their pillowcases all got little flowers and stuff on 'em. What I need is something a man wouldn't mind."
Sally found a pillowcase for him-refused money for it when he took out a soggy roll of bills, then watched him ramble away, the smaller outline of the woman trailing after him.
Remembering about the public hearing, Sally called to him, "Oh, Joseph? Could you please tell Tuck that I won't be at the meeting tomorrow? I have to go out of town on business. I'm really sorry."
Heard Joseph's reply: "Don't blame you. I ain't going to be there, either."
Then the woman's voice: "Oh yes he will be there!"
Closing the screen door, Sally thought, That's the way it is. The way it is and always will be, men and women at odds. Out of synch on a mutual path. The only question was, who would lead and who would follow?
Sally thought of her mother-Loretta Carmel was no follower! She had been a damn smart, tough, and independent woman. And if it was good enough for her mother…
Sally worked around the house, packing, doing bills, getting ready for the drive to Miami, telling herself that she didn't care one way or another whether Ford called, but thinking that he probably would, any minute.
He never did.
By midnight, Ford had repeated the procedure a half-dozen times. It was always the same. Take murky bay water, drop in the strings of sponges and tunicates, and within fifteen minutes, the water was transformed.
Ford noted on a yellow legaclass="underline" "Turbidity zero."
According to anecdotal accounts, the bays of southwest Florida had been tannin-stained but clear up until the turn of the century, when a powerful consortium-the Army Corps of Engineers and the state government, plus land-boom developers-began its assault on the swamps, dredging, filling, building roads, straightening rivers. It was generally accepted that the wholesale loss of root structure had murked the water system. Erosion. It was also generally accepted that, because most of the dredging had been stopped in the 1970s, the bays would gradually heal themselves.
On the notepad, Ford wrote: "The initial loss of root structure undoubtedly created a sudden increase in turbidity. Did that tur-pidity interrupt the life cycle and range of filtering species?"
The question implied a startling concept, and Ford was pleased with himself.
If murk caused by the early dredging had killed a significant area of grass habitat, then the filtering species may never have had a chance to reestablish themselves. To remain clear, water required filtering species. Sea-grass meadows required clear water. Filtering species required sea-grass meadows. One was constantly dependent on the other. Remove one symbiotic element from the system-even if for only a few years-and the whole system was sentenced to gradual, inevitable doom.
That was the premise.
Halt the dredging, replant all the thousands of acres of lost mangroves, but if the estuaries continued to be fouled by fresh water carrying nitrates and phosphates, it wouldn't make much difference.
The bays would never heal themselves unless a way was found to provide surrogate bases for a massive reintroduction of filtering animals.
Sea mobiles…
Ford stepped away from the dissecting table, excited. He had the blood and bones of the paper he wanted to write. But there was so much more research he wanted to do.
He leaned to jot something on the legal pad: "Do filtering animals also remove invisible contaminants? Contact labs; get price for long-term test series."
That caused him to think of Tuck, the tests he'd had done. Ford had the brief mental picture of dropping a sea mobile into the old man's artesian well, instantly decontaminating the thing-which was absurd. Exactly the kind of idea Tuck would come up with. But tunicates and sponges couldn't survive in fresh water. Particularly Tuck's springwater, judging from the long list of pollutants it contained.
Ford returned his attention to the legal pad, made a few more notes, then hurried across the roofed walkway to get a chart that included Dinkin's Bay. He wanted to calculate the approximate amount of water in the bay so he could get a rough estimate of how many biofouling units it would take to effect the turbidity. Perhaps it wasn't practical. Obviously, water flushed in and out with the tides, but he still wanted to try and set up some kind of proportional model'.
He set to work converting the bay's circumference into rectangles, keeping careful track on the chart as he did the math.
From the other room, he heard the phone ring. He ignored it at first, then carried the chart across the roofed walk, still calculating as he went.
A bay roughly 10,250 feet long by 4,400 feet wide… with a median depth of, say, four feet. But the average depth would be more because of the channel, all the potholes…
He picked up the phone and said, "Sanibel Biological Supply."
He heard Sally Carmel's voice but didn't hear all of what she said.
Hunched over the chart, he said, "Sally? Hey look, I'm right in the middle of something here. Can I call you back in an hour?"
Ford heard Sally say, "That's what you said three hours ago. I was worried…" as he wrote, "Average depth, 5 feet+-.," and then began to do the math.