Lloyd nodded. "Handing them out here and on the street, too."
"You notice anybody coming back to buy more water once they used it?"
"This is only the second day we've been open-"
"After they tasted it, I mean."
Lloyd was momentarily uneasy. "That's the thing. It tastes so sulphury. Like medicine, maybe that's what people will think. If it's good for them, they won't mind-"
Tucker was saying, "Uh-huh, uh-huh, but I got this idea about using cherry flavor. I got a gallon of it up to the house. Just don't say nothing to the Indian about it-"
"Joseph."
"Yeah, he's real sensitive."
Lloyd was nodding his head, agreeing with him. "You know, that's exactly what the women say about him. My wife, that's what she said. I guess Mr. Egret spent an hour last night showing her the barn, the horses, telling her stories. They sure like him. My wife seemed so cheerful after her tour."
Tuck's eyes narrowed, reviewing what Lloyd had just said, matching that up with what he knew about Joseph's cow-hunter morality. But then he said, "Naw-w-w-w…"
"Naw?"
Tuck started to say, "Those ladies are too respectable," but then he remembered who he was talking with. "I mean, naw-w-w, 'cause they're such good women and they feel sorry for him, that's all. The poor old fool. But about that cherry flavor-"
"Just between you and me," Lloyd said.
Tuck said, "Mums the word," as he started to amble away, but then he stopped. "Oh, and there's one more thing. Them state park people want their table in the shade. The mango tree down by the water? You and the ladies get a minute-"
"In the shade? The mosquitoes will eat them alive. That's where the bugs stay during the heat of the day. Even I know that."
Taking his hat off to scratch his head, Tuck said, "Mosquitoes? Well, I guess that's true," like he hadn't even thought about it.
He found John Dunn near the barn with some other men, sorting piles of trash in the junkyard. When Dunn saw Tuck stop and pull out his pocket watch at the crest of the mound, he called to him, "I know, I know, we've got to get cleaned up for the hearing. But while you're here, let me ask you about something."
Tuck stepped through the fence into the pasture, listening to Dunn talk but not looking at him. He had his eyes on the bay, scanning the water, thinking, That damn Henry Short, I shoulda gone and brought him in myself!
Dunn said something else, and Tuck said, "Huh?"
"The way we're sorting this stuff," Dunn repeated. "You told me the things that would float or leak gunk, we'd pay to have that carried out by truck, right?"
Tuck said, "We got the money for it. I was just down talking to Lloyd. A couple thousand bucks already, so we can get a crane in here and yank out the big pieces, yeah. Plus money left over." He was looking at the fly bridge of the ruined boat; the vines had all been cut away.
Dunn said, "And you want to make a reef out of the things that sink, so we're making a whole separate pile. But what about stuff like this?" Tuck had followed Dunn to the heap he'd created, watching him stoop to touch a twenty-foot length of rusty cable. The cable was an inch thick, freshly crusted with tiny barnacles, as if it had recently been pulled from the water. Clamped to each end of the cable were heavy grappling hooks. Tuck muttered, "Gawldamn!" as Dunn continued: "Something like this could tear the propeller right off a boat, couldn't it? Or ruin the underwater part of an engine? If a boat hit this, we'd be in a lot of trouble. Not to mention the people in the boat-"
Tuck already had one of the grappling hooks and was starting to coil the cable. "Where the hell you get this?" He looked over his shoulder, hoping not to find that Angela Walker was still following him around, spying.
"Inside that old boiler. It was filled with stuff, and I just… did I do something wrong?"
"Hell, yes! I mean… hell, no." Tuck had the cable up, lugging it back toward the boiler. "What I mean is, you boys are working too hard at this. You don't have to be pulling stuff apart, looking at everything. I was talking generally; about the reef, I mean. Find us a good piece of deep bay water to dump this junk, give you folks a nice easy place to catch groupers and snappers. Plus save us the expense of trucking it out." Tuck dropped the cable into the boiler, thought for a moment, then piled more trash on top before slamming the iron door closed. "Just leave things as they is. I mean, the job ain't got to be perfect." Tuck's eyes surveyed the area again: barn, house, shade trees, people milling on the road, Lloyd and the women carrying the long table toward the mango tree, the state park people still sitting in their air-conditioned van. No sign of Miz Walker… but there was Marion, just pulling up in his truck, his blond hair all wind-scattered, wearing those thick glasses. Getting out with a manila folder under his arm.
Tuck let his breath out, relaxed a little bit. To Dunn, he said, "You boys best get cleaned up now. When you talk to them park people, I want you looking like somebody."
SEVENTEEN
Ford was thinking, What the hell are you trying to pull, old man? He was looking into Tucker Gatrell's wild blue eyes. Stood there a minute or two listening to Tuck patronize him before finally cutting him off, saying, "The only thing I need to hear from you is the truth. Do you really want to keep your land, or are you trying to leverage the state into paying double what it's worth?"
Ford didn't respond to Tuck's indignant reaction, but he almost smiled a little when Tuck said, "Your brain sure does come up with some strange ideas sometimes! Must get it from your daddy's side of the family."
Ford said, "I need an answer."
"Hell, it ain't even my land anymore. Most of it, anyway. Just a measly twenty-five acres. What leverage I got?"
He sensed the slyness in the old man's voice; pointedly ignored the irritation it generated in him. Ford said, "I got the tests back you wanted me to do. The results can help you, or they can ruin you. That's why I'm asking. It all depends on what you want-"
"Ruin me!" Tuck was laughing now. "Hell, boy, I been ruined 'bout a hundred times over. I'm an expert at ruin, which means I'm damn near fearless. So I hope you're not trying to scare me-"
"I'm trying to get you to answer a simple question."
Tuck patted Ford on the shoulder; took a look around. The waterfront was rimmed with people, some standing, others sitting on makeshift benches, all facing the table at which members of the Park Acquisition Board were now seating themselves. Tuck said, "Meeting's getting ready to start," and held an index finger to his lips.
"You're not going to level with me, are you?"
Tuck was silent for a moment, then turned to Ford. "I'll tell you this, boy. I'd rather fall down dead than see those shitheels take land that's always been mine." Tucker winked at him. "That right there is straighter'n I shoot."
When Angela Walker spotted Ford standing off from the crowd's perimeter, listening to the Park Acquisition's staff introduce themselves, she thought, He's part of this? She watched him for a moment, standing there in his wrinkled khaki slacks and gray shirt, looking as if he'd just gotten off a boat. Maybe he had. Maybe he'd driven that fast jade-colored boat of his down all the way from Sanibel, then just stepped off onto the mud beach. Nice way to travel. No traffic, no stoplights. Just drive along looking at the birds and the dolphins until you got to where you were going. Easy, if you were good with boats and knew what you were doing. Scary if you didn't.
Walker knew about that now.
Each of the last three mornings, she'd rented a skiff from Barron Creek Marina, then headed out alone, going from island to island, looking for some sign of the missing men. Her plan was to follow the unlikely routes to the boundary of Everglades National Park. Start at the channel that led out from Barron Creek (Sandfly Channel, it said on the map), then head south. Trouble was, there weren't that many unlikely routes because a labyrinth of mangroves and shoals fingered out from the mainland, east to west, with no cut-through spots. Not that the map showed, anyway. To get around them, you had to drive a boat almost eight miles toward the Gulf, then turn left. Worse, it all looked so different when she was actually out there. Her boat, which had seemed sizable at the marina, shrunk down to almost nothing when the few channel markers ended, leaving her alone with all that water and sky and all those mangrove islands crowding in. There was something creepy about the look of mangrove trees. Their roots hunched up out of the muck like an old man's fingers, with a tangle of trees balanced on top. As if whole islands could crawl around if they wanted; could get up on those root fingers and walk. Like giant crabs.