Tuck, who had his hat off, mopping his head with a red bandanna, glanced irritably at Flowers. "Judge, I hope you're not going to charge me for that advice. Say-" Tuck's face crinkled into a wicked smile. "You know the difference 'tween a catfish and a lawyer? One's a low-life, shit-eatin' bottom feeder, and the other's a fish!"
"You trying to hurt my feelings," Flowers said blandly, "you gonna have to get a lot more personal than that. I'm just sayin' it won't help none, you having a stroke in front of these vultures. They'll pick your bones clean-"
"Quit worrying about me and worry about the job I'm paying you to do!"
"I have to remind you again, Mr. Gatrell? I took this case on contingency. You haven't paid me a cent yet."
"Christ oh frogs, you got ways of making a man mad!"
"That's my job. Now sit down and cool yourself." Flowers took up a volume of the Florida Statutes and began to peruse it nonchalantly.
Tucker said, "Well, it ain't like I ain't got a reason"-meaning a reason for being mad.
He did have reason, too. Lemar hadn't said a word about people showing up to speak in favor of the park. Hell, Tuck had just thought they were more tourists, all these smart-acting people in their bird-watcher's clothes. Where was that damn Joseph when he needed him? Joseph didn't have any love for bird-watchers, but now he was out somewheres riding that big black instead of being here where he belonged, maybe scaring a few of these busybody gull-humpers with his mean Injun looks.
Worst thing, there was so many of them. And they all talked so long. The reporters and television people would probably get tired of it; just pack their things and leave before Tuck and his people got a chance to speak. That's what he was really worried about.
To Flowers, Tuck whispered, "I've heard funeral preachers more cheerful than these yardbirds. What I might do is bring Ervin T. down, have him start sawing on the fiddle. That'll change the mood!"
Flowers kept turning pages. "You'll do no such thing. Sit there and relax till it's our turn. Have yourself a chew of tobacco."
"I don't want a chew. I don't want to relax." Tuck stood momentarily and scanned the bay. No sign of Henry Short's boat. "Gawldamn it, things ain't going right! And don't get me started on that old idiot Henry. I tried to tell you, a nigger's got no more sense of time than a rabbit. Say"-Tuck pulled out his pocket watch-"what time is it, anyway?"
"You and Henry have been friends for fifty years. Who'd he come to for help when he was sick, living out there all alone on that island? He'll be here."
"Yeah, if he didn't fall down dead. That'd be just like him, too." Tuck flipped the watch closed. Almost 2:00 P.M. Up at the table, that man Londecker looked as if he was about to wilt. He was mostly alone now, with the women coming and going from the van. The heat and the bugs-well, good. Let them get a taste of what it was like for the people who near worked themselves to death trying to scratch out a living in these islands.
Flowers said to him, "For the next ten, fifteen minutes, I don't want you to say nothing. Just sit there and calm yourself. Like these young lawyers tell me: Think nice thoughts."
Tuck tried. Let his mind slip around, looking for something pleasant to settle on. Remembered that time Marion hit his first home run up there at the old Pirates spring-training park. That was nice. Big blond-haired boy with the same blue eyes Tuck still saw every morning in the mirror. Which caused him to think of the boy's mother, Melinda. Prettiest little snow-haired baby he'd ever seen, so young and tiny… but, no, he didn't want to think much further about that. But the old times, it was still nice to think about them, and Tuck began to try to recall what the Glades and the islands were like when he was still young-all the place names that were familiar in those days but now were lost, not to be found on maps. There was Devil's Garden, that shady place with all the wild orchids just north of Charlie Buster's Marsh. Hadn't some fancy-minded nudists tried to set up house there? Tried to breed what they called their own "superrace"?
That made Tuck smile.
The bugs had chased them out in less than a month, and now these were probably their grandkids, sitting here in their birdwatchers' clothes, running off at the mouth!
There was Ocaloachoochee Slough that flowed right through the Big Cypress Swamp. Before the damn government had straightened the rivers and diked Lake Okeechobee, you could canoe right up the thing, from Everglades City clear to La Belle. And there was Charlie Tommie's Hog Camp and Rock Island and Grover Doctor Split and Charlie Tigertail's Casino, all just little camps, places for a man to sleep or buy a little food from the Seminoles when he was hunting or working cattle, but they were the same as towns in those days.
And what about Deep Lake? A small lake set way back in, probably thirty miles from the Gulf, but every spring tarpon would show up there. Those wild mirror-bright fish would appear like magic, hobbyhorsing on the surface, no one knew why or from where, then disappear again, come fall.
One night, discussing Deep Lake around the campfire-this was back in the thirties-Tuck had said to Joseph, "The reason no one figured it out but me is because they think of Florida as if it's land. But she's not. Florida's more like a boat. Or like that thing in Babylon, a floating garden. There's fish probably swimmin' around beneath us right now. In tunnels! That's where those tarpon come from, and them tunnel walls is like an anchor. Keeps Florida from drifting off."
Deep Lake and the rest, it was pretty to think about, all those past places, all those old times. Florida had been so big and wild, jungle and oak flats clear to the sea.
Remembering it made Tucker feel good… then it began to cause him to feel bad. What the hell had happened?
Tamiami Trail was one thing. Sucked the soul out of the land as fast as it funneled new people in.
Me! I'm the one who caused that!
Another was all them big developers, come down from out of state, building their "wham-bam, thank you, ma'am" condos and corporation towns, then hightailing it with their pockets full of money.
Who's the one showed them around! Told them the best places!
And all the theme parks!
Give Dick Pope the idea, not even knowing I was cuttin' my own throat.
And then the government coming in, taking control, screwing up one thing after another. Them yahoos needed guidelines just to find their tallywhackers. But that didn't stop them from messin' with the way land and water worked.
Shit always flows downhill-Florida proves it. I shoulda told Harry, he wants to build a park so bad, start with Hiroshima.
"Gawldamn it now, I've heard just about enough!" Tuck was on his feet, not even realizing it; was surprised as anyone at the public hearing to hear his own loud voice.
At the table, Londecker was so startled that he sat up straight. "Excuse me?"
"I said these people have talked long enough! When you gonna give my side a chance?" Lemar Flowers was tugging at Tuck's shirt, trying to get him to sit down, but Tuck pulled away.
"You're out of order, Mr. Gatrell-"
"Mister, you whack that gavel at me one more time, I'll show you what being out of order is like!"
"Tucker!" Flowers was trying to get him back in his seat, but, behind him, the trailer park people and some of the others were starting to yell, too, demanding that they be heard. The whole crowd getting noisier and noisier, grumpy from the heat and the droaning boredom, while Londecker kept banging away with the gavel.
"Quiet, please! You'll have to wait your turn."
"My turn's come and gone, Londecker. That's what this whole business is about!"