The last thing Joseph thought before impacting with the asphalt was, What kind of a sign is this?…
The only time Ford had ever heard the same mixture of horror and hurt in his uncle's voice was long, long ago on a night that had been lost along with his own childhood.
"Duke! Get over here-make these vultures back off. He's hurt real bad!"
Tucker Gatrell shouting to him over the heads of a massing crowd and a hundred yards of mangrove beach.
Hearing that voice, that tone, again gave Ford chills. Made him want to walk the other way and just keep walking.
But he didn't. Instead, he began to jog toward his uncle.
Christ, now what?…
Ford hadn't seen any of it. Hadn't seen Walker chasing Charles Herbott, didn't see Herbott speed off in the van. He'd been down by the water, off alone, testing himself to see how he felt about being used by Tuck one more time.
That bastard knew all along about the water. Probably had the analysis done in Georgia or someplace, one of his redneck buddies up there, but needed an outsider to introduce the data. Me, the outsider.
Well, that sounded just about right.
Ford had been going through all the possible scenarios in his careful, obsessive way. Didn't want to think about it, but he couldn't help it. Tried to shift his attention to Sally Carmel, but that didn't last; even allowed himself to consider Agent Walker in a less than professional way-the woman had impressed him.
But then he saw something out in the bay that did focus his attention: a jade green flats skiff, poling platform like a roof over the outboard, hunched down and throwing a rooster tail as it planed toward Mango.
"That's my boat."
It was, too. No mistaking it as it drew nearer. He could read the stenciled name on the side: SANIBEL BIOLOGICAL SUPPLY.
Ford began to walk quickly toward the dock, squinting at the figure above the wheel. He didn't recognize the man… still didn't recognize him as the man tied off and stepped out of the skiff, though there was something familiar about the way he moved: tall, gangly guy with a military haircut and carrying a briefcase- which was right in keeping with the wrinkled gray suit he wore.
As the man strode toward him, beaming, Ford said softly, "Tomlinson?"
"Hey, Doc!" Same childlike grin, but it seemed broader because his face was shaved smooth. "Man, am I glad to see you-no shit, compadre! Sorry I'm late, but my flight got delayed, just one damn thing after another. So I borrowed your boat."
"Tomlinson!" Ford stood nonplussed as the man wrapped him in a bear hug, pounding his back.
"I know what you're going to say. In fact, consider it understood. I'll never do it again, use your skiff without permission. Even if you do go off in our truck without leaving me a note."
Ford wrestled himself free and stepped back. "What happened to you?"
Tomlinson said, "What? Oh-my hair! So you noticed."
"And a suit?"
"Strictly temporary. A one-trick deal. I took a flier in the real world. Sheer desperation, understand. But the vibes, man, it was like pissing in a Vegematic. I didn't have a single comfortable moment. But that can wait"-Tomlinson held up the briefcase-"because I've got something important here."
Ford was about to tell him the meeting was over, but that's when the screaming of tires drew their attention… and that sound was followed by a sustained tumult, crashing metal and shattering glass, the noise of an automobile rolling through mangroves.
"What the hell was that?"
The abrupt silence that followed was broken by the low, slow wail of a woman crying out, then the gabble of people running.
An instant later: "Duke! Get over here-make these vultures back off, he's hurt real bad!"
Fifteen minutes later, the off-duty paramedic looked up, a little teary-eyed herself, and said, "I think he's gone. I think his neck's broken."
Tucker Gatrell was on his knees beside her, his composure regained, dabbing water on Joseph's face, trying to force a little down him. "Don't you stop that mouth-to-mouth business till the helicopter gets here! Keep working on him. We'll bring him back yet."
"But Mr. Gatrell, the man in the van, he's hurt pretty badly, too-"
When Herbott had swerved to miss the horse, the van had plowed into the mangroves and flipped.
Tuck smacked the water jug down to emphasize his point. "Lady, you lift a finger to help that peckerwood, I'll get my gun and shoot him dead myself. Keep breathin'! Joe just ain't got the hang of it yet."
Joseph Egret lay on his back on the asphalt, eyes closed, a mild smile fixed on his face. Except for the blood, he might have been asleep and dreaming.
Buster grazed patiently near by, as if waiting.
Every now and then, Ervin T. Rouse would pat Tuck on the shoulder, begin to say something, then turn and walk away. Finally, Rouse returned to the ranch house, sat on the porch with his fiddle, and began to play and sing very softly:
"I'm a goin' down to Flor-dah, get some sand in my shoes… I'm goin' down to Flor-ee-dah, get some sand in my shoes. I'll ride the Orange Blossom Special, and shake these New York blues…"
Just before the helicopter returned and the paramedics agreed, privately, that Joseph was dead, Tomlinson held up the sheath of research data he still carried, and he said to Ford, "All these people staring at him, but not a one of them realizes what he represents.. . not a one of them understands who this man was-" then his voice faded to a croak, and he couldn't say any more.
Much later, very drunk, Tuck would say, "Who doesn't understand? You know what it was? You know what it was that man invented?"
EPILOGUE
During the first week of November in that year, from the high regions of the Earth's atmosphere, a great volume of polar air, ascending because of its own density, caught the jet-stream push of what meteorologists call the five-hundred-millibar surface, and it began to drift southward toward the 26th parallel. By the evening of November 9, the polar edge had gathered sufficient momentum to gravitate toward and then displace the warmer, lighter air of the tropics, and it arrived in south Florida as a blustering cold front driven by a wind that seemed to howl down out of the full moon.
Dust particles, a month ago transported by the Sahara High and still lingering in the stratosphere, were swept away.
On the morning of November 14, a Friday, the gale was still blowing when they buried Joseph Egret in the shell mound near the spring on Tucker Gatrell's land. Jimmy Tiger, who beat a skin drum throughout the ceremony, felt the wind rip the thumping notes from his hands and shoot them skyward.
Same thing when they placed the bones of Chekika's Son in the hole beside Joseph.
Later, over tumblers of whiskey, Jimmy would confide to Tomlinson, "I don't expect a frog eater to understand-but that strong wind, it was a very good sign."
The few days between Joseph's death and Joseph's funeral had been neither peaceful nor easy-a circumstance that privately pleased Tucker Gatrell. The first problem was, the State of Florida refused to allow them to bury Joseph on Big Sky Ranch. It was private property.
But Lemar Flowers went to work and got that settled. In a conversation with one bureaucrat, Flowers, genuinely vexed, had said, "You people still don't realize the kinda men you're dealin' with, do you?"
The next problem was that archaeologists employed by the state petitioned the governor to block the burial because, as the petition read, "Digging in or excavating what may be a pre-Columbian burial mound is an outrage against basic human rights, as well as history."