Ten Thousand Islands (7 page)

The word “ball” is appropriate because the spawning ceremony consists of many, many male fish twisting and turning around one or more much larger females. These fish were so focused on their reproductive mandate that they didn’t notice as I used the push pole to swing my skiff into position above them.

I made two throws of my gigantic cast net and put six fine gravid females into my live well. Just looking at them gave me pleasure. A snook is an impressive animal, both in terms of behavior and physical beauty. It has a cartilaginous jaw that flares anvil-like beneath black carnivore eyes. The eyes are ringed with gold, its skin is pewter-bright, fringed with yellow, and there is an armor-work of scales covering a dense coniform body. It is a heavy, functional, predator’s body. Beauty is secondary; a stroke of hereditary luck. Such creatures evolve over thousands of years, refine a perfect genetic design, then prosper for thousands of years more, unchanged. The black lateral line is a sporty touch, not unlike a racing stripe. It is appropriate for this very fast animal.

Trouble is, snook are not fast enough to outrun nutrient pollution from thousands of Florida golf courses. They are not fast enough to outrun illegal stop nets. They are not fast enough to outrun high-tech fishing machines such as mine. A million years of evolution did not anticipate the previous busy, brilliant and sometimes destructive century. Which is why I was so pleased to play a role in Mote’s superb stock-enhancement program.

So I was feeling pretty good as I sped along the beaches past Englewood, Siesta Key and Lido Beach on
my way to the docks of Mote Marine. Every now and again my mind would slip and I would think about JoAnn, the unexpected sexual charge at her touch, and I would scold myself, using Jeth and Janet as an example. See what happened when marina people dated?

I also thought about Tomlinson down there on Key Largo. Someone had been breaking into the trailer of a waitress to loot the mementos of a child. The mother had been sufficiently upset to allow Tomlinson to box her remaining valuables and ship them to a stranger.

It couldn’t be important. Some freak on the prowl. There are so damn many freaks on the prowl these days. Still, I have a logical mind that probes and prods when behavior, human or otherwise, does not follow sequential, rational patterns.

I kept asking myself a simple question:
Why?

Three days later, I would ask it again when I learned that someone had dug up the grave of the late and long-dead Dorothy Copeland.

Mote Marine Lab is one of a very few independent marine research facilities that still survive in the U.S. The lab and aquarium consist of a half-dozen modern buildings and several deep-water holding pools on an eleven-acre campus fronted by sea grapes, palms and Sarasota Bay. About fifty scientists work at the lab, plus hundreds of volunteers. Because it is privately funded, the imperative of private enterprise is very much in effect: if Mote Marine does not excel, it is out of business. If Mote Marine’s employees do not excel, they are out of a job. As a result, this unusual lab is a busy and productive place.

But it wasn’t the lab that was on my mind.

Kathleen Rhodes’s pretty trawler,
The Darwin C.
, was
moored at Mote’s L Dock, just down from the Salty Dog bar and restaurant. The windows of its mahogany wheel-house were dark: no one home. Tied astern of the trawler was Capt. Peter O’Rourke’s collecting boat,
Ono III
.

I thought I’d put Kathleen out of my mind and out of my life. If she wanted to take a break from what had become an intense physical and emotional relationship, that was just fine with me.

Or was it?

Seeing the trawler brought back memories of the nights I’d spent aboard. It brought back the shape and scent of her; the memory of her intellect and her lucid, scientist’s view of life. Independent people seem to be increasingly rare. She was one of the few.

Add self-reliant to the list, too.

After getting her Ph.D. from Stanford, Kathleen had spent two years bringing her trawler down Baja through the Sea of Cortez to the Panama Canal, then along the Gulf of Mexico to Sarasota. It is not an easy trip for a single-handed sailor, female or male, but she’d made it without incident, collecting specimens and data the whole long way.

The sons and daughters of wealthy parents can be a troubled, undependable lot. An unfailing financial safety net does not contribute to character. But Kathleen was not affected by her family’s money. She was a spectacular woman, indeed, and seeing her empty boat produced an unexpected stab of disappointment.

If I didn’t care, why was I already inventing reasons to contact her while I was at Mote?

I tied off my skiff and found Pete O’Rourke in his funky little waterside office. Pete is in charge of collecting for Mote, and he is the perfect choice because he is an
unusual combination: a first-rate fishing guide who possesses the clear eye and intellect of a scientist. His office reflects the same dual personality.

We sat talking for a few minutes amid stacks of fishing gear, lures, stuffed fish, scuba tanks, test tubes and journals. Through the front window, beyond the file cabinets and ratty green carpet, I could see the New Pass swing bridge and the cabin of Kathleen’s boat.

It took some effort to look away.

Then I didn’t have to think of it because Pete and I were busy transferring the snook I’d brought. We put them into what is essentially an oxygenated wheelbarrow and rolled them, two at a time, to the massive brood tank. In the tank were male snook. By carefully controlling temperature and lighting, the Mote scientists could trick the fish’s biological clocks into believing it was eternally spring with many, many moonlit spawning nights.

Before releasing the females, though, Pete and I carefully stripped them of eggs. A big female will carry a million and a half eggs, each not much bigger than the head of a pin. Touch their bellies, and roe flows as if from a dispenser.

We captured the eggs in bags of seawater, then mixed them with milt from male fish. Then we deposited the fertilized eggs into 2,000-gallon incubator tanks.

At some time during the next day, thousands of tiny snook would hatch, none much bigger than mosquito larvae. They would feed on algae and rotifers, then brine shrimp. In a couple of weeks, they would look like the truly remarkable animals they are.

Back in Pete’s office, he caught me looking at Kathleen’s trawler. By not mentioning her name, I had, apparently, underlined my interest in her, which is probably
why he looked so uncomfortable. Finally, he said, “A guy as smart as you, it’s hard to believe you can be such a big bonehead.”

I said, “Pardon me, Pete.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Kathleen. Or maybe you’re back to calling her Dr. Rhodes now. A woman like that, a fine scientist and a hell of a talented musician. All the brains and class in the world, plus legs up to her shoulders and you’re about to let her get away? Or maybe you already have.”

I shrugged, letting him know that it was no big deal. “We decided to take a break, that’s all. Give ourselves some time to think things over. It was mutual. Besides, I was already involved with a very nice woman when Kathleen and I met.”

“The one from Tampa, you mean.”

How did he know that? I said, “There aren’t many secrets between you scientific types, I guess.”

“You know better. But fishing guides tend to be talkative. The Tampa woman who was separated but ended up going back to her husband. I know the one you’re talking about. You stopped seeing Kathleen for her?”

“There were other reasons, too.”

“What bullshit.” He was smiling, shaking his head. “The moratorium was all Kathleen’s idea. She told me. She also told me that she hoped like hell you’d miss her and call and insist that you get back together again. It was a test. You don’t know by now that people in love give each other little tests?”

“Nope. Apparently, it’s not the sort of thing you can study for.”

He said, “We’d sit here talking, Kathleen and me, and I’d catch her staring out the window, the same expression
you had on your face a few seconds ago. Hoping to see you pull up to the dock, just like you were hoping to see her.”

The man was infuriating, but he also happened to be right. I said, “Okay, so I was hoping to see her. I was also dumb and stubborn and not particularly perceptive. When it comes to women, what else is new? So maybe what I should do right now is stroll over to Dr. Rhodes’s office and apologize. Then maybe Kathleen and I can take you and your pretty wife out to dinner. How’s Chinese sound?”

O’Rourke wasn’t smiling now. “It sounds great but you’re not going to find Kathleen in her office. Or anywhere else around here.”

I said, “Huh?”

“Just what I said. She waited, what, nearly three months? A couple times I told her, ‘Hey, think of some excuse, drive to Sanibel and visit the guy! Let him know how you feel.’ But you two, you’re both so damn logical and analytical. She made me promise not to call you, either. So what I’m getting to is, she met a guy. He plays football for Tampa Bay. Not at all her type, but at least he was smart enough to figure out how a telephone works. He’s on injured reserve, so they flew to Mexico last week for that sawfish project she’s been doing, plus so steroid man can see what life is like in the true tropics. The football player, I’m talking about.”

When I didn’t say anything for a moment, he clapped me on the shoulder as he crossed the room. “Those two, they’re not going to hit it off. So maybe it’s not too late. Anyway, Kathleen told me to deliver this if you stopped being stubborn long enough to ask about her.”

He held out a blue envelope, which was addressed to
me in her tiny, precise hand. When I started to open it, O’Rourke said, “Christ, don’t read the damn thing in front of me! I feel bad enough as it is. Go back to your boat, catch us some more fat brood snook. You still owe me five or six fish, right? We need them by Saturday, don’t forget!” He pointed me toward the dock before adding, “That way you can suffer in private.”

In the afternoon, I found a deserted stretch of beach on one of the barrier islands, Cayo Costa, and I camped between a fringe of coconut palms and the water. I stayed two nights.

By the end of the first day, all the beer was gone and most of the food. The morning of the second day, depressed and feeling sluggish with a hangover, I told myself that twenty-four hours of fasting and a marathon workout was not only what I needed but what I deserved.

It has been a lifelong practice of mine. When things are going badly, or when I’m dissatisfied with my own work or behavior, I devise a new and improved Dumb Ass Triathlon. The events are determined by my environment. There must be at least two different disciplines and three different punishing events.

For me, it’s an effective way of stopping negative momentum and of jump-starting a change in personal behavior. It is also an effective way to give myself a personal kick in the butt.

Punishment is the order of the day.

So I punished myself.

I stripped down to Nikes and running shorts and lumbered along the beach to the north point of the island, then all the way back to my camp, about eight miles.

Then I traded in the shoes for goggles and swam almost to the south point of the island—three miles, and all the harder because, toward the very end, I was pulling myself along against an outgoing tide.

Finally, I jogged and hobbled barefooted back to camp, where I drank a half gallon of water, cleaned my glasses, then laid down beneath a sun tarp to read.

Kathleen’s letter was troubling. It was troubling because she wrote without anger nor any attempt to manipulate. There is no criticism so unsettling as the truth, and her observations were logically presented. Perhaps they were accurate, perhaps not.

Certain sentences stood out. I read and reread them.

She wrote:
Marion, You have a wonderful brain and a heart that is bigger than you know, but you are a strange man. Your heart and your brain don’t seem to be connected
…

She wrote:
I remember the look on your face when that drunk stumbled out of the bushes and surprised us. I learned something I couldn’t have learned any other way. I learned that you have a capacity for violence without emotion. No emotion that I could see. No anger, no fear. The only primate who has that capacity is man, and very, very few of them. It frightened me. It should frighten you
….

She wrote:
I’ve found few men as attractive as you, but neither have I felt so isolated during intimacy. As thoughtful as you are, part of you is always in some faraway place. I wish I knew that place. I would have gladly traveled there with you
…

She wrote:
Humans aren’t driven to behavior for which we are not coded, nor do we long for something
unless we’ve lost it. One or both may explain how you are different from other people. You have always been alone, Marion. I think you will always be alone
….

The portrait that emerged wasn’t very flattering. How long had Kathleen and I dated? Seven months off and on, then four months exclusively. Could she really have gotten to know me so well in so short a time?

As I lay on the sand listening to the respiratory wash of waves, the whistle of sea birds, I considered the validity of her observations.

I remembered the night that the drunk had come charging at us out of the shadows. We’d had dinner in downtown Sarasota and were walking along the waterfront to her car. We were talking, looking at the mast lights of sailboats. Unexpectedly, a big man was reaching for her, only a few meters away. Yes, he’d stumbled, but there was no way I could have known that.

I consider my reaction very practical, not extreme. I’d turned the man without much effort, then pinned him to the sidewalk until I was certain of his intentions. It had been methodical, not violent. Of course I hadn’t been emotional. In such a situation, of what possible value was emotion? Yet, the woman found fault with my behavior. It made no sense.

I was also surprised by the depth of her affection. She mentioned her attraction and implied that she would have traveled with me anywhere. Yet, she’d never openly voiced her feelings, so how was I supposed to know? Had I missed some signal?