B0092XNA2Q EBOK (7 page)

The Florida Everglades start as a river flowing south out of Lake Okeechobee, sixty miles wide and a hundred miles long. It flows across a limestone shelf to Florida Bay at the southern end of the state into two parks: Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve. Together they total 2.22 million acres—the largest roadless area in the U.S. While their map lines are set, their boundaries are somewhat fluid as they’re shaped by water, fire, and man. They flood in the wet season: May to November, where they average five feet of rain a year, followed by drought in the dry months of December to April. The Glades’ most famous spokesperson, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, coined the phrase “river of grass.” The Seminoles called it
Pa-hay-okee
, or, “grassy water.” And the Spanish called it the “Lake of the Holy Spirit.” The terrain shifts between cypress swamps, mangrove forests, hardwood hammocks, and pine rock land. Some have said it is quite possibly the most primitive wilderness remaining in the lower forty-eight. Maybe. I wouldn’t know how to measure that other than to say that it’s certainly not civil.

I live on the outskirts in the Everglades—beyond the southern tip of Florida—in that magical soup of mangrove keys called the Ten Thousand Islands—a band or swath of trees and roots that grow up off the shallow shelf between the grass and the deep water of the gulf. A place with no beginning and no end. Where the roots
of the mangroves weave through the water like interlocking fingers looking for safe purchase, anchoring themselves against the next hurricane.

Both the islands and the Glades are too low to live on except for about forty small oyster-shell island mounds probably built by the Calusa and Tequesta Indians. They range in size from two to twenty feet above sea level and from fifty feet across to a hundred and fifty acres. I’m never far from one of these. The last to live here were the Seminoles—the only Indian nation never to surrender to the U.S. The closest town is Chokoloskee, pronounced “chuck-a-luskee,” which sits eighty miles west of Miami just off Tamiami Trail (U.S. 41). Note: I didn’t say I lived “close.” It’s simply the closest place on the map.

Out here sugarcane grows wild. Along with guavas, sugar apples, oranges, limes, grapefruit, papaya, avocado pears, and hearts of palm—called “swamp cabbage.” Trees are buttonwood, poinciana, and coconut palm. Oysters grow rampant on the roots of mangroves. There’s bear, deer, fox, raccoon, alligator, Burmese pythons, and more birds than most have ever seen. Whip-poor-wills, mourning doves, owls, turkeys, osprey, and eagle are common and plentiful.

Given so much water, I live on two boats. One is home. The other is play. There is a third, but we’ll get to that. Home is a forty-eight-foot trawler built in the 1930s that drafts about three feet. Twin diesels, holds five hundred gallons of gas, four hundred gallons of water, two hundred of propane. If I’m frugal, I can stay gone for months at a time. About nine years ago, I was driving north on U.S. 1 and saw her lying on her side, weathered and rotting in a cow pasture miles from the water or the smell of salt. She had beautiful lines, peeling paint, and a yellowed waterline that spoke of gentle moments spread across the cutwater. Foreign shores. Tropical destinations. I paid the farmer five hundred dollars, hauled it to a warehouse, and spent a year, five thousand hours, and five hundred gallons of sweat turning it back into a faint reflection of her former
self. When I got into the hull, I found a picture album and captain’s log wrapped in oilcloth.

In her heyday, the
Blue See
cut her teeth running from Key West to Cuba chasing marlin and tarpon as a charter boat. The log and accompanying charts gave a detailed history of the men and women who fished her and when, where, and how many and what kind of fish they caught and on what bait. In 1943, the boat was voluntarily taken out of charter service and used by the Navy to spot submarines off the Florida coast. Following her service in the war, she returned to charter service, though this time on the high end. Three of the most notable passengers were Eisenhower, Hemingway, and Zane Grey.

I don’t know what happened to the captain or how his boat ended up in a cow pasture providing shade for Florida cows and rattlesnakes but the last entry read: “November 3, 1969. Starboard engine dead. Port fading fast. Sunset behind me. Been a helluva run. If I had any guts, I’d bury us both at sea where we belong. Seems a shame—the stories this girl could tell.” The farmer said the boat had been in his pasture since he bought it in ’71 and he didn’t know how it got there or anything about the owner. In honor of the captain, and given the boat’s penchant for stories, I renamed her
Gone Fiction
. Thought maybe he’d like that.

My second boat is where I spend most of my days. A twenty-four-foot Pathfinder called
Jody
—for reasons that matter to me. If you don’t like to fish, chances are you won’t like this boat—it’s designed by fishermen, for fishermen. By now, she’s well seasoned. I’ve fished her from south Texas, to Louisiana, Key West, the Bahamas, Matanzas Inlet on up to Sea Island and Charleston. But most of the time we find ourselves in the waters of the keys and the Ten Thousand Islands and as a result I’m rarely more than a two- or three-hour boat ride from Miami. The caveat to this is the migration. If the hundred-plus-pound tarpon are schooling in the Matanzas or the waters off Sea Island, well then so are we.

Chasing the fish like this means that I seldom stay in one place for
more than a week. There are always more fish to catch and always a better place to do it. Over the years, I’ve caught tens of thousands of fish and learned that if the fish aren’t biting, I’m either not throwing at them what they want to eat or not throwing it in the right spot. Truth is, the fish are always biting. It’s the fisherman who’s wrong, not the fish.

I suppose some may find it strange but I like living in a boat. I have no grass to mow, no property taxes, and no last-known address because it changes every few days. Between selling what I don’t eat, my crab traps, odd jobs for Steady at the church, and boat repair work for cash in Chokoloskee, I manage.

Sunrise found me awake. One leg dangling. Swaying slightly. A book on my chest. My boat is packed with books. Thousands. Stacked up like cordwood. I never met a used bookstore I could live without. On the other hand, I don’t own a TV, read the paper, subscribe to magazines, or listen to the radio, and I’ve only had meaningful conversation with one other person in the last decade. But don’t think me friendless—I have hundreds. All tucked within the pages of these stories.

A breeze washed across me. Not really cool, but not hot either. I climbed out of my hammock and stretched, staring out over the flats into the first glimpse of daylight while one of the ten trillion swamp angels in the Everglades buzzed my ear. I used to swat them. Now they land, suck, gorge, and fly away.

I slid on my flip-flops, and hung my Costa Del Mars around my neck. Sight-casting is awful tough when you can’t see “into” the water. Costas do that. Thinking Steady might be hungry, I grabbed the cast net, and checked it for holes. It took me six months to make the thing so I’m a little particular about mending it. I found two snags and knotted them closed. I hopped in
Jody
and eased toward faster-moving current in the leeward side of Bonefish Island. The
wind in my face, I turned my hat around. Wheel in one hand, throttle in the other, glass all around—it was one of my favorite places—before you… all possibility. All future. Behind you… a deep cut that heals. A quickly forgotten past.

I cut the engine, walked to the bow, studied the surface, and slung the net. The surface popped with bait fish—I caught breakfast in one cast. Four trout feeding on the surface bait. I threw two back.

From the serenity of the water, I returned to the sound of slamming pans and shattering plates. Along with the screaming of a very angry woman. I tied off
Jody
, hopped downstairs into
Gone Fiction
, and found my houseguest making a mess of almost everything I owned. Steady was trying to talk her out of her rage and, judging by the pile of broken plates and glasses that surrounded her, not having much effect. She held a frying pan in one hand, interrupted in mid-rant about how she got here, and pointed it at me when I walked in. “And, who is that!”

Steady spoke softly. “He’s the guy that saved your life and drove us here.” He pointed at his feet. “This is his boat.”

This registered in her mind, only serving to douse her anger with more gas so she reared back and launched the pan at me. “Why?” she demanded. It glanced off my shoulder, flew out the cabin door, and splashed behind me. Her face was red and a vein had popped out on her right temple. Her top lip was twitching. She was sweating. “What are you looking at? What do you want?”

She was maybe five and a half feet tall. Distinct features. Large, round, expressive eyes. Her body screamed aerobics, yoga, and Pilates. Julie Andrews meets Audrey Hepburn with a little Sophia Loren and Grace Kelly thrown in for spice and that lady from
Terminator
, Linda Hamilton, mixed in for spunk and attitude.

I looked at Steady as a plastic plate Frisbee’d past my head followed by a full water bottle. Over the last decade, I’d spent considerable time lining available wall space with shelves and then filling the shelves with books. An old habit. Given the abundance of stories shelved about her, she turned her attention to them. She
pulled hardcover editions of
The Old Man and the Sea
and
The Count of Monte Cristo.
I didn’t care if she threw every pot, pan, and dish I owned in the water, but those books were another story. She reached back and heaved both at once. I did my best to deflect them. Knocked them to the floor, picked them up, and tucked them safely under my arm. Then I held up my hands in stop-sign fashion. She was reaching for
Les Misérables.
The sight of raw, blistered, and torn skin on my palms gave her pause. She raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong with your hands?”

Steady answered. “He got to the rope first.”

Her resolve weakened ever so slightly. “Does that hurt?”

I nodded.

She hardened again. “I didn’t ask you to stop me from falling.”

Steady spoke up. “Fall or jump?”

She shot a glance at him. “Whatever. Same thing.”

She pointed her finger at both of us. “I want off this boat. Now.”

I reached in my pocket and handed her the keys to her boat. She snatched them out of my hand and the tension in her face eased. “You’re not keeping me here?”

I shook my head.

“Then what do you want and why am I here?”

Steady continued. “We thought it’d give you some space to think things out. Maybe take a deep breath.”

She pointed at the door. “So I can leave any time I want?”

Stepping out of the walkway, I held open the door.

She jumped out the door, hopped in her boat, cranked the engine, and placed it in gear. The boat tugged on its mooring, satisfying her that we weren’t lying and she could actually leave when she wanted. She stood stoically. One hand on the throttle, thinking. Threatening. She eased the throttle forward, stretching the stress limit of the line. Satisfied she was not a prisoner, she throttled down, cut the ignition, and stepped back into my cabin. Steady patted the cushion next to him. “Katie, please.”

She wiped her hands across her face then abruptly pointed her
finger in my face. “I don’t like you and I don’t trust you. And I don’t care what you did, just because I’m on your boat doesn’t mean I owe you a thing.”

I didn’t say a word. I was in bad need of some coffee. I stepped into the galley, ground some beans, filled the coffeemaker, and clicked it on. I observed her out of the corner of my eye. She sat listening to Steady explain himself and his thinking but her attention was centered on the galley and me and specifically the coffeemaker. It finished, I poured myself a cup and sat sipping, hovering over the aroma. By now she was ignoring Steady, staring at me and my cup. She raised an eyebrow. She was calm, measured. Arms folded, legs crossed. One foot tapping the floor. “Black. No cream. No sugar. And warm the cup before you pour the coffee in it.”

I never took my eyes off my coffee. I simply stepped aside and continued sipping from my mug. If she wanted coffee, she was more than welcome to it, but I wasn’t serving her. She stood, slammed open a cupboard, grabbed a mug, washed it in the sink then let it sit under the hot water for five minutes while my precious fresh water ran through her mug and down the drain. Satisfied her cup was of the right temperature, she poured some coffee, sipped not disapprovingly, and then resumed her pissed-off posture on the couch. From the sweat on her top lip, to the narrowed stretch between her eyes, to the tension in her shoulders, everything about her said, “Leave me alone. I don’t want you. Don’t need you. Don’t want to know of your existence.”

I obliged.

I stepped outside and noticed the current along the back side of Pavilion Key. The water from the gulf pushes in through a small slough, or break in the key, creating a swift current that often fills up with trout. I grabbed one of my poles, a Sustain 3000 on a seven-foot St. Croix, and threw a popping cork with a soft plastic into the current. I fish twenty-pound Sufix braid with a thirty-pound fluorocarbon leader. In English, that means I can pitch in around shells and other barnacled structures. It also allows me to cast really far.