The Man Who Ivented Florida (4 page)

Yeah, about that. Three weeks and a few days till the state park people came down and tried to take his land.

So there was plenty of other stuff to keep him busy while Marion came around. Marion would, too. Say what you want about that nerdy kid, he was dependable. Good man in a fight; always was—at least until the navy people sent him off to college and made an egghead out of him. Goddamn navy. Marines, now there was an outfit. Not that the marines weren't shortsighted at times—like not drafting him during the big war because of his age. But he'd joined up anyway just to have the chance to meet those hula girls down there in the South Pacific.

Tucker rambled across the plank floor of his little ranch house, into the room that had once been Marion's, back when Marion was in high school. Cramped room with a window. Tuck kept his own clothes there now. In a pile on the cedar chest or on the floor, where they were easy to get to. There was still plenty of time to make the thirty-mile trip into town, but he wanted to look presentable. Find some clothes that weren't wrinkled or didn't smell like his horse, Roscoe.

Sorting through the clothes, Tucker was thinking, It's about nigh damn time I start looking respectable and make something of myself.

He'd been moping around that damn ranch, dirt-poor and lonely long enough. Yep, get off his ass and make a last-ditch effort to get the upper hand on those wormy bastards trying to run him off his own land. And that's just about exactly what he was going to do.

He stopped for a moment and looked beyond the window glare outside. He could see the silhouette of his bam—that needed fixing!—and the silhouette of Roscoe standing beneath a gumbo-limbo tree, probably asleep. A little ways farther was the jumbled form of his junk pile: boxes, car parts, a busted refrigerator, trash . . . and the rotting fly bridge of an old boat.

I hate seeing that damned old boat, so why the hell have I kept it around so long?

Talking to himself, Tucker answered his own question. "Because I'm a screwup, that's why."

It was true enough. He'd been screwing up his whole life,- that's the way he felt. No wife, no children, no accomplishments, unless he wanted to count a bunch of inventions and other schemes that never worked out. Which he didn't. Didn't count any of them. They didn't deserve credence, he'd messed them up so bad.

Nope. Not a single accomplishment. He'd spent his entire life casting around like a pointer dog in search of anything that smelled even faintly of adventure. And what had it gotten him? Broad shoulders and bowed legs. Scars. Open real estate where his front teeth should have been. The stub of a right ear—the rest of which had been bitten off by a Nicaraguan lady in a moment of high spirit. A case of jungle epidermosis that lighted gasoline might cure, but nothing else would.

He had spent his life as a fisherman and a Florida cowboy, which was the same as saying he had pissed it away. He'd done everything there was to do on the water—and had invented some stuff no one had ever done before. He'd worked cattle in Cuba and Central America, spending his nights getting drunk by a camp fire or in some rat-hole bar, and his mornings fighting low blood pressure depression and hoping he hadn't promised to marry the stranger who slept beside him.

Tucker picked up a shirt, held it to his nose, and said aloud, "Whew-whee!" and tossed it aside. Well, one of his dreams had always been to be rich enough to have somebody to do his laundry. A big ranch house, too, with flush toilets. Yeah, and a cook who didn't give him any lip. Somebody who could cook Chinese and make tomato gravy. Maybe a couple thousand acres of land, too, with no fences and a string of good horses and, perhaps, one of those new pickup trucks with the great big tires. He could buy some bumper stickers for it.

Yeah, and a couple kids would have been nice, too, though Marion had come pretty close to being like that; a son, for a couple years at least. Only he never could quite figure out Marion. What the hell kinda boy was it that would hate the nickname "Duke"? Or spend his spare time catching bugs and fish and looking at them under a microscope?

Tuck had sniffed his way through the whole pile of clothes, then was about to go through them a second time when he figured, What the hell, he didn't mind smelling like a horse. Not Roscoe, anyway. Big rangy Appaloosa, white with charcoal spots on his rump, and he didn't smell half bad. Kinda sweet, really. Not like that fifteen head of cattle out there in the pasture beneath the coconut palms. Snot hanging from their muzzles, dropping pies all over the place. Made him not want to eat meat, and he wouldn't if he didn't like steak so much. Dumb cows.

But Roscoe wasn't cow-dumb; he was smart. Roscoe was so smart, he was kinda like a buddy. Hell, back in the old days, he'da ridden Roscoe into town. Did that plenty of times. But now there Was too much car traffic, which Tuck didn't mind, but Roscoe didn't like it. Not .that Roscoe was skittish, he just couldn't stand

being passed. Made the horse real sour dealing with things faster than himself.

Tucker Gatrell dressed himself in jeans, boots, a blue guayabera shirt to match his eyes, then set his best triple-X cowboy hat on his head, a stained white Justin. From the icebox—he stilled used an icebox—he took out a bottle filled with silty black water, swampy-looking water he'd gotten that afternoon. He took a little drink, smacking his lips at the muddy, sulphur taste of it, and spit it out. "Man, that's rank!" Then he sealed the bottle and put it into a paper sack.

Goin' into town. Tucker thought, hit diggity damn. Getting that old Saturday-night feeling even though it was only Thursday. Carrying my ticket to fortune, fame, and maybe my own cook.

Then he pushed open the screen door, patted his old pit bull, Gator, on the head, and climbed into his Chevy pickup truck, roaring off into the October night, about to pay his first visit to Everglades Township Rest Home,- find his old partner Joseph Egret.

No
one lived at Everglades Township Rest Home by choice. Joseph Egret, age mid-seventies, certainly didn't. Elderly residents lived there because they were homeless or because the local courts had deemed them dangerous—an unattractive situation that the local media condemned at least once a year, then promptly forgot.

Joseph had not spent the last eleven months of his life at Everglades Township because he was homeless.

Tucker Gatrell knew nothing about any of this because he didn't read newspapers or watch television and, furthermore, he hated old people. More specifically, he hated old age. The fact that he was no spring chicken had no mollifying effect on his prejudice; if anything, it was sharpened. As a boy, his hatred of aging had been seeded by his own grandfather, who took strange joy in stealing sips from Tucker's drinks, then washing back nasty specks of cracker or tobacco. It would have made most boys queasy, but not Tuck. It just pissed him off. And Tucker Gatrell was never the sort to forgive and forget.

The lobby of Everglades Township Rest Home was empty when Tucker walked in—empty except for a woman in a nurse's uniform sitting in front of the television. Fat woman on a folding chair. Huge breasts and wide hips draped in surgical white, spreading over the seat like rising bread dough. Tucker stopped behind her and cleared his throat loudly. The nurse seemed not to notice. So he went to the desk and signed his name into the visitor's book, thinking that's what she was waiting for. But nope, she was still hypnotized by the television. On the screen were two actors in fancy clothes, their hair fluffed as if they'd stepped into a wind tunnel, then plunged their heads into hair spray. "Dear God," the woman actor was saying, "it's true—you are prejudiced! You beast!"

Tucker cleared his throat again, and the nurse spoke for the first time, lifting her head briefly. "Stop making that noise—please."

Tucker took his hat off, trying to appear sociable and respectable. "It's visiting hours, ma'am. Says so right there on the door. I got a person I need to visit."

The nurse made no reply until a commercial came on. She looked up then, as irritable as if Tucker were a six-year-old asking for a glass of water. "What are you doing out of your room? And where did you get those awful clothes?"

Tucker said, "Huh?"

"And that bag—you better not be trying to sneak liquor in here!"

Tuck was in a good mood, and he really was trying to be polite, but he wasn't made of stone. After all, these were his best clothes.

"I ain't outta my room, 'cause I don't live here," he said with some heat. "And it's none of your goddamn business how I dress. Just tell me where my old partner Joe Egret is and I'll leave you be."

The nurse leaned her face toward him. "That kind of garbage-mouth language won't be—hey, just who do you think you are?" She lifted her bulk out of the chair. "If you don't get back to your room right now, I'll call the orderlies!"

Well, hell, enough was enough. . . .

Tucker took two quick steps and kicked the television off its stand, really putting his leg into it. The television landed on the linoleum with a crack, and the screen went fuzzy, flickering and throbbing.

Tucker grinned at the new expression on the nurse's face. He had her attention now, by God! He spoke before she could get a word out. "Now you listen here, missy, you tell me that room number—or my boot's bound for hemorrhoid highway. Com-prendo? As in your backside."

The nurse's face had paled. "My God—you're terrible."

Tucker still had his smile. "Yes ma'am. I heard that before. Now where's my partner?"

"Our television set!"

"That's right."

"You . . . bastard!"

"You kiss your mama with that mouth?"

"Get out of here right now!"

Tucker took a step toward the woman. "I ain't gonna say it again."

The nurse took a quick step back. "The Indian? Egret, you said?"

"Yep, the Indian. A great big one." Tucker held his hand over his head. "About so high."

The woman's legs appeared wobbly. "I was watching my favorite show!"

"Just tell me where the old fool is, you can keep on watching."

"What I'm going to do is call the ..." Then she paused, looking at the television. "Hey," she said, "it's working again."

"Not for long if you don't—"

"Oh, for God's sake! He's up the stairs.. One of the rooms toward the end of the hall. Find it yourself."

Tuck started to walk away but then stopped. "I know what's going on in that mind a yours, ma'am. You're thinkin' the moment I head up the stairs, you're gonna call the law. Or them whatever you call it—orderlies? But I'll tell you what: You give me ten minutes with my old partner Joe, I'll leave real quiet like. You don't, you can kiss that television of yours good-bye."

The woman flinched, some of her anger returning. "I won't tolerate threats against our television set! It's our only recreation."

Tuck was smiling. "Then you best not risk it. Ten minutes. Understand?"

The television screen faced the ceiling. The actors with the sprayed hair were tangled in an embrace, whispering to each other. The nurse said, "You leave me alone till this show's over, I don't give a damn what you do." She glared at him once more, then didn't look at him again.

*  *  *

The
rest home's second floor was a catacomb of narrow bed pens, and Tuck pushed open one door after another until he saw Joseph Egret. Joseph stood at the far end of the room, by the window. He wore a hospital gown that tied at the back; black hair hung to his shoulders,- his head and his hands shook with a slight pathological tremor as he held his fingertips to the glass, as if trying to reach through to the outside.

Tucker stood at the doorway, looking in. Except for the window, the room was dark, and his eyes were having trouble adjusting. He was also trying to adjust to the room's odor. The stink hit him when he opened the door,- caused him to snort and cover his nose. The smell seemed to come from the beds, only one of which was occupied: A shrunken figure lay connected by tubes to a sack of clear liquid suspended from a stand. The smell was a potent mixture of urine and some other odor that, had Tuck been younger, he would have recognized as the malodor of age and dying. He was standing with his hand over his nose when a quivering voice said, "It's that damn Indian. The stink. He farts continually and smells like a wet dog." The figure in the bed was talking, an old man with tiny bright eyes.

Tucker said, "Well, you don't smell like no box of Valentine candy yourself, buster," and pushed his way through the stench. He reached up to tap Joseph on the shoulder, saying, "Hey, you old fool—you gone deaf or something?"

Joseph turned to face him for the first time, and Tucker had to step back a bit—that's how surprised he was at the way Joseph had changed . . . had changed more in a year than Tucker would have thought possible. The great wedge of a nose was the same; the same high Indian cheeks, too. But now Joseph's beamy shoulders swooped like folded wings, and the sharp, dark, humorous eyes Tuck remembered were a syrupy glaze. He didn't seem nearly so big, either. Once Joseph had been six and a half feet tall, weighed probably 250. What the hell had happened?

"Gawldamn, Joe," Tucker said gently, not wanting to hurt his old friend's feelings, "these vultures stick a pin in you and let the air out? I've seen road kill looked healthier than you."

Joseph looked down, blinking at him, as Tucker added quickly, "Course, I don't mean that in a bad way."

There was no reason to get Joe mad; they'd been friends too long for that. Friends for more than fifty years, ever since they were teenagers, a few years after the completion of the Tamiami Trail, which crossed the Everglades and connected Miami with the west coast of Florida. In those days, he and Joe had developed a mutual bond that ensured honesty, affection, and scrupulous concern for the other—that bond being a massive white liquor still that either would have shot the other for. That still had produced forty gallons of liquor week in, week out, with little labor or upkeep on their part, and earned for them enough money to buy most of the villages on Florida's west coast. Had they wanted to buy villages. Which they didn't.