The Missing Manatee (2 page)

“Yuck,” I said, not even wanting to think about it. Eating a manatee would be like eating somebody's pet dog or cat.

“And I don't believe I've ever seen a trophy manatee head hangin' on the wall of anybody's den,” Earl drawled, looking at me with a sideways grin.

Imagining it, I grinned back. But then I pictured the lifeless body again, and felt the smile slide off my face.

“The only people I've ever heard complain about the manatees are some of the fishing guides,” Earl said thoughtfully. “Not Mac, but some of the others.”

“Yeah, I've heard 'em, too,” I said. “They hate having to slow down when they go through the refuge area. It takes them longer to get where they're going, and cuts down on their fishing time.”

Earl laughed and said, “You know what Dirty Dan calls manatees, don't you?”

I shook my head. Dirty Dan was a friend of Earl's and Mac's.

“Live speed bumps,” said Earl with a chortle.

Ordinarily, I'd probably have laughed, too, but not right then. “He doesn't mean anything by it,” I said.

“Nah,” Earl agreed. “He's only griping 'cause he likes to run his boat flat out.” After a minute he said, “About the only thing I can imagine is that some good old boys, or maybe some teenage kids, got drunked up and stupid.”

I nodded. It was a possibility. “So how are we going to catch 'em?” I asked.

“Hold on now, Skeet,” Earl said. “I don't think we'll be sending out the posse on this.”

“We won't?” I said, feeling confused. Did Earl mean we were going to go after the guy ourselves? I felt first thrilled, then terrified, at the prospect.

But Earl said, “First thing we'll do is go back and report it to Fish and Wildlife. Ordinarily, they'd be the ones to investigate if somebody killed or even hurt a manatee. If we had the body, they'd probably send it to St. Pete for study. But—” He shrugged, holding out his empty hands.

“But what?”

“Without a body, there isn't much to investigate. They might even take the position that without a body, there's no proof there was a crime.”

“But there
was
a body!” I protested.

“I know, I know,” Earl said soothingly. “It's too bad it up and disappeared. What I'm saying, Skeet, is that law-enforcement folks are busy. This isn't going to be real high up on their list of priorities.”

I couldn't believe this. “It's because I'm a kid, isn't it?” I muttered. “Nobody ever listens to kids.”

“It's not that, Skeet,” Earl said. His Adam's apple bobbed and he said softly, “I'm just trying to be realistic here.”

“But somebody shot a manatee!” I said. “It's against the law, right? You think he should just get away with it? That's not fair!”

“No, all I'm saying—”

“It's not right, Earl.”

Earl sighed. “I hear you, Skeet, but—”

I interrupted again. I couldn't help it. “I should have stayed here until somebody else came along in a boat,” I said in disgust. “Then we'd have the proof.” Even as I said it, I remembered the fear I'd felt there with the dead creature at my feet, imagining the killer nearby.

“Listen to me, Skeet,” Earl was saying. “You did the right thing. Think about it. Whoever did this was near enough to take the body away before we arrived, and we got out here pretty quick. I'm glad you weren't here for long, especially if it
was
a bunch of drunks that did the shooting.”

Maybe Earl was right, but I figured he was just trying to make me feel better.

“We'll go back and make our report,” he said. “And who knows? Maybe I'm wrong and they'll pursue this thing. But don't count on it, Skeet. We don't have any evidence, and the departments are all pretty strapped right now.”

“Okay,” I said, even though it wasn't okay at all. Earl was making it sound as if I was supposed to go back, make a stupid report, and wait to see what happened, which would be nothing. But I wanted to know who killed the manatee and hid the body, and why. Whoever it was ought to be caught and punished, plain and simple.

I sighed, and stepped back into the patrol boat.

Three

Even with the dead manatee on my mind,
I enjoyed the ride back upriver in the sheriff's boat. Earl zoomed through the curves and bends of the river, going close to sixty miles an hour. That felt really fast compared to my skiff, which maxed out at around twenty-five. He throttled down to idle speed when we reached the upper section of the river, where the manatees' refuge began. This was the section Earl and I had been talking about, the section that irritated some of the guides who had fast boats and wanted to use them.

It was April, and there were still about two hundred manatees around. They arrived in October to spend the winter, and some never left when spring came. They were eating and swimming and hanging out in the warm water coming from the spring at the river's source. We passed a bunch of them, lolling contentedly. Which is what a manatee
should
be doing, I thought, not getting ditched someplace with a bullet in its head.

We passed other boats, too. The river was busy with tourists who came every winter, like the manatees, looking for warmth and relaxation. A good number of the boats belonged to local folks, who recognized either Earl or me and waved as we passed them.

It was spring break, so I wasn't surprised to see some kids from school casting off the pier at the public dock when we idled by. I waved to my friend Lenny. Watching his face as he waved back, I could tell he was wondering what the heck I was doing out with the sheriff's department.

Then I looked upriver and called to Earl above the engine noise, “Hey, there's Mac!”

Earl knew I called my father Mac, but it confused most people. “He's your
dad,
” kids would say. “Why don't you call him
Dad?
”

I'd always shrug and say, “Nicknames run in our family.” Which was true. I was called Skeet, short for Skeeter, which was short for mosquito. That's what Mac claimed I looked like when I was born. “Why, he's no bigger than a skeeter,” he said when he first saw me, or so I've been told.

I've been trying my best to grow ever since.

Nobody ever calls me Russell Waters, Jr., which is my real name, except for teachers on the first day of school. Then I set them straight. And nobody calls my father Russ or Russell Sr., either, not even Mom. He's Mac.

“You want to stop?” Earl asked me.

Since he'd been gone, it seemed I was always wishing I could see Mac about one thing or another. I could pick up the phone anytime I wanted to, or ride my bike the couple of blocks to his place, but it wasn't the same as having him at home. Right then I wanted to tell him about the manatee in the worst way, but he had a client. Mac had the guy in a good position for casting shrimp to redfish or trout. The guy was standing in the bow, gazing at the water so intently he reminded me of a great blue heron waiting to pounce on a minnow. He looked as if he took his fishing seriously.

“Naw,” I said. “I don't want to bother him.”

Earl nodded. He knew the fishing-guide business as well as I did. Keeping the clients happy came first.

When we pulled into Larry's Marina, Larry himself was pumping gas into a pontoon barge filled with partying vacationers. He gave Earl and me a tired wave as we passed by. The money he made during tourist season was most likely what kept his business going, but he liked to act as though the extra work was killing him.

I helped Earl tie up the boat in its slip. As we headed for his patrol car, Blink came out of the shop toward me, grinning from ear to ear, followed by his mangy, flea-bitten dog, named Blinky. Blink—the boy, not the dog—was Dirty Dan's son.

Dan's official title was Dirty Dan the Tarpon Man. He was the best tarpon fisherman in these parts, probably in the whole state of Florida, maybe even the entire world. He was also Mac's and Earl's poker-playing friend, and my hero. I didn't know which of Dirty Dan's four wives was Blink's mother. They had all left Dirty Dan because of his single-minded devotion to tarpon fishing, but Blink stayed on. I guessed he always would.

I called Blink a
boy,
but once I asked Mac how old Blink was, and I was astonished when he said he reckoned Blink was around thirty. The thing is, something was wrong with Blink when he was born. No matter how old his body got, in his head he'd never be any older than five or maybe six, and that's how he acted.

If I ever knew his real name, I've forgotten it. Everybody called him Blink, even Dirty Dan. It was on account of his eyes, which were always opening real wide, then shutting tight, then opening again, all on their own.

He was the one who named the dog Blinky. Maybe it was the best name he could think of, or maybe he knew he and that dog would get so close, you might as well call one as call the other. Anyway, Blink loved that dog like nobody's business, even though Blinky was the most pathetic-looking creature you can imagine, with matted, stinky fur, insect-bite sores, and his tail broken so it hung at a right angle halfway down. That didn't stop him from smiling and wagging at everybody he saw, though. I never knew a dog could smile, until I met Blinky.

Blink and Blinky were always at the marina. Dirty Dan kept a little pop-up camper around behind the parking lot, and that's where the three of them lived. It suited them fine. Blink hung around at the marina throwing a ball for Blinky and doing simple odd jobs for Larry sometimes, and all Dan had to do was roll out of bed and he was tarpon fishing.

So Blink came grinning and Blinky came smiling and wagging toward me across the scrubby grass of the marina's picnic area. I knew exactly what Blink was going to do, and sure enough he reached into his pocket, took out a quarter, and said, “Wanna flip, Skeet?”

Ordinarily, I'd say sure and Blink and I would play his favorite game, one that he never seemed to grow tired of. It was funny, but I never got tired of playing it with him, I guess because he got such a big kick out of it. But this time I was in a hurry, all puffed up with the importance of having an official police report to make.

“Can't now, Blink,” I said quickly. “I got something I got to do.”

The corners of his mouth drooped and his eyes opened and closed quickly. “Uh-oh, Skeet's mad. Don't be mad, Skeet. I'm sorry, Blink's real sorry. Don't be mad—”

He looked ready to cry, and I felt like a real crumb. “Aw, Blink, I'm not mad,” I said. “It's just that I gotta go with Earl and—never mind. Give me the quarter. Let's flip.”

At that, his face lit up as if I'd given him a present or something. He handed me the quarter and I made a fist and positioned the quarter on the top of my thumbnail. “What'll it be?” I asked.

Blink screwed up his face as if in thought and finally called, “Heads!”

I popped my thumb and flipped the quarter into the air, caught it, and slapped my open palm onto the back of my other hand. Blink and Blinky both watched me intently. Slowly, with a dramatic flourish, I removed the top hand, revealing the quarter. Blink peered over to look.

“Heads!” he crowed joyfully. “I win! Do it again, Skeet!”

I was already positioning the quarter for the next try. “What'll it be?”

Again, Blink squinched up his face, but I knew what he was going to say this time.

“Tails!”

I flipped, paused, and uncovered the coin. Blink looked. It was heads. His face fell into a tragic mask. He was as sad each time he was wrong as he was happy when he was right. “Oh, no. I lose. Do it again, Skeet!”

I flipped the quarter a few more times until he'd called it right twice in a row. Then I handed it back, saying, as I always did, “That's it, Blink. You're getting too good.”

He smiled happily and repeated, “I'm getting too good.” Carefully, he returned the quarter to his pocket, saying, as he always did, “I'll save it for another day. Right, Skeet?”

“That's right. Save it for another day.”

“Bye, Skeet.”

“See ya, Blink.”

I ran to catch up with Earl. He was waiting beside the police car talking to Larry, who was on his way into the marina's office with the pontoon boat driver's credit card.

“Sounds like you've had yourself quite a morning, Skeeter,” Larry observed as I walked up to them.

“Yeah, I guess,” I answered.

“Terrible thing,” Larry said. “But I can see where it'd be tough to investigate without any evidence.”

I scowled. Everybody agreed it was a terrible thing, so how come nobody except me wanted to do anything about it?

“Well, I gotta go take this gentleman's money,” Larry said, holding up the credit card. “I'll be seein' you.”

I was pretty discouraged when I got into the patrol car with Earl. He was quiet on the way to the station, and that made me feel a little guilty. If he was right and the sheriff and the Fish and Wildlife people weren't going to work too hard on the case, it wasn't his fault.

“Thanks for going out there with me, Earl,” I said in a low voice.

He was quiet for another minute. Then he nodded and said, “I want you to know I'm gonna try my best to get the boss fired up about this, Skeet. C'mon, let's go see him.”

But the sheriff wasn't there. Earl helped me fill out a report about what I'd seen. Then he drove me back to the marina, where I'd left my bike. I rode home, passing the trailer where Mac lived since he'd left. Left permanently, it now appeared.

Mom was at work at the Quik-Save, where she was manager of the movie-rental department. It seemed like a pretty good job, but she was always saying she wanted a better life for me.

“What do you mean, better?” I used to ask.

“Better than
this,
” she'd say, throwing her arms out to indicate not only her job but our house, the town of Chassacoochie Springs, our whole lives.