The Missing Manatee (3 page)

“But what's wrong with
this?
” I'd say, her words making me feel puzzled and hurt. I liked our lives the way they were, at least the way they used to be before Mac had to go.

Mom would get a sort of faraway, dreamy look on her face and say, “Oh, Skeet, there's so much more out there. Why, you can be anything you want.”

“I want to be a fishing guide.”

“Oh, no, Skeet. No. You could be a rocket scientist, a doctor, maybe a researcher who discovers a cure for some horrible disease…”

“Come on, Mom,” I'd tease. “With a last name like Waters, what else can I be but a guide, like Mac?”

She'd tease back: “Why, you could be a scientist, like Jacques Cousteau. A marine biologist. Or…” She'd pause to think, then add, “Or a swimming pool manufacturer. Or a cruise ship captain. Think of that! You'd get to travel all over the world.”

But I didn't want to be any of those things, and kidding around didn't change that. I wanted to be a fishing guide like Mac, and a legendary fisherman like Dirty Dan. I mean, how cool would it be to be known as “the Tarpon Man”?

“Why don't
you
do that stuff, if you think it sounds so great?” I'd ask.

And Mom would look sad and say, “I made my choice when I married your father. It's too late for me. But, Skeet, you have your whole life ahead of you.”

Yeah,
I always wanted to say,
and it's
my
life, not yours.
Lately I'd stopped talking about how I planned to be a great fisherman and a guide, because I didn't want to see the disappointment on her face. I knew what she thought of fishing guides, and I didn't want to get her started on her speech about their “deviant lifestyle.” How they got up at four in the morning and fell asleep in front of the TV at six o'clock at night, not leaving much time for what she called “quality family life.” How lots of them drank too much. How they made lousy husbands and fathers because they cared more about fish than about their families. How there must be some kind of wild gene that caused them to spend day after day in a boat under the blazing sun with clients who half the time turned out to be jerks, hoping to stick a hook in a fish that they ended up releasing after they'd landed it anyway.

And how she sure hoped her son hadn't inherited that wild gene.

Man.

So anyway, Mom was still at work when I got home, but Memaw—she's my grandmother—was in the living room sitting at the sewing machine, stitching some glittery silver stuff onto her favorite denim cowgirl shirt. She looked up at me and smiled. I could tell right away that she was up to something.

“Skeeter, there's a big karaoke contest tonight at the River Haven Grill, and I aim to sing in it. You and your mama are comin' to cheer me on!”

Four

Memaw hogged the bathroom
for about an hour, taking a long bath and fooling with her hair. Before she came out she called to Mom and me, “Don't you two look yet. I want you to see me with my whole outfit on, so you can get the full effect.”

Mom shook her head and gave me a look and a little smile as if to say, Here she goes again. For a mother and daughter, Mom and Memaw were pretty different. It was weird, but I thought Mac and Memaw were more alike. Mom was always saying Memaw ought to act her age. Memaw said why should she, with Mom acting enough like an old stick-in-the-mud for both of them.

Once when they didn't know I was listening, Mom said Memaw was embarrassing. Memaw said she couldn't understand why Mom had to be the ant in the lemonade at every picnic lunch. I tried to stay out of it, but it seemed to me that Memaw was having a lot more fun than Mom. And anyway, Memaw never embarrassed me.

A couple of minutes later, Memaw hollered from the bedroom, “I'm coming out. You ready?”

“We're ready, Memaw,” I hollered back. “Bring it on!”

The door opened and Memaw stood in front of us with her hands on her hips, posing like a movie star. Then she threw her arms out and spun around, so we could get the whole picture. Her blond hair was piled up high in loops and curls, held with sparkly silver-and-blue clips. She was wearing her denim shirt, all decorated with silver fringe and sequins. Her jeans had a row of sequins down the side of each leg, which she must have just sewn on, and she was wearing a belt with a big silver heart-shaped buckle. Around her neck she'd tied a red cowgirl bandanna, and she was wearing her favorite red cowgirl boots.

“Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”

“Wow, Memaw,” I said. “You look like a singer on TV.”

“Not too bad for an old grandma, am I?”

“No way. You look great.”

“Thank you, darlin'.” She gave me a dazzling red-lipstick smile. Then, snapping her fingers with one hand and holding a pretend microphone in the other, she launched into a song I'd heard her practicing around the house. It was called “These Boots Are Made for Walking.”

When she started singing, Mom clapped and I stood up and cheered and let out my loudest whistle. “Go, Memaw! Knock 'em dead!”

After a minute or two, she got to the part of the song where she stops singing and sort of talks to her boots, telling them to start walking. At that, Memaw held her chin up real high, pumped her arms back and forth, and marched in place, stomping her feet like anything. It was pretty spectacular.

When she'd finished, I said, “You got that contest won, Memaw. No point in the rest of 'em even showin' up!”

“You really think so, Skeeter?” she said, giving me a big, perfumey hug. “I hope you're right. I'd dearly love to win that home karaoke setup they're giving out for the prize.”

Mom made a little choking sound in her throat right then, and I could tell she wasn't exactly thrilled about the prospect of Memaw practicing new songs, with musical backup, right there in the living room.

I said, “That'll be great, Memaw.” And I meant it, too.

We got to the River Haven Grill at six o'clock. The contest didn't start until seven, but Memaw said she wanted to get a good seat and check out the competition. Mom and I ordered burgers, but Memaw said her stomach was too jittery to eat. She ordered a Lone Star beer to “get in the mood.” I guess that's what cowgirls like to drink.

We sat on the outside patio where the contest was going to be held and watched people as they drifted in. Memaw checked everybody over with an eagle eye.

“Don't worry, Memaw,” I told her. “Don't any of 'em look half as good as you.”

“Thanks, darlin',” she said. “But you can't always tell by lookin'. Sometimes a dull brown bird can make a mighty sweet song.”

Well, I guess. But still, I felt sure Memaw would win.

Then I heard Mom take a sudden, sharp breath. I turned in the direction she was looking, and saw Mac walk onto the patio with Earl and Dirty Dan.

“There's Mac!” I said.

“And look who he dragged in with him,” Mom said drily. “The aptly named Dirty Dan.”

It killed me that Mom didn't like Dan. She called him “shiftless” because he didn't have a real job. I'd tried to explain to her that he didn't
need
a job. He made money at poker and by winning tarpon tournaments. If he was strapped for cash, he'd take a client out tarpon fishing for pay, but mostly he just fished for himself.

Mom thought even fishing guides who worked regularly were shiftless, so her opinion of Dan was right down there in the mud with the crabs. I guess Dan's four wives probably agreed with Mom, now that I thought about it. But I didn't care. Dan was a lot of the things I hoped to be someday. And, anyway, he was Mac's and Memaw's friend.

There was a famous story about Dan I never got tired of hearing. It always came with a warning: Don't even think of trying this yourself. One day when he was out fishing, Dan hooked up a giant tarpon. He fought it and fought it for about three hours. Finally, when it was getting tired, a hammerhead shark showed up and started circling around. They do that sometimes, when they sense a fish is in trouble. They figure on getting themselves an easy meal.

But there was no way Dirty Dan the Tarpon Man was going to give up his record tarpon to a shark, no sir. So he jumped right into the water, which was only a couple of feet deep, with his rod in one hand and his fish club in the other.

Some people think hammerheads are kind of a joke because they look so silly. I mean, they have those weird rectangle-shaped heads that look like they were put on sideways, and their eyes are way out on the ends. But they are seriously scary predators, with huge mouths and rows and rows of real sharp teeth. They get big, too.

Anyway, Dan stood right in the water and whacked that ten-foot-long monster on the head every time it came near his fish! After a while, the shark gave up and swam away. Each time I heard the story, I had to laugh, picturing that shark swimming off, wondering in its prehistoric little brain, What the heck is going on?

Dirty Dan landed his record tarpon and there wasn't a bite missing. He wasn't called the Tarpon Man for nothing.

“I'm going to go say hi, okay?” I asked Mom.

“Sure, honey.” She smiled at me when she said it, but it was one of those forced smiles.

I hated times like this, when I wanted to be with both Mom and Mac like before, and the only way I could do that was to split myself down the middle. “I'll be back in a sec,” I said, and raced over to where Mac and his friends were taking seats across the patio.

“Hey there, Skeet,” said Mac, grabbing me in a bear hug. “I hear you got yourself deputized today. Or were you just trying to give Earl here a lesson on how to run a boat? Lord knows, he could use it.”

“You hear that, Skeet?” said Earl, shaking his head sadly. “You'd think your daddy would know better than to smart-mouth an officer of the law.”

Dirty Dan said, “I believe there's strict penalties for sassing a deputy. Isn't that right, Officer Earl?”

“Yessir,” said Earl. “
Ve
ry strict.”

Pointing his finger at Mac, Earl said, “Looks like you're gonna have to bring the food
and
the beer Tuesday night, old buddy.”

“No problem,” Mac answered cheerfully. “You two just bet the way you always do, and I'll have double my money back before eight o'clock.” Then he looked at me and said, “Earl told me how you found that manatee this morning.”

I nodded, and looked hopefully at Earl, but he shook his head. “No news yet.”

“Strange the way it wasn't there when you went back,” Mac went on. “How do you figure a thing like that?”

I shrugged and said, “I don't know, but I'd sure like to see the person who did it go to jail.” Then, grinning at Dirty Dan, I imitated his deep voice and added, “I believe there's strict penalties for that.”

I expected Dan to come back with a wisecrack, but instead he said, “I believe I heard Mac say you're on vacation from school. Is that right, Skeet?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you caught yourself a tarpon on a fly yet?”

“No,” I admitted. “I've caught a couple on bait, though.”

Dan snorted. I knew what he thought about bait fishing for tarpon. To Dan, the only way to take one of the big, beautiful silver beauties was on a fly. “You want to come tarpon fishing with me some day this week?” he asked.

Did I want to go tarpon fishing with Dirty Dan, the Tarpon Man? Do fish swim? I looked at Mac. Seeing the hesitation on his face, I knew what he was thinking: Mom wouldn't approve. But Mac also knew how badly I wanted to catch a tarpon on a fly, how many times I'd tried and failed. He'd taken me out a lot, but Mac was primarily a bait fisherman. Dirty Dan was a fly fisherman exclusively, and he was the best. With Dan, I had a real chance. Mac understood that.

I willed him to say yes. What he said was, “I'll have to talk to your mom about it, Skeet.”

Right. Mac couldn't make his own decisions about me the way he used to. He had to talk over every little thing with Mom. I scowled in frustration.

Mac gave my arm a reassuring squeeze. “Don't you worry. I think it'll be all right.”

Turning to Dan I said, “Thanks! I really hope I can come.”

“If your mother says it's okay, you come to Mac's Tuesday night,” said Dan. “After I whup these two at cards, we'll check your gear and tie up some flies. Wednesday morning, we'll go out, catch you a silver king. Deal?”

“Deal!” I said.

Just then, music blared over the sound system, and the deejay stepped behind the podium and began fiddling with the microphone, which let out a loud squeal.

“It's the karaoke contest,” I said. “I better go back. Memaw's singing.”

Dan's face broke into a big grin. “Oooweee!” he said. “
This
I want to hear.”

Mac and the others all turned to the table where Mom and Memaw were sitting, waved, and smiled. Memaw waved back gaily and Mom wiggled her hand halfheartedly.

“Go on,” said Mac, and he gave me another hug. “Don't worry, I'll talk to her,” he said softly.

“Thanks, Mac,” I said. I wanted to ask him what Mom had said to him on the phone that morning, so he could tell me I'd heard wrong or it was all a misunderstanding and he was coming back soon. But this wasn't the right time or place to talk. It was never the right time or place anymore. Feeling a familiar lump rising in my throat, I swallowed it quickly and said, “See ya.”

The deejay was explaining that the winner of the contest would be the person who got the loudest applause after singing. “So clap real loud for your favorite, ladies and gentlemen,” he told us, “and my state-of-the-art, scientifically accurate applause-o-meter will record the level.” He held up something that looked like half a clock with numbers on it from one to ten, and a big arrow, and everybody cheered.