Chapter 4
Tomlinson seemed surprised when I beached my skiff in the mangroves south of the fish house so that we could look for Hannah Smith Darroux on foot. He'd been scolding me for skewering Julie on the cleat— 'Violence is like a boomerang. It always comes back at you'—but he paused when I swung toward shore, favoring me with his you're -growing-as-a-human-being, expression—a look, happily, that I seldom receive. But I didn't beach my boat out of sympathy or to please Tomlinson. The way Arlis Futch had behaved interested me . . . interested and angered me both. I admired the fact that he empathized with the younger men, and he had summed up the inequities of the net ban accurately. Yet he also seemed to take perverse pleasure in being defiant and intractable. That kind of belligerence enjoys a mythos to which every region lays claim: the flinty Yankee, the bow-necked mid-westerner, the resolute cowboy. It is a character standard from folklore in which 'good old common sense' is an essential bedrock ingredient. But too often, 'common sense' is the safe harbor of ignorance and an excuse for intellectual laziness. They don't need the facts because they already know the truth—their common sense has spared them the effort of investigation or thought. It was precisely that attitude which too many cottage industry netters brought to the fishery, and, in doing so, they helped destroy their own way of life. Arlis Futch was an intelligent man. Stupid people don't build successful businesses or earn the respect of their peers. So why would he cloak himself in stupid indifference?
But that's not the only reason I swung into shore. The way Futch had reacted to Tomlinson's story piqued my interest. He had asked about Jimmy Darroux hoping to hear that the man had suffered. I was sure of that. It was in Futch's tone, his eyes. He hadn't approved of Darroux as a husband for Hannah Smith—a woman he spoke of with a degree of respect he certainly didn't show the men who worked around the docks. Tomlinson says my best quality and my worst quality are the same: an orderly mind. I think he's half right. Tomlinson is mystical, I am methodical. He believes in the Great Enigma, I do not. The behavior of any organism should be understandable once external influences are deciphered. When an otherwise predictable animal behaves oddly on the tidal flats—or on the docks—a little alarm goes off in my head. The inexplicable attracts me because there is nothing that cannot be explained. When the explanation is not readily apparent, I become compulsive about isolating the external influences. It attracts me in the same way that jigsaw puzzles and chess draw in similar types of people. Assemble enough pieces, make the right moves, and the reward is clarity.
The alarm had gone off when Arlis Futch asked about Jimmy Darroux, and when he spoke of the wife. Not a loud alarm, just a gentle chime of suspicion. But that, connected to the experience of holding a charred body in my arms, was enough. I wanted to meet Hannah Smith Darroux. I wanted to see for myself why Futch held her in such high regard.
I idled in close to shore, looking up at the lights ofhouses built on Indian shell mounds. When I judged we had gone a couple hundred yards, I tilted the engine and poled us toward a patch of mangroves. I didn't want to leave my skiff unattended in the open. There was no moon, but the night sky was star-bright, and Julie andJ.D. were out there cruising. I stern-anchored so that we could haul the boat off when we got back; then we waded through muck and oysters to the road that ribboned between the houses and the bay.
Tomlinson stood in the middle of the road, fingering a braid of his hair. There was no traffic. It was quiet but for crickets and the whine of mosquitoes. 'I have a feeling it's that one. I don't know why, man, I just do.' He was pointing to an old cottage with an open board porch. The porch light showed peeling, colorless paint. 'I'll walk up and ask.'
'No,' I said, 'we stay together. We'll start with the first house. If they don't know where Hannah Darroux lives, someone at the next house will.'
But the elderly man in the first house knew. Turned out that Tomlinson had guessed correctly.
Hannah Smith Darroux was not the sun-wizened fishwife that I imagined she would be. She was like nothing I could have imagined—my imagination is not that fanciful. When Tomlinson knocked at the screen door, the floor of the porch on which we were standing began to vibrate with the weight of approaching fdotsteps; a steady, authoritative thud. I expected a man to answer. Instead, the door swung open and a woman confronted us, asking, 'Help you?'
Tomlinson didn't speak for a moment, and then he said, 'Huh?' as if he'd been dozing.
The woman said, 'Huh what? Do I know you men?'
'We're . . . looking for Hannah Darroux.'
'Pretty close, but what you found is Hannah Smith. What's your business?'
Tomlinson cleared his throat; he seemed to be having trouble speaking, but he was probably reacting to a kind of sensory overload. He had been as unprepared as I for the woman who stood in the doorway. Hannah Smith Darroux was well over six feet tall—probably six two, six three. Balanced on long crane legs, she had a busty, countrified body: big hands, shoulders, and bony bare feet. I guessed she would weigh 155, maybe 160. She wore jeans and a blue denim work shirt with the tail knotted and bloused loosely above skinny adolescent hips. I guessed her to be in her mid-twenties, maybe a shade older. Her hair was Navajo-black, the whole heavy gloss of it combed over onto her right shoulder as if she didn't want to be bothered with it. She wore no makeup, no jewelry of any kind—not even a wedding ring. The result was a kind of unconscious stylishness. She had wide, full lips, deep sun lines at the corners of her brows, good cheekbones, a squarish quarterback's jaw, and dark perceptive eyes that looked from Tomlinson to me, then back to Tomlinson, taking us in, assessing us, then dismissing us as unimportant. I saw no telltale redness in those eyes. The widow Darroux hadn't done much crying.
'I know this hasn't been the best of days, Mrs. Smith, but I'd like to speak with you. For just a few minutes.'
'If I had a few minutes, I'd throw you in my dryer and close the door. You're drippin' all over my porch.'
'Oh . . . well, see, I had a little. . . encounter down at the fish house—' Tomlinson was backing down the steps, trying to wring more water from his shirt.
'Arlis Futch throw you in, or just have one of his boys do it?'
'Actually, I sort of fell—'
'Men that fall off docks ought to live in the mountains. If you're sellin' something, I suggest you try Denver. Wet the porches there.'
'Seriously, I'm not selling anything, Mrs. Smith—'
'I should say you're not. Question is, why are you bothering me?'
Tomlinson opened his mouth as if to speak, then stopped to collect himself. By continually anticipating what he was going to say, then interrupting to reply to it, the woman was not only keeping Tomlinson off balance, she also was establishing a weird dominance that had even me wishing he would finally say something that would interest her.
After a second or two, he chose the direct approach. 'I'm here because your late husband asked me to come. My friend pulled him out of the water this morning; I was at the hospital with him when he died. My name's Tomlinson, his name's Ford.'
Which threw her off her rhythm. Caused her to narrow her focus, partly out of suspicion, I sensed. 'Jimmy told you to come here?'
'Sit down, I'll tell you everything.'
'Before he died, right? Not something crazy, like talking from the hereafter? You seem that kind to me.'
'I am! You've got a good eye for people, Mrs. Smith. You want to give transsphere communications a try, we can discuss the possibilities later. For now, though, the only thing he ever said to me was while he was still alive. His last words.'
'But the cops told me, this Lieutenant somebody, that Jimmy never regained consciousness. Now you're saying he spoke to you?'
'The police haven't interviewed me yet. I'll tell them, but I'd rather tell you first.'
'I see.' She pressed a long index finger to her lower lip, a reflective pose. 'You could be cops just tryin' to trick me into something. The county cops or the A.T.F.—they already took up half my day. And me with mortuary arrangements, a million things to do. You try to trick me, I reckon my attorney would have to nail you to the wall.
