Captiva

Felt shock close to disbelief—She made it?—followed by pure admiration. There are people in this world who are so strong, who possess such power of character, that the very attributes that set them apart also make the validity of their character suspect.

Heard the small voice say: You were wrong again.

It was true. Wrong about many things. Very wrong about Hannah.

I was gaining on her small green boat. Now I was close enough to see the empty porch that encircles my house . . . and the empty platform below it on which sat my big wooden fish tank. Was close enough to see the rambling, rickety yards of empty boardwalk which lead from my house to the mangrove shore. Was close enough to see ... to see Janet Mueller come through the mangroves and step up onto the boardwalk, walking swiftly. New outfit on this chilly morning: furry red miracle-fabric jacket and green shorts.

It seemed, then, that I could not make my boat go fast enough . . . seemed as if everything was being was dragged down by a leaden gravity created by my own anxiety . . . seemed as if time and movement were being dilated into a terrible slow motion. I leaned over the windshield of my boat, my weight full on the throttle, as if, by urging my boat along, I might free the both of us from gravity's grip. It did not help.

I watched Hannah standing at the throttle of her boat, going fast, waving frantically, trying to get Janet's attention. . . .

Watched Janet, as if lost in her own thoughts, walk obliviously to the end of the boardwalk and step up onto the platform below my house. Realized that she was headed for the fish tank. . . .

Saw Hannah, now no more than a hundred yards away, raise both hands over her head and flag her arms back and forth. . . .

Watched Janet stop at the fish tank, look up at the windows of my house, then reach for the lid of the fish tank. Couldn't she hear the boat bearing down on her? . . .

Saw Hannah cup both hands to her mouth—she was shouting now— as her boat dolphined closer and closer to the house, still going full speed. . . .

Watched Janet lifting the lid . . . lifting it up on its hinges . . . pushing the weight of the lid higher. . . .

Then saw Janet suddenly look at the approaching boat and jump back as if in surprise. Saw the lid slap shut just as Hannah's boat slid to a fast stop below my house, the chines of her boat plowing up a curtain of bright spray that soaked the platform and Janet, too. . . .

Hannah was now talking to Janet, hands motioning animatedly. Janet hesitated. Said something back to Hannah . . . listened for another moment. Then Janet turned and hurried off the platform, jogging along the boardwalk toward shore. . . .

Thank God.

I was a little more than fifty yards away now, already backing off on the throttle, slowing down. Hannah turned to look at me and grinned—a tall, gawky, handsome woman in a cheap yellow rain suit. Her grin so bright that her swollen eye seemed insignificant; did not detract at all from her beauty. She made a clownish show of wiping the sweat off her brow and slinging it away. Mouthed the words: 'I told her.'

I raised a fist over my head and shook it—Good job!—and motioned her toward the pilings where she could tie up while I checked the place out. She idled around the corner of the house . . . caught the only available line of my mooring pulley system, and pulled it. But the counterweight didn't budge.

I thought: That's odd, as I watched Hannah give the rope another yank. And yet another.

My brain took its time; scanned dumbly for an explanation; neuron conduits began the electrochemical process of deduction . . . and suddenly, the message relays were seared by the acid shock of a single, numbing thought: Trip wire!

But I realized it much, much too late to stop Hannah from pulling the rope a final time. Much, much too late to scream a warning, though I tried. And much too late to stab my hand out to stop her—an absurd gesture because I was still forty or more yards away. Yet I attempted to do that, too.

Later, Ron Jackson would tell me the A.T.F. guys calculated that the radiant power of the bomb was no more than that of a quarter-stick of dynamite. It was a small and personalized little bomb, created for just one person; placed against a piling and triggered off the mooring rope so that a returning boater—me—could not possibly avoid it.

So Hannah could not have avoided what happened to her. When she pulled the rope free, I saw a bloom of thermal energy shoot skyward, and in the same instant, I was knocked to the deck by the shock of the noise and rifled debris. When I got to my feet again, I saw that the platform and the back wall of my lab were on fire . . . saw Hannah facedown in the water, blown far from her listing, burning boat.

Days afterward, Janet Mueller, who saw it all, would tell me that I gunned my boat toward Hannah, and when I was close enough, I jumped into the water beside her without pulling the throttle back or switching off the engine. Janet told me that, because I couldn't remember how I had gotten Hannah to shore, or how and why my boat had ended up high and dry, wrecked in the mangroves.

What I could remember was the look of Hannah s face as I held her head in my lap. A pretty face, and peaceful, but her dark eyes were . . . wrong. . . because of the force of the explosion. Could remember the hoarse and strangely amused quality in Hannahs voice trying to ask me something ... or trying to tell me something. . . trying to make me understand.

Leaned to touch my lips to hers. 'Don't try to talk, love.'

But she was stubborn; wouldn't be silent. In a final effort to be heard, she lurched her face up toward mine and whispered words that, for a long time, made no sense: 'Ford? Like before, I . . . didn't . . . sink!'

Though her eyes remained open, Hannah Smith did not speak again.

I remembered that. And I remembered threatening to punch one of the paramedics if he did not allow me sit at Hannah's side as they flew us to the hospital—'What's the big deal about a bruise on my forehead!'—and I remember the expression on the emergency room doctor when he turned to me . . . after pulling the sheet up over Hannah's face.

The only other thing I remember clearly about that morning was standing alone, in an empty hospital corridor—I don't know how I got there—and watching Dr. Maria Corales walking toward me. She was wearing soiled surgical scrubs. She looked very tired. The way she put her hand on my shoulder communicated genuine concern. She told me, 'We'll keep the respirator going until we hear from the family, or until the hospital's Human Subjects Panel meets. But the surgery didn't go well. I'm afraid I lost him this morning.'

It took me a long, dull moment to realize what she meant. She was talking about Tomlinson.

They buried Hannah four days later, January 16, a Monday, one day after the official close of Florida's last mullet roe season. I couldn't decide whether it was good timing or cruel irony. Buried her in an incongruously modern cemetery on the mainland—one of those fairway-neat memorial parks that use standardized brass markers to make it easier on the mowing crews. The cemetery was close enough to the main highway so that all the tourist traffic made it difficult to hear the minister's words.

I don't know how many hundreds of people attended. Enough to render the island of Sulphur Wells nearly empty that afternoon. Enough to illustrate Tomlinson's theory about Hannah's position in the community. When a chieftain dies, the whole tribe turns out. I stood and talked with Tootsie Cribbs for a while. Met his nice wife and three children. His kids looked so uncomfortable in their Sunday clothes that I guessed they would have preferred to be in school.

I didn't blame them.

Also met Hannah's two brothers. There was Bob, who'd flown in from Atlanta, and Cletus, who now lived in Orlando. They weren't at all what I had expected them to be. Both were huge, hulking men, but their expressions were mild, faintly bovine; they didn't have Hannah's wild eyes. Nor were they fishermen. Bob was an attorney; Cletus worked in administration for Disney. It was Bob who told me, 'Hannah was a romantic. With her grades and with her talent—all-state basketball; class president three years in a row—she could have gotten a scholarship, no problem. Florida State wanted her, one of those ritzy Ivy League women's schools, too. But she'd get her mind set on something and nobody could talk sense into her. Our dad fished day and night so his kids wouldn't have to fish. So what's Hannah do? She becomes one of those back-to-the-roots people. I loved her dearly; she was one of my favorite people in the world, but Hannah was . . . different.'

I could not argue.