gulls he and Les Brodie had blown away in that spirit of adolescent cruelty that some are never quite able to shed.
A beam of white light falls under the Red Sox visor into his eyes, briefly obliterating the deific comedy. As his vision is restored, the birds’ noises and colours make him think of romance and he wishes Trudi was here to share this with him, to see how good it all worked out. He thinks back to Edinburgh, the ornithological experience generally limited to scavenging seagulls, oily cooing pigeons and cheeping sparrows bouncing like shuttlecocks along slate pavements.
Chet Lewis is telling Ray Lennox how he and his wife Pamela, who died two years ago, retired to Florida from Long Island. They’d always loved to sail and had purchased a plot of land, building their own home on it. It was partially destroyed by Charlie, he explains. Lennox, thinking of cocaine, is about to say ‘it happens’ before realising that Chet is referring to the hurricane.
In spite of his superficial good cheer and health, Lennox can now discern that Chet’s withering in the void left by his wife. There is a hollowed-out aspect to him, denuded by a terrible sadness that has settled in his eyes.
The banked homes and gardens are soon supplanted by the mangroves, which thicken to form a dense swamp. Chet explains that the bushes actually live on fresh water: rain, dew and the stuff in the earth, their roots going down deep. Then Lennox is startled as, only a few feet from the boat, a diving duck suddenly slams head first into the canal.
As they approach open water, a group of men are fishing from a pier. Lennox envies their easy camaraderie, envisions them getting older and fatter without bothering too much. Maybe age gives you that grace, where, with mortality looming, you really do learn not to give a fuck about anything other than the sun coming up and you and yours being able to draw breath every morning. Or perhaps they’re miserable suffering bastards inside, and death pounces when we finally see the futility of fronting it. He’ll find out soon enough, God willing. For the first time he wants to fast-forward into old age, at least how he perceives the good version of it; to drive out the vestiges of desire, ego, bullshit and insecurity. To have found that well of contentment that you want to drink from, and to just do that each day.
Tianna is sprawled on the front deck’s lilo, reading
Chet yells for her to come down. — Gonna kick things up now, he says, sly and knowing. Tianna shakily joins them at the enclosed rear deck, while Lennox wedges himself in the seat next to Chet as per the skipper’s instructions. Chet pulls the throttle forward and the motor roars into action as the boat tears over the water.
They surge away under a white and hazy midday sky, while Lennox looks back to the dwindling marina, baking and shimmering at the water’s edge. White boats sit immobile in their slips, like racks of training shoes in a sports store. An ibis flock glides over the bay as if they are formation jets, combusting into an ethereal magnesium glow as the sunlight hits their plumes. Then it’s suddenly dark, as the boat passes under thick, swirling clouds. Chet explains that the light is often murky from late morning to early afternoon. He cuts the engine, plunging them into an eerie silence, and drops anchor. Lennox has been keeping an eye on the navigation device and the sonic scanner, which reveals the distance between the hull of the boat and the seabed. In the strip of water between the Florida coast and the Ten Thousand Islands, he’s noticed that the gap from the bottom of the boat to the briny floor could fall to just over one foot, and seldom exceeded thirty.
Chet hoists up his creel and seems pleasantly surprised that it contains only lobsters and his pot just a variety of crabs: spider, horseshoe, blue, calico. He turns to Tianna and Lennox, who are watching his activities, delighting in the satisfaction moulding his weather-beaten face. — Usually you get the whole darn lot gushing out; sea horses, pinfish, tunicates, parrotfish, jellies. I even had a ray in my creel once.
Tianna points at Lennox as laughter peals from her. A reciprocal chortle works its way out of him. Chet appears a bit nonplussed, but figures it’s a private joke and sets about boxing his catch and throwing the smaller ones back. On completion, Tianna opts to go downstairs with the magazine as he restarts the engine, and the vessel rips across the sea. Soon, what appears to be an island comes into view.
As they draw closer, Lennox can just about make out the remnants of an old village, which lies on the right-hand side of the bay, next to yet another new marina and planned community. Chet moves the boat away from the lights, coming into an unmarked and barely posted inlet. It opens up to a concealed, antediluvian harbour and it’s like sailing into a lost world. As they cruise past the old wooden homes and jetties, a decrepit boatyard with some grubby fishing vessels and an aluminium boat shelter lie to the fore, and some shacks behind rising to the higher ground. From the left, the big condos of the new community look ominously over a small hill, a giant ready to devour everything around it.
Tianna has emerged from down below, holding a solitary baseball card. She wears an intense frown of concentration. Her expression disturbs Lennox. He is going to say something, but Chet needs help to moor the boat. As he ties up his end, he watches her pull the rest of the cards from her woolly bag and stick the lone one in the pack. The ibis birds hang around the boatyard. From an overhead tree, an osprey cheeps like a budgie.
In a pondering silence Tianna steps from the boat on to the wooden walkway. Her hand forms a fist as she bites on her knuckle. Lennox feels something swimming inside him. Thinks he’s perhaps imagining things. He looks around, the air appreciably warmer after being out at sea.
The grizzled encampment gives off a sense that its days are numbered. The bar-restaurant, a tin-roofed, grey-painted wooden structure, and the hub of the creaking settlement, is propped defiantly on stilts, on a semicircle of mudflats that form the harbour. With its adjoining glitzy sister, the aged bay curves away towards the dark grey mist of the Ten Thousand Islands that buffer Florida’s mangrove coast from the Gulf of Mexico.
The restaurant is an old school Florida cracker joint, the sort of place Lennox has heard much about but which are now almost as impossible to find, without a guide, as good fishing grounds. As they climb up the steep wooden steps, Tianna dragging behind, lost in thought, Chet says that, despite its island ambience, they have actually docked on a peninsula. — Although it might as well be. All the proper roads lead to planned communities and marinas full of swish boats. Apart from the sea, some of these old places can only be reached by dirt tracks. It’s so easy to drive past those turn-offs on the highway.
Inside the restaurant, a large white woman greets and seats them at a table. Lennox takes the tendered garish, colour-clashing laminate and reads the welcome at its masthead.
‘If seafood tasted any fresher we would be serving it on the ocean bed.’
The choices on the menu dance in front of their eyes. — What do you fancy, Tianna? Lennox asks her, wondering if he can manage some more catfish. Then the red snapper catches his attention.
— Reckon I’ll have chicken, she says, without enthusiasm.
Chet scowls at Tianna and shakes his head at Lennox. — That is sacrilegious in a place like this, young lady. My God, you can take the girl out of Alabama…
Lennox feels like protesting on Tianna’s behalf, but he’s only joking; trying to impart some grown-up sophisticated ways. Chet catches his scrutiny and is gracious enough not to take offence and spare his embarrassment. — So what line of work were you in? Lennox quickly asks him.
— Not very popular work, Lennox, Chet confesses in glum cheeriness. — I was an investigator at the IRS. Corporate stuff. A much-hated man on Wall Street.
Lennox squints at the thick forearms and powerful biceps. — You don’t look like a desk man.
— Ah, well, I was a powerlifter for many years. Competed all over. Chet’s jovial reminiscence dissolves into a lament. — Missed out on the Munich ’72 Olympic team by a whisker, which was probably a blessing. I got selected for Montreal the next time round, but I busted my shoulder and had to withdraw. He raises and massages it for effect. Perhaps it still bothered him. — Guess it wasn’t to be. I still try to get to the gym at least twice a week, and usually manage it, the fates and the tides willing. You look in pretty good shape. Do you work out?
— Kick-boxing, Lennox replies in some guilt, thinking Chet is being generous in his assessment, — although I’ve let myself go a bit recently.
