coast, you better nail Mickey’s ass to the deck ‘cause Minnie ain’t gonna be the only bad blow job in town.’”
Tucker Gatrell’s explanation of how he personally brought Disney World to Central Florida. It was a story I’d heard, didn’t much believe and didn’t care to hear again… so I walked along the periphery of mangroves, out of easy sight of the marina, back home.
Before Amanda left, she’d hurried off to say good-bye to the old fraud and returned to tell me how kind he’d been to her, what a gentleman he was, which proved that the girl was not foolproof when it came to strangers. Same with her mother, apparently.
Few of us are.
She said she hated to just go off and leave, because she felt sorry for him, after all he’d been through that week.
I said, “Huh?” but was thinking, Now what?
She said, “About his horse dying. He didn’t tell you?”
I said, “Tucker’s horse died? You mean Roscoe?”
“No, he didn’t mention anyone named Roscoe. It was the morning I called him at his house. When he told me, he got so upset I thought he was going to start crying. He called the poor thing his cow pony. ‘Just went out and found my cow pony laying dead in the stall.’ You know the way he talks. ‘My cow pony, he’s hit the high trail.’ Like that. Kind of tough, like nothing much bothers him, but he’s really so sentimental.”
For fifteen years or so, pretty close, Roscoe had been both horse and human to Tuck. Big gray appaloosa that Tucker treated like a house pet. Even when I was around, he maintained a running monologue with the animal. Rode him everywhere, strip malls, busy streets, drive-through banks, it didn’t matter to Tuck. His way of showing off, of demonstrating who he was.
I told Amanda, “Roscoe, that was his name. The horse’s name. But I wouldn’t worry about it. He can always buy another horse.”
Which didn’t elevate the woman’s opinion of me, no mistaking her reaction. But there it was. I had to listen to her say, “People can become very close to their pets, you know. Animals aren’t like car tires or bad lightbulbs or something that can be easily replaced. He really cared about that horse. I could tell.” A very chilly edge to her voice.
I said, “Yeah, the man wears his heart on his sleeve.”
“Okay, okay. You two aren’t exactly close. Like there’s this constant friction. I can feel it. But he’s an old man. All that talking he does, wanting attention, I think it’s because he really is sensitive. So why not be nice to him?”
She was right.
I decided the nicest thing I could do for Tucker Gatrell-and myself-was avoid him. Save us both some wear and tear. Besides, it was a Sunday on Sanibel… which meant that I had better things to do than hang around my lab waiting to be cornered by my idiotic old uncle.
Of late, Sunday meant baseball, then chicken wings and beer.
So there was no reason to talk to the man… or even say good-bye.
I am not a baseball fan, but I am a fan of baseball. That’s not the paradox it seems. I have never followed teams and box scares, but I love to play the game. Which is why I was not unhappy that Amanda had to leave early and get back to Lauderdale. I had a game that afternoon.
What a strange thing to remind myself of after all the years since I’d played competitively: ave a game this afternoon.
Actually, it was a doubleheader.
A month or so earlier, Tomlinson had signed us both up to play in a baseball league; the Roy Hobbs League it is called, a national organization named after the fictional hero in Bernard Malamud’s valuable book The Natural. Not Softball, baseball, a game where players steal bases and slide and wear helmets at the plate for a reason.
It was the real game. Rules required that players had to be over the ripe old age of thirty, and a solid baseball background was requisite. The league attracted a lot of former college players and a few ex-professionals, but mostly the teams were made up of an eclectic bunch of amateurs who, in their spare time, were attorneys, surgeons, plumbers and teachers or followed other vocations that were not as much fun as putting on spikes and playing nine.
Without asking my permission, Tomlinson signed us up because he said it would do the both of us good, getting off the island. No… what he actually said was, “It’ll be good for our heads, man. Get out there between the lines where the karma is purer. Keep in mind, amigo, that the shape of a baseball diamond is nothing more than two pyramids joined at the base. And I suspect that you’ve read about the electromagnetic vibes generated by pyramids. Very powerful, man. A very heavy mojo.”
Which was Tomlinson-speak that meant playing baseball would give us something to do that wasn’t based on boats or water… a nice change that might help get my mind off such things as the sexual transformation of grouper and my own failed love affair with Pilar.
Maybe Tomlinson was right, because I’d come to look forward to playing baseball on Sundays. Sometimes on Thursday nights, too, under the lights. And I wasn’t about to let Tucker Gatrell hold me up or make me late. So I hustled around my cabin, dressing myself in cup and supporter, stirrups over long white socks that were still known by the odd, antique name of “sanitaries.” Pulled on gray stretch baseball pants that buttoned tightly where white pinstripe jersey bloused at my waist, then settled my team’s ball cap on my head with no less care than knights of old who once added crowning balance to their personal armor-work.
Presto. Marion Ford, Ph. D. and purveyor of biological specimens, was now a simpler man of purer purpose. I was number 13, proud member of the West Florida Tropics, catcher and occasional relief pitcher. Dress a seventy- year-old man in a football uniform and he’ll look idiotic. Put him in a baseball uniform, though, and he’ll look like he can play nine and steal a base or two. That is one of the sport’s mysterious qualities… so maybe Tomlinson deserves more credit than I give him when he speaks of baseball’s nonlinear aspects.
Once dressed, I peeked out the window to make certain Tucker wasn’t on his way. Then I picked up the VHF microphone and hailed Tomlinson on channel 12, our personal channel of contact, saying, “No Mas, No Mas. This is Sanibel Biological Supply, Whiskey Romeo X-ray six-seven-nine-six. Copy?”
Waited a few beats before I heard, “Got you good, Doc. I plan to drink a few beers after the game, so maybe you’d better drive.”
Which was no surprise. I always drove to our Sunday games and Tomlinson always drank heavily afterwards. Besides, Tomlinson had no car.
Then he said, “But we’ve got to stop at my farm on the way home.”
Tomlinson’s farm: a small portion of rented lot off Casa Ybel Road where he was pouring a lot of time and energy into a new passion-growing chili peppers. Jalapenos, habaneros, Thai, Scotch bonnets, you name it. He grew them all. “The history of Anglo trade and corruption can be read in the pericarp of the humblest chili,” he was fond of saying.
What that meant, I have no idea.
Another claim: “The world chili market is dominated by the same three species that Columbus brought back to Europe from his first couple of voyages.” Talking like some first-rate ethnobotanist.
I found that interesting: three species of wild plant had been spread singularly, hand to hand and generation to generation, among all races and cultures. There were now, of course, hundreds of varieties, but nearly all were descended from those same three species of wild chilies that had probably evolved in the Amazon valley.
It was an unusual pastime for a man who’d spent most of his life at sea, but Tomlinson had apparently entered a back-to-the-earth phase; a revisitation, perhaps, of his commune days, when he lived on some California ranch with similarly long-haired kindreds who went by names like Moon Dance and Autumn. For a year or two, long ago, Tomlinson himself had assumed a name of choice. An “Earth name,” as he described it. He’d gone by the name of Lono, he claimed, out of respect for some Polynesian god he admired.
He’d worked on the communal farm and now he’d been called back to the earth, or so he said. He liked to get his hands and knees black with the commercial growing humus he trucked in because of Sanibel’s poor, salty soil. Growing chilies suited a certain need in him, and I was beginning to find it interesting, too, because he had planted seeds from all over the world. Plus I love to eat chilies.
“We can stop at the farm,” I radioed back. “I’m about out of jalapenos.”
“Then after the game,” he said, “we stop at Hooters for chicken wings and beer. Or hey-we can boat over to
