Captiva

the bee-wah croak of catfish. The lower level of the house is dockage, the upper level is wooden platform. Two single-room cottages sit at the center of the platform, both under the same tin roof. One of the cottages is home, the other I've converted into a lab. The lab is necessary because I run a small company, Sanibel Biological Supply, selling marine specimens, alive or preserved, to schools and research firms around the country. It's a good place for a biologist to live and work, particularly when the biologist is a bachelor who likes living alone but who occasionally wants company. Dinkin's Bay Marina, located down the mangrove shore, provides that when I want it, just as the marina store provides staples such as chips and conch salad and cold beer in quart bottles.

From across the bay, I heard the ratchet cough of an outboard too cold to start on the first pull. After a couple of more tries, I heard Tomlinson's muted voice: 'Japanese scum!' Then the engine caught, and a few minutes later, he was tying his Zodiac up at my dock, saying: 'Um-m-m, coffee. I smell coffee ... or yeah, maybe a beer would be good. Something light, a breakfast beer. Maybe loosen up the receptors, make it easier to communicate.' He climbed barefooted up to the main platform, combing fingers through scraggly blond hair, tugging at his beard, intense, focused, ready to communicate with the universe. As always, he smelled of Patchouli, the old hippie perfume.

I said, 'Interesting choice of clothing, Tomlinson.'

'Got to look sharp—that's what I always say. Look sharp, feel sharp.'

'The serape makes sense. Nice Clint Eastwood touch. But a sarong? Isn't it a little cold to be wearing a sarong?' With his long bony legs showing, the man resembled a stork.

'Sah-rong' he said, correcting my pronunciation. 'Night like this, my body wants to breathe. Teach Mr. Happy the world's not always a warm and cheery place. Living in Florida has spoiled the both of us.'

'Ah.'

'Self-deprivation is a forgotten path to spiritual awakening. The Buddha didn't live naked in the desert just for laughs.'

'Nothing funny about that,' I said.

'Pain purifies.'

'Yeah, well. . .'

He was trying to hold down his billowing skirt. 'Shit! That wind comes blowing right up the prune whistle, huh?'

'If you're cold, I've got some sweatpants you can wear.'

'Goddamn right I'm cold. Take a whiz, I'd have to goose myself and grab Mr. Happy when he jumped out.' He was pulling open the screen door, headed into the house. 'You want a beer too?'

'I'll stick with coffee.'

'Just in case, I'll bring a couple.' Meaning he would drink them both.

As I told the detective (his name was Jackson), we heard a boat enter the bay sometime between three- thirty and quarter to four. There was no moon, just a haze of stars, but I could tell it was a commercial netter's boat by the sound. Net boats are usually open boats, twenty to twenty-four feet long, and their engines are mounted near the bow through a forward well. Because of the well, a net boat can run forty miles an hour in nine inches of water and turn as if on a spindle, but the prop augers a lot of air. The cavitation noise is distinctive.

Tomlinson and I noticed it at the same time, a bumblebee whine at the mouth of the bay two miles away. 'This time of year,' Tomlinson said, 'those people don't sleep at all. The netters.' He had his eye pressed to the telescope, looking and talking at the same time. 'They got what? Five months left? Six?'

'The net ban goes into effect in July. After that, they're out of business.'

'Yeah,' he said. 'Permanently. People wonder why they're desperate? Fish all day, all night, trying to bale all the mullet they can before the clock runs out. Babies to feed, mortgage payments to make. Shit. Out there alone in a boat, all that on their shoulders.'

I said, 'You voted for the net ban. The guilt starting to get to you?'

He looked up from the telescope as if mildly surprised. 'I did? Jesus, I guess I did. Oh man. . . . That's exactly why I hate politics. Always having to make decisions. But they were wiping out all the fish, and fish can't vote. You're the one told me that.'

It was true, but had I told him that? I couldn't remember—although lately, it seemed, I'd been saying and doing more small dumb things than usual. 'What I meant was, it's the migrant netters who come down and strip the place bare. The ones from North Florida, Georgia, Texas; all over. They come down for December and January, take the fish, dump their garbage, and leave.'

'The mullet roe season,' he said. 'That's right, I remember now. They sell the fish eggs to the . . . Taiwanese.'

'Taiwanese. Filipinos. The Japanese. They dry it, consider it a delicacy. Or can the milt.'

'Take the seed stock and the fish can't reproduce. Exactly.'

Which was also true. But he was missing the point—rare for Tomlinson because the man has a first-rate intellect. Granted, he's eccentric, often bizarre. As a late-sixties drug prophet, his mind sometimes takes odd and quirky turns, though it's impossible to say whether it's through enlightenment, as he claims, or because he has done serious chemical damage to the neural pathways and delicate synapse junctions of his brain. Tomlinson's genius is nonlinear, empathic, able to make intuitive leaps from illogical cause to logical effect. There are times that 1 don't take Tomlinson too seriously, but neither do I discount anything he says. That's not true of the general cast of New Age mystics, crystal worshipers, alien advocates, astrology goofs, macrobiotic back-to-the-earthers, and their politically correct brethren. If one of them told me they had been communicating with extraterrestrials, I would nod, smile pleasantly, then angle for the door. But when Tomlinson says it, you think: Well . . . probably not, but . . . maybe. He possesses a kind of stray dog purity that is without ego or malice. I have never met anyone anywhere who didn't like and trust Tomlinson.

'He must have struck fish,' I said. The sound of the boat had traced the western bank of Dinkin's Bay . . . kicked up mud at the shallow Auger Hole entrance—I could hear it—and grown louder as it neared the marina, then stopped abruptly. The mullet fisherman had dumped his net, probably, and was now hauling it in.

'Yeah,' Tomlinson said. 'Or maybe she did. I see women working right along, out there no matter what the weather. White rubber boots and plastic rain jackets, picking fish all by themselves. Couple of 'em.' Tomlinson had begun to tinker with the telescope again, scanning through the viewfinder. We'd already taken a good long look at Venus. It appeared as a tiny moon in crescent phase, gold-tinged by the reflected light of its own yellow clouds. Jupiter was an ice-bright globe, its four visible moons suspended around it. I was satisfied. Felt it was worth getting up at three A.M. because looking through a telescope creates, in time, a pleasant converse perspective. You naturally imagine what it is like to be seen from space: a milk-blue planet, the peninsula of Florida dangling into the sea, the Gulf Coast, a sleeping island, the clustered lights of Sanibel and Captiva, clustered stars and infinity beyond.

I stood shifting from one leg to the other, trying to stay warm now that Tomlinson was free-ranging the Celestron. To the west, the marina was still. Occasionally, a refrigerator generator would kick in or the sump of a bilge pump. I could hear the desert-wind baritone of surf on the Gulf side. The only other noises were the squawk of night herons and, once, the cat scream of raccoons. In another couple of hours, the fishing guides would be stirring, getting their skiffs ready for work. But now the docks were deserted. In the harbor's deep-water slippage, the trawlers and cruisers and doughty houseboats were as dark and motionless as a charcoal sketch. People aboard were buttoned in tight against the January cold. At the shore docks, near the gas pumps and bait tanks, smaller boats—the Makos, Aquasports, Hydrasports, Lake & Bays, Boston Whalers, and Mavericks— were tied incrementally and in a line, like horses.

My eyes swept past . . . stopped . . . and swept back again. I had seen something on the docks. What. . . ? For an instant, just an instant, an image lingered—the suggestion of a human figure hunched down, moving past the bait tanks.

'Far . . . out,' whispered Tomlinson. 'Hey—I think I've got it!' He was folded over the telescope, holding his hair back in a ponytail. 'Yes ... a signal of some sort . . . definitely a signal. Flashing light . . . getting . . . getting . . . brighter.' He stood, motioning with his bony hands. 'Take a look, Doc. I think my space buddies are sending us their regards.'