included.”
He was thoughtful for a moment. “I haven’t figured it out, man, and I’ve worked in the music industry. Chessie is smart, and classy, but she also has a weird vibe. Powerful; she’s a force. Especially when she’s at the piano. Her voice isn’t audio—it’s chemical. So watch yourself, man. Watch yourself. Hear?”
Was that some kind of warning?
Tomlinson was wearing his baggy British shorts, and a tie-dyed tank top that read: WEIRDNESS IS ONLY WEIRD IF YOU FIGHT IT. He also had the Kilner goggles strapped around his neck. He touched the goggles now. “It has to do with her aura. Chessie’s different. When I use these to look at you”—he fitted them over his eyes—“I should be able to see three auric layers. The etheric, the astral, the mental.”
I said, “Oh, please,” and continued working.
“This is science, man. Read the Bible, those halos weren’t made of plastic. The brain and body put out thermal energy and electromagnetic waves. I’ve recoated these lenses with dicyanin dye, which makes them…well, imagine that it’s an auric prism.”
I had a net full of thrashing grunts and pinfish. I lowered them gently into the tank. “I’m imagining.”
“When I look at you…I see all three energy layers. Hmm. Yes, a sort of cloaking effect. Lots of blue and violet in your ethereal layer today. Light blue, which is good. Means your creative side is growing. Green, that’s the dominant color. Far out. Doc, you’re entering a period of growth and change you’ve never experienced. Normally, there’s a lot of red in your aura—no offense.”
I said, “None taken. We were talking about the old lady.”
“You think of her as old?” His surprise was genuine. He removed the goggles. “Maybe I did, too, at first. I’m trying to think. Well…if I did, she seemed younger every time I saw her—because she’s fun, so full of life. Until you came along, anyway.”
I looked at him.
“We had some fun. The friendly type. Discussed old movies; she’d play the piano. Dance, like I mentioned. Then she shut the door on me. Emotionally, I mean. I think it was because I was trying too hard to figure out her act. The karmic story. You know, the big picture? Then you came along.” He made an open-palmed gesture, telling me it was no big deal.
“A week ago, I took these to her house.” He tapped the goggles. “I think it scared her.”
“That’s enough to scare anybody.”
“No. It’s because I can see what other people can’t.”
I said, “There are some who doubt?”
He was oblivious to the sarcasm. “She doesn’t have a normal aura. The energy pattern she gives off, it’s black and white. Evil and good, nothing else. Weird, compadre. Spooky. I’m not convinced she’s
I said, “Terrifying,” thinking:
M any people lost boats in the storm, Jeth included. Which is why he was now in the starboard seat beside me after asking if I’d give him a ride to St. James City on Pine Island.
By car, it was an hour-and-a-half drive. By boat, even in this crummy weather, it was twenty minutes.
We were taking my boat.
“I’m done fishing out of Indian Harbor Marina,” he said. “So I’ve got to do something to make money. I just talked to Mack. He’s pissed I quit, and won’t hire me back.”
“What?”
“Even though I’m a guide, he still thinks of me as a marina handyman. There was a ton of crap needed doing, but I took off for Indian Harbor. So, hell…I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe a water taxi business. Cast-net mullet— anything. There’s a guy in St. James who’s got a Mako he says Javier and I can use in exchange for a cut of what we make.”
“Javier’s still in jail?”
“Nope. One of his fishing clients is an attorney, Steve Carta. Steve got him out already. I’ve been through that drill, man. It sucks.”
I wasn’t certain that Chessie Engle and I would come to an agreement about salvaging the wreck, so I didn’t mention that he might already have a job. I drove the boat and listened.
I was glad Tomlinson wasn’t along to tell Jeth how dark his aura looked. He was glum; under a lot of pressure. Jeth had finally married Janet Mueller, his on-again, off-again lover. She was a great lady who’d endured too much tragedy, including the loss of a child. Janet was now three months pregnant, and didn’t need the additional worry of how they would pay bills.
Even when I told him about the German coins, he didn’t smile. “Coins, huh? If we find a million of them, maybe I can make the last two house payments, then buy my own boat.”
It’s the randomness of life that’s at the root of two delusions: good luck, and bad.
I was one of the lucky ones. I didn’t lose my boat because I didn’t have a boat to lose. I’d ruined my much- abused Maverick months before by running it over a ski jump
Big loss. To me, a boat’s a tool that I also use socially. All along the coast of Southwest Florida, there are islands to visit. I use a boat the way most people use a car.
I spent weeks researching what boat to buy next. I thought seriously about one of the rigid hull inflatables used by the military and Coast Guard. Also considered catamaran hulls. The design makes a lot of sense.
But when it came time to put down money, I bought a newer version of the boat I’d trusted for years. Ordered the twenty-one-foot Maverick with a 225 horsepower Yamaha. A ghostly gray-blue hull, jack plate, and poling platform. The Maverick is an open boat classic that’ll run sixty miles an hour in a foot of water, handles like a Lexus, and rides smooth and dry even in weather.
I’d taken delivery one week after the storm. Lucky.
D inkin’s Bay is a brackish lake that opens through mangroves into a water space of islands called Pine Island Sound. Seventy miles to the north is Sarasota. Fifty miles south is Naples. Marco’s next, then the Everglades littoral, and the Florida Keys.
Hundreds of islands lie between, some inhabited, most not. St. James City is to the east of Dinkin’s Bay, a couple miles away.
I told Jeth, “Hold on,” and leaned on the throttle, feeling the hull lighten beneath me as it popped friction-free from the surface, then settled on plane—“plane” meaning the boat had partially escaped the wave system beneath, and was displacing less than her own weight.
Nice.
It was after 3 P.M. Tide was up but ebbing. Wind: twenty knots, east-southeast; bay choppy, even though we were in the mangrove lee. I crossed the flat to Green Point, running forty miles an hour in knee-deep water, then cut behind the ruins of an abandoned fish house, spooking pelicans and cormorants off roosts, their wings creaking in the volatile air.
At Woodring Point, I found the cut, slowing long enough to wave at my cousin, Ransom Gatrell, who was sitting on the porch of her little Cracker house, reading—a financial report, most likely. A blue tarp, government issue, covered her roof, and the roofs of neighboring houses. Trees were down, dumped in splintered circles by tornadoes.
She blew me a kiss. I saluted in return, and continued on.
My engine was new, still going through its break-in period, so I varied speeds, accelerating, then decelerating, taking it easy as we slipped into the larger waves of Pine Island Sound.
Jeth had ridden in silence, but brightened now that we were away from land. “She rides nice.”
“Yeah.”
“Solid, like she’s got a keel with ballast. Quiet, too.”
“Yeah.”
“I haven’t felt a drop of water. Is she trimmed much?”
“No, just a tad.”
I smiled, and got a fraternal smile from Jeth in return. There are few things as freeing as being on open
