nephew of a man I admired very much, the late Frank DeAntonio, had called Mack out of the blue after the storm, said he’d won the New Jersey lottery, and wanted to visit Dinkin’s Bay on his new boat.
Eddie DeAntonio had asked Mack if the “freakin’ island” had blown away, and said his late uncle mentioned a guy name Ford, and “some weirdo named Tinkerbelle.”
Eddie was expected to arrive around Christmas.
In the month since the storm, three friends had been hospitalized, one acquaintance had died, there were two marriages to attend, and my cousin Ransom had fallen in and out of love.
Small events and intimacies seemed more important now. I didn’t understand why.
S tanding behind the marina’s pole barn, which serves as a maintenance shed and warehouse, I told Mack, “The marina’s not the same without Jeth around. And now that Janet’s pregnant—”
Mack made a shushing motion with his hand. “I’m trying to count, darn it, Doc. Every time I get to twenty, you say something and I’ve gotta start over.”
Mack is Graeme MacKinlay, owner and operator of Dinkin’s Bay Marina. Mack, the transplanted New Zealander who is partial to white Panama hats and fine Cuban cigars.
He had a clipboard in his hand, checking inventory. Pawing through boxes of T-shirts, boxes of shell ornaments, rubber alligators, hats, and pink plastic flamingos. Pausing to write numbers on a sheet.
The storm had ripped away the barn’s roof, so there’d been water damage. He’d lost thousands in merchandise, along with part of his dock system, plus all the damage to the buildings.
Insurance agencies, we were all learning, bill promptly, but pay off reluctantly, and at their own pace—if they pay at all.
Jeth had asked him for his old job back a few hours earlier. Since then, Mack had showered, changed into fresh clothes, and he’d lit a new cigar. His mood hadn’t improved, though.
“I let Jeth live here, paid him decent wages even in the slow times when I didn’t need him. September, October? Might as well close the place. But I still paid him. So what’s he do after we get the guts kicked out of us by a hurricane? Goes north to a marina that didn’t get much damage. It’s business, Doc. Money. It’s got nothing to do with Janet being pregnant.”
Mack takes many things seriously, but nothing quite so seriously as money. He keeps a big wad of hundreds in a money clip, and likes to count it when he thinks no one is looking. He still has an old-fashioned cash register in the ship’s store because the ringing sound of a sale makes him smile.
Mentioning Janet, though, caused him to soften a little.
I said, “You know the story about her first child. Before she moved here from Ohio? Then that nightmare she went through when the boat sank, and those divers were lost.”
He made the shushing motion, then grimaced. “Damn it all, you made me lose count again. Besides”—he tossed the clipboard onto a table—“I don’t have enough business now to justify putting Jeth back on the payroll. Even with the docks we lost, I still have more empty slips than I want to think about. Every boat that sunk, or got blown away, I lost a customer. Lost the fuel sale, the bait and beer. Everything. Not to mention the tourists who aren’t coming because of all the baloney they see on the news.
“The storm was bad. But what happens after a hurricane, it’s worse. No one tells you that.”
The pressure was getting to Mack. It was the same with all who were dependent on the economic interlinkings of tourism. Resorts, restaurants, hotels, and retail shops were suffering, but surviving. So far. Other small business operators—fishing guides, tour operators—were already broke. There were no tourists, so cash flow was zero. Most had to borrow against their boats or property to pay bills. Which meant they had no money for new roofs, or windows, or whatever else they needed to stem damage done by rain and mold. So they stood helplessly, watching their homes disintegrate around them, as the rains continued.
In a disaster area, cash is king. Contractors have so much work, there’s no reason to do a job on the gamble that insurance will pay off months later. And the federal emergency agency, FEMA, had been more trouble than help. With its reams of forms, it leached valuable time from those who had no time, and provided nothing in return.
There were a lot of desperate people who, as weeks passed, were becoming more desperate.
Javier was one. Jeth another.
Mack added, “There’s a rage growing in people. Have you noticed? Not everyone. Just the ones who had property that got a direct hit. It’s been over a month, most of the state’s already recovered, but folks in this area are still fighting for their lives. It’s like they feel targeted. Shit on by God, by nature, the government, insurance agencies, everything. They’re snappy, like dogs, ready to bite. But bite who?”
I’d noticed. The bands of a hurricane may extend hundreds of miles, but the eye is narrow. If you’re not in the eye, a hurricane is just bad weather; sometimes,
Shit on by God, by nature, by the government, and insurance agencies. As analysis, it was as accurate as any I’d heard.
A wooden fence separates the marina parking lot from the area that lies behind the maintenance shed. We stood among junked outboards, boats on trailers, marine litter all around, Styrofoam, kapok, and trash hanging in the trees, blown there by the storm. To the northeast, I could see a patchwork of blue tarps. They covered damaged roofs: Mack’s home, the marina store, and the gift shop.
All across South Florida, blue tarps designated homes that had been in the storm’s path, thousands of them. They were government-issue, fifteen-by-fifteen-foot polyethylene. The tarps stunk of plastic, and similar materials that are transitory and disposable. Which is why I’d ripped my tarp off the second night, and used bits of scavenged tin and wood to plug my roof.
Something else I could see beyond the fence: Tomlinson in his dinghy, steering toward my house. Far behind, just poking through the westward opening into Dinkin’s Bay, was a green mullet skiff. It was locally made, marine plywood. A small man stood alone at the controls.
The man looked familiar, and so did the boat. Arlis Futch? Jeth had said he was working at Indian Harbor Marina as a night watchman.
What was Arlis doing in Dinkin’s Bay?
To Mack, I said, “You know what you can afford, and can’t. I hope you don’t mind me making a pitch for Jeth.”
“Don’t worry about it. Hell, Doc, I miss the kid, too. He’s been hanging around here since he was in high school. And Janet—she finally has a chance to have a baby…” He sighed, his smile weary. “See ya, Doc.”
As I opened the gate, Mack looked up from his clipboard. “Tell Jeth to call me, okay? Who knows. I might be able to find something. He really is a hell of a nice kid.”
15
“It’s been four weeks since the storm,” Tomlinson told me, “and I’ve decided that man’s greatest structural flaw is that we can’t use our dicks as snorkels. Who’s had time to come up for air? It’s even worse for women. They’re all pent up, like overinflated balloons.”
I stood at the north window of my lab, looking out. Yes, it was Arlis Futch. A short man with huge forearms and hands from pulling nets, wearing a big Bing Crosby hat. But Arlis wanted time alone before he came ashore. That’s the way I read it, the old man drifting a hundred yards from my stilt house, engine off, in a boat designed for netting mullet, but which was now obsolete because of a net ban that had taken his livelihood away. Not only his, but the livelihoods of several thousand Florida commercial fishermen, most of them competent, responsible people; a few, redneck trash.
The good and the bad, it didn’t matter. They’d vanished not long after their promises to fight back had been dismissed.
Arlis was one of the good ones. He’d been close friends with Hannah Smith.
I turned from the window, and listened to Tomlinson tell me that fluctuating barometric pressure—because of all the hurricanes—was having a major effect on Florida’s female population.
