Shark River (19 page)

Then she’d slid Tucker’s letter in front of me, both sides of an old sheet of legal notepad covered with his handwriting.

I read the letter. Looked though the folder, at all the old photos, and I read the papers in there, too.

There was a photo of a much younger Tucker Gatrell holding a caramel-colored child on his lap, a stunning black woman at his side—Ransom as a little girl, and her mother.

There was also a photo of Tucker in his jeans and Justin beaverskin cowboy hat standing with me. I remembered exactly when it was taken, the uneasiness of him being there. It was a few minutes before the final match of the high school state wrestling championships, my junior year. I was wearing my singlet, the weight class sewn on the hip—189—white on green.

Looking past my shoulder at the photo, Ransom had said, “My, my, you still got the shoulders and that skinny lil’ butt. But them glasses you wearin’, the black rims, they make you look like a hooty owl with muscles.”

She was surprised that I wasn’t interested in the photo or Tuck’s letter. Then she seemed stupefied when I refused to accept two of the four coins. She’d yelled, “Man, you don’t want to help me? Then I don’t understand why the hell I lied to help you!” and stomped off.

That night, I had dinner with her and Tomlinson at the Tarpon Lodge, but she’d recovered her composure. Didn’t mention the subject once. Spent the evening holding court in the bar, telling funny stories, flirting with the waiters. Wearing that black skirt with her long legs sticking out and a white blouse that illustrated well why she didn’t need a bra. Then Leo sat down at the piano bar while Ransom took turns dancing with every man in the room until jealous wives began to intervene and lead their husbands home.

Now it was Friday and we were in my trawl boat, skiff in tow, puttering home to Dinkin’s Bay. Tomlinson had paddled the rental canoe back to the mainland at first light, then loaded his backpack onto his forty-two-foot Morgan
No Más,
along with Nimba Dimbokro and her five big suitcases for a farewell cruise to Sanibel before he called a cab to take her to the airport the next morning.

Our stay on Guava Key, we’d both decided, was over. For Tomlinson, it was because he wanted to help Ransom go find her inheritance.

For me, it was because of what I had been forced to promise Harrington.

When I said to Tomlinson, “Is Nimba mad because she has to leave a day early?” he shook his head, disconsolate. “It’s gonna take me five hours to beat my way to the marina, and she says she’s going to oil herself up naked and give me one last try. Then she’s sleeping aboard, and I know damn well she’s gonna try again. Ransom staying over last night brought out a competitive streak in Nimba that her Zen instruction didn’t touch. The pressure, man, it’s really starting to take its toll.”

Meaning Ransom had to ride with me.

 

 

Ransom said, “Know what the feeling is I get? From reading Daddy’s letter over and over, I get the feeling he may have stolen that money, which is why he had to hide it. Him and someone else, the big Indian he mentions. The doubloons back on Cat Island? It took me awhile to admit it to myself, but same thing. Daddy stole that gold from a very mean man there, and had to hide it away in the monastery ’cause he couldn’t get off the island with it.”

For some reason, I found that hilarious, and had to fight back the laughter as I replied, “Tucker Gatrell a thief? Well . . . I guess it’s something we have to consider . . . yes, as upsetting as it may be to you. That Tucker would send you off to find stolen money . . . now that you mention it, uh-huh, we have to admit it’s a possibility.”

Stealing money, stealing horses, pigs, chickens, small planes, and the lyrics from country-western songs—there wasn’t much that Tucker hadn’t stolen at some stage in his life. I didn’t share that with Ransom, but I was thinking:
Finally, she’s catching on.

We’d crossed Charlotte Harbor and left the Intracoastal markers off Bokeelia on Pine Island and cut in behind Patricio Island, running back country. Running doesn’t seem like an accurate word to describe a rattling, rumbling twelve knots, but at least we were moving steadily over the bottom. It was one of those low-pressure-system lulls we sometimes get in winter. The air had a summer density but the sky was Rocky Mountain blue. On the far curvature of earth and sea were borders of cirrus clouds. The clouds were a fibrous silver: crystalline illustrations of wind sheer, adrift, like sails.

We’d picked a good day for passage. In a chop, my flat-bottomed trawler pounds miserably. In a squall, it’s borderline dangerous. Today, though, the bay had a gelatin texture, lifting and rising with the slow respiration of distant oceans and faraway storms. The air was balmy, scented by the tropics and syncopated with cool Midwestern gusts of wind that touched the face, then vanished.

From my elevated spot at the wheel, I could look down and see the bottom slide by. Could see the floury white sand pockets and meadows of sea grass—individual grass blades leaning in the tide as if contoured by a steady breeze. Could see crossing patterns of spooked redfish and sea trout, pushing expanding wakes through the shallows. Could see table-sized stingrays explode from the marl, could see the astro-shapes of sea stars and brittle stars isolated in their own paned universe. Could see anemones and comb jellies and drifting medusoids, their tentacles angling downward and behind, like storm clouds dragging sheets of rain. There is something intimate about sea bottom, when you have the opportunity to see what exists there, a sense of an unclothing, which makes it personal, private.

“Are you hearing what I jus’ said?”

I answered, “Huh?”

Ransom was shaking her head, smiling. “I keep talking, I get the feeling you not listening, my brother. The fish and things, them sea creatures, you get a real happy light in your face when you look at them.”

It was true that she’d been talking right along. Not the maddening, nonstop meaningless chatter of a neurotic. Talking with passion, though, about Tucker and his letters, which is why I wasn’t listening. I much preferred to concentrate on the sea bottom.

She was sitting in the captain’s chair beside me, barefooted, feet propped up on the bulkhead. She was wearing the yellow canvas shorts again, but with a pink tank top, on the front of which was printed:

Her beaded braids were tied back with a pink ribbon, and I noted that around her neck she wore strings of cheap red and white beads as well as beads of white and yellow. From my trips to Cuba and the islands, I recognized them as Obeah beads. Or Santería beads. Because to understand a people you must also understand their beliefs, I’d had to do some research for my work in those places. Obeah is a potent religious mix of voodoo, Catholicism, and old African superstition. The beads would have been blessed or empowered by a priestess, known as a Babalao in Cuba or, on most of the islands, as an Obeah “vitch” or witch.

I couldn’t remember for certain, but I thought that the red and white beads that Ransom wore honored the God of Destiny. The meaning of the white and yellow beads, however had stuck with me. They were worn only by women and invited grace from Ochun, the goddess of rivers and love and female sensuality.

I’d always found that a charming combination: river, love, sensuality.

Judging from the way she’d fondle the beads while in thought, I guessed her to be a true believer, which was not surprising. More so than most religions, Obeah and Santería both offer quick relief from emotional suffering without moralizing sermons. For every physical or spiritual ailment, for every lapse in luck or judgment, the priests can come up with a combination of herbs or spells or beads to make things right again. Obeah doesn’t have much interest in morality or ethics. Among the world’s poor, those two things can be an expensive indulgence.

“What I was telling you about was the bad man that Daddy Gatrell stole the gold from. You didn’t hear a word, did you?”

“Sorry.”

“I tell you one more time if you stop lookin’ at all the fishes down there. Why you like them things so much, man? Down in the islands, we got those things, but we don’t care about them. They just somethin’ nice to eat.”

“I like them because . . .” I let the sentence trail off. To describe what she considered food as a fascinating lineage of cause, effect, and ruthless adaptation seemed pompous. Same with the philosophical imperative: The microcosm can be a perfect mirror of the macrocosm only if the source of creation is the same. So I finished, “I like them because it’s always been a hobby. So tell me about the bad man again. I’ll listen. Promise.”

She put both her hands on my left shoulder. Gave me a little push, but not hard enough to hurt my arm. “Then you sit where I sit, and let me drive so’s you can concentrate.” When I hesitated, she said, “Man, I can drive a boat good as you any ol’ time. Out here, what I gonna hit? An
island?
”

I shrugged and let her take the wheel.

 

 

The reason that Tuck’s attorney hadn’t contacted her until more than two years after Tucker’s death was that he’d been ordered by Tuck to wait until the man from whom he’d probably stolen the Spanish coins had also died.

Ransom told me, “He a very dangerous man on my island. Man by the name of Sinclair Benton. I kept askin’ myself: ‘If Daddy got them coins honest, why’d he have to hide them? Why couldn’t he take them off the island or just give ’em to me straight away?”

The reason, she’d decided, was that Benton kept a sharp eye on Tuck and Joseph when they visited, and an equally close watch on Ransom, whom the whole island knew to be Tuck’s daughter. Seven or eight times, Tucker had visited her during her childhood, and seven or eight times, island thugs had forcibly searched him before he left.

“I don’t think Benton know’d for sure who it was robbed him, but he always very suspicious of Daddy Gatrell. That why it always too dangerous for Daddy to go back and get that treasure. Benton, he was a big ol’ Obeah man, a gorilla man—what we call Mr. Bones, the Prince of Death. Benton, he a witch. A real witch who know all the spells and powders. Ev’body on the island scared of Benton, and Benton, he hated our daddy more’n he hated most white men, and that sayin’ something. Probably ’cause my momma love Daddy Gatrell so much.”

Just hearing that combination of words, “Daddy Gatrell” was still difficult for me to process because it was such an outrageous mismatch. I found the fact that he’d gone back to see his child surprising. I found the fact he’d actually remembered her in a will positively shocking. No one ever described Tucker as a thoughtful or sensitive man.

Ransom had one hand on the wheel, steering easily as she talked. “Judge Flowers, he was directed to wait until he got notice of Benton’s death before he send me these papers. Daddy didn’t want to put us in any danger, understand?” She pointed to the little storage box where her single suitcase was stored along with the papers that had been mailed to her. “That evil man died a month or so ago, and everyone on Cat Island was happy. Had us a big party, all the junkanoo bands, all the scrape-n-rake bands, we singin’ and playin’, dancin’ and drinking that ol’ rum. Two weeks later, these papers arrive from the judge, and I been searchin’ for you, my brother, ever since.”

At first, I thought she meant Cat Cay, a popular, highly publicized fishing destination. But, no, she meant Cat Island, a large, remote key in the middle of the Bahamian chain. The only reason I knew about the place was that a couple of the Sanibel guides had broken down while making their way along the islands and had to spend a few nights there. They’d told me it was one of the few places in the Bahamas that was pure, hadn’t been touched by tourism yet. Only one paved road, a few cars, mostly fishing and agriculture.

Ransom said, “I don’t know what Benton did to make Daddy Gatrell mad enough to rob him. I don’t doubt there was a very good reason for it. But know what?” She had very white teeth when she grinned; they made her skin appear darker. “I don’t much care the reason ’cause I got me the gold coins, and I got me more than that, too. Like I tell you before, I’m in the new part of my life. Many women my age, they look in the mirror, see their ass gotten big, their bubbies droppin’ down, they kids all gone. So they think ‘I ain’t gonna fight no more ’cause my womanly life, it all done.’ Not me, man! I done already told you about how I changed myself. Or maybe you didn’t hear that, either?”

Yes, she’d told me and I’d listened, impressed. Told me all about herself in the first hour or so, riding along in that slow boat. She wasn’t that eager to talk about herself. I had to keep asking. It is an old and favorite device: Keep asking the right questions, and there will be no need to talk about yourself.

Ransom was quite a bit older than she looked—thirty-seven. When she was fifteen, she’d married a Cayman Islander by the name of Ebanks, a turtle fisherman. She had two sons, one now twenty, the other, her firstborn, died when he was fourteen.

“The dragon got him,” she told me. “The mangrove lakes on Cat Island, they ain’t got no bottom. Flow right out to the big ocean, man, through caves. My son, Tucker—I named him after Daddy, understand?—my dear lil’ boy, he went swimmin’ in a lake we call ‘Horse Eatin’ Hole.’ That ’cause it got a dragon living down in its caves that come out at night and eats horses. But my young Tucker, he just laugh when people tell him that. He say, ‘That just superstition, man!’ Smart? That lil’ boy, he
was
smart! Readin’ books all the time, collecting butterflies and bugs to study. The islanders, they all laugh and call him a fool when he say they no dragon. So what that strong lil’ boy do? He go to Horse Eatin’ Hole and swim at night just to prove himself. Went down in the black water, and he never came up. Lil’ Tucker, he not a good swimmer and the dragon got him sure enough.

“That night right there almost kill me, too. It were the worst night of my life. When they come tol’ me, I don’t remember nothing for three or four months afterwards. Nothin’ except my throat hurting from the sound of my crying.”