The Man Who Ivented Florida (5 page)

It had taken the two of them the best chunk of a month in Havana to piss all that money away, but they had managed. And they had been secretly proud of the inventive methods required to do it.

After government men destroyed the still, Tuck and Joseph had joined talents in a variety of enterprises over the years, which included running rum, smuggling in Orientals from Mexico, smuggling in Mexicans from the Bahamas, and running guns to Castro's revolutionaries, for which they received absolutely nothing and were, in fact, just happy to escape with their lives.

In recent years, they had spent a few evenings each month together. Sometimes, they'd poach a gator or two, knowing full well there was no longer anyplace in America to sell an illegal hide. Or shoot a few white ibis—curlew, Tuck called them—and fry them up with rice and tomato gravy. Some nights, Tucker would let some of his cattle escape, blame the neighbors, and contact Joseph with a desperate plea for roundup help. Actually, it was just an excuse to ride and drink as they once had, and the bulk of their sentences began, "Remember that time . . . ?"

Mostly, the two men drifted apart. All friendships begin on a chance first meeting and usually end on an equally unexpected last encounter. Friendship is more closely related to alchemy than to chemistry, so it is always a little bit of a surprise that the laws of mortality still apply. Joseph Egret retreated to a cypress strand a few miles north of the Tamiami Trail, where he lived in a shack with a thatched palmetto roof and a 1971
Playboy
calendar on the wall. Tuck retired to his scrub cattle and mullet skiff in Mango.

The last thing Tuck had heard about Joseph was from a bartender at the Rod & Gun Club in Everglades City. The bartender told him that Joseph had been found, sick and near death, in his shack by some hunters, who had contacted the county welfare people. One of the welfare people had approached the sleeping Joseph with a rectal thermometer. Joseph had rallied sufficiently from his surprise to throw the welfare worker through the wall. The welfare worker contacted the Sheriff's Department, got a judge to sign the right papers, and now, the bartender told Tucker, Joseph was paying his dept at Everglades Township Rest Home.

"Serves 'im right," Tucker had said at the time. "Teach 'im not to throw white people around like that."

But that was before Tucker had descended into the despair of his own loneliness; before his horse Roscoe had discovered that sulphur spring; before Tuck had realized the spring's wonderful potential; before the state, those bastards, had tried to pin him to the wall.

Tucker was thinking about all of this when he touched the shoulder of his old and beloved friend. Well, he was thinking about it a little bit. Thinking that once he had been nothing more than a cow hunter with evil ways, but now he was elevating himself, coming to this nasty damn place to rescue an old friend.

"Joe, you okay?" Tucker asked. "Can you hear me?"

Joseph looked at Tucker, and his eyes seemed to focus for a moment. "Lordy God," he said, "I hope somebody locked up my wallet."

Tucker took the big man's arms and shook him slightly. "Hey, Joe, it's Tuck. Me, your best friend!" He'd expected a warmer reunion.

Joseph studied the face before him. His mind was a gauzy shambles of reality and dreams, and his eyes were milky. "I know who you are. We got another whiskey run to make? I want to count the money this time, you cheatin' bastard—"

Tucker was still shaking him gently. "Joe! Listen to me. We ain't run no liquor in fifty years."

"I don't care if it was a hundred. You shortchanged me on that run to LaBelle. Don't think I ain't got ways of finding out."

"How in the hell ... I mean, damn it, Joe, you're talking nonsense."

"Say, Tuck," Joseph continued vacantly, "how 'bout we go jack-lightin' tonight. Kill some gators. They're giving Indians four bucks a hide over to Miami. Seven bucks to white men, so I guess you better handle the sellin', but goddamn it, I want to count the money before it hits your pocket—"

From the bed, a querulous voice interrupted: "Why waste your time trying to reason with that stupid Seminole? He talks gibberish. Nothing but gibberish. And I need my rest!"

Joseph shook away from Tuck and lumbered toward the shrunken figure in the bed. "I told you about that," he said.

To Tucker, the dim figure yelled, "Make him leave me alone!" Then to Joseph: "Go away, you red devil, or I'll buzz the nurses' station and have the orderlies tie you down again!"

Joseph found the plastic tube running from the sack into the old man and pinched off the flow. "Take it back. Say I ain't a Seminole."

Bright Eyes moaned, "Are you trying to kill me?"

Tucker was right there beside Joseph, and he whispered, "Hey Joe—will that really kill him?"

Joseph shrugged. "If it don't, I can choke him," he said.

Tucker turned to the figure and directed hastily, "Say he ain't a Seminole. Say it real nice like." He didn't particular care about the old man, but for Joseph to get mixed up in a murder trial now would completely screw up his plans.

"Okay, okay," hollered the man, "you are not a Seminole." His gaze swung to Tucker. "Now please get this stinking Indian away from me!"

Joseph released the tube, saying, "That's better." Bending over the man, he added, "I won't stand for disrespect." Then he turned and tottered back toward the window, which is when he noticed the sack Tucker was carrying. "Hey," he said, "you bring me a present? Nice can of snuff, maybe?"

Tucker pulled out the plastic bottle and held it up to the window. "Better than that. I got something here that's gonna fix you right up."

"Hum," said Joseph, clicking his tongue softly. "White liquor, maybe? Only, hey—this looks kinda yella. You ain't playin' no trick on me. It better not be—"

"It ain't whiskey, and I ain't playing no trick, you old fool." Tucker put his hand on Joseph's shoulder and began to whisper. "I got a favor to ask, Joe. Big favor that could do a lot of good for us both. Say—I bet they make you take a lot of drugs and stuff here, huh."

Joseph's mind drifted away, then drifted back again. "Nothin' any fun. I just take pills. All kinds a colors a pills. The fat nurse brings them."

"From now on, I don't want you to take another pill. Not a one."

"But it's my medicine."

"Hell, you don't look sick to me. You feel poorly?"

"Dang right I feel poorly. I'm old."

"I'd do it for you, Joe. I truly would. You wanted me to stop taking my pills, I do it in a second. Just 'cause we're friends."

Joseph said, "Sure, you can say that. But they stick 'em up your butt, you don't take them. They got about six or seven orderlies here, and I ain't as young as I used to be."

Tucker was shaking his head, a pained expression on his face. "Just pretend to take 'em. Gawldamn, you're stupid! No wonder you ended up in this shit hole, without me around to do your thinking."

Joseph gave him a flat look of warning. "I ain't that old, Tucker."

Tucker Gatrell said, "Okay, okay, okay," and began to whisper some more. After a few minutes, Joseph said, "Roscoe's nuts growed back? So what?" Tucker whispered again, and then Joseph said, "I'm the one they got locked up, but you're the crazy one."

Tucker said, "There ain't nothing in the world crazy about it. This water's got vitamins in it . . . minerals. Something. You know what they got now? Hell, they got whole stores now that sell nothing but vitamins. And you go to a grocery store, they got shelves and shelves of water. People actually pay money for it! This here's like two things wrapped up in one."

Joseph's mind drifted away for a moment, and he said, "My granddaddy, he used to tell me about that."

Tucker said, "Damn right!" But then he said, "Tell you about what?"

Joseph reached for the bottle. "Let me have a taste. I'll tell you if it makes me feel any healthier."

"Well, you ain't gonna notice it right off, ya idiot. Takes time." Tucker jabbed a finger at the side of his head. "I was drinking the water for only about a month when this here ear I lost in a fight started to grow back."

"You didn't lose that ear in a fight," Joseph said dubiously. "Some whore chewed it off down when we was in Caracas."

"Nicaragua," Tuck corrected. "And it was so a fight—sort of. But that ain't the point. The point is, it's growing back."

Joseph studied the pink stub of ear. It didn't look as if it had been growing. He tried to remember what Tuck had looked like the year before, but all that came to his mind was they way he had looked when they were young men.

"My granddaddy, old Chekika's Son, told me," said Joseph. "Water where the sick people could go and get better."

Tucker was nodding, sensing that he was winning Joseph over. Getting a little excited, too. If he could convince someone as stubborn as Joseph in only a few minutes, it wouldn't be hard at all to convince a couple of million normal people in the weeks he had left. He said, "Hell, I'll help bust you out of this place now if you want. Damn—wish I'd brought my gun." Tuck was patting his sides, just in case he had remembered.

Joseph said, "Nope. If I start feeling good enough to break out, I'll do it when I'm ready."

"But no more of them damn pills. I've been reading about that. Just drink the water."

"I'll see how it goes. I don't trust you, Tuck."

Tucker motioned to the walls, the ceiling. "I suppose you like living in this honey bucket."

Joseph looked at Tuck. "When I'm ready"—meaning it was not to be discussed anymore.

Tuck left, but Joseph kept the bottle of water.

In
a rare lucid moment, Joseph Egret wrapped the bottle in his dirty underwear and hid it beneath his bed. The rest home's staff never looked under the beds, perhaps because to look was to acknowledge the existence of bedpans. They couldn't empty what they didn't see.

Joseph hid the bottle with the few valuables not already stolen by the staff (all they had left him was his deerskin boots and his old black Wyoming cattle roper's hat), and so the bottle was there every morning and evening when he wanted a drink from it.

He also followed Tuck's advice about the dozen or so pills he was supposed to take each day. Medications, the nurses called them, bringing the bright plastic capsules around on a cart in rows of tiny paper cups. Had he refused to take the pills, the orderlies would have been called—he'd already tried that. So what he did was toss his head back as if he was swallowing the pills, but he really transferred them into his big hands, to be thrown into the toilet later. The nurses didn't pay a lot of attention. They were busy making check marks on their charts so they could hurry and get back to their television programs downstairs.

On the third day, Joseph awoke, realizing that the numbness that had long deadened the left side of his body had disappeared. Like an arm that falls asleep and then slowly awakens, there was a strange residual itch, but it was not unpleasant. And the numbness was certainly gone. He also began to experience a growing restlessness, a sort of psychic itch—which
was
unpleasant. He had spent the bulk of his eleven months at Everglades Township Rest Home in a drug-induced reverie, never really coherent enough to realize or wonder how his life had degenerated to the point where he now carried a catheter bag on his hip as comfortably as he had once carried a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson. This new itch filled him with a black depression that caused him to be feisty by rest home standards. He broke the tiny mirror in his room because he did not like the gaunt reflection that stared back at him. That did not assuage his despair, so he went from room to room breaking every mirror he could find. Joseph also discovered that he was desperately hungry, so he sneaked to the kitchen, threatened the head dietitian with a knife, and rummaged through cans of government surplus food until he found two pounds of hamburger, which he ate raw. On the way back to his room, he yanked out his own catheter tube, went to the bathroom, and, after enduring an initial burst of pain, found he didn't need the damn thing.

The orderlies had had more than their share of trouble with Joseph, and when they found him, they knew what to do. They tied his hands and feet with plastic tie wraps and threw him facedown on his bed. Four hours later, when he was released, old Bright Eyes in the next bed made an observation about Indians that Joseph found offensive. In his dark mood, there seemed only one honorable thing to do—beat the little bastard to death. He would have done it, too, if one of the fat nurses hadn't banged into the room, looking for the individual she referred to as "the perverted son of a bitch who stole our
TV Guide."

The orderlies tied his hands and feet again; left him bound all night.

On the morning of the fifth day after Tuck's visit, Joseph awoke, finding a mature but attractive rest home volunteer standing over him. The woman had a sponge in her hand and a name tag that read MARJORIE. Joseph rubbed his eyes clear and saw that she was staring at him, a vexed expression on her face. Which puzzled Joseph until he noticed that the sheet over his hips peaked with the abrupt contours of a two-man mountain tent. He peeked under the sheet to see what created the tent, then returned from beneath the covers, surprised and pleased.

"Mr. Egret," the woman said, "I hope you're not hiding something under that blanket." She said it primly, but kindly, too. Her hair was gray-blond, she had nice brown eyes, and the pink volunteer's uniform brought out the color of her face. He had never seen this woman before; they rarely got volunteers.

"Please," the woman said, "I'm giving you a chance."

Joseph combed his fingers through his hair, hoping he looked as good as he felt.

"I'm scheduled to give you a sponge bath, but if that's a liquor bottle under the covers, I'll . . . well, I won't report you—just as long as you take it to the bathroom right now and dispose of it."

Joseph settled himself, folded his hands behind his head, and smiled rakishly.

"Please, Mr. Egret. If you don't cooperate, I'll have to notify the nurses, and you will be in a great deal of trouble." The woman tried to sound stern, but sounded nervous instead. Maybe it was her first day as a volunteer. Maybe it was her first sponge bath. Joseph wagged his eyebrows and said nothing.