The Mangrove Coast (5 page)

To me, her wandering eye, that slight imperfection, implied a depth of character … or of vulnerability … that made the child’s face distinctive, lovely to look upon, and I told the proud father that he should think twice before getting the thing fixed. It was harmless flattery that he took seriously.

“Doc,” he’d told me, “the only reason you say that is because you know absolutely nothing about the intrinsic vanity of women. Or about women at all for that matter.”

True enough … but this from a man with a film-star face, a quarterback’s body, who was a little bit vain himself.

No, not a little bit vain. Bobby was one of the sharpest, toughest and most dependable men I’d ever met, but that did not alter the truth that he was vain; very, very vain indeed….

It was strange thinking about him after all the years that had passed. It was strange and unexpected and oddly, oddly unsettling, too.

I am not a nostalgia buff. I do not prefer to haunt a past softened and brightened by imagination. The past is constructed of memory, the future of expectation. I live most
comfortably in the present, because that, in truth, is the only reality. It is all a reasonable person has.

Besides, my memories of Bobby and Asia weren’t all that rosy. And I certainly hadn’t planned to stay up long past midnight thinking about old friends, old battles and long gone losses….

No, what I had planned was a quiet night alone at home….

I was looking forward to it: just me and the microscope in my lab, sea specimens arranged neatly and in order over the stainless-steel dissecting table … gooseneck lamp adding precise illumination … music on the stereo, if I wanted, or maybe the portable shortwave radio.

I’d rigged an external antenna off the wooden water cistern outside, so I could pull in programs from Hanoi or Jakarta or Beijing, even Australia Broadcasting out of Perth, no problem at all.

And there was, of course, the comet.

When I needed a break from the microscope, it was a nice thing to walk outside and look into littoral darkness, still listening to some solitary radio voice that was ricocheting off stars from the other side of the globe. The electronic connexus is deceptively personal. It seemed to flow down out of space and directly into my remodeled fish shack which is built on stilts over water.

So no, I didn’t expect or want to hear from Tucker Gatrell, and I certainly didn’t want to be drawn into a revisitation of my former life, my former occupation.

Absolutely not. Lately, in fact, I had been restricting all my socializing to the guides and the liveaboards at Dinkin’s Bay Marina.

Just wasn’t in the mood for outsiders.

There was a reason, a very specific reason.

My friend Tomlinson said it was because I had entered a reclusive period. The man is part savant, part goat, so he is usually at least half right about everything he says. An
example: “Unrequited love, man. What a serious green weenie that is. Remember: love is what goes out of us, not what we take in. It’s the union of two solitudes, yeah. Two solitudes willing to protect and trust. But just ‘cause it didn’t work out doesn’t mean that you have to spend all your time alone.”

Tomlinson talks like that; he really does. He says it is because he has evolved spiritually after years and years of study and meditation. I think it’s because his thought processes have been chemically altered during years and years of abusing marijuana and hallucinogenics.

But it was also Tomlinson who, after cracking a cold bottle of Hatuey, told me, “Amigo, if it’s got tits or tires, you’re sure to have trouble with it down the road. Face it, man, she’s committed to Central America. Nothing you can do is gonna change that. So, the way I see it, it’s time for us to find you a new ride.”

He was talking about a woman I knew, a woman I shared history with, a woman named Pilar. Pilar was a former lover.

I had to keep reminding myself of that: Pilar was my
former
lover.

It was not an easy truth to acknowledge.

So, yeah, I’d entered a reclusive period. For weeks, I worked in the lab. I listened to my shortwave radio. I lived alone in my little sea-cabin house. At night, I’d sit on the porch listening to the mountain-stream gurgle of tide rivering past the pilings beneath me. I’d listen to the snap-crackle-pop of pistol shrimp and the
bee-whah
groan of catfish.

I looked at the comet.

Daytime was different. When the sun’s out, it seems reasonable to pursue goals. I defined mine by writing them each and every day in one of my notebooks. They were simple goals.

Twice a day, seven days a week, I rededicate myself to getting back into shape. It was none too soon. I’d let myself go over the last several months, and in that very
short time I’d gained maybe fifteen pounds. I felt soft and slow and grainy. I felt as if age and gravity were vines that were working their way up my legs, taking control. I was eating too much, drinking too many beers, sleeping way too much.

So the rules were simple: beer on Fridays and Saturdays only. Absolutely no food of any kind after 8:00
P.M.

It was time to take charge of my own life once again.

Every year, getting into shape seems to be a tougher, slower, more painful process.

Each year, my knees and shoulders and ankles seem to hurt a little more.

Tough physical work was exactly what I needed. Pain is good. Extreme pain is extremely good. I punished myself with it and then I used it as a purge.

I lost the fifteen pounds of fat, and then I lost five more for good measure. I spent so much time running up and down the beaches of Sanibel that I began to recognize the condo owners and individual vacationers at resorts such as Sundial, Casa Ybel, Sand Castles and Sonesta.

They’d wave; I’d wave back.

Gradually, I began to come out of my shell a little.

On one of my runs, I was passed by a lean blonde with a ball nose and the thighs of a high hurdler. She had a good grin; a kind of jaunty we’re-both-distance-junkies attitude.

I caught up and introduced myself. Her name was Maggie. She was married; lived in Tampa, but she and her husband were having problems. She’d taken a place at Breakers West for the week to be alone and think things over.

We had a nice run. Same thing the next day and the next. She appreciated the insights of an objective man. I appreciated her humor and her strength. We became friends. We agreed that, considering her circumstance, it had to be a nonphysical friendship … which took all the pressure off both of us.

We stayed in touch after Maggie returned to her life in
Tampa. We decided that, as friends, we should meet a couple of times a week in some neutral place and work out together.

She chose Pass-a-Grille, an off-the-track beach village south of St. Pete that, with its Mexican tile and palm-lined streets, reminded me of the best parts of southern California. Pass-a-Grille was a small town with history and humor and texture. People there were amused by their own isolation. It made them easy to meet. Maggie and I would run four or five miles, swim a mile along the beach, then we’d eat shrimp or crab at the Seahorse Restaurant. Sit there talking to Gary the bartender while we ate, then walk up the street to Shadrack’s and have a beer with Big Al, the owner.

Big Al also owned Harleys.

I was surprised to hear that Maggie the housewife had always wanted a motorcycle.

It gave them something to talk about.

Maggie and Pass-a-Grille were a good break for me. Getting away from Dinkin’s Bay and Sanibel reminded me that there was a big wide world out there. Other lives were going on whether I was reclusive or not. I have been in love only twice in my life and have gradually come to the conclusion that love is not a condition, it is a dilemma. Love, I believe, is chemically induced; created and maintained by the little-understood and complex chemistry of the brain. How we target and connect with our partners is anyone’s guess, but the resultant response has more in common with addiction than with rosy emotion.

Realizing that helped me feel better, too. Chemistry is something I understand. It is chartable, predictable. Withdrawal from a chemical dependence would take time, but the chemical’s hold must necessarily grow weaker day by day by day.

It made sense that the same would be true of Pilar’s hold on me.

So slowly, surely, I began to resume my old life at Dinkin’s Bay as well as my old role as willing confidant,
sunset cocktail buddy, dependable big brother, dispenser of cold beer and heartfelt advice and of confidential favors.

In short, I was making the return to the quiet and peaceful life I’ve always wanted.

Which is when Tucker Gatrell called….

T
he thing that first surprised me about Amanda Calloway (Amanda Richardson, as she told me to call her) was that she looked so unlike her father.

Didn’t have Bobby’s perfect features, that’s for sure.

No, he’d been tall and golden haired; of a type you sometimes hear women say, “He’s
too
good looking,” as if, by dismissing him, they could distance themselves from a man who was probably beyond their wildest hopes anyway.

Bobby knew it, too. Was very, very careful about his hair and his clothes. On R&R in Singapore or Bangkok, he had his favorite barbers, his favorite masseuses, his own personal tailors.

Vain, yes. But a womanizer, no. He was committed to Gail, his wife. We spent four months together in Asia; he’d been there a couple of months before I arrived and there was not a single lapse. Not that he ever mentioned to me. No joking around about being “separated,” no locker-room winks and nudges. The man loved and was dedicated to the woman with whom he’d already had one child and hoped
to have more. And half a year is a long time to be alone in a region we called the Back of Beyond.

So it wasn’t women. No … Bobby just liked it; liked being healthy and handsome; the expensive life. The same way some men and women enjoy bodybuilding, he took pleasure in the details of an elevated lifestyle and the way he looked.

“This is why I need to make lots and lots of money,” he’d tell me. Or: “Man, I was born to be rich. I got no other choice.” He might be modeling some silk suit; looking at himself in the mirror, being critical and enjoying it. “There’s no way I can afford this kind of stuff—a tailored Armani? Even a copy like this. Are you kidding? Not back in the States on what I make. I need to get the hell out of this work and start my own business. Or maybe the movies. What’a you think?”

I told him he’d made a very strange choice, getting involved with Naval Intelligence and Naval Special Warfare, if he had aspirations of being a film star.

He’d said that he couldn’t help himself. He was hooked, out of control or something like that—which was bullshit. He was playing a standard role, Mr. Adventurer, for standard reasons: “I’m a dead-on adrenaline junkie and where else can I get paid to skydive, scuba dive and sneak around at night wearing tac-paint while bad guys try to pop me? Carry a weapon, allowed to
kill
people? Jesus, anyplace else, what I do’d be illegal.”

No argument there.

It was that way with most men who were involved in that peculiar and dangerous line of work. They had talent, brains—name a field, they would have probably excelled in it. And Bobby seemed to have more going for him than most. He had looks, taste, style … and that peculiar light that one associates with certain politicians who have the knack of inspiring affection rather than creating envy.

Bobby Richardson had it all; seemed to have been born under a lucky guardian star. Until one night, 100 klicks
north of Phnom Penh, he was vaporized by a mortar round and was sent back to the States in a sack not much bigger than a cigar box which contained a hand, a foot, bits and pieces of hair and bone, with no space at all left over for ego or hopes or vanity….

Bobby’s only child, however, was very plain in comparison to the way he had looked….

I was on the lower deck of my stilthouse working on the fish tank when they arrived. Felt the familiar wooden tremor that told me someone had mounted the walkway that connects my house to the mainland.

Looked up to see a woman wearing pleated white shorts and baggy gray-blue T-shirt striding toward me, the female variation of the Generation X look. It was a style that implied limited body-piercing, maybe a small tattoo or two, an affection for MTV. The anachronism, Tucker Gatrell, walked behind, western hat in hand … clomping along in cowboy boots, for God’s sake. A man who was always on stage, always in costume.

Saw that the woman was a rust-blonde redhead with one of those boxy haircuts so that her large brown eyes looked out at me from beneath a shield of bangs, hair squared heavily over hunched bookworm shoulders.

The way she walked, the way she carried herself, she reminded me of that: the type who escaped into books. Athletic-looking; she had a rangy, cattish quality, but also bookish. Or maybe it was computers these days. The studious variety of loner, isolated by self, maybe a little self-conscious, judging from the way she moved, knowing I was watching her; aware of it and not comfortable being the center of attention.

It tightened her movements. Added a mechanical stiffness. She had the gauntness, that hollowed quality, of the ultra-long-distance runner.

But no glasses. Not like the little girl I’d seen in the photograph. And … as she drew closer, I could see that the wandering eye had been straightened.

The disappointment I felt was surprising. I’d liked the face on that child from long ago.

Had Bobby’s eyes been brown? I couldn’t remember … more likely, I’d never paid enough attention to know. But there was something familiar in her eyes … could see it as we shook hands—“It’s nice of you to meet with me, Dr. Ford”—as she held my face with her gaze, then allowed it to wander.

Got a glimpse of something tougher than suggested by her averted eyes. A little bit of Bobby in there peering out. Then could hear that toughness in her voice when she said, “You’re the man in my father’s letters, right? You knew my father.”