Later that night, what started as a typical bar fight nearly escalated into a riot, and, as I told Tomlinson later, we should have both seen it coming and found a way to put a halt to it before it got started.
“How was I supposed to stop anything?” he asked me. “I had a pitcher of margaritas in me, four Singapore slings, three grande mojitos made with delicious fresh mint, a six-pack of Corona, plus two joints of very fine Voodoo Surprise. There also may have been pills involved-I remember very distinctly speaking to that lady anesthetist from Englewood. We both know she tends to be overly generous with her recreational pharmaceuticals. No telling what poison that Asiatic brute may have put into my hands. My friend-” he was shaking his head, being serious, “it is impossible for one to impose social order when one is lying facedown, puking, in the sand next to the totem pole at Jensen’s Marina.”
Then he pointed out: “I do remember that you seemed a little drunk yourself, Marion. That’s not something we see in these parts very often, Doc Ford out of control. I don’t think you were in a position to stop what happened, either.”
Well… not out of control, but I did have too much to drink. Tomlinson was right. It’s something I rarely do. Alcohol poisoning makes it impossible to do the quiet, articulate work in my lab at night or to enjoy my run or ocean swim the next morning.
But like everyone else at the marina, Amelia’s story had ripped the emotional bottom right out of me. I’d believed everything she’d said, which is why in retrospect her confidential assertion to me that a boat might have picked the others up really knocked me off my own personal tracks.
I’d already accepted the fact that Janet was lost. She was dead and gone, and I’d said good-bye to her in my own private way.
Now, though, Amelia Gardner had opened a tiny little corridor of uncertainty and hope. I was so shaken by it that I immediately understood her wisdom when she asked me not to share the information with the others.
There is nothing in life so unsettling or so painful as the unknown.
Alcohol is a favorite analgesic for both.
The traditional Friday parties at Dinkin’s Bay are usually relaxed and conversational, with pauses for music and maybe a little dancing. Fifteen or twenty people mingling on the docks, discussing esoterica that would be of interest only to those of us who live on the islands.
This party was different, though. It had a different attitude and a different feel, probably because of the stress we’d all been under-not just because of Janet, but because, for the last many months, we’d all been living with the knowledge that Dinkin’s Bay soon might be closed to all powerboat traffic.
If that happened, the feds would come in, rip down the old Florida fish camp that is Dinkin’s Bay, and replace it with some sterile, pressure-treated, and poured-to-form clone of the government’s idea of a marina. They would equip it with regulation buildings and docks. It seemed unlikely that, on Sanibel, they’d be able to find and hire the breed of seniority-system employees such buildings required, but that was a sad possibility, too.
For one or both reasons, everyone at the marina that night seemed more intimately aware that life is brief and that our interaction with the people and places we love is temporary. Those feelings caused the party to move with a complex intensity and at a much faster pace.
A final contributing factor to the near riot that occurred may have been presaged earlier that day by Dieter Rasmussen, who’d told us that the fourth stage of mourning usually included anger with a potential for violence.
What began as a celebration of a good woman’s life later turned very violent indeed.
By the time the limbo contest started, I’d had four or five tumblers of fresh grapefruit juice and vodka and was enjoying myself very much. First time I got a chance, I went up to Amelia Gardner and apologized for apparently suggesting that she had some guilty secret to confess, explaining, “It’s not that I was suspicious of you, I just don’t know you well enough. When someone asks me to keep something confidential, I need to know who and what I’m dealing with for a very simple reason-if I give my word, I will keep the information confidential.”
It seemed to mollify her, put us back on friendly footing again, which pleased me more than I expected. I liked her rangy looks, her private, businesswoman’s grin, the way she moved from group to group, socializing comfortably. Liked her plain, handsome face, her Irish hair. Liked the way she stood, hands on hips, one knee bent slightly-a cattle wrangler’s stance-and the way her expression narrowed, focusing, when people spoke to her, giving them her absolute attention. She was a person alone among strangers, but one who could take care of herself, no problem.
One thing I was unable to do was get her by herself long enough to ask about the boat she said she’d seen. At one point, I tried, and she touched a finger to her lips very briefly, and said, “Later, okay? I’m going to spend the night with your sister. She said she has a house near here?”
True. Along with her Hewes Bonefisher, Ransom had used the inheritance from her father, Tucker Gatrell, to buy a tiny little bungalow just down from Ralph Woodring’s place, off Woodring’s Point, near the mouth of Dinkin’s Bay. Ralph let her keep the skiff at his dock, so she could run back and forth to the marina anytime she wanted.
“Okay,” I told Amelia, pleased that she was staying. “We’ll get together late tonight. Or tomorrow, maybe, for breakfast.”
The big fight began at Sanibel Grill, moved to the Crow’s Nest at ’Tween Waters Inn on Captiva, then spilled out onto the deck of the pool bar, spreading to the little beach that angled into the bay.
It started an hour or so after the limbo contest, which Tomlinson won, though I did not see the finish for the simple reason that I preferred not to watch. When Tomlinson limbos, he wears nothing but his sarong, which is why Mack, Jeth, and I, along with most of the other fishing guides, made it a point to stroll out on the docks and talk among ourselves-unless it was Ransom’s turn. Except for me, there wasn’t a man at the marina who didn’t want to watch her.
Which is why I tend to be overly protective of her, and overly suspicious of any man who shows an interest in her.
There is no denying that Ransom is a stunning-looking woman. I’m not certain of her age. She refuses to confide even in me. With her long, sprinter’s legs, dense muscularity, and skin the color and texture of chocolate toffee, she could be thirty-two-or forty-five. No telling. What I do know is that, a few years back, she got tired of being overweight and out of shape and, in her own words, decided to take back her “womanly life.” She started working out, watching her diet, and now she is mostly muscle and sinew, but with all the appropriate angles and curves, and she has become my devoted running and weight-lifting partner.
Tomlinson often refers to her as living proof of his own private theory: The world’s most beautiful women are always well into their thirties, forties, or fifties because only the experience of living and prevailing day after day can provide the necessary emotional texture and depth of understanding that Tomlinson’s definition of “beauty” requires.
Ransom is smart and beautiful and funny, too. But she is no man’s toy and no person’s fool. So there’s something I have to keep reminding myself: My cousin is very capable of taking care of herself.
By the time the limbo contest ended, it was a little after nine. Still early, so we decided, as a group, to walk along Tarpon Bay Road to Timber’s Restaurant, which is just a couple hundred yards from the shell lane that leads to Dinkin’s Bay Marina.
In late November, there’s a little post-Thanksgiving tourism lull. Even so, the restaurant was busy-people standing in line at the fresh-fish counter-so we pushed tables together at Sanibel Grill, the adjoining sports bar, and sat together, a dozen of us crowded in tight. Nice bar with dark wood, good ventilation with palms outside the windows and a Gulf wind breezing through, orange Converse basketball shoes holding condiments on the tables-yes, basketball shoes-ceiling fans, walls a museum of sports memorabilia and photos of the restaurant’s gifted, idiosyncratic owner with a garden variety of famous jocks.
Jeth and I exchanged our empty plastic cups for fresh beer, and he said to me, speaking very softly, “I don’t know why, but I feel a lot better after listening to Amelia. It kind of shook me out of my funk about what happened and the way it happened. She talked about me, Doc. Janet, I mean. The night their boat sunk, I was the one she was thinking about.”
After a long pause, he said, “I miss her like crazy. I never realized what a prize I had until she was gone, but the fact that she told the others about me-the guy I thought she was dating, Michael-the fact that she told him and the two women that she loved me, it makes me feel closer to her than I maybe ever felt before.”
He thought about it for another moment, the noise of the bar shielding us from people sitting nearby, and then added, “I believe the story Amelia told us back at the marina. At least, I want to believe her. Or maybe… what kind of worries me is, you think she’d make up some of that stuff just to make me feel better?”
I told him, “I think she’d probably stretch the truth to make it easier on us as a group. Sure. But lie just to make you feel better? When they were in the water, unless Janet really talked about you, how else would Amelia know your name, that you and Janet were lovers? No. She wasn’t lying. I know Janet… I knew Janet, and I know how much she cared for you. I don’t doubt for a moment that Janet’s last words, her last thoughts, were about you.”
Jeth was holding a bottle of Bud Light in his big right hand. I watched his fingers fade bloodless, white as he squeezed the bottle, showing the frustration, all the pent-up sorrow and anger in him, seeking release. “I was an idiot,” he said, then repeated what he’d already told me many, many times. “She asked me out that weekend. She wanted the two of us to go to Palm Island, rent a beach house there, wanted to talk about our future. So what do I tell her? I tell her I’ve already got a date, and she should go find a date of her own.”
He banged the bottle down on the table, and I could see then that he was drunker than I realized-it was a gesture that was far out of character for this man I knew well.
It was then that JoAnn reached across the table and tapped me on the wrist. “Hey, Doc, you recognize the guy Ransom’s talking to?”
Sitting near the end of the table, next to Tomlinson and Claudia, Amelia said, “I do. I recognized him right away.”
I followed her eyes to the bar, where Ransom was speaking to a group of three men sitting on stools. Successful professional types dressed in clothes chosen to make a statement about wealth, leisure, style. Chambray and Ralph Lauren, pleated khakis, waxed Topsiders, watch bracelets by Rolex and Tag Heur, something theatrical about the careful, windblown hairstyles of all three. Either actors, politicians, or realtors, I decided-although the best people in those fields wouldn’t have pushed the look so hard, made it so obvious. So I wasn’t surprised when JoAnn added, “That’s Gunnar Camphill. As in the Gunnar Camphill. The film star.”
When I didn’t respond immediately, she shook her head, her expression suggesting that I was hopeless, a hermit alien out of touch with the modern world.
Amelia said, “You’re kidding me. You don’t know the name? The guy’s been in only like four or five absolute box-office smashes.” She waited for a moment before adding, “You really don’t know what I’m talking about. I can see it. Know something, Ford? You are an unusual man.”
Then Amelia named some titles, a couple of which seemed familiar, but I don’t have a television and don’t go to movies, so I’d never seen the films. I sat there as JoAnn, still staring at the actor, explained to me, “He does these great action-adventure movies. Lots of car chases, or he’ll be like a Navy SEAL trapped on a hijacked airliner, only no one knows who he really is. I read this article. He actually is some kind of martial arts expert, only I don’t remember the Japanese name for whatever it is, and he pisses off a lot of people because he’s a big political activist. Environmental stuff mostly. He speaks at rallies and led some kind of boycott a couple months back. You know, very outspoken.” She paused, smiling. “Damn, he really is good-looking, isn’t he? And a lot bigger than I thought. Actors, I’ve seen a bunch of them, they’re almost always a lot shorter than you expect.”
Rhonda was listening now, the two women leaning shoulder to shoulder, having fun with it, ogling the film star. Claudia was right there with them. Fresh from Ohio, her first night in the tropics, and here was this movie icon. JoAnn said, “So out of all the women in the bar, who does the famous actor pick out to hit on? Ransom, of course. That sister of yours, Doc, we love her, you surely know that-but, speaking for Rhonda and me, we marina women don’t exactly need any more competition.”
Beside her, Rhonda laughed, nodding. “We’re not getting any younger-” she nudged me with her elbow, then whispered so no one else could hear, “not that we’re exactly over the hill. We still got some bounce in us. Which I guess you’d vouch for, huh?”
I smiled- no comment- pleased that these two friends of mine were happily starstruck. On the islands, we get a lot of vacationers from films, television, sports, music, and politics, men and women who are famous nationally and internationally. You get used to seeing them at Bailey’s General Store, or on the beach, or in the little shops and restaurants. No big deal. People who come to the islands can depend on their privacy being respected. So I was surprised that JoAnn and Rhonda were impressed, and I took it as a measure of the actor’s fame.
I was still smiling when JoAnn said, “Maybe we should stroll up to the bar and see if Ransom will introduce us. I’ve never asked for an autograph in my life, but…” which is when I stopped smiling and JoAnn stopped talking because we both saw the actor, Gunnar Camphill, reach out and touch Ransom’s arm, saw Ransom pull away. Then we watched Camphill reach again and this time catch her arm and try to pull her to him, but Ransom yanked her elbow back once again and said something to him, her expression cautionary, not yet angry but getting there.
I was pushing my chair back, but Jeth was already on his feet, moving across the bar toward Camphill as the actor held both hands up, palms out to Ransom-he was surrendering-laughing at Ransom, a concessionary posture, but Ransom wasn’t smiling back.
I got there just behind Jeth, whose eyes were moving from Camphill to the men at his side, and I heard him say, “What’s the problem, this guy giving you a hard ta-ta-tah-time?” Nervous, his stutter had suddenly returned.
As Ransom told us, “This white gentleman getting very, very close to getting his pretty face slapped,” one of the men next to Camphill-he was much smaller, with a pointed face and coarse black hair, holding a cigar with the paper ring still on it-said simultaneously, “Jesus Christ, it’s Porky Pig to the rescue,” meaning Jeth with his cartoon stutter.
That stopped Jeth, changed his expression, an insult so obvious, and he moved a step closer to the man, Ransom backing slightly to his right as he said, “What dah-dah-did you just call me, mister?” angry and drunk enough to punch the guy right there, his stutter getting worse because he was furious.
Then Camphill-large boned, muscular, with blond hair, square chin, tough-guy eyes-stepped in. He stood and moved between Jeth and the bar and said, “Look, my friend, what we’d really like to avoid here is causing a scene. Doesn’t that make sense? So what I’m going to ask you to do right now is back off a few steps, give us our space. A little room for us all to breathe, huh? Then here’s what I suggest: I will apologize to your nice lady friend for misreading something she said. Entirely my fault. After that, you go back to your table like a good boy, and all of us, we go our separate ways and forget the whole thing.”
Jeth didn’t step back; he seemed frozen, his fists clenched, staring at the smaller man, hyperventilating, while pointed-face, the man with coarse black hair, sat there sipping his drink, eyes moving lazily around the room, smiling as if Jeth were invisible or too small to see-an insignificant problem, something for the hired help to deal with, nothing at all to worry about.
Camphill’s voice had an actor’s resonance, and he knew how to make a statement using his body, posing. He was playing a role now, and the role was that of the rational adult, the peacemaker-a person big enough to take all the blame, even though he didn’t deserve it-but his hand gestures, the way he held himself, his vocal intonations said: Don’t push it, make nice with me right now, or I’ll have to change character and do something I don’t want to do.
“Did you hear me, my friend? Back off just a little bit. You understand what I’m saying? We’re apologizing. ” Camphill reached to touch Jeth’s chest-move away, please-but I got my hands on Jeth first, worried that minor physical contact might cause him to snap. I’ve known the man for years, and I’d never seen him so angry, so close to losing all control. I turned Jeth and moved between him and the bar, my back to Camphill and the others. “Jeth Jeth, listen to me. Let me handle this. Go back to the table, I’ll find out what happened.”
Behind me, I heard the man with coarse black hair say, “First Gilligan with an Afro Mary Ann, and now the Professor. Where the fuck’s Skipper and Ginger?”
Jeth was looking past me. “Hey… wait a minute, did that guy just call me Gilligan? You jerk, I don’t look anything like Gilligan!”
“Drop it, Jeth. Let it go.” I was herding him gently away from the bar. Behind me, I heard pointed-face say, “Watch out for that razor intellect of his, Gunnar. He’s a sharp one, very sharp.”
I turned and, over the noise of their laughter, said to Ransom, “What happened? Why’d the guy grab you?”
Camphill said, “I was chatting with the lady-”
Angry myself, and feeling the alcohol in me, I leaned and put my index finger within an inch of the actor’s nose. Held it there for a moment before I told him, “I’m talking to her. Not you.” Stared into his eyes.
It took all the noise out of the bar. I stood and listened to a shuffling of feet, heard someone cough. I expected Camphill to knock my hand away. Instead, he took a huge breath, making a show of controlling himself, letting everyone around know this wasn’t easy for him, still playing the peacekeeper’s role, as the man to his right-a slim blond tennis player type-said, “He doesn’t know who you are, Gunnar. Better drop it. We know in twenty, thirty seconds, you could put him in the hospital, kill him, whatever, but you’re the one with the career-not the Professor here.”
I lowered my hand slowly, looking at Ransom, who was already talking, her voice easy to hear because the bar had gone so very quiet. “The way it happen, my brother, this pretty gentleman, he start a conversation with me. Very nice at first, then he say he give me two, three hundred dollars, whatever I want, if I come to their hotel and make his friends feel very good tonight. Told me his two friends, they’d never had them a black girl. It so good he wanted them to know what it like.
“I told ’em he and his friends, all three of them, they probably used to trading blow jobs with each other. Or maybe little boys-” Several people at the bar laughed at that. “So why they want to bother a nice colored woman like me?” She was shaking her head, smiling, giving them a dose of her contempt before she added, “That’s when this pretty gentleman, he grab me.”
I turned once again to the actor, some inner awareness reminding me that I’d had too much to drink, that I needed to be careful, cognitive, keep things cool, so I said, “You’re right, mister. You need to apologize to her. Now. Then we go our separate ways.”
He thought about it, staring at me with his tough-guy eyes, nodding, creating drama because he knew how to do it, and then threw his head back and laughed. “Okay, Professor! I’ll blink first!” He stood, took Ransom’s hand, bowed at the waist, and kissed the back of her hand regally. “Lovely lady, I was wrong to say what I did. I hope you’ll accept my apology.”
Then he stood there as if maybe expecting to hear some polite applause, but there wasn’t any. Everyone around the crowded bar was staring at him, mostly locals, their expressions saying he was a jerk, maybe they were a little embarrassed for the famous man, too.
Which got to him. I could see it in his expression. So he had to get the last word, contrive a dominant gesture, so he leaned and put his index finger near my nose-payback time-and said loudly, “And you, my friend, you don’t know how very, very lucky you are that I’m in a good mood tonight.”
Looking into his eyes, I let the words hang there for a moment before I answered softly, “Just for the record-I am not your friend.” I waited for something to happen, and, when it didn’t, I shrugged and turned away.
I thought that was the end of it.
It wasn’t.
Because then Gunnar Camphill focused on Jeth’s T-shirt. It was a T-shirt that had quickly become popular with Florida’s sports fishermen. On the back is a silk-screened cartoon of a dead manatee lashed to a spit, roasting over a fire. Beneath the cartoon are the words: Any Questions?
The irony of the T-shirt-and the situation-is that Florida’s sports fishermen have, for years, been among the state’s most vocal and powerful environmental advocates. Now they were being labeled “antienvironmentalist” by groups pushing to get fishing boats off the water. The long and careful defense required to disprove broad, buckshot accusations, such as “racist” or “communist,” is incapacitating-exactly the reason such charges are so commonly made and why they are so effective.
Thus the popularity of this angry T-shirt.
“What the fuck is that?” said Camphill, pointing.
Jeth looked down, looked up, and said, “Yeah, what about it?”
Camphill made a blowing nose with his lips-was this guy really so stupid? “You’re kidding. You really don’t know why I’m here? SAM-the Save All Manatees group-flew me in for the conference on Captiva. They’ve got about a half million members, and I’m their national spokesman, which is why, Gilligan, you either need to strip that T-shirt off right now or get the hell out of this bar.”