The Way of All Fish: A Novel (24 page)

“Bad news? You look like death, dear.”

“No. No more than usual. You’d be surprised at all the bucking up and handholding one has to do in this business. Writers are such whiners; when they’re not making impossible demands, they’re crying on your shoulder. One might as well be a psychiatrist—”

Simone interrupted. “Now, Bass, what about this little excursion to find my orchid?”

“My secretary just told me of a pressing matter I need to attend to. I really should go back to Manhattan tomorrow.” Seeing her expression, he quickly added, “And then come back here in another week or two.”

Coldly, she said, “You were to stay for several days.”

“I know, I know. But this just came up.”

“Let me call Monty and see if he can take you out tonight.” Before he could say anything, she was up and reaching for her cordless phone and punching in the number. She ignored his protests and his look of terror. “Monty, dear. Simone Simmons here. Yes. I was wondering if you’d be able to take my nephew out this evening— You would? Marvelous!”

Bass dropped his head in his hands.

“The poor boy needs a bit of distraction. A little canoe trip is just what he needs. Yes, I do understand you can’t witness it. Yes, I know . . .”

Bass’s head came up. Witness it? What in God’s name did she mean? When she finally hung up from the accommodating Monty, he asked.

“Oh, that. Simply that he couldn’t be there when you cut the orchid from the tree. And there’s a procedure you must follow, for these orchids are fragile—”

“Yes, yes, but where will Monty be if he can’t see me doing this?” Bass’s high-pitched voice was almost as stringent as Jasper’s, who chose that moment to echo him.

Simone picked up her burning cigarette and inhaled. “Oh, just paddling about, I expect.” She checked her nail varnish. And then her will.

Bass nearly fell down into his Tommy Bahama chair. “He paddles off and leaves me on
my very own
in the
swamp
?”

Jasper shrieked.

Simone was paging through her will. “Or he’ll just sit and wait. He doesn’t want to be”—here she whispered, with her will-free hand poised to the right of her mouth in that exaggerated way people do—“an accessory.”

Bass drained his drink. My God,
my God
. Then, craftily, he thought: I can just buy him off. Hell, just give him a few hundred to say we made the trip. He relaxed.

I can just buy him off.

N
o, he couldn’t.

When they drove away, Simone waving at them from her little porch, Bass suggested five hundred dollars to Monty, “and mum’s the word.” He even put his finger to his lips.

Monty—a tall, spindly fellow wearing Ray-Bans and a baseball cap and brown hair in a ponytail—said that would not be honorable of him, and anyway, Simone was paying him five times that to take Bass out. “I guess you don’t like the idea of getting caught poaching, right?”

Bass fumed. “Obviously, I don’t. Neither do you.”

Monty shifted down. On a trailer behind his dilapidated Ford Bronco sat a canoe that looked as if it had been in business before the Seminoles came.

“You got that right, Bass, ol’boy.”

They pulled into a small touristy business called Captain Jerry’s, now closed for the day.

“What’s this?” said Bass. It was obvious what it was: another place offering airboat rides, alligator sightings, bird-watching.

“Belongs to a pal of mine.” Monty parked his truck in the deserted lot.

“You keep your canoe here?”

“We’re not taking the canoe out.”

Bass heaved a sigh of relief.

“We’re using the dory. Come on.” They walked down to the marina, where two air-boats, a half-dozen rowboats and several aged motorboats
were tied up at two long docks. The dory sat in among the rowboats.

Bass’s relief was quick-lived. The dory looked no bigger than a canoe. He looked doubtful as Monty climbed into it, a small boat with two bench seats. Oars were locked in their sockets. There was also an outboard motor.

Monty waved him in. “Just settle in. I got me a nice little Honda 5 horsepower here. It ain’t a speedboat, but it’ll get us where we’re going. Sun’s going down.” Monty squinted into the light. “Some sunset.”

Bass didn’t respond. He climbed in and took one of the bench seats, dreading the boat’s lack of sturdiness. Monty got the motor going and they were slicing through the vast sheet of darkening water.

Up ahead, lights on the shore. One of the far shores. There were entirely too many shores, too many islands, for Bass’s taste. “What’s over there?” he shouted into a wave of cold spray.

“Chokoloskee.”

“Where are we going?” Earth’s end would be the answer.

“Over there.” Monty pointed not toward the lights of Chokoloskee, but toward more dark mangroves, more hardwood hammocks.

Then they were at the mouth of an inlet, and Monty cut the motor. “Okay, this boat’s got an electric motor, so we don’t make noise.” He nosed into the narrow opening.

Fear sprouted in Bass Hess. “What are you talking about? What in here has ears?”

Monty didn’t bother answering but switched on a very dim light attached to the boat’s side. It did not serve to illuminate as much as it served to heighten the general eeriness.

It might have been—this mangrove and cypress-crowded inlet, in deep silence and missing out on any sign of life beyond sudden birdcall—it might have been considered wonderful and mysterious by naive and sentimental tourists with their cameras and binoculars slung around their necks.

To Bass Hess, it was just the opposite. Pools of water, sun gone down. Sawgrass not grass at all but a river of thin knives. When night fell in the Everglades, it fell like a banyan crashing. He thought he saw movement along the bank, something rising, something falling back. The boat was large enough for a dozen more, and Bass almost wished the dozen had come along.

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Years.”

“Then you must know these inlets pretty well.”

“Back of my hand.”

“Are there alligators?”

“Oh, there’s always alligators, right?” Monty gave a heh-heh-heh and shifted the light a bit, unbothered by the scream of a bird that sounded hideously like Jasper.

Monty kept telling Bass to peer straight ahead. That way, Monty alone would see the signal. He looked to his left as they passed an even narrower band of water . . . and God almighty, there it was! Molloy right on time and right on target. The light winked on and off through a tangle of branches. Molloy had a big, shuttered spotlight much brighter than a flashlight.

“Okay, we can pull in right up there. Right around there’s where I saw trees full of dozens of ghost orchids. You see that movie?”

Bass was busy monitoring the gnarly fallen logs lying half in water to see if they were actually logs. “What movie?”

“Had Meryl Streep in it. She goes out looking for orchids.”

“The movie was based on a book. Do you see that log over there?”

Monty squinted and looked hard, or pretended to. The temptation was strong to say, Yeah, it moved! And then watch old Bass react. But he quelled it. He could mess up Molloy’s and Sammy’s gig if he veered off the plan, a plan he made no sense of, but hey, ten grand? He’d lay a mindfuck on anybody for ten large.

“Yeah, I see it. Why?”

“I think it moved.” Bass’s voice was so tight, it squeaked.

“Nah.” Monty laughed. “You got the heebie-jeebies, man.” He pulled the boat up to a crowd of mangrove roots and said they were there. “Here’s the spot. You got the clippers? Just go on in. It won’t be far off to the right.”

“In
there
? Are you insane? That’s impossible! Look at those mangrove roots.” Tall, exposed roots, intertwined, layered thick as the rippling locks of a Medusa, if Medusa had wooden hair. “A person can’t walk through
there,
man!”

“Walk, no. You pretty much have to crouch a little, maybe crawl a little. But plenty’s made it through there. You only have to go maybe fifteen, twenty feet. So let’s go. I’ll be right behind you.”

“You’re coming?”

“Sure.” Like hell.

Bass stumbled out of the boat and immediately collapsed over a set of roots like knees. He cursed, dragged himself up, and more or less crawled forward.

Monty, still in the boat, wouldn’t have made out the black shape near a mangrove had he not expected the black shape to be there. Nor would he have noticed the movement of the battered, weather-beaten log that lay right by the black shape had he not known the log could move.

“Bass,” whispered Monty. “Bass.”

“What?”

Bass’s voice was way above a whisper, and Monty made a movement down with his hands, a pantomime to warn Bass not to speak above a whisper. “Don’t take another step,” whispered Monty.

“Why?”

This guy actually told people how to write books? And couldn’t understand simple directions? In a show of frenzy, Monty motioned for Bass. “Just come toward me and the boat real slow. No, no, don’t turn around, don’t make any sudden moves.”

As soon as Bass heard that, his face went moon-white, and he broke into a stumbling run, if one could be said to run in such circumstances.

Monty steadied the boat and helped Bass to clamber in. “Fuckin’ alligator, man!”

The black log slid into the water behind him. Monty paddled, but not as fast as he might have.

And then it happened. Bass was halfway up from his seat when Monty yelled, “Sit down! For fuck’s sake, you’ll—”

The boat tilted to windward and sent Bass Hess over the side. Bass went under the black water and came back up, flailing and yelling that he couldn’t swim. Monty stuck out an oar, shouting, “Grab this!”

Bass tried and failed. Bass’s head went under, then popped back up, under, up, Bass yelling again he couldn’t goddamned swim!

There was a sudden lurch. Then the log rose up with Bass on its back.

“Alligator,” yelled Bass. “Alligator got me!”

Only the gator didn’t seem to want him, for what it did was move toward the boat and, once there, bump and deposit Bass back into it.

Bass was choking and puking up water as Monty tossed him a towel from his pack.

“Shit, I never saw nothing like that, Bass. Gator saved your fuckin’ life!”

Bass stared back, slack-jawed, speechless.

Monty started the motor again and talked about this Good Samaritan gator all the way back to shore, shouting over the engine noise, then all the while he helped his charge back to the truck, and all the way back to Everglades City.

“I can’t get over that, man. That fuckin’ gator, it just got under you, lifted you up, and popped you back in the boat like some goddamned tour guide! Yeah, that was one triple-A fuckin’ miracle, Bass. Gator musta had help.”

God, maybe?

Molloy, definitely.

“What in heaven’s name happened?” said Simone upon seeing Bass’s soaking, muddy person. Had Monty not been there to confirm it, Simone would have questioned her nephew’s sanity. She already had called that into question.

“I’m going to turn in,” he said after giving her some of the story.

“What about my orchid?”

“Orchid? Orchid? Haven’t you been listening? I was almost killed because of your bloody orchid! Good night!”