The Man Who Ivented Florida (15 page)

"Ah-h-hhg!" He slumped over, retching.

"Goddamn it, Bambridge, if you start crying again, I'll give you a reason to cry!" One of the Chucks talking. Charles Herbott, the environmentalist, and Chuck Fleet, the surveyor, were sitting on the shell floor with him, the pit so small that they couldn't move, couldn't even sit without touching one another.

The other Chuck, Chuck Fleet, said, "If he wasn't so damn . . . big, we'd have room to lie down at least, maybe get some decent sleep. I slept okay before he got here."

"You mean fat—just say it!"

"Ah, Christ. . ."

Bambridge began to sob, covering his face with his hands. "I don't want to be here any more than you do! It's not my fault I got lost, then came looking for help when my engine quit—"

"Quit crying!"

"Broke down, just like you two—" "None of us likes it, Bambridge. We just have to hang on until they find us. They will. You've heard the planes."

"He'll work me to death first. I'm not like you two. You're used to the outdoors. I can't take it anymore. The bugs and the heat—I just can't! I'm an educator, for God's sake!"

One of the Chucks, Charles Herbott, said, "Every morning, it's the same thing, him bawling and whining. I can't listen to much more of his crybaby bullshit, I'm warning you both right now!" Furious, threatening violence with the intensity of his voice.

Charles Herbott did that a lot, lost his temper.

Fleet said, "The old man'll be coming for us pretty soon. We ought to rest instead of argue. Hey—" He was ignoring Bambridge. The two Chucks had made a point of ignoring him since the evening of the first day he'd arrived. His first night in the pit, he'd broken down so totally that his hysteria had become contagious, a kind of emotional electrical current that had zapped them both and pushed them close to panic. Now, when he cried, they acted as if he didn't exist. Fleet said, "Hey, you know, I was thinking—"

"That and slap mosquitoes, what the hell else is there to do?"

"Naw, the old man, I was thinking about him." Fleet had a couple of shells in his palm, bouncing them like coins. "He may not be as crazy as we think."

"He's . .. just look at him—insane. Look at his eyes."

"Yeah, but listen. I was thinking, why is it he waits till late afternoon to make us work? 'Cause of the storms, that's why. See?"

"It's because of the heat. We've already talked about that. He works us in the full heat, he's worried we'll die and won't get his cane in. Son of a bitch is a slave driver, and him a—"

"Maybe, maybe, but look: The search planes only come in the morning. That's why. See? The storms build up every afternoon this time of year, so the old man knows it's the only safe time to have us out. Works us then."

"Yeah . . . ?"

"So the planes won't see us."

"I see that, but I don't get—"

"I'm just saying if he's crazy, at least he's smart crazy. Too smart to kill us."

"That's what he's going to do! You know it is! Him and that gun!" Bambridge blubbering again.

Charles Herbott said, "Maybe ... I don't know. He keeps saying he's going to let us go. And if he does, I'll tell you this, I ever get my hands on that old asshole—" Making a twisting motion with his hands. Herbott, the environmental consultant, was a little man with tight weight-lifter muscles, the kind made in a gym, doing reps in front of a mirror.

"But see, if he's rational, rational in his own way"—Chuck Fleet was thinking and talking—"then maybe all this really does make sense to him. Our boats break down—"

"They didn't just break down. I knock the prop off my engine, you tear the foot off yours, and him right there to help saying no use to call on the radio, the hand-held VHFs wouldn't reach—"

"See? He was right about that. I tried. We're out of range down here. The radio wouldn't reach."

"But that he'd tow us back to the shack, make sure we got help. He was lying about that, just tricking us."

Bambridge broke in. "There's the difference. He wanted you two. Me, my engine stopped, then I dropped my radio over and I had to paddle and paddle. He should let me go!"

Charles Herbott said, "Bambridge, I hear that story one more time, I'm going to kill you myself."

Chuck Fleet said, "If you two would just listen. Understand what I'm getting at? Us broken down—run aground, he sees it— then he really did have a right to salvage our boats. The instant we got out, anyway. In his own mind, he had a right, I'm saying. Not that any normal person would do that. But he's old, old Florida, understand? From the days of the salvage industry: old maritime law said it was legal to take an abandoned boat, and the owners had to pay a percentage of the manifest. That was the law. Hell, it might
still
be the law, for all I know. That's what he means when he says we got to work off our debt."

"But my boat hit something that shouldn't a been there. He laid a trap—"

"Maybe he did. Like the old-time wreckers. They'd move the channel lights, run boats onto the reef. Same thing."

Charles Herbott stood and put his hands against the shell wall of the pit. His first day there, Fleet had told him, don't try to climb out, he'd already tried. The shell was so loose, the walls could come down on top of them. But Herbott had tried anyway, and, sure enough, it was like trying to climb through a landslide. The idea of being covered with shell and suffocating—

Fleet said, "He's rational. That's what I'm saying. In his own way. I think he's going to make us work off our debt and let us go."

"He's a killer, and we all know it!" Bambridge again. "He pointed his gun at my head!"

"No, he's never done that, never pointed his gun at any of us. Never come right out and threatened to shoot any of us, when you think back."

"He's sure as hell implied it!"

"Think what you want, I'm just trying to look at it from another point of view."

Herbott said, "So he doesn't think he's doing anything illegal."

"That's what I'm saying."

"And he has no reason to kill us? Doesn't matter. If he ever gives me the chance, I'm going to shoot the old scumbag myself, or beat him to death with my bare hands." That was Charles Her-bott's favorite topic, how he was going to take the old man apart.

Chuck Fleet said, "The point is, he thinks things out. That's why he works us in the afternoons, when the storms blow through. No planes."

The two Chucks talked about that, passing time. They'd talked about everything, mostly how to get away. But when they weren't in the pit, they were working those thick cane patches planted in among the gumbo-limbo trees, or turning the cane press by hand like mules. And the old man stood within shooting range with his double-barreled 12-gauge, but never close enough for them to jump him.

"I've got to get out of here or I'll go insane!"

The two Chucks ignored him,- they always did. William Bambridge put his face in his hands, waiting for more tears, but he was all cried out. He could feel the blisters on his palms, spongy against his cheeks. The mosquitoes were all over him; he could feel their needle touch on his legs, could hear them whining in his ears, could feel their wings feathering the hair on his arms. The old man had said the pit was the only place they could sleep and still be out of the bugs, plus he'd built a thatched roof over it to keep out the rain. "Skeeters and sand flies," he called them. But the bugs were nearly as bad below as they were above. Worse, the maddening things were more attracted to him than to the other two men—of that Bambridge was certain. He'd read that somewhere, that mosquitoes preferred certain body chemistries to others. Where had he read that?

Thinking about it reminded him of his nice library in his nice little house back home—the library with all the books on chess and literature, a whole small section on the culinary arts, even a few books on fishing, including a dozen copies left of his own,
To an Unknown Tarpon, With Love.
Bambridge had spent a vacation week at Rio Colorado Tarpon Lodge in Costa Rica—never did land one of the damn fish—then spent two years writing the book because he had a federal grant, and if he didn't work on it for twenty-four months, he wouldn't get his quarterly checks, and what else was he going to write about? His dull life in Ohio? Then, wonder of wonders, the book won the UPLA—University Professor's Literary Award—which, in turn, had prompted
The New York Times
to invite him to contribute the occasional fishing column. And that had prompted several of the television news magazines to use him as an on-camera fishing expert. Which was probably why
People
magazine had referred to him as the "Dean of the American Outdoors" in the two-paragraph story about his book selling to the movies. Which had prompted the national television syndicate to contact him about doing the fishing show.

The show had done pretty well, too; got picked up by quite a few markets, and the numbers were pretty good. The sponsors came through with money and a lot of product, so he'd requested the sabbatical from teaching. Not that it would have mattered had the college refused. He had tenure—he could do what he damn well pleased. So he took the fall quarter off to take the show on the road, get the hell away from those tiresome shows on walleye techniques on Lake Erie. Brought it down here to Florida to check the place out, thinking maybe it was about time he moved from teaching into a full-time television career. . . .

Only to stumble into this nightmare. Held captive in a hole with two strangers—one of them, Herbott, a violent bully—defecating in a bucket, surviving on nothing but water and some kind of greasy fish. Even the two Chucks didn't know what it was. Being worked to the point of nausea and beyond, waiting to die or go mad.

This is hell, this is hell, this is hell....
Sitting there repeating it in his mind like a mantra.

It couldn't be happening, yet it was.

Bambridge stirred and swiped the mosquitoes off his arm, then smacked at his legs. Then he began to slap at his whole body in a growing frenzy, not unlike a drunk slapping snakes in the grips of delirium.

"Get them off me! It's not fair; it's not fair----"

"Knock it off, Bambridge. You're kicking me!"

"Hey—shut up, you two. He's coming, the old man."

"He's nuts! You kick me again, I'll beat the living shit out of you, Bambridge. I mean it!"

"Quiet!"

William Bambridge stilled himself abruptly; sat there trembling, knowing only that this horror couldn't go on. He had to end it, somehow, someway. He couldn't abide another day working in the heat, living with the insects. He sat looking toward the opening of the pit, like looking out of a well, and saw the silhouette of the old man appear, bent at the hips, peering down. The old man's raspy nasal twang: "You boys got so much juice, I'll put you to work early," which Bambridge heard as, "Yew baws gah so-o-o moch jews, ah'll putchew tah whark airr-ly."

Bambridge got to his feet, dusting the shells off his wet butt, watching the silhouette stoop over something—the long wooden ladder he lowered each day.

"Sir? Sir? I have to tell you something." Bambridge had his hands cupped around his mouth, trying to sound pleasant but authoritative. "I'm ill—sick. Very sick. I can't work today. I simply can't."

The old man was futzing with the ladder, talking to himself.

"Sir? Sir? Captain!" Which was what one of the Chucks called him—Fleet—like a chain-gang worker in a movie about the Deep South. "I'm trying to discuss something with you here, get something settled—"

The ladder began to slide down into the pit. The old man said, "Onliest thing you got to settle is the man's day's work you owe me."

"I can't! Don't you hear me?" And the tears came again. "I'm sick, I tell you. I can't work in the fields today. If you try to make me, I'll... I'll run away. I mean it!"

The old man's voice: "You do, you'll never make it off this island. I mean that." "You'll shoot me? That's what you mean, isn't it!"

"I mean a fat 'un like you ain't got the gumption to make it. Now quit your talkin'."

"Then why don't you shoot me? I wish you would! Shoot me now, for God's sake." Bambridge had his back to the shell wall, and he slowly rode it to the ground, collapsing in sobs. He didn't look up when he heard one of the Chucks, Fleet, say, "Captain, he's telling the truth. He's either sick or he's lost his mind. Either way, we wish you'd get him out of here."

"Me, too, old man. Do us all a favor." Herbott's surly voice.

The old man said, "You boys jes take it into your minds you don't want to work; you think that's the way things is."

"No sir, Captain. We'll do our work, all we owe you. It's him we're talking about."

There was a long silence, the old man muttering. Then: "You there!" The old man was talking to him; Bambridge could sense the focus of his attention. "Climb up outta that there hole, Fat'un."

"I'm not going to the fields." Bambridge said it flatly. The exhaustion had been replaced by a rock-bottom resolve. He didn't care anymore what the old bastard did, what the two Chucks thought. "Nothing matters," he said. "Go ahead. Shoot."

"Didn't say nothing about no fields. You owe me work—"

"I already said I'll pay you! Pay you anything you want if you get me back—"

"One of them there checks, no thanks. I had my money in a bank oncest and lost it."

"Then cash, for Christ's sake!"

"But you don't got it on you." The old man made a whoofing noise, cynical. "I tow you back now, I'll never see you or yer boats again."

"You will, too! We've told you a hundred times, we don't have the cash on us—"

The old man said, "Then you owe me work, and you'll by God do it. You can't do man's work, maybe you can do woman's work. Can you cook?"

"I'm not work—" Bambridge stopped, realizing what he was being asked. He looked up at the silhouette. "Yes . . . yes, I can cook. I like to ... I'm a very good cook."

"Can you sweep and scrub and wash?"

"Inside your home, you mean?" Bambridge had never been inside it, a bamboo thatched hut beneath trees, but at least it had walls to keep the bugs out. "I can do that, yes. Scrub, cook, anything. And stay there, out of the bugs?"