Buzz Cut (6 page)

Thorn was tying flies in the shade of a giant sapodilla tree, his vise and workbench facing Blackwater Sound. A mile away the markers of the Intracoastal guided a steady flow of boats up and down the coast, and beyond that were a scattering of mangrove islands and the waters of Florida Bay and the Gulf.

Blackwater Sound was eye-flinching bright, a dazzling shelf of diamonds. The sunlight ricocheting off its surface, brilliant sparks flying. From the southeast a humid breeze flooded up out of the Florida Straits and rattled the seed pods overhead, made the pelicans and gulls bank hard to gain altitude as they worked their territories from one side of the island to the other, Atlantic to Gulf and back again.

Squinting out at the blaze, Thorn saw the stark silhouette of someone poling a skiff across the tidal flats. For a pulse-bumping moment he imagined it was Sugarman. But as the skiff grew closer, he saw it was only Calvin Jaspers up on the poling platform of his blue Hewes bonefisher.

The old man leaned into his long fiberglass pole, coasted ahead ten feet, reset the claw foot against the muddy bottom and leaned into it again, a good solid rhythm, moving along, heading toward Thorn's dock.

Calvin was a lean and dignified man of seventy-five with a thick tangle of white hair and high English coloring. He'd ministered to Ohio Presbyterians for thirty-five years. Now he was a bonefish convert, and Thorn's best customer.

For the last few years Jaspers had managed a fishing school fifteen miles down the road in Islamorada. Eight hundred dollars for a weekend of flats-fishing instruction by some of the world's best guides, room and board at The Cheeca Lodge, and all the frozen margaritas his lawyer and doctor clients could guzzle at the end of every sunburned day.

But about a year ago everything changed. Some contagious disease had swept through urban centers all around the country and apparently infected a large percentage of the professional class with the fly-fishing bug. In one year alone, applications for Jaspers' school quadrupled. For the last five months he'd been hustling seventy-five to a hundred fly-fishing wanna-bes through his school every weekend, and because most of them were beginners or hopeless bunglers, they lost a lot of tackle, brand-new flies snagged on the bottom, caught deep in the mangrove branches, or simply spilled overboard.

All summer Thorn had been tying flies as fast as his fingers could work, handing over dozens of Crazy Charlies and Bonebusters to the Reverend Jaspers every Friday afternoon. Clearing over three hundred dollars a week, the highest steady income Thorn had seen in his life.

He watched as Jaspers made his skiff fast to the cleats, straightened up and waved hello, and started slowly down the dock. He was barefoot and wore a long-sleeved khaki shirt, matching shorts, fishing pliers in a leather holster on his belt, a white floppy hat, and black wraparound sunglasses. As he approached, Thorn could see his lips were crimped into a strange and unfamiliar smile. The look of a man with ruinous news.

They exchanged hellos and Thorn handed him the green felt pad with a dozen of his latest creations. A weedless fly, small and light, meant to resemble the tiny shrimp that bonefish shot to the surface for. It was the most realistic fly he'd created in a long time.

First he wrapped a barbless hook with an iridescent pinkish thread—a few hundred tight turns to form the plump body of the shrimp. Near the eyelet he glued two silver beads bought by the scoopful from the hobby shop tray, beads intended for some summer camp bracelet. He dotted the beads with bright red marine paint to give the shrimp a goggle-eyed stare. Then used a half-inch spray of beauty shop frosted hair for a tantalizing hula skirt that concealed the razor-point hook.

The fly was pink and small with a frothy, tantalizing look. An easy gulp. Not as outlandish as the ones he'd been tying over the last few years, but a convincing fly, with just enough whimsy to mark it as Thorn's.

Calvin Jaspers took the felt pad from Thorn and stepped back from the workbench, away from the sapodilla's deep shade. He tilted the pad at different angles to the light, tugged one fly off, held it up as though he were checking a diamond for a smudge of inferior color. A moment or two later he hooked the fly back onto the green pad and held the pad down by his side and stared out at the bay for half a minute.

"What is it?" Thorn said.

Jaspers turned and his smile deteriorated.

"They're beautiful," he said.

"Glad you like them."

"Damn beautiful."

Thorn was silent.

"They're all the same," Jaspers said. "Identical."

"Small variations," Thorn said. "But yeah, I've been trying to perfect this style."

"I'm afraid I don't want them."

"Oh," Thorn said. "Okay."

"Don't you want to know why?"

"All right."

"These are exactly like the ones you sold me last week and the week before."

"That a problem?"

"Well, they haven't been catching fish, Thorn. None at all. First time that's happened with one of yours. I had close to a hundred anglers down two weeks ago, eighty-five last week, a dozen guides taking turns with them. Skunked. Every one of them, guides included. Two weekends on the water, sixteen hours a day. No bones. Zip, not a snapper, a jack, not even a trash fish. Damn embarrassing. They're beautiful flies though. Had a lot of comments on them."

"Thanks."

"But if they aren't catching fish, you know, they're worthless to me. Impractical."

"I understand."

Thorn stared out at a catamaran, its sail down, motoring along the channel.

"Hell if I can say why they aren't working. Damned strange. Anglers spotted plenty of fish, but just couldn't get anything to hit. So here's what I've decided. I'm going to have to give you a breather, Thorn. I'll stop back around, say the middle of December, see what you're working on. If it looks good, if it looks like the old stuff, we're back in business."

"Sounds fair."

The catamaran was towing an inflatable raft. A black dog was in the raft barking furiously at a flock of trailing gulls.

"Sorry, Thorn. I hate to drop this on you."

"It's okay. No problem. I'll see you in December then."

"No hard feelings?"

"None," Thorn said. "None at all."

He turned to go, then swung back around. "You got any explanation for it, son? You've always had such a magic touch."

Thorn glanced down at the custom vise that gripped the fly he'd been working on. "Maybe I've lost it."

"No, I'm sure it's just a slump. You'll get it back. Just keep swinging at those pitches."

"I'll do that, Reverend."

"You feeling all right, son?"

"I'm fine. Never better. Very relaxed."

"Well, maybe that's it," the preacher said. "Maybe that's the whole thing right there. It's possible, you know, for a man to feel too good for his own welfare, lose his edge."

Thorn waved a mosquito away from his ear. "That one of your religious doctrines?"

"Uneasiness is good," Jaspers said. "A man who doubts is a man who tests things, doesn't get sluggish. As I used to say, lazy faith is no faith at all."

"Hey, they're just bonefish flies, Reverend. A hook wrapped with colored threads, some feathers and fur. That's all they are."

The man smiled. "Sure, son. If you say so."

He hesitated a moment more with an odd look in his eyes, then turned and walked away. Thorn felt his smile wither from within, but out of stubbornness and recent habit he kept it there for a few' moments more.

Upstairs, he found Rochelle hunched over her portable sewing machine. He stood in the doorway and looked at her for a moment. Last summer's sun still shone gold in the tips of her hair. A month or so ago, shortly after she'd moved in with him, she'd cropped her shoulder-length auburn hair very short, just barely enough to part. Now' she looked like a penitent. A sexy penitent.

The new cut seemed to enlarge Rochelle's green eyes. It emphasized her cheekbones too. Her lips. Thorn liked to hold her face in his hands. He liked to kiss her that way, face cradled in his palms. He liked to massage her head, scratch her scalp, which made her hum and rock her head to loosen the muscles in her neck. He liked to feel the shape of her skull, molding his hands around it.

He couldn't remember liking to do any of that with other women. He'd been in love a few times and each time was very different. Every instance seemed to have nothing to do with the ones before. Of course the women made it different. Each of them distinct, and Thorn kept changing as well. That must've been why the pleasure he felt with Rochelle, the melting away, the angles of stimulation, the exact weight and complexity of his feelings, all of it was mysterious and unfamiliar. The rhythms of their conversations, the silences, the grammar of their touch. New cadences, new junctures of flesh.

Even with years of experience with other lovers, it was as though Thorn were starting fresh with her. All his education didn't help, made no difference whatever. Love, it seemed, was one of those things about which it was impossible to be wise.

Rochelle had finished making curtains for the west windows and was working on the east ones now. White Spanish lace. Simple and elegant, tossed easily by the sea breezes. They gave the room a soft, sleepy feel. A room to nap in.

He'd never had curtains before. No need, with a jungle of Florida hollies and seagrape, ironwood, gumbo limbo and strangler fig cloaking the perimeter of his property, any voyeurs would need a week of hard labor with a machete to get within peeping distance.

"What's wrong, Thorn?"

Rochelle's sewing needle was still, the machine humming before her. She was holding a hem of the white lace, poised to feed more of it through the guide. Rover was asleep, lying on his plaid mat near her feet. She wore an ankle-length dress in a blue paisley print, a scooping neckline that gave a generous view of sun-freckled flesh. A hippie costume making the rounds again. But underneath the dress, Thorn knew she wore black scalloped lace panties. A bra that was barely a whisper of fabric. That was Rochelle. A junk painting that the world saw, a sensuous masterpiece underneath. Scratch away that hippie dress, you found a woman who loved to rollick. A woman who'd refreshed Thorn's interest in the erotic, reminded him how to caper, how to laze away an afternoon, smooth his jagged brainwaves.

"You're not smiling," she said. "What is it?"

Thorn told her about Jaspers and her face softened. Oh, only that.

"Well, I like them. I think they're beautiful. Much prettier than the flies you've done in the past."

"You're not a fish."

"No," she said. "Would you like me better if I were?"

"I like you fine."

"If I were a fish," she said, making a sly smile. "You could mount me. Hang me on the wall."

"I don't mount fish."

"Sorry," she said. And she looked at him a moment more as if trying to decode this new disposition. Something she hadn't seen before. It had only been a month, living like this.

Thorn wished he could tell her how to deal with him, what to say to make this uneasiness disappear, but he didn't know himself.

"You could mount me anyway," she said quietly.

"I could," he said. "Yes, there's always that."

He tried to smile but could feel it turn sickly on his lips. "It's okay, Rochelle."

"Is this just a mood?"

"Yeah, I guess it's that."

"Well, then I get to have one too."

"Fair enough." He felt his smile coming back. "We could take a gigantic mood swing together. Get seriously cranky, go out on the porch, shake our fists at the sky."

Rochelle stood up, started over to him.

There was a breeze stirring the curtains. When they bloused out, the room changed, waves of light trickling across the walls.

He'd spent more hours in that room than any place on earth. Sitting at his fly-tying desk, he could hear the quiet ticking of the wood, knew all its creaks and groans and crackling as it weathered the years. He could tell the hour of the day by the shape of the shadows lying across the floor, could name the bird by the sound of its claws scratching across the wood shingles.

But just then those curtains and the tricks they were playing with the light made him dizzy and confused. Giving him a breathless vertigo that passed almost as quickly as it came.

Rochelle took him in her arms and Thorn fit himself against her. His hand rising to touch the back of her head, the soft bristle of her scalp. The embrace snug and familiar.

"Glass of wine?" she said, her mouth at his throat.

"I've still got work to do."

"You work too hard."

"I like to work. It's what I do."

He felt her body flush against his, so close it seemed they were seeping into one another. She smoothed a hand across his bottom, let it linger.

"It's almost happy hour," she whispered.

"Well, maybe just one glass."

Rochelle peeled slowly from the embrace, went to the wine rack. It was a simple teak arrangement she'd given him as a gift. The wine rack held ten bottles, mostly Cabernets, which was what she favored. She uncorked last night's bottle, pulled two glasses from the shelf. Hers as well. Long-stemmed glasses etched with a lacy design around the rims. Not the heavy squat things Thorn used for wine—a half cut above jelly jars.

They went out into the sun, leaned against the porch railing and gazed at Blackwater Sound, the harsh concussions of light against its surface. Another cool front had moved through overnight and the sky was scraped clean again. A frigate bird was suspended a mile up in the perfect blue, a winged dragon searching for prey. The sunlight was sharp and pure, cleaner than light ever was on the mainland. Temperature in the low seventies, a breeze from the north carrying a hint of evergreen.