Lost Man's River (56 page)

Right up till a few years ago, we was huntin gators all the year around. Had some state laws protectin 'em but nobody didn't pay that no attention, just come in and laid their gator flats right on the dock and nobody never said a thing about it. Salt down the belly flats, dry 'em in the sun, roll 'em and stack 'em in a good dry place till the day when the law gets changed and there's a market—that is their idea. Only thing, them flats don't keep good
once the damp gets to 'em, so mostly all them gators was killed off for nothin.

For many years, the number-one gator poacher was Crockett Senior Daniels. Speck is still livin off the land, he says, by which he means livin off the Park. It ain't a secret, ever'body knows it, Park rangers included. Speck loves the Glades but he don't love the Park and never did—don't want to
hear
about it, even. Far as Speck's concerned, it don't exist. “That's the last of the wild country,” ol' Speck likes to say, “and she's still wild, boys, never you mind how many stupid signs them greenhorns go to slappin up along their so-called boundaries. That is our territory, and Uncle Sam hisself ain't got the right to tell us born-bred local fellers what to do with it!”

Course Speck was talkin mainly about gators. By the time the Park come in, the gators was killed out about ever'where—Georgie, Mi'sippi, Loosiana, too—and after they was all but gone, the state of Florida give the gator full protection. That suited us gator hunters to a T cause it drove the price up. The state fish and wildlife boys never messed with us too much. A man on a state salary, now, he's got to think twice about riskin his neck goin up against mean swamp rats that don't take kindly to any man who gets in their way.

It ain't like the old-time gator poachin—Joe Lopez and Tant Jenkins, a few other fellers, skiff and pole and rifle and a pot for coffee. Swamp rats has to keep up with the times the same as ever'body. With gators so few, we rigged us a couple them new airboats so's to cover more country, even rented an ol' crop-duster biplane to map out every last damn gator hole in the Big Cypress. Pretty soon, them Cypress gators was all gone, the only gators left to hunt was the ones across the boundary in the Park. So one night, bouncin along over them Loop Road potholes, Speck says, “Boys, this ol' swamp over here to south'ard is supposed to be some kind of a national damn park, and what I'm lookin for is a damn boundary marker so's we don't go breakin no federal law. Any you boys see any sign of that darn boundary? Cause I can't never make it out too good, nighttimes especially.”

Well, us poor fellers always did believe that the Glades was took away unfairly by the U.S. government, so when Speck said, “Boys, we best go get them gators”—well, that is what we done. Swooped in and out of there like hawks. That national park become national headquarters for poachers, to where we had strangers infestin in the Glades from other counties and from all over the South. Gator Hook was where we divvied up and where we partied, we had us a regular Redneck Riviera! Shipped hides by the damn thousands right up there to Q. C. Plott Raw Fur and Ginseng in Atlanta, which was doin real good with wild animal parts in the hide export business.

Takes a smart feller like Speck Daniels to work out all the fine points. Sets
up his moonshine still and huntin camp
inside
the Park out of harm's way, where he ain't got no damn local sheriffs nor state cops snoopin around that has to be paid off. Don't hardly make no bones about it, because that's his own home territory, the way he sees it. Old Man Speck sets back on his old boat and counts his money while his lawyer takes care of somebody at Parks who keeps them patrols away from Chatham River.

I reckon you know that Speck's camp is at Chatham Bend. Works real good for his night runs by airboat. Follow the rivers back up into the Glades, head northeast over the sloughs and out over the saw grass to his drop-offs along the Loop Road. Or sometimes he uses them broad levee banks where his buyers can bring a truck south from the Trail. After the feds got on to that, Speck would be tipped off before the rangers, never lost a cargo. Stead of headin north up to the roads where they was waitin for him, he run his hides downriver to the Gulf. Hauls 'em offshore to a coast vessel that runs up a new Panama flag, crates 'em up as caiman hides marked “South America,” then imports 'em back into Florida at Tampa Bay.

Course today the feds are keepin the wildlife trade under surveillance, they are crackin down inside the Park and out. But one thing they ain't done yet is catch Speck Daniels. Can't catch that man out in that wilderness, can't run him down in the shaller rivers on this coast. He drags out their channel markers fast as they put 'em in, leaves any boat that tries to chase him stranded high and dry on some ol' orster bar. No matter what they try, he stays one jump ahead.

Huntin gators was good business for a while. A lot of Chokoloskee men done that when it was legal, me included, and a few of us went ahead after it weren't. Tant Jenkins and the Lopez boys, they never paid much attention to the law, and a couple of them Browns, they was real professionals, and other fellers done it on the side. But all of 'em has quit the business now, because them poor dumb things are mostly gone.

Still got the laws but ain't got no more gators. Speck don't hardly poach no more cause they ain't enough gators left to bother with. Few years' time, there won't be no place to hunt except way south around Florida Bay, and no place to ship the few hides a man might get. But God created Crockett Senior Daniels to take and sell just about anything so long as it ain't his, so if he has to, he will rob rare bird eggs, or butterflies or ferns or orchids, or green tree snakes, or a coral snake, or maybe them peppermint-striped tree snails that's mostly gone now off the hammocks. A dealer he's got over to Miami knows how to get them pretty things to rich collectors, them very few that don't die along the way.

Case you might think I am tellin all Speck's secrets, none of this ain't no secret at all, not to nobody around the Glades country.
Ol' Speck been gettin on in years, claims he's retired now, lives on his old boat out of Flamingo on account of the heat his boys is drawing around here. Into his sixties and still gives the wardens fits. Don't need the money, he has made so much, and that ain't even where he's makin it, cause wild things today ain't nothin but his hobby. He's got his boys runnin guns for South America, in and out of the Ten Thousand Islands, just like he run bird plumes and liquor in the old days.

While Speck was over to Miami settin up deals for moonshine and gators, and payin people off, he seen that by our Florida law there weren't no kind of damn firearm you couldn't buy over the counter, and that runnin weapons to the Caribbean or Latin America, where they are kind of loose about their licenses, might be a nice sideline for a gator hunter who was huntin himself right out of business here at home. Speck went right over into haulin guns, and he's already thinkin about haulin marijuana, because that is where the real big money will be comin from ten years from now, in Speck's opinion.

You know and I know that our federal government don't put nothin in the way of businessmen, don't matter how greedy or cold-blooded dirty that business might be. If marijuana gets goin good, the big tobacco companies will take it over from the little fellers, put it out in fancy packages, you wait and see. Them corporations pays big money to get their errand boys elected, and after that, they tell 'em what kind of laws to write and how to get 'em passed. Hell, them weapons makers, they do just as good in peace as they do in war! Only hassle they might come up against is right here at the Florida end, with all the paperwork.

But ol' Speck says, “Why Godamighty, boys, them forms and export permits don't mean nothin! I aim to get them weapons out or know the reason why!” Next thing you know, he's buyin up heavy-duty ordnance that's labeled for home use or huntin or whatever kind of sportin fun us rednecks might get up to while there's still a few wild critters left to kill—assault rifles for turkey shoots, bazookas for blowin deer away. Lob a hand grenade into good cover, you might come out with a whole covey of quail! Some of that sportin hardware is so big, it comes on wheels! Truck that ordnance over here to the west coast so's not to mess with federal surveillance at Miami. Collect enough for a big shipment, haul it out beyond the three-mile limit to that Panama amigo, and run that cargo south to them poor countries where they got some kind of a cryin need to kill people.

It's like Speck told me once before I quit—“What they do with them weapons ain't none of our damn business, Whidden, on account of the customer is always right.” Says, “Ain't that the motto that made this country great?” Told us about the American Dream and all like that. Ol' Speck talked
so doggone patriotic, it like to brought tears to my eyes, least when I was drinkin.

All the same, I quit. I'd been thinkin about quittin anyway, because them boys was gettin too darn ornery even for me. Killed out gators all across the Glades, kept killin till it made no sense. Had gator flats piled up by the damn thousands when there just weren't no call for 'em no more. We was waitin on a market that weren't goin to come back, not before them stacks of hides moldered and rotted.

I hated that part worst—the waste of life. Felt like my own heart was leakin, some way. So when Speck's baby daughter asked me to quit and left me when I didn't, I thought about it awhile, then said okay. Sally could live with the moonshine business, she could take or leave the gators, but gun-runnin was somethin else, because innocent people was goin to come up killed.

Course Speck will tell you how some shipments of his weapons was used to put a stop to some damn revolution. Felt pretty proud about his war against godless Commonists, I can tell you. But Sally found out that most of them guns was goin to dictators and criminals, and most of the victims was Injun people down in them poor countries who made the mistake of tryin to resist gettin burned out, run off their land, maybe stomped and killed, just to make Speck's customers more money. Seems like small brown people are always in the way.

Whidden stopped talking to listen, then tossed off his cup as Lucius did the same. His legs came off the table and he hauled himself upright in his chair, and his boot heel nudged his jug back underneath it as Sally appeared in the door. “A while back you was askin about Henry Short. Bill House had a son could tell you something.” He stretched and yawned as if unaware of Sally. “Andy House, he'd know about Henry good as anybody. Might even tell you where to find him. And Andy knows some things about your daddy, too, cause Bill House talked about Ed Watson all his life. Ted Smallwood's children would remember things, and Old Man Sandy Albritton in Everglade, and some of them older Browns at Chokoloskee.”

Sally was glaring at Whidden's blue tin cup. “Smallwoods! Houses! Browns! How about Hardens? Your family knew him a lot better than these flea-bitten old-timers who are still slinging it around about Ed Watson, how their daddies told Watson this and he said that! Just to show they know something important, which they don't! The little they know that's not hand-me-down lies and bragging from their daddies comes straight out of the magazines and books, most of it wrong!”
This was true and Lucius nodded but Sally ignored him. Her gaze remained fixed upon her husband with a look that promised she would settle with him later. “Lee Harden called Old Man D. D. House ‘the leader of the outlaws.' So why would you send Mister Colonel to listen to a House?”

Whidden said quietly, “The House boys thought what they done that day was right. They did not back away from it or talk their way around it, not like some.”

But Sally knew he had been drinking and went storming off to bed, and after that, they remained silent for a while. Looking forward to putting his boat into the water, happy they were headed for the Islands, Whidden contemplated his guest with affection. “Seems to me,” he said at last, “I been settin around with Mister Colonel Watson since the world began. And them good old times are startin to come back.” Swaying erect, heading for bed, he nodded and smiled, eyes shining with fond reveries, but for an hour afterwards, before Lucius finally slept, he could hear the reverberation of their voices, rising, falling.

Next morning when Lucius awoke, Whidden's truck was gone. He listened to Sally run a bath, heard the rub of her pretty hip on the porcelain tub, and suffered a sad aching sense of loss. When she came in, she smiled affectionately and said, “Plain Lucius!” but she wasn't flirting.

Barefoot, Sally fixed his breakfast, steamy and fresh as a pink shrimp in her white towel bathrobe. Observing her movements at the stove, he longed to retreat between her legs, never to be seen on earth again. Feeling weak and hungover, he murmured finally, “You are very beautiful this morning, Mrs. Harden. And I miss you.”