Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island (21 page)

The conference was held at a posh hotel in downtown D.C. Carol got gussied up for the event, wearing a men’s khaki button-up shirt and a clean pair of jeans. At the conference, she was instantly enthralled: never before had she been surrounded by so many like-minded turtle geeks.

Yet Carol was an anomaly even among the turtle experts. Most were older men with university positions. Carol’s high school education and lack of formal training was frowned upon, especially when she questioned one professor over his conclusion that sea turtles appeared to be shrinking in size.

“Are you measuring the turtles with calipers or tape?” she asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Sure it does. Some folks measure with a flexible tape. Others use calipers and measure the straight-line width. The results differ by several centimeters or more.”

The professor scratched his head and winced. “And who are you, madam?”

Later, she even challenged the feds. A top scientist with the National Marine Fisheries Service claimed that trawling by shrimpers had little effect on sea turtles.

“Baloney!” Carol said. “Trawling is the number-one turtle killer.”

“Do you have evidence for such a hypothesis?” he retorted.

“I’ve got the necropsies of hundreds of dead loggerheads that continue to wash ashore in record numbers.” Whispers rippled through the crowd.

Carol stayed late at the hotel bar, sparring with various scientists over their turtle research. She may have lacked PhD pedigree, but she had gutted more turtles than any of the leading researchers.

After a few drinks, the white-haired professors started to enjoy the saucy spitfire who had crashed their party. And after years of wrestling with ideas alone on an island, Carol was thrilled to trade barbs with some of the country’s sharpest scientific minds.

Rebecca nudged Carol and glanced at her watch. “We gotta get going.” They were about to leave when Carol overheard a bald guy next to her talking about salamander sex.

“Salamanders don’t need males to reproduce,” Carol interjected. She described how some all-female populations of salamanders on Cumberland Island can reproduce by humping each other.

“They’re just producing clones,” the bald professor replied. To survive long-term, salamanders still need the genetic mixing of sex with males. “That’s why nearly every animal hierarchy is led by an alpha male.”

“But females still have the upper hand sexually,” Carol said. She described how female scorpions devour their male partners after sex. Female fireflies, praying mantises, and spiders are sexual cannibals, too. “Men can beat their chests all they want, but ultimately, women call the shots.”

Speechless, the bald man grinned and reached for his whiskey. His name was Bob Shoop, a herpetologist from the University of Rhode Island, and he had spent the past twenty years studying salamanders and becoming one of the world’s leading researchers, only to have a drunk woman at a bar go toe-to-toe with him. He was tall, sturdily built, bald, and rosy-cheeked, with riveting ocean-blue eyes. Unlike the other stiffs dressed in starched shirts and bow ties, Bob wore jeans and a blazer. His lips were floppy and loose, stretched out by his sunny, spacious smile.

“A female’s eggs are the limiting resource,” Carol continued. “We produce one egg once a month. Males produce millions of sperm every day. If all the men on earth died tonight, the species could continue on frozen sperm. If the women disappear, it’s extinction.”

The crowded bar was getting louder. Bob scooted his bar stool closer to hers. “I guess that’s why we males ram our heads together and have pissing contests all the time.”

“That’s right,” Carol said. “How much convincing does it take for a male to give up his sperm? Zero. I could ask you for your sperm right now and you’d probably give it to me.”

Bob felt his cheeks flush.

“Women, on the other hand, need a lot more convincing,” Carol continued, “because our eggs don’t come as easily, and we’re only fertile for a few days a month.”

“It would be a whole lot easier if women just announced when they were in heat each month,” Bob said. “We can’t smell your pheromones like tomcats.”

Carol wanted to keep scrapping with him, but Rebecca was tugging at her to leave. Bob scrawled his phone number on a napkin and handed it to her.

“Could I call you some time?” he asked.

“I don’t have a phone.”

“That’s the best rejection I’ve ever received.”

“No, it’s true. Here’s my mailing address . . . write me.”

On the way home that evening, Rebecca’s car sputtered to a stop on the shoulder of Interstate 95, leaving them stranded along the country’s busiest freeway. The elderly retired professor with whom they were staying couldn’t drive at night, and neither Carol nor Rebecca knew anyone else in D.C.

“Wait a second!” Carol shouted, pulling a napkin from her pocket.

Carol walked to a pay phone and called Bob. He hopped in the university van and rescued Carol and Rebecca from the side of the interstate, and then brought them back to the conference center where he and his grad students were staying. Carol and Rebecca couldn’t afford a room at the swanky hotel, so Bob gave them his bed while he slept on the floor. He was a perfect gentleman.

But that’s not what his grad students were thinking. They had been hanging out on the hotel roof drinking that night. They couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw their esteemed professor drive away in the university van after midnight and then return with two attractive younger women, whom he escorted to his room.

Carol came back to Cumberland with renewed energy for her sea turtle research. She’d been gone only a few days, but over a dozen turtle carcasses had washed ashore while she was away. On the beach, Carol chased away the vultures, who had descended on the turtle graveyard.

One by one, Carol began carving into the turtles, bloated by the midsummer heat. After a weekend in an air-conditioned hotel, the island sun felt like sandpaper on her skin. Sweat stung her eyes. She felt like she was breathing through a damp dishrag.

As she sliced open carcasses, Carol read the story of each turtle. Fissures and rifts in the bone told tales. From the tangle of intestines she unraveled the turtle’s life and death. Most of the carcasses had bloody fluid in their stomach, soggy lungs, and foam in their trachea—evidence of drowning. Sea turtles must surface for air, but when trapped in a shrimpers’ trawl net they go into oxygen-deprived shock and die.

What was even more intriguing were the turtles who had apparently died of shark attacks or boat propeller strikes. When Carol examined their caracasses more closely, she discovered the same evidence of drowning. Most of the turtles hit by boats or attacked by sharks were already dead, she realized. They were floating lifelessly in the ocean after drowning in trawl nets. Shrimpers’ trawls were killing a lot more turtles than anyone wanted to know.

Carol was scooping shrimp out of the dead turtles’ stomachs when Louie drove up in his truck. He braked hard, skidding in the wet sand. He stood over her, arms folded, flat-footed, his shadow swallowing the sun’s light.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“There’s nothing left to say.”

He glared hard at her with wet, red-rimmed eyes. His mouth was a stubborn line. Then he kicked the beach, spraying her with sand. Carol wiped her face with a bandana as he stormed back to his truck, revved the engine, and roared away.

Louie continued to host weekend bashes at the bluff while Carol immersed herself in her turtle work, which was suddenly attracting national attention. Her data showed that more endangered sea turtles were dying than ever before. Reporters regularly came to the island to interview Carol. When Patti Hagan, an editor from
The New Yorker
, asked to visit in the fall of 1979, Carol worried that her cockroach-infested cabin would be unsuitable for a well-heeled Manhattan writer. So she reluctantly asked Louie if Patti could stay at his air-conditioned house. He agreed.

They all had drinks together on Louie’s front porch. Patti and Carol talked turtles and island politics late into the night while Louie sat quietly in the shadows knocking back vodka tonics.

Around midnight, Carol stood up to leave. It was dark, and Carol had to walk a half mile back to her cabin, so she said good night.

“I’ll walk you home,” Louie offered. He could barely lift himself out of his chair.

They walked in silence through the forest. Ragged clouds hid a sickle moon overhead. Then Louie said, “I read your letter.”

Carol’s throat tightened. “What letter?”

“You told that Anne woman that our relationship had run its course.”

“You’re reading my mail? What the hell, Louie?”

“You’re done with me, huh. Is that how you feel?”

Carol swallowed hard. “We had some good times together, but now it’s time to move on.”

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Louie punched Carol in the eye. In the dark, she never saw it coming. He knocked her flat and momentarily unconscious.

She awoke to the taste of metallic blood trickling from her nose. Louie stood over her.
Get up, Carol
, she told herself.
Get up and get the hell out of here
.

Which way to run? She wanted to head for home, but Louie’s house was closer, and Patti was there.

Louie turned his back for a moment. Now was her chance. She wobbled to her feet, steadied herself, then broke for Louie’s house.

Between twisted oaks, she ran through the black night, one eye wide open, the other swollen shut. Behind her, she heard the snap of twigs beneath his footfall.
Don’t look back, don’t look back
, she told herself.

“Carol! We need to talk!” he shouted.

Her jackhammer heart pounded harder. In the soot-black Cumberland night, she could barely make out the white ribbon of sandy road through the forest.
If he catches me, I’m dead
, Carol thought. He was getting closer. She smelled his bourbon musk.

“Get back here, Carol!” he yelled.

The hairs on her neck bristled.
Be ready to fight
, Carol told herself.
Gouge his eyes. Kick him in the balls. Rip off his ears.

She glanced sideways and caught a glimpse of his shadow closing in. Her heart leapt into her throat. Arms flailing, jaw clenched, she looked out through fogged slits at her slow-motion nightmare. She felt his hot breath on the back of her neck.

Then a pale sliver of moonlight pierced the clouds, and she glimpsed the house’s silhouette through the trees. She bore down, wringing out the last sap from her legs.

Carol raced up the steps, swung open the door, dashed into the back room and locked it. She huddled in the corner. For a moment, everything was still.
Then she heard footsteps clomp across the porch. His bloodshot eyes appeared at the back window. Adrenaline knifed through her.

Louie rattled the door handle. Then a long silence followed. Carol shivered in the corner, wondering if she could make it till daylight. She counted the seconds, one by one. Finally, dawn drowned the stars in a pale azure. She steeled herself, crept to the window, and peered into the twilight. He was gone.

Slowly, she cracked open the door and snuck across the hall to Patti’s bedroom.

“Oh my god, Carol! What happened?” Patti said.

Carol’s right eye was black and ballooned. Dried blood stained her upper lip. Carol sat on Patti’s bed shivering and tried to explain. A few minutes later, they heard Louie walk up the porch steps and creak open the front door.

“Everybody take it easy,” he said.

“What the hell did you do to her?” Patti shrieked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Louie replied, eyes to the ground. “She must have tripped on a tree root.”

Patti packed her bags and walked with Carol back to her cabin, elbows linked. They barricaded the door behind them and didn’t leave the cabin all day.

Louie returned the next morning. Carol was washing dishes when he tapped at her kitchen window. She jumped backward from the sink.

“Stay away from me, Louie!” she shouted through the glass.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to make it right.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

He hovered on her porch, pacing. Carol hid in the windowless bathroom until she heard him leave.

Later that afternoon, Carol called her parents from the Park
Service phone, and they promised to come down the next day. Then she
and Patti took a stroll along the beach, walking barefoot in the surf, feeling the warm sun on their skin.
They kept to the firm sand below the tide wrack, a tangle of shells, seaweed, and horseshoe crabs—their spiked maroon flanks and long, sharp tails still wet. Carol nudged a horseshoe crab’s jagged, helmet-shaped shell with her foot.

“That looks mean,” Patti said. “Does it bite?”

“Naw. Most folks use it for fish bait.”

Carol explained how horseshoe crabs crawl ashore to nest under the full moon for only a few nights each spring, coating the island beach with pastel-green eggs that look like Tic-Tacs. At the same time, a small shorebird called a red knot synchronizes its eighteen-thousand-mile migration from South America to the Arctic with the horseshoe crab’s egg laying orgy to fuel its journey. Today, both species are threatened.