I turned and got back to the work I was doing, searched through my open tool box for four-inch nails and I found a hunting knife under my hammer. I glanced back at the man. He was still a good ninety-five yards downriver. I saw him put something in the pouch he carried.
After sniper training, after my time in the first Gulf War, I still calibrated distance in trajectory — what I had to do to make sure a.50 caliber rifle bullet hit a target the size of a grapefruit a quarter mile away. I looked at the river’s surface. There was no wind. The man walking in the river wore a wide-brim hat. From where I stood, I could aim with a scoped rifle, if I had one, for the middle of the hat, right above the brim. From this distance, the bullet would hit him dead center in the forehead.
I blinked hard. Enough. Not everybody is a hostile. Not everybody is homicidal or a homicide suspect. I swatted a deerfly and took a deep breath. It was spring and the river carried the smells of renewing life. Alligators building nests out of sand, sticks and river mud. Spoonbills and herons feeding live fish to squalling young. Honeysuckles and wild roses blooming.
I removed the knife from the toolbox and laid it on the wooden bench. I looked over my shoulder at the man in the distance and began driving a nail into the wood. I wanted to replace worn and broken planks on the long bench. The morning was already hot, near eighty I guessed. I was shirtless, jeans. Sweat rolled down my back as I hit the nails.
My Uncle Bill, a World War II vet who never spoke of the war, only the demons he fought after it, used to say that anger drives the nails into your own coffin. He also said that every man has his breaking point. After a thirteen year career as a homicide detective, I began to understand what Uncle Bill meant.
It’s gut rot of the soul, and it was the most pervasive part of the job in fighting crime. In homicide, I didn’t fight crime. The crime had happened before we arrived. I fought the motivation, the detached switch that allowed someone to derail another person’s life. And it fought back. It had pierced the scab covering a dark ember in my marrow, and the buried ash smoldered beneath the surface of night sweats.
I pounded another nail so deep into the wood I couldn’t see the head. After my wife, Sherri, died of ovarian cancer six months ago, I moved here to this remote spot on Florida’s St. Johns River with Max. Sherri had bought the miniature dachshund when I’d been away on a three-day stakeout. She named her Maxine and allowed her sleeping quarters at the foot of our bed on her own “doggie blanket.” When I’d returned home, my wife said that Maxine was the only other warm body she’d let in our bed. I couldn’t argue that, and so this little dog, with her soft brown eyes, permanent eyeliner and heart of a lion, became our companion.
Now it was just the two of us, and Max was sleeping under the blanket on her side of the bed. I’d sold everything with the house in Miami. My new home was an old Florida cracker house with a large tin roof, plenty of rambling rooms, huge screened-in porch, and a generous view of the river. The house sat on one of the few high banks overlooking the river. Most were bluffs of ancient Indian shell mounds. The native people had lived off the river, eating fish, clams and oysters. They piled the shells and bones into mounds up and down the river.
“Dog’s gonna be a meal for a gator if it gets too close to the edge.”
I whirled around and saw the man, now less than fifty feet from my dock. How had he walked that quickly? Had I been pounding the nails so hard I didn’t hear Max bark? Did she bark? She stood there, little paws at the edge of the dock, tail wagging looking at the man in the river.
He wore an Australian outback hat that looked as old as Ayers Rock. He walked along the river bottom, water up to his chest, the pole tapping the unseen. Max uttered a low growl.
“It’s okay, Max,” I said. She looked back at me like she didn’t believe me. I glanced at the knife on the bench and looked at the man.
He held his hat and slowly dropped down into the river, the dark water covering him. Within seconds, he was gone.
TWO
I knew he had not been pulled under by a gator. His descent was too slow. I stepped over to the side of the dock next to Max. She didn't budge, eyes wide, staring at the spot in the river where the man had disappeared.
“Maybe he slipped in a hole, Max.” She whined, her whimper somewhere on the verge of a bark. Suddenly, the man rose out of the river’s surface like the Greek God Poseidon, clutching his scepter. He used one hand to secure the hat on his head, water pouring from the brim, the other hand gripping the metal pole. Then he dropped something into the leather sack around one shoulder. He said, “Couldn’t get it out with my toes, had to use my hand.”
“What are you doing?”
He closed his eyes and listened, prodding the pole into the river mud. His face was coffee brown, maybe Native American. He had smooth skin for a man I guessed was in his mid-fifties. His hair was long, salt and pepper, pulled back into a ponytail. He had a hawk nose that looked like it had been broken and set more than once. He wore a tank top, and his biceps rolled with muscle as he worked the metal prod.
I heard the pole strike something. With his feet, he seemed to be feeling the river mud. He lifted one foot out of the water and held something between his toes. He reached down to take the object, turning it over in his hand, studying it a few seconds before dropping whatever it was into the sack.
Max wagged her tail and finally barked. The man looked up and spoke in a slow, deliberate tone. “Dog’s gonna attract gators. Saw a big’en here a month ago.”
I almost laughed at the irony. “You’re standing in the middle of the river, water up to your chest, and you’re telling me that my dog might attract gators.”
He stopped his tapping for a beat. “I’m not in the middle of the river. Gator is most dangerous at night. You live around ‘em long enough and you learn their ways.” “I’m glad you’re in harmony with nature.”
“Dog and a gator won’t ever mix. Gator will stalk him. One day your dog will be barkin’ here on the side of the dock and a gator will jump outta the river and grab him.” “What are you doing?”
“Retrieving artifacts.”
“You're hunting for arrowheads?”
“Salvaging the past.”
“Why are you searching in the river?”
“Because this is where they are.” He squinted in the sun. “Lot of the ground’s been picked over. This river basin was the home to thousands of my people. There’s plenty of arrow and spearheads in this river mud.” He walked up to the dock, took his sack off and emptied it on the wooden planks.
Max wagged her tail and sniffed. I smiled. “Okay Max, let’s look at the past, the future is a little obscure right now.” The arrowheads were all near perfect. Some small. Some large. They seemed to have been chiseled from different colors of flint.
He held up the largest. “They’d use a few like this to kill a manatee or a gator.”
The man set the pole on my dock and climbed out of the river, mud clinging to his feet. He washed his feet in the water before standing.
“Name’s Joe Billie.” He stretched his long arm and offered a handshake. I shook his wet hand. I could smell sweat and river mud. His grip was strong. A knife was strapped to his belt and thigh.
“I’m Sean O’Brien. Do you often hunt for arrow — artifacts in the river?” “Whenever I can. I can tell if I’m hitting flint or something like a beer can.” He bent down and scratched Max behind her ears. “Hello dog.” Her tail wagged. “Ya’ll live here long?”