My wineglass was empty by then. This freed my hands for the occasional subtext of an accidental touch. Nothing so obvious I could not pretend it was innocent. Beneath the table, however, our feet were bolder. Soon, I felt perfectly at ease resting an ankle against his-this under the guise of his leg being part of the table. But when his shoes came off and he reinitiated contact, skin on skin, it was too much to ignore. That’s when I called a halt to the evening.
The grove manager had apologized his way up the steps to the stern deck outside. I’d made sure the dock lights were out, of course-another sneaky decision-which only softened the man’s soft brown eyes when he turned to me to say good night.
“I don’t know what got into me, Hannah. Wait… that’s not true, either. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long, long time, or felt so at ease. If things were going better at home, maybe… And then there’s my job-hell… if I still have a job. Mostly, though”-he had placed his hands on my wrists to say this-“it’s the feeling I got when I first saw you. You are so damn beautiful, and not in the typical hair spray, lipstick sort of way. Believe me, I’ve never done anything like this before.”
If he had only said “attractive,” I might have allowed him to kiss me, for I knew that was coming. I wanted to be kissed; I wanted to be held. The word striking might have worked, too, for I’d like to think I am striking in the right dress and soft lighting, but no man has ever called me beautiful-not with honest motives or without irony.
The exaggeration brought me to my senses yet did not slow my breathing. I had to step free of his touch to find air. “That’s sweet of you, Kermit, but you can’t say such things if we’re to be friends. Follow the dock; I’ll switch on the lights. I think you can find the way to your own truck.”
I didn’t expect him to leave without another attempt. He didn’t disappoint me.
“Are friends allowed to give each other a hug good night?”
“Of course,” I said, well aware of the ledge I had just stepped off.
Time is sometimes difficult to gauge, but it wasn’t much later when he whispered in my ear, “Pretend like this never happened. Both of us. We’ve got no choice and we both know why. But, Hannah? I can’t pretend I don’t want this to happen again.”
Only then did the married man return to his truck.
All this replayed in my head after I dropped off the Gentrys and pointed my skiff home. It was nearly four; I was in a rush and distracted or would have been quicker to notice a boat trailing too close in my wake.
I looked back and did a double take. It was the black catamaran hull. Yes… the same boat, but only the driver aboard, with his green visor and wild, red handlebar mustache. His shirt was open, flapping in the wind.
I swung around and pretended I hadn’t seen him. We were on the east side of the Intracoastal Waterway. It was busy on this winter afternoon. Lots of cruiser traffic, yachts that plowed a wake, so I couldn’t be certain of the man’s intentions. Not yet anyway. I increased speed, sledded down a series of waves, then banked into shallow water. Ahead lay three miles of shoals separating me from the dock my Uncle Jake had built and home.
The tide was flooding. Oyster bars and limestone jetties and snags caused by hurricanes would be masked by water, but that was okay. I’d been skidding boats through that maze since childhood.
Behind me, the man with the mustache turned, too.
No doubt now. He was following me, coming fast, and way too close.
In the 1980s, when Florida banned traditional mullet nets, fishermen forced out of business were offered water leases and the chance to raise clams commercially.
It was a high-risk, low-profit “opportunity.” What else could they do?
As a result, west of Demere Key is a vast acreage of Styrofoam buoys and stakes that mark the clam leases and the bags of seed clams that grow beneath. It’s an area I avoid out of respect for people whom the government has seldom treated fairly. They didn’t deserve the added burden of property damaged by propellers, but that’s where I headed… until my conscience got the best of me.
Why not stop and have it out with the guy right now?
I tried, but, when I slowed, Yosemite Sam-that’s what Mrs. Gentry had called him-nearly rammed his boat over the corner of my transom. He would’ve if I hadn’t jammed the throttle forward. When I glanced aft, he towered above me at the controls and wore the same idiotic grin, his hair and shirttails flapping like flags. To acknowledge eye contact, he flashed the peace sign, then used the same two fingers to throw me a kiss.
The man was crazy.
I had no choice but to run. My skiff is a 21-foot Maverick, built for thin water and over-powered with a 225-horse Mercury OptiMax. Seldom did I invite the eye-watering discomfort by exceeding 40 mph, but the speedometer climbed to 50 as I raced away.
Behind me, the black catamaran had no trouble keeping up; in fact, it could have passed me, which cartoon Sam threatened several times by nosing close to my stern, then jumping my wake, before dropping back.
A mile of water lay between us and the clam beds.
Beneath the console was a VHF radio I seldom use, and also my cell phone. I chose the radio. I contacted the Coast Guard at Fort Myers Beach. After the duty officer had me switch to Channel 22-Alpha, I told her what was going on. Because of the noise, I had to shout, and repeat my location several times.
“Do you feel your life is in danger?” she asked.
Yes, I did, which is why I phoned my sheriff’s deputy friend next. Birdy Tupplemeyer is a high-octane woman-a three-year veteran of the force who does not share my reluctance to use profanity or hop into bed with married men. The time would come when I could confide to her about Kermit, but that could wait. I gave her the same information-still shouting, and forced to repeat details, but in a less formal way.
“The crazy fool’s gonna get us both killed,” I yelled.
“Are you packing?” Her tone was judgmental. I could picture her in a two-piece, pacing by her aunt’s Palm Beach swimming pool.
“Packing a gun?”
“Hell yes, you ninny. This dude-you ever seen him before? Doesn’t matter. If you’re packing, stop your damn boat and threaten to put a couple rounds up his ass. Warn him first-all the standard bullshit. Then do it! Go ahead. Put your phone on Speaker so I can testify the scumbag had it coming.”
“Only fishing gear,” I hollered. “Isn’t there someone you can call? It’s Saturday. The marine division-there has to be a police boat out here somewhere.”
“Jesus Christ, Hannah. Carry; always, always carry. How many times have I told you! And it’s not like you haven’t already rung that bell.”
Shot a man, she meant.
This was true; an incident I rarely discuss.
“Call somebody, for heaven’s sake,” I said, and stowed the phone.
Racing toward me was a blur of buoys and floating bamboo poles, a few with rags attached to make them visible. They were tied to nylon ropes from which bags of clams were suspended, each buoy anchored to the bottom. The incoming tide held the buoys taut. Ripples showed me the direction the ropes lay and created hundreds of narrow channels to choose from. Stray even a foot, it meant trouble: a mile of nylon rope would snag the propeller and strangle an engine dead.
I waited until the last possible instant to make my turn, then cleaved an angling course. Rows of white buoys scattered to make room. Until then, Yosemite Sam had been taunting me from both sides of the boat, but he realized the danger and fell in line, so close that the nose of his boat shadowed my transom.
Crazy or not, the man was no stranger to water. I began to doubt my plan to lose him here in the lonely backcountry. Maybe it was wiser to return to the main channel, where a hundred witnesses might dissuade him from whatever violence he had in mind.