“Oh, but I didn’t! What gave you that impression?”
I had to smile at the look of innocence on her face. How in the world could I possibly be so confused?
I said, “When the weather improves, I plan on trailering my skiff to Marco Island and do some exploring from there.”
“In the Keys or Florida Bay?”
“At the edge of the Everglades,” I said, intentionally evasive.
“I understand why you can’t be too specific-and I’m not asking-but you need to watch yourself, Hannah. You wouldn’t go alone, would you?”
“It’s a rare day I don’t spend time on the water on my boat alone,” I replied. “Are you offering to go with me?”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the Everglades. I know a couple of rangers and they say the snake population down there has gone insane. They’ve seen pythons, even some anacondas, that could swallow a man whole.”
The imagery she used, and the question I was about to pose, required me to maintain a brave front. “The place I have in mind isn’t a saw grass area,” I said. “It’s more to the west; a backcountry, brackish area where mangroves begin at the edge of the Gulf. Or-I’m thinking out loud here-we could tow my skiff and use my bigger boat as a sort of base camp. I live on a thirty-seven-foot Marlow I restored myself. It’s really nice inside; plenty of room to sleep two. We could take our time; do an overnight, and anchor off somewhere where the bugs wouldn’t be too bad.”
It took the woman a moment. “We?”
“I hope so.”
“You’re inviting me? I don’t know what to say.”
“I’d invite your husband, too,” I said, “but my boat doesn’t have that kind of privacy. We need someone who understands citrus, and I’m convinced I don’t qualify. I spoke to the Gentrys a few minutes ago. They’re all for it. I doubt if we’ll make a cent, but you and I would split whatever-”
“Wait… you told Dr. Gentry about me? She said it was okay?” Roberta was flattered, this woman who worked in a small government office with a view of tomato fields on the outskirts of tiny Immokalee.
“I call her Mrs. Gentry. She’s already read a couple of your research papers.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. What do you think?”
“I’d love to. Of course I would. It’s not about the money, although, lord knows, we could use it. But I only get weekends off. How many days would we be gone?”
“Depends on my memory,” I replied. “It could take a while. The area I have in mind, there’re more mangroves than water, so it might be slow-going in a boat. We can work around your schedule, but it would be nice to have at least three days. Otherwise, there’d be a lot of driving back and forth.”
“I’ve already used up my vacation time,” Roberta said, and sounded genuinely disappointed. A little later, she added a couple of more reasons she couldn’t go, including lessons of some sort she taught on Sundays.
This seemed to settle the matter.
We went to a nearby processing plant. A foreman equipped us with hard hats, safety glasses, and ID badges. Inside was a noisy assembly line of stainless steel rollers, pumps, and pasteurizing vats, from which exited a robotic battalion of juice cartons, all streaming toward destinations around the world. The building was gymnasium-sized and smelled of Christmas cookies and orange cake.
We left hungry. A short drive away was Mary Margaret’s Tea and Biscuit in the old downtown area of Arcadia. The nineteenth-century name matched the décor. I ordered an orange scone, and was sipping hot lemon-lavender tea, when I happened to mention the biologist Marion Ford, who owned a seaplane.
“A plane like his would be ideal for narrowing down the search area,” I said, “but the timing’s bad. He left on a trip yesterday. No idea when he’ll be back. You’ve never met such a man, when it comes to disappearing.”
The long silence that followed caused me to look across the table at Roberta. She was staring at me in mild disbelief. “You said there wasn’t much water where you’re going.”
“There’s not. But if the tide’s right, there would be enough to land, I suppose.”
“Could you afford it?”
“To what, buy a plane?”
“No, rent one for a day. Planes aren’t cheap, but I’d be willing to split the fuel just to keep my hours up. As it is, it’s a struggle to log enough time to keep my instructor’s license. That’s what I teach Sundays-flying-to kids in 4-H.”
I remembered the photo in her office. “That’s nice, giving back to an organization that helped us both, but I don’t mean a crop duster. We’d need a plane with floats.”
In reply to the woman’s matter-of-fact nod, I asked, “Are you telling me you can fly a seaplane?”
We left three days later, a Friday morning; packed everything we could possibly need into a Cessna with pontoons-except one simple item.
That item might have helped save Roberta’s life.
TWELVE
From a small plane, Marco Island is a mosaic of green fairways and ivory condos that line the beach until the Gulf of Mexico floods inland, making the land uninhabitable. A thousand square hectares of wilderness lie beyond-a vast delta of saw grass and mangroves that separates Miami, on the east coast, from Naples, one hundred miles to the west.
After we had been flying low over swamp for ten minutes, a dappled orange blur grabbed my attention. Roberta circled back. The area seemed about right, so we landed. What appeared to be wild citrus trees might have been dead mangrove leaves. Sacrificial leaves, the yellow ones are called, for it is the tree’s way of venting salt-or so some believe.
I was sitting on a pontoon, my feet in the water, and explaining this when Roberta, my new partner, said, “Dang it. I went off and left my machete. You didn’t happen to bring an extra, did you?” She was standing next to me, pawing through her bag, which was in the rear of the plane.
“You won’t need it as long as you have gloves,” I assured her. This was said with the unruffled optimism that is typical of children, and the dangerously naïve. It had been years since I’d been to this isolated spot-if it was the right spot-so I could not fathom how the area had changed, nor what awaited us. We were alone, miles from the nearest boat channel or road, denied even the comfort of a horizon. Here, the sky was choked to darkness by a screen of foliage that, aside from a strip of water, tolerated no swift escape.
“I’ll go first,” I said, and slipped off the pontoon into the water. I expected to sink into muck. I didn’t, for Roberta had found an ideal spot to beach the plane: a shell ramp that angled up to a shell ridge, where the burnished trunks of gumbo-limbo trees promised high ground. Within a few minutes of hiking around, I knew it was the wrong island, but that was okay. I’d been here before as a girl. There were some interesting things to see.
“Let’s have a look,” I called. “This isn’t the place, but we’re close. I’ve got my bearings now.”
“Do we need water?”
“We won’t be that long, but you might want bug spray.”
Already, the silence of lapping water thrummed with the drone of mosquitoes. I wore sleeves, gloves, and long pants. From a Ziploc bag I removed a jacket made of DEET-impregnated netting and pulled it on. Roberta appeared. She was using one hand to swat and carrying a can of Deep Woods OFF! in the other.
“How in the world did people survive in places like this?”
I replied, “A lot didn’t. The name isn’t on most charts, but I think this is Faka Union Island. People used to farm here.”
“Any citrus?” She swatted, and stomped her feet. “Hey-do you mind spraying my back? But don’t get any on my skin-that’s important. I’ll tell you why later.”
I took the can and used it carefully. I didn’t remember seeing orange trees here, but I had remembered something else. “I’m glad you kept your maiden name-it would have been harder to find you. But I’m curious. The Daniels side of your family-where are they from?”