Tropical Depression Page 5

Nonchalantly, with the cord still in his mouth, Murray glanced over his shoulder. No one but a couple of herons and a pelican had seen the abortive toss; it hadn't really happened.

  On the second throw he did a little better; by the sixth or seventh try the mesh was spreading; by the tenth the net was landing softly. On around the twelfth toss it all came together: The fabric sprang like a flight of doves from the Bra King's hands; it opened and twirled against the flaming yellow backdrop of the sun; it hovered like a whirlybird, preparing to settle quiet as a cloud on the green surface of the sea.

  Murray watched serenely as the perfect small event unfolded. He felt neither modesty nor pride, had the peculiar Asiatic sensation that the throw had nothing whatever to do with him. It was just a lovely thing.

  So lovely that a sense of wonder pried open his jaws. The retrieving cord flew out of his mouth and landed with a small splash in the ocean. He was no longer attached to the net that had spun so prettily and was now slowly but inexorably beginning to sink down toward the muck.

  Murray said, "Oh shit."

  The crisis instantly made him a Westerner, a Manhattanite again. Synapses fired. Serenity exploded. He grabbed his fishing pole, leaned far out over the railing. The rod tip fell an excruciating inch or two short of the subsiding fabric. Faster than the mind could talk things over with the body, he had a different idea. Below the railing was a knee-high concrete wall; between the wall and the rail was about a foot and a half of empty space. If Murray squeezed himself into that groove, he could reach farther out, maybe he could grab the sinking net.

  With the false agility of the desperate, the Bra King dove into the slot. His groin compressed against the hot concrete of the wall, his shoulder blades were pinned by the metal tubing of the rail. Head suspended above the green Atlantic, he flailed his rod at the disappearing net and managed to snag a strand of mesh. Pulse throbbing, he used the fishing pole like a knitting needle, poked and turned it till the fabric was attached securely. He grunted, he sweated, he savored the mindless effort.

  Finally he was ready to pull in the rescued net. That's when he realized he was stuck.

  He arched his back to rise; the railing pressed against his spine like a giant foot and kicked him down again. He hunkered low and tried to squirm along the wall; the concrete cinched his thigh and raked against his squashed testicles. He lifted his head; the back of it clanged softly against the metal rail. The arm that held the fishing pole soon went into a numbing cramp.

  Gulls laughed. Cormorants crapped down from the tops of lampposts. The Bra King writhed and sweated. He tried to shrink himself, tried like a half- crushed bug to slink away on whatever appendage still had life. But he was going nowhere, and at length he heard a clanking squeak, as of a rusted bicycle. He turned his neck with the pained slowness of a tortoise, glanced up with popping eyes like those of a caught fish, and saw the Indian.

  The Indian said, "Fuck you doin', man?"

  "Fishing," said the Bra King, weakly.

  "Got a funny waya doin' it."

  To this Murray said nothing.

  The Indian said blandly, "Want a hand?"

  "Tha'd be great."

  In no special hurry, Tommy Tarpon climbed off his bike. A practical man, he first took the rod from Murray and gathered in the sodden net. Then he grabbed the Bra King by the belt and an ankle, and set himself to yank. "Tuck your head," he advised.

  He didn't say it quite soon enough. He reared back and hauled. Murray came free with a scraping sound, then clunked his skull on the metal rail. There was a ringing, the Bra King couldn't tell which side of his brainpan it was on. But he stood and faced his rescuer, looked him in the eye. "Thanks," he said. "You're very kind."

  The word had an odd effect on Tommy Tarpon. It seemed to make him impatient, elusive, as though it was an accusation. He went to his bike without a word, rolled it to his spot.

  Murray leaned against the railing, a little unsure of his legs. His clothes were splotched with sweat, a soft breeze tickled the wet places. He watched the Indian go through his ritual: the telescoping rod, the six-pack, the milk crate, all taken from his cart of shells. He watched him make his one casually perfect throw of the net. He watched him gather in his bait.

  He was still leaning motionless against the rail when Tommy had filled his yellow bucket and made his first cast toward the lowering sun. The Indian glanced quickly over at him, said, "Didn't you say you were fishing?"

  Murray had sort of forgotten about fishing. His back ached and his arms were tired. Besides, he was embarrassed to throw his net with the Indian watching, and he knew now that his lures were futile. He just shrugged.

  Tommy Tarpon turned toward him so slightly that he could not have seen him with more than the very edge of his wraparound eye. "Take some bait from the pail," he said. He said it not grudgingly, exactly, but as if some force, some necessity beyond his conscious preference was pulling the words, the offer, out of him. "I have more than I need."

  The Bra King hesitated, suddenly feeling shy. A pinfish was a tiny gift, but a gift nevertheless. And gifts were not to be taken lightly. They made connections, they were connections; exchanges that led to more exchanges. At length Murray sidled slowly toward the bait pail and reached in.

  Minute creatures swam between his fingers as through the tendrils of a reef. He managed to grab one, it jerked and struggled against his palm, he was shocked and humbled at the amount of life contained in such a puny package. He lifted it into the air, winced with remorse as he pressed it onto his hook. He cast the skewered fish into the ocean, let it swim around in fatal circles, waiting for a bigger fish to come and eat it and be hooked in turn.

  After a moment, without looking over, Tommy said, "I'm sorry I cursed you out the other morning. Had nothing to do with you."

  Murray just said, "Hey, no problem."

  They fished. In the distance, schooners full of tourists scudded by in front of the pulsing orange sun.

  Tommy said, "The Paradiso, place makes me edgy. Much too white for my red ass."

  "Yeah," considered Murray. "I guess it's pretty white. Where d'you live, Tommy?"

  The Indian leaned back on his milk crate, swigged his beer. "Toxic Triangle."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Corner of the harbor no one wants. Across from the electric company. Next to what used to be a field of oil tanks. Water's full of beer cans. Dock's falling down. Good place for an Indian."

  Murray focused on the small doomed tugs of his baitfish. His line lay across his index finger, he felt the excess voltage of his brain throbbing down his arm and out into the sea. "So it's true what Bert says," he thought aloud. "You really are a bitter guy."

  The Indian sucked his teeth, spat in the ocean.

  Then Murray yelped, lurched, set his feet and arched his back against the sudden violence of a bending, twitching rod. Line screamed off his reel, water roiled fifty yards in front of him as a hooked fish bolted in rage and terror from the pain in its lip and the inexplicable weight against its progress. "Holy shit," the Bra King said. "I got one, Tommy? Fuck I do now?"

  "Let 'im run," the Indian said calmly. "Keep your rod tip high and let 'im run."

  The fish sprinted, Murray could feel its zigs and zags. Beads of sweat popped out on the angler's forehead, a blue vein stood forth in his neck.

  "Now start to reel," said Tommy. "Pull back gently, then quick forward, and reel in what you've gained."

  Murray, breathing heavily, leaned and reeled, arched and bowed, the motion reminded him of old men dahvenning in synagogue. He won back half his line, then the fish took off again. The grinding process started over.

  "He's getting tired," said the Indian.

  "He's getting tired? I'm gonna plotz."

  "Get 'im just a little closer and I'll gaff 'im."

  The Bra King didn't know exactly what that meant, but it sounded like a good idea. He tugged and grunted, and Tommy produced a medieval-looking tool from a compartment of his cart. He leaned over
the rail, finally caught the played-out fish by its gill plate, and horsed it up onto the pier.

  "Redfish," he pronounced. "Six, seven pounds. Gotten rare around here. Good eatin'."

  Murray, huffing, amazed, looked at the defeated creature hanging from the gaff. Its eye was flat and glassy, its gills heaved, showing brick-red membranes. "First fish I ever caught."

  "I figured that."

  "Want 'im?"

  There was a pause. The sun hit the horizon, began to spill across the ocean like a broken yolk. The Indian looked flabbergasted and once again mistrustful.

  "Your bait," Murray said.

  "That was nothing. I gave you the bait."

  "So I'm giving you the fish."

  Tommy shook his head. "Your fish."

  "I couldn't have caught 'im alone. Take 'im."

  The Indian stood firm, looking at the changing colors of the dying creature.

  "Look," Murray went on, "you helped me, I'd like you to have 'im."

  Tommy regarded Murray, pushed his lips forward in a thoughtful pout. Who was this clumsy headlong stranger who talked too much and tried too hard, who seemed to be empty of malice and of bias, who fished with an ignorant purity and seemed as displaced as he felt himself to be? Who was this odd awkward man that would offer another a fine rare fish, the first fish he'd ever caught? The Indian gazed unblinking at the fiery horizon, then said, "Tell ya what. I'll take half the fish."

  The Bra King had his breath back now, was mopping his brow with his forearm. "Half, whole, whatever you like."

  The Indian hesitated another moment, scoured Murray with his judging eyes. Finally he said, "I'll take half, you take half. But if ya like, we'll leave the halves together, we'll grill 'im on the beach."

  Murray couldn't talk. It was not uncertainty but the thrill of the new that stopped his mouth. A fish; an Indian; a campfire on a Florida beach he'd fled to by himself. Finally he said, "Ya mean we'll gather driftwood—?"

  "Driftwood?" said Tommy. "Fuck that. Ya got a car?"

  Murray nodded that he did.

  "You'll go to the grocery, get some charcoal, the kind ya just light the bag. And while you're at it, grab a bottle of bourbon, Scotch, whatever. Something brown. Driftwood. Jesus, you really are a piece of work."

  9

  The demolished fish lay on a picnic table in a tiny unwalled hut at County Beach. Its head was still on above a naked skeleton. Its eye was seared opaque white, its tongue stuck out in a gesture of unconquerable defiance. Embers glowed softly in the barbecue grate nearby, red-hearted ash floated away on a mild breeze. Tommy poured bourbon from a bottle that had gotten pretty light.

  Apropos of nothing very recent, he said, "Yeah, you're right, I'm bitter."

  Murray nodded agreeably. He was smashed. He said, "Ya know, before I moved here, I really didn't drink much."

  "I did," Tommy said. Then he added, "Aren't you?"

  The Bra King ran a hand over his stubbly and slightly numb jowls. "Aren't I what'"

  "Bitter," said the Indian. "I'd think anybody with a brain would be bitter."

  Murray swigged liquor from a plastic cup, gazed off at the last mauve residue of sunset. Then he said, "No. I'm not bitter. I'm depressed."

  Tommy Tarpon plucked a bone from the fish's carcass, picked his teeth with it. He knew the place Murray lived. He'd seen Murray's car.

  "Fuck you got to be depressed about?"

  "That isn't how it works," said Murray. "You don't get depressed about something. Not necessarily. You just get depressed."

  "For no reason?" said the Indian.

  "There's reasons," Murray said, "there's reasons. But the reasons are, like, a little indirect. Ya pay a shrink to figure 'em out."

  "Then they go away?"

  "Who said they go away?"

  The Indian squinted off toward the purple ocean.

  "But this bitter thing," Murray resumed, "you telling me you got reasons, crystal-clear, ya know just what they are?"

  "You bet your ass I do," said Tommy.

  But he didn't elaborate and Murray let it drop. They were solitary men at a dubious and bashful point along the road of possibly becoming friends. They weren't quite ready to talk about their reasons.

  The silence went on longer than was comfortable. Then Murray said, "Hey Tommy—the Paradiso, you so much don't like it, how come you were there the other morning?"

  Tommy drank bourbon, leaned out beyond the roofline of the tiny hut to glance up at the brightening stars. Bitterly he said, "I was summoned. I was summoned, and like a fuckin' jerk I went. Curiosity, I guess."

  "Summoned why?"

  "So LaRue could try to fuck up my life."

  "Fuck it up how?"

  Tommy plucked another fishbone, ran it along the skeleton, it made a sound like a fingernail on a comb. "Murray, stop asking me so many questions."

  "Do I ask a lotta questions?"

  The Indian didn't answer. In the quiet they could hear the soft hiss of tiny wavelets seeping down through sand.

  Murray said, "If I didn't ask questions, your tongue would stick to the roof of your mouth, you'd get lockjaw, something."

  Tommy coaxed a morsel of fish from the skeleton, absently scarfed it down. "Okay," he said, "okay. He wants me to open a store."

  The Bra King rubbed his chin, scratched his ear, he didn't see what was so terrible. "A store? Zat all? Jesus, Tommy, the way you made it sound—"

  "He just wants to use me."

  "Use you how?"

  "I don't know how," Tommy admitted. "But I'm not stupid. He's doing me a favor? Bullshit. Something he wants, some white-ass scam, he needs an Indian."

  "Why an Indian?"

  Tommy squeezed air furiously past his gums. " 'Cause Indians get certain crumbs that whites can fuck them out of. Cigarette concessions. Boating rights. The way it works, Indian front man signs the papers, white backers pull the strings."

  Murray said, "Just cause it's a good deal for the other guy doesn't mean it's a bad deal for you."

  "It would totally fuck up my life. Look, the way it is now, I do what I want. I sell a few shells; I fish. A store, there'd be schedules, records, cash registers, burglar alarms. All that white bullshit."

  Murray considered. He'd seen some retail operations in this town. "That white bullshit," he said, "might make you pretty rich."

  Tommy leaned low across his arms. "I don't wanna be rich."

  Murray blinked at this novel sentiment, frowned down at his knuckles then looked straight at the Indian's eyes. "You sure?"

  For a second Tommy didn't speak, Murray saw the slightest give in his bleary but steadfast gaze, saw for the first time a fleshly wrinkle in his bedrock certainty. "I don't wanna be rich," he said, "if it means I'm gonna be owned by these scumbag assholes who I hate."

  The Bra King ran a hand through his hair, then sniffed his fingers and realized that they smelled like fish. "I still don't know what scumbag assholes—?"

  "I don't know what scumbag assholes either," admitted Tommy.

  "Then how do you know—"

  "Murray, there's no shortage of scumbag assholes. Look, only Indians can sell these shells. One of our crumbs. That's why they need me. No Indian, no ball game."

  "So that gives you some leverage—"

  "But who's really gonna win this game?" Tommy interrupted. "The guy who's gonna win is the money guy, some turd who's in tight with LaRue. They'll throw me a few bucks, sure. But you think they're really gonna let me win?"

  "Let you win?" said Murray. "Let you win?" He surprised himself by feeling suddenly feisty. He grabbed the bourbon bottle, poured himself a slug, briefly felt like someone else, someone tough and leathery. "Tommy, no one ever lets you win, I don't care if you're an Indian or a Jew or the fucking czar of Russia. You win because you win, because you find a way. And once you've won, you look back on all the scumbags who you know in your heart were rooting against you, working against you, and you think: How sweet it is, all you bastards can kiss my hairy as
s."

  He slammed his cup down, soaked his fist with whiskey, the klutzy denouement pulled him back to who he was. He looked at Tommy, saw a faint and furtive smile slip across his solemn mouth.

  "Aha," he resumed. "Telling 'em to kiss your ass. You like that part."

  The Indian's face was growing vague, but he did not seem drunk, just weary. "Yeah," he said, "I like that part. But Murray, I don't wanna spend my life sitting in a fucking store, and I can't stand the idea that my tribe dies out as the flunkey of these asshole scumbags."

  "Maybe there's some other way," the Bra King said.

  "Some other way what?"

  "To make you some money without being a flunkey of asshole scumbags."

  "Forget about it, Murray. I'm fine as I am."

  There was a silence. The two men sipped liquor, looked at embers whose dusty glow rose and fell as though with the beating of some ghastly heart.

  Then the Bra King said, "Hey wait a second. What's this about your tribe dying out?"

  Tommy said bitterly, "It's not important."

  "Of course it's important," Murray said. "Ya mean dying out, like, extinct?"

  The Indian looked away.

  "Jesus," Murray said. "Like how many people ya got in this tribe?"

  Tommy just stared at him.

  "You telling me," said Murray, "the tribe—"

  "—is me," said Tommy.

  "Jesus," Murray said again, and he looked at his friend like he was seeing a ghost, a prophet, a dinosaur. "What's the name of this tribe?"

  Unconsciously, Tommy squared his shoulders, lifted up his chest. "Matalatchee. People think I'm a Seminole, but that's not even close. We're a branch of the old Calusas. The original Florida Indians."

  "And proud of it," Murray thought aloud. "So you're not gonna be a flunkey and you're not gonna live on crumbs."

  "No," said Tommy. "I am gonna live on crumbs. Seashells. But my own way. My way of saying, okay, you fuckers, this is all you're leaving me, this is all I need."

  Breeze shook the palms, fronds dryly scratched. Murray put bourbon to his lips, had the sudden feeling that if one more sour drop passed his gullet he would surely retch. Instead of drinking, he said, "Jesus, Tommy, you don't make things easy for yourself."