The Missing Manatee Read online

  I’ve been trying my best to grow ever since.

  Nobody ever calls me Russell Waters, Jr., which is my real name, except for teachers on the first day of school. Then I set them straight. And nobody calls my father Russ or Russell Sr., either, not even Mom. He’s Mac.

  “You want to stop?” Earl asked me.

  Since he’d been gone, it seemed I was always wishing I could see Mac about one thing or another. I could pick up the phone anytime I wanted to, or ride my bike the couple of blocks to his place, but it wasn’t the same as having him at home. Right then I wanted to tell him about the manatee in the worst way, but he had a client. Mac had the guy in a good position for casting shrimp to redfish or trout. The guy was standing in the bow, gazing at the water so intently he reminded me of a great blue heron waiting to pounce on a minnow. He looked as if he took his fishing seriously.

  “Naw,” I said. “I don’t want to bother him.”

  Earl nodded. He knew the fishing-guide business as well as I did. Keeping the clients happy came first.

  When we pulled into Larry’s Marina, Larry himself was pumping gas into a pontoon barge filled with partying vacationers. He gave Earl and me a tired wave as we passed by. The money he made during tourist season was most likely what kept his business going, but he liked to act as though the extra work was killing him.

  I helped Earl tie up the boat in its slip. As we headed for his patrol car, Blink came out of the shop toward me, grinning from ear to ear, followed by his mangy, flea-bitten dog, named Blinky. Blink—the boy, not the dog—was Dirty Dan’s son.

  Dan’s official title was Dirty Dan the Tarpon Man. He was the best tarpon fisherman in these parts, probably in the whole state of Florida, maybe even the entire world. He was also Mac’s and Earl’s poker-playing friend, and my hero. I didn’t know which of Dirty Dan’s four wives was Blink’s mother. They had all left Dirty Dan because of his single-minded devotion to tarpon fishing, but Blink stayed on. I guessed he always would.

  I called Blink a boy, but once I asked Mac how old Blink was, and I was astonished when he said he reckoned Blink was around thirty. The thing is, something was wrong with Blink when he was born. No matter how old his body got, in his head he’d never be any older than five or maybe six, and that’s how he acted.

  If I ever knew his real name, I’ve forgotten it. Everybody called him Blink, even Dirty Dan. It was on account of his eyes, which were always opening real wide, then shutting tight, then opening again, all on their own.

  He was the one who named the dog Blinky. Maybe it was the best name he could think of, or maybe he knew he and that dog would get so close, you might as well call one as call the other. Anyway, Blink loved that dog like nobody’s business, even though Blinky was the most pathetic-looking creature you can imagine, with matted, stinky fur, insect-bite sores, and his tail broken so it hung at a right angle halfway down. That didn’t stop him from smiling and wagging at everybody he saw, though. I never knew a dog could smile, until I met Blinky.

  Blink and Blinky were always at the marina. Dirty Dan kept a little pop-up camper around behind the parking lot, and that’s where the three of them lived. It suited them fine. Blink hung around at the marina throwing a ball for Blinky and doing simple odd jobs for Larry sometimes, and all Dan had to do was roll out of bed and he was tarpon fishing.

  So Blink came grinning and Blinky came smiling and wagging toward me across the scrubby grass of the marina’s picnic area. I knew exactly what Blink was going to do, and sure enough he reached into his pocket, took out a quarter, and said, “Wanna flip, Skeet?”

  Ordinarily, I’d say sure and Blink and I would play his favorite game, one that he never seemed to grow tired of. It was funny, but I never got tired of playing it with him, I guess because he got such a big kick out of it. But this time I was in a hurry, all puffed up with the importance of having an official police report to make.

  “Can’t now, Blink,” I said quickly. “I got something I got to do.”

  The corners of his mouth drooped and his eyes opened and closed quickly. “Uh-oh, Skeet’s mad. Don’t be mad, Skeet. I’m sorry, Blink’s real sorry. Don’t be mad—”

  He looked ready to cry, and I felt like a real crumb. “Aw, Blink, I’m not mad,” I said. “It’s just that I gotta go with Earl and—never mind. Give me the quarter. Let’s flip.”

  At that, his face lit up as if I’d given him a present or something. He handed me the quarter and I made a fist and positioned the quarter on the top of my thumbnail. “What’ll it be?” I asked.

  Blink screwed up his face as if in thought and finally called, “Heads!”

  I popped my thumb and flipped the quarter into the air, caught it, and slapped my open palm onto the back of my other hand. Blink and Blinky both watched me intently. Slowly, with a dramatic flourish, I removed the top hand, revealing the quarter. Blink peered over to look.

  “Heads!” he crowed joyfully. “I win! Do it again, Skeet!”

  I was already positioning the quarter for the next try. “What’ll it be?”

  Again, Blink squinched up his face, but I knew what he was going to say this time.

  “Tails!”

  I flipped, paused, and uncovered the coin. Blink looked. It was heads. His face fell into a tragic mask. He was as sad each time he was wrong as he was happy when he was right. “Oh, no. I lose. Do it again, Skeet!”

  I flipped the quarter a few more times until he’d called it right twice in a row. Then I handed it back, saying, as I always did, “That’s it, Blink. You’re getting too good.”

  He smiled happily and repeated, “I’m getting too good.” Carefully, he returned the quarter to his pocket, saying, as he always did, “I’ll save it for another day. Right, Skeet?”

  “That’s right. Save it for another day.”

  “Bye, Skeet.”

  “See ya, Blink.”

  I ran to catch up with Earl. He was waiting beside the police car talking to Larry, who was on his way into the marina’s office with the pontoon boat driver’s credit card.

  “Sounds like you’ve had yourself quite a morning, Skeeter,” Larry observed as I walked up to them.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I answered.

  “Terrible thing,” Larry said. “But I can see where it’d be tough to investigate without any evidence.”

  I scowled. Everybody agreed it was a terrible thing, so how come nobody except me wanted to do anything about it?

  “Well, I gotta go take this gentleman’s money,” Larry said, holding up the credit card. “I’ll be seein’ you.”

  I was pretty discouraged when I got into the patrol car with Earl. He was quiet on the way to the station, and that made me feel a little guilty. If he was right and the sheriff and the Fish and Wildlife people weren’t going to work too hard on the case, it wasn’t his fault.

  “Thanks for going out there with me, Earl,” I said in a low voice.

  He was quiet for another minute. Then he nodded and said, “I want you to know I’m gonna try my best to get the boss fired up about this, Skeet. C’mon, let’s go see him.”

  But the sheriff wasn’t there. Earl helped me fill out a report about what I’d seen. Then he drove me back to the marina, where I’d left my bike. I rode home, passing the trailer where Mac lived since he’d left. Left permanently, it now appeared.

  Mom was at work at the Quik-Save, where she was manager of the movie-rental department. It seemed like a pretty good job, but she was always saying she wanted a better life for me.

  “What do you mean, better?” I used to ask.

  “Better than this,” she’d say, throwing her arms out to indicate not only her job but our house, the town of Chassacoochie Springs, our whole lives.

  “But what’s wrong with this?” I’d say, her words making me feel puzzled and hurt. I liked our lives the way they were, at least the way they used to be before Mac had to go.

  Mom would get a sort of faraway, dreamy look on her face and say, “Oh, Skee
t, there’s so much more out there. Why, you can be anything you want.”

  “I want to be a fishing guide.”

  “Oh, no, Skeet. No. You could be a rocket scientist, a doctor, maybe a researcher who discovers a cure for some horrible disease…”

  “Come on, Mom,” I’d tease. “With a last name like Waters, what else can I be but a guide, like Mac?”

  She’d tease back: “Why, you could be a scientist, like Jacques Cousteau. A marine biologist. Or…” She’d pause to think, then add, “Or a swimming pool manufacturer. Or a cruise ship captain. Think of that! You’d get to travel all over the world.”

  But I didn’t want to be any of those things, and kidding around didn’t change that. I wanted to be a fishing guide like Mac, and a legendary fisherman like Dirty Dan. I mean, how cool would it be to be known as “the Tarpon Man”?

  “Why don’t you do that stuff, if you think it sounds so great?” I’d ask.

  And Mom would look sad and say, “I made my choice when I married your father. It’s too late for me. But, Skeet, you have your whole life ahead of you.”

  Yeah, I always wanted to say, and it’s my life, not yours. Lately I’d stopped talking about how I planned to be a great fisherman and a guide, because I didn’t want to see the disappointment on her face. I knew what she thought of fishing guides, and I didn’t want to get her started on her speech about their “deviant lifestyle.” How they got up at four in the morning and fell asleep in front of the TV at six o’clock at night, not leaving much time for what she called “quality family life.” How lots of them drank too much. How they made lousy husbands and fathers because they cared more about fish than about their families. How there must be some kind of wild gene that caused them to spend day after day in a boat under the blazing sun with clients who half the time turned out to be jerks, hoping to stick a hook in a fish that they ended up releasing after they’d landed it anyway.

  And how she sure hoped her son hadn’t inherited that wild gene.

  Man.

  So anyway, Mom was still at work when I got home, but Memaw—she’s my grandmother—was in the living room sitting at the sewing machine, stitching some glittery silver stuff onto her favorite denim cowgirl shirt. She looked up at me and smiled. I could tell right away that she was up to something.

  “Skeeter, there’s a big karaoke contest tonight at the River Haven Grill, and I aim to sing in it. You and your mama are comin’ to cheer me on!”

  Four

  Memaw hogged the bathroom for about an hour, taking a long bath and fooling with her hair. Before she came out she called to Mom and me, “Don’t you two look yet. I want you to see me with my whole outfit on, so you can get the full effect.”

  Mom shook her head and gave me a look and a little smile as if to say, Here she goes again. For a mother and daughter, Mom and Memaw were pretty different. It was weird, but I thought Mac and Memaw were more alike. Mom was always saying Memaw ought to act her age. Memaw said why should she, with Mom acting enough like an old stick-in-the-mud for both of them.

  Once when they didn’t know I was listening, Mom said Memaw was embarrassing. Memaw said she couldn’t understand why Mom had to be the ant in the lemonade at every picnic lunch. I tried to stay out of it, but it seemed to me that Memaw was having a lot more fun than Mom. And anyway, Memaw never embarrassed me.

  A couple of minutes later, Memaw hollered from the bedroom, “I’m coming out. You ready?”

  “We’re ready, Memaw,” I hollered back. “Bring it on!”

  The door opened and Memaw stood in front of us with her hands on her hips, posing like a movie star. Then she threw her arms out and spun around, so we could get the whole picture. Her blond hair was piled up high in loops and curls, held with sparkly silver-and-blue clips. She was wearing her denim shirt, all decorated with silver fringe and sequins. Her jeans had a row of sequins down the side of each leg, which she must have just sewn on, and she was wearing a belt with a big silver heart-shaped buckle. Around her neck she’d tied a red cowgirl bandanna, and she was wearing her favorite red cowgirl boots.

  “Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”

  “Wow, Memaw,” I said. “You look like a singer on TV.”

  “Not too bad for an old grandma, am I?”

  “No way. You look great.”

  “Thank you, darlin’.” She gave me a dazzling red-lipstick smile. Then, snapping her fingers with one hand and holding a pretend microphone in the other, she launched into a song I’d heard her practicing around the house. It was called “These Boots Are Made for Walking.”

  When she started singing, Mom clapped and I stood up and cheered and let out my loudest whistle. “Go, Memaw! Knock ’em dead!”

  After a minute or two, she got to the part of the song where she stops singing and sort of talks to her boots, telling them to start walking. At that, Memaw held her chin up real high, pumped her arms back and forth, and marched in place, stomping her feet like anything. It was pretty spectacular.

  When she’d finished, I said, “You got that contest won, Memaw. No point in the rest of ’em even showin’ up!”

  “You really think so, Skeeter?” she said, giving me a big, perfumey hug. “I hope you’re right. I’d dearly love to win that home karaoke setup they’re giving out for the prize.”

  Mom made a little choking sound in her throat right then, and I could tell she wasn’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of Memaw practicing new songs, with musical backup, right there in the living room.

  I said, “That’ll be great, Memaw.” And I meant it, too.

  We got to the River Haven Grill at six o’clock. The contest didn’t start until seven, but Memaw said she wanted to get a good seat and check out the competition. Mom and I ordered burgers, but Memaw said her stomach was too jittery to eat. She ordered a Lone Star beer to “get in the mood.” I guess that’s what cowgirls like to drink.

  We sat on the outside patio where the contest was going to be held and watched people as they drifted in. Memaw checked everybody over with an eagle eye.

  “Don’t worry, Memaw,” I told her. “Don’t any of ’em look half as good as you.”

  “Thanks, darlin’,” she said. “But you can’t always tell by lookin’. Sometimes a dull brown bird can make a mighty sweet song.”

  Well, I guess. But still, I felt sure Memaw would win.

  Then I heard Mom take a sudden, sharp breath. I turned in the direction she was looking, and saw Mac walk onto the patio with Earl and Dirty Dan.

  “There’s Mac!” I said.

  “And look who he dragged in with him,” Mom said drily. “The aptly named Dirty Dan.”

  It killed me that Mom didn’t like Dan. She called him “shiftless” because he didn’t have a real job. I’d tried to explain to her that he didn’t need a job. He made money at poker and by winning tarpon tournaments. If he was strapped for cash, he’d take a client out tarpon fishing for pay, but mostly he just fished for himself.

  Mom thought even fishing guides who worked regularly were shiftless, so her opinion of Dan was right down there in the mud with the crabs. I guess Dan’s four wives probably agreed with Mom, now that I thought about it. But I didn’t care. Dan was a lot of the things I hoped to be someday. And, anyway, he was Mac’s and Memaw’s friend.

  There was a famous story about Dan I never got tired of hearing. It always came with a warning: Don’t even think of trying this yourself. One day when he was out fishing, Dan hooked up a giant tarpon. He fought it and fought it for about three hours. Finally, when it was getting tired, a hammerhead shark showed up and started circling around. They do that sometimes, when they sense a fish is in trouble. They figure on getting themselves an easy meal.

  But there was no way Dirty Dan the Tarpon Man was going to give up his record tarpon to a shark, no sir. So he jumped right into the water, which was only a couple of feet deep, with his rod in one hand and his fish club in the other.

  Some people think hammerheads a
re kind of a joke because they look so silly. I mean, they have those weird rectangle-shaped heads that look like they were put on sideways, and their eyes are way out on the ends. But they are seriously scary predators, with huge mouths and rows and rows of real sharp teeth. They get big, too.

  Anyway, Dan stood right in the water and whacked that ten-foot-long monster on the head every time it came near his fish! After a while, the shark gave up and swam away. Each time I heard the story, I had to laugh, picturing that shark swimming off, wondering in its prehistoric little brain, What the heck is going on?

  Dirty Dan landed his record tarpon and there wasn’t a bite missing. He wasn’t called the Tarpon Man for nothing.

  “I’m going to go say hi, okay?” I asked Mom.

  “Sure, honey.” She smiled at me when she said it, but it was one of those forced smiles.

  I hated times like this, when I wanted to be with both Mom and Mac like before, and the only way I could do that was to split myself down the middle. “I’ll be back in a sec,” I said, and raced over to where Mac and his friends were taking seats across the patio.

  “Hey there, Skeet,” said Mac, grabbing me in a bear hug. “I hear you got yourself deputized today. Or were you just trying to give Earl here a lesson on how to run a boat? Lord knows, he could use it.”

  “You hear that, Skeet?” said Earl, shaking his head sadly. “You’d think your daddy would know better than to smart-mouth an officer of the law.”

  Dirty Dan said, “I believe there’s strict penalties for sassing a deputy. Isn’t that right, Officer Earl?”

  “Yessir,” said Earl. “Very strict.”

  Pointing his finger at Mac, Earl said, “Looks like you’re gonna have to bring the food and the beer Tuesday night, old buddy.”

  “No problem,” Mac answered cheerfully. “You two just bet the way you always do, and I’ll have double my money back before eight o’clock.” Then he looked at me and said, “Earl told me how you found that manatee this morning.”