Acts of Nature Read Online Free PDF Page B

high. In fact late last week the far outer bands of a tropical storm that was probably the last of the season had pelted us pretty good and replenished the evaporation and runoff that constantly rules over this place. But the last I had checked that named storm was rolling well south of Key West and heading toward the Yucatán peninsula. Its passing had helped create the high pressure and the accompanying clear sky and low humidity that now blessed us. At seventy-five degrees I could paddle all day and in high water we could keep a nearly straight course on the GPS reading. For the first hour I kept us moving due south in the open channel alongside the berm. As we neared the Loxahatchee Recreation Area, we struck out west onto the sawgrass plain and into what author and conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas made famous as “the river of grass.”
    We ran through about a quarter mile of six-foot-tall sawgrass and around some outcroppings of melaleuca until we came upon an obvious airboat trail. The flat-bottomed airboats cruise regularly across the close-in Glades. With their propeller airplane engines mounted on the back to provide the push, the boats can glide across the water and over even the thickest patches of grasses and small-diameter trees. Having slapped down the vegetation on the most frequently used trails, they have effectively created six-foot-wide waterways cutting through the grasslands. We took advantage. The open-water strips make canoeing a simpler task but beware if one of the wind machines catches you on its freeway at high speed. The safe part is that the raw, ripping sound of an airboat engine at full throttle can be heard a quarter mile away, which gives you plenty of time to ease your canoe off into the sawgrass to avoid being swamped or run over. Today, it was silent.
    There is something of a physical hush in the tall grass here. I believe it is the heat, the slow simmer of the Florida sun trapped in the quiet water, and the smell of wet stalks and green lilies. On occasion the wind will pick up and there is a brushing sound just above our heads and then the call of an anhinga or wood stork passing on wings above.
    “What is it that you like so much about being out here, Max?”
    Sherry’s voice was no louder than the bird calls above. I pondered the question for a few seconds.
    “I’m never in a hurry out here,” I finally said. “All those years on the street, always in a hurry, even when you were doing nothing but surveillance, the anticipation made you feel like you were in a hurry. Maybe it was just my nerves.”
    I took a long, hard pull on my paddle and looked up at Sherry as I followed through with the stroke. “Why? You don’t like it?”
    She looked back with that grin that shows more in her eyes than it does on her lips.
    “It’s way different from anywhere I’ve been,” she said. “Maybe a little too innocent.”
    “It does have that quality,” I said, thinking of the term as a positive whereas I was sure she was still unsure of her own definition. We lapsed into silence again. If you took a deep breath down here, the must of growing grass and decaying humus was sweet and ancient. If you stood, just the altitude of a few feet changed the aroma like a lingering perfume that only interests you when the woman wearing it passes by but intrigues you as it drifts away.
    “I think Jimmy would have liked it out here too. He liked innocent. That’s what got him killed.”
    If it were possible to sound both wistful and bitter at the same time, Sherry had captured it. Her husband, also a cop, had been killed in the line of duty. He’d answered a robbery in progress at one of those convenience stores every cop hates and often call the Stop & Rob, letting the humor cover the anxiety. Jimmy had caught a glimpse of someone running from the store as his partner pulled the squad car up, and he bailed out of the unit and then chased the subject into a dead-end alley.
    “You really