The Man Who Ivented Florida Read Online Free PDF Page B

included running rum, smuggling in Orientals from Mexico, smuggling in Mexicans from the Bahamas, and running guns to Castro's revolutionaries, for which they received absolutely nothing and were, in fact, just happy to escape with their lives.
    In recent years, they had spent a few evenings each month together. Sometimes, they'd poach a gator or two, knowing full well there was no longer anyplace in America to sell an illegal hide. Or shoot a few white ibis—curlew, Tuck called them—and fry them up with rice and tomato gravy. Some nights, Tucker would let some of his cattle escape, blame the neighbors, and contact Joseph with a desperate plea for roundup help. Actually, it was just an excuse to ride and drink as they once had, and the bulk of their sentences began, "Remember that time . . . ?"
    Mostly, the two men drifted apart. All friendships begin on a chance first meeting and usually end on an equally unexpected last encounter. Friendship is more closely related to alchemy than to chemistry, so it is always a little bit of a surprise that the laws of mortality still apply. Joseph Egret retreated to a cypress strand a few miles north of the Tamiami Trail, where he lived in a shack with a thatched palmetto roof and a 1971 Playboy calendar on the wall. Tuck retired to his scrub cattle and mullet skiff in Mango.
    The last thing Tuck had heard about Joseph was from a bartender at the Rod & Gun Club in Everglades City. The bartender told him that Joseph had been found, sick and near death, in his shack by some hunters, who had contacted the county welfare people. One of the welfare people had approached the sleeping Joseph with a rectal thermometer. Joseph had rallied sufficiently from his surprise to throw the welfare worker through the wall. The welfare worker contacted the Sheriff's Department, got a judge to sign the right papers, and now, the bartender told Tucker, Joseph was paying his dept at Everglades Township Rest Home.
    "Serves 'im right," Tucker had said at the time. "Teach 'im not to throw white people around like that."
    But that was before Tucker had descended into the despair of his own loneliness; before his horse Roscoe had discovered that sulphur spring; before Tuck had realized the spring's wonderful potential; before the state, those bastards, had tried to pin him to the wall.
    Tucker was thinking about all of this when he touched the shoulder of his old and beloved friend. Well, he was thinking about it a little bit. Thinking that once he had been nothing more than a cow hunter with evil ways, but now he was elevating himself, coming to this nasty damn place to rescue an old friend.
    "Joe, you okay?" Tucker asked. "Can you hear me?"
    Joseph looked at Tucker, and his eyes seemed to focus for a moment. "Lordy God," he said, "I hope somebody locked up my wallet."
    Tucker took the big man's arms and shook him slightly. "Hey, Joe, it's Tuck. Me, your best friend!" He'd expected a warmer reunion.
    Joseph studied the face before him. His mind was a gauzy shambles of reality and dreams, and his eyes were milky. "I know who you are. We got another whiskey run to make? I want to count the money this time, you cheatin' bastard—"
    Tucker was still shaking him gently. "Joe! Listen to me. We ain't run no liquor in fifty years."
    "I don't care if it was a hundred. You shortchanged me on that run to LaBelle. Don't think I ain't got ways of finding out."
    "How in the hell ... I mean, damn it, Joe, you're talking nonsense."
    "Say, Tuck," Joseph continued vacantly, "how 'bout we go jack-lightin' tonight. Kill some gators. They're giving Indians four bucks a hide over to Miami. Seven bucks to white men, so I guess you better handle the sellin', but goddamn it, I want to count the money before it hits your pocket—"
    From the bed, a querulous voice interrupted: "Why waste your time trying to reason with that stupid Seminole? He talks gibberish. Nothing but gibberish. And I need my rest!"
    Joseph shook away from Tuck and