We didn't win by sitting around writing poetry in nature parks. You're a Semmes, Scooter, and I know you have the stuff of one. I'd hate to see you wander off into some liberal never-never land."
Raff raised his hand like a student in class and said, "But--"
His uncle was not to be interrupted. "I'll tell you where this whole part of the Gulf Coast is headed, Scooter. Pensacola is bound to keep expanding its suburbs and little satellite towns to the west until it meets developments coming out from Fairhope and the rest of Baldwin County. Mobile is going to spread north way past Satsuma and west on across the Mississippi border to include the Gulf Coast there. In fifty years Mobile and Pensacola will be one single urban area surrounded by well-to-do suburbs. I like to think we'll be a metropolis like the Gold Coast on the other side of Florida and the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis."
As Cyrus was finishing this oration, his secretary Cindy Sue Lauchaux tapped lightly on the door and entered the room. She was a tall brunette, in her mid-forties, dressed in light tan slacks and a frilled white blouse. Her double first name had been bestowed in Southern accordance with her stature as second daughter in the family. Her last name suggested Cajun or, less likely, Old French Mobile. She spoke slowly in a soft, alto voice.
"Excuse me, Mr. Semmes, but your trainer called. He wants to know if you'll make your four o'clock appointment today?"
Cyrus glanced at his watch and rose from his chair. "Tell him I'm on my way.
"Gotta go, Scooter. I'm getting fit by taking boxing lessons. Best kind of workout there is, boxing. I try to do it like the professionals."
Raff made one last try as he followed his uncle to the door. "Won't there be any room for natural history reserves in the new Twin Cities?"
Cyrus halted, turned to face him. "Well, of course there will be, if we plan all this the right way. There'll be plenty of parks, with easy access, where families can go to relax and see some nature. We can arrange guided tours like the ones at Disney World. There'll be a lot of gardens as beautiful as the one down at Bellingrath. I'm hoping that right here in Mobile we might expand the Azalea Trail, and make it the big deal it once was. The impact on tourism will be just great."
"But won't there be any real wild areas for the native plants and animals?"
Cyrus paused, marinating that concept a bit, and resumed his explanation. "Look, Scooter, I think you're mature enough to understand that what we've got going here is big, and it's wonderful. Drake Sunderland and I, and some other business and political leaders in Mobile and Pensacola, have a nonprofit group we call the Gulf Gateway Coalition. Our aim is to help guide the growth, make it long-term and in the right direction and the right pace, of course. We'll keep the nature lovers happy. Frankly, I've always hoped that you yourself might play an important role in that effort."
With that, he spun around and walked out the door. "I'll be back first thing in the morning," he told Cindy Sue. She waggled her fingers at him but did not look away from her computer screen.
Raff started to follow him. Then he hesitated in order to look up for a moment to the space above the door, as he always did when he visited this office. There hung a stuffed five-foot alligator his uncle had shot during a hunting trip in the swamps of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. The reptile stared back at him with a yellow glass eye.
Raff thought of Frogman's fourteen-foot-long Old Ben in the Chicobee River. He murmured to the specimen on the wall, "Sorry you got cut down in your childhood."
As he stepped out of the granite-rimmed entrance of the Loding Building, Raff looked down Bledsoe Street for his uncle, and spotted him fifty yards away walking briskly in the direction of the city center. He had no desire to catch up, so he stayed where he was for a short while. Feeling the afternoon sun bearing down through the hot humid air, Raff walked across the narrow street to stand in the shade of a large magnolia tree. When he looked down Bledsoe Street a second time, farther beyond the Loding Building, and from this new angle, he could see a row of