Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,3
piece by piece instead of scraping us off the ground with shovels. Then, off to starboard, a flooded sinkhole came into view, and I felt hopeful. The pond wasn’t large, but at least it would soften our impact when the seaplane’s floats made contact. Maybe I pointed, maybe I called out advice, I’m not sure. But it only caused Futch to shake his head and raise his voice above the din, yelling, “No—the grass! Water will kill us!” He stabbed at the trim wheel, then applied throttle. Increase speed while landing? That was a new one. Seconds later, as the Earth rushed up to crush us, the man hollered, “Hold on, guys, we’re going in hot!”
Yes, we were.
One hand on the door latch, I moved my eyes to the airspeed indicator while Futch tilted the nose until blue sky filled the windshield. We were doing a hundred knots, and still gaining speed as we ascended. The odds of surviving were plummeting just as fast.
On those rare occasions when imagining how I will deal with the inevitable, I embrace the hope I’ll accept my last moments as a rational man, which is to say dispassionately, beyond the reach of panic. Which is pure damn fantasy. I was too numb for panic but did feel a suffocating dread that perhaps is as inevitable as death itself. Worse, that fear was blended with regret—regret for all the infinite experiences, done and undone, that vanish with the last thump of our own fragile hearts. At the end, in truth, my thought stream was neither detached nor rational, just pitifully human: Not yet! I don’t want to die! Not like this!
Die in a small plane, on a sunny February morning, searching for something that is synonymous with paranormal weirdos and the UFO lunatic fringe? What a damn ridiculous way for a rational man—a respected marine biologist!—to end his years.
Not that I’m a believer, but Tomlinson had implied a spiritual verity by speaking on behalf of all our sorry asses: God must alternately flood the eons with ironic laughter—or his grieving tears.
2
I WOULD NOT HAVE WASTED A MINUTE SEARCHING for the iconic Flight 19, let alone a day flying around Florida, if Dan Futch hadn’t asked me to get involved. Dan comes from Old Florida waterman stock, a fourth-generation fishing guide, when he’s not flying charters, and he’s as solid and smart as they come.
It didn’t matter that Futch had convinced me there was a statistical chance the torpedo bombers had disappeared in the Gulf or the Everglades, not in the Atlantic as most believed. It didn’t matter that out of all the so-called experts on Flight 19, few had done enough original research to be credible. And those few, with rare exception, agreed that there were so many variables, so few facts, that it was impossible to reach an unimpeachable conclusion about the fate of those five planes.
I joined the hunt because Dan is Dan Futch. True, he’d helped me land a controversial tarpon project in nearby Boca Grande Pass, so I owed him a favor. But he is also among the most competent men I know—a quality that runs in his family.
Between Orlando and Key West, the name Futch has the ring of blue-collar royalty. It is a family that has earned, over the decades, the instant respect accorded by those who appreciate boats, gutsiness, mechanical savvy, and saltwater. Since the 1800s, the family has been associated with the banyan-shaded village of Boca Grande on Gasparilla Island, forty miles south of Sarasota. World’s Tarpon Capital, as the village is known. But generations of Futches have excelled as fishing guides, boatbuilders, and hardworking innovators throughout the state. The reputation of the patriarch grandfather, Daniel Webster Futch, remains near mythic, even years after his death, and the man’s exploits as a rum smuggler and tough-guy fisherman are still a favorite topic around the docks. Dan, the legend’s namesake, is Futch to the bone, from his horn-rimmed glasses to his big-shouldered appetite for life.
A month ago, Futch had landed his seaplane in Dinkin’s Bay and appeared in the doorway of my laboratory carrying a briefcase. I assumed it had something to do with the tarpon study I had recently completed. Wrong. Nor was it a purely social call, but that was okay. We’ve been friends for years, and he has arrived carrying all sorts of odd objects—from a small brass cannon he had salvaged to a hydraulic oyster shucker—but a leather briefcase was unexpected.