Free A Second Chance in Paradise by Tom Winton Page A

his story.
    “ One evenin’ at dusk I was cullin’ the dead mullet out of the live well aboard the ‘Island Belle’ – that’s our old Chris-Craft cabin cruiser ... Buster’s out in it right now. Anyway, after I flipped the first mullet over the side I heard a pop. I looked down there and saw ‘Old Moe’ layin’ there, motionless; eyeballin’ me. I threw him another one and this time saw him grab it. Been feedin’ him and his brood ever since.”
    With my eyebrows now arched much the way Pa’s were permanently, I said, “I’d say that’s really getting in touch with nature.”
    “Nowadays it’s a lot e asier than connectin’ with most people.”
    “Yeah,” I said, l ooking out at Wreckers Channel now, “people are so busy running around in a frenzy today most of them don’t have time for each other anymore.”
    “ That’s part of the beauty of this here key. There ain’t many of us and nobody’s ever in a rush. We have plenty of time to be neighborly. Been that way since my great-grand-daddy came here to Wrecker’s Key in the 1830’s. He was the first white man to settle here.”
    “I nteresting! So your family’s been here ever since?”
    “ Yup, only difference, ’cept for a little increase in boat traffic, is all those tourists rushin’ by out on U.S. 1. Let me tell ya, there’s some real characters pass through here. Hell, just last weekend we had some first-class bozos from Miami stop at the store. They were all liquored-up and wanted ta fill the boat they were trailerin’ with gas. One of them put the nozzle into a rod-holder instead of the fuel fill and poured eighty dollars worth of regular onto the floor of the boat!
    “ Haaa!  Some kind of characters they must have been!”
    As we shared a good laugh, a brown pelican landed next to Pa on the dock. He called him “Max” then hand fed him a fish and stroked his white head a couple of times. The bird was perfectly fine with this show of affection, but when I leaned to take a look at him he took one cumbersome step back.
    “ Mister Bell,” I said then, in a more serious tone, “the reason why I came over here was to ask you if there’s any possibility I could rent Mr. Doyle’s Airstream for a little longer. I mean ... unless he’s coming back soon?”
    Pa pursed his lips in thought and said, “Son, I wish he was comin’ back. He was a good friend and was here a long time, but I’m afraid it’d take one of them miracles to bring him back from where he is now.”
     
    “ Oh, I see. I’m sorry to hear that.”
    Thinking of his lost friend now, Pa suddenly lost his kind, even-tempered demeanor. In just a flash the sadness in his old eyes turned to anger.
    “Godamned developers down in the Saddlebunch Keys killed him, just like they kill everything else –  for the quick money. Ole Doyle was waitin’ to pull out onto U.S. 1, out front of my store, when a flatbed flies by. This guy’s haulin’ three big sable palms to some new condo down on Saddlebunch, and he loses one, wasn’t tied down snug. It landed smack on top of the hood of Doyle’s old pickup ... rolled with such force that it smashed into the windshield and crushed him. He was killed instantly.”  Shaking his head in disgust now, his eyelids beginning to tremble, Pa said, “Them useless Chamber of Commerce types ... politicians, developers, investors, all of ’em. They’re more venomous than a pissed-off cottonmouth, when it comes to money. No matter how much they got, it ain’t never enough. They got no respect for nothin’ or nobody!”
    Seeing him this enraged made me a little nervous. It was obvious his resentment towards the developers and their cronies had been festering for a long, long time.
    “ Anyway,” Pa continued, trying to compose himself now, “the firemen cut the cab open and the EMTs carted Doyle off to the morgue down in Key West. To them developers, he wasn’t nothin’ more than a road kill. Just some old nobody, with no