Free Everglades by Randy Wayne White

deal. He replied, “What happens to a bunch of swamp water is the least of our worries.”
    Then he sealed the subject, saying, “When I go to our Sawgrass Ashram, I want the new girl with me, the blonde. Her name’s Kirsten something, from Lauderdale.”
    Izzy began to grin—the guy was shameless. “That’s going to piss off your old sweetie. What’d Mary donate, a couple hundred acres of hubby’s Colorado ranch land? That’s the way you want to do business?”
    More controlled and formal now: “I keep telling you: I don’t run a business. This is a religion. ”
    Izzy had heard him say that before. Lots of times.
    At the door, remembering one last thing, he stopped and said, “That subject we discussed earlier. The woman who went to Sanibel. What if she and her friends start getting too close?”
    Shiva said, “Oh yeah, her friend the old hippy bomber.” Giving it a double meaning.
    “Umm-huh, the eco-freak who’s screwed with us before. I’m already thinking of that angle. If the guy starts sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, what we could do is get the two of you together. Find a way to piss him off, get him to threaten you personally. Establish a motive, is what I’m saying—an eco-terrorist bomber to throw to the cops just in case things go wrong.”
    Very calmly, in the deeper voice he used when giving sermons or making prophecy, Shiva said, “The souls of many are worth the lives of a few. Just make it happen, Izzy.”
    Izzy had heard him say that before, too.

chapter seven
    I finished my drink, then ushered Sally inside the house, where I built another tall one. I told her to make herself at home while I got cleaned up. Then I stepped outside, and walked toward the darker, rear section of deck. A single cloud, no bigger than a house, cloaked the moon for a moment, then floated overhead. It was holding water, and it began to rain again, fat, heavy drops. My own little dark cloud hanging over just me.
    It didn’t affect the party going on across the water. I could hear music; and see Chinese lanterns, red, yellow and green reflecting off the bay. It was 8:20 P.M. Still early for a Friday night at Dinkin’s Bay.
    My shower is outdoors, a big, brass water bucket of a spray head beneath a wooden cistern, sun-heated through coiled black pipe, gravity creating sufficient pressure.
    I walked through the rain, stripping my clothes off as I went, and threw them in a heap onto the deck below—I’d bag them and toss them into the marina’s Dumpster later. Then I stood beneath the shower, rain slopping down from snow-peak height, warm water and cold mixing.
    Tomlinson had left bottles of counterculture soap, the health-food-store variety—Dr. Bronner’s Hemp & Peppermint Castile. I used it to suds away the stink and grime of what had been a weird, but occasionally interesting, four days in the Everglades.
    Much to my surprise, I realized that thinking about the trip brought a little smile to my face.
    Surprise because, in the last year or so, I hadn’t been doing much smiling. Too many bad dreams, too many bad and haunting memories. Too many good people lost.
    I am objective enough, scientist enough, to have recognized in myself an uncharacteristic slide toward clinical depression. I kept fighting it, kept thinking that, one day, the feelings of guilt and dread would dissipate.
    It didn’t happen.
    Something else I also recognized: My increasing dependence on alcohol was symptomatic.
    On this night, though, I felt better. From any objective aspect, I had reason to smile, and those reasons seemed to be accumulating.
    For one thing, anyone who lives on the mangrove coast of Florida, USA, is automatically one of the luckiest souls on earth. Except for going to the ’Glades, I hadn’t had to do any traveling for months, and the simple orderliness of a daily routine, awaking each morning on the bay, and doing my work, was helping me to heal.
    Professionally, I was doing okay. My monograph