RICKETY DOCK
Dock Rudloe limped noticeably and slowly around the huge yard of his biological supply company, humming a three-note tune, his old shoes keeping a contrasting rhythm in soft, sandy earth. Dock’s right knee had begun to bother him and he knew of no cure, short of a wheelchair or death. It was a fine autumnal Saturday morning – the very best season on that half-remembered coast; when the temperatures cooled, the bugs and tourists diminished and the fat silvery mullet schooled for their annual spawning runs. Dock had weathered many autumns in North Florida and they never failed to please him. He picked up a white plastic five-gallon bucket that had several orange starfish resting in six inches of water on the bottom – someone had left it outside of the closed doors of the aquarium’s lab building during the night. Dock wondered if they would be billed for the starfish. He looked down at the handsome creatures, briefly trying to recount the numerous people who had brought specimens of one sort and another to the lab from the Gulf in the past fifteen years or so.But there were so many that he never could have recalled them all.There were, first of all, the older local fishermen, whom he’d come to know when he was still in high school.They were a major reason why he had decided to start a marine lab on that little-known coast in the first place.Daily, he had seen them discarding precisely the small sea creatures that he knew were in demand in laboratories all over America.When he had asked some of them if he could keep the starfish and sea-cucumbers and sea-pansies and seahorses and nudibranchs and remoras and all of the other smallish Gulf creatures that they cast off as worthless, they were astonished.No one had ever had any use for such things in their lifetime.Shrimpers routinely culled their catches at sea and threw myriads of small sea forms back into the water, some alive and some already dead or dying of shock or air drowning.But there were almost always some smallish critters still alive on the boats when they docked – mixed in with the money-fish, or on their decks and nets, or even sometimes kept purposely in their tanks or large ice chests and other storage areas.They occasionally brought in a live toad-fish or guitar-fish, or the odd garfish or octopus to give or sell to someone.The Gulf of Mexico was a very fertile mother.
Young Dock and those grizzled watermen had worked out a basic understanding as to what he needed and how much he could pay for each and when he needed certain ones.Dock had written about those early years in his first-published classic book, The Sea Brings Forth.Dock really liked that book; it was the one that John Steinbeck had read just before his death, after having helped Dock find a publisher.Why, even old Skinny Caldwell had written him several fan letters full of praise for it.Caldwell used to fish in the Panacea area decades earlier during his boyhood in South Georgia.Caldwell’s racy novels could well have been set in Panacea.
In time, as word spread that Dock needed all sorts of things from the Gulf, his irregular collecting volunteers grew in number and discrimination.Clay brought him a live baby shark that he and Murray had caught at the mouth of a local river, using jug-buoyed hooks.Weekend fishermen would bring him an eel or a ray or a skate that they had caught while trolling.Small kids brought him can-fulls of fiddle-crabs, stone-crabs, calico-crabs, and the plentiful blue crabs that they had caught just for the fun of it.Dock would give them some pocket change, and they would leave feeling very rich and practical.His foreman, Duke # 2, made weekly forays into secret water haunts to keep the lab’s tanks full of fish and to fill special orders that had been phoned in or mailed in to Maria Elena – the office manager who oversaw the day-to-day operations of that nonprofit business.Dock, himself, would make occasional trips along the local beaches or out on the Gulf in one boat or another – The Cyclops was the lab’s collecting boat – always with his one good eye out for some useful specimens.Eve and Kirby added this and that to the gallimaufry in the numerous aquarium tanks.Several years before, that couple had read a few of Dock’s books up in their farm in New England and had moved south to Panacea to work with him.Even Mack brought in an occasional crab or sponge or such to the lab.
Dock was especially fond of sea-turtles, but state law would not allow the company to keep them for more than a week or so – and that only for rest and recuperation unless the turtle was very sick.He had written one book about turtles – Time of the Turtle – which also described the small local Diamondback Terrapins.Mack had often noticed that there was something very “turtleish” about Dock himself – his poor eyesight, his slow awkward gait on land, his firm unyielding grip, and even Dock’s increasingly roly-poly figure.Mack had begun to notice any number of such interesting phenomena after he settled into the swamps.
Steady Eddie would often bring live specimens and dead “food-fish” to the lab from the marina, where he was the ace handyman.Dock had come to rely on Steady Eddie for a number of reasons over the years.Eddie was a lifelong resident of that often-ignored coast, the youngest of a family of welders, fishermen, and hell-raisers.Eddie had served a few years in a state prison and had used his jail-time wisely; he learned to read and to love books while incarcerated.He decided to be a better man when he returned to Panacea, where he quickly became a friend to all of the boaters at the new marina, which had been built in his absence.For Eddie knew a lot about boats:building them, operating them, securing them, fixing their engines – and also about shrimping and all the other sorts of local fishing.He had grown up with it all.It was during those years at the Marina that he came to be known as Steady Eddie.If anyone had a problem with their boat there – even during a hurricane, when it was a very dangerous place – Eddie would help the boat owner and ask nothing in return.A checkers champ from childhood, he learned to play chess in prison and became the local chess champion also.Eddie liked the ladies; he liked to drink, and he was even learning how to handle large sailing vessels – which Eddie called “blow-boats.”In short, he was becoming an indispensable man in Panacea.He would listen to Dock’s problems and even give him tips on writing about nature.Dock revered him, and so did many others in that small fishing village.
Awakening from his reverie, Dock continued humming his tuneless song as he dumped the starfish ever so gently into one of the flat, shallow tanks of sea-creatures in the bay water in shed # 1.The sound of saltwater pumping constantly through the lab’s labyrinth of plastic piping was music to Dock’s tin ears.How many years of trial-and-error had it taken to perfect that jury-rigged aquarium?He laughed out loud, recalling how one local contractor had built him a cement tank that actually had exploded one night . . . the noise sounding like a big bomb in that quiet town.Fortunately, no one was around to get hurt.That contractor soon quit that business and became a deputy sheriff, where bomb noises are more a part of their duties.
Dock remembered that someone had brought a small octopus to the lab that week, and he walked into the big, round middle tank in shed # 2 and looked in the water.The octopus quickly saw him and swiftly propelled itself over to where Dock’s had rested on the cement ledge.The octopus slipped a rubbery tentacle up the tank wall and touched Dock’s fingers, as if to say “Good Morning.”Dock had had that happen before with cephalopods – among the most intelligent of all sea creatures.The tentacle felt friendly; Dock wiggled a finger in response.“It’s just like a snake,” he thought.Once a King snake had coiled itself around his arm and from that day on Dock had no fear of nonpoisonous reptiles.“Good morning, Ozzie,” Dock said aloud, withdrawing his hand slowly from the ledge.He stepped over to the crab tank, picked out a large male blue crab and dropped it into the circular tank.The unlucky crab immediately began scuttling sideways, searching for a hiding place.But there is no such haven from the smart octopi:breakfast was served in about five minutes on the half shell.
Dock mused over one of the many old fishermen’s tales in the Gulf:that a stone crab would regenerate one of its fat claws if it were put back in the open water with one claw to fend for itself.Personally, Dock had never seen a stone crab grow a claw from scratch ‑‑ he wondered only if it was possible.Similarly, a Dutch friend had insisted to him that most sharks, under most circumstances, will not attack humans.There were so many such stories among watermen . . . great food for thought in their solitary profession . . . .
Dock hummed on.The phone rang, buzzing crudely over the static-laden loudspeaker.He answered it reluctantly.No, they didn’t have any robin-fish or bat-fish, but they might get some in in the next week or two.Could the party please call back, preferably on a weekday?He hung up.Dusty, his brownish mongrel bitch, lay in the golden sunlight outside of the lab buildings, utterly at peace with herself and her own sense of reality.Dock had rescued Dusty from the county dump a few years previously, after an alligator ate his second, previous Airedale – Magen – at Otter Lake.Dusty was the luckiest dog in the county, for she had no particular duties and was spoiled rotten by Dock’s boys and their chums.Her leftover seafood banquets were scrumptious; she waddled when she walked.To see her and Dock walk together was eye-catching.
Dock limped into the shark-and-ray tank building, wanting to check on the water system and the animals’ health.Two or three middle-sized nurse sharks were resting motionlessly near the incoming bursts of bay water; they rarely moved, except to eat a fish dropped in their tank on feeding days.Those sharks would reach a maximum length of about six- or eight-feet over the years.Tourists and other visitors who paid a small fee to tour the lab always wanted to see sharks.“They’re a good draw,” Dock thought, “but, of course, they’d like to be free, too.”He automatically checked and counted the skates and rays and inspected the horseshoe crabs for any dead ones as he walked slowly through the tin building.His wife, Anna, was a world-renowned expert on horseshoe crabs, which bred in seemingly endless numbers on that shallow coast.Their multiple eyes and their rare blood made them valuable to biologists, for experimentation and for use in blood testing the world around.Those oval-shaped antediluvians were alleged to be about a half-billion years old, as a species, having changed very little over that span of time.Anna had written her doctoral dissertation on those odd amphibians at the state university in Tallahassee.
Leaving that shed, Dock walked back out into the sunlight, headed over to the small wooden building where the pickled specimens were kept and where Dock stored his old manuscripts – “The Pickle Building.”As he did so, he recalled his various expeditions to Madagascar, Surinam, Costa Rica, and the Orient.He could use another trip soon, he reckoned.He hoped to go to Hong Kong or China to talk to some Chinese about the Gulf Coast’s cannonball jellyfish, which Orientals found to be a culinary treat.Oh, if he could only find somebody to pay for his trips!Among his many unpublished manuscripts was one he wanted to rewrite:his awkward novel about dope smuggling on his secretive coast.He’d used several working titles for it: “Potluck,” “Seaweed,” “Funny Money” – but none of his agents or publishers had much liked that manuscript.Still, he wanted to rewrite it one last time.He dug through cardboard boxes and piles of fading yellowed manuscript, finally grasping the thick sheaf that represented a year or two of seemingly wasted labor.He carried the bulging folder back out into the fresh air, coughing as he left the stale, acrid confines of the pickle building.He’d have to clean all of that one day soon, he vowed for the hundredth time.
As he limped back to the office, he saw Mack coming out of the tool shed with a four-foot-long crowbar in his hand.“What’s up?” he asked his mythical neighbor.
“Gotta fix my front porch.Curwin nearly fell through a bad spot the other day and skinned his ankle.He won’t visit me again unless I fix the porch.I’ll return it.”Mack hefted the heavy tool.
Dock accepted that promise.Mack did return things, usually.“Wanta take a beach walk in a while?” Dock asked the old hobo.Dock could never quite bring himself to believe that Mack was who – or whom – he said he was.Dock was not even sure if he wanted to know if Mack had really been in Steinbeck’s books; if he was, it was a cosmic coincidence . . . while, if he wasn’t, it would ruin their joke.Still, Dock wished for the umpteenth time that John Steinbeck was still alive or that he had come to Panacea before he passed away in 1968.
