Shark River by Randy Wayne White

Author:Randy Wayne White [White, Randy Wayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

10

The first thing I did after securing my skiff and the trawler was check the shark pen, which is on the deepwater, sunrise side of my piling house. I stood on the top deck and watched three bull sharks, all thick as small ponies, swim a slow clockwise perimeter along the heavy netting.

Usually, they swam in just the opposite direction. Lately, though, it was clockwise. I’ve never understood why.

I checked their feeding chart—Jeth had fed them twenty fresh mullet that morning. That was the most difficult thing about keeping sharks in captivity—getting them to eat. They could be very fussy. But these three seemed to be doing okay. They looked healthy. One, a female, had a very deep mating scar on her back, which I’d treated with antibiotics. It looked to be nearly healed.

Standing at my shoulder, Ransom said, “Man, the way you look at them scary animals, I bet you got names for all three of ’em.”

I answered, “Why would anyone name a fish?” and moved on.

Then I checked my fish tank, which is the primary storage unit for the plants and animals I catch and collect and keep alive.

The tank is actually a thousand-gallon wooden cistern, built like a whiskey barrel, that I’d cut in two, mounted on the widest part of the dock and then added a sub-sand filter and a hundred-gallon upper reservoir to improve water clarity. PVC pipe and a Briggs raw water pump kept it oxygenated.

The tank is so large that it’s a miniature, self-contained sea biota, its own little saltwater universe, and so heavy that I’d had to have extra pilings jetted in beneath it for support.

In the tank are local flora and fauna: turtle grass, tunicates, sea hydroids, and several common vertebrates, such as killifish, small snappers, immature groupers, several immature tarpon and snook, plus plenty of shrimp so the fish don’t eat each other. There are also sea horses, whelks, and tulip shells, and as many reef squid as I can keep alive and uneaten. I like to keep squid in the tank because they are delicate, and good indicators of an aquarium’s integrity.

Ransom followed me around like a shadow as I checked the filters and water flow. She seemed amused that I would keep fish as what she perceived to be pets, names or no names. She was also very comfortable with my house—surprising, because it’s a simple place. Not all women like it. It’s two weather-bleached cottages, really, under one tin roof, built at the turn of the previous century on a plank platform over the water, and connected to the mangrove shoreline by ninety feet of boardwalk.

She looked at the cypress planking, the peeling gray paint and the outdoor, rain cistern shower. Looked at the Franklin fireplace, which is my only source of heat. Considered the little gas stove where I cook and the simple ship’s refrigerator. Noted the single bed, the sparse furnishings, the worn throw rugs, and completely misinterpreted what it all meant.

“Man,” she said, “I thought I was poor, living in my lil’ house on Cat Island.

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