The Mangrove Coast by Randy Wayne White Read Free Book Online

honest or worthwhile in thirty seconds, what’s the sense of wasting your time?”
    Trying to keep things relaxed, trying to ease her into what she’d come to talk about, I’d asked her about her T-shirt:
Thirty-Second Rule Strictly Enforced.
    I said, “And the guys know there’s this time limit? It’s a new thing now … or—?”
    “You mean do a lot of women use it?”
    I was nodding. “Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.” There were enough years between us that this might have been some generational fad. If it’s not on shortwave radio or on the VHF weather stations, I have no way of keeping up.
    She said, “I just told you, some friends and I, it’s our idea. But yeah, it’s getting around. Like the university towns. Gainesville, Tallahassee, Miami. I heard some girls down on spring break took it back to Michigan, University of Iowa. Some other places, too. But it was all our idea.”
    Proud of that.
    I had taken Tucker’s seat at the galley booth facing her until she scooched a little closer to the wall to create an extra couple of inches of distance between us. That slight movement stirred the air enough so that she left a few scent molecules lingering. Body powder. Shampoo. Woman.The thirty-second rule, I guessed, was like her baggy clothes, her hair: a place of her own creation in which to hide.
    I said, “I’ve been talking to you for a couple of minutes and I don’t feel like I know very much at all about you. A lot longer than thirty seconds, but I wouldn’t presume to make any judgments.”
    “But this isn’t social. So the rule doesn’t apply, see?”
    I said, “It’s not business either, though. Or is it?”
    Amanda was sipping her tea, hands very steady, eyes and eyebrows showing just above the rim of her glass. “It’s neither,” she said. “What it is is personal.”
    She had handed me a sheaf of letters, all of them getting brittle and yellow, they were that old. Written on airmail onion-skin paper, so they were slightly brittle to begin with.
    As I leafed through them, she said, “He wrote my mom almost every day. That’s how much in love they were. The whole time he was in Asia or wherever he was. Those APO return addresses, you’ve got no way of knowing. But he mentioned Bangkok quite a bit, so that’s what Mom figured. And he mentioned you. Your name’s in there a lot.” Amanda looked at me, let her eyes linger for a moment, then looked away before adding, “One of the reasons I wanted to talk with you was so you could maybe tell me more about my dad. About where you two were when he was killed, what you were doing. It’s weird, but, my own father, I know almost nothing about him”
    I said, “I’ll tell you what I can.”
    “I’d appreciate that. Maybe more than you realize.”
    “My pleasure. And Tuck said something about you having a problem. Maybe a favor to ask.”
    “That’s why I brought the letters, because I wanted you to see how I came to know about you. So … what I’d like you to do now is read this—” She carefully unfolded another letter, placed it in front of me and tapped a paragraph midway down, knowing the letter so well she didn’thave to read it again because she knew where the paragraph was. “This will tell you why I’m imposing on you. Why I went to the trouble of finding you. Because, well, I
had
to. It was like it was an order from my father or something. Go ahead, take the letter and you’ll understand.”
    It was very strange reading words written by a friend who had been dead for nearly twenty years. About the dead we often say that their spirit remains in our hearts. But that’s seldom true. Not really. We abandon the dead as quickly as our emotions will allow, and Bobby had been dead for a long, long time. Now here he was speaking to me from paper that his hands had touched, through ink that was a direct conduit to what he had been thinking and feeling at that time.
    I could picture him hunched beneath a gas lantern, jungle