Carl Hiaasen – Naked Came The Manatee

The explosion lit up the sky behind her, but Fay just kept right on driving until she pulled into the Barnett Bank on Alton Road. She grabbed an empty grocery bag and walked into the bank. If that fisherman hadn’t handed her the key in Peacock Park, she might not have remembered this for weeks, remembered that years before, Granny had given her the duplicate key to her safe deposit box, “just in case anything happens to me.”

“But Granny,” she’d protested. “Why should anything happen to you? You’re only ninety-nine.”

Fay was led into the vault. She removed the box and carried it into the cubicle and shut the door. She took a deep breath, took out her key, took out the identical key the fisherman had given her, and opened the box. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The box was jammed with money, piles and piles of neatly stacked hundred-dollar bills. Fay had never seen so much money in her life. Resting on top of it was a sealed envelope with her name printed neatly in her Granny’s handwriting. Fay opened it.

Dearest Fay,

I could not die happily as long as I knew my lover, my friend, my life, my bay was in danger. When the bay gave me the head, I realized what I had to do. I knew the head would be worth a lot of money to the right people. There’s dose to a million dollars in this box. Use it to save Biscayne Bay. But don’t ask any questions about where I got this money. These are bad people.

I love you with all my heart, my special Angelfish, Granny Marion

10. DANCE OF THE MANATEE—Vicki Hendricks

Booger heard the crack and rumble above him as he followed the party boat upstream. He felt chills rush down his hide and each bristle on his back push against the flow. He felt his nakedness. His two-thousand-pound bulk was as vulnerable as a bowl of fish aspic.

He craved Marion, the human he called Ma. He sought the warmth of her frail flesh. But he sensed that the soft crepey arms would never again rock his fears away, nor the skeletal fingers massage the sensitive areas beneath his limbs.

She had often come to him in the moonlight when the harsh air-world was smothering her, a hot trickle of energy seeping from her pores into the salt water. He would nuzzle his rubbery nose under her armpits or into her rump till she shrieked with pleasure. They had communication beyond words. They were good for each other. Now she was gone.

His smallish brain replayed the scenario of the last afternoon he’d seen her alive. He’d been munching at the bottom, chewing well on a particularly bitter clump of turtle grass, when he’d recognized Ma’s bony legs. They’d been fluttering and whipping in a foaming chaos of kicks that was sure to lure sharks. Behind her was the silent black hull of a Cigarette boat following at no-wake speed. Booger had surfaced to see Ma thrashing with her last strength through the waves, coughing, gulping air, digging in, trying to reach her Booger.

She’d led them into Booger territory, for him to save her. He felt his adrenaline-like fluids start to pump. He dove and came up in front of her. He humped her onto his rounded shoulders and made a run for the shallows, but he couldn’t submerge to get up speed. Ma was gasping, and her shaking arms could barely cling around his neck.

They never had a chance. The monster boat could go most anyplace he could. It was on his tail, unstoppable as a freighter.

“Okay, Miss Marion,” a male human bellowed. “No more exercise. Tell us where it is or we shoot the porker you’re ridin’ on.”

She let go of Booger’s neck instantly. He tried to nuzzle between her legs to get her back on top of him, but she was doing a scissors kick at top speed. She launched herself toward the boat. “No!” she was screaming. “No! Not him. He’s innocent.”

Booger ran under her and flipped and banged his tail against the boat. Once, twice. He thumped it again, again, again. It was no use. He was off balance. He got water up his nose and his lower back seized up in pain. There wasn’t even a dent in the hull.

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