Carl Hiaasen – Native Tongue

“And the first phase,” said the mayor, “is already sold out. We’re talking two hundred and two units!”

Joe Winder found an empty chair and sat down. He propped the fly rod in his lap so that it rose like a nine-foot CB antenna out of his crotch. He wondered why he hadn’t heard about this project, considering that the property abutted the southern boundary of the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills. He didn’t remember seeing anything in the newspapers about a new country club. He felt a homicidal churning in his belly.

Not again, he thought. Not again, not again, not again.

The mayor introduced Jake Harp—”one of the greatest cross-handed putters of all time”—and the audience actually rose to its feet and cheered.

Jake Harp stood at the podium and waved ebulliently. Waved and waved, as if he were the bloody pope.

“Welcome to Falcon Trace,” he began, reading off an index card. “Welcome to my new home.”

More clapping as everyone settled back in their chairs.

“You know, I’ve won the PGA three times,” said Jake Harp, “and finished third in the Masters twice. But I can honestly say that I was never so honored as when y’all selected me as the touring pro for beautiful Falcon Trace.”

A voice piped up near the stage: “You rot in hell!”

A strong impassioned voice—a woman. The crowd murmured uncomfortably. Jake Harp nervously cleared his throat, a tubercular grunt into the microphone.

Again the woman’s voice rose: “We don’t need another damn golf course. Why don’t you go back to Palm Springs with the rest of the gangsters!”

Now she was standing. Joe Winder craned to get a good look.

The famous golfer tried to make a joke. Painfully he said, “I guess we got ourselves a golf widow in the audience.”

“No,” the woman called back, “a real widow.”

On stage, Jake Harp bent over and whispered something to the mayor, who was smoking fiercely. Someone signaled to the conductor of the high-school band, which adroitly struck up a Michael Jackson dance number. Meanwhile three uniformed sheriff’s deputies materialized and edged toward the rude protester. The woman stood up, shook a fist above the silvery puff that was her head and said something that Joe Winder couldn’t quite hear, except for the word “bastard.”

Then she put on a floppy pink Easter bonnet and permitted herself to be arrested.

Well, hello, thought Winder. The lady from the Wildlife Rescue Corps, the one who’d slipped him the note at the Amazing Kingdom.

Joe Winder watched the deputies lead the old woman away. He wanted to follow and ask what in the hell was going on, but she was quickly deposited in the back of a squad car, which sped off toward Key Largo. As Jake Harp resumed his speech, Winder got up and walked past the stage toward the ocean. In a few minutes he found the familiar stretch of shoreline where he usually searched for bonefish, but the water was too milky to see over the tops of his own sneakers. As he waded into the flats, he could hear the high-school band begin to play “The Star Spangled Banner,” signaling the climax of the groundbreaking ceremony.

As he slid his feet across the rocks and sea grass, Joe Winder started false-casting his fly, stripping out the line as he moved forward. The water was murky, roiled, just a mess. There would be no fish here, Winder knew, but still he drove the meat of the line seventy feet hard into the wind, and watched the tiny plop of the fly when it landed.

Joe Winder fished in manic motion because he knew time was running out. Before long, this fine little bay would be a stagnant ruin and the only fish worth catching would be gone, spooked by jet skis, sail-boarders, motorboats and plumes of rank sewage blossoming from submerged drainage pipes.

Welcome to Falcon Trace.

He took another step and felt something seize his right ankle. When he tried to pull free, he lost his balance and fell down noisily in the water. He landed on his ass but quickly rolled to his knees, careful to hold the expensive Seamaster fly reel high and dry. Irritably Winder groped beneath the surface for the thing that had tripped him.

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