Twelve years old and you’re almost as tall as a man.”
“Frankie, it’s great to see you again!” all the Landons exclaimed as they hugged her.
Half in disbelief, then in alarm, Bridger exclaimed, “Frankie is a woman?”
Taking his hand, Olivia pulled him forward and said, “Bridger, I’d like you to meet Captain Frankie Gardell, the best fishing guide in all of the Everglades.”
With his eyes narrowed to a squint, Bridger touched the brim of his cowboy hat and mumbled, “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” At first he looked anything but pleased, but then his face lightened a bit as he said, “Guess you just own the boat, right? Who runs it for you?”
“Me!” When Frankie smiled, the skin around her mouth crinkled into dozens of wrinkles that connected to other dozens of wrinkles in her sun-browned cheeks.
She was small, barely over five feet two, and dressed in a red-and-white-striped shirt that hung over cutoff jeans. It seemed odd, even to Jack, for a 70-year-old woman to wear cutoffs, but somehow on Frankie it looked all right.
“To answer your question, Bridger,” Frankie went on, “when my husband, Gene, was alive, we made the fishing trips together. But Gene’s been gone for eight years now, rest his soul, and in that time I’ve run this business by myself.”
Bridger looked even more confused. “Your husband’s name was Jean?”
Chuckling, Frankie answered, “Spelled G-E-N-E. Short for Eugene. And I’m Frankie, short for Francesca. And yonder’s the Pescadillo.”
Thoroughly flustered, Bridger burst out, “What the heck is a pescadillo?”
“It’s my boat! The name is kind of a combination of ‘pesce,’ which is Italian for ‘fish,’ and ‘peccadillo,’ which means—well, I’ll tell you later, Bridger. We need to get moving.”
“Good idea,” Olivia said, glancing at her watch. “I have a meeting in 20 minutes. Lots of people coming: park rangers, researchers—everyone with information on the manatees. I feel as if I’ve got a thousand pieces of a big puzzle, Frankie, and no picture on the box to guide me. So do you mind if Steven and I leave now and don’t see you off?”
“Go, go!” Frankie urged them, shooing Steven and Olivia with sun-browned hands. “My new shipmates and I will be just fine. Won’t we, Ashley?”
“You bet!”
Steven said, “Then we’ll see you tonight. Get busy out there, guys—if you make a good catch, the restaurant will cook it for us.”
From the end of the dock, the four of them waved, watching Steven and Olivia pull away in the car. Once they’d disappeared, Frankie placed her hands on her hips and surveyed the kids. Jack wondered if she could tell that Bridger was unhappy about her being a woman, but if she knew, she didn’t let on. Instead, she began to bark out orders like a real ship’s captain.
Pointing briskly, she went down the line. “Jack, you load up the rest of the gear that’s right by your feet. Bridger, you take that cooler on board and stow it between the captain’s chair and the gunwale. Ashley, you’re going to get the line off the piling, and when
I tell you, throw it onto the boat deck and then jump in after it. Don’t wait too long, or the boat’ll get away from you and you’ll end up with an Everglades bath.”
“I’ll untie the boat for her,” Bridger offered.
“Nonsense. Ashley’s as agile as a monkey. You handle the cooler, and Ashley will take care of the rest. But first, Bridger, take off those boots!”
For a moment, Bridger stood stock still, his face reddening slightly to match the red in his plaid cotton shirt. “Why?” he asked.
“No boots on board! They’ll gouge the deck. If you don’t have any boat shoes with you, like Jack and Ashley are wearing, then you can just stay in your sock feet.”
Bridger got even redder. Finally, touching the brim of his hat, he said, “Yes, ma’am,” so softly that Jack was sure Frankie hadn’t heard, except that she sent another smile in Bridger’s direction. He sat down to take off his boots.
Jack jumped down into the Pescadillo. From there he reached up to the dock to pick up the gear, one box at a time, transferring it into the boat. Bridger, still on the dock, lifted the cooler and set the boots on top of it, intending to hold everything while he lowered himself into the boat.
“Maybe you ought to…” Jack began as Bridger put one foot on the boat’s edge, which Frankie had called the gunwale. But Bridger shook his head. He wobbled a little—the cooler was heavy, the boat moved from the dock under the pressure of his foot, and his socks must have felt pretty slippery on the teakwood gunwale.
Jack halfway reached out to help, but Bridger frowned in concentration, as though this were some kind of athletic competition, and by sheer willpower he could figure out how to balance himself and his heavy load on the narrow rim. And he did. After sizing it all up, he took one more step and then jumped, landing flatfooted in the boat, with his balance and the cooler intact. He didn’t grin in satisfaction, but just gave a short, sharp nod to no one in particular, stowed the cooler beside the captain’s chair, and set his boots alongside a white vinyl bench.
Out of the corner of her eye, Frankie had watched the whole episode. All she said was, “Hop to it, Ashley. All aboard that’s goin’ aboard.” Ashley undid the line from the cleat on the piling, threw it into the boat, then scrambled quickly after it.
“All right, crew, line up and get your life jackets,” Frankie ordered. “One per customer—pull them out of the box there.”
“What about you, Frankie?” Ashley asked. “You need to wear one too, don’t you?”
“Um…ah…” Frankie hedged, and then said, “Yes, you’re absolutely right. Watch me and you can see how to buckle these things.” After they’d all slipped their arms through the pillowy orange life jackets and fastened the straps, Frankie said, “Now let’s shove off and see what we can find out there in the land of Ten Thousand Islands.” In an instant the diesel engine caught and roared. Jack could feel the vibrations under his feet.
“Sticking close to shore the way we are now, I’ve got to go slow,” Frankie told them. “The water’s no more than four feet deep here, which makes it easy to run over manatees, something we definitely don’t want to do.”
Even their slow passage stirred up a nice breeze, enough to whip Frankie’s hair into short white spikes that looked like peaks of meringue. Surely, deftly, she handled the steering wheel as though she and the boat were lifelong friends. After a while, Frankie told them, “The trick to maneuvering through these mangrove islands is to know where the channels are. We’ve passed the town of Chokoloskee now, so I’ll let her out a little.” She pushed the throttle forward on the starboard side of the helm.
“We were in Chokoloskee last night—” Jack had started to say, but before he could get it out, the Pescadillo leaped forward and his words were sucked back into his throat.
“Wow! This is great!” Ashley cried loudly, so she could be heard above the motor and the sudden rush of wind. “Feels like someone just turned on the air conditioning.” She stood at the helm, next to Frankie,
