The Prairie marsh basin had flooded. Water was lapping over one lane of Highway 441, and there were a dozen or so alligators lined up at the road's edge. Cars and trucks crawled along as drivers gawked at the prehistoric reptiles and the vast flooded marsh. It was only the first of the day's extraordinary events.
I had never seen Paynes Prairie like that before, though some north Florida old timers still called it Alachua Lake. The appearance of the alligators was even more astonishing. Apparently, the cold-blooded creatures had been forced by the high water to do their warming on the dry surface of the road.
I shuddered as I passed them, and irrationally powered my car windows halfway up as I, just as irrationally, whispered "Go Gators!" It was the mantra of University of Florida football fans and used so ubiquitously, it tended to seep into ones DNA.
I continued into Gainesville past the old Brown Derby Restaurant. It was the former scene of so many celebratory and clandestine meetings, and ironically, I thought, was now an Islamic Center. As I drive by, I occasionally have the flicker of a memory of Jeffrey, and a dark, uneasy feeling. Jeffrey, my former husband and I, would often rendezvous at the Brown Derby. Sometimes, I'd even stop there for a drink alone until the murder.
A young woman college student who also may have stopped by for a drink, or to meet someone, was beaten to death. Her car was in the Derby parking lot. Her battered nude body was found, across the street, in a shallow grave. It gave me the creeps when a friend asked me to go hiking with her in that area. I refused. Not like I was afraid of ghosts, but...
My close encounter with the alligators, and the white-washed serenity of the once notorious restaurant somehow felt connected. Cold-blooded gators. Cold-blooded murder. I shivered at the thought.
As I drove up 13th Street near the University, I was once again caught in a snarl of traffic. Cars, mopeds, bikes, and sandal-footed, head-phone wearing students, all in a hurried jumble. In Gainesville, it is not the weather but the tide of thousands of students that signals the change of seasons. Fall semester was beginning.
Though I was more than twenty years from my own undergrad days, I could still feel the air prickle with the excitement of fresh starts. I flirted with the appealing idea that the day might bring me something new and exciting. Little did I suspect it was a wish I would come to regret.
I stepped into our office, the Center for Earth Options, and announced, "Hey, can you believe it? I just saw a dozen alligators sitting roadside on the Prairie. The whole place is flooded. It's an amazing sight."
My boss, Diana Demeter, gave me a quick anxious glance before bringing her hands up to her mouth, and shaking her head. Her large-brown rimmed glasses gave her an owl-like look, and her severely tailored appearance reminded me of my elementary school librarian.
Dropping her hands, she said, "This just cant happen. Heaven knows, we cannot let it happen!"
"What's up?" I asked, and walked further into the office. "What can't happen?"
I looked at Diana and then at Becky, our office manager, who sat behind the reception desk. Diana gave me a wan smile. Becky sat erect, and was tapping her pencil back and forth on the desk. She looked as though she would burst into tears at any moment.
Diana finally explained, "Apparently the south Florida Valdez Development Company has plans to build a high rise housing project on the rim of the Prairie."
I was stunned by the news. "But how can they get a permit? I mean, what about the countys land use plan, for God's sake? Isn't the Prairie rim on preservation status or something? There are single family homes out there, but, surely they can't allow a whole damn high rise development, can they?"
Becky responded, "That's what we thought, but Dr. Ames, from the Sierra Club, just called and told Diana that Valdez has an old permit. And," she paused, her heavy dark eyebrows shooting up dramatically, "it has no expiration date. They're basically good to go."
"Dalton said they are already on the agenda for the next County Commission meeting. Theyre really moving fast," Diana added, touching Becky's hand to stop her repetitive tapping.
"Jesus," I said, walking over to my desk and plopping down in the chair. "I can't believe it!"
"Neither did we, at first," Diana said, giving me a sympathetic look. "We were devastated by the news."
I sat in stunned silence, and watched as the two women hovered over Becky's desk, murmuring to one another, and shuffling through various papers. I thought about the diverse backgrounds that had somehow landed us together.
There was twenty-something Becky, fast-talking, and filled with zeal over many issues. Her family lived in Boston. And, Diana, a soft-spoken widow in her forties with a son she described as a "troubled teenager." I looked at her, and felt a wave of affection as I recalled our first meeting, my job interview. We clicked right away, and shared some of our personal history. She and her husband had been Georgia farmers until he was killed in a farming accident. She said it made her into a "steel magnolia." And then there was meliving out my mother's dream to be an actressraised as an only child, in south Florida, by a mother and father who owned an orange grove.
How comical it would be if Becky, Diana, and I were lined up together? I'd be the tallest, Becky the squarest, and Diana slender and petite. Yet, despite all of our differences, it was certain that the news of the Valdez plan would ignite our shared passion to preserve this wild land.
After several minutes, Diana sat down and started to speak to us in her slow Georgia drawl. "I think you should know something about who we're up against," she said. "Valdez is run by two old University buddies: Jimmy Valdez and Crawford Keezer. I first met them at an Environmental Permitting Conference in Sanibel a couple of years ago. Those two boys couldn't be more different from one another, but both of them are pretty slick in their own way. They build developments big as a whole town, and they start out by just scraping the land of everything on it. If they do get this thing going, I guess we can expect the same." She shook her head sadly and looked away from us.
Becky suddenly jumped from her chair. As she began speaking, her long wiry brown hair seemed to bristle with the intensity of her tone.
"But that's not going to happen," she said, and pounded her fist on the desk. "That's why we're here. Right, Diana? And I've got lots of other friends who'll know how to stop this thing, too. "
I guessed Becky was referring to the rag-tag group of grad students she hung out with. They were all members of a radical environmental group called EcoSave!.
"Okay," I said, and sat down again. I put up my hands in a gesture that signified I had heard enough. "We obviously need to stop their project. Diana, how can we get the County Commission to overturn the permit?"
"I'm not sure," she said. "So far, Dalton says that there's not much the Commission can do since the permit is still valid."
My anger flared thinking about some of the other fights we'd had with our largely pro-development Commission.
"Or won't do if Commissioner Judson Sparks and his friends are in on it," I said.
"Well, you can be certain of one thing, ladies; we'll give them one heck of a good fight." Diana stood up, and faced us with renewed confidence.
"Becky, please get me all the old coalition files. We're going to call an emergency board meeting and round up the faithful."
Becky headed to the file cabinets that lined one whole wall of the office.
Diana stood up, straightened her back, put her hands on her hips, and said, "We'll get something going pretty quickly. I just hope we can head them off before deals get firmed-up. And youre right about Judson Sparks, Lorelei. We'll need to keep our eye on him. I heard that Sparks, Valdez, and Keezer all belonged to the same fraternity in college."
"What can I do?" I asked.
She looked at me for a moment, "How about preparing an action alert to email to our members? And also a news release. Something about an environmental coalition forming under Dalton Ames direction. I'm sure he'll approve it."
Without awaiting a response, Diana walked back into her office. I felt emotionally jarred, and aware that my neck and shoulders ached. As soon as Diana went back in her office, Becky stopped rifling through the files, and turned to me as I leaned back in my chair for a long stretch. Her mouth was working as though she wanted to say something but hadn't decided how.
Finally, she announced, in a whisper, "I think we need to get Jeff Waterman up here." She looked from me to Diana's office door and back.
I broke my stretch at the sound of Jeffrey's name. How weird; I thought, I had been thinking of him again, on the drive in. Remembering the times we sat at the Brown Derby bar. The same bar where the murdered girl had sat.
Becky rushed over to my desk. She bent down, and said very quietly, "Remember how good he was at organizing the whole Jonesville protest? What do you think, Lorelei? I know you could talk Diana into asking him."
Ask Jeffrey to come back here from Orlando? What an outrageous idea, I thought. "Why do you even think he'd be interested?" I asked and realized my mouth had gone dry. "He's been gone so many years."
"Oh, we're still in touch. Of course he'd want to be involved. He loves the Prairie."
"I don't know, Becky." I appeared to give the idea some consideration. "Bringing Jeffrey Waterman up here would make things more stressful than they already are." Now that's an understatement, I thought, and I found my heart beating rapidly at the mere thought of seeing him again.
Diana stood at her office door and glared at Becky. "Did I hear Jeff Waterman's name? That loose cannon? Forgive me, Lorelei, but thank goodness he's not around to declare war."
I shrugged, seeming to be indifferent to her comment.
She said, "I'm still trying to overcome the damage he did our reputation because of his tactics at Jonesville. Where are those files, Becky? We need to get going."
Looking defeated, Becky returned to the file cabinet.
"I'm going home to work. I need some fresh air and time to think about all of this," I said gathering my mail and stuffing it into my handbag. "Keep me posted if you hear anything else."
I approached Becky on my way out the door, and whispered, "Becky, you'll just get Diana more riled up if you call Jeffrey in on this. Really, like I said, it would complicate things right now. Please. Just don't do it."
Becky didn't look up from the files, and gave me a non-committal grunt as I left the office.
I drove back home on automatic pilot. I was reflecting on Valdez, and on the threat to my peace if Becky failed to heed my warning about calling Jeffrey. Micanopy is just 10 miles south of Gainesville, and I soon re-crossed the Prairie basin. The gators had withdrawn or the Park Rangers had somehow managed to get them off the road, and the traffic was moving more quickly.
My feelings began shifting as I took a deep breath, and was calmed by sight of the tall pines, moss draped oaks, and dense shrubs that shaded both sides of the highway. I lowered my car windows to experience the forested air made fresher by the tropical storm that had touched the Gulf coast and crossed the North Florida peninsula.
"Lorelei, whatever will you do if Jeffrey shows up?" I said, sighing deeply.
I recalled Bill's question, before we went to sleep last night. He had asked, "Honey, how are we going to celebrate our 10th anniversary? You know its coming up next month."
I had put him off. Celebrate? I thought. What's to celebrate? A house, a cat, and occasional love-making? That's all we'd come to share as Bill's professorial life and my so-called career as an actress had caused our schedules, and our lives to diverge. And now, I worried, what impact would Jeffrey have if he were to suddenly appear on the scene?
End Chapter One: Murder on the Prairie © M.D. Abrams
