Deep Water, Flat Sky

The lake was five feet below its winter pool, exposing the black, slimy roots of the buttonwood bushes along the rim canal. Roy kept the outboard idling at a low crawl, his eyes on the surface for the shifting shadows of hydrilla beds that could choke an intake valve in thirty seconds. His passenger, a man named Henderson who had arrived from Tampa in a clean grey Mercedes, sat on the swivel seat in the bow, his hands tucked into the pockets of a white windbreaker that looked too bright for the swamp. He hadn't touched his rod since they left the marina.

"You've got a lot of muck down there," Henderson said, his voice flat and thin over the rattle of the motor. He was watching the small screen of his fish-finder, which showed a steady, grey line representing six inches of silt over limestone. Roy didn't answer; he knew the muck was seventy years of fertilizer runoff from the cane fields north of the lake, a thick, black lard that settled over the old sandy bottom like a heavy winter blanket. He had fished this water when you could see five feet down, when the bass were bright green and smelled of clean weed instead of engine oil.

They reached the mouth of the Taylor Creek canal, where the water was yellow and thick with algae. Roy shut off the engine, the silence settling over the boat like a warm wet sheet. A green heron stepped along the edge of a floating island of water hyacinth, its neck darting forward to snatch a gambusia from the shallows. Henderson stood up, his white shoes leaving two clean circles on the muddy carpet of the deck, and stared into the brown water as if he were waiting for his own face to rise up from the bottom and speak to him.