The Mangrove Coast by Randy Wayne White Page A

your husband when you marry. But if you leave here in a huff and run to the newspapers cryingabout how your government lied to you about the death of your father, then I’ll disappear from the picture. That’s the silence I’m asking you to respect.”
    Another long, thoughtful pause. “You’re sure about this? Were you there when my father was killed?”
    “No. I learned of it two, maybe three, days later. Some of the Phmong told me, the mountain warriors. They had tremendous respect for your father.”
    “They’re the ones who brought back his body?”
    I could have said, “What was left of it.” Instead, I said, “He was killed in a mortar attack. Yes. They were there and brought him back. It happened not too far from our camp.”
    “If you weren’t there, then how do you know what they said is true?”
    I could have said that I saw the hand, the foot, the flesh detritus of what remained. Instead, I said, “They would have lied to protect your father, but they had no reason to lie. With your father gone, they had no one they needed to protect. So why make up stories?”
    She was asking some pretty good questions. Not suspicious, but careful—checking up on this and that to let me know she was keeping track.
    “Something else you said, it bothers me. Not that I don’t believe what you’re saying, I’m just trying to be clear. The business about his being an intelligence officer. In every picture of him, he’s wearing a Navy uniform, but now you’re telling me he was like some kind of CIA person. What were you guys, spies?”
    “I was what I am now, a marine biologist. Your father was with Naval Special Warfare, the SEALs, and attached to Naval Intelligence. He was a very gifted man. We became close friends quickly. Bobby was smart, funny, tough … a good person; a good guy. He had a photograph of you, a Polaroid, that he loved. At night, just sitting, talking, he’d bring out this picture and pass it around. We had Coleman lanterns for light. It was you in a yellow party dress.”
    I thought that would please her. Instead she seemed momentarily flustered. “You mean a picture of when I was an infant.”
    “Uh-uh. You were four, maybe five, years old. There were a couple of people in the background, maybe your mother.”
    “Oh, that old.” She had her face turned away, looking out the window. Then I realized what the problem was: seeing the photograph meant that I had seen her before a surgeon had straightened her wandering eye. I knew what she had once looked like … probably what, in her own mind, she was supposed to look like … and the fact that I knew made her uneasy.
    So I decided to confront the subject: “I remember telling your father that you had a wonderfully wise face. I loved your eyes.”
    “You said that?”
    “I did.”
    Which earned me a snort of cynical laughter. “You’re telling me … you’re saying that you liked the fact that I was cross-eyed? I’m supposed to believe that? Maybe you have us confused. My mom’s the one with the gorgeous eyes.”
    “Nope, I liked yours. A lot.”
    “I’m supposed to believe that, just like I’m supposed to believe that the reason you were with my dad in Cambodia was because you were a marine biologist? Jesus.”
    “Both true.”
    “I’m sure.” Her tone said: bullshit.
    “Cambodia’s on the Gulf of Thailand. There’s a species of fish there, the ox-eye tarpon that I was studying. There are only two species of tarpon on earth. And there are some interesting islands off a place called Saom Bay. Rain forest and thatched huts built on poles. Every afternoon at sunset, these giant fruit bats would drop down out of the high trees. When they extended their wings, you’d hear a popping sound, like parachutes opening. That’s how big they were.”
    “You sound so reasonable.”
    “I try to be. I was associated with a thing called the Studies and Observations Group.”
    “I bet.”
    “That happens to be the truth,