The Devil’s Bargain
The animals that we saw in those lands were three kinds of deer, rabbits and hares, bears and lions and other wild animals, among which we saw one which carries its young in a pouch on its belly. While they are small they carry them in that manner until they can get their own food. If they happen to be out of the pouch searching for food when people approach, the mother does not flee until she has gathered them all in her pouch.
We’re getting out far enough from the city center, the margins where the religion gets weirder. Christ bleeding on a billboard, cowboy churches. I see a sign on the side of the road: Ecclesiastes 4:4 written in marquee letters on the inside of an enormous clam shell.
Whenever we slow down at a light we can again that the yards of rich people have people in them. Gardeners. Almost all immigrants from Central and South America. Holding weed whackers, swaying back and forth with leaf blowers on their backs, armed with enormous scissors shaping topiary that nobody will look at. Yards and gardens nobody will sit in and nobody will stroll through.
Someone is up in a palm tree, wearing a holster around their pelvis, hoisted up on a pulley system. He is cutting free the browned fronds that gather at the base of the canopy. A pair of gardeners stand over a brown patch of bermuda grass, talking about which chemicals to add to it to make it grow back.
Were driving in silence for the first time. I look over at Ramas eyebrows furled underneath her cat eye glasses. I don’t let her see where we’re going, holding the phone with the directions in my lap. Now we’re out here on a highway in the exurbs, and Rama is driving like a madwoman.
Despite our speed, I know that the brown spots on the side of the road are what remains of an animal carcass. Maybe a rodent, definitely a mammal. I consult the Field Guide, which doesn’t show how animals look as roadkill, but does say that the only native species or rodent is the Florida mouse (podomys floridanus). I wonder what they would think of all of the other introduced rodents, the ones that came with us, would they think of them as any less invasive, I bet a Florida mouse would think that norwegian rats were a species more similar to humans than them, living in our walls and crawling spaces and remaking the landscape in their image as well, made indefatigable and immune to the vagaries of weather and the food chain by feasting on the endless bounty of human trash.
I wonder what they think about other species, ones that were once local, but were eventually seduced by the same bounty, the engorged racoons and dumpster diving bears, the flocks of birds which swell from turning their main source of calories to nabbing under table french fries and slicing open black bags of garbage. The devil’s bargain.
I look out at the tree line and I see the black mass on a branch. vulture. I wonder if the population of vultures actually increased when we built all these highways. That is exactly the kind of question my prescient field guide would be good at answering. Venereal disease, Veterans, Venice of the South, Volcanoes, Vultures.
While the advent of agriculture has been apocalyptic to bird species overall, causing a loss of nearly one quarter of the global bird population has been lost since the advent of agriculture, two avian species that have seemingly benefited from human landscape modifications are turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) and black vultures (Coragyps atratus). At night vultures roost communally on transmission tower in groups exceeding hundreds of birds, thermal air currents created by paved surfaces make for easy flying, and the wholesale transformation of the landscape into a dense lattice of superhighways has given them a veritable smorgasbord of dependable carrion.
Huh, well how about that. I say out loud. No reaction from Rama. She has sped up to 90. The silence in the car is getting awkward so I turn on the radio. I bet Rama will think something on AM radio is interesting. Fizz immigrant tuba music fizz a jingle for a mattress company Fizz a preacher who sounds almost in tears discussing Joshua 14-21. He is speaking to a live audience, to whom he asks questions and to which they respond. Does God expect faithfulness? YES! Does God forget his promises? NO! I start answering right. Does God still conquers evil and provides rest? YES! I explain. I wonder if they have a horse there in the church. Rama asks me if I’m really already so bored from driving. I scan through the channels and there is a staticky news report. It’s about the proposal to build a wildlife corridor, especially for panthers, and the last puma in the eastern United States.
The panther neared extinction in the early 1970s, dwindling to about 20 animals. State and federal wildlife agencies and private partners helped bring the population back to an estimated 120 to 230 wild adults and sub-adults, according to the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. Even still, the panthers are limited to a single breeding population in South Florida on less than 5% of their historic range, according to the refuge. The vast majority of panther deaths are due to vehicle collisions, with 26 vehicle deaths in 2018; 23 in 2019
I look over at Rama, she doesn’t react. I stare at her, and stare at the odometer. She finally looks over, without any reaction. The odometer starts to go down.
نارنجاوات
It was a nine-day journey from Apalachee to Aute. When we arrived we found all the people of the village gone, the village burned and much corn, squash and beans, all ready to be harvested.
After another red light, Rama starts to speed up, but about a mile down the road I see two hispanic farmers standing at the back of the truck. The truck bed looks like it’s holding a motionless bonfire. That’s right, I hadn’t even thought about it, we’re here right at the perfect time, everything is in harvest now, I ask Rama to please stop.
I get out of the car first and greet the men, each in straw hats, who in turn give me the thumbs up.
Buenos Tardes
They tell me they grow this all themselves in their free time on their own lots, it’s all very fresh. They start to pronounce the english names of the varietals in a thick accent.
Fallglow and Robinson tangerines
Satsumas
Ruby red and flame grapefruit
Orlando tangelo
Key lime
Clementine
Pero nada es mas dulce que tu
They are looking past me, at Rama whose curiosity has overcome her annoyance. I laugh and she looks at me confused.
guess they think you’re hispanic.
Yeah, I get that a lot. I start sorting through the truck bed and say
cuidado, si pudiera entender lo que uds dijeron sería amarga como un limón.
The men laugh and one whistles. They start picking through as well and hand me over things they think we’ll like. Soon we have two garbage bags full of fruit. Rama picks out a tangelo and starts to peel it. One of the men holds up their fingers, signalling for her to wait. He climbs up into his truck cabin and looks up smiling through the back window. I give him a thumbs up. Rama groans, oh God, this is so good.
Yeah, amazing what a piece of fruit tastes like when it’s in season.
The man in the straw hat comes out smiling with all of his teeth except the one that’s missing, and holds out something for Rama to grab. She opens her palm and in it drops a small green lime.
Para que hagas una limonada
She says gracias and I say o mas bien una margarita She understands that and we all laugh. They ask her in broken English where she’s from. She tells them exactly, which is more geography than they understand. I tell them in Spanish that she’s from the Holy Land. That they understand. I pull out some cash and pay them, it costs almost nothing for all of this fruit.
We both sit in the front seats of the car waiving in silence out my window at the men in the straw hats.
I don’t get it, she says, breaking her silence.
I tell her working in restaurants for the last ten years you basically learn some spanish by osmosis.
No, not that. I don’t get how you can be so misanthropic and also so nice to people.
Big Bend Station
After resting there for two days, the Governor asked me to go find the coast, which the Indians said was very near. We walked until the hour of vespers, when we reached an inlet where we found many oysters, which greatly pleased the men. And we gave great thanks to God for having brought us there.
We see the smokestacks pouring out smoke over the thicket. All the electricity we’ve been using on this trip was made there, the jukebox at the Tiki Bar, all of the lights my uncle leaves on at his house, the charge of this iPhone. I see a red-tailed hawk flying over the chimney, taking advantage of the heated updraft to climb higher into the sky.
You’re taking me to a power plant? We’ve got one right in Brooklyn.
No, you’ll see.
We see a sign for the parking lot and turn in, but then are stopped immediately by a car idling. The parking lot is full and so we join the line of cars waiting for spots to open up. Rama is immediately impatient and picks up her novel that she’s been keeping in the car door pocket. I can see the park office and the observation deck but we can’t get out until a spot opens up. Everywhere we go we’re imprisoned in this car.
We slowly snake around the parking lot in the line of cars as spots open one by one. Once it’s our turn for a spot we begin idling in front of a woman standing at the opened hatchback of her minivan, deeply engaged in some activity. She doesn’t acknowledge us. We inch forward. She is changing a baby’s diaper as it squirms on the ground of the van. The back of the woman changing her baby’s nappy begins to bead with sweat, and her shirt becomes bunched up and caught on her bra, and she continues wrestling with the baby to get its diaper on. The one thing she does not do is acknowledge our presence, waiting in anguish to take her parking space. But I guess we’re all really just waiting for the baby to cooperate. I don’t know how much control any of us have in this situation. I don’t know because I’ve never changed anyone’s diaper. I’m about to feel sympathy when all of a sudden the diaper changing is over, the woman throws the baby over her shoulder, closes up the hatchback, and begins walking back to the visitor’s center. Rama and I both groan loudly.
So much of the lives of the people out here are spent like this, driving to and waiting for parking. How do they do it? Rama and I have both almost lost our tempers and it’s only been 10 minutes. She tries reading her novel again but can’t concentrate, she keeps looking up to see if someone is going to give up their spot. I’m getting so claustrophobic, I feel like I’m strapped to a hospital bed, how do people live like this? To try to pass the time, I ask Rama what her book is about. It’s a post-apocalyptic dystopian novel about a super-empathetic prophet who creates her own religion. This should buy some time.
When I finally spot an old couple hobbling towards the enormous truck parked right in front of us, Rama is describing what she means by hyper-empathy, the condition that the protagonist in the novel has, the uncontrollable ability to feel the sensations she witnesses in others, particularly the abundant pain in her world. The man unlocks the car with his keys and the bumper lights blink. This is it. The man opens up the rear passenger door of the truck and pulls out a stepping stool. He walks around to the other side of the truck and puts it at the feet of the old woman. I nod at what Rama is saying. The old woman steps up one by one, holds onto the handle next to the door, and with great strain, pulls herself into the truck. Rama is talking about empathy more generally and about her friends who describe themselves as “empaths.” The man picks the stepping stool back up, walks around the back of the truck, slides it on the ground of the back seat of the truck, closes the door, and climbs up into the drivers seat. I have no empathy.
Finally out the car, We cross the parking lot, and now people who haven’t parked yet watch our every movement from their car windows. A man lowers his window to ask if we’re leaving, and I shake my head. He insults me as the window lifts back up. I don’t blame him. We cross the street between the parking lot and the visitor center office on the comically small crosswalk they have built to protect pedestrians. The office is a visitor center made up of mobile buildings on stilts next to a platform overlooking an industrial canal which separates the tourists from the enormous rusting power plant on the opposite shore. At the base of the plant are the square exhaust ports which rush out hot exhaust water into the canal. Rama asks if I want to go ito the visitor center, they have a nature exhibit all about mangroves. But I am caught looking at the power plant, entranced. It looks terrifying, its pipes and tanks resembles a rib cage, and its spewing smoke and dumping discharge straight into the canal, and somewhere deep in the innards of this evil metallic whale carcass is a blazing furnace of coal. But you can’t smell anything and the plant is completely silent.
We pass a crowd of people as we head into the visitor center. They are surrounding a square pond and all putting their hands in the water. Inside the pond a number of manta rays swimming compulsively in circles. The rays do not react when a child’s little fingers draw lines down their backs, or try to grab their tails. I always try to minimize the idea, whenever it comes to me, that the lived experience of animals and humans are that different. I am fairly certain that rats and toucans and sharks understand, more or less, what’s going on. And pain must be basically identical. But at the same time I can’t bring myself to imagine myself as one of those Manta Rays right now, driven insane pacing back and forth in a suspended box of water, all the while being tickled by fingers which continually manifest from the rippled glass ceiling.
I ask the kid next to me what it must be like to be a manta ray and without a beat he says it must suck. We all understand more or less what’s going on.
The exhibition at the visitor center is disappointing. There are no park rangers or guides to teach anything. And the wall-text is paltry. Nothing about the Sabkha, the Fiddler crabs, or the bay estuary ecosystem and its floral-fauna interactions, nothing about plant assemblages. Rama laughs, this is meant for children. Why? These kids aren’t reading anything, this is just a toy store for them. The animals are drawn on the walls as cartoon versions of themselves, and we hear a recorded voice broadcast from a loudspeaker explaining that these special animals’ are extremely sensitive to cold, and so they spend the winter right here, sheltering inside the man-made canal because the hot water that flows out from the power plant after cooling the turbines. See, I tell Rama I thought she’d appreciate the irony.
The recorded voice boasts of the Power Plant company’s actions to preserve the local environment, including the establishment of this park. It then goes on to explain ways we, the visitors, can help protect the environment. Have you tried turning off the running faucet, buying an electric vehicle, or helping out by cutting the rings of six-packs so that they don’t get caught around turtles’ necks? I imitate the voice to Rama, have you ever thought of industrial sabotage? Or self sterilization?
We move along with the crowd of whiny children and retirees towards the outdoor viewing platform. We join an even larger crowd spread out along a boardwalk parallel to the canal. The power plant dwarfs us all. Everyone is milling about until a gray-haired man shouts that he has spotted the couple. We all follow the direction of his finger to a bump in the water, which is hard to spot in the murky water. But there it is, a tiny gray scarred island.
سلرطانات
The manatees don’t move much, content to slowly hover above the seagrass. The water is murky from the turbulence of the power plant exhaust so you can’t see them unless they come up for air. One of their backs will emerge for a minute or two, and then disappear back underwater. I fill in the spaces between their emergence with more Manatee facts. I know what you’re thinking Rama, how can they all be so chubby and not just float on top of the water! Manatee bones are dense and solid which allows them to act as ballast and promote negative buoyancy. Isn’t that fascinating. How about this? The major conservation organization for Manatees was started by none other than Jimmy Buffet! Mr. Margaritaville wasn’t all just drunk piracy, he took Manatee advocacy seriously and is arguably the most important single figure in saving Florida’s manatees. None of this is written anywhere, so a few people start listening to me. Most Florida manatees depend on localized warm-water refuges in the southern two-thirds of Florida to survive winter; about 60% use outfalls from 10 power plants like this one, whereas 15% use 4 natural warm-water springs. But those have become overrun with development and tourism. What’s going to happen to them? A child asks me. Well we have to decide, we need to gradually wean manatees off plant outfalls since we plan on eventually closing these dinosaur carbon-intense power plants, so we need to either do better return the flow of springs now used by manatees and restrict use by humans, which will never happen, so what we’ll probably do is create new thermal basins to retain warm-water pockets able to support overwintering manatees. Like Manatee hot-tubs? Yes, like manatee hot-tubs. An older woman asks me if I work here, she wants to know where there is a diaper changing station.
Rama tries taking a picture of the manatees for social media, but it doesn’t come out well. You can’t tell what you’re supposed to be looking at. The audience on the boardwalk is soon disappointed that this is all we’re going to get, that the Manatees aren’t going to be performing tricks, and it disappoints me to see Ramah lose interest as well. I am failing this test. I don’t think she even thought it was very ironic. Old couples continue their conversations, a few kids are crying or screaming, and the coal smoke continues to pour out of the smokestack. Rama, reluctantly, asks me if I also want to go see the crabs.
We follow a gravel path into the brushy area behind the parking lot, a nature trail built by the electric company on land that was once a palm plantation. The sign at the front claims that the trail will highlight a number of coastal ecosystems and that it will eventually lead to a watchtower. I don’t have high expectations, but on this one little piece of reclaimed land, nature thrives. The trail is surrounded by thick walls and tangles of vegetation. Rama has decided to continue telling me the plot of the Octavia Butler novel, about how in the climate-change induced dystopian world the main character lives in a gated community, and how society outside the community walls has reverted to chaos due to resource scarcity and poverty. She does not realize that I have stopped walking.
I look intently into the thicket. Rama turns to watch as I remove my field guide from the pocket and begin to thumb through it.
While the Tampa Electric Company may have set aside a paltry lot of land in its environmental PR stunt, it nonetheless excels in preserving a precious and rare ecosystem. Gulf Coast Salt Marshes were once protected from man’s development onslaught by its unproductivity as land and by its insect sentinels the mosquito. But with the invention of DTT, and a merciless campaign of infilling throughout the 1930s and 1940s, much has been lost. That is why this small but mighty coastal habitat trail is so special: it winds eight-tenths of a mile through saltern, coastal high marsh and coastal strand habitats. A patient observer will be treated to the dramatic sweep of the transitional zone from ocean life to terrestrial uplands, beginning with the estuarial mangrove forest and smooth cord grass (Spartina alterniflora) at the water’s edge, to the irregularly flooded Needlerush (Juncus roemerianus) up to the barren salt flat where Fiddler crabs reign, and finally to the maritime marsh-elder (Iva frutescens ) and upland pines (Pinus palustris). Here is the sensory symphony of biome transitions, each plant assemblages determined by tide, soil content, and the presence of symbiotic faunal relationships rather than the irrational whims of bad horticultural taste and invasive plants that typify our contemporary suburban landscape.
Yeah! That’s what I want to see. I want to see everything all together where it belongs.. Rama says she thinks that might be a little hard here. A couple in athleisure wear pass us by on the trail, exercising with little speakers on their belt and power walking. Techno music Doppler effect.
Undissuaded I begin staring out at the landscape. Green, low-lying bramble. I look more closely. I look for details. I see a whole field of familiar inflorescences. Well look what we have here. Rama looks up from her phone.
Rama, you might not recognize them in their native habitat, looking so healthy and well-adapted, but it’s our friend from the airport.
Bryan?
Who?
Your friend Bryan?
No! I mean Iva frutescens. Remember? Jesuit’s Bark? Two curious people stop to see what I’m discovered. They must think i’ve found a fox or a rattlesnake. One of them has a dog which is furiously barking around my knees it sticks at snout into the Bramble, and also tries to find what I’m looking for. Rama tells them that I’m looking at weeds. Confused, they leave.
Oh Rama, look down here at this little succulent. Batis maratima: also known as turtle weed, saltwort, or crabwort.
I thought we were going to look at the crabs.
Yes, sorry one minute, let’s see, oh wow, will you look at that, a succulent shrub that forms dense colonies in salt marshes, brackish marshes, and mangrove swamps, bingo! Right where it belongs.
Oh here Rama, you’ll think this is interesting. Its leaves are sometimes added to salads in Puerto Rico where they are used as an aromatic herb, purée, and pickled food. Its beans can be added to the salad. The seeds are added to salads, and can be roasted or “popped” like corn.
Speaking of, we need to start heading to your uncle’s for dinner.
You’re right.
We continue briskly down the pathway and I’m having the time of my life, transitioning from the upland bush to the salt flat. I try to not be distracted by a man who passes us tethered to two dogs bred to be misshapen, he holds onto their taut leashes likes he’s water skiing. The salt flat opens up before us and we step onto a boardwalk to avoid walking on the soggy sandy soil. I tell Rama that I hope we’ll get to see a Fiddler crab in its native habitat, but as soon as I say that we come upon them: hundreds of them. An enormous salt flat completely covered in Fiddler crabs. They are small, red and orange, and the male crabs have one arm bigger than the other. They mill about on the flat surface of the salt marsh, an entire crab civilization. They seem completely unphased by us watching from the boardwalk, they are too wrapped up in their own life world. One of them is building his hole, and two of them are fighting. Another group is gathering, as if plotting a conspiracy. Hundreds and hundreds of crabs. They disappear into the mangroves beyond. Rama finally has something to take a picture of.
As Rama looks for the right angle, I ask her to use her super empathy, what must be like to be a Fiddler crab, do they feel a permanent imbalance in their body because of the one bigger claw?
Of course not.
What must it feel like to live in a vast crab society, does it have crab interpersonal drama? Are there crab politics?!
Of course.
The trail ends at a wooden observation tower overlooking the edge of the water. As we go up the stairs Rama finishes telling me about her dystopian novel, or at least as far as she’s gotten. I’m excited for the view, the chance to take in the entire transitional zone at once, but I can’t help but notice once we’re up there that the nature trail area is completely surrounded by private development villas. The field guide is right, the salt marsh is almost all gone. In its place is an endless pattern of housing developments, just like my uncle’s, rows of identical Venetian villas on large, sun-bleached lawns, with their own stupid little docks. America’s pathological predilection for hoarding.
I tell Rama those villa owners are fighting a losing battle with their grass lawns. A rug of Bermuda grass being inundated with salt spray and the Florida sun. No matter how much the landscape guys come, the Mangroves will pop up from the salt water below us. They might try to use pesticide to poison what they call weeds. They’ll call in a landscape design expert to help when a colony of fiddler crabs creates infertile patches in the lawn. But before long they’ll have long lead pine saplings competing for space with their ionic columns, baccaris halumfloria crowding out their pansies and other English garden plants. I don’t know Rama.
Don’t know what?
The future.
What about the future?
Maybe it won’t all be bad. It could also be a climate disaster induced paradise. Just think about how this will look in even just a few hundred years. It will be so hot and prone to flooding that humans will have given up their investments and moved north, all these villas will be covered in moss and vines. The boat docks will disappear into the tangle of mangrove forest. All the wood rotted and disintegrated turned back into silt, to be fed on by crabs. The manatees will love the heat, they’ll emerge from their hiding place and return to the depths of its bay, now quiet without the incessant roar of boats’ engines. Hawks and vultures strutting over the empty highways. The night sky will be filled with stars and the Milky Way, the amphibians will return to their circadian rhythm and chirp with one voice at dusk.
Rama comes over to my side of the observation deck and gives me an unexpected hug.
I like that.
Like what?
I like when you use your imagination.
We look at each other in the eyes, but then pull apart as we hear a family fighting their way up the stairs. We crowd into a corner and the family scatters out onto the platform. One of the children drops a large drop of chocolate on the railing and puts the rest into his mouth for safe keeping. The mom tells the daughter to get off the railing. They don’t acknowledge us, or acknowledge the landscape. The father looks at his phone. The mom tries to catch her breath. They head right back down the stairs, asking each other about what kinds of pizza they want.
I look at the salt flat one more time, and Rama takes some photos. As we walk towards the stairs I see a caravan of ants that have found the melted chocolate mountain on the railing and are working to carry it back to their home.
