Карл Ҳиасеннің «Скинк» кейіпкері: Флориданың ерекше гөрінісі

Clinton Tyree, a. k. a. Skink, is a fictional character who has appeared in several novels by Carl Hiaasen, beginning with Double Whammy in 1987. He is a former governor of Florida who suddenly abandoned his office to live in the wilderness, most often the Everglades and, later, the Florida Keys. Tyree is depicted as a skilled outdoorsman, a partaker of roadkill cuisine, and a fierce and slightly unhinged opponent of sprawl and overdevelopment in the state.

In the first book in which he appears (Double Whammy), Skink lives in a tumbledown shack in fictional Harney County, and occasionally hires his services as a bass fishing guide. He survives mostly on roadkill cuisine, but sometimes fresh fish. In the later books, he has become more of a nomad, camping rough in the wilds throughout Southeast Florida, often close to the Everglades. Wherever he goes, he travels with an immense library of first edition books, stored at various times in his shack, in antique steamer trunks, or in old junker cars parked near his camps. He listens exclusively to music from the 1960s and '70s: The Who, The Beatles, The Allman Brothers Band, The Rolling Stones, Buffalo Springfield, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Eagles, The Moody Blues, etc. In Stormy Weather, he sings "Box of Rain" by Grateful Dead to a small child scared after a recent hurricane. Although he is seventy two years old (as of No Surrender), he has exceptionally white and perfectly aligned teeth, is exceptionally tall, strong, and fit, and is an experienced hunter, woodsman, and fighter. He often has access to guns of various kinds. Although he has adopted the name "Skink," he usually insists on being addressed as "Captain." In Star Island, he explains that this was his rank in the United States Army during the Vietnam war. He occasionally ingests naturally derived hallucinogens, such as smoking homemade bufotenin joints. By the time of Squeeze Me, he confesses he ingests microdoses of LSD every other day.

Skink is (according to Double Whammy) six foot six inches tall, and proportionately broad. His skin is tanned dark brown from years spent outdoors. His eyes were originally green, but he lost one in a beating from a trio of teenage thugs. He replaced the lost eye with a glass eye taken from a stuffed barn owl, giving the appearance of heterochromia. The fake eye is crimson, and much larger than his normal one. Skink's hair is silver (though by the time of Sick Puppy he has gone bald on the top of his head), and he wears it long, along with an equally long beard, which he sometimes braids and accentuates with buzzards' beaks or other trinkets. Tyree's clothes are a peculiar mix of the practical and the bizarre. At various times he wears a bright orange rain poncho (to keep from being hit on the highway while scooping up roadkills), a bright flowered shower cap, dungarees, military boots, a Rolling Stones t shirt, and at one time a kilt made from a checkered racing flag. His teeth are startlingly perfect, straight and white, and his smile is a trademark he retains from his election days (which often contrasts jarringly with the rest of his appearance). Despite his age, lifestyle, and wild appearance, many of the female characters who run across him are strongly attracted to him.

Skink's best friend is Jim Tile, an African American Florida Highway Patrol trooper whom Tyree met in the 1970s while on the campaign trail, and appointed to be the head of his gubernatorial bodyguard. Tile was Tyree's driver when Tyree fled Tallahassee and was dropped off at a Greyhound station in Orlando. Since that day, Tile has been the only person aware of Tyree's approximate whereabouts. In books where Skink appears, Tile usually appears too. He makes it a personal priority to stay around his old boss and vouch for his character on the rare occasions when Tyree needs a helping hand. It is revealed in Sick Puppy that Clinton had an older brother, Doyle. The two brothers went to Vietnam together. Doyle was discharged after a drunken joyride in a jeep led to a crash that killed his sergeant and inflicted serious head injuries on Doyle. The injuries, combined with guilt over the crash, led Doyle to suffer a nervous breakdown. After returning to the U. S., he left home and disappeared, becoming a homeless wanderer. When Clinton became governor, he tracked his brother down and gave him a job and home as the keeper of the (fictional) Peregrine Bay Lighthouse near Hobe Sound. In No Surrender, Tile confides that Clinton "came into some money" a few years before the events of the novel, implying that Doyle had died and left his unspent state earnings to his younger brother. Also in Sick Puppy, Skink strikes up a friendship with the protagonist, Twilly Spree, a passionate young environmentalist with similar ideals. It is suggested that the two remain in touch after the events of the novel; in Skink's brief appearance in Skinny Dip he contacts and is met by an "intense young man" who is implied to be Spree.