by Janie DeVos
“Naw.” Papa shook his head. “I’m glad for the stronger beams.” He finished securing the boat’s lines to the pilings, then jumped back in to help us unload. “There are already enough wrecks to work. No need to add any more to that list. Too many lives have been lost to those old reefs and sandbars. But stronger bulbs or not, those jagged rocks are still gonna create plenty of casualties. It doesn’t matter whether the crews can see the reefs or not. When the winds are strong enough, they’re gonna toss boats and ships around any which way they choose.”
We finished unloading and started up toward the house with the supplies, but a clap of thunder sounded off in the distance, startling us, and we looked up to see ominous charcoal-colored clouds billowing up in the west.
“Weather’s comin’ in,” Dylan said. “But Lord knows we need the rain. It’s been so dry.”
“Yeah,” Papa agreed, taking one last look toward the sky before climbing the porch steps and seeking sanctuary in the well-made refuge house. “But you know how that goes: What Mother Nature withholds from us now, she will more than make up for in the future.”
Looking off to the west just in time to see lightning backlight the rapidly building storm clouds, I wondered if the future might have just arrived.
Chapter 2
Life is Calling
I slid another stack of pancakes onto Dylan’s plate, and then sat back down at the kitchen table.
“So you’ll be at Fowey for just a week, you think?” Papa asked before taking another sip of coffee. We’d been forced to eat breakfast for supper since we’d been unable to fish that afternoon. The skies had opened up, chasing every living creature into shelter, including us. Now, with the wood-burning stove going, the room was cozy. It was late April, so there was still a little coolness to the air, especially on the beach in a storm, but we wouldn’t have that luxury for too much longer. Within another month, heat and humidity would force us to get out of the kitchen as soon as a meal was over, and the choice of meals would be contingent on how long one would have to stand over the stove to cook them.
Once, during a dinner that was being prepared by the ladies of the First Presbyterian Church for a fourth of July celebration, I heard Elotta Aims remark that she wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that a woman who was condemned to spend eternity in hell wasn’t sent to some lake of fire but banished, instead, to a kitchen in Miami, in August, with a fully fired-up wood-burning stove. “Now that,” she’d emphasized, “is what I’d consider hell.” We’d all laughed, heartily agreeing as we wiped the perspiration from our faces with our already-soaked handkerchiefs and continued frying chicken. The heavy cotton or linen blouses and wool shirts we were expected to wear in social settings nearly gave us heat stroke during the summer. As soon as I returned home, I always shed the miserable clothing for either a lighter cotton dress or a pair of canvas pants and a cotton or denim shirt, just as Mama did. As far as we were concerned, living in South Florida’s oppressive heat meant throwing the old rules of etiquette out the window and wearing clothes that wouldn’t kill us.
“Pass me the sugar, Ma, would ya, please?” Dylan asked before answering Papa’s question about his expected length of stay out at Fowey Rocks lighthouse. I assessed my brother across the table from me, and thought about how kind he was and how he’d make some lucky girl a fine husband. He was a good-looking man. Though he was fairer than me, we had the same angular facial structure, and his eyes were an exact copy of Papa’s. They were dark blue, penetrating eyes, and when Dylan looked at you, it seemed as though he could look right through you. Truly like father, like son, I thought.
“I’ll be at Fowey Light at least a week,” Dylan said, stirring sugar into his coffee. “I’ll man it with Striker until Adam Wilson gets back from shore leave. I appreciate y’all taking me out tomorrow. There’s got to be at least two men there at all times. Adam was just getting ready to leave for the mainland when Jim Altman fell off the oil tank’s ladder and broke his ribs. Lucky for Jim, Adam hadn’t left yet, or Jim would have been stuck there until the next boat came by to haul him back to shore. It’s tough--there’s no way to send a message for help other than to hang the flag upside down and wait for a passing ship to notice it. Crews are good about keeping an eye out for it, though, and stopping when they see a distress signal. They know somethin’s goin’ on. But it sure would be nice to have a telegraph machine or phone line out there. Anyway, I’ll stay when Adam gets back so Striker can get some shore leave, especially if Jim isn’t back by then. Apparently, he got banged up pretty badly.”
“Listen, Dylan, how’s Striker doin’ these days? And how long is he plannin’ on stayin’ out at the light?” Mama asked as she gathered up some of our dishes and took them over to the sink. Paul Strickland, or Striker, had become a friend of Dylan’s soon after we moved to Miami. People who didn’t know Striker well thought his name was just a shorter version of his surname. But he’d actually gotten the moniker because of his uncanny luck getting a “strike” almost every time he threw a fishing line into the water. He was a couple of years older than Dylan, and had lived with his parents just downriver from us to the west.
Mae and Jerry Strickland, Striker’s parents, had also been citrus growers who were ruined by the freeze that had wiped us out. But their enormous groves had been south of us, in Leesburg, Florida. Just as my parents had decided that running an enormous grove was a thing of the past, so had they, and the Stricklands became involved in boat building. They mainly built glade skiffs, the flat-bottomed boats used to navigate through the marshes of sawgrass in the Everglades, but they built some small sailboats, as well. Paul, their only child, had shown a real affinity for building the boats, and before too long, he’d gone to work at the Merrill-Stevens boatyard in Jacksonville, which was considered one of the best builders in the state.
Striker was gone for about a year, and returned home with all kinds of designs and dreams sailing around in his head. He had some money in his pocket, too, for the good folks at Merrill-Stevens felt that it was a wise investment to put their money in the hands of young boat designers, and Striker opened a small boatyard on the Miami River. All had gone well the first year until Striker designed and built a beautiful small sloop as a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary gift for his parents. The couple had sailed the newly-christened Strike One up toward the Jupiter Inlet area, with plans to anchor overnight. But, right at dusk, they’d hit a reef and gone down. Neither Jerry nor Mae had survived.
“I guess he’s okay,” Dylan shrugged. “Honestly, I haven’t seen much of him either—not since he went out to the light, and that’s been…what…maybe eight or nine months ago?”
“He can’t hide out there forever, you know,” Mama said over her shoulder as she began washing dishes.
“I don’t think he’s hiding out,” Papa said. “He’s not the kind of man to do that. No, I think he’s just tryin’ to get some things worked out. Losing his folks the way he did—well, hell, that’s enough to mess with anyone’s mind. Even though it wasn’t his fault, and everyone tells him that, still…I know he feels responsible for the accident. Anyway, he’s got to sort through it, and he needs some time alone to do that. And where better a place to find solitude than in a lighthouse seven miles out to sea? Least he’s not drownin’ his sorrows in the bottle like some men would. No, he’s gotta be in a place where a man can hear himself think. I hope he can put this behind him at some point and move on. He’s too talented and too good a person not to.”
“Has Striker ever been out to the place the Strike One went down?” Mama asked.
“Not that I know of,” Dylan said. Papa said he didn’t think so either.
“Maybe he could find some closure if he did,” Mama said. “Lord, what a tragedy,” she added, while drying the skillet.
“I have some news!” I volunteered, hoping to steer us away from the subject of Striker and his parents.
“What�
�d you go and do now?” my brother teased as he leaned back comfortably in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, as if preparing himself for a long story.
“Make light of it all you want to, but I have figured out my life’s calling!”
“Lord, here we go,” Dylan muttered under his breath. I chose to ignore him.
I took a deep breath and dove in. “Well, a Seminole couple came into the trading post at the end of the day last week. I’d seen ’em out on the lawn all day trading their what-nots for other what-nots. They came in right before we closed up for the day wantin’ five yards of pink lace ribbon. After I’d cut the piece from a spool, I rang it up and told them it was a dollar thirty, and the Seminole woman handed her change purse over to the man so that he could count out the proper amount.
“I asked him if the woman knew how to speak English. I knew I’d seen ’em before, and I’d seen them do the same thing—she’d hand over her purse to him, letting him take what he wanted from it.
“‘She speak the English a little,’ the man said, ‘but she not know numbers too good.’
“‘Your name is Willie Factor, isn’t it?’ I asked him, even though I knew it was, but we’d never been formally introduced and I was just trying to be polite. He looked at me suspiciously, like I was about to make a point that he wasn’t sure he wanted to be a part of. Well, he gives me this quick little nod, confirming that he was Willie Factor, and I said, ‘Mr. Factor, why don’t you let me help your wife with her English, and I’ll teach her a little math, too—adding and subtracting? That way, if you’re not around, she’ll understand what’s being asked of her, and she won’t be taken advantage of.’
“Well, you’d think I’d just asked that man to sneak off to a thicket with me! Lord, he looked downright offended! Drew back from me like I’d just spit at him. ‘She know English good enough. Plenty good enough! Don’t need white lady to learn Lina nothing. White ways bad for her. Very bad’
“‘Is it bad for Lina or for you, Mr. Factor?’ I said. Well, that was it! The man latched on to poor ol’ Lina’s arm and practically dragged her out of the store. Then Mrs. Brickell comes up and asks me what that was all about, and was I causing her to lose good customers. And I told her, ‘No, Mrs. Brickell, just ignorant ones.’ Well, she didn’t like that too much and told me I better watch myself. I calmly told her I would while telling myself that pretty soon I’d be watching myself walk out her store’s front door for the last time. And that’s when I decided!”
“Decided what?” my brother asked as though he was a little afraid to hear my answer.
“I’m gonna teach the Seminole children—all the children, the girls too! And their women!”
“Lord, Eliza.” Dylan rolled his eyes and laughed, while Mama just shook her head. Papa, on the other hand, watched me with a twinkle in his wonderful eyes and an amused smile on his face.
Papa was part Creek Indian and I had his thick, jet-black hair, though mine was long and wavy like Mama’s. My eyes were brown like hers, too, though not as dark, and both Dylan and I had inherited our parents’ considerable height.
“Those people aren’t going to let you teach any of their females,” Mama said, just as she had the first time I’d told her. “They’ll think you’re gonna poison their brains. You know they think a Seminole woman educated by a white person is totally immoral.”
“Maybe they do,” I said. “But who’s to stop the girls from overhearing what the boys are learning? I’m gonna teach those girls one way or another! And if Papa will let me help with salvaging some more wrecks, teaching those girls will be a much easier thing to accomplish.”
“Here she goes,” Papa muttered under his breath while winking at my mother.
“The way I figure it,” I continued, choosing to ignore my father, “if I can offer the Seminole men a little somethin’ or other from a wreck I’ve salvaged, then maybe they’ll be more accommodating about letting me teach their womenfolk.”
Dylan laughed. “Somehow, sister, I doubt they can be so easily bribed. Now, that’s not to say you won’t find a way to get the job done, though. If I had to bet on anyone doin’ it, it’d be you, hands down,”
“Thank you, Dylan,” I said, truly meaning it. I adored my brother for his never-failing confidence in me, among many other reasons, and I knew that the feeling was mutual. He wanted me to be happy even if that meant taking a few chances other young women might not. I’d never been the conventional sort, and in truth, I had the feeling I’d disappoint my family if I ever tried to be. After all, there was nothing very conventional about any of us.
Mama and Papa had helped Mama’s twin sister, Ivy, find refuge at a Seminole village in Immokalee, Florida, when Ivy had fallen in love and gotten pregnant by a black man. Ivy and Moses had fled their homes in Silver Springs when my grandfather had found out, but he went after them, intent on killing them. Fortunately, Mama had enlisted Papa’s help since he was an experienced tracker, and they’d found the runaways before my grandfather could. Immediately, they’d taken them to the Seminole village, where Ivy, Moses, and their three children still lived now.
Dylan, though more of an introvert than I was, was rather unconventional in his own way. He shared Mama’s love of writing, and he studied authors from John Audubon to Plato. Some years back, Mama thought he might be working on a manuscript. Dylan had replied, “That’s just it, Mama; I’m working on it, and I haven’t quite figured out exactly what it’s supposed to be. But you’ll be the first to know if and when I do.”
While Dylan’s life of substituting as a keeper at the lighthouses and houses of refuge suited him for the time being, I knew that he felt something was missing and that he hadn’t been able to quite tap into that special calling of his heart. There were times I could see his frustration, especially since he’d turned twenty. At those times, he would wander the beach, or take out the glade skiff or sailboat and be gone for hours exploring the Everglades, sailing around Biscayne Bay, or beyond into the Atlantic.
“So, Pa, you still thinkin’ about going back down to see what’s left on the Alicia?” my brother asked. He was referring to the wreck that had occurred the year before, just off Elliot Key, an island south of the lighthouse where Dylan was going. It was as though my brother was presenting the perfect opportunity to put my plan into effect.
Papa tried to hide a smile, no doubt guessing he was now dealing with a son who was in cahoots with his daughter’s harebrained scheme. “Thinkin’ about it,” Papa said noncommittally as he scooted his chair back from the table and lit a thin black cigar.
“Talk him into it, Dylan!” I urged. “Honestly, I’ve tried bargaining with him, and even tried to figure out a way of blackmailing him into going, but so far, he hasn’t budged.”
As Papa had gotten more and more involved in wreck salvaging, I got more and more interested in wreck diving. To my mind, there was nothing more exhilarating than exploring the shattered remains of some unlucky mariner’s disastrous voyage. My father employed a couple of young Seminole men to dive the wrecks, for they were the best at it, and through much begging and pleading, my parents had allowed Simon and Turtle to teach me the art of wreck diving. As often as I could, I took part in the salvaging.
My father had a fifty-five-foot, steam-powered fishing trawler, and with the help of a winch and pulley system installed in it, we’d been able to pull up some wonderful treasures from the reef wrecks. Once it was decided that there was cargo of value in a sunken vessel, we would attach nets, ropes and hooks to the cargo and Papa would haul it up. We’d recovered beautiful jewelry, as well as silver and gold coins, but we’d also raised larger cargo including casks of wine and barrels of nails, cotton, and molasses, as well as crockery, glassware, and canned goods. After everything was recovered, Papa took the bounty to the Port of Entry, in Key West, where it was recorded, appraised and sold.
Papa’s salvaging work had been l
ucrative enough to allow us to expand our tongue and groove pine board two-bedroom into a four-bedroom home. We’d also extended the wide veranda so that it ran along three sides of the house instead of just the front, and we’d painted the place white. We’d built a far more substantial dock to accommodate my parents’ sailboat as well as Dylan’s, and the trawler. To some people’s minds, having three boats seemed extravagant, but they were our means of making a living, and they were also an easy way of traveling along the coastline of South Florida. The woods, hammocks, and mangroves were difficult to navigate, and, in some places, virtually impenetrable.
Mama said it reminded her of when she was a young girl in Central Florida, and had to travel down her beloved Ocklawaha River in a small steamboat. Her family had been deeply involved in working and riding on the steamboats, and though she had broken all ties with her parents, who were now long dead, she was still close to her brothers. And the oldest one, Joseph, still made a living as an engineer on the enormous and opulent paddle wheelers running the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Being on the water had been a way of life for our family for many years, and it seemed that would continue to be the case.
When we were done with our supper, Papa and Dylan finished up some minor repairs on the refuge house that they’d been working on all afternoon, while Mama and I finished cleaning up the kitchen. Then we settled down in rockers on the veranda with fresh cups of coffee. The storm had finally run its course and the day ended in a spectacular sunset of various shades of orange, pink, and red. I wondered if the next day would dawn in the same vibrant colors, but I hoped not, for any man worth his salt on the seas knew: Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning.