by Janie DeVos
“What in the world are you doing?” Mrs. Brickell asked, peering over my shoulder as she did so.
“Well, I’m figurin’ out what you owe me since you paid me last week.” Looking up from the pad, I pointed over to the book shelf with the end of the pencil. “How much are those primers?”
“A dime each,” she replied and then a thought seemed to occur to her. “Little Miss Uppity-Britches, what makes you so sure you can teach anyone? You’ve only just graduated!”
“That’s exactly right!” I agreed. “I’ve been taught and tested, grilled and groomed, and am now ready to pass on what I’ve learned.”
Looking back down at the pad, I circled the final figure I’d come up with and laid it and the pencil back down on the barrel. Then, pulling an old burlap bag from a stack of them hanging from a hook, I walked around the store gathering up everything I’d need, including all ten of the primers presently in stock, plus two story books, one encyclopedia, a dictionary, a small blackboard, twenty pieces of chalk, and a jar of licorice. If Paroh would agree to let me teach, then I’d have Papa help me make blackboards. It was easy enough to make them from pine boards covered with a mixture of egg whites and the black rubbings from the skins of charred potatoes. If Paroh refused to let me educate the children, I’d donate what I was purchasing to my alma mater.
“You owe me a dollar thirty, Mrs. Brickell. But please put it down as a credit. I’ll be back.” And with that, I left the woman huffing and puffing as I walked out the door, no longer her employee, but a customer, instead.
Mama and Papa thought I might have been a little rash, leaving a semi-decent paying job, but, as I explained to them, once I knew what my schedule would be at the Seminole village—if there was to be a schedule—then I could go to work for Mr. Burdine, either full-time or part-time. I also added that if we were able to salvage any of the gold from the Paso Rápido, I wouldn’t need a paid position. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, you know,” Mama had said. And I told her that only applied to situations where there weren’t gold bars waiting to plucked off a reef in the Atlantic.
I was beyond excited about salvaging the Paso. The day before, Papa had confirmed that Ezra Asher was the Paso’s wreck master, so he had the say over who could work the sunken cutter with him, and what percentage of the cargo each additional salvager would get. After some canny negotiating on Papa’s part, they’d settled on 35 percent and decided they would head out to the Paso in three days.
As my father was returning from his talk with Ezra Asher, he’d run into Adam Wilson coming out of the trading post. Apparently, a third lighthouse keeper had been hired, and he needed to get the man settled in at Fowey and give Striker his much-needed shore leave. Papa asked him how soon he needed to get out there, thinking that he might drop them off on the way out to the Paso, but when Adam told him that he was expected to be on the job in two days, my father had to fall back on my offer to take them out. Papa said he should have just let Adam bring the lighthouse’s boat in when we’d dropped off Dylan, but I told Papa I was more than happy to take Adam and the new man out. Mama had been standing there listening, and the smile on her face seemed to say, “I bet you are,” though she’d never have said it out loud.
Mama knew me inside and out, and though I hadn’t talked about it much when it happened, she knew my heart had been bruised by Striker when he’d abruptly ended the relationship we’d started to build. To my mind, it was the beginning of something long and beautiful; but to Striker, it was something that could be started and finished in one short chapter. Mama had told me that my aching heart would heal in time, and that someone wonderful and special would come along when I least expected it, just as Papa had for her. But, as far as I was concerned, the only thing that would heal my heart was keeping my distance from the man who had inflicted the damage, and having him out in the Atlantic tending to Fresnel lenses was fine by me. I just wondered if I was a bit of a glutton for punishment, volunteering to go out there when I could have let Adam find another way to get to Fowey. It was like pouring salt water into the wound.
Chapter 7
Far from the Beckoning Shore
I was still several miles from the Seminole village when I came to the fork in the river. Taking the north branch of it, I slowed for a moment to admire the small rapids, and then I continued on. I’d only been to the village once before, when Papa had taken some tourists out fishing and we stopped by to drop off medicine for an ailing newborn. Just as I remembered, there were no signs of civilization as far as the eye could see. Off in the distance and to the right of me was a prairie dotted with marshes. Guiding Sundae away from the water, I rode up to slightly higher ground. There was nothing more interesting for me to see than the usual gnarled cypresses, scrub pines, oaks and palms, and a variety of birds among the water hyacinths, eating their fill of bugs and small fish, so my mind drifted back to Striker. Seeing him when we’d dropped my brother off at Fowey had brought to mind those memories I tried not to think about.
The first time I laid eyes on him was soon after we’d moved to Miami from Lake Weir. Miami was a tiny hamlet then and everyone knew everyone else. Dylan was a couple of years behind Striker in school, but they’d become fast friends over their shared love of boats. There were many times the two of them would go sailing in the bay, and though I begged to go along, the sailboat was a floating boys’ club and girls were always left behind. As the years went by, my school girl crush secretly grew as I watched the once lanky boy from Leesburg grow into a ruggedly handsome young man. Soft-spoken and serious, Striker seemed to know exactly where he was going and what he wanted to do in life, so unlike the other boys who couldn’t see a future beyond a night of shark fishing or frog gigging. Striker’s maturity and good looks caught the eye of most every girl in town, but he was too entranced by boat building to be interested in romance. That seemed to change, however, when he returned home from Jacksonville to open the boatyard.
It had been a year since we’d seen each other and I was working for the Brickells, in my last year of high school. Striker had come into the trading post and was busy reading the label on a bottle of castor oil when he came up to pay for it. He hadn’t seen me yet, and I didn’t say a word as I waited for him to look up. The surprise on his face when he did made me glad he’d set the bottle on the counter beforehand so that I didn’t have to clean up a mess of the thick oil. After he muttered a rather flustered hello, it suddenly seemed to dawn on him that he was purchasing a remedy for irregularity. His face turned a deep red as he stuttered his way through the explanation that it was for his mother not him. I said not a word, but quickly tucked the medicine away in a burlap bag and then put my elbow on the counter, rested my chin in my hand, and waited for him to finish. Suddenly, he stopped mid-sentence, looked at me hard as if he was seeing me for the first time, and said softly, “Damn, you look good.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” I responded. “I know how your mother’s doin’,” I said, glancing at the bagged bottle of castor oil. “But how’re you and your daddy?”
That seemed to set things right and we started to laugh, then laughed some more as we kept talking over each other, trying to catch up. We both stopped talking at the same time, too, and stood there for a few seconds just looking at each other, smiling. Finally, Striker paid me, told me he’d see me around as he was back home to stay, and left the store. Not a minute had passed when the front door bell tinkled again. I stopped mid-stride on my way back to the stock room and turned around to see that Striker had returned.
“Will you go sailing with me after work?” he asked.
“Where to?” I replied.
“Key Biscayne?” he suggested.
“How ’bout I bring a picnic supper?” I offered.
“Meet me at my folks’ dock,” he said.
And I did.
We sailed up the river into Biscayne Bay, and then headed southeast
toward the key. Instead of going all the way down to the south side, where the Cape Florida lighthouse stood, we stopped about mid-way on the island. Tall coconut palms majestically lined the beach and seemed to beckon us ashore with their waving fronds, promising to provide the shade we would need from the sun even as it continued inching lower toward the horizon.
“This ought to do,” Striker said, navigating us in toward the beach. Before the bow could touch the shore, he hopped out of the vessel and gently pulled it onto the sand. It was clear that he spent much time and effort on the care of the single-mast sloop, for the native mahogany wood was polished to a high sheen, and the brass hardware was neither pitted nor blemished.
“Did you build this boat, Striker?” I asked, handing him the picnic basket before jumping down from the bow. The name High Hopes was painted on the boat’s transom, and neither the boat nor its name was familiar to me.
“No,” he said as we waded ashore in the shallow water. “I bought it off a guy who needed some cash. It’s a good little boat, and very similar to one I’m building for my parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. But I gave my parents’ sloop an additional twelve feet so they’ll have plenty of room to sleep on it.”
We spread a blanket out and anchored it with the picnic basket and rocks. Then I sat on it and rolled down the bottom of my canvas pant legs so that they could dry. They’d gotten wet as I waded in to shore. If it hadn’t been getting so late in the day, I would have considered wearing a bathing outfit, but with the wind coming out of the east, it was too chilly.
“Dylan said you’ve been back for a couple of weeks and plan to open a boatyard down the river from your folks’ house,” I said, looking up at him as he secured the boat’s bow line to a small palm tree.
“Merrill-Stevens Boat Yard will actually own it. They’re the ones I worked for in Jacksonville, and they invested the money to open the shipyard down here. I’m just overseein’ things.”
“Don’t make so little of it, Striker.” I was truly impressed. “That’s a real accomplishment for someone your age—or any age, really.”
He was uncomfortable at having a fuss made over him, so, after muttering a humble ‘thank you,’ he quickly changed the subject and asked me if I wanted to eat, go for a walk, or even cast a fishing line out. I told him I’d like to do some beachcombing, if he had a mind to, and when he said that he did, we headed south in the direction of the lighthouse.
All manner of things washed up on the beach, but one of the things I loved hunting for the most was sea glass. It was formed from bottles or other glass items that had been lost to the sea. After the glass was broken into small pieces, salt water would wear it down to a smooth-textured, frosted finish. Jewelry could be made from it, so I collected it and gave it to a sweet Seminole girl named Rose, who was perhaps a year or so younger than I. Every so often, she spread her blanket out on the lawn at the trading post to sell or trade her lovely handmade jewelry, all of which was made from unusual materials, including a variety of sea shells, shark and alligator teeth, bone and ivory (which she traded for), coconut shells, and sea glass. To thank me for giving her the glass, she’d given me a lovely pair of light green glass earrings and a matching necklace.
I bent over to examine a tiger’s eye sea shell, but seeing that it was broken, left it there. “You glad to be home?” I asked.
“Yeah, I am.” He skipped a small flat stone across the water.
The breeze blew his golden, shoulder-length hair away from his face, giving me a clear profile of his strong, straight nose and angular features. He’d matured in the year since I’d seen him. He was ruggedly handsome but in a quiet, thoughtful kind of way, and it made him that much more appealing.
He glanced over at me and caught me studying him. We both smiled a little self-consciously before quickly looking away. Ahead on the sand, I spotted a small conch shell and started toward it, but as I did, Striker grabbed my arm. “Watch it!” he warned and I looked down to see what had alarmed him. Bending down and grabbing a piece of sun-bleached driftwood, he poked it into a hole that I had almost stepped into. Suddenly, a giant land crab climbed out to see what had disturbed him. “Want some crabs for supper?” he asked, and when I told him I did, he reached down and snatched up the crustacean from the back, avoiding his painful pinchers. He dropped it into a burlap bag he carried over his shoulder, and then pointed ahead of us with his driftwood. “Look.”
Dotted across the sand were dozens of crab holes. I grabbed a stick of driftwood and we both began poking the holes until we filled Striker’s bag with six large crabs.
“Do you want to eat them now, or take them home?” Striker asked.
“Let’s eat ’em now!” I said without hesitation. The food I’d brought could wait. There was nothing in the world I liked better than freshly caught crab.
We gathered up more driftwood and returned to our blanket. “See about gatherin’ up a few green palm fronds while I grab a pot from the boat,” he said, withdrawing a knife from a sheath at the waist of his canvas pants and handing it to me.
I cut several fronds, then looked around for rocks about the size of a man’s fist. Once we had gathered up all we needed, we laid the driftwood on top of the fronds and got a fire going.
“Too bad we don’t have any butter to go with ’em,” he said as he squatted down to put another branch on the fire.
“Now, Striker.” I smiled. “I brought fried chicken for our supper, and what goes better with fried chicken than bread and butter sandwiches?” I lifted the lid on our picnic basket, removed the sandwiches, which were wrapped in waxed paper, and, using Striker’s knife, skimmed off the thick layer of butter that I’d generously slathered onto the white bread and knocked it off into another empty mason jar I’d brought for beach combing. After setting the jar close enough to the fire to melt the butter, I sat back down on the blanket with Striker, and we waited for the required twenty minutes it took to cook the crabs. While we did, he told me more about his plans for the boatyard.
Striker intended on building a line of sleek, small to medium-sized sloops that would cut through the water more efficiently and smoothly than anything else on the seas at the time. But the thing he was most excited about was building his first motor boat.
“I’ve seen a few of ’em out here in the bay, and some while I was up in Jacksonville. I even worked on a couple. They’re going to be the workhorse of the seas; sailing will become nothing more than a leisure activity. Actually, I designed one using the wick carburetor that a fella in England designed. Now I just have to build it.”
As he spoke, his dark brown eyes were lit from within. The passion he felt for his trade was obvious. Though he had learned much while working at Merrill-Stevens, he said that he’d learned most of what he wanted to incorporate into his own boat designs through trial and error. Apparently, he’d taken possession of several vessels that were broken beyond repair, including a motor boat, and had worked with a skill and understanding of the craft that went far beyond what the Merrill-Stevens people could teach him. They had realized early on that he was far from simply being a marine repair man; he was a designer—and a re-designer—as well. Which was why Merrill-Stevens invested in his business.
“I’m fortunate,” he said. “I’ve been given permission to run electricity from the Royal Palm Hotel’s massive generators over to the large building I’ll put up to house the boats I’ll be working on. It’ll be nice having electric lights rather than kerosene lamps.”
“Papa has been talking about running power to our house, too. What a thing that’ll be, to turn on a light with the flick of a switch instead of having to light wicks. Good of Flagler to let us use the power from his hotel.”
“Don’t fool yourself, Eliza,” Striker laughed, making the dimple near the right side of his mouth appear. “He’ll make nice money by allowin’ us that little luxury. At some point, some company’s gonna co
me in and run power to any and all who want it, and become extremely rich because of it. Makes me wish I was more of a Thomas Edison, instead of a John O. Johnson.” Seeing the lack of understanding on my face, Striker laughed and explained that Johnson had designed a beautiful championship sailboat.
“They’re ready,” he said, nodding toward the pot on the tripod, and our attention immediately turned from boat building to crab eating.
We broke off the legs, and then broke the shells open by hammering them with rocks. The hot white meat was succulent and sweet, and the melted butter we dipped it into added a deliciously rich coating. Once the crabs were thoroughly picked over for the small amount of good meat they offered, Striker ate two pieces of chicken and bread; then we each had a fried apple pie with a chunk of cheddar cheese. When we were done, I stretched my legs out in front of me, leaned back on my elbows and tilted my head toward the late day sun. It was good living on the coast of Florida, and never more so than with a belly full of fresh seafood.
“Much as I hate to do it, we’d better get back,” Striker said, standing up and stretching. “We need to get in while there’s still some daylight left.”
I knew he was right, but I hated for the day to end. I started gathering our things together while Striker doused the fire with the water from the crab pot, and then kicked sand on top of the smoldering mound. As I looked around for anything I might have missed, I spotted my mason jar of sea glass and leaned over to pick it up just as Striker was picking up his burlap sack. Our eyes met and we kept them locked on each other as we stood up. Striker put his left arm around my waist and gently pulled me to him. Whispering that I was beautiful, he ran his hand up through my hair and studied my face as if he was seeing it for the first time, and as he did, I dropped the jar back onto the sand. Then Striker slowly leaned down, still watching my eyes, and kissed me.