by Janie DeVos
Suddenly, I spotted the edge of something shiny poking up through the sand near the stern of the cutter. It was an 1898 Cuban peso, and had most likely been someone’s pocket change. Looking around the immediate area, I found two more, and after sticking them into the canvas bag tied around my waist, I checked the locations and welfare of the other divers as I’d been taught to do, then pushed myself up from the sea bottom and surfaced for air.
Anchored near each other were Papa’s trawler, Deep Secrets, and Ezra’s, the Waylaid. Swimming over to my father, I climbed up the rope ladder and then began to dry off with a towel he handed to me. “Anything?” he asked.
“Pesos,” I answered as I pulled on a pair of canvas pants and shirt over my buckskin shorts and bandeau-style top. Though my swimming attire was far skimpier than any that proper ladies wore, it was necessary for salvage work. Getting bulky swimwear caught on the wreck was a danger I couldn’t afford.
Pulling open the strings which held the top of the canvas bag closed, I reached in for the pesos, then added them to a box Papa was keeping the smaller items in. “Honestly, Papa, we could scrounge around for weeks and keep finding these little things, but I think we need to roll this cutter and start salvaging beneath her. We’re not making enough money to pay for our oil.”
Papa smiled at my last statement, for I was parroting the complaint I’d heard him make a hundred times. “It won’t be long now,” he said. “Ezra and I agreed that by mid-morning, we’ll start trying to parbuckle her.”
Just then, Simon and Turtle climbed back on board, and I saw Ezra’s two men, Carlos Herrera, and Tony something-or-other, board the Waylaid. I’d never met them before, and Papa was only slightly familiar with Herrera, but we were told they’d served in the military with Ezra, and they all seemed friendly enough.
Ezra Asher stood out from the rest of us with his shock of curly snow-white hair. He also had intense bright blue eyes, and both hair and eyes stood out against his sun-browned skin. I guessed him to be just under six feet tall, with a slender build, but he was strong and sinewy from the salvaging work he’d been doing for the last five years, and from being a navy seaman before that. Even though his hair was white, and his face had more lines than a nautical map, he wasn’t old. As a matter of fact, Ezra had told my father that he was born in northern California, in ’72, making him just thirty-three or four. He was friendly, but intensely focused, and he had the energy of three men. It looked as though we’d hooked up with a man who worked just as hard as my father did, and the two captains seemed to genuinely like each other. Ezra was quick to ask my father’s opinion or preference about salvaging matters, just as my father always did out of respect for any captain he was working with. Because of that, a quick and easy camaraderie had developed between the two.
In the late morning, after two hours of connecting chains, ropes and pulleys to the Paso, and then another hour for the two trawlers to roll the sunken vessel into an upright position, the enormous task was accomplished without any unforeseen problems. Afterward, we let the stirred up sand settle back down while we ate our noonday dinner, and then we jumped back onto the wreck site with high hopes that the newly exposed seabed would reveal its hidden treasures. And it quickly became apparent that we wouldn’t be disappointed.
Within fifteen minutes of exploring the area, Simon came up with five silver pieces and three gold. But the best find of the afternoon was what Tony brought up: the captain’s log. It listed all of the cargo on board, with the exception of the fifty thousand dollars worth of gold and silver to pay for the illegal acquisition of the Jacksonville real estate. However, what was listed as being on board was a bag of tourmalines. The stone was native to Cuba, and the quality was high. This particular shipment (over nineteen hundred karats’ worth), had been en route to a gem buyer in New York; if found, they would be well worth the trouble of spending many hours on the wreck site.
We worked on the site for three days, and at the end of each day, everything that each diver had found was laid out on the deck of Ezra’s boat, logged, and then kept in a safe in his stateroom. Once the salvaging was complete, he and Papa would take all that had been recovered to the Port of Entry, in Key West, to be appraised; once the appraisal was accepted by all parties, items would then be auctioned off and the money would be divided by whatever percentages had been agreed upon. Ezra had decided that just he and Papa would work the wreck, and as wreck master, Ezra had that right. No one argued the point for the fewer people involved, the more each salvager made.
Our fourth day on the wreck was Sunday. It would be the last day for our crew for several days because Papa had a hunting trip with folks staying at the Royal Palm, and I was teaching at the Seminole village. I was a little nervous about my first day there, so I was just as glad to keep my mind off of it by spending the day diving instead of going to church. I figured God was okay with that since He was the one who made gold and silver in the first place.
Thus far, the grouper and the tourmalines had eluded me, as well as all but one gold bar, which I’d found beneath the outcropping of a medium-size coral rock the day before. Papa and Ezra estimated the worth at about nine thousand dollars, and I was thrilled. Combined with the other treasures we’d found, we figured we’d brought up about nineteen thousand in gold and silver, as well as some of the Paso crew’s more valuable personal items, including the gold wedding band, a finely crafted cameo brooch, and five pewter mugs. And though there was much more to be found, I was content with what we’d found thus far and, in all honesty, I was exhausted. My fingers were shriveled like prunes from the long hours spent in the water, and I’d had enough for a while.
I had just finished checking around another coral rock and was starting to surface when I spotted the grouper coming back into the vicinity. He was probably hoping to reclaim his home in the reef. But before I could do a thing about it, I saw Carlos spear him. He’d left the three-pronged harpoon lying near the reef just in case, and I was kicking myself for not having done the same. Leaving the victor to his spoils, I pushed up from the sandy bottom and then climbed on board our boat.
Several minutes later, as I finished drying off and getting dressed, I heard the commotion going on over at the Waylaid as Carlos surfaced with the grouper, and Tony and Ezra leaned over the side and hauled the fish on board. As they did, Simon and Turtle climbed onto our boat, and then Simon handed my father some small thing he’d found. As they talked, I began to straighten up the deck in preparation to leave, and then I heard my father talking to Carlos.
“Nice catch, Herrera,” Papa acknowledged. Then, “You know, that’s a mighty big fish. How ’bout we cut her up and I’ll take a couple of filets home to Eve. There’s nothin’ she likes better.”
Herrera wasn’t so quick to agree, and mumbled something to Ezra. The captain said something in response and then turned to us. “Carlos is proud of that damn grouper,” he laughed. “But since little Eliza there has been itching to wrangle that fish in all week, he’ll share. I’ll tell you what, I’ll even do the dirty work and cut it up for you all.” But just as he picked up a knife, my father stopped him.
“No, no. That wouldn’t be right.” Papa stiffly smiled. “If we’re takin’ some, we’ll do the work.” Even though Papa didn’t say as much, the expression on his face told me something was wrong.
“I pleased to cut fish up, Mr. Harjo,” Carlos assured my father. “It’s happy for me,” he said in his broken English.
But Papa pinned both him and Ezra with a look that I’d never seen him give anyone. “No. Simon’ll do it,” Papa said more forcefully than I thought was necessary, and apparently everyone else thought so, too, for no one said a word. The tension in the air was getting heavier by the second.
“Pull the anchor line in some, Turtle,” Papa instructed. “Edge our bow closer to theirs.” Once Turtle had pulled us within a couple of feet of the Waylaid, Papa told Simon to board it.
As Simon did, Ezra reacted. “I don’t know what’s bit your ass, Harjo, but you’re way out of line here. The fact of the matter is that it’s Herrera’s catch, and he has the right to keep the entire fish for himself. We were tryin’ to be generous, but forget it. Carlos’ll keep the whole damn thing. Get back on your boat, Simon. We’re leaving.”
“No, you’re not,” Papa said and before anyone could object or even begin to move, Papa leapt onto Ezra’s trawler, and stood nearly nose to nose with the man, though Papa had the advantage in height. “Slice the grouper open, Simon—all the way up through the throat,” Papa instructed while not taking his eyes off of Ezra.
As the two men glared at each other, Simon withdrew his knife from a sheath at the top of his breeches, and slit the grouper from its belly up to its boney mouth. Then Simon inserted his hand into the fish’s throat and withdrew a good-sized leather pouch.
“Open it,” Papa told him. Pulling apart the strings that held the pouch closed, Simon shook out some of its contents into the palm of his hand. There, glinting in the sun, were exquisite multi-colored stones of all shapes and sizes in beautiful shades of green, pink, purple, and yellow. The tourmalines had been found. “Now, toss them over to Eliza,” Papa said.
“Here’s how this is gonna play out now.” My father remained within inches of Ezra’s face, which was beet-red at the moment, though I wasn’t sure if it was from embarrassment or anger, or both. “You’re gonna give us that gold bar Eliza found, and we’re gonna consider this matter settled and go our separate ways. However, if you have a problem with that, then I’ll leave you, your gold bar, and the tourmalines right here, and go straight to the courthouse and let them know how our salvaging operation is goin’. I have a feeling they’d be mighty interested knowin’ how you do business in South Florida waters. You have a problem with that?”
The silence was heavier than a one hundred pound grouper. Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was no more than several seconds, Ezra turned away from my father, spat on the floor of the boat, and then instructed Carlos to open the safe and give us the bar. Once he handed it to Papa, my father tossed it over to Turtle, and then instructed Simon to get back on our boat. Once he was on board, Papa stepped back from Ezra, and quickly re-boarded our boat as well.
“That’s the end of this, Asher. Nothing more will be said or done about it, but I’m telling you now, you leave these waters and don’t come back. If I see you around, the whole town will know you’re a damn thief, and you may not have the opportunity again to get out so easily. People around here are funny. They don’t take too kindly to folks who want to steal their hard-earned money, and they have a way of takin’ the law into their own hands dealin’ with ’em. Don’t let me see you or your crew again, you understand?”
Ezra angrily muttered to Tony to pull up anchor and for Carlos to fire up the boiler. Within minutes, they’d built up enough steam to pull away, and they did so without saying another word to us. As we watched them pick up speed and head north, I quietly asked my father, “Do you think that’s the last we’ll see of them?”
“Probably not,” my father said, not taking his eyes off the retreating trawler. “They have gold fever, and that’s the worst kind of fever to cure.”
Suddenly, a thought occurred to me and I turned toward Papa. “How’d you know about the tourmalines?”
“Simon was checking for salvage behind a large coral rock when Carlos shot that grouper, but Carlos didn’t know he was there. Simon saw him take a pouch out of the canvas sack he carries for salvage, and then shove it down the fish’s throat. Simon figured it had to be somethin’ pretty valuable and somethin’ Carlos didn’t want their crew to share with ours. If Simon had had to come up for air, he might not have seen it happen. Luckily, the boy can hold his breath for a long time.”
“Lucky for us,” I agreed. “Not so much for the Waylaid.” I grinned.
Chapter 12
A Bald Peacock
The afternoon sun beat down relentlessly on Sundae and me as we rode away from the Seminole village. It was early June, the sun was brutal, and there was very little in the way of shade at this point on our regular route. It was the one we’d been taking for the last month and we knew the path well enough to travel it blindfolded.
We came to our usual spot on the river where the bank dipped down so my horse could get a much-needed drink. As she eagerly drank, I splashed handful after handful of water over my head and face, and then hiked up my skirt, removed my booties and dipped my legs in.
Off in the distance to the north, I could faintly make out the dredging equipment that had appeared there just the week before. Seeing it while riding to the village one morning alarmed me. When I told Paroh about it, I learned he’d seen it, too, and had actually ridden north to confront the men digging the canals that would carry the Glades’ water out to the sea. They had assured him that the Seminole village would not be included in the many thousands of acres that would be dredged, but neither of us was quite willing to believe that. However, there was nothing we could do but wait and see.
I remounted Sundae and pulled my heavy navy cotton skirt up to the middle of my thighs to allow the sun and wind to dry my skin, and then we settled into a leisurely pace for home. As I rode along, I thought about how far along the Seminole boys and young men had come in just a month’s time with their reading and arithmetic skills. While that pleased me greatly, I was also frustrated by the fact that too many times I’d caught the girls watching us longingly from the distance they were required to keep. I was hoping that as Paroh and his council got used to my being there, they might reconsider letting me teach at least a few of the girls the basics in both subjects. But I figured I stood a better chance of sprouting wings and flying.
Just the week before, while the men were out hunting, Rose’s younger sister, Rae, had nonchalantly wandered over to within hearing distance of the chickee where I was teaching a lesson on the different uses of the words “to”, “two”, and “too”. Rae sat down beneath a palm with knitting needles and several balls of yarn and began working away, but every time I looked in her direction, I caught her looking in mine. I knew that she was attempting to listen in, so I raised my voice and talked a little louder. As I glanced over at her, I realized that in her lap, along with the knitting paraphernalia, were paper and a pencil, and she was doing her best to take down notes. I wasn’t the only one to catch her eavesdropping. Suddenly Rae’s grandmother appeared at her side and began hitting her with a thin oak switch. I could hear the soft whistle of it as she brought it down through the air again and again, and the cries of the poor girl each time it stung her skin. I started to go over to them, to intercede on Rae’s behalf, but when I rose from my stool and took several steps in their direction, one of my young male students grabbed my wrist, stopping me.
“No, no, Miss Eliza,” Jimmy said, looking stricken and shaking his head vigorously. He obviously realized what my intention was. “If you go over there, you make it worse for Rae. She’ll get three times as many strikes after you leave.”
Knowing he was right, but terribly frustrated about the whole situation, I remained where I was as tears filled my eyes. Finally, the grandmother allowed Rae to run off into the hammock, and I had to wonder if the girl would suffer longer from the sting of being caught and the embarrassment of her public whipping, or from being denied the right to learn. I knew that a salve would ease the girl’s welts, but there was no cure for her frustration at being denied the right to learn. I wasn’t sure who was more frustrated, the girls or me.
Letting out a loud sigh as Sundae and I continued on toward home, I was suddenly startled by a flock of crows that rose up from the marsh to my left. Something had spooked them, causing them to take to the sky, caw-cawing in complaint. Immediately, I spotted a lone horseman coming from the north. Though the man was about a hundred yards from me, I could see that he sat tall in the saddle, and
wore a light-colored shirt, dark pants, and had a dark cap on, or perhaps his hair was dark. I slowed Sundae down even more so that our paths wouldn’t cross until I had a better chance to figure out who he was, and what he might be doing there. But as the distance closed between us, I suddenly realized who the rider was. It was the new lighthouse keeper out at Fowey, Owen Perry. I smiled when I recognized him and watched the same reaction from him as recognition lit up his face. Picking up his pace, he quickly closed the remaining space between us.
“Why, Miss Harjo!” he said, respectfully tipping his navy blue cap. “Whatever brings you out to this untamable land?” he added dramatically.
“Mr. Perry, I believe that’s simply an outsider’s way of thinking,” I said with a smile. “While some may prefer to tame it, others like it just as is.” I was quite pleased with my smooth retort.
“Well said, Miss Harjo! Well said!” He smiled broadly, clearly impressed…or was there a touch of patronizing amusement in there, too? I wasn’t quite sure what I was seeing in his startling slate gray eyes. Had they been that color gray when I first met him, or did they change according to his surroundings or mood? Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling quite as confident as I had just a moment before. This man was older than me, more experienced, and I suddenly felt a little less tall in my own saddle.
“What brings you out this way, Mr. Perry, if you don’t mind my asking?” I said, trying to settle myself.
“I’ve never been to the Glades before, even during my time up in Jupiter. It’s something I always wanted to see,” he replied.