Finding Miranda

by Chacon, Iris

  Eating a simple brown-bagged tuna sandwich at his end of the not-yet-wet bench, Lloyd watched with mild interest as Remmy assembled her salad. “Still on your diet, I see,” he remarked.”

  “I sho’ am,” Remmy boasted. “I bet I’ve lost a pound and a half this month alone. Imagine if I can stay on it for a whole year. You want a brownie?” She held up a plastic bag of brownies.

  “No, thanks. You can have mine.”

  “Fine then. You let me know if ya change yer mind. I’ll save yo’ brownie for last.”

  Lloyd reached across the bench and picked up the empty blue cheese dressing bottle. He read the label. “This says 140 calories per serving.”

  “Yeah, 140 calories is nuthin’. I can have 300 calories for lunch, and ever’body knows raw vegetables is mostly water, so I’m good.”

  “Remmy, there are eight servings in this bottle, and you used the whole bottle,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s bad. Guess I’ll skip the brownies. That oughta make up the difference.”

  “Good plan,” he said, tossing the salad dressing bottle into the nearby recycling bin.

  “‘Course, I can still eat yo’ brownie,” Remmy reasoned. “It’s only my own dessert calories that count. Nobody can be penalized for somebody else’s dessert calories.”

  Lloyd nodded. He had no response for Remmy’s nutritional logic, and he valued their friendship too much to risk a faux pas with regard to a woman’s weight. All males worth their testosterone knew what a minefield that topic could be.

  They relaxed and enjoyed their shady lunch together in the comfortable silence born of many years’ camaraderie.

  After some minutes Remmy said, “Still goin’ through wid it?”

  “Mwhawf?” said Lloyd around a mouthful of tuna sandwich.

  “The bid.”

  “Ympfh.”

  “And you’ll actually quit this glamorous, high-payin’ job?” she teased.

  Lloyd swallowed his last bite of sandwich and threw his trash into the appropriate receptacles. He produced a pad and pencil from a large pocket in his cargo pants and began sketching as they talked.

  “Have to quit,” he said. “Conflict of interest.”

  “Heckuva big risk,” she said. “I just don’t believe you’ve really thought this through.”

  “Remmy, I’ll be able to work from home. Be there for my kids.” Lloyd studied the playground nearby, where a few children were playing. He began drawing the playground.

  Remmy continued eating for three bites before commenting, “Yo’ kids. You know what I think ‘bout dat.”

  “I’m not getting married,” he said.

  “How about cloning? Cloning’s coming right along these days, according to the news.”

  “I don’t want sheep,” he said.

  “Yeah, and I’ve noticed you’re the perfect candidate for adoption,” Remmy said sarcastically. “No wife, no parents, no wealth, no college degree, no perfectly good civil service job after tomorrow, and—oh, did I mention?—you’re nuts. No offense. It’s what we all love about you. But, honey, dey gone give kids to Jack The Ripper before dey give ‘em to you. Dey ain’t never even come to yo’ house for the follow-up interview.”

  Lloyd stopped drawing. “Yes they have—or at least, they will. A social worker is coming to the house at 5:30 this evening. Her name is,” he slid a folded slip of paper from a pocket and opened it. “Stoner. Hepzibah Stoner. Five-thirty tonight.” He folded and pocketed the paper with a triumphant grin.

  He leaned toward Remmy and showed her his drawing of the playground. He had captured the movement and whimsy of the children climbing the weathered slide and jungle gym.

  Remmy looked at the sketch, and smiled to let him know she liked it. She handed it back to him, shaking her head. Then she lifted her eyes skyward and said, “Lawd, have mercy on dis poor, sweet, crazy soul,” tilting her head toward Lloyd so God would be sure to take her meaning.

  Across town, in a much better neighborhood, the newly landscaped Commissioner Rosa Garcia-Katz Park sprawled under the Florida sun. Garcia-Katz Park was the jewel in the crown of the Miami-Dade County Parks and Recreation Department (ex-Marine Hepzibah Stoner would have said ParRecDep). Jogging paths wound through the landscape, a Frisbee field was set aside for dogs and their owners, and the County was about to accept bids for a new design in playground equipment.

  The Garcia-Katz Park playground would be the pilot project for potential renovation or replacement of deteriorating old playground equipment at all the County’s parks. The lucky contractor who entered the low bid for the pilot project might eventually earn millions by the time all the parks were finished—a task that was scheduled for completion over the coming decade.

  Garcia-Katz Park was named in honor of one of Miami-Dade’s County Commissioners. Rosa Garcia-Katz supported ParRecDep (though she didn’t call it that) and, in fact, lived in the posh neighborhood surrounding the park that bore her name.

  On the day Lloyd and Remmy lunched together in a distant and less affluent part of town, Commissioner Garcia-Katz was jogging through “her” park. Jogging toward her from the opposite end of the park was Dr. Arthur Frankel, psychiatrist, investor, and campaign contributor. The two joggers did not acknowledge one another, but when they approached an intersection of paths, they both turned so that they were running side-by-side.

  “Evening, Arthur,” the Commissioner said, without turning her head in his direction.

  “Commissioner,” said Frankel, also looking straight ahead.

  “Bids are due by noon tomorrow,” she said.

  “Ours will be delivered by 8:30 a.m.,” Frankel responded. “The same messenger will be delivering our group’s campaign fund check to your secretary.”

  They continued to jog, keeping their eyes on the path before them. Commissioner Garcia-Katz smiled as if counting the campaign money already. Then her brow furrowed as she voiced a concern, “You’re sure your group’s design meets the specs?”

  Frankel snorted. “How should I know? I’m not an architect. The people we hire to build the thing will take care of that.”

  “They’d better, or your whole group will not only be looking for a new tax shelter, you’ll be looking for a good defense attorney.”

  Frankel smiled, totally at ease. “Look around you, Commissioner. When’s the last time you saw children actually playing in a public park in this neighborhood? They’re all at lacrosse practice or violin lessons or sailing or ballet or whatever. No child is ever going to be endangered by this park’s equipment because no child in this neighborhood is ever going to use it. So, don’t you worry about what kind of pilot playground we build. You just make sure that we’re the ones who build it.”

  Moments later the jogging path diverged into two separate paths, and the two joggers headed in different directions without ever looking at each other. From a distance, nobody would know they had been talking at all.

  End of Sample Chapters

  of

  Schifflebein’s Folly

  by

  Iris Chacon

  CHAPTER 1

  1862

  Sergeant Jules Pfifer, a career Army man, marched his patrol briskly through the evening heat toward a tall wooden house on the corner of Whitehead Street and Duval Street. Atop the house was perched a square cupola surrounded by the sailor-carved balustrades called gingerbread. These porches, just large enough for one or two persons to stand and observe the sea from the rooftop, were known as widows’ walks. From this particular widow’s walk an illegal Confederate flag flaunted its red stars and bars against the clear Key West sky.

  The soldiers in Union blue marched smartly through the gate in the white picket fence, up the front steps, and in at the front door—which opened before them as if by magic.

  “Evenin’, Miz Lowe,” Sergeant Pfifer said, without breaking stride, to the woman who had opened the door.

  “Evenin’, Sergeant,” the lady of the house answered, unpe
rturbed.

  On the Lowe house roof, the stars and bars were whipped from their post; they disappeared from sight just as the soldiers, clomping and puffing and sweat-stained, arrived atop the stairway. Pfifer and another man crowded onto the widow’s walk. Consternation wrinkled the soldiers’ faces when they found no Confederate flag, only 17-year-old Caroline Lowe, smiling sweetly.

  ...

  In the twilight, the three-story brick trapezoid of Fort Zachary Taylor loomed castle-like over the sea waves. It stood on its own 63-acre shoal, connected to the island of Key West by a narrow 1000-foot causeway. The fort had taken 21 years to build and was plagued by constant shortages of men and material as well as outbreaks of deadly yellow fever.

  Yankee sentries paced between the black silhouettes of cannon pointed seaward. Firefly lights of campfires and lanterns sparkled on the parade ground and among the Sibley tents huddled on shore at the base of the causeway.

  Midway between the fort and Caroline Lowe’s flagpole, on the tin roof of a three-story wooden house, behind the gingerbread railing of another widow’s walk, two athletic, handsome youngsters stood close together, blown by the wind. Twenty-year-old Richard scanned the sea with a spyglass. Joe, an inch shorter than Richard, kept one hand atop a floppy hat the wind wanted to steal.

  Richard found something interesting to the east. He handed over the spyglass and pointed Joe toward the same point on the horizon. Joe searched, then zeroed in.

  “Some rascal’s laid a false light over on Boca Chica,” Richard said, referring to the smaller island just north of Key West. “Come on!”

  They tucked the spyglass into a hollow rail of the widow’s walk and hastened down the stairs.

  ...

  On neighboring Boca Chica island, night blanketed the beach. A hunched figure tossed a branch onto a blazing bonfire then slunk away into the darkness. Pine pitch popped and crackled in the fire, adding its sweet aroma to the tang of the salty breeze coming off the sea.

  ...

  Inside a warehouse on Tift’s Wharf, all shapes and sizes of kegs, boxes, and wooden crates towered in jagged heaps. Sickly yellow light from a sailor’s lantern sent quivering shadows across the stacks. A spindly boy of 15, Joseph Porter, kept watch through a crack in the door.

  On the floor a dozen teenaged boys hunkered down, whispering. Richard sneaked in from the rear of the building to join them. Behind him, out of the light and keeping quiet, came Joe.

  Porter hissed, “Mudsills comin’!”

  The whispered buzz of conversation halted. Someone doused the light. Bodies thumped to the floor as the boys took cover.

  Outside, footsteps ground into the gravelly dirt of the street. Four Yankee soldiers, the source of the boys’ concern, completed a weary circuit of the dark dockside buildings. They were Pennsylvania farm boys not much older than the Key West boys hiding inside.

  The southern boys would have been surprised to know that the Yankees in the street were not technically “mudsills;” that was the name given to northern factory workers who lived crowded together in dirt-floored shacks along muddy streets. Still, the word was applied to all the Yankee enemies, just as the northern boys would have called Key West residents “mooncussers,” as if they all were pirates.

  Native born citizens of Key West referred to themselves as Conchs, a term dating back to the 1780s immigration of British Loyalists from the Bahamas. A large shellfish called a conch was plentiful in the local waters and became a staple of the pioneers’ diet.

  On Tift’s Wharf one of the Pennsylvania soldiers said something in Dutch-German, and the others murmured agreement. They sounded homesick. One slapped a mosquito on his neck then turned up his collar, grumbling.

  In front of the warehouse the soldiers stopped beside a barrel set to catch rainwater running off the tin roof during storms. They loosened their woolen tunics and dipped their handkerchiefs into the water, laving themselves, trying in vain to ease the steamy agony of tropical heat.

  Inside, the wide-eyed Conch boys held their breath, listening to the sounds from the water barrel outside. Joseph Porter trembled, perspired, and stared cross-eyed at a gigantic mosquito making itself at home on the end of his nose. He tried to raise one hand quietly to chase the brute away, but his elbow nudged a crate of bottles. Glass tinkled. The boys froze.

  Outside, a soldier started at the sound and snatched up his weapon. “Vas ist das?”

  The other soldiers were less concerned. They were hot, tired, and not looking for trouble.

  “Rats,” one said. “These pirate ships are full of them. Let’s go back to the ice house. It’s cooler.”

  The sweat-covered Conch boys heard the receding footsteps of the Yankees. Long, sweltering seconds later, Porter crept to his crack in the door and risked a peek. “It’s all right. They’re gone.”

  Red-haired William Sawyer lit the lantern.

  A bigger boy, Marcus Oliveri, stepped forward and cuffed Porter smartly. “Porter, you imbecile!”

  “Here now, Marcus!” said William. “He didn’t mean to.”

  Oliveri returned to his place in the circle of boys forming around the lantern. “I don’t fancy getting arrested or maybe shot because Porter can’t abide getting mosquito bit for his country!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Porter. “It was an accident.”

  “Let’s just forget it,” urged William. “Let’s finish up and get out of here before they come back. Now, the English schooner leaves for Nassau tomorrow morning. Richard and Marcus and Alfred and me will be on it. The rest of you know what to do to cover for us.”

  An older boy with a thick Bahamian accent, Alfred Lowe, shook his finger under the nose of a friend. “And you, Bogy Sands, stay away from my sister while I’m gone, you hear me?”

  Richard looked surprised. He thought he and Caroline Lowe had an unspoken agreement. “Caroline? Bogy!”

  “You ain’t engaged to her, Thibodeaux,” said Bogy.

  William Sawyer’s hair flashed the same fiery color as the lamplight when he reached across the circle to separate Richard and Bogy. “That’s enough of that! Let’s not be fighting each other. God willing, we’ll all be soldiers of the Seventh Florida Regiment within the year. Any questions?”

  All around the circle the boys murmured in the negative.

  “Let’s get home then, and be ready when the call comes,” William said.

  The boys scrambled away. Joe and Richard were the last to leave, watching for Yankee patrols while the others sneaked out.

  Joe complained, “I’ll probably break my neck walking around in your boots. You got such big feet, Wretched! I had to stuff the toes with rags.”

  “You just keep that hat on and stay out of Papa’s way. You’ll do fine,” Richard replied.

  As they moved to leave the warehouse, Richard put an arm around Joe’s shoulders and gave an encouraging squeeze.

  ...

  In the Florida Straits between Key West and Cuba, just before dawn, two lithe, black fishermen reacted to the flare of a distress signal that arced upward in the eastern sky. One fisherman reached into the bilge of his craft and produced the empty pink-and-white spiraling shell of that large mollusk called a conch. He lifted the trumpet-size conch shell to his lips and blew a loud, hooting blast.

  Seconds later on Tift’s Wharf, a lookout in a wooden tower reacted to the distant conch horn, scanned the eastern horizon with a spyglass for barely an instant, then clanged the wreckers’ bell and shouted to wake the whole island.

  “Wreck asho-o-o-re! Wreck asho-o-o-re!”

  Men of all sizes came running from every direction. Black men and white, old and young, in jerseys and loose short pants, they raced through the streets of Key West to the Jamaica sloops moored in the harbor. Every shopkeeper (save one, William Curry) left his store, every clergyman his church, every able-bodied homeowner his house. Quickly it became apparent that nearly every man in Key West, whatever else he might be, was a wrecker.

  Men shouted, the be
ll clanged, the distant conch horn trumpeted. The race was on. Yankee soldiers, standing on the street corner, did well not to be trampled in the rush.

  At Fort Taylor, blue-clad soldiers on the roof of the fort took note of the wreck and watched closely the activity in the harbor, ready to take action if necessary.

  Aboard the moored schooner Lady Alyce, white-bearded, patriarchal Captain Elias Thibodeaux, regal in his double-breasted jacket, surveyed the scene with hawk’s eyes. The Lady Alyce, at 50 feet and 136 tons, was a sleek topsail schooner with well-greased masts, coiled lines, and shining brightwork. She looked like she could outsail anything.

  “Mister Simmons,” the captain shouted.

  The mate, Cataline Simmons, was a black Bahamian with the muscles and instincts of an experienced sailor and the accent of an Oxford professor. “Aye, sir!”

  Thibodeau’s eyes searched the wharf again, but it was no use. What he sought was not there. “Hoist the mains’l,” he commanded.

  Cataline, too, looked with concern at the wharf before executing the order.

  “Today, Simmons!” bellowed the captain. “We’ll leave him if we have to, but I will be first to bespeak that wreck!”

  Cataline leapt into action, gesturing to four crewmen—three white, one black—who waited poised at their stations. “Aye, sir! Hoist the mains’l.”

  The three white crewmen set about their tasks quickly, skillfully. The small, wiry black man, Stepney Austin, hesitated. If Thibodeaux was king here, and he undoubtedly was, then Stepney Austin was the court jester. Monkeylike in his movements and Cockney in his speech, he could be the bane of Simmons’ existence if he were not so brave and loyal.

  “Cast off the docklines,” said the captain.

  Cataline threw Stepney a look. Stepney moved as if he had been waiting for just such an order.

  The sail was filling; other boats were getting underway. Stepney cast off the bow lines and moved deliberately toward the stern, watching the wharf as did Cataline. Thibodeaux turned away and looked seaward, giving up on finding what he sought upon the wharf.