When I, newly married, first met Cynda Denaud Williams and her little sister Mary Alice, it was along the middle Florida Gulf coast during the latter stages of the war. I commanded a gunboat, and was ashore on a reconnaissance to ascertain the likelihood of Floridians joining the national Union cause. Though that rumor was well established among politicos in Washington, in reality I found very few inhabitants of the state that would even entertain the idea, fewer still who would act upon it.
Cynda was an enemy noncombatant, wife of a Rebel planter who had scandalously absconded for the Bahamas when the fortunes of war changed against his side. Left behind, she was the beleaguered mistress of their estate. That plantation was part of the enemy’s structure of sustenance, a legitimate target of war, and a subject of my interest.
Well understanding the effect she had on men, she’d used her Machiavellian scheming and feminine charm on me to gain her own purposes. It was a common enough tactic by women near the end of that long ugly event, but disappointing to see in one who had such intelligence and beauty and sophisticated upbringing. For a flickering moment one evening it worked, and my innate defenses were lowered. Then, quite fortunately, my sense of honor, and more likely my suspicion, prevailed. Still, she’d gotten what she wanted—transport out of the danger area for herself and her sister. Rork was there through it all, a steady hand in a very unsteady situation.
Though I couldn’t help admiring Cynda, both her appearance and her internal strength, I never again fully trusted her after that. There was something about her, a chameleonlike ability to adapt to prevailing situations after determining what role and route would be most advantageous to her. I had seen the flash of predatory guile emerge from behind the demure damsel’s façade. While I empathized with the concept of self-preservation, I didn’t like her methods.
Then, sitting there in the warm carriage car rattling through central Florida, I thought about the hypocrisy in that judgment. My methods with Paloma hadn’t been of the highest character either. Maybe Cynda and I did share a certain ruthless trait. Was my justification of saving future lives from war as thin-sounding as her goal of self-preservation during the war?
That little realization didn’t improve my morale. And in the back of my mind, as the train took us south toward an uncertain future, I wondered about her present honesty and motives. It was obvious she had retained that captivating beauty—every man aboard watched her every move, not withstanding her mourning attire. But had the years dulled her cunning? Probably not. If anything, life experience would have increased her astuteness.
No matter, I told myself abruptly. It was time to center my attention on the problem at hand. I needed to understand the subject of our effort, and by understanding him more fully, perhaps I would grasp Cynda’s intentions. So I asked her to describe her son—in appearance, intellect, and manner. I found her explanation revealing in more ways than one.
She described Luke Saunders as five feet, seven inches tall; with wavy blonde hair to his collar; and of medium weight, probably a hundred thirty pounds. He had blue eyes like his mother, but the prominent jaw and nose of his father. Raised on the family’s sugar plantation in the west of Puerto Rico, he was strong but played no American sports. He was an avid fisherman and had confidence on the water—sailing his father’s small boat single-handed considerable distances along the beach. His academics had been initially home-taught by father and mother, but he had attended the local Catholic school for boys since he was ten. Luke was bilingual and loved reading books, particularly those in English about the sea. He was very loyal to his parents and their Por Fin Plantation, and was devastated when his father died.
I replied that her recital contained absolutely nothing negative, as one would expect from a mother, but that every teenaged boy had another side. Mine certainly had at that age. Her eyes dropped.
“Tell me the rest, Cynda. It could very well be important to our success.”
There was the beginning of a quiver in her chin. “Yes, I suppose you do need to know. Well . . . he wasn’t perfect. There were tensions. Bad tensions.”
“Such as . . .”
Her eyes filled. “Actually, Peter . . . well, actually Luke hated me. He hated his life at Por Fin. I think he felt stifled. Imprisoned. Especially after Jonathan died and he had only me for company.”
“There’s more to this than you’ve told me, Cynda. What is it?”
She took a breath. “He may not come back with me when we find him. I think he felt I was too . . . overbearing. He has this restless urge, this rebellious core. I’m afraid that Luke can be . . . cruel with his words. Very cruel. That’s not how Jonathan and I tried to bring him up, Peter. Not at all.”
Her son was large for his age. “Did Luke ever try to hurt you?”
“No. He never struck me, but he would become enraged when I said no to a request. His temper was short. After his father died it got worse. I don’t know how I became the enemy . . .”
“When Luke left you to go on the schooner, what was his attitude?”
She looked at me with a sadness that laid open my heart for her.
“Luke said he hated our home so much that he just might not come back.”
Rather dire sentiment for a fourteen-year-old boy. And one that had the potential to get Luke into far more trouble than his young mind could anticipate. Cynda shut down at that point, the grief too much, and I decided not to ask the big question in my mind: what would she do if and when we found him? Or better yet—what would he do?
6
Insomnia
En route south by train
Central Florida
Monday, 2 July 1888
Our route was like a tunnel through the dense forests, stopping momentarily at the shady villages along the route. There was DeLand, with its newly founded college; Benson Junction, where we crossed the bucolic St. Johns River and changed to the South Florida Line, thereafter emerging from the close confines of the oak and pine forests to the vista of Lake Monroe, a vast inland sea. Sanford came next, a busy little port on the south shore of Monroe; then we chugged further south to Longwood; Maitland; Winter Park; Orlando, with its dappled ponds amidst small orange-tree-covered hills; and finally Kissimmee, a moss-lined burgh on the edge of a large marshy lake with the exotic moniker of Tohopekaliga.
At each stop, passengers were afforded an opportunity to stroll for ten minutes and see the incredible changes a railroad can bring to a community. Where five years prior those places had been backwoods crossroads, they now began sporting the signs of modernity, including small facilities to entice the growing winter tourist trade—hotels, eateries, taverns, health sanatoriums, fishing guides, land brokers.
Though there were few passengers on our train, the townspeople made sure every one of us knew what their locale had to offer. It was amusing in a way, inspiring laughs from those of us who knew Florida, and great interest in my friends who were visiting for the first time. Cynda took interest in the places, probably as much to displace the depressing thoughts in her mind as to see how her native state had changed. She listened intently as locals would proudly explain their town’s amenities and advantages, asking kind questions designed to boost their egos. It was a masterful performance on her part, and instructive for me as I watched her.
We disembarked—no easy task with all that gear—at Bartow Junction in the middle of the peninsula, where the traveler had a decision to make: continue west to Tampa or south toward my coast. We chose the latter and changed to Henry Plant’s Florida Southern Railroad, a far less comfortable affair. Most of these windows were stuck shut.
Proceeding south through Winter Haven, we came to the dusty mining and cattle town of Bartow proper, located on a small plateau overlooking a lake. Corny, whose active mind was always alert to opportunities for bon vivance or scientific gain, suggested that perhaps we might find ancient fossils in the phosphate mine excava
tions. Failing to excite any interest among his overheated companions, he ultimately decided that, “it’s too damn hot to dig for bones, but maybe I’ll come back in the decent season. Do they even have one down here?”
Down the spine of Florida we wobbled on the tracks, now along the sandy banks of the Peace River. The real hill country was gone now, and as we chugged southward we saw more cypress swamp and bog. The river level was still low, for the summer rains had not completely arrived yet. It wouldn’t be long, however. Soon the skies would unload tons of the stuff and every river and stream would overflow with water, and along with the rain would come southern Florida’s greatest nemesis, mosquitoes.
Cynda began conversing with me again. She asked if I still knew people in Key West who might know Captain Kingston or the schooner. When I said yes, she delved into the mechanics of how we would proceed from there. It was what we had already discussed, but I was glad her mind focused on the search, not the sorrow. You could see her mind and body strengthen. I resolved to do my best to keep her attention concentrated to that effect.
We entered frontier country, where life was rustic and more than a few of the inhabitants were trying to hide from society or authority farther north. Fort Meade, Stonewall Jackson’s last post for the U.S. Army; the tiny hamlets of Zolfo Springs, Arcadia, Nocatee, Fort Ogden—we saw them all. I explained to my friends a little of the history of the places. No grand, or even modest, tourist resorts here. Cattle, mining for phosphate rocks, citrus, and vegetable farming dominated. These were rough backwoods places, some of the citizenry made up of violent men and crude women. They would grudgingly assist you, but weren’t impressed at all by what you wore or how you spoke. Some of them might even take offense at it.
Once beyond the pine woods, the undulating of the rails became more pronounced, sinking down alarmingly into a rail bed set into the sand and mud, making the car slow down and wallow back and forth like a waterlogged vessel. Past Fort Ogden, the end of the line until two years earlier, the terrain became flat-land salt marsh and mangrove, the people more ragged, and the sense of isolation more palpable.
We were nearing the coast, and the new end of the railroad at Punta Gorda. A rudimentary fishing village of a couple hundred souls who harbored rather grandiose hopes for the future, it was the reason for the railroad’s extension to the salt water, the destination for anyone venturing all that way through the swamps. We rolled to a stop in front of the newly built Punta Gorda Hotel at seven o’clock that evening—my entire band of travelers hot, tired, sore, sooty, and hungry. The hotel, a three-story frame structure fronting the mile-wide Peace River, housed fishing tourists in the winter and spring seasons. It was closed now for the summer.
The last of the day’s sea breeze was dying, allowing a humid malaise to fill the air. Thunder rolled off to the east. I looked around for the man who took care of Patricio Island in our absence. He was known only as Whidden, a common surname in those parts. But he was nowhere in sight.
As we unloaded the mound of trunks, boxes, and bags, Rork and I exchanged glances—would Whidden be there to pick us up and sail us to the island, twenty-two miles away? Rork went searching for him and returned ten minutes later with a shrug.
Whidden wasn’t around. We’d informed him of our intentions by telegram three weeks ahead of time. Something must have come up. It frequently did with Whidden. Time is a relative concept on the coast. The others cast expectant looks toward me. Very well, we’d have to find lodging for the night, hopefully before the bugs and rain attacked.
Requesting my friends to remain at the trackside platform, for there was no depot then, I dispatched Rork to the vacant resort hotel on the chance the summer caretaker was around. Those would be by far the most comfortable accommodations in Punta Gorda. Meanwhile, I headed for Tom Hector’s place a block away, in which I spied a lantern glowing. Probably a billiard challenge going on, I surmised. Inside the place I found Tom, and three others I knew, gathered around the faded green affair which served as the sole billiard table in that region. In the normal manner of the locals, their greeting was a muted one.
Colonel Isaac Trabue greeted me with a nonchalant wave from the corner. A Union man in Louisville, Kentucky, during the war, he was still lean and handsome, with a confident air and one of those Kentucky goatees I associate with actors and lawyers. He was one of those fellows who are a bundle of energetic action, just waiting for release. A man who takes charge—even when nobody wants him to—and gets things done.
Trabue arrived on the coast in 1885. Within three years he’d bought up hundreds of acres, built a community hall, platted out a town named for himself, and thereafter promised and expected great things to come. He’d even persuaded Henry Plant to run that rail line down to the new town, with the prospect of creating a splendid resort, which came somewhat true in the form of the hotel.
But there was trouble in paradise. Trabue’s vigor, civic efforts, and egalitarian views on blacks, were not fully appreciated by some of the hard-eyed natives, and when it came time to petition the government to officially incorporate the town in ’87, they knocked him down a peg or two by voting to name it Punta Gorda, the old Spanish designation for the place. I thought that a slap in the face of a man who had done a lot for them.
The other two men didn’t have Trabue’s money or deportment. Albert Gilchrist was a pleasant-faced surveyor for Plant’s railroad. A good man, and by all appearances quite smart, but for some reason, I’ve never been able to relax in the few times I’d been around him.
The third man was a close friend of Whidden. Daniel Smith was as black as a man could get, and as decent, too. He worked for Gilchrist on the survey crew, which also did repair work, new construction, and other assorted odd jobs in the area. Punta Gorda was unique in that the whites’ racial prejudice was kept under the surface and an air of civility reigned in the town, with black and white working together.
Smith grinned at me, and said, “Hello there, Mr. Wake, sir. I didn’t know you’d be down this time a’ year. Lookin’ for Mr. Whidden?”
“Hello, Daniel. Yes, I’m looking for Whidden. Do you know where he is? He was supposed to pick us up with the Nancy Ann.”
Trabue shook his head. Gilchrist chuckled. Smith sighed with compassion for his wayward friend. “Oh, Nancy Ann’s over at the long dock. But Whidden, well, he’s in the jail for drinkin’, sir. Drinkin’ bad, down at Big Six’s place, tryin’ to impress Miss Henrietta. Shoulda’ known better than that, but you know how it is with him. Ol’ Whidden’s been in jail last night and this. Supposed to let him out in the morn, I think.”
Big Six’s establishment was a makeshift rotgut rum and beer joint, as coarse as the man himself, set up in an abandoned feed shed down on the cattle trail south of town. Big Six was a giant Florida swamp dweller who sold anything to anybody, including fools like Whidden. No one knew Big Six’s name for certain and most figured he had a warrant outstanding from up north. I imagined Henrietta to be the latest down-and-out trollop passing through who’d decided to work for Six. The “Punta Gorda Jail” was a padlocked cattle car kept on a rail siding. We’d passed it coming into town. In that heat, it would’ve been hell inside.
I moaned aloud, which brought forth another chuckle from Gilchrist, who offered an unsolicited opinion. “Wake, I don’t know why you employ that idiot. He’s drunk most of the time you’re not around. No telling what he does out on that island of yours when you’re gone.”
“Just another ne’er-do-well we’ve got to convince to leave this coast,” said Trabue. “It’s time to make this place civilized.”
“He ain’t drunk all the time, Colonel,” said Smith, a religious teetotaler, defending his friend. Then he admitted, “Oh, my, but when he do, he sure do it up big.”
Ignoring Trabue and Gilchrist, I continued with the black man. “All right, I’ll get him out in the morning. Is he hurt?”
“Yessir, he’s ba
nged up a might. Big Six didn’t hurt him too bad, though.”
Whidden was a drunk, but he was a tough drunk. He’d survive. “Good. Now, gentlemen, since we’re not taking my sloop out in that approaching storm even if Whidden wasn’t in jail, I need several rooms for the night. I’ve got Rork and four other friends with me, including a lady. Hotel caretaker around?” Wagging heads were the answer. “No? Well, what about boarding at Kelly Harvey’s.”
Gilchrist shook his head again. “Nope, they’re gone to Tampa. So’s R. B. Smith.”
Trabue quietly said, “Sorry, Wake, but I’ve got no room either.”
Thunder chose that moment to rumble louder. It was nearby. Outside, the wind was piping up. Not much time before it hit. Right about then, Smith solved my problem.
“Cap’n Brown’s got two rooms, Mr. Wake. It’ll be crowded, but dry.” He glanced outside. Thunder sounded again, closer this time. “Well, sorta dry.”
By their expressions, it was obvious the colonel and Gilchrist thought that inappropriate, but I didn’t particularly care. I appreciated the help. “That’s better than nothing. Thank you, Daniel.”
I left to round up my troops. Smith went on ahead and sought permission for my entourage to spend the night from Captain George Brown, a black ship-builder who lived east of the main town. That was the poor part of town. I’d met him before and knew him to be an honest hard-working man, like Smith.
Smith and Captain Brown showed up with a rickety wagon at the rail depot, just as the first solid gust of wind hit. The sky to the east was a dense cliff of bluish-purple racing toward us, evil-looking in the yellowed dusk. Lightning sizzled white streaks, the thunder detonating exactly like a navy ten-inch gun. It was going to be a bad one.
Honor Bound Page 5