by Janie DeVos
“You know what it took for me to come see you?” I took a step closer to him. “Do you, Max? Do you? Do you not realize that all the plans I’ve made have been squashed now? I’ve put my job on the line, and my life on hold, so that I could come see you face to face!” Angry, I was pointing a finger at him. “Everything that I have worked so hard for and had lined up for my future, I was willing to forfeit for you, Max. For you!” My voice rose in both pitch and volume. This man’s smugness and arrogance made me damn mad.
“That may be so, Eve,” he said, “but you haven’t given me the first reason as to why you’d do that—give up all these things that you thought were so extremely important. What I want to know is why? Why?”
All of a sudden, I felt totally drained and exhausted. In response, I let out a barely audible moan as I exhaled, and my shoulders sagged. “Because,” I said in a resigned and utterly defeated voice. “Because I love you.” I bowed my head and stared down at the tops of my black booties, watching as small clean spots appeared where the teardrops landed on the dusty leather.
Suddenly, large warm hands gently but firmly cupped my face and raised it up so that I was staring into a pair of intense dark blue eyes that seemed to look right through me. And below his eyes, his strong masculine mouth came down to whisper against my own mouth, “That’s it, Eve. Yes, that’s it.” His voice was husky, filled with emotion as he ran his hands up from my face and into my hair.
“Do you think we can make our two different worlds work together, Max?” I whispered.
“Yes, little kaccv hokte,” his beautiful mouth whispered against mine. “I think you and I can do just about anything.”
Then he covered my mouth with his, and as we stood there tasting and embracing each other, I heard the sharp blast of a steamboat’s whistle. There was no need to interrupt our kiss to see who was blowing it, though. I knew that standing in the pilot house of the May Breeze was a wise and wonderful old friend, smiling his broad smile of approval.
Epilogue
Our Own Corner
Lake Weir
Ocklawaha, Florida
1885
Max ran his hand down my slightly rounded belly and lower, until he found the most sensitive spot on my body. Using his other hand to pull me over to him, he touched me firmly, more quickly, until he brought me to a perfect release in the clear, cool waters of the spring. Bringing his lips down to mine, he sealed the exquisite moment with his mouth and then started to climb out of the pool, but I pulled him back again and wrapped my legs around him, encouraging him to find the same beautiful release that I had just found.
As he moved within me, I saw the glint of my wedding band reflected in the bright morning sun as I gripped his large shoulders, and I marveled again at the fact that we had been married for nearly a year, with a child due in just a few short months. I held Max tightly as he moaned deeply and shuddered and then waited as his breathing slowed and returned to normal. We climbed out of the spring together and lay on the soft grass to allow our naked bodies to dry in the early September sun. Putting an arm beneath my head, I looked out at our vast citrus grove and saw that the small yellow and orange fruits were quickly ripening.
Much like the babe in my belly, I thought to myself. Max pulled me over to him, and as I snuggled against his side, I couldn’t help but think about how happy I was.
Fortunately, I still wrote for the Florida Times-Union, but from afar and on a freelance basis. Charles Jones had been more than kind by keeping me on the staff and printed as many stories as I could send to him. I traveled as much as I could and as often as Max was able to leave the grove. He always accompanied me as I wandered around the state, taking advantage of the different areas for hunting while I gathered stories about the people and the places that made Florida an interesting amalgam of the past and the present.
Sadly, I hadn’t spoken to my parents since the day I’d walked out of the house. And from what I’d been told by the very few who still knew anything about their day-to-day existence, Papa was still the same while my mother seemed to be quickly fading. Her health was poor, and she was unable to work anymore. Because I kept in touch with James and Joseph, I knew that they were sending money to get our parents by, but I still hadn’t been able to bring myself to the point of reaching out to them.
Ivy and Moses were doing well with their baby, Charles Maxwell, otherwise known as “Charlie,” and we were planning on visiting them within the month, before I got much bigger.
Ivy was becoming a well-respected and much-sought-after medicine woman in South Florida in just the relatively short time she’d been there. Because she was white, she was able to go back and forth between the Seminoles and the white world. Both groups of people had learned to trust her and count on her.
Moses had been fully embraced by the Seminole people because of his heritage and had learned their language quickly. He became instrumental to the negotiation of trades or sales between the Seminoles and the whites.
James and Joseph were following their dreams with great focus and determination. James continued his studies in structural engineering at the University of Georgia, and he was considering the southern part of the state as the place to begin his career upon graduation. Florida seemed to be in an ongoing state of change, and James realized that progress would continue south, where land was plentiful and opportunities awaited. It was inevitable that the trains would end up running the length of the state someday, and James seemed to have set his sights on helping to raise new towns and cities all along the rail lines. But while James looked toward the south for his future, Joseph was interested in all points of the compass as he continued working his way up the waterways of America.
My older brother signed on with the prestigious Anchor Line Company, in New Orleans in March of ’85. The ship he’d been assigned to was the City of New Orleans, and it was nothing short of a floating palace. At two hundred ninety feet in length, the ship required five boilers, which Joseph expertly oversaw. The ship ran the New Orleans to St. Louis route, carrying passengers as well as large tonnages of cargo for trade. Working for the Anchor Line Company made it necessary for him to move to New Orleans, so as soon as the ink was dry on his contract, he moved with his wife Regina, and their son Matthew Wayne, to his new home port. Though I missed him, I was terribly proud of him for being considered one of the finest maritime engineers in the area. He had worked hard to achieve that reputation, and it was paying off handsomely for him.
Regardless that my siblings and I were scattered far from each other, we knew that nothing would ever come between us again.
Suddenly, I felt the baby moving and turned to Max to tell him but saw that he was sleeping. He looked so peaceful that I just let him be. As I watched him, I thanked God once again for this beautiful man with whom I shared such an intense yet gentle love. We had indeed created one world out of the two vastly different ones we’d come from, and though it was not a perfect world, it was ours, and our own special corner in Glory Land.
Don’t miss the next novel in Janie DeVos’s fascinating account of early Florida,
The Rising of Glory Land.
Preface
Lake Weir Area, Central Florida
February, 1895
My world changed as I sat hidden within the branches of a wasted orange tree. I was playing hide-and-seek with my nearly nine-year-old brother, Dylan, and at the moment, he was “it.” As I sat silently upon a limb, my mother appeared below me and, refusing to give away my hiding spot, I watched her look soundlessly at the devastation that surrounded us. Even at the age of seven, I knew that the amount of damage our citrus groves had suffered was enormous. Thousands of shriveled and pitted-skinned oranges covered the ground, and beyond what I could see were another hundred acres of the frozen remains of our tangerine and grapefruit trees. Nothing had been spared.
Mama squatted down and picked up a ruined o
range, but the sound of a wagon rolling down the road that ran parallel to our grove got her attention, as well as mine, and she stood up and looked in that direction. Several rows of orange trees blocked our view for the moment, but just from the creaking, sluggish sound of the wagon plodding along, I figured it was heavily weighted down. When it cleared the trees, I could see that I’d been correct. The conveyance was piled high with belongings, and crowded in and among them all was Clyde Whitfield, along with his family. All five of his children, as well as his wife, Grace, looked as beaten down as our groves. But as Clyde turned toward Mama to touch the brim of his sweat-stained hat in greeting, I saw more than just defeat look on his face. I could see a terrible fear in his eyes that seemed to ask the question: What now?
When the first freeze slammed Florida on December 29, the temperature sank to nineteen degrees, and snow blanketed areas from Tampa across the state to Titusville. But even while Dylan and I were making our first snowballs, I couldn’t stop thinking about the things I’d heard during the meeting at our church the night before. Another grove owner Bob Chapman started saying that Armageddon had begun, and since Reverend Short had preached about that very thing just a few weeks before, I knew what Mr. Chapman was talking about and it terrified me. Looking around at how unusually full the church pews were, I couldn’t help but believe he might be right. We prayed together as “children of a mighty and merciful God” for hours that night, and at first it seemed as if our prayers might actually have been heard, for within the week small signs of life began shooting out in green buds on the sturdier older trees.
My parents, Max and Eve Harjo, knew that many of our younger trees wouldn’t survive, but they felt that the older ones could, and Papa had said those that did were almost guaranteed to give us the sweetest fruit we’d ever tasted. But all hope was lost when the second freeze, on February 8, hit us even harder than the first one had. There was no snow this time, but after the temperatures stayed well below freezing for two straight days, there was nothing left of the trees but shriveled fruit and blown out bark when the sap froze in the trunks. Leaves and fruit fell from the branches, leaving our once beautiful groves a dying wasteland. My father said that if Mr. Chapman was right—that Armageddon had begun—then the Bible had gotten it wrong, after all. We wouldn’t be consumed by fire and brimstone, he said, but by an icy grip instead.
Suddenly, I heard Papa calling Mama’s name. “I’m in the third row,” she shouted, and a moment later, he appeared through some of the trees about halfway down the row from us. I knew I should make my presence known, but there’d been too many hushed conversations between my parents lately, and I wanted an unfiltered version of what was going on, so I remained silent and still.
“Did you see the Whitfields?” he asked as he walked toward her.
“Yeah, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to them. I just saw them ride by with what looked to be everything they own piled into that old wagon. Did you talk to Clyde?”
“Yes. They’ve had enough. Since losing most of what they had in the ’86 freeze, they only had the fifteen acres of tangerines left, and most of those were younger trees. The grove’s destroyed. They’re heading back to Brunswick. You ’bout done here, Eve? We need to sit down and settle on what we’re gonna do, and when.”
“Still thinkin’ about doing what we talked about last night, Max?” Mama asked.
“Yes,” Papa confirmed.
“I figured you’d already made up your mind that’s where we’re headed.” She smiled up at him. After ten years of marriage, it was obvious they knew each other pretty well. “James will be thrilled,” she said, referring to her older brother.
I liked Uncle James. He always brought Dylan and me something when he came for a visit, and he looked a lot like Mama, with his dark red hair and brown eyes. He lived far away, south of us, in some tiny little placed named Miami. I’d heard him tell my parents more than once that we should move down there, too, but I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. I liked living among the orange groves and swimming in the blue springs, and I saw no reason to change any of that. I had to admit, though, Uncle James’ enthusiasm was fairly contagious as he described the beauty of the place, and the different and exciting things to do, like swimming in an ocean of salty water. What a strange thing that would be!
“Well, I’m glad someone will be thrilled about it,” Papa said, “’cause Miami’s a pretty rough place. But, things will change fast once the railroad gets down there. It didn’t freeze that far south – at least not to the extent and duration that it did here, and I’d be willing to bet that railroad man Flagler knows it, too. Even so, we don’t have to have groves again, Eve, at least not as large as we have now. There’re other ways to make a living, too, and after what we’ve just been through, I’m leanin’ towards those other ways. There’s the fishing industry, and, soon enough, there’ll be a good tourist industry as more and more folks come down on the trains. James says he’s gonna help build up Miami, and I have no doubt that he will. He’ll prosper in a big way because of it, too. If we get down there while the place is still young, we can do the same, Eve.”
“Still, Max, there’s hardly anything there, or anyone either.” Mama sounded a little uneasy. “Remember what James once told us? It’s mostly dreamers of the hardiest kind or hard people of the most desperate kind that are there now, and we’d be settling our family among them. But I guess we’re pretty desperate now, too,” she said, forcing a smile.
I was reminded of a letter we’d received from Uncle James soon after he’d arrived in Miami six months before, when he’d gone down to help design and build a hotel. He’d written that the area had so many mosquitoes, horse flies and sand fleas that they were thicker ‘n thieves at a blind men’s convention and could suck a body dry in a matter of minutes. And if that wasn’t enough to make one turn tail and run, there was the fact that the longtime homesteaders and Seminoles didn’t take too kindly to a bunch of outsiders coming into their territory and rearranging things as they saw fit. Though Mama had laughed and said that most of the letter was probably exaggerated, I figured there was some truth in it, too.
My thoughts of the future were quickly replaced by the present when I heard Mama say that it was nearly dinnertime and ask Papa if he was hungry.
“I could eat,” he confirmed.
“Let’s find Dylan and Eliza,” she said as she bent down to look beneath the branches of the trees to see if she could spot our legs down one of the rows. “We need to let them know what’s going on.”
As they headed off toward home, I didn’t move from my branch. I needed to think things over for a minute or two, to see how I felt about it, and to see how it felt to say the name of that strange new place out loud. “Miami,” I whispered. I climbed down through the branches, shimmied down the trunk, and then started for home. “Miami!” I said a little louder. I decided I liked the name. Maybe I’ll decide I like the place, too, I thought, if the ’skeeters don’t run us off before I have enough time to settle in.
About the Author
Janie DeVos, a native of Coral Gables, Florida, first began working in the advertising industry in the late 1980s, but left the field in 2000 and turned her love for writing into a full time career. She is the author of the national-award winning poem How High Can You Fly, as well as acclaimed children’s picture books and women’s fiction novels
Ms. DeVos has made numerous appearances in schools and libraries as well as in bookstores including Barnes and Noble and Borders Books. She has been a keynote speaker, a selected author for special events for the Miami Book Fair International, and has served on various committees, including being the authors’ liaison for the Reading Across Broward Festival in 2006. In the autumn of 2013, she was a highlighted author at the Carolina Literary Festival, outside of Asheville.
Janie DeVos continues work on her novels, while enjoying her not-so-quiet life with her husband and two howling
Basset Hounds in a log cabin on the top of a mountain in North Carolina.