Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County

by Amy Hill Hearth

  And then it would die down again. I confess I didn’t pay much attention unless Mama brought it up, which she did often. Mama always took the side of poor folks, regardless of color.

  I wondered what Mama would have said about Darryl’s project, and the words came through strong and straight from heaven. Darryl’s a shortsighted and greedy jerk, I heard her say inside my head, and just thinking those words made me almost laugh out loud.

  Was I imagining Mama’s words or did I have a direct line to her, reposing as she was, beyond the pearly gates? It didn’t matter. Her words rang true either way. The fact is I’d been assuming that moving poor folks away from the river would be a consequence of Darryl’s project. Knowing my hometown, I now realized it was possible that getting rid of them was an underlying reason for the groundswell of support for Darryl in the first place.

  Seven

  Judd Hart showed up at my cottage the next morning with a small snapper whose shell had been damaged, probably by a lawn mower.

  “Look, I fixed him up,” Judd said, beaming but a little hesitant. He had used gauze and first-aid tape, and I wondered aloud if it would do the job. “Oh, I’ve been studying,” Judd said. “Not that you were doing anything wrong,” he added quickly, “but I read a copy of National Geographic magazine, and it said the shell has to breathe. We should never use any kind of epoxy, or heavy tape.”

  I had used anything I could think of over the years, even duct tape in emergencies, to hold an injured turtle’s shell together. And here was Judd, at thirteen years old, showing me something new. I was humbled. He bit his bottom lip, and I realized he was afraid he might have offended me. Truth be told, I was a little embarrassed, but my instincts told me that Judd’s need for praise was greater than my need to protect my pride. It couldn’t be easy having Jackie for a mother, plus a dad who traveled a lot as the business manager for Mr. Toomb. This was a boy who might have benefited from having a brother, but instead he had two older sisters—identical twins—who were in their own little world. I’d never actually had a conversation with either of them.

  “Judd,” I said, “you’re very wise and I’m sure you will go places in life. I am very impressed, and, on behalf of turtles everywhere, thank you.”

  He blushed a shade of red that nearly matched his hair. I realized if this conversation went on any longer it would be excruciating for him, so I changed the subject. “So, when does school start?” I asked.

  His face fell. “Two weeks,” he said sadly.

  “Um, well, what grade will you be in?”

  “Eight,” he said, not sounding any happier.

  I racked my brain for a better topic. I was not used to conversing with teenagers. “Oh,” I said, “your mother mentioned that you joined the Civil Air Patrol.”

  “Yes!” he said, almost bowling me over with his enthusiasm. “I’m too young to fly but I can go along as a spotter. I’m going to keep doing it during the school year, though I’ll have to cut back my hours. I had to persuade Mom that it would be okay, and convince my dad that it was something important I should do.”

  He was right: It was important. The Florida coastline was so vast that even the Coast Guard couldn’t patrol every inch. The Civil Air Patrol filled the gap, with volunteers flying their own small planes to check for boaters in trouble. But the Naples Civil Air Patrol didn’t just fly over the Gulf. They followed the rivers and streams into the Everglades. In recent years, the volunteer group had taken on an additional role that seemed straight out of a James Bond movie except it was real—to keep an eye out for suspicious activity since Collier County was so close to Cuba.

  Judd told me about the things he had seen. There was a fishing boat that ran out of fuel and was in danger of sinking because of a problem with its bilge. And a tourist who fell asleep on a float and drifted too far from shore to swim back. “I saw something really strange last week,” he said. “A lot of trees being cut down by the river a ways behind Mrs. Bailey White’s house but further down.”

  If I’d had anything in my hands, I’d have dropped it. “What?! Wait, are you talking about where Darryl is planning his project? Are you saying he’s already started?”

  Judd looked panicky. “Well, I don’t know . . . I mean, I don’t know if it’s his, or if something else is going on. But every day it seems like there’s more trees cut down.”

  He was sorry he had brought it up. I could see it in his eyes. “Judd,” I said, trying to be calm, “have you ever seen a map of the plans? I mean, Darryl’s development plans?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “There ain’t any map as far as I know. Oh, don’t tell Mom I said ‘ain’t,’ okay? She’d ground me for a week.”

  “There must be a map,” I said, thinking aloud. “Judd, I’m going to leave you with the turtles and go see if I can find someone who will know what’s up.”

  Judd nodded. As I turned to leave he added, “There’s a trailer. I saw it from the air. It’s in a clearing about a mile from the Trail. Maybe that’s where you’ll find your, uh, former husband.”

  • • •

  I COULDN’T FIND ANYONE DOWNTOWN who would talk to me. I went to the mayor’s office; I went to the hardware store and the Book Nook. My little town was usually a gossip mill but not when it came to this subject.

  Judd had drawn a rough map showing the way to get to the trailer. It was much too far to walk, and, anyway, I needed reinforcements. I hated to do it but I called Jackie from the pay telephone inside the Rexall. Would she take me over there? Would she keep me company, in case we found Darryl and he got ugly? If there was one thing Jackie loved, it was intrigue. That, and the possibility of some surefire excitement.

  “Of course, Dora dear,” she said, “I believe I owe you an apology. I was thoughtless and selfish about the construction in the, um, swamps. I was thinking about it and I believe you are right that the creatures, uh, critters, as you say, have a right to be here, too. Mankind is nothing if not arrogant. And, anyway, if I can help you, I would like to.”

  I couldn’t resist. “Even if it means you won’t get new restaurants and stores?” I asked, needling her.

  She sighed. “Yes, if it’s the right thing to do. Besides, I’m mad at your former husband. I don’t like the way he’s handling this.”

  “That makes two of us,” I said. No disagreement there.

  “I can’t go over there right now, though,” Jackie said. “Can you wait an hour?”

  “Surely can,” I said. “I’ll be at the post office.”

  I was reluctant to see my former colleagues because I wasn’t ready to answer questions about my year away, and they had a way of flustering me. Working there wasn’t so bad, but as the only woman I’d always felt I was a bit of an intruder. Too bad Marty, my second cousin on Daddy’s side, had been relocated to the post office in Plant City.

  I found three of my former colleagues having a smoke break in back. They had been looking at a girlie magazine and when they saw me, they quickly put it away. Of course, this made it even more awkward to speak to them.

  Maybe because I’d caught them doing something they shouldn’t—and feared I would tell their supervisor—they were friendlier than I expected. I learned there was a lot of support in town for Darryl’s project, and, just as Plain Jane had said, it was all about jobs. One of my former colleagues put it this way: “My son has no future here. The only hope I have of him coming back to Collier County after he graduates from Gainesville is that there will be new opportunity here. Otherwise, he’ll move away.”

  Great, I thought. What I didn’t say was, Why don’t you move with him, to some place that’s already paved over? But since I was trying to get information from these fellas, I couldn’t afford to alienate them. They were trying to be honest with me. The smartest thing I could do was listen. So far they’d been pretty forthcoming. But when I asked if Darryl had permission from the mayor and the council, they either didn’t know or didn’t want to give me a straight answer.

&nbs
p; “There have been some legal formalities,” one of them said, choosing his words carefully. “I’m pretty sure, from what I hear, that he’s already started work.”

  A car horn blasted out front. “That’s my ride,” I said. “Thank you, but I’ve got to run.” I wanted to hurry so that Jackie wouldn’t honk the horn again.

  The youngest of the three men followed me. He’d been in the Navy, and I always thought he might be sweet on me. “Dora?” he called out.

  “What?”

  “I don’t think things have been done properly,” he said. “By Darryl, I mean. I went to one of the town meetings and it seemed like it was a done deal. Important enough to be rushed through. Please be careful, Dora.”

  His comment almost took the wind out of my sails. I climbed into the passenger seat, grateful that the convertible top was up, on account of it looking like rain. I didn’t feel like seeing anyone—or being seen—at the moment.

  But Jackie was on a tear. “I just learned the most amazing thing,” she said breathlessly. “Ted is on the road—up in the Panhandle or whatever it’s called—and he phoned me because he won’t be home tomorrow, even though he said he would. Anyway, it seemed like it just kind of slipped out—like he wasn’t going to tell me—but when he’s on the road he gets tired and I think he let his guard down—”

  “What?” I said.

  “He said that Mr. Toomb is going to . . . well, I don’t know how to say this, it sounds so ridiculous.”

  “Jackie! You’re killing me!”

  “Mr. Toomb is starting an airline.” She hit the accelerator.

  I thought I must have misheard. “An airline?”

  “A regional airline. You know, Naples to Miami. Naples to Tampa. Jacksonville to Tampa. But the major ones in place by the end of this year.”

  First the real estate development, now an airline? What next? I said a quick prayer that the ultimate goal was not like the plans rumored for Orlando, where someone widely suspected to be Walt Disney was said to be buying up huge tracts of land. Walt Disney himself was thought to be waiting for the right time to make a big announcement about his “Florida Project.”

  I finally found my voice. “Jackie,” I croaked out the words, “do you think this has anything to do with that project planned by Walt Disney?”

  “Sure,” Jackie said. “I think old Mr. Toomb is positioning himself to ride on Walt Disney’s coattails.”

  “What about Darryl?”

  “Oh, I think Darryl is an opportunist just like Mr. Toomb. I asked Ted if he knew anything and he says Darryl’s money is coming from New Jersey. Some suburb in New Jersey—I think it’s called Basking-something. Basking Ridge, I think. Anyway, Darryl’s investors may be trying to capitalize on Disney too, same as Mr. Toomb is.”

  “But we’re so far south of Orlando,” I said. “Heck, that’s almost two hundred miles north of here!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Jackie replied. “That’s the way investors think. Florida is ‘hot’ right now. Everything’s on the table. That’s what Ted says.”

  I could see it all now. Naples would be connected to the outside world in a way it had never been. “Won’t they have to improve our airport?” I said, thinking that would take some time. All we had now was a little cement runway good enough for the Civil Air Patrol to take off and land. Just a few private planes, that’s all. A commercial airline would change everything.

  “Oh, they’re already doing that,” Jackie said. “Judd said something to me about it the other day, but I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  This was bigger than I had even imagined, and beyond anything I could prevent. I might as well try to part the Red Sea. What was the point in confronting Darryl? But a funny thing had happened to Jackie. Now that I was tuckered out, she was full of that unstoppable Jackie energy.

  “Well, we can’t stop Walt Disney, and there’s not much we can do about Mr. Toomb,” she said. “But I don’t think we should raise the white flag to Darryl—not without a fight, anyway.”

  Eight

  Dang, thought Dolores Simpson, the former Bunny Ann McIntyre. Why was it taking that little gal, Dora Witherspoon, so long to meet up with her ex-husband and talk some sense into the man? When was she going to come back here and tell me what in tarnation is going on?

  Dolores was not accustomed to feeling impatient. Living in her fishing shack all these years meant she had none of the stresses and deadlines of ordinary life. There’s no reason to be in a hurry when you have nowhere to go. The fish would bite, or they wouldn’t. The night heron sat stoically on her messy ol’ nest. Five minutes could have passed, or five years.

  “Hey,” she called, “how many eggs you got there, anyway? Three? Four?”

  The small heron stared back. Sometimes, she’d shake her head just like a person but today she wasn’t going to be bothered.

  “I wonder when yer ol’ eggs are going to hatch,” Dolores said half to herself. “I hate to break it to you,” she added, calling over to the bird, “but in case no one told you, your little night heron chicks are going to be ugly as a toad’s hindquarters. Now, don’t take it real personal; that’s just the way it is. If this is your first nest of eggs, I don’t want you to be surprised, that’s all. But Lawd knows there ain’t nothing uglier in this world than a night heron chick.”

  The bird stretched its neck and let out a sharp squawk.

  “Oh, you didn’t like that, huh? Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Just teasin’ you, is all.”

  Dolores swallowed a mouthful of porch-brewed tea from an old canning jar. Beside her on the step was a basket overflowing with swamp reeds. Marylou, a Seminole Indian, had taught her how to make baskets years before. It was a miracle, watching Marylou turn reeds into a work of art—a usable work of art that the tourists would buy. Marylou had died a long time ago—ten years? fifteen?—and ever since, Dolores didn’t have the heart to make baskets. But with all this mess going on with new development, something made her start again. Maybe it was the easy rhythm of weaving the reeds. Worst thing in the world, waiting for news. And maybe even harder when you’re all by yourself, ’cept for a night heron to keep you company.

  She remembered how quickly Marylou’s hands moved when she was making a basket. Why, she could make one in a few hours, depending on the pattern. Of course, Marylou had been making baskets from the time she was four years old, maybe even younger.

  She worked for about an hour, then rested. Was she getting lazy, or was it just old age comin’ down the pike? Hard living catches up to a person real fast, Dolores thought. You think you’re doing purty darn good, next thing you know you look like somethin’ that washed in with the tide. When she’d gone into town and sent that telegram to little Dora Witherspoon, she’d been shocked at her own reflection in the big plate glass window at the five and dime. Who the heck is that? For a second she thought someone was sneaking up behind her but it was time—just time—that had caught up with her.

  Well, one good thing about getting older was that the men didn’t bother her anymore. Whenever that thought passed through her mind, she got religion. “Thank you, Jesus!” she’d say aloud. She didn’t miss men—at least, the bad behavior of men—one bit.

  Funny thing was, her nearest human neighbors were men. Billy and Marco were brothers of undetermined pedigree who shared a pickup truck and several bad habits. Because of their antics, usually fueled by moonshine, the area was called Gun Rack Village by the uppity types who ran Naples nearby.

  There was a fellow who never spoke a word and wore clothes like Tarzan. Dolores kept her distance from him, especially once she’d learned that Billy and Marco called him Sing Sing, after the prison up north from which he’d got loose and swum across a big river—the Hudson, maybe.

  More recently, an older man had set up camp near a huge clump of mangrove trees. He told Dolores, when she’d encountered him on the river one day, that he’d had enough of the modern world and intended to live and die right there.
She’d agreed to bury him if she came across his body.

  And then there was Weird Sam. He lived in an old trawler that had washed up the river in one of the bigger storms and had stuck fast between two cypress trees. No one knew the details, but according to the grapevine, Weird Sam was from a well-off family that had him put in an institution. At some point he either escaped or was let out; regardless, his family wouldn’t have anything to do with him. So he lived back in the swamps with a cat named Fish, a dog named Freedom, and a parrot called Mrs. Roosevelt. He did not entertain visitors.

  But he did reach out to Dolores when his cat stepped on something sharp and got a deep cut in its paw. He showed up crying with the parrot on his shoulder, the dog by his side, and the injured kitty in his arms. For some reason he thought Dolores could help him, and she did. He held the cat tightly while she poured some moonshine down its throat—just enough to make it woozy—and then stitched up the poor little paw. The cat was right as rain in no time, and Weird Sam started to consider Dolores a friend, or something close to it.

  Scattered among the ragtag white residents were Seminole Indians, though how many there were, and exactly where they were, Dolores did not know, even after living on the river all those years. Dolores had only known Marylou, who had taught her how to weave baskets.

  Further south on the river was the small village of colored folks. There was one spot on the river where they were known to gather on a Sunday once or twice a year. The first time Dolores had seen them there, she thought she was seeing haints. She hid behind a small grove of mangroves and watched as Negro women, dressed in white robes, walked single file toward a natural clearing by the river. What was most startling to Dolores was the women’s absolute silence. They paused while a group of small boys dashed ahead, poking sticks into reeds and banging drums up and down the water’s edge. No doubt they were scaring off gators and snakes. Not until Dolores saw two preachers wade out into the water, with one holding a Bible high in the air so it wouldn’t get wet, did she realize this was a baptism ceremony. The women were dunked under the water one at a time and came up spluttering. There was much hugging and joyful weeping as each newly baptized woman joined the others on the sand. Only after they were all baptized did they begin to sing. Their voices were lush and glorious as they sang their praise music in perfect harmony, accompanied by the ’ Glade’s own peculiar sound, a constant, low droning that seemed to come from deep within the earth.