Dream of Orchids

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Clearly it would be useless to push him, and even though the questions still seethed, I tried to listen as he talked about the Overseas Highway to Key West. The flat, sandy landscape and endless palm trees flowed past the car window.

  It would be a drive of several hours, he told me, since the keys stretched more than a hundred miles along a reef that separated the Gulf of Mexico from the Atlantic Ocean. The island of Key West was at the tip of the “scorpion’s tail” that curved into waters where ocean and gulf met in swirling currents.

  “A lot of the highway is built over water,” Marcus said. “Though I wish I’d been around when the keys weren’t connected with bridges. The way into Key West used to be only by boat. Just the same, the highway is a miracle in its own right.”

  His voice warmed as he told me the story—a voice that carried color and vibrancy, and I found myself once more listening to its sound as well as to his words.

  The reason the Overseas Highway existed at all, he said, was because of one man’s obsession. Long before this project, Henry Flagler had built a railroad to open Palm Beach. Later he determined to run the tracks all the way down the keys to isolated little Key West—a gigantic undertaking that took years of planning before a single piling was put in. Everything had to be brought in by boat at first, and there were endless complications and disasters.

  “A lot of people said he was crazy, but Flagler paid no attention. Obsessions never count the cost. In a way, I suppose he was running a race with time because he wanted to see his railroad completed in his own lifetime. He brought in hundreds of workers to build huge concrete pilings and bridges from key to key, and a good many of those men died during the years of construction. There were accidents, explosions, hurricanes. They called the railroad Flagler’s Folly in those days, and it lasted for just twenty-three years.

  “In 1912 when the first train whistle sounded in Key West, the whole town went crazy. There are pictures of that celebration. I remember one of a little girl handing Henry Flagler a bouquet of flowers, and there are tears on his cheeks.”

  “Why did it last only twenty-three years?”

  “In 1935 the eye of a huge hurricane struck Islamorada in the Matecumbe Keys. Some people say Matecumbe is a corruption of the Spanish Mata Hombre, or ‘Kill Man,’ and the keys lived up to their name. A big section of the railroad was swept away, and more than five hundred lives were lost. There was never a true count, because so many bodies were never found. It’s not a story the real estate people like to tell.”

  “Couldn’t the railroad be repaired?”

  “It never really paid off. In fact, it nearly bankrupted Flagler and his partners. So no one had the money—no one wanted to save it. But on its roadbed, and over all those bridges with their Roman arches, the Overseas Highway was built. Here we go, Laurel—the first bridge!”

  Listening to Marcus’s voice, I’d been able to put my concerns aside for a time, and now I felt a stirring of excitement. This wasn’t just a road we traveled—it was part of a fascinating history, and I was glad that Marcus had given me this glimpse.

  “In the beginning,” he went on, “the road was only two lanes wide all the way. It’s still that in places. They used to call it Death Alley because there were no shoulders, no turnoffs. If a car came over from the other side, there was no way to escape a crash, and there were accidents. Now it’s being widened and a parallel road built, so each can be one-way. Though there’s still not much room, especially on the bridges.”

  The world seemed to have widened around us, turning into a far-reaching immensity of seascape and sky that was strange to me—overwhelming and oppressive. The green land areas were tiny by comparison and seemed at the mercy of both water and windy sky.

  At first, before the first bridge, a sea of grass washed the banks below the road. Tidal creeks, really, since I could glimpse water shining underneath in the sun. There were mangrove swamps on either hand, with black roots twisting beneath beautiful dark green growth that seemed mysterious—places that would hold no human foot, and never gave up their secrets. The expanse of blue sky, the green and blue shading of the water on both sides, began to seem overpowering. For me, this was a strange, unknown world that both stirred and disturbed me.

  On some of the keys little towns had been built, catering to the needs of tourists for lodging and food, for boating and fishing and swimming. The towns seemed nondescript, with the same gas stations, restaurants, motels, and neon signs that covered most of America. I preferred the wild, mysterious stretches in between, even though they made me uneasy.

  Marcus must have sensed something of my feeling. “This is the road to an outpost. It’s what’s waiting at the far end that counts. But you need to get the feeling of its isolation first. There’s been a lot of drug running along this road betweeen Key West and the mainland, and a few years ago the U.S. Government set up a blockade. Every car that went through was stopped, and you can imagine what that did to the tourist trade. It’s already a long trip, and while the blockade was in effect, many people gave up coming in by car. But Key Westers don’t take things like that lying down.”

  “What could they do?”

  He laughed, remembering. I hadn’t heard him laugh before, and the sound made me shiver. Watch it, I told myself. Don’t start being attracted to this man!

  “The island declared itself the Conch Republic and seceded from the United States. With celebrations and declarations and pronouncements! Key West loves parties, and they did this to a turn. The blockade was lifted and everything quieted down again. I still have one of the passports to the Republic they issued at the time.”

  He’d given me a map to follow, and as we drove through, I picked out names: Key Largo (shades of Bogie and Bacall!); Islamorada, where the hurricane had struck; Marathon, a sandy little Florida town. And after that the Seven Mile Bridge. There’d been other bridges carrying us from key to key, some of them quite long, and once we passed a forlorn stretch where arched railroad pilings stood abandoned in the water, bypassed by the modern highway. The bridges were more frequent now, and there was more water—the distance to Key West lessening by the moment.

  All my uneasiness swept back. “Tell me what to expect,” I said. “How do they feel about my coming? How does my father feel? I won’t be put off any longer—I have to know.”

  He sighed. “All right. I have been putting this off, but now we’re nearly there, so let’s stop for coffee, and we’ll talk awhile. I know how full of questions you must be, but I don’t know all the answers you’ll want, Laurel. Anyway, there’s a place on the next key, and we’ll take a break.”

  I was glad to get out of the car and stretch my legs. At the restaurant we sat at a small table in an airy room with ceiling fans overhead and pots of tropical foliage all around. I asked for tea and a muffin, and waited for Marcus to tell me the worst.

  “The only way you can deal with whatever comes is a step at a time,” he warned. “Don’t rush in and try to take charge, or fix things up that don’t please you.”

  I sputtered indignantly. “I’m not like that!”

  “I hope you’re not.” His slight smile told me he was trying once more to get under my skin. Then he sobered. “I’d really rather not hand you my ideas and prejudices about the situation at your father’s house. At least not in the beginning. I’d rather hear what you think, once you get some idea of what’s going on. Something is, I’m afraid, and in some ways perhaps you can do more in the situation than I can. For one thing, you’ll be inside the house. And if your father begins to like and trust you, who knows what can happen?”

  “What if I don’t like or trust him? Perhaps that’s even more likely. I may take one look and run. I’ve had misgivings ever since I left New York.”

  “The first thing you said to me in Miami was that you don’t back out of things.”

  “I was bragging. I do feel excited and curious—but maybe a little scared too. You haven’t helped much when it comes to letting
me know what I’m getting into. I’m even wondering why I came.”

  “You came because your father isn’t well, and you’d never forgive yourself if you didn’t see him in time. That’s reason enough.”

  “That’s part of it, but there’s more, isn’t there? I wish you wouldn’t treat me like an idiot. Even back in New York, I felt there was a lot you weren’t telling me. If my father doesn’t want to see me, then everything will be even worse than it was before.”

  “That’s a risk you have to take. He hasn’t said he didn’t want to see you. When I told him I meant to bring you to Key West, there were tears in his eyes.”

  I didn’t want to be reached too quickly. My defenses were still up. “Tears are easy. I’ve shed a few myself and I don’t think they change very much.”

  I wished that the very thought of my father didn’t waken an angry, defensive hope in me. The old contradictions still tore me apart. “What did he say?” I added.

  Marcus regarded me over his coffee cup, and again I had that feeling of being looked through too clearly. “What Cliff said was, ‘I hope she’s as strong as her mother. But softer too.’”

  That made me wince. There was still more—something he held back. Something he wanted of me that he wasn’t ready to explain.

  “I haven’t come to fight for anything,” I told him.

  “In that case, you’re going to disappoint me.” He studied me again, and I decided that his eyes were not, after all, the gray-blue of the bay at home, but the greenish blue color of the gulf waters on the way to Key West. Why on earth should I think about the color of his eyes, when I didn’t really like him—or want to like him?

  “Disappointing you doesn’t matter to me very much,” I said. “I still don’t know why I’m here.”

  He seemed to think about that. “There’s something—a sort of angry vitality about you. A quality you may be able to use to help your father. I suspect you’re stubborn too, and I suppose that’s what I’m hoping for—help for him. I think he needs it pretty desperately, and I don’t think his other daughters are of much use to him right now. In fact, they’re part of his trouble.”

  “I suppose it’s my sisters who don’t want me to come?”

  “Feelings of suspicion on their part would be natural enough. After all, you’re being thrown at them suddenly, and they’re not going to open their arms right away. Though Fern did send you that orchid. Mainly it’s Iris who has set herself against your coming. This time Cliff has overruled her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before that they didn’t want me?”

  “Would you have come if I had? Anyway, it doesn’t matter. For once, Cliff stood up to Iris as he hasn’t done since Poppy died.”

  “Because you urged him to?”

  “Occasionally he listens to me. Of course I still don’t know how much of a mistake I may be making. As I told you, Iris plans to marry. It’s a marriage that Poppy opposed and Cliff still favors.”

  “That sounds as though you hope he’ll change his mind. Why was Poppy against it?”

  “For one thing, Derek Phillips is a lot older than Iris—fifty-two to her twenty-four. Derek runs one of the popular bars in Key West—the Banyan Tree, or Derek’s Place, as people call it. He’s made a pile of money over the years and spent a lot too. Iris has an inheritance from her mother, as well as what Cliff will leave her, so Derek’s money doesn’t matter. Since Poppy came from an old Key West family, there was a lot of cigar money there, and in later years it was banking money. Right now Derek’s engaged in something Poppy hated—treasure hunting in sunken wrecks.”

  “He sounds like an adventurer.”

  “Adventurers are a dime a dozen in Key west, Though I think it was mainly his treasure fever that upset Poppy. At least, that’s what she claimed. She didn’t want that for Iris.”

  “What do you mean—what she claimed?”

  Marcus seemed to shy away from the question and went on talking about Derek Phillips.

  “He’s done everything, been everywhere. Africa, the Orient, South America. He even conducted a spectacular rescue mission in Laos, and another one in Africa—along with several mercenaries, ex-Green Berets. Successful but dangerous. He takes big risks and men were killed. He doesn’t lose easily or settle for what’s conventional. He’s powerful—and not all that scrupulous.”

  “And you don’t like him, do you? You don’t want him either for Iris?”

  “I’m not part of the family,” Marcus said stiffly.

  “And my father admires this man?”

  Marcus hesitated. “Sometimes I think Cliff sees him as a character out of one of his novels—heroic and capable of dangerous, dramatic action. He and Derek have been friends from way back. Derek was away for a long while and returned to Key West only a few years ago. Iris had grown up by that time, and she seemed to fascinate him. She’s a fascinating young woman.”

  I’d begun to pick up something. Whenever Marcus spoke Iris York’s name, his voice took on a special concern.

  “Tell me about Iris,” I said.

  “She’s beautiful. Intelligent. Very capable too. She deserves better than Derek.”

  I wondered if there’d been a time when Marcus O’Neill might have wanted to marry Iris himself, but I wasn’t going to ask.

  “When will the wedding take place?”

  “Nothing’s been set. Right now Derek’s involved in a wild project that may even pay off. For the first time, he may have found an important shipwreck. It’s what they call a ‘new’ wreck, since no one’s registered it before. So he’d have salvage rights. Laws have been changing, and I’m not sure where he stands right now.”

  “Was this a recent wreck?”

  “If it’s the ship he hopes for, she went down more than three hundred years ago.”

  “A Spanish galleon!”

  “It’s possible. He’s found two cannons that may identify the ship when he gets them up. The archives in Seville indicate that it might be the Santa Beatriz.”

  I loved to swim, and I’d done some scuba diving off Long Island, but never in tropical waters. If this was really a seventeenth-century galleon …! I could feel prickles at the back of my neck.

  “Watch it! You’ve got that treasure fever look in your eyes. It can be catching.”

  “Why not? It sounds exciting. It would be wonderful to dive down and explore an old wreck. Do you suppose I could?”

  “The weather hasn’t been right for diving, so we haven’t done much lately. But the season’s opening up and the ocean’s a bit quieter now. However, Derek might not want you coming down. Nobody except his own divers is sure what he’s found. Treasure hunters are a secretive lot.”

  “You said ‘we.’ You’re a diver?”

  “Amateur. Research for Cliff. He arranged it for me with Derek.” Marcus spoke casually, but I had a feeling that he was excited about this wreck too.

  “Tell me what it was like. Diving must be completely different down here. What did you find?”

  “There wasn’t much to see when I’ve been down—that’s the trouble. There’s part of a ship’s anchor, and the two cannons that have been found so far. Also ballast stones—which are always a good indicator of where a ship went down. Tons of sand have been burying what’s there for centuries, and there may be few signs of the ship left.”

  “Did she sink out in the Gulf Stream?”

  “No. The Stream is deep enough to navigate safely. It’s when a ship got blown off course that it could be wrecked on a reef.”

  “How did he find the wreck?”

  “A couple of well-known treasure hunters, Mel Fisher, working off Key West, and Kip Wagner, at Vero Beach, have had spectacular success. These days the magnetometer is used. It’s an iron detector, so part of the anchor that hadn’t corroded away was located by the needle. You tow this contraption back and forth across the water until you get a reading. Unfortunately, it won’t detect gold. None of the gold detectors have been sensitive enough to work
at any distance. Anyway, Derek found the anchor. If this is the Santa Beatriz, the find could be spectacular.”

  “Historically, you mean?”

  “That’s what’s important. I hope Derek recognizes this. Treasure hunters can do a lot of damage to artifacts if their only concern is gold and silver.”

  “Why hasn’t the wreck been discovered before this?”

  “There are thousands of wrecks scattered across the bottom of the ocean. Some will never be found because the water and sand are too deep. Mel Fisher developed a way to blow the sand off and uncover what remains of a shipwreck. A recent storm probably helped to uncover what Derek found. Mel has established the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society—something that may do for underwater archeology what the Cousteau Society has done for sea life.”

  A new world was opening for me, and I knew I’d have to do some diving to Derek’s wreck, if I could.

  “Anyway,” Marcus went on, “all this treasure hunting is why Derek hasn’t time to get married right now.”

  “You mean treasure hunting comes ahead of love?”

  “Iris wants it that way too. It’s important to Derek.” Marcus didn’t sound sorry about the delay.

  “Are you going to write about all this?” I asked.

  “I want to—if Derek will let me. I’m only an apprentice adventurer. My job’s to get the story down on paper.”

  His voice had quickened with an excitement of its own, though Marcus’s “treasure” would be different from Derek’s.

  “What about Fern? How does she fit into all this?”

  He hesitated and I sensed a new reluctance. “You’ll understand better when you see her. In a way, she’s one of your father’s main problems. He worries about her a lot. Fern has always been everyone’s pet, but now she’s lost her mother, and she’ll lose her sister to marriage. She’s impulsive and not always sensible, and we’re all concerned about her. It’s a good thing Poppy had her orchids and taught her daughters to care for them. Fern has that, at least, to keep her busy.”