by Tom Lowe
Osceola looked across the opposite shoreline, the sunset coming less than an hour. He would meet the elder tonight. There was no wind, the Spanish moss hanging straight down, the knotty eyes of a large alligator just above the surface. Osceola listened for the sounds of gunfire in the distance, on the edge of the Green Swamp. He watched the wildlife, eavesdropping on nature, heeding sounds that weren’t native to his environment. He observed a cardinal singing from an oak, the bright red bird watching him near the river.
Osceola stood at six feet, handsome, dark hair and eyes, his skin lighter than most Seminoles. He wore a cloth shirt, buckskin vest and pants—a chest plate made from shell, three eagle feathers protruding from a black turban on his head.
He turned from the river, looked at his camp a hundred yards away. Tribe members—men, women and children mingling in and out of the chickee homes—primitive structures with roofs made from dried palmetto fronds. There was excitement in the camp. Some of the men had killed a large manatee. Two of the men dressed the fresh meat, the women preparing the meal. The animal would feed the entire tribe for at least a week. All parts of the manatee, snout to the thick tail, cooked and devoured.
Osceola watched his people for a moment, the Panther, Bear and Otter clans descending from women in the tribe. In the previous months, some of his brothers and sisters had been captured and sent away to a faraway land west of the great river called the Mississippi. The Indians were housed like cattle in camps of no return, the destiny found at the end of the Trail of Tears. Osceola would not go. Not surrender. Not submit to the relocation demands of men dressed as Army soldiers.
He walked a half-mile through the woods, heading in the direction of the temple mound and cave. The old man would be there. He was the oldest of the elders. And his medicine bundle was so powerful that he kept it away from the camp. He told Osceola to come at sunset. To receive medicine needed to prepare his spirit for war.
The sun was on the edge of the world when Osceola entered the partial clearing, a sacred place. A primal temple mound stood in the center of the clearing. It was more than twenty-five feet high by two hundred feet in diameter, centuries old and built by the ancients. The ancients had vanished due to war with the Spanish and disease exported from Europe. Osceola looked at the temple mound and felt a kinship, a powerful pull that often brought him here to be alone
On the perimeter of the clearing to the right of the mound was a slight knoll, a natural uplifting of earth by limestone formations, some of the old boulders protruding from the earth. It was the entrance to a system of caves. And it was in here where the medicine man kept the most powerful medicine, far away from others.
Osceola looked up to the peak of the mound, the old man a silhouette in the setting sun. He used one hand, motioning Osceola to climb. Within a minute, Osceola joined the elder at the summit. They could see across the flat forest and jungles of southwest Florida. Nothing but wilderness in any direction, the western sky was now a fiery red.
The old man’s face was carved by time. Skin dark, weather-beaten and creased from age and sun. He wore a vest with red, green and white beads sewn onto it. Buckskin pants. No shoes. A black scarf around his neck. His pewter gray hair hung from the sides of a dark green turban on his head, three flamingo feathers jutting from the turban.
He’d made a very small campfire in the center of the mound. He motioned for Osceola to sit. In the language of the Seminole he told Osceola to extend his arms, palms up. And then the old man used teeth from the jawbone of a garfish to cut into Osceola’s forearms, to scrape, the sharp bones leaving bloody trails. Osceola said nothing. He stared at the sunset, his jawline hard, the tinge of fire in his dark eyes.
The elder man chanted in song, dropping some dried leaves on the campfire and then blowing smoke into Osceola’s face. After a minute passed, the medicine man lifted a hollowed gourd and instructed Osceola to drink the black liquid inside. He did so, holding the drink in his stomach for as long as he could before turning his head to vomit.
The medicine man chanted, his eyes unblinking, staring into the ember of the fading sun, white smoke swirling around his craggy face. He opened a buckskin sack. Osceola could see powder the color of silver inside the sack. The medicine man produced a long black crow feather. He dusted the feather in the silvery powder and lifted it from the sack, placing the tip into the fire. When the feather ignited, he held it in front of Osceola and blew smoke into his face. He told Osceola to inhale through his nostrils. To, “Breathe in the spirit of the crow.”
Tomorrow at dawn the spirit of the crow would guide Osceola when two hundred men came to kill him.
ONE
(Florida Wilderness – Present Day)
Some old timers wouldn’t go there. They said there was something about the land—the place itself that was not welcoming, as if Mother Nature cast a spell on a few hundred acres tucked away in a primal spot that time overlooked and man left alone. The family, descendants of cattle ranchers, had tried for years to sell most of the land. And now, as urban sprawl crept like a disease over Florida, the environmentalist and nature conservation people were looking to buy and set aside tracts of pristine land, especially acreage that bordered rivers and lakes.
Today it was still private ranch land. Fenced along its massive perimeter. There were more than ten thousand acres, many bordering the Withlacoochee River. At one time, years ago, the ranch family ran herds of cattle over some of the property. Other sections, acreage encompassing part of the Green Swamp, were left to nature. Due to the remoteness, swampy terrain, poisonous snakes, ticks and leeches, folklore of hauntings—especially near the temple mound, there had been very little trespassing.
Today the remaining family members were anxious for an estate sale. Environmentalists had petitioned and encouraged the state of Florida to buy the most unspoiled areas and designate the property as a nature preserve or maybe even a state park. A large mound built centuries ago on an isolated piece of the property would make a perfect study in native cultures, some dating back thirteen thousand years.
Dr. Beverly Sanchez, an anthropologist for the state’s Department of Cultural Affairs, and two of her colleagues, steered four-wheel ATVs, following the ranch owner through the scarcely marked trails of the primeval ground. They looped around wet cypress hammocks, tannin water more than two-feet deep.
They traversed under live oaks that had been here since the Civil War. The property was thick with bromeliads, cabbage palms and saw palmetto. The rancher stopped near an oak, shut off the ATV motor. He wore an old Stetson hat, the lower third long-since stained from sweat. He was in his mid-sixties, rangy face filled with gray whiskers. “We’re almost there. Anybody need some water? Got a half dozen bottle in my saddlebags.”
“I could use some hydration,” said Dr. Sanchez, early thirties, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Even with no make-up on her face, the rancher thought that she was a striking woman.
“Here you go.” He stepped from his ATV and handed her a bottle of water. “How ‘bout ya’ll?” he asked the two graduate students, both men.
“I’m okay,” said one.
The second man shook his head. “You have any bug spray in there? l was fine until we stopped and then the mosquitoes got into a frenzy.” He swatted a mosquito.
The rancher nodded. He reached in one of the compartments on his ATV and lifted out a can of insect repellent. He tossed it to the man. “Help yourself. Pass it around. Skeeters don’t see people too much out here.”
Dr. Sanchez nodded and smiled. “We really appreciate you taking the time to show us the property. It’s like Florida of days gone by. It’s so beautiful. I can see why your family originally bought the land. I think it’ll make an excellent acquisition for the state.”
He grinned, removed his hat, wiping his furrowed brow. “When my daddy bought it, they were almost giving land away. He needed enough to run herds of cattle. A thousand acres would have done it. But because a lot of it was underwater, the s
ellers were glad to get rid of it. The whole parcel is less than eleven thousand acres. And the stuff ya’ll are interested in is no doubt the closest to Eden you’ll find left on earth. Let’s saddle up. We’re almost there.”
He cranked his engine. The others did the same and followed the rancher toward the northeast, to a place in Florida that hadn’t changed much in thousands of years.
They rode through nearly impenetrable bush, the sable palms slapping faces and hands with fronds interlocked across the trail. The rancher used his left hand to wipe a massive spider’s web from his face, while continuing to steer is ATV. After another five minutes, the sables and palmettos weren’t as thick, they seceded to oaks and pines. A half a minute later they entered an open space in a forest that was unique—nature’s own garden, a clearing in the midst of jungle, swamps, springs, rivers and dry woodlands.
And there it was.
A temple mound. A mountain in place of no hills.
Dr. Sanchez stopped. She shut off the ATV and started photographing the ancient mound. The others on her party followed.
The rancher circled back and said, “Wait ‘till you see the view from the top. Some people have told us that mound is older than the pyramids of Egypt. And on the backside are caves that go on and on. There’s a karst system of underground water, limestone…lots of springs bubbling up and flowing into the Withlacoochee. Like I said, this place as a direct descendant from the Garden of Eden. Some say it was Osceola’s hideout before he was captured under a white flag of truce. The state better buy it before somebody builds a theme park here.”
Dr. Sanchez looked up from her camera, her eyes following something in the sky. She watched three carrion birds ride the warm air currents, circling above them. She pointed. “Maybe there’s an dead animal nearby.”
The rancher nodded. “It’s life…and its damn sure death. This land has a motto: eat or be eaten. It’s all about survival and where’s the next meal coming from. Probably a deer carcass. Something left over from a panther or bear attack.”
They started their ATVs. The two graduate students following the rancher as he headed toward the right of the temple mound. On a whim, Dr. Sanchez decided to go to the left, to meet them somewhere on the other side. She drove the ATV slowly, taking in the majesty of the work that went into constructing a mound of this size.
She thought about the doctoral thesis paper she’d written on the Calusa Indians. They had been a fearless tribe. The men and women were tall. For more than two hundred years they resisted all attempts from the Spanish to convert them to the white man’s religion. And in 1535, they were the tribe that killed the Spaniard famous because if his exhaustive search for the fabled Fountain of Youth. Ponce De Leon met death at the end of a Calusa arrow dipped in poison from a beach apple tree.
Had the Calusa built this mound, she wondered. If not, who did and what happened to them.
Her thoughts were abruptly altered when the stench of death hit her nostrils. She’d smelled the odor once before when an indigent man she knew had died in his trailer home. Dead a week before he was found. And now, here it was again, in the middle of a secluded habitat. She stopped her ATV, her mind trying to comprehend what her eyes were sending to her brain. She couldn’t. The image was simply too horrible to grasp. She didn’t notice the rancher and the others riding up, their voices sounding muted. The coughing. The gagging sound. Someone trying to dial 9-1-1. No signal.
She stepped closer, trying to process the horror of what was on the ground. The body looked posed—propped up for display. She stopped, clutching her throat. The man’s body was at base of the tree, positioned in a kneeling posture. His hands had been tied behind his back. He was stripped of his clothes. A stick was wedged under his chin, holding his head up. He’d been scalped, dried blood coagulated in his open eyes, eyes that stared up at the top of the mound. Greenish blowflies circled his head. Some were crawling in his ears and nostrils. The others were feeding on dried blood that had oozed from his skull into what remained of his hairline.
Dr. Sanchez braced herself against a cabbage palm tree. Her knees were weak. The wind shifted, blowing the stench of death right toward her. She leaned over and vomited, the screech of carrion birds circling above her.
TWO
Joe Billie drove slowly approaching his old airstream trailer. He almost always would drive his twenty-year-old pickup truck with the windows down. Sometimes he listened to the news and human-interest stories on NPR. Mostly he listened to the sounds of nature, going deep into the Florida woodlands to harvest palmetto fronds. He spent much of his time in the fish camp drying palm fronds to use in building rustic outdoor shelters, waterfront bars at marina resorts usually. When not working, he read nonfiction books and carved wood.
He eased his truck off the hard packed dirt and oyster shell road that twisted through Highland Park Fish Camp, stopping in front of the last the vintage trailer in a remote part of the secluded camp. The once shiny aluminum exterior was stained in dried pine tree sap and age spots of oxidation from spending almost thirty summers in the harsh Florida environment.
Billie parked, glanced in his rearview mirror at the palmetto fronds that filled the truck-bed. He listened to his engine tick, cooling in the shade of large pines. He looked up at the blue sky between the limbs, the hoot of a barn owl coming from near the St. Johns River. It was a rare sound for that time of day and the time of year. Billie, a descendent from the Seminole Owl clan, thought the call of the owl was the warning of a sentinel long associated with his family. He lifted the machete from the truck seat. It was still sharp even after using it to cut dozens of palm fronds.
Billie got out of his truck. He carried a book he’d borrowed from the Volusia County Library in his left hand, the machete in his right hand. He was just over six feet tall, mid-forties, broad shoulders, brown skin, large and powerful hands. He wore his salt and pepper colored hair in a ponytail.
He stepped up to his trailer door, checked the hidden traps he always set when he was gone for more than a couple of hours. The small sliver of toothpick he’d wedged between the door and the jamb was gone. Billie lowered his eyes to the base of the metal door. The splinter of wood was at the threshold. He turned the handle. It was still locked, but it appeared that someone had jimmied the door.
Billie stepped back. Slowly turning. Listening. There was the second hoot from the owl. And then Billie heard the cars coming. At least three…maybe more. As they rounded the bend in the dirt road, he could see they were sheriff’s cars. Lights flashing. No sirens. They stopped quickly, dust and pine straw caught in the drafts. A large deputy got out of the first car, his right hand resting on the butt of his pistol.
“Are you Joe Billie?”
“What do you want?”
The deputy kept the opened door between him and Billie. “I want you to set that weapon down and step to one side.”
“What’s this about?” Billie’s hand tightened around the handle.
“Drop your weapon!”
Another deputy emerged, pistol drawn and pointed directly at Billie. He dropped the machete and stepped backwards, closer to his trailer. The first deputy approached Billie, staying within ten feet of him. “You Joe Billie?”
“Yes.”
The deputy looked at the palm fronds in the truck. “Where’d you get those?”
“In the woods.”
“What woods? Where?”
“What’s this about?”
“It’s about murder. It’s about scalping a man…and it’s about you.”
“Are you arresting me?”
“You got that right. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. And you have the right to an attorney.” He paused, stepped a little closer, studying Billie. “You want an attorney or can we go on down to the station and straighten this out?”
“I want to speak with Sean O’Brien.”
He ran hard. Stopped, waited for little Max to catch up, and
then jogged. Sean O’Brien was finishing an afternoon run along the beach near Ponce Inlet when his phone buzzed the first time. Max, his ten-pound female dachshund followed him, short legs a blur, stopping to sniff an occasional starfish or crab carried to shore by the pounding Atlantic. O’Brien slowed to a walk and then sat on a sand dune, cooling off, feeling his heart rate return to normal.
He was more than six-two, athletic build, wide shoulders, dark hair, chiseled face, hazel eyes that could penetrate the lies he’d faced conducting homicide interrogations years ago. His former partner in the Miami-Dade PD used to say O’Brien had a bloodhound’s nose for sniffing out BS during questioning, often getting a confession with the first hour. O’Brien simply chalked it up to closely watching people and listening to what they said or didn’t say. How they moved in the chair or didn’t move. The physical hints to the psychological façades.
His phone buzzed a second time.
Max sat at his feet, her pink tongue showing, eyes bright watching seagulls hop between the breakers. O’Brien looked the caller ID. It was from the Volusia County Jail. He knew no one in the jail. He knew no one that worked in the jail. He did know plenty of people in the Florida State Prison—people he’d help send there when he was a homicide detective. There was no one in or out of the county jail that he knew. But he couldn’t ignore the call. He answered, and for the first time ever, hearing a trace of desperation in his old friend’s speech. O’Brien felt his heart rate kick up again.
“I hate to ask you this, Sean…but I could use your help.”