HOMOSASSA SHADOWS (6 page)

In the silence Hackett turned to Brandy. “Come on. Fishhawk’s busy getting purified and ready for his family. We’ll go to the mound after I pick up my student. It’ll give me a chance to tell you about my own search.” He smiled, led her back toward the path, and dropped his voice. “Actually, I’m the one who’s made the real find, not poor old Hart. Only mine hasn’t any value except to research, and no museum can keep it.” He shook his head. “Fishhawk’s my friend, but don’t ask him about studying burial mounds. He doesn’t approve. Disturbing the dead’s a big negative.”

“You must’ve found Indian bones.”

Grif nodded. “I didn’t create the problem. Thieves who steal from Indian graves did.”

CHAPTER 4
 

“Fishhawk isn’t my friend’s English name, of course,” Hackett said as they pushed his boat off the shore. Brandy scrambled to find a seat among the sifting screens, trowels, and a small tool Grif identified as a probe. “Fish-hawk’s American name is Franklin Pine. But he likes to use the name he got at a naming ceremony as a boy. Comes from a dream his grandfather had when Fishhawk was a baby. Something about an osprey swooping down and plucking something valuable out of water. Even the name Fish-hawk is Anglicized. It’s really a Miccosukee word I can’t pronounce. Still, his mother had him baptized. Go figure.”

“Must be confusing for contemporary Seminoles, not knowing which is their real culture.”

The archaeologist turned the key to the engine and it roared to life. “Fishhawk knows. His boots are firmly in the chickee. Now Annie—she’s different. She’s a full-blooded Seminole, but she’s more into white culture.

Brandy watched Hackett skirt the oyster bar that lurked below the water where the creek joined the Homosassa River. “I’m to pick Bibi up at the dock nearest the Florida Marine Patrol trailer. She’ll be waiting there. He frowned and shook his head. “She won’t be eager to go back out to the mound. I warn you, the mosquitoes are fierce, and it’s dirty work. Bibi will never make a field archaeologist. I guess it’s just as well she finds out now.

She volunteers at the Crystal River Archaeological Site Museum. She should study native pottery and specialize in ceramics instead.”

Grif turned back upriver, skirted Bird Island with its roosting flocks of cormorants and anhingas, and skimmed past a row of shrimp boats docked along a pier.

“But you prefer field work?”

Grif gave her a wry smile. “Yes, but in an area where new discoveries are being made, like Mexico.”

When he passed the Marine Patrol station, he maneuvered into the closest marina. A tall, solidly built girl in jeans stood by one of the gas pumps, watching Grif. An attendant in coveralls hurried to the edge of the pier and helped pull Grif’s pontoon into a slip.

“I’ll fill the tanks while we’re here,” Grif said to Brandy. “You may want to get out, grab a Coke or something.” He called across to the girl, “Brandy O’Bannon here is going to ride out with us. She’s a reporter from Gainesville. Brandy, meet my student, Bibi Brier.”

Brandy stepped up onto the dock. “I’ve never seen real archaeological field work in progress,” she said to Bibi, who did not move from her place beside the pump. Instead she began encasing her long brown hair under a tight fitting scarf. She barely nodded to Brandy, then turned to Grif. “I’d about decided not to go this morning. But I’ve changed my mind.” She focused large gray eyes on Brandy, who thought young Bibi wore a lot of carefully applied eyeliner and mascara for grubby work in mosquito-infested woods.

Grif watched the attendant finish with the first heavy plastic tank next to the engine and start filling the second. “Today I’m planning to bring several items to the rooms I’ve rented at the motel,” he said. “I’ve taken an agitator there for washing pottery shards. We won’t be long at the mound.”

With languid grace, Bibi sauntered over to stand next to Grif. For a large-boned woman, she moved with a surprisingly liquid quality. Brandy thought she’d probably had training in dance.

“I can help you clean the fragments with a toothbrush,” she said.

Grif did not reply directly. “Bibi not only volunteers at the museum,” Grif said to Brandy. “Last fall she went to the Chassahowitza Wildlife Refuge a few miles south of here and helped build an observation blind and a pen for the winter’s incoming whooping cranes.”

Brandy turned to Bibi Brier with renewed interest. “You’ve been very busy.”

“I grew up in Crystal River,” Bibi said, eyes still on Grif. Brandy recognized the hero worship gaze.

If Grif was affected, he didn’t show it. “Well, let’s go. It’s already late. Fortunately, I don’t have to do anything except bag a few items.”

The three stepped down into the pontoon. Grif took his place at the console, while Brandy and Bibi crawled over the tools and perched on a bench in the rear. “I’ve got a suggestion,” Brandy said before Grif cranked the engine. “Drop me off at Alma May’s to pick up my own boat. I’ll follow you to the mound. I need to get back to my place by lunch time.” John would be waiting.

He shrugged. “Suit yourself, but after we turn off the Salt River into the Little Homosassa, you’ll need to watch for rocks. Stay right behind me. The river’s pretty shallow this time of year.”

A few minutes later he stopped at Alma May’s dock, then idled off shore while Brandy settled herself behind the wheel of her own pontoon. Beside Alma May’s small craft rocked a sleek Grady White boat with a 150 horsepower engine. Brandy glanced up at the house. Through the open living room window she recognized Melba Grapple, and beside her, a tall, bulky figure. Brandy remembered Alma May was a widow. As she turned the key, shifted into reverse, and cut in behind Hackett, she wondered if there was a Mr. Grapple.

After about a quarter of a mile, Grif wheeled his boat into the Salt River. For a moment Brandy had the incongruous view of the Crystal River nuclear power plant tower thrusting up above distant hammocks. Grif cruised through Shiver’s Bay and into the narrower Little Homosassa, where he beached his boat across from the mouth of a shallow creek. Both Bibi and Grif jumped out and dragged the bow further ashore. Brandy pulled in beside him, tugged her own craft up beside his, and climbed once more over the bow railing. Beyond the tiny beach rose a slope, dotted with red cedars and cabbage palms. A few slender trunks curved out above the water. Brandy did not see a mound.

Bibi stretched, stared at the ground lifting up before them, then wrapped her arms around herself. Although she wore a long-sleeved shirt, she didn’t seem confident it would protect her. “I’m staying with the boat,” she announced. “I’ll help with anything you want to take back. I don’t need to go up there again.”

Grif frowned. “Mosquitoes, I suppose,” he said. “Well, suit yourself.” He sighed. “I’ve got two people who’re supposed to help me, and neither one’s willing to work on the mound.” Brandy realized Fishhawk did not want to come even this close.

Shells popped under his feet as he walked toward Brandy, holding out a can of insect repellent. “The mosquitoes will be fierce. The Seminoles used fish oil mixed with juice or ashes of indigo. This probably works better.” He watched while she sprayed her arms and legs and rubbed some of the liquid on her face, then reached back into his boat and dragged out a bedraggled jacket. “Better put this on, too, for the long sleeves. You wear a wedding ring,” he added quietly.

Brandy’s cheeks reddened. He hadn’t noticed it before. “I do. But...” She paused in confusion. She had almost confessed that she and John had problems.

After a few seconds Hackett said, “I understand about the ‘but.’” He turned, started up an overgrown trail that wound among the cedars. “I was married for a time,” he said. “It didn’t take.” He glanced over his shoulder as she toiled up behind him. “But I’ve got no kids, thank goodness. And you?”

She shook her head, remembering how John felt on the subject, then looked up. They now stood on top of a hill about eighty feet wide and twelve feet high, overlooking both river and bayou. Brandy realized they had been climbing the mound itself, its summit hidden by thick cedars. “We’re on state land,” Grif said. “Florida owns about 80,000 acres here that are protected from development. Safety Harbor Indians lived here, long before the Seminoles came. They were in the area when the Spanish first came to Florida.” He looked west toward the Gulf, perhaps two miles away. “Treasure ships from Mexico sailed past here on the way to Hispan-iola. A few wrecked on coral reefs off shore because of the hurricanes.”

Brandy tried to picture the mound, river, and woods as they had been then—scores of Indians, men casting nets for fish and crabs, digging for clams, women pounding maize, children scampering among them.

“The state sent me here as a repairman, you might say,” Hackett said. “A Florida Marine Patrol boat spotted pot hunters up here a few weeks ago, digging up native pottery. The officers scared them off, but they could never identify the thieves. They notified the state archaeology department. Enter me.”

Brandy gazed around her. Across the top and sides of the mound the soil had been disturbed, but she didn’t see open holes. Apparently Hackett had begun restoration work.

“In these cases, a committee that includes Seminoles meets in Tallahassee. They decided I should preserve what’s not disturbed and turn the pottery fragments over to the Natural History Museum in Gainesville. I’m a regional curator on the staff.”

“You can’t just put things back the way they were?”

“Once a site’s disturbed, it’s ruined for the Indians and the archaeologists. We needed a spiritual advisor for the job, but fortunately, I knew Fishhawk. Of course, there aren’t any Safety Harbor people left, but the Seminoles could be very distant cousins. Some anthropologists believe a number of the original Indians survived the plagues of small pox and other diseases and joined incoming Creeks. After all, white men wrote the histories that said all the original natives were wiped out. Some may have survived far from the Spanish, farther inland. In any case, we know southeastern tribes were influenced by the mound-building culture.”

Brandy noticed that several spots were covered with fresh dirt. “Must make it hard to be an archaeologist in Florida. Don’t archaeologists usually collect what they find from the past?”

“Not at American Indian sites. Most American Indians believe the earth is damaged when it’s plundered. They think even burial goods like pots are animate. Certainly they don’t want Indian bones displayed, like museums did for years.” Hackett stooped and carefully withdrew a plastic cover. “I’ve followed Fishhawk’s advice—to a point. He was only near here once. Indians don’t like to be around the dead, or even look at a graveyard. He didn’t come as close as Bibi is now. Traditional Seminoles don’t even want to speak of the dead, but Fishhawk does have a job to do later.”

Grif pealed back the plastic sheet, and where it had been, Brandy could see a square hole in the soil and beside it a vertical shaft several feet wide. He squatted next to it. “Spent several days working here,” he added. “The pot hunters bored a six inch hole and partially uncovered this burial. Fortunately, the water table here is high. That helps preserve things. I’ve taken out several pots with holes knocked in them. The holes let out the spirit.” He rose, and then bent down, hands on his knees. “The pot hunters got a few all right, but they weren’t big time dealers. They worked with long handled shovels, not back hoes.”

“There’s a market?” Brandy swatted several mosquitoes on her jacket sleeve.

“Sure. Private collectors will pay. Maybe some museums, if they don’t know the sale items are loot. Here, look down.” She bent over the shaft. Even in the warm April sun, she felt a sudden chill. She could see bones, not an articulated skeleton, but what looked like diminutive leg bones laid side by side, a ragged piece of cord still binding them to earth-colored fiber. Near the slender bones Brandy could make out a fragile jaw bone, a few tiny teeth, parts of a small, broken skull.

“Skulls are sometimes stored separately. Sometimes set on the bones,” he said. Brandy’s voice dropped, as if in church.

“They seem so little.”

Grif Hackett stood and stretched. “A small child. Probably a girl. Kids had a high mortality rate. They led a hard life.” Brandy turned away from the opening. She wondered if the grave goods had included a doll, perhaps, or a toy necklace. She didn’t ask. After all these generations, what else could be left besides bones and clay and shell?

“You’d be surprised,” Hackett added. “There’s even a market for Indian bones.”

Brandy stood and faced away. “That’s barbaric. If this is the work Fish-hawk doesn’t approve of, I can understand.”

Grif pulled his lower lip down in disapproval. “To scientists bones are just a mixture of calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, and fibrous tissue. Nothing to get upset about. But I’ll keep the bundle burial moist to preserve it, and Fishhawk will re-bury it with the proper ceremonies.” He gave a crooked smile. “Superstitious stuff, of course. He has to consult the committee and decide where. Probably not here again. Too isolated.”

“Pot hunters might come back?”

“Remember, bones have been sold.” He pointed to a small one-room clapboard shack half hidden among the cedars. “That’s what’s left of a fisherman’s old place. That and a dry cistern. I’ve stored some pots in the shack before I take them to the lab.” He glanced once more into the damp shaft. “This burial ought to be studied. For one thing, I found blue beads with this child. Shows these Indians did contact the Spaniards. We can even tell from the bones what their diet was.”

Brandy knew that until a few years ago excavations were commonplace; museums had been filled with aboriginal artifacts and bones. “And the great find you made?” she asked “The one that won’t bring any money?”

“You’ve just seen it—a bundle burial. Much better preserved than ones found near here in the fifties. Now re-burial is the law, if burials are disturbed at all.”

Brandy thought again of her study of Shakespeare. She remembered a line from the epitaph on his grave, and murmured, “Curst be he who moves my bones.” The meaning was plain enough for the most illiterate gravedigger. Indians weren’t the only ones who thought bones were sacred. A slight wind stirred the cedars, then the air became still. Brandy shuddered. How many skeletons were buried here? The very air seemed charged. She could understand why Fishhawk did not want to be here, maybe Bibi, too. The feeling welled up again that she experienced at Tiger Tail Island, waiting for the detective.