Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County (11 page)

At least Jackie seemed happy now. Their first year in Florida had been tumultuous. Between the book club and the radio
show, she'd caused quite a ruckus. She had irritated the heck out of Mr. Toomb, but even that seemed smoothed over. The book club had mostly disbanded, and Jackie was spending most of her time helping with that baby. Yes, it was a bit unorthodox, but it was certainly worthwhile. He was relieved by the decision by Jackie and her friends to keep the baby primarily at Mrs. Bailey White's house, which was off the beaten path. It also meant that the baby's mother, Priscilla, could stay there—and not at his house—when she returned on her visits from college. Ted was not prejudiced, or at least he didn't think he was. However, a man had to protect his wife and children, and he was not going to let them be a target for some furious redneck who might throw a Molotov cocktail through the living room window.

Like Jackie, he believed that the best way to address the race problem in America was to help Negroes advance through education. In fact, one of Ted's favorite charities was the United Negro College Fund, to which he donated every year since it was founded in 1944, even when his wallet had been thin. He had met Priscilla only once, but he agreed with Jackie that the young girl was college material.

He was surprised—but kept it to himself—that Jackie seemed to be enjoying the baby as much as she did. He recalled how brittle she had been as a new mother and it was interesting to see that she was so relaxed with Priscilla's baby. Maybe, because Jackie was a little older now, and experienced. Jackie's friend, Plain Jane, seemed to be enjoying the baby, too, at least judging from Jackie's comments. He had his doubts about weird old Mrs. Bailey White, but from everything he'd heard, the old woman had paid her debt to society and was settling back into a normal life. If Jackie and Plain Jane were, in a sense, helping
with Mrs. Bailey White's rehabilitation, that seemed like a good cause, too.

Obviously, this was not the life Jackie expected when she'd married him. Of course, it wasn't what he had planned on, either. If only there'd been a way to climb the corporate ladder without being on the road so much of the time, or relocating the whole family to a place that seemed as far from Boston as Timbuktu.

D
olores Simpson did not have a radio or television, nor did she care to. Even if owning one or both had been her heart's desire, the electric grid didn't come anywhere near her little fishing shack. She had considered buying one of those newfangled transistor radios, but it cost too much. As for a telephone, the thought was laughable. It would be “a hundred years shy of never,” as the saying went, before anyone put phone lines there.

Robbie-Lee had been her grapevine to the outside world. He would come home from school—and later, from his job at Sears—and tell her the big news of the day (the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example) along with local news (who had gotten married, who had up and died) and, best of all, little tidbits from Hollywood that he heard on the radio during his lunch hour. If he had something new to tell her about Elizabeth Taylor, it made her day.

But those days were gone. She didn't miss people in general. She just missed Robbie-Lee. And with changes coming
to the river, she needed the information that her son, had he still been living at home, would have provided. Walking to town was tiring, but she'd done it when necessary, for example, when she'd sent the telegram to Dora Witherspoon in Mississippi. Fortunately, her neighbors, Billy and Marco, aware that Robbie-Lee had gone away, had started dropping off the
Naples Star
at her fishing shack on their way back from—well, from somewhere. She never really knew what they were up to but followed the unofficial rule of Gun Rack Village: Don't ask questions.

The gift of a newspaper miraculously landing on her narrow dock, courtesy of Billy and Marco, didn't occur every day but it was often enough to suit her. She no longer had to keep track of the passage of days by marking a scrap of paper each morning. She didn't care that the newspaper was secondhand; there were signs, like cigarette ashes smudged into the newsprint, that the brothers had read it already. That was fine; it meant she didn't have to pay them.

On this particular day Dolores heard the truck followed by the familiar
thump
as the paper hit the dock but didn't bother to retrieve it right away. Not a thing was happening of any importance. For real news—news that mattered—she'd have to wait for Dora Witherspoon.

Only when she went outside an hour later to clean her shotgun did she remember the newspaper, saw it sitting there, and picked it up. She took the rubber band off (she saved them; they were hard to come by) and saw this announcement on the front page:

“Read Our New Column by Collier County's Very Own MISS DREAMSVILLE!” page 11

Like everyone else in Naples, Dolores flipped immediately to page eleven. Peering out at her was a little pen-and-ink sketch of a grinning, winking woman who was clearly supposed to be Jackie. Next to the drawing were the words “Chatter Box by Miss Dreamsville!”

There was a headline beneath it that read,
THE LEGEND OF SEMINOLE JOE
. Dolores did not take the time to sit down or go back in the house. She read it standing stock still, not even bothered by a sliver of sunlight breaking through some bad-weather clouds and shining in her eyes. Some of the words were hard for her so she read slowly and aloud:

Residents have long spoken in hushed tones about a dangerous apparition who is said to reside near the Mangrove River and has been known to wreak havoc in our lovely community.

Seminole Joe, as he is called, has killed (and, some say, eaten) at least seventeen persons since he himself was murdered by Spanish Explorers. It is believed he only attacks Caucasian men. Mr. Joe has been fairly quiet in recent years, but old-timers are concerned this will change with the proposed new real-estate development (cheekily called Dreamsville Estates by Mr. Darryl Norwood, who, it should be stated here, did not ask permission of yours truly).

Since the beginning of time, one of the peculiarities of the human condition is that people can look at the exact same event, or in this case, the same place, and see entirely different things. Some look at the river and see Nature in all her glory. Others envision a river of money, created with asphalt, timber, and glass. It is not hard to
imagine which side Seminole Joe will take as it is widely known that he abhors change and wanton waste.

A model citizen who has lived in Collier County for all of her eighty years was willing to speak but not for attribution.
“
I'm very worried that Joe will get all stirred up again,” she remarked. “Anyone working on that project, or living there after it's built, will never again have a sound night's sleep. I know I won't.”

Will Neapolitans be safe from the wrath of the ghostly Indian? Will Seminole Joe rise again? Only time will tell.

Dolores crumpled the newspaper in her hands and tossed it as far as she could, only to have a wind gust pick it up and toss it straight back, mocking her. What was that crazy Boston gal up to now? Having her involved was not helpful. The woman made a mess of everything she touched. Why was she bringing up
Seminole Joe
?

Old-timers knew it wasn't wise to talk about Seminole Joe unless you absolutely had to, and then, only in quiet, funeral-parlor voices. You surely didn't write about him in the newspaper.

The fact that Darryl was planning to call his development Dreamsville Estates was a shock. A wickedly clever business idea on Darryl's part. But what kind of fool would provoke Jackie Hart and Seminole Joe at the same time?

Over the years, Dolores had occasionally heard a child being disciplined by a thoughtless parent saying, “You'd better behave or Seminole Joe will get you tonight.” Well, first of all, Dolores thought that was mean. Why would anyone scare
a child like that? She'd never talked to Robbie-Lee like that. Second, Seminole Joe wouldn't be bothered with some poor skeerty-cat child who hadn't done his homework or his chores. He had far more worthwhile wrongs to right. Besides, no one could summon Seminole Joe for selfish reasons. Some spirits could be conjured for specific reasons, but not Joe. He had a mind of his own.

Jackie was the type of Yankee who, no doubt, would laugh at the idea of Seminole Joe, like the woman manager who came down from Chicago to train Robbie-Lee to run the Sears catalog store. Miss High and Mighty had interrupted a conversation between Robbie-Lee and a customer by announcing, “What are you talking about?! Surely you know there is no such thing as ghosts!” And, according to Robbie-Lee, it was said in a way that made both him and the customer feel ignorant.

Dolores knew the type. What the lady manager didn't say, but might as well have, was, “I don't believe in them, therefore, they cannot possibly exist.” Dolores knew differently. The truth was, if you didn't encounter spirits it was because you refused to see them—possibly, to your own detriment.

Why were Yankees so certain they understood the world better than anyone else? You'd think life was some kind of big joke, and they were the only ones smart enough to know what was funny and what was not. Folks like that weren't open to mystery or magic. They thought they had everything figured out, so their minds were closed like a steel trap. It was kind of sad, when you got right down to it.

Maybe the problem was that Yankee folks, even on vacation, were always in motion, running from one activity to the next. If they weren't swimming, they were golfing. If they weren't golfing, they were boating. That was fine—they were welcome to
it—but Dolores was puzzled that people could claim to love the outdoor life and yet seem so far away from nature. They preferred houses built like bunkers with cement floors and walls, barriers to the swampland where, God forbid, bugs and other scary things lurked. Dolores imagined them in their nice houses, some with air-conditioning, all of them with plumbing. They put on shoes that looked like combat boots, just to walk to their mailboxes. She'd seen them and tried not to laugh.

Did they ever spend hours looking at the stars, as Dolores did? There was nothing quite like star watching on a clear night, or witnessing the fight for survival among the plants and critters in the swamps, to make a person remember that she was just a speck of dust.

Seminole Joe was more than a story. He was a spirit, and spirits live on, in different ways and for different reasons.

What most folks didn't seem to understand was that Seminole Joe was the spirit of injustice. He represented all the wrongs that had been done in the 'Glades. Folks were scared of Seminole Joe but in her opinion, it was Darryl they should have been skeert of. Darryl was like an overseer with a whip, a man with no soul. Darryl was a man who had choices, and he'd chosen mean over good.

From time to time, Dolores actually understood—just a little—what it must have been like to be colored or Indian. It didn't take a genius to see that white people were at the root of just about every mess you could think of, and Darryl was just the latest version. White folks had a knack for finding their way to the top of the pecking order and ruling the roost. Dolores could see this, and yet it created a problem for her because she was white, so what was wrong with her? What was she lacking? Why wasn't she rich and powerful, and sitting at the top of
the henhouse looking down on everyone else? Maybe she wasn't quite mean enough. Or ambitious enough.

She uncrumpled the newspaper and reread the column. Jackie Hart's bringing up Seminole Joe was bound to complicate an already-tricky situation. Jackie seemed to thrive when she created chaos. But Dolores had lived long enough to know that a wise person didn't let a bobcat out of its cage and assume it would eat only varmints. No, sir, it might eat you instead.

She looked over at the night heron. “Let's hope Dora Witherspoon talks some sense into her man,” she called out, and the bird stretched its wings in response. To herself, she added, “Otherwise, I'm afeared we be in for a wild ride.”

W
hat do you suppose Seminole Joe looks like?” Judd asked, wiping the sweat from his brow with the hem of his T-shirt. He had fled to my little cottage to get away from the craziness that had been going on all day, ever since the
Naples Star
landed in people's driveways or hedges. Judd said the phone had not stopped ringing with excited people wanting to talk to his mother about her column on Seminole Joe. No wonder he wanted to hide out for a while at my cottage. And I put him to work, helping me dig some new holes for the turtles to wallow around in.

“Haven't you ever seen the local Indians?” I asked, surprised.

“You mean selling baskets?” he said. “No one ever said they were Indians. I didn't know who they were. My teacher said we should stay away from them, that's all I know.”

“Well, did you ever see the movie
Key Largo
?” I asked.

He looked like he was racking his brain. “No, I don't think so,” he said. “That was before my time.”

Judd cracked me up. Sometimes he sounded like a thirteen-year-old
boy, and sometimes he sounded like a sixty-year-old man.

“Well,” I said, slurping on my iced tea, “Lauren Bacall was in it. And Humphrey Bogart.”

“Seminole Joe looks like . . . Humphrey Bogart?”

I tried not to laugh. “No, no, Humphrey Bogart plays a man who was in the Army in the war and visits his dead friend's father and widow who live down yon in Key Largo. There's a bunch of gangsters in the movie, too—Edward G. Robinson plays one of them.”

The word “gangster” got Judd's attention. He was behaving like a thirteen-year-old again. “So what happens?” he said, completely focused. I noticed, once again, that he had Jackie's blue eyes—the exact shade. And yet he looked like his dad, Ted Hart, too.