Bahamarama, page 4
part #1 of Zack Chasteen Series
“This where you live?” one of the kids said. “Looks like a ghost town.”
“Welcome to LaDonna,” I said. “Population: Two.”
That would be me and Boggy. I didn’t count Boggy’s numerous girlfriends, mainly because I couldn’t keep track of them all. And I didn’t count Barbara, even though she had been spending more and more time at my place before Baypoint claimed me. I was hoping we might be headed toward something permanent. I think Barbara was hoping the same thing. But it was a subject that hadn’t been broached. We had a lot of catching up to do first
I gave the two surfers their hundred dollars and they immediately began talking about how they would spend it. One of them wanted to “throw a giant kegger.” The other planned to put it toward a ticket to Costa Rica so he could check out the surf and the ganja down there. Made me feel all proud and glowing inside, knowing I was helping make the dreams of America’s youth come true.
I got out of the rusty Volvo and went the last few hundred yards on foot. I walked past a green historical marker with gold lettering that read: “The Town of LaDonna.” Below it, the inscription went on to say that while the origins of the name LaDonna were unknown, it was once the site of a Timucuana Indian settlement, as evidenced by numerous shell middens and a network of canals built to connect the ocean with the lagoon. Later, in the early 1900s, well-to-do citrus growers from inland built the houses as family retreats.
What the historical marker didn’t say was that LaDonna had been the site of a bitter battle, one fought in the 1960s, by the descendents of those well-to-do citrus growers, when the federal government confiscated their property as part of its coastal land-grab spree. Perhaps confiscated is too strong a word, but that’s what it amounted to in the long run. The feds offered each of the homeowners a pitifully small cash payment, along with a life-leasehold. Meaning, when the owner of the property died it would revert directly to the government, and all the heirs be damned.
My grandfather Chasteen wasn’t nearly as well-to-do as his forebears—it would not be unfair to call him an eccentric—but he was a hardheaded old coot. All the other LaDonna landowners signed buy-out contracts with the government. Not my grandfather. Exhausting what little money he possessed, he hired attorneys and waged war for nearly a decade. He argued that, unlike the other owners at LaDonna, he used his property as a place of business, a business that couldn’t easily be up-rooted. So to speak.
Some people go gaga over orchids, others over roses. For my grandfather, it was palm trees. He roamed the world seeking them out—Madagascar, the Canary Islands, Thailand, Cuba. He stashed away seed pods and, in some cases, juvenile trees, then sneaked them back into the country since he didn’t have a federal research permit. My grandmother was once detained at Miami International after customs agents found a three-foot-tall talipot palm from India in her steamer trunk. Just a minor setback, since my grandfather made it through with a smaller talipot hidden inside his umbrella. The two of them, they were the real smugglers in our family, not me.
All in all there were more than two hundred species of palm on the property, probably thirty thousand trees altogether, crammed into a little more than seventeen acres. It was an exotic tropical jungle that miraculously sprouted on a scrubby barrier island. And it was a great place to grow up.
“Our own little Eden,” my mother used to call it.
I was seven when she and my father died in a horrible accident on Redfish Lagoon. They were out shrimping one summer evening when a thunderstorm blew in out of nowhere. Lightning struck their little boat and the gas tank exploded. They were gone in an instant.
My grandparents raised me. They smothered me with love. And they dug in their heels when the federal government came along and tried to take away their idyllic little domain on the river.
The sad truth about us Chasteens is that we are genetically disinclined toward entrepreneurialism. We work hard, but we just don’t make good businesspeople. While my grandfather sold some palm trees from time to time, enough to pay the bills and keep us in groceries, he wasn’t all that aggressive about attracting new clients, or tapping into the vast and lucrative landscaping market that grew out of Florida’s full-throttle rush to develop every square inch of the state. He much preferred collecting rare specimens and nurturing them to maturity. He traded trees with other collectors and donated them to any botanical garden or public park that asked. He never made much money from his obsession. The palm trees were just something he loved. Still, a federal judge eventually ruled that Chasteen Palm Nursery represented a “unique and indigenous livelihood, one that is intrinsically connected to its physical place.” The government lost its bid to buy us out. And our homestead endured as a private oasis surrounded by national park.
I followed the dirt road until it ended at a cul-de-sac where an eight-foot wood fence ran from the river to about a hundred yards inland. Behind the fence, in lush and flagrant contrast to the surroundings, loomed a mass of green—palm tree after palm tree after palm tree.
After my grandfather died, and my grandmother soon after him, the grounds were tough to maintain. The house was in good shape, or at least in as good shape as a hundred-year-old wooden house in Florida can be with salt winds and thunder-storms and all manner of semitropical vermin always nipping away at it. I had all the work I could handle keeping my boats running and bringing in customers on that front. Besides, I wasn’t much of a horticulturalist. I enjoyed all the trees, but I really didn’t know what to do with them. The palm nursery slipped into neglect, with blight and disease wiping out a few of the more fragile species.
Still, it was home, and aside from my time in college and the few years I’d spent in Miami, it was the only home I’d ever really known. And even though I was expecting it, even though I was the one who had set the wheels in motion, I wasn’t fully prepared for seeing the sign in the driveway, the one that said FOR SALE.
6
I didn’t want to sell the place, but it wasn’t as if I had a choice. I was broke. And without my boats I had no way of generating income. I couldn’t even pay the property taxes, much less the regular upkeep.
The FOR SALE sign bore the logo of Jo Hardwick Realty and gave a phone number to call. Jo was an old family friend and, as realtors go, she had some principles. The property was worth a lot of money and her commission would be sizable. Still, she balked when I told her I had decided to put it on the market.
“Zack, all you have to do is contact the park service and you know they’ll grab it in a heartbeat,” she said. “You don’t need me slicing seven percent out of the deal.”
“Already called them,” I said. “Talked to some muckety-muck up in Washington. Said the park service would have to lobby Congress for a special appropriation. Said a sale could take three or four years. I can’t afford to wait that long. I need the money now.”
Jo sent me the listing papers and I signed them a week before they sprung me from Baypoint. I’d avoided thinking about it since then, but the FOR SALE sign delivered a sharp slap of wake-up-and-smell-the-dismal-reality. The market for waterfront property in Florida is always vigorous. Jo knew a couple of potential buyers and thought we would have a contract within a month.
There wasn’t anything I really needed to do at LaDonna. I just wanted to be there, to take it all in, to reset my compass, get my bearings, say the first of many good-byes, and then head for the Bahamas and Barbara.
We typically kept the driveway gate closed. But as I approached I saw that it was wide open. There were fresh tire tracks in the dirt. It was unlikely that Boggy had made them. He drives only when he has to and then only with a monumental amount of bitching. So who had paid me a visit? Could Goatee and Raul have contacted their associates to tell them I’d given them the slip? Maybe. Would they have left the gate open and advertised what they were up to? Maybe. These weren’t subtle guys. I edged to the side of the driveway and took it slow, on the lookout.
I couldn’t help noticing that someone had put serious sweat equity into the place. The undergrowth had been whacked away. A pile of PVC pipe was stacked and ready to be set out for irrigation. The trees looked as healthy as I’d ever seen them. There were even some new plantings.
I turned the last bend before the house and saw a flatbed truck parked in the driveway. A man about my age was tying down a big sago palm on the back of the truck. A teenage boy was helping him. The sago had a half dozen or so crowns—a prize specimen—and its root ball was wrapped in burlap. Over the years we’d always kept an eye out for people sneaking onto the property and digging up palms to decorate their yards. But pulling right up in the driveway? That was pretty damn brazen.
The man and the boy stopped what they were doing and watched me walking toward them. The man was lean and lanky. He took off his cap, wiped his forehead with a shirtsleeve, and grinned at me.
“How you doin’, Zack?” he said.
Only then did I spot the name on the side of the truck—Burleson Landscape—and recognize Tom Burleson. We had grown up together, but I hadn’t seen him in at least a dozen years.
“Tom,” I said, shaking his hand. “Been a long time.”
“Yeah, it has. Zack, this here’s my son, Tom Jr.” I shook Tom Jr.’s hand, his father saying: “Tommy, when you were just a kid you used to watch Mr. Chasteen here playing on the TV for the Gators and the Dolphins.”
“I remember,” said Tom, Jr. “Zack the Sack, number forty-four.”
“I’m flattered.”
Tom Jr. stared at me, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t make up his mind about it. Then finally, “I thought it sucked what the high school did.”
“What’s that?” I said.
Tom Jr. looked at his dad. And then both of them looked away, embarrassed. Finally, Burleson said, “Aw, hell, Zack, I thought you’d heard about it. It was all over the newspaper. You know that trophy case they had in the school lobby? The one with the photos of you in it and your jerseys from the Gators and the Dolphins?”
I nodded.
“A bunch of goodie-goodies didn’t think it looked right honoring somebody who was in prison. They kept raising hell until the school took it down.”
“Well, I guess there’s always going to be people like that,” I said.
“You oughta make ’em put it back up,” said Tom Jr.
“Probably not worth the fight,” I said. “But I appreciate you saying it.”
We were quiet for a couple of seconds. I didn’t quite know how to ask Tom Burleson what he was doing stealing palm trees from my property. And he didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed that I’d caught him at it.
“Saw the FOR SALE sign,” Burleson said.
I shrugged. I really didn’t want to talk about it. But did he think a FOR SALE sign meant he could just come and plunder as he pleased?
“That fella you got running this place been doing a pretty good job of it while you were gone,” Burleson said. “I’ve probably bought four or five sagos off him and every one of them is doing fine. What’s that fella’s name anyway?”
“I call him Boggy.”
“Bobby?”
“No, Boggy. Like muck. You seen him around?”
“Nah. I was by earlier in the week, and he said he might be gone awhile. Said if he wasn’t here, for me just to pull on in here and load up,” said Burleson. “What is he, Mexican or something?”
“He’s from the Dominican Republic,” I said.
“Kinda Indian-looking.”
“He’s Taino.”
“Tie what?”
“Taino. They’re Caribbean Indians.”
“Never heard of such a thing,” Burleson said. “Tell you what, though, Zack, that fella sure likes to dicker. Me and him, we must have gone around for at least an hour or so before we settled on a price for this sago. And he’s a stickler about getting paid in cash.”
Burleson reached into the cab of his truck, then handed me a bank envelope.
“Should be twenty-five hundred in there,” he said.
“That how much Boggy charged you for this sago?”
“Yep. Like I said, he likes to dicker. Started out asking four thousand dollars. But it’s a fair enough price. Big sagos like this take fifty years to grow, and they’re getting scarce. You got another one up there, by the midden, pretty near twice the size. Me and Boggy have just about settled in at three thousand dollars for it. You get a better offer than that, you let me know.”
I told him I’d keep that in mind. I helped them finish tying down the sago, then we said our good-byes, and Burleson backed his truck out of the driveway. I closed the gate behind them.
I felt equal parts fury and betrayal. It was like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Boggy had been selling off palm trees and pocketing the cash. Four or five sagos for two or three thousand apiece. That was a pretty good bundle. And who knew what all else he’d dug up? There were some Canary Island date palms I knew could fetch four or five thousand each. And some of the rare specimen palms, hell, you could just about name any price you wanted for them.
I could only guess that Boggy had seen the future and figured he didn’t want any part of it. The palm trees were just sitting there, easy pickings, a fair amount of stake money for hitting the road. I wondered where he had run off to, wondered if I’d ever see him again.
7
I left the driveway and followed a stone path that led me to the house. It stood solid and permanent, as everlasting as anything I’d ever known. Giant live oaks, older even than the house, encircled it and provided cool shade. It was all locked up, the storm shutters latched tight. Boggy had fled the scene, but at least he’d had the decency to shut the doors on his way out. I could get inside the house easy enough, but if I did that I’d be knocking around in there for hours, communing with ghosts and reliving memories. I didn’t have time for that.
I moved past the house and down a gentle grassy slope toward the river. The sun was bright here, the back side of the property kept clear to offer a view of the water from the back porch of the house. There was another FOR SALE sign stuck in the backyard, all the better for attracting the attention of boaters passing by. The river was narrow at LaDonna, only forty or fifty yards across, and dotted with little islands that weren’t much more than wiregrass and mangrove, and piles of broken, bleached-out shells. The tide was out, and the mud flats sat exposed. Ibis and herons stalked tiny crabs in puddles by the boathouse.
I opened the door of the boathouse and stepped inside. It looked pretty much the way I’d left it—empty and lonesome. My boats were gone. The only thing occupying the three slips were thick clusters of oysters and barnacles that encrusted the wooden pilings. Last I’d heard, the boats were scheduled for auction at the U.S. Coast Guard station in Minorca Beach. I could only assume they’d been sold to the highest bidders while I was still in Baypoint, the proceeds going to the government. I’d been too torn up about it to seek out the details.
I walked past a row of closets and storage lockers, flipping them open and checking them out as I went. Most of my gear was still there—fishing tackle, diving paraphernalia, cleats and lines, anchors, rigging, five-gallon gas tanks, Q-beams, marine batteries, boxes of Coast Guard-certified emergency flares—the endless clutter that comes with owning boats. Or having once owned them.
I walked to the end of the largest boat slip—the one that once held my trawler, Miz Blitz—and looked up and down the river. About the only change I noticed was in the seawall that ran on either side of the boathouse. The last time I’d been here, shortly before the trial that sent me away, a tropical depression was pounding the East Coast. It had dropped about a foot of rain and, coupled with some kind of freak alignment of the moon and sun that swelled the tides and flooded the river, had cracked and broken away most of my seawall.
But I saw now that it was fixed. The work was new and Boggy had quite obviously done it himself. I could tell this because the new seawall was a thing of both function and art, although the art part of it might have been obscure to anyone who did not appreciate Boggy’s artistic vision. Instead of buying steel rebar to reinforce the concrete and rock in the seawall, Boggy had relied on whatever he could find lying around—chicken wire, old axles and wheel rims, several driveshafts from ancient outboard motors, old scuba tanks, and other castoff gear from over the years. Broken pieces of tile and glass were set in the face of the seawall, creating a wild mosaic of blues and yellows and reds. It might not have been the way I would have repaired the seawall, but it had saved me a bundle of money, and at least I could thank Boggy for something.
I walked out on the seawall and stood there, gazing across the lagoon. The last time I’d seen my parents I was standing at the very same spot, waving good-bye to them as they pushed off in the boat. I could still recall tiny details of that day—the turquoise bracelet my mother wore, the Marlboro hanging from my father’s mouth, the eight-track tape deck that was playing the soundtrack from South Pacific. They loved listening to music on the water. My father was hamming it up and singing along with “There Is Nothing Like a Dame.” My mother was rolling her eyes, but loving it. Then they were gone.
I broke away and returned to the boathouse. My tiny office occupied a corner by the last boat slip. I stepped inside and switched on the light. Everything looked OK. A fax machine/printer and a prehistoric laptop sat on the pinewood picnic table that was my desk. A three-drawer metal filing cabinet, a few plastic chairs, nautical charts thumbtacked to the particleboard walls, a ceiling fan with the blades covered in dust—the executive suite of what used to be LaDonna Charters.
