Everglades, page 17
Tomlinson said, “He wants to build a casino.”
“It’s more than that. When we get confirmed, we’ll be our own nation. On our land, if you open a restaurant, a hotel— name it—you don’t have to worry about state inspectors, getting permits, state codes, all that red tape. No unions, no Social Security business. Plus no taxes. Or almost no taxes, depending on the kind’a deal you work out with the government.”
“But a casino, that’s where he’d make his money back.”
Jenny was becoming animated, opening up some to Tomlinson, building a rapport. “A little Las Vegas, that’s what the man wants to build. A whole city with tall buildings and bright lights out here in the ’Glades. Only he never told us that. We found out slow, from other people. Geoff Minster—he was honest, at least, about what was going on.”
“You trusted him?”
Jenny shrugged. “Not much. I liked him better than Shiva. Minster, at first, was just another money man, a developer. No matter what he told us, we knew what he really wanted—profit. But then he began to get interested in us, Joseph’s history, some of the ’Glades religions. I believe that about him. He was trying to open up his heart.”
She said, “Shiva, though, is different. Even when he’s telling you the truth, he’s lying, because he wants something more. Something deeper.” She thought for a moment, touching fingers to a blemish on her cheek—a touching vanity from a woman her size and shape. “That man, it’s like he wants to reach his hand inside you and pull something out of your chest. Something to steal away for himself.”
DeAntoni said, “If he’s investing money, you can’t blame the guy for expecting to make some dough. What else would he want?”
Jenny said, “A lot. Things we’re not sure about. He wants our tribal council to make him a member of the Egret Seminoles—which we can do. Legally. It’s up to individual tribes now, who’s an Indian or not. The Bureau of Indian Affairs changed the law ’cause it was so much trouble for them, proving what they call quantum blood. How much native blood does it take to make a person an Indian?”
“Why would you go along with something like that?”
James said, “I’m on the council, and I wouldn’t. No way. But our tribal chairman, that’s who Shiva’s working hard to convince. The chairman and five elders—old-time ’Glades people set in their ways. Our chairman’s a . . . well, our chairman’s a mystic . . . a real spiritual person . . . and got a lot of power.”
When Tomlinson asked, “Who’s your tribal chairman?” Jenny began to move around behind the sink, putting away glasses, cleaning ashtrays. Was she getting ready to close so early?
After a few moments, looking at the interested faces around the room, James said, “This is probably a subject we shouldn’t be talkin’ about in a bar.”
Jenny told him, “Plus, you need to be gettin’ back to work. If these fellas want, maybe they’d be interested in seeing that new airboat you bought.”
She turned to me, a familiar expression on her face—I was being tested again—as she added, “If you don’t have the time to follow James, that’s fine, too. Come back another day. Or a month from now. Maybe we can talk some more. Or not. Makes no difference, it’s up to you.”
We were inside DeAntoni’s Lincoln, following James Tiger’s red Dodge Ram with the high-water tires, the towing package and stainless-steel lockbox in the bed.
We were headed west on the Tamiami Trail, returning to the shade of cypress domes, vultures heavy on hoary limbs, dragonflies and swallow-tailed kites spiraling weightless, riding sawgrass thermals through cumulous vents.
The vultures roosted motionless as gargoyles, their scale-headed cowlings black, like Egyptian priests. Waiting . . . waiting for the first blue-fly vapor of carrion scent. At night, when the swamp air cools, reptiles and mammals are drawn to the sun-soaked asphalt. The fast highway becomes a killing field. Along the Tamiami Trail, vultures never have long to wait.
To our right, the two-lane was bordered by a canal dredged years ago to create the roadbed. The water conduit was a floating garden of yellow pond lilies, Florida violets, pink swamp roses and flag root. Marsh hens—purple gallinules—walked spring-footed on the lilies while alligators sunned themselves on cattail banks, or floated nearby.
Both hands on the wheel, seeing nothing but the road, DeAntoni said, “I wish this guy talked as fast as he drives. Why’s it so damn hard getting information out of these people? I ask a couple of questions, they looked right through me. Like I wasn’t even there.”
Right on both counts.
James was a fast driver. This quiet member of the Egret Seminole council drove like a NASCAR fanatic. The only time he slowed was to tailgate the occasional Winnebago, or await the chance to leapfrog a citrus convoy.
He liked outspoken bumper stickers, too.
If DeAntoni stayed heavy on the gas, we could get close enough to the rear of James Tiger’s truck to read his bumper:
BIA: BETRAYING INDIAN ASSETS SINCE 1924
CUSTER WORE ARROW SHIRTS
YOU CAN TRUST THE GOVERNMENT. ASK AN INDIAN!
WHERE WAS THE I.N.S. IN 1492 WHEN WE NEEDED THEM?
FLORIDA SEMINOLES—
UNDEFEATED! (FOOTBALL? WHAT’S THAT?)
Tomlinson told DeAntoni, “The Skins—Indians, I’m saying—they don’t feel comfortable coming right out and answering questions from strangers. It’s a cultural thing. Ask a question, don’t expect a direct answer, because you’re not going to get it. So being pushy, taking the fast approach, is usually a mistake. In some tribes, it’s even considered rude.”
DeAntoni said, “Jesus Christ. Now Tinkerbell’s an expert on manners, too. If I want information on Minster, what the hell am I supposed to do? Send up a fucking smoke signal?”
Tomlinson said, “No, the way to do it is to just let it happen, man. Like the universe unfolding. You want information? What I’d do is . . . Let me ask you a question. You were a New York cop.”
“Twelve years. I already told you.”
“Okay, when you were off-duty, where’d you socialize with other cops?”
“We used to hang out at some of the Irish pubs—real Irish pubs, where the Guinness’s freighted in fresh every day. Not like the bullshit places around here. Most the time, I’d have a few at the Barrow Pub on the corner of Hudson. Good pool tables, plus they show the Yanks and the Mets. McSorley’s in the East Village. On Seventh Street? What’s your point?”
Tomlinson said, “Imagine James Tiger walking into the Barrow Pub, sitting down beside you, and asking a lot of questions about someone you knew, who disappeared and was probably dead.”
DeAntoni thought about that, cypress trees flickering by the windshield in a blur. Finally, he said, “Okay, okay. I see what you mean. A guy like that, with a hick accent, comes nosing around, we’d have run him outside into the street. Like, fuck you, pal. Hit the bricks.”
Tomlinson said, “There you go. The difference is, at least James is giving us a chance to get to know him a little. If it wasn’t for Doc being related to Tucker Gatrell and us knowing Joseph Egret, guess where we’d be right now?”
DeAntoni said, “Hittin’ the bricks.”
Tomlinson told him, “Exactly.”
After a few moments, DeAntoni said, “Know what, Tinkerbell? Sometimes, you actually make a little bit of sense.” Then, several seconds later: “The big Indian, the dead one you keep talking about. Why’s he so special?”
Tomlinson told DeAntoni that Joseph Egret and my uncle, Tucker Gatrell, were lifelong friends and partners.
Tomlinson said, “I never understood why Joseph stuck by that old redneck. Tuck was one of the biggest racists I’ve ever met.” Looking at me with his luminous blue eyes, Tomlinson added, “Sorry. No offense.”
I said, “Are you kidding?”
Then Tomlinson told DeAntoni that, several years back—goaded by my uncle—we had reason to attempt to prove that Joseph had a historical and genetic right to live (and be buried) on the pre-Columbian Indian mounds that were on my uncle’s property.
The state of Florida, Tomlinson explained, attempted to annex Tuck’s land by exercising its right of eminent domain. Proving that Joseph was among the last of an Indian tribe long thought to be extinct was the only way to keep the state from booting the two men off the ranch.
They’d spent most their lives there, living on Mango Bay, rousting cattle on horseback, fishing, drinking, plotting, spitting tobacco juice off the front porch. Men that age shouldn’t be bullied, and that’s exactly what the state bureaucrats were trying to do.
“I got bone marrow samples from the Florida Museum of Natural History. Of the Calusa—bones more than a thousand years old, excavated from the mounds on Gatrell’s property. Then took samples of Joseph’s hair, and flew them up to a friend of mine who runs a lab outside Boston.”
Tomlinson told DeAntoni that they found repetitive genetic markers in the DNA of both marrow and hair that suggested that Joseph was a direct descendant of Florida’s mound builders. Those markers, he explained, didn’t turn up uniformly in all members of an ethnic group, which is why modern Indians are against using DNA to prove anything.
“But the bone marrow from that old Calusa, and Joseph—the markers were right there to read,” he added. “The Calusa were an amazing people. Physically—for that time period, back in the sixteen hundreds—they were huge. The Spaniards described them as giants. You see how big Jenny is? Six one, six two, and she’s small compared to Joseph. They had a civilization on the west coast of Florida that rivaled the Maya. The entire southern part of the state was their kingdom. They kept slaves, performed human sacrifices. And they scared the hell out of the Spaniards.
“The Calusa refused to convert to Christianity, and literally pissed on anyone who tried to change them. Seriously. As in they made the Jesuit priests kneel down and whizzed on them—which the priests wrote about in their journals. Like, to show the kind of savages they were dealing with.”
DeAntoni told him, “Cool.” He’d personally arrested a few priests himself that he wouldn’t mind pissing on. Tomlinson continued, “But back to the DNA—we found a double T, double A, double C-G-T sequence in the hair and the bone marrow.
“We were focusing on the mitochondrion D-loop. There was also a unique sequencing in the HLA genes—and that’s where we found the genetic flags. The state of Florida couldn’t argue that. No way. So they let Tucker Gatrell keep his ranch, and they let us bury Joseph in the back pasture, on the mounds where he belonged.”
DeAntoni eyes were glazing, getting bored—all this scientific talk. But he was still following closely enough to ask, “So if they were so tough, these Calusa, what happened to them? Why was the old dead Indian, your pal, the last one?”
“Disease,” Tomlinson said. “Within two hundred years after contact with the Spanish, the Calusa were almost finished. They went from being kings of the world, to living like animals on the run. When the Calusa started getting sick, losing power, the tribes they used for slaves got their revenge.
“When the United States bought Florida from Spain and settlers started farming the islands, the Maskókî started moving south—Doc was wrong when he told you Creeks. That’s a common misconception, still taught in schools. The Seminole and the Miccosukee aren’t Creeks. They’re Maskókî.
“Anyway, that was the end of the Calusa as a people. Except for sixty or so who went to live in Cuba. But none were left in the States. Except for Joseph and maybe a few others.”
DeAntoni said, “But Joseph had a bunch of sons and daughters. This old tribe is not extinct. So why should anybody even give a damn?”
I was watching Billy Tiger’s truck slow, red brake lights aglow, left blinker flashing, as it approached a yellow billboard: a massive alligator, jaws wide. JAMES TIGER’S FAMOUS REPTILE SHOW AND AIRBOAT RIDES.
On the south side of the road was an island-sized settlement of pole houses, thatched palmetto roofs, airboats angled bow-high on the banks of the canal, a parking lot of white coral filled with cars bearing out-of-state license plates—Michigan, Illinois, New Jersey.
A tourist stop. Another Florida roadside attraction.
As DeAntoni slowed to turn, Tomlinson said, “Are you kidding? If Billy Tiger or any of Joseph’s heirs can prove the Calusa aren’t extinct, that the tribe still exists, they can claim ownership of the whole southern tip of Florida. Everything, West Palm to Tampa, and south to Key West. Because, rightfully, they do own it. They really do.”
DeAntoni was shaking his head, smiling. “No court’s gonna have the balls to order something like that. Give half the state back to a couple of dozen Indians? Yeah, right, I can see it—kick everybody out of Miami, South Beach and Lauderdale. The Cubans would be piling up sandbags, locking ’n’ loading, the old Jewish ladies right beside them. It’s just not gonna happen.”
Tomlinson said, “Personally, I think it could happen. Legally, anyway, and then the state would be forced to make some kind of gigantic financial settlement. But just the threat is a powerful leverage tool. Does the state want to risk the issue going to the Supreme Court—maybe lose a couple of million acres of state land, or a few billion dollars? Or, is it better to say, Screw it, award the Egret Seminoles a smaller chunk of land. In return, the state lets them build their houses, shopping centers, whatever they want.”
DeAntoni said, “Okay, I’m with you. Shopping centers—or casinos. That’s where the big money is.”
Tomlinson said, “Precisely.”
chapter eighteen
Tomlinson took me aside and said, in a voice too low for anyone to hear, “He’s keeping us here for a reason. As packed as this place is with tourists, he wouldn’t be wasting his time.”
Meaning James Tiger, who had his back to us—barefooted now, still wearing his Stetson—standing with DeAntoni near the canal where there were lily pads and white moonflowers blooming. The two men were on the boat ramp next to a chickee built on poles, and a commercial-sized airboat that was beached near four portable toilets.
An airboat is a weird-looking craft common to the Everglades, though I have seen them in Australia, and in Africa, too. It is a pan-flat boat, stern-driven, powered by an airplane propeller, and can fly over water, grass, even rock. This airboat looked like a red metal sled, bench seats in the middle, a captain’s chair bolted atop a massive engine, a Cessna type propeller mounted aft inside a circular cage.
There were two airboats of similar design tied at a dock. One was off-loading passengers via a short boarding bridge; the other was loading. The boats looked like they could handle nine, maybe ten, people at a time. There had to be fifty, sixty or more people waiting in line, their bodies attached to angular black shadows that moved beside them on the white coral parking lot. There were kids running around, bored, parents shifting from leg to leg.
I said, “I’m not waiting much longer. I need to get back to Sanibel and check my fish tanks. Plus, I’ve got an order for two hundred horseshoe crabs. This time of year, finding that many crabs is not going to be easy.”
Tomlinson said, “Your head’s hurting, isn’t it? You should get an X ray, as hard as that jerk hit you. We can stop at Naples Community Hospital on the way back.”
“Sure, sure, we can both check into the ER. You get your shoulder X-rayed, and they can do my skull while they’re at it.”
A safe offer to make, because Tomlinson despises hospitals.
Reacting to my impatience, he said, once again, that James would not have led us to his village without good reason, then added, “I think it has something to do with Jenny, the bartender. Joseph’s daughter. She’s a power woman. Understand what I’m saying? A buffalo woman—very centered, a leader. James might have been doing most of the talking, but she was doing most of the thinking. Maybe she’s supposed to call and check on us. Or contact someone else. Who knows, man? What I’m telling you is, the Egret Seminoles have invited us to the outer edge of their inner circle for inspection. We’ve got old Joe and Tuck to thank for that. Let’s not pull the plug now.”
I was watching DeAntoni motioning to us, signaling us to join him. Walking toward the canal, I told Tomlinson that I’d give it another half hour, no more, then listened to DeAntoni say, “You guys ever ride in an airboat? I’ve seen ’em on TV—the bastards scoot.”
For the first time, I got a sense of the kind of child he’d been—there was that sort of excitement in his voice. Probably a big, quiet boy; a secret little circus going on inside, but shy for a street kid. He was enjoying himself now; showing it.
Then he said to James, “James, tell ’em about your boat. You guys aren’t gonna believe how damn cool this thing is. What’d you say—it can go sixty, seventy, miles an hour?”
Frank DeAntoni, the carburetor-head, talking with his new Indian buddy, who had also gone through a personality change. James, the stoic cowhunter, had now become the racecar speed freak we’d suspected, and was suddenly an enthusiastic talker. We listened to him tell us about his new boat: twenty-one feet long, eight-foot beam, with a big-block aircraft engine, 430 horsepower with a 2:1 reduction system and a seventy-two-inch wooden composite Sensenich propeller.
The hull, he said, was laid upon yellow pine stringers, built up in Cross City by Freedom Craft, modeled after one of the original hulls built by O. B. Osceola, back in the 1930s. The twin aft rudder flaps were foam-filled aluminum, and they’d been custom-airbrushed, green on gold, with the head of a giant snapping gator.
The boat’s name, Chekika’s Shadow, was written upon each in red script.
“It’s similar to the newer Kennedy hulls,” James told us. “She’s a sweet one. The transom’s high enough, she doesn’t suck in backwash if you lay off the throttle too fast and hit the drag brake. She doesn’t porpoise, either, and there’s not a hint of hook in her bottom. She’s a clean boat. Solid.”
