Duby's Doctor (36 page)

“You got it,” said Hepzibah Stoner.
“Snicklebean is history.”

End of Prologue and Sample Chapter

of

SCHIFFLEBEIN’S FOLLY

by

Iris Chacon

Enjoy These

Sample Pages

From

MUDSILLS & MOONCUSSERS

In Key West, the southernmost city in the South
during the War Between the States, Aaron Matthews has the
misfortunate to be a spy for the North. His search for a saboteur
working for the South is further complicated when Aaron realizes
the culprit may be the very woman with whom he is falling in
love.

SAMPLE CHAPTER

1862

Sergeant Jules Pfifer, a career Army man,
marched his patrol briskly through the evening heat toward a tall
wooden house on the corner of Whitehead Street and Duval Street.
Atop the house was perched a square cupola surrounded by the
sailor-carved balustrades called gingerbread. These porches, just
large enough for one or two persons to stand and observe the sea
from the rooftop, were known as widow’s walks. From this particular
widow’s walk an illegal Confederate flag flaunted its red stars and
bars against the clear Key West sky.

The soldiers in Union blue marched smartly
through the gate in the white picket fence, up the front steps, and
in at the front door—which opened before them as if by magic.

“Evenin’, Miz Lowe,” Sergeant Pfifer said,
without breaking stride, to the woman who had opened the door.

“Evenin’, Sergeant,” the lady of the house
answered, unperturbed.

On the Lowe house roof, the stars and bars
were whipped from their post; they disappeared from sight just as
the soldiers, clomping and puffing and sweat-stained, arrived atop
the stairway. Pfifer and another man crowded onto the widow’s walk.
Consternation wrinkled the soldiers’ faces when they found no
Confederate flag, only 17-year-old Caroline Lowe, smiling
sweetly.

~o~ ~o~ ~o~

In the twilight, the three-story brick
trapezoid of Fort Zachary Taylor loomed castle-like over the sea
waves. It stood on its own 63-acre shoal, connected to the island
of Key West by a narrow 1000-foot causeway. The fort had taken 21
years to build and was plagued by constant shortages of men and
material as well as outbreaks of deadly yellow fever.

Yankee sentries paced between the black
silhouettes of cannon pointed seaward. Firefly lights of campfires
and lanterns sparkled on the parade ground and among the Sibley
tents huddled on shore at the base of the causeway.

Midway between the fort and Caroline Lowe’s
flagpole, on the tin roof of a three-story wooden house, behind the
gingerbread railing of another widow’s walk, two athletic, handsome
youngsters stood close together, blown by the wind. Twenty-year-old
Richard scanned the sea with a spyglass. Joe, an inch shorter than
Richard, kept one hand atop a floppy hat the wind wanted to
steal.

Richard found something interesting to the
east. He handed over the spyglass and pointed Joe toward the same
point on the horizon. Joe searched, then zeroed in.

“Some rascal’s laid a false light over on
Boca Chica,” Richard said, referring to the smaller island just
north of Key West. “Come on!”

They tucked the spyglass into a hollow rail
of the widow’s walk and hastened down the stairs.

~o~ ~o~ ~o~

On neighboring Boca Chica island, night
blanketed the beach. A hunched figure tossed a branch onto a
blazing bonfire then slunk away into the darkness. Pine pitch
popped and crackled in the fire, adding its sweet aroma to the tang
of the salty breeze coming off the sea.

~o~ ~o~ ~o~

Inside a warehouse on Tift’s Wharf, all
shapes and sizes of kegs, boxes, and wooden crates towered in
jagged heaps. Sickly yellow light from a sailor’s lantern sent
quivering shadows across the stacks. A spindly boy of 15, Joseph
Porter, kept watch through a crack in the door.

On the floor a dozen teenaged boys hunkered
down, whispering. Richard sneaked in from the rear of the building
to join them. Behind him, out of the light and keeping quiet, came
Joe.

Porter hissed, “Mudsills comin’!”

The whispered buzz of conversation halted.
Someone doused the light. Bodies thumped to the floor as the boys
took cover.

Outside, footsteps ground into the gravelly
dirt of the street. Four Yankee soldiers, the source of the boys’
concern, completed a weary circuit of the dark dockside buildings.
They were Pennsylvania farm boys not much older than the Key West
boys hiding inside.

The southern boys would have been surprised
to know that the Yankees in the street were not technically
“mudsills,” that being the name given to northern factory workers
who lived crowded together in dirt-floored shacks along muddy
streets. Still, the word was applied to all the Yankee enemies,
just as the northern boys would have called Key West residents
“mooncussers,” as if they all were pirates.

Native born citizens of Key West referred to
themselves as Conchs, a term dating back to the 1780s immigration
of British Loyalists from the Bahamas. A large shellfish called a
conch was plentiful in the local waters and became a staple of the
pioneers’ diet.

On Tift’s Wharf one of the Pennsylvania
soldiers said something in Dutch-German, and the others murmured
agreement. They sounded homesick. One slapped a mosquito on his
neck then turned up his collar, grumbling.

In front of the warehouse the soldiers
stopped beside a barrel set to catch rainwater running off the tin
roof during storms. They loosened their woolen tunics and dipped
their handkerchiefs into the water, laving themselves, trying in
vain to ease the steamy agony of tropical heat.

Inside, the wide-eyed Conch boys held their
breath, listening to the sounds from the water barrel outside.
Joseph Porter trembled, perspired, and stared cross-eyed at a
gigantic mosquito making itself at home on the end of his nose. He
tried to raise one hand quietly to chase the brute away, but his
elbow nudged a crate of bottles. Glass tinkled. The boys froze.

Outside, a soldier started at the sound and
snatched up his weapon.
“Vas ist das?”

The other soldiers were less concerned. They
were hot, tired, and not looking for trouble.

“Rats,” one said. “These pirate ships are
full of them. Let’s go back to the ice house. It’s cooler.”

The sweat-covered Conch boys heard the
receding footsteps of the Yankees. Long, sweltering seconds later,
Porter crept to his crack in the door and risked a peek. “It’s all
right. They’re gone.”

Red-haired William Sawyer lit the
lantern.

A bigger boy, Marcus Oliveri, stepped forward
and cuffed Porter smartly. “Porter, you imbecile!”

“Here now, Marcus!” said William. “He didn’t
mean to.”

Oliveri returned to his place in the circle
of boys forming around the lantern. “I don’t fancy getting arrested
or maybe shot because Porter can’t abide getting mosquito bit for
his country!”

“I’m sorry,” said Porter. “It was an
accident.”

“Let’s just forget it,” urged William. “Let’s
finish up and get out of here before they come back. Now, the
English schooner leaves for Nassau tomorrow morning. Richard and
Marcus and Alfred and me will be on it. The rest of you know what
to do to cover for us.”

An older boy with a thick Bahamian accent,
Alfred Lowe, shook his finger under the nose of a friend. “And you,
Bogy Sands, stay away from my sister while I’m gone, you hear
me?”

Richard looked surprised. He thought he and
Caroline Lowe had an unspoken agreement. “Caroline? Bogy!”

“You ain’t engaged to her, Thibodeaux,” said
Bogy.

William Sawyer’s hair flashed the same fiery
color as the lamplight when he reached across the circle to
separate Richard and Bogy. “That’s enough of that! Let’s not be
fighting each other. God willing, we’ll all be soldiers of the
Seventh Florida Regiment within the year. Any questions?”

All around the circle the boys murmured in
the negative.

“Let’s get home then, and be ready when the
call comes,” William said.

The boys scrambled away. Joe and Richard were
the last to leave, watching for Yankee patrols while the others
sneaked out.

Joe complained, “I’ll probably break my neck
walking around in your boots. You got such big feet, Wretched! I
had to stuff the toes with rags.”

“You just keep that hat on and stay out of
Papa’s way. You’ll do fine,” Richard replied.

As they moved to leave the warehouse, Richard
put an arm around Joe’s shoulders and gave an encouraging
squeeze.

~o~ ~o~ ~o~

In the Florida Straits between Key West and
Cuba, just before dawn, two lithe, black fishermen reacted to the
flare of a distress signal that arced upward in the eastern sky.
One fisherman reached into the bilge of his craft and produced the
empty pink-and-white spiraling shell of that large mollusk called a
conch. He lifted the trumpet-size conch shell to his lips and blew
a loud, hooting blast.

Seconds later on Tift’s Wharf, a lookout in a
wooden tower reacted to the distant conch horn, scanned the eastern
horizon with a spyglass for barely an instant, then clanged the
wreckers’ bell and shouted to wake the whole island.

“Wreck asho-o-o-re! Wreck asho-o-o-re!”

Men of all sizes came running from every
direction. Black men and white, old and young, in jerseys and loose
short pants, they raced through the streets of Key West to the
Jamaica sloops moored in the harbor. Every shopkeeper (save one,
William Curry) left his store, every clergyman his church, every
able-bodied homeowner his house. Quickly it became apparent that
nearly every man in Key West, whatever else he might be, was a
wrecker.

Men shouted, the bell clanged, the distant
conch horn trumpeted. The race was on. Yankee soldiers, standing on
the street corner, did well not to be trampled in the rush.

At Fort Taylor, blue-clad soldiers on the
roof of the fort took note of the wreck and watched closely the
activity in the harbor, ready to take action if necessary.

Aboard the moored schooner Lady Alyce,
white-bearded, patriarchal Captain Elias Thibodeaux, regal in his
double-breasted jacket, surveyed the scene with hawk’s eyes. The
Lady Alyce, at 50 feet and 136 tons, was a sleek topsail schooner
with well-greased masts, coiled lines, and shining brightwork. She
looked like she could outsail anything.

“Mister Simmons,” the captain shouted.

The mate, Cataline Simmons, was a black
Bahamian with the muscles and instincts of an experienced sailor
and the accent of an Oxford professor. “Aye, sir!”

Thibodeau’s eyes searched the wharf again,
but it was no use. What he sought was not there. “Hoist the
mains’l,” he commanded.

Cataline, too, looked with concern at the
wharf before executing the order.

“Today, Simmons!” bellowed the captain.
“We’ll leave him if we have to, but I will be first to bespeak that
wreck!”

Cataline leapt into action, gesturing to four
crewmen—three white, one black—who waited poised at their stations.
“Aye, sir! Hoist the mains’l.”

The three white crewmen set about their tasks
quickly, skillfully. The small, wiry black man, Stepney Austin,
hesitated. If Thibodeaux was king here, and he undoubtedly was,
then Stepney Austin was the court jester. Monkeylike in his
movements and Cockney in his speech, he could be the bane of
Simmons’ existence if he were not so brave and loyal.

“Cast off the docklines,” said the
captain.

Cataline threw Stepney a look. Stepney moved
as if he had been waiting for just such an order.

The sail was filling; other boats were
getting underway. Stepney cast off the bow lines and moved
deliberately toward the stern, watching the wharf as did Cataline.
Thibodeaux turned away and looked seaward, giving up on finding
what he sought upon the wharf.

Then Joe, baggy in Richard’s clothing and
unsteady in Richard’s boots, appeared at the far side of the wharf,
running toward the Lady Alyce.

Stepney cried, “There he is!”

Thibodeaux did not look. “Cast off!”

Cataline lifted a cargo block hanging from
the rigging nearby and, as he spoke, swung the block like a great
pendulum out over the wharf. “Casting off. Aye, aye, sir.”

Stepney was forced to comply, but it was in
slow motion that he cast off the stern line.

Joe ran desperately to close the gap of
several yards between Richard’s reluctant boots and the departing
schooner. When the cargo block swung toward Joe, Joe took full
advantage of it by grabbing it and hanging on for dear life.

Stepney chanted, “Come on, come on!”

Joe’s forward motion combined with the
pendulum swing of the block to carry Joe, like a trapeze artist,
across the chasm now yawning between schooner and wharf. Joe landed
more-or-less flatfooted on the deck behind Captain Thibodeaux.
Richard’s floppy hat tumbled from Joe’s head, followed by a cascade
of unruly curls that reached halfway down her back.