Ten Thousand Islands (2 page)
Read Ten Thousand Islands Online
Authors: Randy Wayne White
Picture a metal object about the size of your palm and shaped like a miniature shield. On the upper half of the shield are concentric circles upon a cross. The circles are intersected by three lines. A rifle target as seen through the crosshairs of a scope would be similar.
Midway down the medallion are two square holes cut through the gold. They are placed in a way to suggest eyes, though that may not have been the intent. Below the
holes are a pair of inverted teardrop shapes and several half-rectangles, like doors within doors on the spatulated bottom half. On its back are two perfect and delicate crescent moons, one above the other.
In Spanish journals from the sixteenth century, a medallion of this design (a
chaguala
in the literature) is mentioned in association with the chief who ruled southwest Florida’s indigenous people, a powerful and advanced society, the Calusa. It may have been worn on the chief’s forehead or around his neck. No archaeologist doubts that the symbols are significant or that the medallion was once worn by Calusa royalty.
Some say the medallion resembles an alligator’s skull. Others describe portions of the etchings as a “spider” design or “doors of infinity,” or “roots of a sacred tree.” To this day, medicine men of the Everglades tribes will perform certain ceremonies only on a crescent moon. That may have been true of Calusa shamans as well. No one knows.
All interpretations of the symbols are conjecture, for the knowledge has been lost. The importance of the symbols, however, cannot be doubted, for they were repeated in carvings over thousands of years of Calusa hegemony. As Tomlinson might say, symbols have energy. Judging from their centuries of dominion, the medallion’s symbols demonstrate that a powerful people once believed it was so.
Everyone who’s held the medallion has puzzled over those symbols. The boy who found it was no different. Years later, his mother would tell me: “D—read everything he could about the history of the Calusa, and he liked to hunt for artifacts. It was uncanny the way he could find things. Like the medallion—he was digging in a place no one would think to look.”
Archaeologists who later authenticated the boy’s discovery were also impressed.
The late Dr. B. Calvin Jones of the Florida Bureau of Archaeology wrote to me, “D—was a bright young man and had a natural gift for understanding what lay beneath the earth. To this issue, he was the most gifted child that I’ve ever met. Yes, he did make a major discovery, one I think marks the burial site of Chief Carlos and his subordinates.”
In conversation, another archaeologist told me, “The child had a genius for finding things.”
According to his mother, though, the boy was troubled by his discovery. “He seemed to grow increasingly nervous as the weeks passed,” she said. “I know that he was having nightmares and he seemed to become obsessed with thoughts of Indians. It bothered him that he’d dug up a grave.”
The mother also had nightmares. In one, she and her son were standing in water that was neck-deep. The boy had the medallion in his hand. He dropped it. In the dream, the mother begged him not to go after it, but he laughed and disappeared beneath the water.
Three days later, the boy was found dead, hanging from a very low tree branch—perhaps a fatal attempt to “experience unconsciousness” as his mother believes.
This is also true: shortly after her son’s death, the mother was contacted by a stranger who offered to hold a seance in which she might speak to her son from the grave. Nearly crazed with grief, the mother agreed.
At the seance, by candlelight, the dead boy “spoke” through a series of raps on the table. He told his mother to give the gold medallion to the man who’d organized the seance.
The mother did what her beloved son instructed.
This novel is fiction, entirely fiction, created in the mind of the author, although some of the events herein are based on actual events. For instance, looters actually did transport a backhoe to a deserted island to hunt for treasure. They decimated an important archaeological site, yet found nothing.
It is sad but not surprising. Florida is a transient state in which too many rootless people care nothing for the past nor this state’s future. Florida is a vacation destination or a retirement place, as temporary as time spent in a bus station.
Like a bus station, Florida attracts con men and predators.
It always has. Florida always will.
Randy White
Pineland, Florida
T
he islands of Sanibel, Captiva, Marco and Key Largo are real places, and, I hope, faithfully described, but they are all used fictitiously in this novel. The same is true of certain actual businesses, marinas, bars and other places frequented by Doc Ford and his friend Tomlinson. In all other respects, this novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The author would like to thank Commander Larry Simmons, formerly of SEAL Team 1; Captain Peter Hull, Dr. Ken Leber, Dr. John Miller, J. Robert Long, Dr. Richard Pierce, all of Mote Marine Laboratories; Mr. Troy Deal, Sybil Bailey and especially Renee T. Humbert for her assistance. I would also like to thank Dr. Bill Marquardt, Dr. Robin C. Brown and Corbett Torrence for their expertise on Calusa archaeology; Amy Massey, Capt. John Martinez,
Jack Webb of Key Largo, and all the Mandalites; Dr. Thaddeus Kostrubala, who provided invaluable scientific fabric as well as case histories to support the premise that there are politicians who lie without remorse, there are human anomalies who prey on women and, sometimes, they are one and the same.
These people provided valuable guidance and information. All errors, exaggerations, omissions or fictionalizations are entirely the responsibility of the author. An example: the Calusa king, Carlos, and the man who betrayed his people, Filipe, actually existed, as did Father Juan Rogel and Juan Lopez de Velasco. They are accurately quoted or paraphrased. Salvador and Tocayo are fictional characters, although their lives parallel those of Carlos and Filipe, even to some translated passages from letters written by priests who lived among them.
Prologue
T
here’s something sinister about the sound of a big man trying to sneak through mangroves. On the foggiest night of the year, standing alone on the porch outside my lab, I heard the crack of a branch, then silence. Heard the rustle of leaves. Then I strained to hear through a longer silence that implied observation and careful breathing.
The platform that supports my house and laboratory is built on stilts over the water, thirty yards from land, Dinkin’s Bay, Sanibel Island, Florida. The only way on or off is by a rickety boardwalk. Someone was working his way toward that boardwalk, getting closer.
I waited, head tilted, and heard branches move once again. The sound of a snapping twig is an ancient alert. It fires all the limbic alarms that enable direct communication between the ears and eager feet. An unknown primate was out there in the gloom.
I touched a button on my watch and saw that it was
2:07
A.M.
, 2 October. Very, very late for a friend to come a’calling. Very, very late for me.
I was awake because I couldn’t sleep, and I was outside because I was restless—neither particularly unusual. What was unusual was the weather. An abrupt and windless cold front had drifted in that night. It brought a sea change. Fog descended as if the island had slipped its anchor and drifted into a mountain cloud. Fall and spring are the seasons. If you have the misfortune to be on the water when the silver shroud arrives, your best bet is to flee the channel, drop the hook and wait it out.
Sitting in a rocker on the porch, looking out into the mist, however, is very pleasant. That’s what I chose to do. I’d lain in bed, listening to silence and dripping water until I couldn’t stand it anymore, then pulled on a pair of shorts and went out the screen door into the haze.
Amazing. I stood at one end of my deck and couldn’t see the railing at the other end. I swung down to the lower platform to check my fish tank, and could just barely see the edge of a tin roof through the swirling mist.
My house was gone.
Dinkin’s Bay Marina is just down the shoreline. The lights of the marina created a surreal van Gogh sky: swirling stars and corridors of light on a white canvas.
I found a rocker on the porch and sat there listening. Fog is condensed water vapor and conducts sound far more efficiently than air, so it seemed as if the old wives’ tale was true: Blind people have a heightened sense of hearing.
I was certainly blind in that fog. From the direction of the marina, I could hear the click of every auto-switch, the whir of every pump, the groan of straining dock lines and the steady gurgle of bait tanks.
Then I heard it, a sound that didn’t belong, a sound that didn’t fit. It was the careful closing of a car door. It is a distinctive latching of metal on metal made when a door, half closed, is pressed with the hip.
A moment later, I heard the same sound again.
I sat a little straighter, trying to peer through the fog. It was blinding, dizzying. The sound came from the direction of the mangroves where the shell road, separated by the marina’s gate, becomes Tarpon Bay Road. I could only occasionally see the mangrove fringe. Black limbs reached toward me, then vanished in a smudge of white.
It’s not unusual for insomniac tourists to turn onto the marina’s dead-end road to see what there is to see, but there’s a pattern. I’ve heard it too often not to know. They stop at the gate where business hours are posted. They read the sign. Then they back up and leave.
The shell road also attracts lovers. But people who stop for a roadside encounter don’t get out of the car unless it’s to urinate, and there is a pattern to that, too. Doors open, there’s a short pause, doors close.
I sat waiting to hear the doors again.
Waited two minutes; five minutes. Nothing.
Then I heard that distinctive sound in the mangroves. Heard the snap of a limb; rustle of leaves. Then:
silence
.
Thus I knew that two or more people had exited a car, and at least one of those people was trying to find the path to the boardwalk that leads to my house.
I stood. Listened for another moment. Then, very quietly, I began to move.
I get the occasional late night visitor. It was bar-closing time on a nasty, foggy night. Stumbling toward me was probably one of any number of my drunken friends with a couple of friendly drunks in tow. I could hear them explaining
to me, Doc, it was just too damn foggy to run the boat home, so I caught a ride to your place. I’ll sleep on your porch, you don’t mind.
It’s happened before.
I stepped into the house, left the lights off. In any emergency situation, a man wants two things covered: his testicles and his toes. I was already wearing shorts, so I slipped into my running shoes, then fumbled around in my dresser drawer until I found my old 9mm Sig Sauer pistol wrapped in oilcloth, always loaded, always ready.
I shucked a cartridge into the chamber … then I stopped, remembering a recent letter I’d received from a lover, the tall and articulate Dr. Kathleen Rhodes.
Correction,
former
lover.
Among other things, her letter had described me as a man whose heart and head weren’t connected, that I was capable of violence without emotion. I’d been fretting over the damn thing since I’d received it. While it’s true I’m not overly emotional, I still have feelings, and her words had struck a nerve. Was I really so heartless, so insular? Now I had to admit it—she was
right
. That’s precisely how I was behaving. I’d automatically assumed I was being targeted for attack. Those were probably friends of mine out there! And here I was already arming myself with deadly force.
I see my life as divided into two distinct rooms. One of those rooms is forever locked, as it must be. Inside are too many jungled nights; too many nights spent moving quietly in darkness. The second room is brighter, simpler; my life as it is now. I am the owner and sole employee of Sanibel Biological Supply, purveyor of marine specimens to labs around the country. It is a straightforward, constructive life that I tend carefully and reinspect often.
The reason is simple. Once the door to the darker room has been opened, the creature therein is forever alive.
I was sweating despite the cool air. Sweat dripped down my forehead. I took off my glasses. I didn’t need them. They’d be a liability in the fog.
I hesitated, undecided. Then I put the Sig away.
Still … some atavistic sense refused to allow me to go lumbering down the dock with my big hand of friendship extended. Boat theft is a thriving business. Thieves carry cable cutters and crowbars, ready-made clubs. Only a fool would walk into something like that.
And if they were friends? Well, the only reason a friend would sneak around at 2
A.M.
is to play a practical joke.
Friend or foe, I decided to turn the tables.
Let the joke be on them.
I stood in the shadows of the deck, peering into the fog. Mangroves disappeared and reappeared before me and to my left. The van Gogh lights of the marina were to the right. Even in fog, if I crept along the walkway to shore, the lights would isolate me in silhouette.