Amerika (11 page)

‘How long did you fly with her?’ I said.

‘Five, maybe six times, until I got the hang of it.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Like you. Quiet, all business. More serious than she needed to be, but considering what she was doing, maybe that’s the way you professional pilots are.’

I thought about Captain Fatt, who had taught me the art of flying Pan Am clippers. ‘Not all of them.’

We flew for a while in silence. The engines droned in perfect synchronization. Once again I admired Orlando’s talent as an aviation mechanic. Before he quit Pan Am to team up with me, he had risen to become Assistant Chief of Maintenance, Caribbean Division. A lofty title, he often reminded me. He had thirty guys working for him, and every last one of them would have killed for Orlando because every morning he showed up in the hangar wearing spotless clean coveralls, and walked out every night as tired and grease-covered as the rest of them.

‘Earhart taught you how to fly. That’s something, alright.’

‘Just the basics. When the production wrapped, she went her way and I went mine. Took lessons at a field near L.A. Soloed. Got my ticket a month later. Then my instrument rating and multi.’

‘A Beechcraft Staggerwing is a lot of airplane.’

She laughed. ‘You’re telling me. When that big fat radial engine first fired up, I thought, dear God, what have I done?’

We laughed at that.

I said, ‘It’s a beautiful piece of workmanship,’

‘Custom built. Leather seats, cruises at two hundred, lands at fifty like an eagle coming home to roost. I named her
Sweet Surrender
.’

‘Must have cost a fortune. Twenty thousand new I read somewhere.’

‘Movies pay a decent wage.’

‘Providing you’re a star.’

‘Was, you mean. I sold that plane for a song.’

A long silence.

She sighed. ‘You do what you gotta’ do sometimes.’

‘But if you find the gold you can buy it back again.’

She brightened. ‘So you don’t think I’m crazy?’

‘Didn’t say that.’

‘Even if we do find the gold, I…’ She fell silent.

‘If we find the gold, what?’

‘You ask too many damn questions.’

I gave up and used binoculars to scan the seven-island chain of the Dry Tortugas that began peeking through the broken cloud cover.

‘You said to the west of Loggerhead Key?’

‘That’s what the map says.’

From two thousand feet the keys look insignificant. From the ground too, for that matter. Middle Key, a narrow spit of sand and scrub, is often awash in the summer. Loggerhead Key, the bottommost island, is larger and holds the Coast Guard lighthouse. Garden Key, the largest island in the group, is the site of Fort Jefferson. The six-sided brick monster of a fort with eight-foot thick walls was built back in the 1840s to protect the Straits of Florida, but never used because the real enemy, malaria, kept killing its occupants.

The wind and sea constantly alter the keys’ shapes; one year here, the next year gone beneath the waves, the following year back again. Hurricane winds can scour a key smooth of all vegetation in an instant, but Mother Nature always fights back, and scrub and underbrush can re-appear within months. In Orlando’s words, ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’ But I say Mother Nature’s the one doing it, not the Lord; yielding abundance and plenty and then desolation and destruction.

The Dry Tortugas are a fisherman’s paradise with yellowtail and snapper practically jumping into your boat. Tarpon, too, if you have the right rig to catch them. And when you get tired of fishing, you can look down into the crystal clear water and admire the rainbow-colored angel fish, wrasses, and sergeant majors swimming in and around the reef.

When Orlando and I came here fishing with my dad, I would often go diving and see them first hand. Orlando, for all his athletic skill and strength, barely knew how to swim. So, while he and my father sat in the boat swapping lies, I’d put on my homemade goggles, strip down to my shorts and go swimming. I always carried a knife with me, just in case I met up with something that wanted to eat me.

But in all the years I did this, I never met a predator other than myself. Luck played a part too, I know, but Captain Fatt taught me that luck is something you can count on in the cockpit when you’re in a jam and everything else has failed. But if that fails, then - and only then - you pray for a miracle.

‘Do me a favor and circle around the fort,’ I said. ‘Keep us at about five hundred feet.’

‘What for?’

‘The first officer never questions the captain.’

She grinned. ‘I didn’t realize I got promoted.’

‘Anyone who can fly a Staggerwing, can fly this old bird.’

She laughed, and gently banked the plane over the six-sided fort. It rotated beneath our gaze. 

‘That a moat around it?’ Ava said.

‘Breakwater. Keeps the waves from chewing up the walls.’

‘That thing’s gigantic.’

The fort’s brick walls, dotted with hundreds of gun ports, enclosed a vast parade ground. Where once Union artillery soldiers marched past their commanding officer in proud review, a small forest of fully-grown cocoanut, date palm and butternut trees filled the deserted space. The silent, majestic, deteriorating structure, long gone to seed, spoke of a time when Fort Jefferson was one of the greatest construction projects of the ages.

I said, ‘Took sixteen million bricks to build it.’

‘It’s in the middle of nowhere.’

‘Geographically yes, strategically, no. And every brick brought in by boat. Tons of flagstone, timber, and nails, plus slave labor from Key West to do all the work. And when done, the Yankees aimed four hundred-fifty smoothbore cannons out of those gun ports down there.’

‘Ever see action?’

‘Never. Rifled cannon put it out of business. You fire one of those into brick, and no matter how thick, it crumbles like sand. The Army declared it obsolete right after the Civil War began and then abandoned it a few years later. Now it’s a national monument - hold it, there he is. I knew he’d hear our engines.’

A small figure dressed in white stood watching from a corner parapet, his hand shading his eyes from the hot sun.

‘Throttle back for just a second and keep her wings level.’

When the noise abated, I slid open the cockpit window, cupped my hands and shouted, ‘Ahoy, Billy, it’s Sam!’

The figure stiffened, and then started waving furiously, his voice faint and faraway.  I waved back, Ava throttled up and we continued flying south.

‘That’s Billy Button. Runs the place.  President Roosevelt made Fort Jeff a national monument in the mid-thirties, Billy pulled the right strings and got himself appointed director. He’s all alone down there. Just the way he likes it.’

‘I’d go nuts.’

‘He doesn’t. Supply boat comes down once a week. He goes back on it and blows off steam in Key West.’

‘He can just leave?’

‘In the summer it’s so hot nobody in their right mind comes down here except fisherman.’

‘And treasure hunters like us. The map says it’s five miles due west of Loggerhead Light.’

Just as she said this we flew over the black and white lighthouse. Perched on the edge of a three-quarter mile long key, the black and white striped landmark lay due south of Fort Jeff. By day, the one hundred fifty-foot high stone structure was a silent reminder that from here north, America began. By night, its three-million candlepower light warned ships of the perils of the reefs as they sailed north out of the Gulf of Mexico to continue up the Atlantic seaboard or head east to war-torn Europe - providing they carried no contraband. The five unfortunate ships the U-Boats torpedoed right after the Neutrality Act seemed to be keeping the other dogs at bay.

I said, ‘Back in the old days, wreckers used to sneak down here and douse that light in hopes of causing a shipwreck.’

‘Did it work?’ Ava said.

‘Many a fine house was built in Key West on the profits from salvaging those wrecks. My great-grandfather’s for instance, except he was one of the honest ones.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘No.’

We laughed.

Ava said, ‘What a life that must have been. It’d make a hell of a movie. John Wayne would fit the part like a glove.’

She was right: I could see movie images of salvage men tumbling out of bed in the middle of the night, horns blaring, running to launch their sloops and cutters into the teeth of a storm that had trapped some unfortunate three-mast barquentine, her holds full with valuable cargo and foundering on the reefs.

Whatever wrecker got there first laid claim to the hull and owned it outright, and in turn would divvy up the spoils with his fellow wreckers according to a strict method of accounting.

Many a ship’s captain tried to ward off these wolves by refusing to leave. Some even tried the old trick of leaving a dog or cat on the wreck, claiming still living creatures were still on board. But the wreckers would grab the pet, heave it in overboard, roll up their sleeves and get down to the perilous work of lugging casks of wine, whiskey, lard, and whale oil out of the dark, water-filled holds that threatened to flood at any moment. They’d winch off cargoes of prime building lumber, bundles of silk, muskets, gunpowder, men’s suit coats, ladies shoes, herds of goats, even cattle sometimes - and haul it laboriously back to Key West to sell it to an eagerly waiting market.

I said, ‘Did this imaginary buried treasure of yours come from a wreck?’

A long pause. ‘From a mutiny. And it’s not imaginary.’

‘Tell me what you see out there.’

She lifted herself up from her seat so as to be able to see over the S-38’s long snout. ‘Nothing.’

‘We’ve come five miles, almost six now.’

‘Keep going. It’s out there.’

‘I’ve been down here a lot and never saw it.’

‘Ever flown out this particular course?’

She had me there. All the flying I’d done had been in and around Fort Jeff, and to be honest, the occasional key that I saw could well have disappeared in the next storm, so I never bothered.

‘Knock, knock,’ Ziggy said.

‘Who’s there?’ Ava said.

‘Delores.’

She sighed in surrender. ‘Delores who?’

‘Delores my shepherd, I shall not want.’

‘We’re busy. Go sit down.’

Instead, he wormed his way further into the cockpit. ‘I tried that on Orlando. He didn’t think it was very funny either.’

I said, ‘Orlando’s a preacher.’

‘On the level?’

‘Not ordained, but he does it part-time. Has a flock of folks who favor the way he sees the Lord.’

‘Maybe he could pray for us to find the island.’

‘It’ll take a miracle.’

‘No it won’t. Ava tapped me on the shoulder. Check your eleven o’clock.’

Just off to port, a tiny, emerald green dot of scrub and tree-covered land floated in the middle of nothingness. The three of us crowded the window to stare at the approaching vision.

Ava said, ‘Land ho.’

Ziggy whispered, ‘Treasure Island.’

For a Florida key that wasn’t supposed to be here, it was amazing to behold: a half-mile long, maybe, a quarter mile wide, the kidney-shaped island had substantial scrub and brush, which meant it had been around for some years. Why hadn’t it been on the maps, I don’t know, and it’s not worth discussing here. Maps are a sore spot to flyers and navigators. The better they look, the less you trust them.

I slowly circled at five hundred feet while Ava took turns comparing the real thing to the treasure map in her lap.

‘Shape’s about the same. Not exactly, but close.’

‘Where is ‘X’ marks the spot’?’

‘According to this, a little beyond the scrub line on the westward side. Just up from the beach. See it?’

‘Affirmative.’

In addition to a small beach, a narrow, curving spit of sand continued out into the water, providing a slight lee that would smooth the waters and help our landing.

‘Good a place as any to set her down,’ I said.

‘Will you anchor in the water?’

‘Only if the sand won’t hold us, but it should. These tires are good and fat.’

Just as I said this, Orlando called out from the cabin. ‘I don’t think we need to unpack the raft, cap. That sand looks pretty firm to me.’

As always, Orlando and I were on the same frequency.

‘I’m starving,’ Ziggy said.

‘Ignore him,’ Ava said. ‘He always gets hungry when he gets excited.’

‘You should have seen me when you got the part in
Angels with Dirty Faces
.’

‘I did, and don’t remind me.’

Orlando leaned into the cockpit. ‘Tell me something, Is Humphrey Bogart as mean as he looks?’

Ava said, ‘A pussy cat. Or at least he was last time I saw him.’

‘He handles a Tommy gun like he’d been doing it all his life.’

‘Good actors make you believe in things even when they don’t.’

I said, ‘Like hunting for buried treasure?’

Her jaw muscles tensed but her smile was bright. ‘Let’s land this bucket of bolts and get rich quick.’