Everglades (21 page)

James was James Tiger, the son of Josie Tiger, he told us. The attractive waitress with the Aztec face was his sister, Naomi Bloom. Behind the bar was Jenny Egret.

That was definitely a surname familiar to Tomlinson and me.

Commonality of last names among ’Glades Indians isn’t unusual. Among the Seminole and Miccosukee, names such as Osceola, Johns, Tiger, Storm, Billie and Cypress are the equivalent of Smith, Jones, Johnson and Brown in the wider world.

But Egret? It was a name that I associated with only one man.

Tomlinson wasn’t shy about asking. To Jenny, the big woman, he said, “I don’t suppose you’re related to Joseph Egret. Used to be partners with this far-out old redneck cowhunter named Gatrell? He lived west of here, south of Naples, this little ranch on Mango Bay.”

Meaning my late uncle, Tucker Gatrell, and using the old-time Florida term,
cowhunter
for cowboy. Which Tucker and Joseph Egret certainly were. Cowhunters, poachers, whiskey-makers, womanizers, Everglades guides and, in later years, I’m fairly certain, they smuggled their share of marijuana, too. They boated it across the Gulf of Mexico from Colombia and Panama into southwest Florida, the remote Ten Thousand Islands, where not even a helicopter could follow them through the mangrove tunnels and swamp tributaries.

Joe and Tuck were born in the mangroves; grew up in the ’Glades. They knew the wild country better than any outsider could ever know it.

The three of us were sitting at the bar again. Bloodletting during battle usually creates galvanizing bonds, but our second reception at Gator Bill’s was only slightly warmer than the first. These were a reserved people, isolated not only geographically, but socially. With the exception of a few, there was racial isolation, too. The fact that we’d beaten off the Sawgrass security team proved that we, at least, had a common enemy. But it didn’t mean we were friends—or that we could be trusted.

So our conversation with them was polite, generic. It became slightly more comfortable after a pair of sheriff’s deputies arrived, asked us a few questions, then departed. But then Tomlinson mentioned Joseph Egret; asked the tall woman if she were related, and all the Indians in the room seemed to withdraw into a cocoon of their own creation. It was as if we, as strangers, had once again walked through the door for the first time. That’s the variety of hush that dominated.

Jenny made eye contact with James, then Naomi—an entire conversation going on among them in that brief silence—before she said to Tomlinson, “I’ve heard the name Joseph Egret. Ev’body in the ’Glades has. A great big man. Story goes, one time his horse took a stingray spine in the pad of his hoof. Joseph loved that horse so much, he put the animal over his shoulders and carried the horse back to the barn where he had the tools and the medicine. That’s how big’a man he was. Only he’s dead now.”

They way she said it—speaking by rote, slightly theatrical—she might have been talking about some long-gone legend. Daniel Boone. Paul Bunyan. Like she didn’t know the man at all, just making conversation. But then, in a different tone, she said, “Why’d you ask about those two? Joe Egret and Cap’n Gatrell?”

Embarrassed by the scene I’d created, the degrading loss of emotional control, I’d gone to the rest room, washed the blood off my face, my gray fishing shirt, and then sat quietly at the far end of the bar. Sat there with my head throbbing, letting DeAntoni and Tomlinson do all the talking, as I finished two quick rums with soda and lime.

Now, though, Tomlinson included me by pointing, telling them my name—an awkward gesture, because he was holding a bag of ice on the ugly red welt swelling just above his bicep. He said, “I’m asking because he’s Tucker’s nephew. They practically raised him as a kid, Joseph and Tuck both. They were like his father. That’s how I met them—through Doc.”

The woman, Jenny, turned to me. “You’re kin to Cap’n Gatrell, Dr. Ford?”

“Yes.”

“You’re
Marion
Ford.”

“That’s right. As a kid, I lived with Tuck for a while. Joseph and I were close. I considered him . . . a friend. A good man. One of the finest men I’ve known.”

Jenny had her own approach to the detection of bullshit. She began to ask me seemingly innocuous questions: “I was at Cap’n Gatrell’s ranch once, but that’s back when I was a little girl. Was there a horse barn there?”

Gradually, though, the questions became more obvious, then pointed. What was the name of Joseph Egret’s favorite horse? (Buster) On which Caribbean island did he and Tucker run a cattle ranch? (Cuba) Finally: Where did Joseph Egret die?

I told her, “The bad curve on the way into the village of Mango. I was there. He and his horse were hit by this idiot in a van. I was beside Joseph at the end. It wasn’t a pretty thing to see, and it’s not the way I choose to remember the man. So no more questions, okay? I stopped taking tests years ago.”

Jenny’s expression softened, broadened. Suddenly, I was no longer a stranger. She told me, “I thought I recognized you.”

She looked at Tomlinson. “Him, too—him with his hippy hair and his bony, bird legs. But there had to be three or four hundred ’Glades people the day of Joseph’s funeral, whites and Indians. Some famous rich people from up north came, too—his old hunting clients. And lots of women, all of them bawling. The day they buried Joseph.”

I said, “You were at the funeral? I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

“Yep. I was at Cap’n Gatrell’s place, the Big Sky Ranch, back there on the Indian mound. Watched them lower the body down in the old traditional way.” She pointed to Naomi, the waitress, and then to James Tiger. “Their daddy’s Josie Tiger, and their granddaddy’s James Tiger. James started the Famous Reptile Show and Airboat Rides right near Forty Mile Bend. Ev’body knows those big yellow signs with the gator on them. Old James, he played the wind drum at Joseph’s funeral. I bet you remember
that.
”

I nodded. Yes, I remembered. Which is why, I finally realized, their names were familiar.

For the first time, I heard Naomi speak. “I went with Daddy to hear him play the drum. The day Joseph died, on his way back to Mango—Joe, I’m talking about—he stopped at our camp. He was on that big horse of his. My sister, Maria, gave him a red handkerchief to wear in his hair, like an old-time warrior. And he gave her—”

She stopped; looked at her brother, James, smiling. Then she walked behind the bar, where she took an old, black beaver-skin cowboy hat from a hook and placed it on her head. “—he gave her his roper’s hat, which she gave to me for Christmas. I’ll never forget it. He looked so handsome sitting up there on his horse. Even for his age, Joseph was such a good-looking man. I wear his hat nearly every day.”

DeAntoni was saying, “See? I told you it was smart to bring you Florida boys along,” as Jenny told me, “Joseph had that magic with women. Didn’t matter what age, they all loved him, the way he looked, and his great big heart. My mama was the same. She was Rilla Mae Osceola. She and Joseph never married, but I still took Daddy’s name.”

I touched my hand to the back on my head—quite a lump swelling there. It took me a long moment to realize what she was saying. “You’re Joseph Egret’s
daughter?
I didn’t know he had any children.”

“You didn’t know Joseph fathered children?”

That got a laugh from the room.

chapter seventeen

Naomi
told me, “There was twenty-five, maybe thirty women we know of had children by Joseph. So now, one way or another, we’re all kin to him. Joseph Egret could’a populated a whole village with the sons and daughters he sired.”

James Tiger said, “Or a tribe. That’s the way we think of ourselves now. Pretty soon, it’s gonna be official. Egret Seminoles, that’s the name we voted to take. Only Joseph wouldn’t’a liked that, ’cause he always knew he weren’t really no Seminole.”

Tomlinson had been following along, nodding, understanding the implications of it all more quickly than I, because he said, astonished, “My God, I understand, now. Your
own
tribe. You’re filing to become designated as a tribe. Joseph’s offspring; his extended biological family. The
Egret
Seminoles. You really are petitioning the government?”

Jenny said, “Uh-huh. We got every reason in the world to do it, too. And the right. My father had different blood than most of the ’Glades Indians. He passed that blood on to a bunch of us. After more than two years trying to get it done, the federal government’s only a month or two from making it official.”

Tomlinson said, “Congratulations. That had to take a lot of time, a lot of work,” showing her that he knew something about the process.

“When you’re dealing with the government, nothing’s
easy.
Especially if you’re Indian. In the last three, four years, other Florida tribes, like the Tribe of East Creeks, the Okle waha Band of Seminoles, the United Tuscola, they’ve all been denied—but they keep right on pushing, filing their petitions. Their clans have been together for hundreds of years. They got their customs, their tribal leaders, but the federal government says they don’t exist, so they don’t. Not
legally.

“But the Egret Seminoles, ours is almost a done deal. That’s what our attorneys tell us, and the people in Washington, the folks at the BIA’s Branch of Acknowledgment and Recognition. They say it like they’re doing us a favor. But they got no choice because we
proved
it.”

Tomlinson said, “You proved it using Joseph’s DNA.”

James was nodding, not looking at us, his right hand tugging at the brim of his hat. “The DNA didn’t prove it outright. But it sure helped. Maybe you can tell us something about
that.
We heard rumors that you and Dr. Ford are the ones who did the testing. Yanked out hair from Joe’s head and took it to some laboratory up north.”

Then he added quickly, as if to reassure us: “It’s not something we talk about with outsiders. We don’t use people’s private names ’less they says it’s all right.”

I told him, “Tomlinson’s the one who did the DNA stuff. He tested Joseph’s hair, not me. He’s the expert.”

Tomlinson said, “I’m no expert, but a friend of mine is. I took the samples to Mass-Labs, near Boston. They have a Preliminary Chain Reaction processor there; a complete computerized system for testing DNA. Later, if you want, I can tell you the details. What surprises me is that you knew.”

“So you
are
the ones?”

“We’re the ones,” Tomlinson said. “Joseph and Tucker were in trouble. We wanted to help.”

Jenny considered that for a moment before she said, “Oh, we
knew.
From the rumors, yes, but that’s not the only way we found out. Nearly three years ago, a man showed up here with some papers. They were copies of the DNA report. His lawyers found them in some file up in Tallahassee, and he was all excited. He said there were certain genetic markers that proved Daddy wasn’t Seminole or Miccosukee. He said, legally, they were strong evidence that Daddy came from the old Florida Indians, the ones here when Ponce de León came sailing in. The ones who built the shell mounds up and down this coast that Miami, St. Pete, Lauderdale—a lot of big towns—are built on.”

Naomi asked, “Do you know about them? The old ones?”

Smiling at her, Tomlinson said, “Tell us.”

“They called them the Calusa,” she said. “The scientists say the Calusa are extinct now. But they’re wrong.”

She added, “The Calusa lived here a thousand years before the Seminoles showed up. They didn’t have chiefs. They had kings, like the Maya. Only, all the archaeologists, like I said, think they’re extinct, killed off by disease. But they aren’t all dead. Joseph had the blood. Now we’ve proved that we got the Calusa blood, too. A bunch of us sent pieces of our hair off in little plastic tubes, and paid for the same kind’a test. We all had the same genetic markers. DNA.”

Tomlinson asked, “The man who brought the papers from Tallahassee, was it the same one who developed Sawgrass?”

Jenny was nodding. “Um-huh. This was more than three years back. Before they even broke ground. He told us Sawgrass was going to be a great thing for the area. Some joke.”

“The man’s name was Geoff Minster.”

Once again, James, Naomi and Jenny exchanged a long, communal look, before James answered, “Oh, we
know
Minster. He wasn’t too bad. Didn’t lie to us no more than most men who want to see this part of the ’Glades developed. Could be, some of us liked Mr. Minster okay. We heard he died. Fell off a boat one night.”

DeAntoni said, “If you have the time, I wouldn’t mind asking you a few more questions about Minster,” but James ignored him, listening as Tomlinson pressed, “If it wasn’t Minster, the man who approached you had to be Shiva. The man who claims to be a religious teacher. Or maybe he called himself Jerry Singh. He controls Sawgrass now.”

Jenny said, “Yeah, it was Shiva. Came driving up in some kind of big blue car—”

“A Rolls-Royce,” Naomi said.

“Yeah, that was the kind of car it was. A tall man wearing robes. Told us God had sent him. That he’s a meditator, a mystic, and he said he had a way we’d never have to worry about money again.”

James said quickly, “We don’t want to talk too much about that now, do we?”

Jenny used a mild undertone to snap at him. “You ever hear me say more than I’m supposed to?” Then she continued, “Shiva was the one who came to us with those papers, saying that, legally, we had a right to form our own tribe. Like it was his idea, but it wasn’t. He didn’t tell us anything we hadn’t already thought of before. But it takes lawyers to file all those forms, to keep pushing the government, and lots of money.”

“Shiva promised to provide the money?”

Jenny addressed the implication: “His church has
already
provided the money. Lots of it, too. Four lawyers, one in Florida, two in D.C., and one out in Oklahoma tryin’ to prove there’s no Seminoles out there with the same blood as us. But don’t think we’re stupid. Shiva isn’t the first to try and take advantage of us getting tribal status. We know why he’s doing what he’s doing.”