Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County (15 page)

Naples still had plenty of mean folks, including an active Klan. They were still lurking, much like Seminole Joe. The Klansmen were out there in the swamps, fields, and tidal rivers. Mama had no patience whatsoever for the Klan. As a nurse, she believed all people were the same and should be treated as such. When I was in high school, I had a long conversation with Mama about the way the world worked. “The Klan members think they're settling some kind of score from long ago,” she had said. “That's just malarkey. They're just a bunch of bullies picking on colored folks for one reason: They can! They can murder colored folks, burn their churches, do what they please and no one has stopped them. That's just wrong,” she said. “You remember that, Dora. It's just plain wrong. If anything, those other folks—the coloreds and the Injuns—they're the ones who ought to be settling scores, 'cause so much been done to
them
over the years. The Klan—they got it all backward.”

My eyes started to tear up, as always happened when I thought about Mama. She was so wise, and I missed her so much.

“Collier County is right in the crosshairs of some of the greatest stressors in our country,” the lady from Ohio was saying. That jerked me to attention. “Besides the racial problem, and the farm-worker issue, you have a new group of immigrants, the Cubans. You don't have a lot of them, mostly spillover from Miami, but they tend to find the transition to American life very difficult, especially those who were well-off in their home country and are overeducated for the jobs they can get here.”

Cubans? I hadn't been aware. No one I knew had mentioned it.

“You are also perfectly positioned for explosive growth,” the speaker went on. “With the growing availability of air-conditioning, you will see a large influx of people from the North.”

Good Lord
, I thought.
Now I'm really awake.

“You have beautiful beaches, great fishing,” she continued. “Your challenge will be managing your growth in a way that doesn't ruin what you have. And doesn't leave anyone behind.”

Ha!
I thought.
Ain't that the truth
.

I looked around the room again. Wouldn't it have been great if the mayor had been here? Or someone from the newspaper? I wish I'd thought to call Jackie.

“I'd like to finish by saying that I wish it weren't just women in this room,” our speaker said, as if reading my mind. “For some reason, men won't come to hear a woman giving a talk,” she added with a slight smile.

“Well, they don't come to nothin' that's been organized by Methodist
women
,” one of the organizers said, trying to sound playful. I recognized her as the wife of one of the deputy sheriffs. “I wish they would, 'cause we talk about a lot of important topics here. When we have a special guest, we always let them know they are welcome!”

I thought to myself,
That will be the day
. This led to another thought.
And we may fix all the other problems mentioned here tonight before anyone faces the fact that women aren't taken seriously.

“Well, we can all go home and tell our men what we learned tonight,” our organizer added. “If they won't come, we can always bring it to them.”

What if you don't have a man?
I thought. I raised my hand. The speaker nodded, and I asked my question. “Hello,” I heard myself saying. “I am divorced. If you're saying we need to go home and serve our man some newfangled ideas with his breakfast grits and eggs, how do I fit in? I mean, I am just wondering. What else can women do?”

I don't know what got into me. I'd never called attention
to the fact I was divorced, and now I was pointing it out in a very public way. In a room full of Methodist women, no less. I was horrified. Did I sound bitter? Sassy? Maybe even
sarcastic
? What was happening to me?

Lawd have mercy, I might have learned it from Jackie! Wasn't this a Yankee thing—not to speak up, necessarily, but to speak up
in a way that made others uncomfortable
? I surely hadn't learned this in Mississippi.

I realized all of the women in the room were staring at me. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I was trying to be funny, I guess.”

“Well, actually you raise a valid point,” the speaker said soothingly. I was so grateful that she came to my aid that I nearly cried. “What women can do—married or not—is to speak up. Speak up at home, in church, in your civic groups, anywhere you have a chance. We are more powerful than we know, if only we make our feelings and wishes known.”

Later, having retreated to my home and my turtles and their blessed unconditional love, I realized that I was, in fact, following the speaker's advice already. The unvarnished truth was that little Dora Witherspoon had changed. I was less worried about what others thought of me and more willing to speak my mind. Jackie may have had some influence, but so had the other members of the book club. Mama's death—and, no doubt, my divorce—played a role, too. I was not the same person I had been. Plus, having gone to Mississippi on my own, and having faced some truths there, gave me a certain cockiness. Heck, I was born in a small town, and I loved it, but it didn't define me. Not entirely. Not anymore.

•  •  •

JACKIE KEPT WRITING HER COLUMN,
and everyone in town kept reading it. “Chatter Box” was supposed to run twice a week but
Jackie, true to her nature, found it hard to be so predictable. And she didn't want to write only about Darryl. “I don't want it to seem like a vendetta,” she said, so her second column was called “Mourning President Kennedy.” This was a tearjerker; even those who disliked Kennedy—and there were many in Naples—had to agree that she'd really captured our nation's lingering sadness. Then she wrote one called “Why American Schoolchildren Should Learn Foreign Languages,” which got no reaction whatsoever. After that, she wrote about her beloved Buick convertible and what it meant to her, which reestablished her as a bit of a loony. (Men could wax eloquent about a cherished automobile, but it was weird for a woman to do so. The fact that it was a Buick and not a Ford or Chevy made it even more peculiar.) She told us that she wanted to write about racial hatred in the South but that her editors had asked her to wait until she was “a more seasoned columnist,” which, in my estimation, was their way of saying “When hell freezes over.” Finally, she got back to Darryl Norwood and Seminole Joe with a column she called “Is Dreamsville a Nightmare?”

I'd been home for almost six weeks, and while Jackie was doing some damage to Darryl, and maybe slowing him down, the sad truth was that she hadn't stopped him. Unless something totally unexpected happened, I was beginning to think that nothing could.

J
ust when you think you have enough grit in your oysters, the devil has a way of upping the ante, allowing things to happen to distract or confound us mortals. Mama used to call these incidents “diversions meant to knock you off your path of righteousness.” Mama surely did have a way with words, tending toward the Biblical, of course.

First, there was a little incident involving Judd Hart. He'd been one of those kids who was infatuated with the Space Race and inspired by the astronauts who were, after all, just across the state at Cape Kennedy.

Jackie got an inkling that something was amiss courtesy of the town librarian, a middle-aged woman from Sarasota with a polished appearance who had been hired to replace Miss Lansbury, who had been so helpful with Jackie's book club. One day, the new librarian called Jackie out of the blue. “I thought you should know that your son has checked out a book on explosives,” she said in a crisp, yet not accusing voice. Jackie, squelching an urge to tell her that it was no one's business what anyone
checked out of a library, thanked her for the information. Jackie fretted and fumed, and when Judd walked in a half hour later, she met him at the door demanding an explanation. Judd assured her that he was working on a science experiment for school and that he was trying for an A.

Later, she said she should have known better because Judd had said, “They're just
small
rockets, not like the ones on TV.” And then the time-honored red flag,
“Don't worry, Mom.”

The first calls to the sheriff came from Mr. Cuthbert “Birdie” Gertleson who thought Communists from Cuba were making a land assault on Collier County. Birdie was—thank you, Jesus—unharmed but his frantic phone call and the words “missile attack!” sent the police into combat mode. Within minutes every able-bodied man in Naples was unlocking his gun cabinet, loading a shotgun, and heading for old Birdie's modest homestead.

Instead of Commies, however, all they found was Judd Hart looking guilty as a Sunday School teacher sipping moonshine. Two other boys were hightailing it into the swamp.

Everything had gone perfectly, Judd explained, until the rocket tipped over at the last second. Instead of going up into the sky in a blaze of glory it raced horizontally across a grassy piece of tidal marsh. Incredibly, it managed to hit the only house within a half mile in any direction, the simple structure owned by Birdie Gertleson. Worse, when it hit the outside wall, it kept going. And going. Not until after it was all over did the police learn that Judd's rocket, which featured a solid brass nose cone, had careered around Birdie's living room, ripping the newspaper he was reading right out of his hands while he sat in his favorite chair, terrorizing his cat, and finally bursting through the roof.

The fact that Old Birdie wasn't dead surprised everyone, himself especially. He was so glad he wasn't dead, and that it
wasn't Commies that had been attacking his humble abode, that he forgot to be angry. The cat, which is all that Birdie cared about anyway, was retrieved from its hiding place underneath Birdie's rusted 1929 Ford. Birdie's relief did not appease the sheriff, however. Judd was two inches away from being arrested.

Ted Hart had been enjoying a rare day working close to home when a Florida Highway Patrol officer, wearing the familiar Confederate pink uniform, marched into Collier County Savings & Loan where Ted and his boss Mr. Toomb were meeting with the trustees. Without time even to call Jackie, Ted was escorted to “the scene of the crime,” as the officer called it, without elaboration other than somehow it involved Judd.

The sheriff was already there. Once Ted realized that no one, including Judd, had been injured, he felt a wave of relief he'd experienced only one other time in his life—when Japan surrendered and the war was finally over. He'd gotten drunk with his friends and whooped and hollered until they all passed out, exhausted.

This time, however, although he wanted to shout with joy, he hid his true feelings. He was scared of what the law would do to Judd.

So Ted did what a father was expected to do: He turned and yelled at his son. He made Judd apologize to Birdie and promise he would pay for repairs. And then he threatened to send Judd to military school, a place called Admiral Farragut Academy in St. Petersburg, which was widely believed by Judd and other boys his age to be a reform school for kids from families with financial resources.

Satisfied that Judd had been properly shamed, the trooper and the sheriff decided to let the matter rest. Justice would be served at home by the boy's father. The sheriff asked the dispatcher
to send Harry Donahue from Harry's Handyman Service to secure the house and make an estimate for repairs for Ted; then he took Old Birdie and his cat to the Naples Beach Club Hotel, where they would stay, at Ted's expense, until the house was livable again. Meanwhile, the trooper agreed to drop Ted and Judd off at home.

“You are going to be mowing lawns for the rest of your life,” Ted told Judd on the way home, “and every penny will pay me back for all these expenses.”

“Do I really have to go to military school?” Judd asked, wide-eyed.

Aware that the trooper was listening, Ted said yes. But he knew that Jackie would never let that happen. Judd figured the same. Considering that he could have found himself in juvenile jail, Judd was rather pleased overall with the outcome of the day's events. Mowing lawns would be no problem. In fact, he already had a lawn-mowing service with more than a dozen regular customers. So what if he was essentially working for his dad for a while? He'd gotten off easy.

•  •  •

THE SECOND UNNERVING EVENT CAME
in the form of a letter hand-delivered to Mrs. Bailey White's. Jackie had just finished telling us about Judd's “misadventure,” as she phrased it. She had missed all the excitement involving the rocket fiasco, having driven the twins to voice lessons with a Mrs. Pendergast in Punta Gorda. “Here I was trying to be a good mother to my girls, and when we come home I find out my son has turned into a mad scientist!” she groaned, blotting her eyes with a tissue. “I had my children when I was too young! I am a complete catastrophe as a mother!”

“Oh, now, stop being a Miss Melodrama,” Mrs. Bailey White said. “Have a Dr Pepper and calm down.”

“Ugh,”
Jackie said with disgust. “I hate that Dr Pepper stuff. Do you have any tonic water? Better yet, some gin to go with it?”

“Too early in the day,” Plain Jane scolded. “With this heat you'll end up with a huge headache.”

“Ted went to New Orleans and he said all the people there drink even in the late morning,” Jackie said defensively.

“Honey child, this ain't no
New Orleans
,” Mrs. Bailey White said, shaking her head. “That's up north compared to here. We're in the
tropics
. Besides, those folks are partygoers. They got pickle juice in their veins. But they don't live as long as we do. By the way, did you know they don't bury their people in the ground?”