Then I looked into Tomlinson’s sad, old eyes. He was shaking his head, staring at me-no disapproval there, just an expression of helplessness, hurt, worry. Then I turned back toward the door of Gator Bill’s bar.
I said to DeAntoni, “I need a drink.”
The names of some of the locals inside Gator Bill’s seemed oddly familiar.
It wouldn’t be long before I understood why.
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.
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.”