When she replied “Pennsylvania,” I was disappointed, at first, then mildly relieved. I hacked through the brush and found a narrow path, which was a rarity on these backcountry islands. “It crossed my mind this might be upsetting,” I said when I’d found what I was looking for. “The Daniels family has been on these islands forever.”
Before us, a cluster of tombstones peeked out from an intrusion of cactus and vines. Not stones, really, but thin tablets of cement that had been inscribed with a stick, or a knife, when the cement was fresh. After a few swipes of the machete, I stepped back.
Roberta was drawn to a tiny yellow charm-a canary-embedded in the smallest stone.
JAMES P. DANIELS JR
1911-1913
R. I. P.
“He was only two years old,” she said. “How sad for a child to die in a place like this.” She touched a meditative finger to the canary charm, then stood and looked around, puzzled by something. “Hannah… what is that noise?”
The wind moving through bushes, I’d assumed. I tilted my head and focused. Drag the weight of a fire hose slowly, slowly over an expanse of dead leaves, and the sound would be similar. More disconcerting, the activity originated from two… possibly, three directions.
“Whatever it is, it’s close,” I said.
“This isn’t where you expected to find oranges, is it?”
I continued trying to ferret out what the noise might be until Roberta pulled my arm to turn me. “Come on. Let’s get out of here-I don’t like the vibe of this place.”
When we were safely buckled into the plane, wearing headphones and voice-activated microphones, we laughed about how spooked we were.
“Like a couple of kids! I was damn near running by the time I saw the water-and me, in my condition.”
“Probably raccoons,” I said. “The sick ones, they can be weird; slow, like zombies-” I stopped. “What do you mean, ‘my condition’?”
“Tell you later.” Roberta was using the throttle to taxi us away while she perused the gauges.
I remembered her saying No bug spray on my skin and knew what her condition was. It all fit with her concerns about saving money. “Let’s head back to Immokalee,” I suggested, for that’s where the plane was hangared-a little airport east of town used mostly by the crop dusters that lined the tarmac.
“Not already. We’ve already paid, and there’s a four-hour minimum. I thought you said you had your bearings?”
I did. Even from where I sat, I could look through the windshield and triangulate the landmarks my uncle had used to find that secret place long ago. The markers didn’t appear on charts, or in GPS software. It might take a full day to find the exact spot, but I knew I could get us close.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Some of the details are coming back to me. The bottom there is probably all muck. No telling how deep. Climbing off a boat is one thing; but we can’t get that close. We’d have to wade ashore. Who knows how many tries it will take us to find that tree. Or trees. I can’t remember if there was more than one.”
“How far?”
“From here? Four, maybe five miles. But now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure the spot is too narrow to land a plane. Why not just fly around; do a search from the air, then come back later in my boat?”
“We’re already here,” Roberta said in a determined way. “When we’re airborne, tell me which way to turn.”
Forking into Buttonwood Bay, miles east of Marco, are three tidal rivers that are navigable by small boat, and a fourth river that is not-unless you travel with a man who loves bushwhacking.
That’s what I’d remembered as I hiked around Faka Union Island. In the plane, I confirmed my recollections with a chart. Mangroves had sealed the mouth of the fourth river centuries ago-possibly, eons ago-so the average boater couldn’t get in. That’s why, as a child, the spot had stuck in memory as a narrow bay.
It was my Uncle Jake’s favorite place for catching what he called bronze snook. Bronze because a lifetime of feeding in tannin-red water had colored their skin that way.
Jake, like many fishermen, was irrationally territorial, and devious, when it came to protecting a good spot. I don’t know how he discovered the remains of a feeder creek that twisted into the river, but he did. He’d returned with a ripsaw and clippers and pruned his way in, foot by foot, pulling me and a skiff behind. His masterstroke was leaving a curtain of mangroves untouched so no one would notice the tunnel he’d cut nor suspect it led to a pristine stretch of water.
“I bet God hasn’t been here in a thousand years,” Jake had said when we finally broke free into sunlight.
That’s the way I remembered the place: no human spoor; palm hammocks and black mangroves a hundred feet high that shaded basins of clear water; rivulets that dropped off, black and deep, near the bank.
“See that tall stretch of trees?” I said into the microphone. “Head for that.”
We flew low over the water and turned back. When we did, I spotted a twisting scar in the mangroves. The passage my uncle had cut still existed but was visible only from the air.
“This is it,” I said. “See those pods of gumbo-limbo trees? That means high ground, probably shell mounds.”
“Which one?”
There were several pods of gumbos along a series of watery switchbacks.
“I don’t know, but we picked oranges on one of those mounds. All I remember is how thick the brush was hiking in-you couldn’t see the sky for all the thorns and vines. And the birdlife-birds everywhere. There seemed to be egret or ibis nests in every tree. I would’ve never found this by boat. Even if I had, we’d have had to cut our way in. A canoe is what you’d need.”
Roberta replied, “When I’m wrong, I admit it. I didn’t think we had a chance in Hades of finding- Hang on…” She looked at home wearing earphones, one hand on the yoke while she paused to punch buttons on the GPS. “I’m saving these numbers for when we come back,” she explained.
I assumed she meant there wasn’t room enough to land, which was a relief. “I told you it was a narrow stretch of water. How much muck, that’s the big question. I’ve heard of places, you sink to the waist. People can’t free their legs because of the suction, so they-”
“There’s plenty of room to land,” she cut in, her focus back on flying the plane. “What I meant was, you were right. There’s nothing around here but swamp and saltwater for miles in every direction. If the Spaniards planted citrus, there might be clones-and there’s not much chance they’ve cross-pollinated with modern trees. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
We landed.
The first spot we tried was deceptively easy. Roberta stayed with the plane. I slogged in alone, thinking it was the fastest way to check an area where several shell hillocks dotted the mangroves. Muck was ankle-deep for twenty yards before I hacked my way inland for a quick look.
“This might take a while,” I said when I got back. I climbed onto a pontoon and sat for a moment, breathing heavily. “The hardest part isn’t getting through the mangroves; it’s cutting through to high ground. First there’s a wall of catbriers, and there’re so many strangler figs-those prop roots they drop? It was like squeezing through bars. And mosquitoes-my lord, they’re worse than the last place.”
“No signal,” Roberta said, looking at her iPhone. “Why am I not surprised?” She placed it on the dash and looked past me through the open door. “I don’t see any bird nests. In fact… I don’t see any birds. You said there were ibis and egret nests everywhere. I wonder what happened?”