Secrets of St. Joe, page 2
“Okay, Nadyne, must be Monday morning. Hold ’em off until I can make a quick telephone call, will you?”
“Will do.”
The doctor dialed Edna, the town’s day telephone operator, and asked her to connect him to Jewel’s number in New York City. He listened to the echo of the phone ringing many miles away somewhere up in exotic Harlem. Jewel answered on the second ring. “Hello?” she said.
“Hello, Jewel. It’s Van. How are you?”
“Oh, Doc, I’m fine as frog’s hair split three ways. It’s been a coon’s age. How ’bout you? Vivian been takin’ good care of you?”
“Yeah, we’re doing all right. But I was thinking maybe you’d fallen off the face of the earth, like Amelia Earhart. I haven’t heard from you in so long. Vivian said y’all are finally coming home for a visit though?”
“Yeah, we are. Gabriel’s got some time off comin’ and we heard from Mama that Daddy’s s’pose to get outta Raiford on July thirty-first. Mama says he done served most of his time and has been sick, so they gonna let him come home … probably to die, Mama says.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Mama says he got TB, but I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
“When exactly?”
“Well, in a couple of weeks. Gabriel gets off on the twenty-eighth, so we plan on drivin’ down that weekend so I can pick up Daddy on Monday.”
“Then what?”
“That’s a good question. You know Gabriel ain’t none too eager to face Daddy after all these years, and I can’t blame him. Why, he’s about as nervous as an upright, grown-up person. And I ain’t any too eager myself after what happened back then. But I guess we gotta face the music.”
What happened back then was that Gabriel had gotten Jewel pregnant, and when her father found out he had gone after Gabriel with a shotgun. Gabriel happened to be performing at a white nightclub in Mexico Beach when Jewel’s daddy, crazy mad and liquored up lush, busted into the club with the intent of blowing Gabriel’s brains out. The white clientele of the club had other ideas, however. They weren’t ready for Gabriel’s music to stop quite yet, so they stepped in to save him, which resulted in a struggle that left several white folks seriously injured and ultimately a ten-year prison sentence for Jewel’s daddy. Both Jewel and Gabriel weren’t expecting Jewel’s father to be suddenly forgiving after all that. So the music they would face didn’t portend to be pleasing.
“Listen, Jewel,” the doctor said, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his handkerchief. “If you think it’ll make it any easier, I could request your father’s medical records from the prison and then check him out before y’all face him.”
“Hmm,” Jewel said. “That ain’t a bad idea. I don’t know if it’ll make a tad of difference or not. Might just prolong the inevitable, which is both me and Gabriel wakin’ up with a spade in our faces.”
“Well, give it some thought and then come and see me first thing when you get back down here so we can talk about it some more. Meanwhile, I’ll call the prison and ask them to send your daddy’s medical file to me. I’ll give them your phone number if they need permission from a family member. What’s his full name?”
“John Jefferson Jackson. ’Cept everybody calls him Django.”
“Django?”
“Yeah, Django. Mama says a band of gypsies come through the turpentine camp when he was a little boy and Daddy liked to stay up late and sing with ’em. Anyway, they took him under their wing and started callin’ him Django and it stuck.”
“Hmm, okay. I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Okay, Doc. Sounds good. We should be rollin’ in there sometime on Sunday afternoon, the thirtieth, I think, if all goes well. We’ll see you then.”
“All right. I’ll be looking for you. Oh, how long are y’all planning to stay?”
“Gabriel has to be back to work on August fourteenth, so for a couple of weeks, I guess. We ain’t got it all figured out quite yet. We been so worried about seein’ Daddy.”
“You okay, Jewel?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine, once we git this business with Daddy all taken care of. How ’bout you?”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too.”
“See you soon.”
“See you, Doc. Good-bye.”
My God, he did miss her—a lot. But at least she was returning, even if it was just for a visit. The doctor had something to look forward to for the first time in a long time.
The doctor drove out toward Cape San Blas that afternoon to check on Mary and Eli Morgan’s daughter. This wasn’t the first time. The Morgans operated one of the biggest, most successful orchards in Gulf County. As the doctor drove down the narrow dirt road to their house, he passed through groves of Satsuma orange, Meyer lemon, kumquat, nectarine, apple, pear, and pecan, many of which were heavily laden with fruit, maturing at one stage or another. When the doctor arrived at Eli Morgan’s house, a sprawling, ramshackle cabin behind a row of tall pecan trees, he was led by Mary Morgan to a cramped bedroom where he found the couple’s little girl, no more than ten years old, in bed with a badly swollen right ankle. The doctor examined it and asked the girl to turn it, but she couldn’t as she winced in pain.
“What happened?” he asked her.
“I fell out of a pear tree,” she whimpered.
“What were you doing up there?”
“Pickin’ pears.”
“Who told you to do that?”
“Daddy.”
The doctor turned to the girl’s mother and raised his eyebrows, then led her out of the bedroom and closed the door.
“Mrs. Morgan,” the doctor began, “we’ve talked about this before. You know you can’t have these kids, especially the young ones, up in those trees. The last time I was out here, Maggie just had a sprain. But now I’m afraid she’s broken her ankle.”
The woman, who was still pretty but weary and worn after bearing six children, bowed her head and began to weep. “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “I told Eli that he can’t send the younguns up in them trees, but he don’t never listen to me. Most of ’em do okay, but Maggie, she ain’t got as good a balance as the others. She’s always fallin’ out.”
“Well, then,” the doctor said, “you’re going to have to pack her up and get her to the hospital in Panama City. They’ll do an X-ray and then probably put her in a cast. Then you have to keep her out of the trees. Do you understand me?”
“Yeah, but Eli’s just too cheap to pay for help. Says why should he do that when he’s got six able-bodied kids to do the work.”
“Well, this one’s not so able bodied anymore. You tell Eli—or I will, if you want me to—that it’s going to cost him a pretty penny to get that ankle set in Panama City, unless y’all have insurance, and that I’m going to report him to the sheriff for breaking child labor laws. And I’m not kidding.”
“Okay, Doc,” she said. “I’ll tell him, but I don’t know if it’ll do any good. The man’s as stubborn as an ol’ mule.”
“Well, maybe he’ll listen to the sheriff then, because I’m about at the end of my rope on this thing. If I’m called out here again for some child falling out of a tree, I’m going to press charges and have your husband arrested. You tell him that. If he has a problem with it, have him come and see me. You understand?”
“Yes, sir,” she sighed.
“Okay. Keep that ankle iced, and get her to the hospital in Panama City as soon as you can.”
The doctor was disgusted. He saw it almost every week: one child or another forced to work under hazardous conditions because his family couldn’t afford to hire workers. And, despite his threat, there was not much to be done about it. The child labor laws exempted farm work, and that was where most of the abuse occurred. If worse came to worse and Eli Morgan didn’t get those children out of the trees, the doctor swore he would get them out himself by shooting the son of a bitch if he had to.
Chapter 3
When the doctor walked to work a few days later, he found Gator Mica’s rusty old Chevy Capitol pickup parked in front of his office on Reid Avenue.. Gator was slumped behind the steering wheel, his ragged, straw cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes, his loud snoring groaning through the truck’s open window.
“Gator,” the doctor said, nudging the big Indian’s shoulder, “time to get up. Your snoring’s disturbing the whole town.”
“Oh, mornin’, partner,” Gator said, as he tipped back his hat and pulled himself upright. “Just catchin’ a little shut-eye. How y’all doin’?”
“I’m okay for an old man. How about you? I haven’t seen you for weeks now. Dr. Price keeping you busy out there?”
“Yep, seems like I git one thing done, then there’s somethin’ else croppin’ up. I ain’t got time to tie my own shoes half the time. What about you? You doin’ okay?”
“I guess I can’t complain. I’m still alive and more or less kicking. What brings you into town this fine morning?”
“Good question. For one thing, I ain’t seen you for a while and we ain’t been huntin’ or fishin’ since I don’t know when, so I was gonna ask you to go fishin’ with me out on one of the lakes on St. Vincent. Them little ponds are filled with perch, bream, and big ol’ black bass that’ll pull you in if you ain’t careful. And for another, Dr. Price is laid up sick in bed with some kind of ailment so I’d like you to take a look at him, if you don’t mind.”
“No, I don’t mind at all. What’s wrong with the doctor?”
“Not sure. He’s got himself a fever, muscle pains all over, and a bad headache. He’s been treating himself with some of them patent medicines his company makes, but he don’t seem to be gettin’ any better.”
“Surprise, surprise. How long has this been going on?”
“Oh, just a couple of days, but I’m kind of worried about him since he ain’t never sick, even though he is an old man. And he just don’t look right.”
“Okay, sounds like I better take a look at him soon.”
“Yeah, I think so. He just seems to be gittin’ worse.”
“Well, I was planning on staying home and reading, since it’s Saturday, but how ’bout tomorrow?”
“That sounds good. We could go over there in the morning, you could check on the doctor, and then we could go fishin’ the rest of the day.”
“All right. Let’s do it. What if I meet you at Indian Pass at, say, nine o’clock?”
“I’ll see you there,” Gator said, as he tried to start his truck. As it sputtered and finally rattled to a shaky idle, the doctor remembered Jewel. “Gator, wait. Guess who’s coming back for a visit?”
“Don’t tell me.”
“Yep, Jewel. In a couple of weeks. I’ll fill you in on the details tomorrow. We definitely have to have a get-together for old time’s sake.”
“Oh, yeah, for sure. Damn! Jewel. I was beginnin’ to wonder if we’d ever see that ol’ gal again.”
Frankly, so was the doctor. Even though Jewel’s mother still lived in her little shotgun shack in North Port St. Joe, the doctor had seen more than enough young people abandon their elders during this terrible Depression to find work elsewhere, never to return. When the doctor had done all that he could to save them, he had seen too many of these poor old people buried in paupers’ graves, alone and beaten down by malnutrition, dementia, and the miserable lives they had been left to live. But it looked like Jewel was going to be different.
However, it was one thing to return to check on her mother but still another to face her father after all that had happened so many years earlier. Now that was courageous, or maybe crazy—the doctor wasn’t sure which—but it sure did set her apart from all those deserters who had turned their backs on their families and friends and had forsaken forever this impoverished little town by the bay.
The next morning, the doctor parked his old Ford near the landing at Indian Pass, a natural waterway about a quarter of a mile wide between the mainland and St. Vincent Island, joining Apalachicola Bay to the east and the Gulf of Mexico to the southwest. The sun, as usual, was strong and bright and the wind, unusually calm. As the doctor peered into the dark water, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sandbar sharks, bottle-nosed dolphins, or West Indian manatees that frequented the area, he heard the distant roar of a big speedboat entering the pass. As the launch approached, the doctor soon recognized, there at the helm of the polished twenty-five-foot, triple-cockpit Chris-Craft Runabout, none other than a beaming, sunburned Gator Mica, carefully guiding the craft to shore.
“Ahoy, matey,” Gator hollered, offering his left hand to the doctor. “Permission for the landlubber to come aboard is hereby granted. But only if you take off your shoes. We don’t allow no scratches on the deck of this baby.”
“My, my, this is a thing of beauty, Gator,” the doctor said as he removed his shoes and socks, rolled up his pant legs, and waded into the surf. “Quite a step up from that old glade skiff of yours, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“No shit. But don’t worry. We’ll be usin’ that ol’ skiff to get into the lakes later this afternoon. Here, give me that bag and your shoes.”
The doctor waded the remaining few feet to the boat, handed Gator his black bag and his shoes, and grabbed the rope ladder that Gator had dropped over the side of the boat. But before he could pull himself up over the gunwale, Gator had snatched him under his right armpit and heaved him up into the elegant front cockpit, outfitted in plush black leather and a shiny chrome instrument panel that housed five round, shining gauges.
“Now this is living.”
“Ain’t it, though?” Gator replied as he gunned the rumbling engine and steered the big beast of a boat eastward up through the middle of St. Vincent Sound toward St. Vincent Point, about nine miles away at the northeast corner of the eighteen-square-mile island. It was like gliding on silk as they sailed effortlessly across the placid waters. The doctor was not an admirer of how Dr. Price and his father had amassed their fortune—by selling useless patent medicines to poor, gullible, sick people—but he had to admit that some of the luxuries they were able to afford with these illgained dollars, like this stunning boat and this beautiful island that they were now speeding past, argued for the merits of these deceptive dealings.
St. Vincent Island was indeed a wild and wonderful retreat from the encroaching commercialism that was ravaging the rest of their state. Beyond the broad, white-sand beaches that they were now sailing past stood a high forest of slash pine, live oak, and mixed hardwoods, one of the few remaining virgin timber stands left anywhere in the eastern United States. Bald eagles, brown pelicans, and laughing gulls soared above, almost as thick against the azure sky as were the stars against the expansive heavens of the ebony sky at night. The waters surrounding the primeval island were as bountiful as any food source on the planet, with the most delicious varieties of oysters, shrimp, scallop, tarpon, sunfish, flounder, and mullet to be found anywhere in the world. To his credit, Dr. Price had protected these natural resources with an unflagging vigor from the encroaching development that continued to threaten his island paradise with increasing intensity.
At St. Vincent Point, Gator swung the boat east around a shallow sand bar and then continued south across Apalachicola Bay for about three and half miles to West Pass, the waterway separating St. George Island and the southeastern tip of St. Vincent Island. When they sighted a long, whitewashed dock extending out into the pass, Gator backed down the engine and steered the Chris-Craft alongside the pier. As the big boat rocked to a stop, Gator switched off the engine, crawled up onto the top of the shiny, mahogany bow, unfurled a hemp rope from its forward stanchion, and jumped in his stocking feet onto the dock, where he tied the motorboat up and helped the doctor ashore.
At the land end of the dock and beyond a low dune was a narrow sand road that led about a quarter mile to the Price compound. Sweating and swatting mosquitoes and deer flies, the two men trudged up the sandy path that ended in front of a large, two-story, pine-log cabin with a wide plank porch encircling it on three sides. A narrow creek that flowed at the edge of the clearing had been damned to form a swimming hole near the tall pines that towered all around. Behind it were three smaller, cypress clapboard cottages, and nearby a red horse barn and a long cedar-shingled tool shed that formerly housed Dr. Price’s moonshine distillery.
With the increasing scrutiny of the patent drug industry by the Food and Drug Administration, Price had diversified his business by producing and selling moonshine when Prohibition was instituted. But when Prohibition ended in 1933, the market for the doctor’s moonshine gradually dried up. With Gator’s help and the bounty of the oyster beds around St. Vincent Island, Dr. Price had abandoned his moonshine business the previous year and started harvesting the plentiful beds of oysters in Oyster Pond, Sheepshead Bayou, Indian Lagoon, Flag Island Cove, and St. Vincent Sound.
The doctor remembered the two dogs that had greeted them on their last visit, but there was no evidence of them or of any other life today. The dogs must have belonged to Jed Washington, whom Gator had replaced as the manager of the island’s livestock. The only sounds this morning were a slight breeze that rustled through the trees and seagulls squabbling on the beach behind them. It was a little eerie, the doctor thought, all this muted wilderness so far from civilization. For some reason, he thought of how easy it would be for someone to pick them off with a rifle from the top of the windmill that rose sixty or so feet above the compound. He looked up and saw only the long wooden blades spinning innocently.
They climbed the big cabin’s front stairs and walked across the porch, their steps echoing through the clearing. The doctor’s heart was beating rapidly, more rapidly than it should have been for such a brief walk and climb up the stairs, but it was pounding nonetheless as he had hurried to keep up with Gator. The big Indian knocked twice on the door, and they waited … and waited, not a sound coming from within the house. Now what? The doctor looked at Gator, and Gator shrugged. He raised his fist to knock again, but before his knuckles hit the door, a horrific, high-pitched screech blared across the compound. They jumped in unison as the heavy front door swung open and a tall, stately Negro dressed in a formal black suit and a regimental, striped tie stood grimly before them.
