Secrets of St. Joe, page 9
“Utensils,” the doctor reminded Vivian. “And then quit fussing around and sit down at the table with us.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I got so excited seeing Jewel here that I plum forgot.”
“So how was your trip to Raiford? How’s your daddy?”
“The trip was okay … long. Daddy’s sick. He’s coughing a lot and he’s lost a lot of weight. Peaked too. Just don’t look right.”
“Okay, bring him by the office today, and I’ll take a look at him. What about Gabriel? Did you talk about that?”
“Yeah. He’s still mad as farr. Says he doesn’t want to have anything to do with Gabriel.”
“What about Marcus?”
“He just shook his head, but Mama says she’ll take care of that, ’cause she ain’t gonna stop havin’ Marcus around ’cause of Daddy. He better get used to the boy, she says, or he’ll not be sittin’ on the front porch but be out back in the doghouse instead.”
“So where’s Gabriel staying now that your daddy’s back in the house?”
“Oh, he’s out with his buddy Robert, who’s got a farm on Old Parkwood Tramroad. But he ain’t too happy about it.”
“Good grits, Vivian,” the doctor said. “What do you think, Jewel?”
“Not bad,” she answered. “Could use a bit more cheese and a dash or two more pepper, but not bad.”
“What else is new, Jewel? Since you been gone, I been real behind on the town gossip. What’s goin’ on?”
“Well, since I been runnin’ back and forth between here and Raiford, I ain’t heard much, but today I’ll put out the word that we’re lookin’ for Lucky and Gator. Something’ll turn up.”
“I hope so,” the doctor said. “Chief Lane and I are gonna check out Lucky’s old house on St. Vincent Sound this afternoon to see what we can see. And I’m thinking maybe I’ll pay Sally Martin a visit to see if she’ll tell us anything. I have my doubts, but maybe it’s worth a try.”
“Are you sure you want to do that, Doc? You seen her at all since last year?”
“No. I’ve heard through the grapevine that she’s doing real well at the mill. Already been promoted and doing something important there, not sure what.”
“Let me check it out before you go see her,” Jewel said. “I’ll find out what’s really happenin’ there so you know the whole story before you face off with her.”
“Okay, Jewel,” the doctor said as he stood up and started clearing the table. “I have to get to work. See you when you bring your daddy by.”
“All right, but you and Chief Lane be particular out there tryin’ to find that nut.”
Jewel was right as usual. Her daddy, Django Jackson, did not look well. Jewel had dropped him off at the doctor’s office at around 11:00 and then had abruptly left to do some shopping, saying she would be back in about an hour.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,” the doctor said to Jewel’s daddy as the man sat uncertainly on the doctor’s examination table. “Before moving to New York, your daughter worked for me for three years, and she did a fine job. More than that, she’s a good person. You should be proud of her.”
“I am,” the man said in a deep, gruff, no-nonsense voice.
“Before I examine you, tell me a bit about yourself, please,” the doctor said.
“Ain’t much to tell. I was born and raised over in Franklin County. My mama and daddy was slaves and when they was freed they went to work in a gum patch—that’s what we called a turpentine camp back then. It was north of Eastpoint, near High Bluff. I was born in that camp and I probably would have died in that camp if my daddy hadn’t told me when I was eighteen to go into Apalachicola and join the Army. That was the only way he could see me gittin’ outta that camp, since we owed so much to the commissary. So in eighteen ninety-eight, I joined the Tenth Cavalry Regiment, what they called the Buffalo Soldiers, ’cause we was all colored, and fought with Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill during the Spanish American War. And then when I got out of the Army, I went to Port St. Joe, where I heard the Apalachicola Northern Railroad was hiring veterans. I got a job as a laborer for ’em, and then I met Jewel’s mama and then we had Jewel. It was a rough delivery, but she sure ’nough is the apple of my eye, that gal. Then that son of a bitch bluesman had to come to town and go and git her pregnant, and I ends up in prison for beatin’ up some white men ’bout eight years ago, and then I got sick so they let me out early so I wouldn’t infect any of the other prisoners. That’s makin’ a long story ’bout as short as I can make it.”
“How long have you been sick?”
“For about the last year or so.”
“Tell me about your symptoms. How you been feeling?”
“Well, at first I was runnin’ a fever, then I got the chills, night sweats, and then I started coughing all the time, spittin’ up some blood.”
“What did they do for your sickness in the prison?”
“Well, they gave me a TB skin test that come out positive and then they gave me an X-ray that showed I had the disease. So they took me off the work gang and put me in the dispensary and had me rest and lay out on the porch most days. Then the dispensary got too crowded so some of us who had been in the longest got to go home.”
“Okay, let’s take a look at you. Take your shirt off so I can check your blood pressure and listen to your breathing.”
Django Jackson was thin and a bit darker than Jewel, but with his shirt off, he looked gray and emaciated. Still, he was a handsome man, with Jewel’s deep-brown eyes and straight nose and kinky black hair. His breathing was labored and his lungs obviously damaged. The doctor had no reason to disbelieve the prison’s X-ray, but he decided to use his own portable X-ray machine that he was still paying for to take another picture.
“How long ago did they X-ray you?” the doctor asked him.
“Can’t remember exactly, couple of months ago, I think, was the last one.”
“I’m gonna take another one today so stand up and move over there in front of that machine there.”
It took a few minutes for Nadyne to develop the photo, but it showed about the same number of lesions in the lungs as the prison’s print.
“Okay, Mr. Jackson, you can put your shirt back on now,” the doctor began. “I’m not sure how much Jewel has told you, but here’s the deal. You’re real sick. Your tuberculosis has advanced to the point that I would attempt to remove part of your lung if you were a younger man. But at your age it would be too dangerous. So the best thing to do is to make you as comfortable as possible for the time you have left.”
“How long?” the patient asked.
“I don’t know. If you rest, get lots of fresh air, eat well to bolster your immune system, you could beat this thing. But I’m not gonna lie to you. It’s more likely that you’ll die in the next few years.”
The man did not blink so the doctor continued, “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to let your wife take care of you. Sit out on the porch whenever the weather is nice. Don’t go out among a lot of people. Stay away from people as much as you can so you won’t infect them. Keep your distance from Marcus, Gabriel, and Jewel.”
“Won’t be no problem with Gabriel.”
“Well, that’s your business. They’ll all be goin’ back to New York City soon, so it doesn’t make too much difference anyway.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Like I said,” the doctor spoke softly to his dying patient, “it’s none of my business. You have to do what you have to do. But if I were in your position, knowing that I was probably going to die sooner rather than later, and my only daughter and her son and the man she loves were leaving in a few days and I might never see them again, I would try to find it in my heart to make it right with them, swallow some pride, and do some powerful forgiving.”
“Muriel, Jewel’s mama, says the same thing so I been doin’ some thinkin’.”
“And?”
“Well, it’s against my better judgment, but if that no-good blues singer makes an honest woman of her and finally marries her, I’ll give her away and bless the whole damn lot of ’em, for the little boy’s sake, if for no other reason.”
“I think that would make your daughter very happy.”
“Humph,” Django Jackson replied, as he tucked in his shirt and resolutely marched out of the doctor’s office.
Chapter 14
That afternoon was one of the hottest on record for poor little Port St. Joe. There was not a cloud in the sky, and the sun was blazing down and burning everything in its path. The breeze across the bay that ordinarily offered some relief was inexplicably absent. The heat and inescapable humidity put the doctor into an instant sweat as he drove over to meet Chief Lane.
“I appreciate your doing this,” the doctor said as they rode out on Constitution Drive in the chief’s black-and-white patrol car. “I know it’s not your jurisdiction out there so this is definitely above and beyond the call of duty.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I’m not sure whether that old beach house is in Gulf or Franklin County. So I don’t know whose jurisdiction it is, but, you’re right, it’s not in mine.”
“How do you even know where it is?”
“Well,” the chief answered, “I’m not sure I do. When I interviewed Lucilla in the hospital after we shot him, he told me the place had been abandoned by Sheriff Batson’s father when the duPonts bought him out in thirty-three. Apparently the sheriff had told him about it and allowed him to stay there without the duPonts’ knowledge. Lucilla said it was on St. Vincent Sound just east of the end of Jones Homestead Road. So we’re gonna go out Sand Bar Road till we get to Jones Homestead, which I’m hoping is marked, and then go to the end of it at St. Vincent Sound, and we’ll see what we can see.”
The chief turned right off of Highway 98 and proceeded through a tunnel of thick palmetto and live oak, the glistening bay occasionally peeking through on their right. Then the road curved left at the Cape San Blas turnoff, and they were heading almost due east toward Apalachicola, past the Indian Pass Raw Bar and Indian Lagoon, out several miles until they saw the battered wooden sign that read Jones Homestead Road. The chief turned the patrol car onto the narrow gravel path that led to the sea.
“By the way,” the chief said as he swerved to miss a deep pothole, “I had a little chat with Norman Adams this morning.”
“Yeah, how’d that go?”
“I’m not sure. He was mad. Denied having anything to do with his son’s bruises, but he knew that I knew. That’s the important thing. I hope he doesn’t take his anger out on any of his kids or his wife. If he does and I find out, I’ll lock him up. I’m not sure what the judge will do about it, but I’m not gonna put up with it. So let me know if any of them come to see you again, okay?”
“Sure. I hope I don’t have to.”
“Me too.”
Finally they came to the end of the gravel road, and there before them was St. Vincent Sound; far across it, St. Vincent Island; and just beyond, the top of the Cape St. George Lighthouse, cresting the slash pine forest, stark black and white against the azure sky. They found a sandy trail leading east on the mainland side of the dunes to a dilapidated, two-story cottage about fifty yards away.
“I don’t know about this,” Chief Lane said. “I think that sand looks pretty loose down that trail. We better park here and walk the rest of the way.”
“I guess that’s the place,” the doctor said, opening the car’s door.
“I think so,” the chief said, removing his pistol from his holster.
They trudged down the trail, which was no more than parallel tire tracks with a ridge of sand sprouting sea rockets and primrose in between. Their shirts were soaked with sweat when they reached the white, weatherworn house boarded up with wide, pine planks nailed securely across each window. The steps up to the broad porch were sagging with rot, but the men made it to the porch without falling through. The covered porch extended out around the house on three sides. They walked around it, looking for an open window or an easy way in, but everything was boarded up. From the porch, they could see an old, listing shed in the backyard among a grove of saw palmetto and cabbage palm. Sea gulls squalled on the beach as the waves lapped the shore no more than thirty feet from them. Someday soon, the doctor thought, a storm will take this entire house out to sea forever.
They checked the back door, but it was boarded up just like the windows. The front door had only one pine plank across it. A foot wide and a couple of inches thick, the plank rested in a steel sleeve on each side of the door, with a thick bolt that appeared to run through the sleeve as well as the plank into the frame of the door. On the plank, in faded red paint, were the words “KEEP OUT.”
“It looks like someone doesn’t want us in here,” the chief said. “Now what?”
“Well, if we had a wrench, we could unscrew those bolts and then just lift that plank out.”
“I don’t have a wrench in the car, but I guess we could check in that old shed over there.”
“Okay, let’s take a look.”
Of course, the only door to the shed was locked. The chief jiggled the latch and, since it seemed pretty loose, backed up a step and gave the lock a powerful kick. The door sprung open and the chief pointed his pistol inside. But there wasn’t much to point it at: an old wooden wheel barrow, a rusty shovel, several five-gallon tin cans, an oyster rake, and a lot of dust. On the workbench that extended along the longest side of the shed was a steel tool chest, and inside was a rusty adjustable wrench.
“We’re in luck,” the chief said.
It didn’t take the chief long to unscrew and remove the two long bolts. Then together they lifted the plank out of its steel sleeves. The chief tried the lock on the heavy front door. It wouldn’t budge. “Well, what do you think? This one’s too sturdy for me to kick in, and the place looks pretty empty to me. Shall I shoot the lock open, or shall I buy you a beer at the Indian Pass Raw Bar?”
“We’ve come this far,” the doctor said.
The chief shrugged, aimed his pistol at the door’s lock, and fired. The doctor had never seen this done in real life, only in moving pictures, but, surprisingly, it worked. The door sprang loose, and the chief pulled it open. They stepped inside. A nasty barnyard smell hit them immediately, but with all the windows boarded up they couldn’t see what was causing it. The chief took a flashlight from his belt and shone it around the room. It was empty except for an old brown couch covered with dust and piles of tiny gray pellets. The chief shone the flashlight up to the ceiling, and they saw where the smell was coming from. The entire ceiling was covered with small, furry creatures with beady, black eyes and slightly extended wings, hanging upside down, staring down menacingly at the two intruders.
“Holy shit,” was all the doctor could say.
“More like bat shit,” the chief replied. “Let’s get this over with. This place gives me the creeps. And it smells like …”
“Bat shit,” the doctor concluded.
“No shit.”
With his flashlight in one hand and his pistol in the other, the chief walked from room to room, followed by the doctor, through the thick layer of guano on the uneven floors. Every room downstairs was empty, except for the bats and the one room with the old couch, so they started up the stairs to the second floor. It was the same scene in the two rooms there, nothing much more than dust, guano, and bats, thousands of them clinging precariously to the ceilings and smelly walls. There was a ladder at the end of the hallway leading to a three-foot-square hole in the ceiling.
“Shall we check out the attic?” the chief asked.
“Why don’t you just climb up and put your head through the hole to make sure?” the doctor suggested.
Then they heard a chilling thud below. They hurried back down the stairs, the doctor following a step behind the chief. At the bottom of the stairs they found total darkness. The chief shone his flashlight on the front door. It was closed. Then they heard rapid footsteps on the porch outside. Then a new smell spread, all too familiar. It was gasoline … all around them. They both rushed to the door, pushed together to open it, but it was closed and locked, tight as a vice. Next came the frightening whoosh sound, like a sudden storm approaching, and the pungent odor of fire and smoke. The bats smelled it and began spiraling wildly from the ceiling, spraying guano everywhere. The two men swiped at them frantically, but the bats were panic stricken. The doctor tried to follow their path as the chief swung his flashlight erratically around the room.
“Up the stairs!” the doctor shouted, as the smoke grew denser and hotter. The chief shone his light at the square hole at the end of the hallway and saw the bats fighting desperately to fly through it.
“Let’s go!,” the chief said.
“You go first,” the doctor said. He wasn’t in any hurry to fight his way through the bats that were now streaming in waves through the opening.
The sheriff put his pistol back in its holster and climbed the ladder while the doctor shone his flashlight on him. The bats were crazed now by the smoke and the smell of the fire that was burning below. They looked like they were attacking the chief as he climbed the steps and finally disappeared into the attic.
The doctor started climbing, switching the flashlight back and forth between one hand and the other, trying at the same time to fight off the bats that were banging recklessly into him. Finally he was able to stick his head up through the hole as Chief Lane extended a hand and pulled him up into the attic. There he saw more bats and sunlight, beaming miraculously through the round, attic vent hole, its louvers long since rotted away, giving the bats, and maybe the two men, access to the outside world. The hole was about waist high and a yard across, and the bats were now streaming swiftly through it to escape the ensuing conflagration below. The chief rushed to the opening and stuck his head out into the bright light of the afternoon sun, bats battering him mercilessly.
