A Land Remembered, Volume 2, page 10
“Sure. I’ll give them to you when we get back to the buckboard.”
“Can I use the buckboard for a little while first thing in the morning?”
“I suppose so. But why do you want it?”
“I’ve got a thing to do, and it won’t take long. I’ll be real careful with it, Pappa. I just want to go back out of town a ways.”
“You can do whatever you want tomorrow, but come sunup the next day we’ve got to push on. We best go on now and find us a place to stay. I don’t believe folks here would look kindly if we camped out on the street.”
Had it not been for Glenda wanting to stay another day and enjoy browsing through the shops, Zech would have preferred to leave right then and camp in the woods. To him it seemed impossible that such splendor could exist just a few miles from the wilderness. People and animals out there were starving, scratching desperately for survival; yet here there was an abundance of everything. Just the thought of it was repulsive, and he wanted no more of Palm Beach.
Sol ran on ahead to the buckboard, and as Zech and Glenda walked together he said absently, “All this is just the start of it.”
“The start of what, Zech?”
“Someday the railroads will haul folks in here thicker than deer flies, and it’ll spread elsewhere. I’m glad pappa never saw such as this. It would ’a killed him quicker than the malaria and the cold.”
“You’re not making sense to me.”
“I suppose not. Maybe someday all this will make sense to Sol, but not to me. I’ve lived too long out yonder to change now. I guess I’m just a dumb cracker, like Pappa.”
“Well, it just so happens I like dumb crackers,” she said, taking his arm in hers. “What say after we get a place to stay we find a café that serves fried chicken? We haven’t had that since Punta Rassa.”
“That would be fine. There’s bound to be some place here that don’t require a reservation just to eat. Fried chicken sounds good to me.”
***
Sol left before breakfast the next morning, and by nine o’clock he still had not returned to the boarding house. Glenda was worried about him, but Zech assured her he was old enough to look out for himself and would return soon.
They left the boarding house and crossed the bridge leading back to the main section of Palm Beach, enjoying the cool breeze that came in from the ocean and the scent of flower gardens that bordered houses.
Zech walked on alone, idly watching carriages pass by and the funny little bicycle carts.
At the next corner he stopped and stared at his own buckboard tied there. Sol was accepting money from an elderly man dressed in knickers, and he continued staring as the man walked away briskly in the direction of the Royal Poinciana, carrying a caged bird in his left hand.
There were six more cages on the buckboard, each containing a small bird with frizzy white fuzz and feathers. Zech walked over rapidly and said, “Sol, what are you doing?”
Sol grinned, and then he said, “I’m selling birds, Pappa, just like the shop down the street.”
“Selling baby buzzards?” Zech asked.
“They ain’t buzzards,” Sol said. “They’re kookabens, brought over from Cuba on a schooner. They’ll turn green and red when they grow up, and they’ll sing just like them little yellow birds in the shop.”
Zech stared at the cages again, and then he said, “Son, don’t try to fool your daddy. Them’s buzzards! I seen a million of ’em in my day.”
“All right, Pappa, they’re buzzards,” Sol admitted. “I done sold eighteen at twenty-five dollars apiece, and I didn’t have to climb but six trees to get ’em. One man was so glad to get his that cheap he gave me an extra ten dollars. I only got six more to sell, Pappa. Please let me finish it.”
“My goodness!” Zech exclaimed, shaking his head. “Me an’ Pappa thought we’d done something when we sold our first wild cows for fifteen dollars each. What you’re doin’ seems downright dishonest to me, but I guess if a man’s fool enough to pay three hundred dollars for a hotel room for one night he can afford another twenty-five for a buzzard.”
“I’m not making nobody buy ’em, Pappa. They all seem to want one real bad ’cause mine are cheaper than the ones at the bird store.”
“Kookabens! What you reckon them folks will do when they get back home and them things turns black and gets so big they flap right off, carrying cage and all?”
“I don’t know, Pappa. But I won’t be there to find out.”
“You sell the rest of them things, that’s six hundred dollars for a batch of buzzards. I guess you’re going to make out all right, Sol, but I sure wouldn’t want to do business with you. Maybe I ought to go out to the woods and shinny up a tree myself. But I best go on back and steer your mamma in another direction. If she sees you on the street sellin’ buzzards, she’ll most likely have a faintin’ spell. You hurry up and get done with it, and don’t you do it no more!”
“Thanks, Pappa. It won’t take long. Everybody who comes by wants to buy one. I wish I’d got more of them but I only had twenty-four cages.”
As Zech turned and walked back up the street a man and a woman stopped at the buckboard, looking curiously at the fuzzy birds. He glanced back as the man picked up a cage and handed it to the woman; then he muttered, “Kookaben birds! What some folks won’t buy!”
***
Zech was at the livery stable at dawn the next morning, hitching up the buckboard to resume the trip. He said to the stable owner, “Is there any special way a man ought to go to get down to Fort Dallas?”
“Yep, sure is. Leave that rig here and take a schooner. That’s the best way.”
“Well, I don’t want to do that. I’ve got to take my trunk along, and it’s too heavy to lug on board a boat and then off again.”
“Too heavy for a schooner? What you got in there, gold bars?”
“Nope. Coins.”
The man gave Zech a strange look. “You can make it in the rig, but you’ll have your work cut out for you. Just follow the only trail going that way. But I still say if I was you I’d take a schooner. How come you want to go to that godforsaken place anyway?”
“Got business there. And thanks for the information.”
“Must be going into the skeeter business,” the man said as Zech drove off.
As soon as he got back to the boarding house they set forth again, Zech gladly leaving Palm Beach behind. Sol was still happy with his sack of buzzard money safely tucked into his saddlebag.
At first the dirt road was easily passable, running a few miles inland from the ocean. Just before they reached Lake Worth at noon, they passed through an area planted heavily with pineapples, stopping briefly to gather some for their next meal.
They could not pass between the lake and the ocean because someone had cut a canal from the beach into the fresh water lake, turning it to salt; so they skirted the west shore and then turned south again.
Later that afternoon they stopped and made camp in a hardwood hammock and were immediately introduced to mosquitoes that would plague them for the rest of the trip. They came in clouds, swarming over arms and faces. Zech and Sol built two huge fires, throwing on green wood to create as much smoke as possible, but still they came. All of them slept that night with blankets pulled over their heads, suffering the heat in order to keep off the mosquitoes.
From this point south the passable area gradually narrowed to a thin strip separating ocean and palmetto jungle in the east from the vast Pay-Hay-Okee that stretched away endlessly to the west.
The further south they moved, the worse became the trail, and after three more days they came into a jungle of trees and vines, reminding Zech of the custard-apple forest on the western shore of Okeechobee.
They were all beginning to believe there was no Fort Dallas when finally they came into an area planted with oranges, lemons, limes, figs and guavas, mangoes and bananas and avocados—the first sign of humans since leaving Lake Worth.
When they made camp for the night, Sol ate bananas as quickly as he could zip the peels off, unconcerned that he was harvesting someone’s fruit. They were so plentiful that a few wouldn’t matter, and the evening meal also included bowls of ripe figs and guavas.
At mid-morning the next day they came to the remains of the old fort, finding that someone had changed part of it into a house. Just past this there was a scattering of shacks and a weathered building that served as a post office, land office, and store. Across from this were the schooner docks.
Zech paused and said, “It sure don’t look like much. Reminds me of the first time I saw Punta Rassa. Only this place is not even near as big as that.”
“I just hope we get what we came after,” Glenda said. “I would hate to make a trip all the way down here for nothing. It seems like the end of the world, and I can’t for the life of me see why anyone would ever want to live here.”
“Me neither,” Sol said. “The skeeters is big enough to suck a horse dry.”
“There’ll be people aplenty when they find out it didn’t freeze here,” Zech said. “You can count on that. It won’t stay like this forever. After we buy the trees, I think I’ll spend all the gold that’s left on land.”
“I don’t know what we’d ever do with land here,” Glenda said, “but I guess buying it would be better than carrying coins all the way back to the hammock.”
They chose an area beneath a thick growth of coconut palms to make camp, and Sol immediately shinnied up the thin trunk of one tree, trying to reach the green nuts.
Glenda shouted up to him, “Come down from there, Sol! You’re not a monkey!”
“Sometimes it seems he is,” Zech said. “While you’re trying to get him back on the ground I’ll walk over to the store and ask about the trees.”
“Could you buy something there for us to eat? It’s just too hot right now to build a fire and cook.”
“I’ll see what they got,” Zech replied, walking off.
The storekeeper was a short fat man in his late forties, wearing a huge straw hat and brown leather sandals with no socks. His thin cotton clothes hung loose over his body and looked more like pajamas than a shirt and pants.
Zech entered and said to him, “Howdy. Name’s Zech MacIvey.”
“Sam Potter. I seen you come in with that rig. You drive it all the way down here or did the wind blow you in from sommers?”
“Drove it from Palm Beach. And before that, the Kissimmee River.”
“You got guts. What can I do for you?”
“I’m interested in buying orange trees.”
“Got caught by the freeze, eh? We heard about it. Felt real sorry for you people. How many trees you got in mind?”
“How much they cost?”
“Can let you have cuttins for five cents each. Trees cost a quarter. When the trees are bigger you can make your own cuttins.”
“I’m not interested in nothing but trees. Cows eat them cuttins right up. I’ll take eight thousand trees for a start.”
“How many?”
“Eight thousand to begin with, and as many more as I can get ever month or so. I aim to end up with about ten thousand acres in trees.”
“That’s a heap. But you sure can’t get many trees in that buckboard. Best way is for me to ship ’em up the coast to Fort Pierce by schooner and you pick ’em up there.”
“That’d be fine. I’m not too far out from Fort Pierce.”
“Eight thousand trees is two thousand dollars. What you got to pay with?”
“Spanish gold doubloons.”
“Good enough!” Potter said, smiling. “Can’t do better than that. Most folks tries to pay me off with coconuts. That’s why I always ask the manner of payment before striking a deal. I ain’t seen gold in a coon’s age.”
“Can you ship me a thousand more ever month till I send word I got enough?”
“No problem.”
“How will I pay you?”
“The skipper is a friend of mine. You can pay him when he brings the trees. He docks at Fort Pierce twice a month on a Monday, ’less the weather messes him up. I’ll ship ’em so they’ll arrive the first Monday ever month and you can meet him there.”
“That’s real fine. As soon as we eat I’ll come back and pay you for the first batch. I might be interested in buying some land too. How much is it?”
“Well, right now the going price is a dollar an acre, but it won’t stay that way for long. We’re trying to get Flagler to run his railroad on down here, and if he does, the price is sure to go up. It’ll go to five dollars an acre, maybe more. Now’s a good time to buy.”
“I’ll think it over and let you know. What you got to eat my wife don’t have to cook?”
“Fresh smoked fish, canned beans and tinned beef. You want some fruit, just go out and pick it. Folks here don’t care.”
“We done that already. I’ll take a big batch of smoked fish and a half-dozen cans of beans. I been hankerin’ for some beans lately, and my son Sol likes ’em too.”
Potter put the items in a sack and said, “You don’t owe me nothin’. It’s on the house. I ain’t traded none for gold in a long time. It’s a pleasure dealin’ with you.”
“Same here, and thanks. I’ll see you again in a short while.”
The fish was delicious, thick slabs of king mackerel and amberjack, and Sol capped it off with three cans of beans, followed by Zech with two. All of it was washed down with thick, creamy milk from several coconuts Sol brought down from the tree.
Zech said to Glenda, “I’m only going to have to put out two thousand in cash for the trees, and I’ll pay for the others as they come to Fort Pierce. There’s over eight thousand in gold in the trunk, so I might as well go on and spend it down here. I’ll keep enough for us to get home on and buy land with the rest.”
“Whatever you say, Zech. I know there’s plenty more gold at the house, and it just takes up room in the buckboard. Maybe land here will be worth something someday.”
“It ain’t too bad a place except for getting here and the skeeters. But it looks like things sure grow good down here.”
“I want to buy some land too,” Sol said, listening to the conversation.
“What for?” Zech asked, surprised. “How come you’d want to do that? I’ll put everbody’s name on the deed and it’ll be yours as much as mine.”
“I just want to do it myself, Pappa,” Sol insisted. “I’ve got the money I made in Palm Beach.”
“What money?” Glenda asked.
“Never mind about it,” Zech said to Glenda quickly. “He sold some stuff he gathered in the woods. It’s your money, Sol. Just do what you want with it and shut up.”
“What kind of stuff?” Glenda then asked.
“Just stuff, Glenda,” Zech said. “That’s all. It didn’t amount to nothin’.”
Glenda wasn’t satisfied, but she dropped the questioning and said, “While you two are over at the store I’m going to walk to the old fort and look around. I’ll meet you back here later.”
“Come on, Sol, let’s go talk to the man and see what we can do,” Zech said.
As they led the buckboard to the store, Sol said, “Thanks, Pappa.”
“You’re welcome. But next time you better think before you talk in front of your mamma. You’ll get yourself in trouble if you don’t.”
Zech tied the horses and then removed four sacks of coins from the trunk. He and Sol carried them inside and put them on a counter, and Zech said to Potter, “There’s more here than I owe for the trees, so just count it later and hold on to the rest. We want to talk now about land.”
“You decided what you want to do?” Potter asked.
“Yeah. I want six thousand acres, and Sol wants to buy a little on his own.”
“Six thousand acres,” Potter repeated. “That’s real good, Mister MacIvey. Any special place you want it?”
“I wouldn’t know one from the other. You got any suggestions?”
“All the land from here south would be real good if it was cleared. Would make a fine farm. Let’s block it out there.”
“Suits me. What about you, Sol? You want him to just pick out some for you?”
“What’s on that land you can see over yonder across the bay?” Sol asked.
“Well, there’s a right nice beach over there if you can push through the mangrove swamps to get to it. Plenty of skeeters too. It ain’t fittin’ to plant crops on, but if you want some land over there, I can drop the price to fifty cents an acre.”
“That’s what I want, over yonder on the beach,” Sol said. “I’ve got enough for twelve hundred acres.”
“You sure about this?” Potterquestioned. “I don’t want you to come back later and think I cheated you.”
“It don’t look like much from here,” Zech said, “but it ought to be worth twenty-four buzzards. Go on and sell it to him if that’s what he wants. It’s his money, free and clear.”
“Ain’t no buzzards over there I know of,” Potter said, puzzled by the remark. “It’s mostly pelicans and gulls.”
“Never mind,” Zech said. “I don’t think Sol’s going in the bird business again. When can you have the deeds ready?”
“I’ll try to get it done this afternoon. If I don’t, sometime tomorrow. And I’ll tell you for a fact, Mister MacIvey. You ain’t making no mistake. We’re putting in for a state charter to make this place Dade County, and when that goes through we’re going to name the village Miami.”
“Miami? I know a Indian medicine man first name of Miami. He saved my pappa from dying of malaria. But I never asked him what the name means.”
