The Orchid Keeper: A Sean O'Brien Novel

by Tom Lowe

  I shut of the motor and turned to Max. “As I recall, they’ll let you eat here if we get a table outside on that long porch.” She snorted, eyes anxious. I lifted her up with one hand, locking the Jeep. I scanned the parking area, not spotting Wynona’s car among the dozens of rental cars and three RVs. A family with a Kentucky license plate on their mini-van got out, the two kids running ahead. Mom shouting, “Stop running! That means you, Andy.”

  To my left, came a Toyota RAV-4, parking in the least crowded section. Wynona Osceola stepped out of the car. Even from a distance of about one hundred feet, she looked striking. Her black hair fell to the center of her back. She wore jeans, a white cotton blouse, and a dark blue business jacket, open. I could see her wide smile. Max began fidgeting. Although we hadn’t seen Wynona in a few weeks, Max almost sang her excitement in a fast repartee, her barks rolling off her tongue like a rapper who could only yodel.

  I made sure no cars were coming or going before setting Max down. She bolted in Wynona’s direction, making a full circle around her shoes, barking twice, tail blurring. Wynona bent down and picked her up. “I’ve missed you, too, Miss Maxine.” Wynona held Max close, receiving doxie kisses on her cheeks. “What a greeting,” she said as I walked toward them. “My mom used to say dogs wag their tails with their hearts.”

  “I think your mom was spot on,” I said, giving her a hug. “You’re looking lovely.”

  She smiled. “Thanks. You’re not so bad to look at yourself.” She scratched Max behind the ears. “It’s good to see you, Sean. Did you just happen to be in the area, near the rez, and decided to see if I was available for lunch?”

  I smiled. “No. It was more preplanned than that. I know your birthday is this month. I wanted to give you an early present. It’s here.” I motioned for her to follow me to my Jeep. I opened the back and unbuckled the two orchids in their clay pots and held one in each hand. “These are for you.”

  She smiled, her eyes misting a moment. “They’re so beautiful. You remembered me telling you that orchids are my favorite flowers. As a little girl, when my brother and I would go into the glades or Big Cypress with my grandfather, he’d use a bamboo pole to move his flat-bottom boat through the shallow water and point out various plants, animals, and flowers to us. My favorite was the orchids … especially the ghost orchids. They reminded me of something between a butterfly and a frog because they always had the beautiful white wings of a delicate butterfly and looked as if they were leaping from the trees, like frogs. Can I trade you Max for the orchids?”

  “Absolutely.” We made the exchange, and Wynona looked closely at the blossoms, her eyes filling with wonder and curiosity.

  “Sean, these are the most beautiful orchids I’ve ever seen. Thank you so much. I have the perfect place in my house to put them. These don’t seem like the kind of orchids you can buy in the grocery store. They’re much too exotic and mysterious. Where on earth did you ever find them?”

  “A place on earth that’s hard to find. Actually, it’s not too far from here as the proverbial crow flies. Off the Tamiami Trail is a nearly hidden spot that you have to be looking for to find. An old man lives back in the cypress swamps. He’s traveled the world studying and buying orchids. He’s a botanist who cultivates and grows some of the most beautiful and rarest orchids in the world. He’s been replanting native orchids back in the glades. Over lunch, I’ll tell you more about the pedigree and legacy of your new orchids.”

  “Sounds like these should come with registration papers or maybe a passport.”

  • • •

  Johnny Nelson walked into the hospital emergency room with his frightened wife by his side. Amber Nelson stood a foot shorter than her husband, her vivid green eyes filled with worry, her mouth like a red knot. Her hair, the color of bailed hay left in a field, was pulled back in a tight ponytail. She held a baby on her hip, gently swaying back and forth as they met with the nurse receptionist. “My husband has a real bad infection,” she said, licking her dry lips. “His leg looks like it’s on fire.”

  The receptionist stayed seated, her computer screen reflecting off her glasses. She nodded. “We’ll have the doctor look at it as soon as we can. First, I’ll need to ask you folks a few questions and get you in the system.”

  After they gave her all the required information, they were told to have a seat in the waiting area with at least two dozen other people, many in for flu-like symptoms, deep coughing, hacking. One man with snow white hair, slumped shoulders, his left eye partially closed and filled with cataracts, sat in a wheelchair, his khaki pants stained from the loss of urine.

  Johnny and Amber took seats in a corner area, a dwarf palm in a dark plastic pot near them, a TV screen on the wall, sound off, Wheel-of-Fortune on. “I hope we don’t have to wait too long,” she said, rocking her baby son in her arms.

  Johnny stared at his leg. The cut on his shin looked to be alive, long red streaks splaying out like a sun flare, the wound oozing a milky green substance. He cleared his throat. “It’s weird … I’ve had deeper cuts than this in combat. They all healed up fine. After a few days, they’d be scabbed and forgotten about, but not this time.”

  “That’s ‘cause there are things in that water that can kill you. Even in the two years that you did those tours of duty, the water in southwest Florida has changed. It’s not like it was growing up around here. Late last summer, the red tide or something in the water got so bad, some people living in Sarasota couldn’t sit out on their porches in the evening when the breeze blew the stuff around the canals and whatnot. A couple interviewed on the news said it smelled like dead fish for three weeks.” She eyed her sleeping baby. “They had a child close to Michael’s age at the time. The man said they were scared the baby would get a respiratory infection because they could smell it even through the air-conditioner.”

  “That’s sad. Never should happen. Maybe I can just get a shot, a bunch of antibiotics and knock this thing out of me.”

  Amber looked at her husband’s leg and put on the bravest face she could muster. “When we get you well, you gotta promise me you won’t go back in there with your cast net. It’s not worth the risks.” The baby cried softly. Amber rocked her son with the reassurance in her arms that she wanted to feel in her heart. But the wound on her husband’s leg shattered illusions with a painful reminder of the unknown that too often lurks beneath the water.

  FOURTEEN

  Joe Thaxton looked out into the sea of faces and paused, glancing at Jessica standing off to one side of the stage, which was a large outdoor gazebo in a park setting of palms and lofty oaks draped in Spanish moss. More than three hundred people, most in shorts and short-sleeve shirts, spilled out around the gazebo, the Stuart city water tower in the background, an American flag painted on the big silver-gray water tank. The air smelled of fresh-cut grass and roses in the wind. Thaxton said, “So, in conclusion, friends. I want to thank y’all for coming out here today to show your support … not so much for me, but rather for what we all stand for. And that’s clean water for every man, woman and child in Florida.”

  “Tell it like it is, Joe!” shouted a supporter.

  “I plan to, and I plan to do a lot more than just telling. I’m a doer. This plague, which is what I’m gonna keep calling it until it’s inoculated and gone—this disease called pollution is drastically interfering with the way we conduct our lives. The way we work and play … and our health. When you can’t take your child to the beach because of the fish kills, the stink, and the fear of catching something or worse—like dying, when our lifeguards are sitting in their guard stands and breathing through surgical gauze masks, this is beginning to look apocalyptic. It must change!”

  “Take it to Tallahassee!” shouted a tall man.

  “I will! That is with the help and support of people like everyone here today. No one can do it alone. We need a united front to face the polluters. We need an angry populace to demand accountability on the state water management boards. We need
to tell Big Sugar and corporate agriculture their time with the current status quo is up. Because far too long they’ve lobbied and paid their way to greater profits by having laws written to their benefit. Guess what? These laws can be rewritten to turn back the toxic clouds of pollution that move insidiously like green slime along our waterways. If you send me to Tallahassee, you’ll send me with more than a message. I have a plan that can work with agriculture and change antiquated septic systems, measures we need in place to save our lakes, rivers, beaches, and our health. Let’s make this a win-win!”

  The crowed exploded in applause. Thaxton signaled for his wife to join him on stage behind the podium. Jessica stood by her husband’s side, smiling, his hand on her back. A mass of smiling faces and applauding supporters. And then she spotted two men in the back standing in the shadows of a live oak. They weren’t clapping. Hands deep in their pockets. Dark glasses on hard faces of stone. One man whispering in another man’s ear, both nodding. One using a pocket knife to scrape dirt from under his fingernails.

  • • •

  We sat in a remote section of the restaurant’s expansive veranda, the orchids on the back part of our table, Max at our feet, the beauty of the marshlands across the vista, the sound of an airboat in the distance. We ate fried catfish, gator tail nuggets, kale salad and fry bread. I sipped black coffee. Wynona ordered water with a lemon slice.

  I told Wynona about Chester Miller, his efforts to restore native orchids to the Everglades, and his extensive orchid research project tucked away in a raised spit of land surrounded by swamps. “So, the orchids you’ll take home with you have quite a legacy by way of Colombia and the volcanic peaks and valleys of Malaysia. Chester has spent a lifetime studying and cross-pollinating some of the best of the best in the world of orchids. He’s more than a botanist … he’s a scientist who’s cataloged orchid DNA back to the time the famed orchid hunters of Europe trekked to inhospitable jungles in South America and Africa to export the most fascinating plant Europe and Victorian England had ever seen, the mysterious orchid. Fast-forward a couple of centuries later and factor in mass production with greenhouses, orchids now are as available as sunflowers.”

  “But they’re not the same,” Wynona said, looking at the vivid, delicate petals. She lifted her eyes to mine. “There is still something mysterious about a beautiful and rare orchid. The shape of the flower—the variegated colors of the petals, the feminine lips into the inner sanctum, the womb, that seems to hypnotize bees into blind obedience—to carry the orchid seed on their wings and help flower a new generation.” She paused, taking a deep breath, gazing at the wetlands beyond the veranda. Then she looked at me, something hidden in the complexity of her eyes. After a few seconds, she smiled and said, “Orchids hold a unique fascination. It’s as if they’ve been around so long, they could tell us stories about the birth of the planet if we’d only listen.”

  “I think people like Chester Miller, and even his granddaughter, Callie, are listening. They’re not focused as much on the birth of the planet as they are on its well-being. The ghost orchids you mentioned seeing as a little girl … Chester has studied and cataloged them in the Everglades, Fakahatchee Strand, and Big Cypress. He says the label ghost is applicable, not so much by the way they look, but rather because they’re difficult to find. He calls them the canary in the coal mine in terms of the condition of the Everglades.”

  Wynona nodded and sipped her glass of water. “I think he’s right about that. Although I haven’t been in the glades or Big Cypress in a while, the last time I was there I can’t recall seeing a ghost orchid. That was at least four years ago. This botanist you mentioned, Chester Miller …”

  “What about him?”

  “If I’m not mistaken, I believe he’s friends with Sam Otter, the last of the renowned Seminole medicine men. You met Sam when you were helping to prove Joe Billie was innocent of murder charges. No one is sure of Sam’s exact age. Some guess it’s about a hundred and three years. Even when I was a little girl, he seemed to be old back then. He’s way up there in chronological age … but somehow time seems to have less of an aging effect on him and some of the other elders that I remember in the tribe. It probably has a lot to do with his lifestyle, diet, and his deep knowledge of plants and Seminole medicine.”

  I looked at my plate of food. “Let’s hope catfish is among his favorites.”

  Wynona smiled. “I think Sam Otter has spent time with Chester Miller in the Everglades. I remember hearing about a non-Indian who was extremely knowledgeable about the flora and fauna in the glades. I heard that Sam shared a lot of information, handed down knowledge from generations of Seminoles about the ways of nature. Sean, that’s like getting a dozen PhDs in plant science. What makes people like Sam Otter so fascinating is his ability to mix the sap and leaves of various plants and bark to obtain the specific medicine he seeks. Inside his chickee there are literally hundreds of canning jars. Many contain dried leaves. Some hold dirt, dried mud, mixed with plant materials. Others have hardened sap, pollens, and tree bark. None are labeled in the traditional sense. When he dies, all of that extensive knowledge and wisdom will go with him to the grave.”

  “Let’s hope he can get an apprentice and log the materials and data.”

  “Where will he find someone to do that in today’s Seminole Tribe? Those days are gone forever.”

  I smiled. “Maybe Chester Miller would be an apprentice. Even in his eighties, he’s at least twenty years younger than Sam Otter.”

  Wynona laughed. “Now that would make a great reality TV show. Imagine, two elderly men, one in his hundreds, one in his eighties. Both in waders slowly walking through the glades, pointing out plants and flowers. Maybe the younger fella, Chester, would be scribbling notes like James Audubon when he first arrived in Florida and the massive flocks of wading birds would darken the sun at midday when they arose and took flight over the glades.”

  “Now, that’s a visual. I’d watch that TV show. Sounds like something that might interest Discovery or National Geographic Channel.”

  “I know that Sam wouldn’t be interested. Not that he’s too old, and it’s not that he’s uncomfortable or intimidated by cameras. Among the Seminole, he’s a revered and respected man. Maybe like the pope with Catholics. Sam mixes medicine with religion and helps members of the tribe to heal their bodies and their spirits.”

  “Did you ever see him when you were ill?”

  “Twice as a little girl. I’d had a bad fever one time and a case of pneumonia the second time. Sam looked at me, my eyes, inside my mouth and ears. He placed one ear on my chest to listen to my heart and lungs. He looked at my hair and fingernails. He asked me a few questions in the native language. My mother had to interpret for me. Then he gave her these horrible tasting herb medicines for me and strict instructions on how to administer them. Within a day or two, each time, I was well again.” Wynona inhaled deeply through her nostrils, slowly releasing a long breath. “There was another time I should have seen him, but I chose not to.”

  “When was that?”

  “I think you might know. Let’s order coffee, and I’ll tell you.”

  FIFTEEN

  Joe Thaxton and his wife, Jessica, stayed on the Gazebo platform, shaking hands and listening to stories people told. Most of the supporters were long-time Florida residents with tales to tell about the days before green-slime rivers and the red tides rolled up on beaches leaving dead fish. Some people had recently moved to the state and felt like they’d opened a Pandora’s box when it came to green algae rivers and red tide. Each had an example for Joe to use as he built his platform and sharpened his toolset.

  Joe’s campaign manager, Larry Garner, a big man with a round, ruddy face, puffy eyes, graying hair, stood to one side of the candidate and his wife. Garner wore a dark sports coat, button down shirt and new blue jeans. He glanced at his watch and scrolled through his iPad, looking at schedules. They were running behind. The next appointment was to meet with the editor
ial board of the largest newspaper in the area. Garner hoped that the meeting would result in the paper endorsing the candidacy of Joe Thaxton for state senate.

  When the handshaking line dwindled to a few people, Joe glanced at his remaining supporters, recognizing one man, nodding and then speaking to a woman who was next in line. “I appreciate you coming out here today,” he said to the woman, mid-forties, wearing a blue sundress, matching high heels, a strand of pearls around her dark, tanned neck.

  The woman looked at Jessica and then at Joe. “You two make such a nice couple. It was interesting and heartbreaking to hear y’all tell the story of your daughter the first time that green goop came floating down the river. By the grace of God, your little girl is okay, right?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Joe said. “We’re blessed.”

  Jessica smiled and added, “Our daughter, Kristy, is just one of many children who can’t tolerate that kind of toxicity in the air. It’s like people who are allergic to peanuts. They can’t go near peanuts or suffer grave consequences. Diet is a choice people can make, but that’s not always the case when it comes to the environment. Often, you can be going about your daily life and come to realize you’re being attacked by things in the environment. But like Joe says, we can change that before there’s no change possible.”

  “I agree. You had quite a turn-out here today. Now, what y’all need are T-shirts and hats for people to wear and proudly show their support.”