Miami Gundown

by Michael Zimmer

  The muscles across my chest tightened, making breathing more difficult. “Do you intend to kill him, Jim?”

  “No, suh, not me. It won’t do for a Negro to kill a white man. Not if that Negro don’t want his own neck stretched from a magnolia tree right quick. But I’s goin’ to make it real simple for you to do it.” I swallowed hard, and I guess he heard me. “Ain’t gonna be no different than what you boys did to them Yankees outside Punta Rassa,” he added.

  “No, I guess not.”

  “They got Lena, marse, and they got your daddy’s horses. We let that slide, that bunch’ll keep comin’ back and takin’ more.”

  “I said all right.”

  He nodded as if satisfied that he’d made his point. “You got your pistol reloaded?”

  “Yeah.” I took a deep breath, held it for several seconds, then exhaled loudly. “Then I reckon we’re ready.”

  In a voice real low and real mean, like I’d never heard from him before, Jim said: “I been ready ever since I found my Josie out in them woods behind your daddy’s house, scared near senseless for fear of what them men might do. What they might’ve already done to poor, little Lena.”

  To be honest, I didn’t remember Josie appearing all that frightened when she came running toward us from the trees, but I suppose a man sees things differently when it’s his woman who’s been put through the ringer.

  “I’ll go get Casey,” I said, and walked back to where the others were standing with their horses. I explained what we were going to do, then tipped my head for Casey to follow. We led our horses over to where Jim was waiting, but he shook his head when he saw our mounts.

  “Best leave them horses behind. We’ll go in on foot from here.”

  “Punch,” I called softly, and when the younger man came over, we handed him our reins. “Keep ’em quiet,” I instructed, then turned to Jim. “Lead off.”

  We made our way as quietly as possible over such rough terrain. Jim moved like a cloud shadow over the landscape, but Casey and I weren’t as skilled and, to my ears, at least, made enough racket to wake the dead. Twenty minutes after slipping away from the others, Jim stopped so unexpectedly I rammed into his back. He didn’t look around or give me a reprimand, but just held up a hand in a “wait” gesture, and Casey and I froze in our tracks.

  Swaying back to where I was practically standing on his heels, Jim said: “You boys stay put a spell. You’ll know when to come forward, and you’ll know where, too. Just don’t make no noise till you hear my signal.”

  I nodded solemnly, blinked once, and then Jim was gone. Like he’d turned into smoke or something. Easing up at my side, Casey whispered: “I wish I could move that quiet.”

  I didn’t reply, but I was thinking the same thing. Negro Jim was showing off skills that night I never had a clue he possessed.

  The minutes dragged on, and my nerves began to stretch toward the breaking point. So much so that, when I heard a sharp grunt, then the crackle of bushes from no more than fifty feet away, I nearly jumped out of my sodden boots.

  “Easy, hoss,” Casey breathed, then gave me a gentle push forward.

  There were no further sounds, but I figured that had to be the signal Jim had told us to listen for. We started off in the direction it had come from, and Jim called when we got close. Shoving through a stand of arrowroot, I found him flat on his back, his powerful legs clamped around the mid-section of a heavily bearded man clutched in a bear hug. Jim’s razor-sharp cane knife—kind of a machete with a barb opposite the tip to pull the cane stalks out of the way—was pressed tight against the lookout’s throat, and I knew that a single, fiddle-like swipe from Jim would come awful close to severing the man’s head. Judging from the wide-open stare of the guard, I suspect he knew it, too.

  “Don’t stand there gawkin’,” Jim scolded. “Pull this ’coon’s suspenders off and tie him up.”

  Casey and I didn’t waste time. After yanking the man’s revolver from its holster and tossing it toward a carbine lying in the dirt a few paces away, I grabbed his ankles while Casey cut the leather braces from his shoulders and bound him hand and foot. When he was securely trussed, Jim shoved him off and rose to his knees. He had a wicked grin on his face as he pressed the tip of his cane knife against the lookout’s cheek. “Mister, you is gonna do some quick talkin’, and you damn well better make me believe you is tellin’ the truth.” He pressed in lightly with his knife. “You savvy, fish bait?”

  “Jim,” I said warily, half afraid from the expression on the Negro’s face that he’d start cutting before we had the information we needed.

  “That’s all right, marse. I already explained to this boy how he can stay alive . . . assumin’ that’s what he wants. I’m just remindin’ him that he ain’t done what he needs to do yet.”

  “Jesus, mister,” the lookout said to me in a panicky voice. “Is this your darky?”

  “He ain’t nobody’s darky,” I replied. “But he sure is mad about what you boys did at the Flatiron. That was his wife you scared into the trees, and his soon-to-be daughter-in-law you kidnapped and brought down here. He’s been thinking about that ever since we started after you boys, and he ain’t cooled off about it yet that I can see.”

  “Not one little peck,” Jim agreed sinisterly.

  “That gal of yours ain’t been hurt, but she might be if you boys go stomping down there like you own the place.” The guard was still looking at me, as if Jim no longer existed. “Ol’ Jake’s told us about you McCallisters and all the trouble they’ve had with your pap over the years. I’d say you’re lucky your whole bunch hasn’t been run outta the state before now.”

  “It ain’t McCallisters or Davises that carry running irons in their saddlebags,” Casey shot back. [Ed. Note: Running irons were generally straight, iron bars, a foot or two in length, used like pencils to alter brands on cattle and horses; in many states and territories during the nineteenth century, the mere possession of a running iron was considered an admission of guilt to cattle rustling and horse theft.]

  “It seems you ain’t takin’ my warnin’ serious,” Jim said so softly I could barely make out the words; he was speaking to the bearded guard and once again had his attention. “Let me be real clear on what I expect,” Jim went on, and placed the cutting edge of his cane knife against the bottom of the lookout’s nose, “You don’t talk no more, ’less it’s to answer a question I’ve asked, and you keep your opinions to yourself, too. Otherwise, I’m gonna slice your sniffer clean off your face and eat it raw. Then I’m gonna move on to other parts of your body, and see how much gumption you’ve really got. You understand . . . boy?”

  The guard gave me a startled look, but—almost comically—didn’t utter a word.

  “In case you’re wondering,” I supplied to his unspoken question. “Yeah, I’m going to let him do it. As a matter of fact, I’ll help hold you down.”

  Jim added just enough pressure to his knife to draw a thin stream of blood, while clamping his free hand solidly over the lookout’s mouth. The man’s eyes widened in terror. Pulling the knife back slightly, Jim said: “You takin’ me serious now?”

  The man’s head bobbed rapidly under Jim’s palm, bringing a hard smile to the black man’s lips. “Good. Let’s get started.”

  I guess it was all fairly anticlimactic after that. Jim asked, and the lookout answered, both of them speaking in low, terse whispers. By the time they were finished, we had a fair idea of how many men and women lived in Miami, how long the Klees had been in town, and where they were holed up. Not surprisingly, the reply to that last question was the settlement’s only saloon, a cypress-log building just up from the southern bank. The only thing that surprised me was that old Judah Klee and his part of the clan hadn’t arrived yet. Led to believe that they were already there, I was relieved to find out that I was wrong. According to the lookout—whose name I never did get, unfortunately—Judah and his bunch were still back in the swamps south of Okeechobee, while Jubal Klee—Jake’
s brother—had taken a gang north to do some raiding around Jacksonville.

  We also learned that Lena was being held in a slave shack at the far end of Miami’s single, muddy street, the stolen horses had been pastured somewhere south of the village, and Jacob had about a dozen men with him. The women, kids, and old people were still on their way, dragging their belongings through the swamps in canoes and dugouts, which just shows you what kind of men they were, leaving the women and elderly to do all the hard work while they lazed around Miami’s only saloon, raising hell with their drinking, gambling, and carousing.

  After taking his cane knife away from the guard’s nose, Jim crammed a kerchief into his mouth to keep him quiet, then stood and wiped his blade clean on a wad of coontie leaves. I became aware of the black man’s quiet scrutiny and, with a sickening sensation in the pit of my stomach, knew what he was silently asking. Staring down at the bearded Klee—or at least a Klee man—I shook my head.

  “Let him live.”

  “We do, we might someday regret it,” Jim said.

  I hesitated, but in my mind I kept seeing those Yankees we’d hung outside of Punta Rassa, recalling the fear and disbelief on their faces as we strung them up one at a time. It hadn’t been the same with that detachment below Fort Pierce; they’d opened the ball on that one. Sighing heavily, I said: “We might, but I’m getting tired of fighting and killing. Make sure his gag is tight, then let’s go get Lena.”

  After returning to where we’d left the others, I quickly outlined what we’d learned, then looked to Jim to take over.

  “Best we lead our horses as far as the fort,” he said. “Was a flat-bottomed boat tied up on the near bank when I was there earlier. We’ll use that to cross the Miami. Once we get on t’other side, Mistah Casey and Mistah Punch can go after the horses, while the rest of us keeps an eye on the saloon. Soon as them two’s got the horses, we’ll slip in real quiet and find Lena, then swim the horses back across the river and light out for home.” He paused and looked at me. “I reckon that’s ’bout it, marse, ’less you gots something to say.”

  I shook my head, and Jim nodded. “Then I reckon we best get movin’,” he said, and started off through the darkness toward Fort Dallas, on the Miami River.

  Excerpted from:

  Views of Old Miami Town:

  Reminiscences of a Former Resident

  by

  Patrick Kayne

  Southern Pride Books, 1887

  Chapter Seven

  The War Years—1861–1865

  In the early years of the War Between the States, life continued basically unchanged among Miami’s founding residents. Still imbued with the resilience of a hardy pioneer heritage, they cheerfully forged ahead in their daily endeavors of harvesting the bounty of this singular niche in paradise, with the production of pine tar, turpentine, lumber, and Arrowroot starch [coontie] from the coastal pine ridge, which they sold primarily to eager markets in Key West and Nassau.

  * * * * *

  [B]ut local industry, and Miami culture in general, was substantially and forever altered by this insidious act of antagonism [the Union blockade]. Although the Miami area was given low priority by the Federal military because of its isolation and what was perceived as a lack of commodities beneficial to Northern causes, Union ships regularly patrolling Florida’s Eastern Seaboard continued a cursory monitoring of Biscayne Bay and would frequently dock at the Fort Dallas wharf to take on supplies of wood, water, salted meat, and fresh produce.

  * * * * *

  [H]owever, by 1864, the tenor of Miami’s populace began to change dramatically, with an influx of outlaws, horse thieves, pirates, blockade runners, and deserters from both sides of the conflict, desperate men one and all, seeking the locality’s unique remoteness to hide themselves and their deeds, or to mask their otherwise cowardly identities.

  This unexpected influence had several negative consequences upon the area’s original settlers, not the least of which was a shuddersome dread of the outlaws’ violently capricious nature. Furthering this trepidation on the part of Miami’s more morally enlightened citizenry was an increase of Yankee aggression, affecting the area’s original inhabitants as much, or more, than it did the community’s less-refined denizens.

  * * * * *

  . . . While many of these scallywags preferred the jungles separating the Bay from the endless horizons of the Everglades, or the dense pinewoods to the south of our fair city, the bolder among them preferred to infiltrate the community itself, perpetuating their acts of anarchy in blissful ignorance of the damages they incurred upon the community.

  The more notorious of this element were the men of the Eli Wilberson gang, made up largely of Southern deserters and thugs from the South’s larger cities, and the multi-generational progeny of “Old” Judah Klee, whose clan ranged over most of southern and central Florida for several decades during the mid-nineteenth century, causing untold grief and havoc to even the most peace-loving settler and rancher.

  Session Nine

  Everything went pretty much as Jim predicted. Him and me and Ardell and Roy, we all took shelter among the trees lining the Miami’s south bank, where we could keep an eye on the settlement, while Casey and Punch circled wide to the east to follow the beach in search of the horse herd. Although I was anxious to start looking for Lena, Jim held us back. He was afraid that once we entered the village, our chances of being discovered would “jump over the moon,” as the saying goes.

  “That happens,” Jim had warned me as we crossed the Miami three at a time in a tiny skiff, “we’ll have to forget them Flatiron horses and make a run for it.”

  Which is what we should have done to begin with, forgetting about the horses and focusing on grabbing Lena, then hauling our butts out of there as fast as our ponies could carry us. But I got greedy, wanting both the girl and the horses, and before the day was through—hell, before the sun came up all the way—we’d pay a hefty price for my avarice.

  I saw a postcard of downtown Miami a few years ago that I found hard to accept. It was a night view, with streetlights glowing off wet pavement and automobiles parked nose-first along both sides of the street, like marshtackies hitched to cypress rails. There was a sizable crowd of men, women, and children—entire families—moseying along the cement sidewalks, peering into brightly lit storefront windows. Everyone seemed to be laughing or smiling, and save for the palm trees in the distance, it reminded me a lot of Fort Worth on a Friday night. The decent part of town, not the Acre. [Ed. Note: McCallister is referring to Fort Worth’s notorious red-light district, known as Hell’s Half Acre, often shortened to “the Acre.”]

  Miami wasn’t like that when I was there in ’64. Back then, there was but a single, wide street, sheeted in mud from the recent rains, and maybe a score of buildings, most of them little more than shacks with palm-frond roofs. There was a store on one side of the street, and the saloon was on the other. Both were built close to the river, to catch the eyes of the sailors who occasionally docked at the Fort Dallas wharf. Dense jungles surrounded the settlement like a thin, green rind, separating it from the sawgrass flats of the Everglades that stretched all the way to the distant Gulf coast.

  Other than the store and the saloon, there wasn’t much to see, and the sharp odor of damp rot, penned hogs, and human waste smothered any scent of fresh fruit or verdant gardens—and I’m just assuming there were some at that time. Although I couldn’t see the hog pens from where we were crouched along the river, I could hear the low, discontented grunts of the swine as they moved about in their enclosure.

  I was looking east, past the sloping palm trees to Biscayne Bay, and noticing how quickly dawn seemed to be taking shape above the mangrove forests of an island way out across the water, when Ardell whispered: “Here they come.” [Ed. Note: McCallister is probably referring to Virginia Key here, part of the barrier islands that form the eastern boundary of Biscayne Bay.]

  Cautiously lifting my eyes above the lip of the bank, I
spotted Casey and Punch entering the village from the south. Disappointment cut deep when I saw that they were still afoot, and my gaze slid resentfully toward the gray bulk of the saloon.

  “We be out of time, marse,” Jim said gently, then squeezed the top of my shoulder as if in commiseration. “Come on. Your daddy’s got plenty of horses, and we’s already wasted too much time.”

  Well, there was no arguing that. Waving my hand for the others to follow, we surged over the top of the bank as a single entity and quickly made our way toward the center of the ramshackle community. As we exited the knob-kneed mangroves along the river, I began to realize just how late the morning had become. I have a kind of internal benchmark about what constitutes day from night, since “dawn” and “sundown” can often be ambiguous. For me, it’s when there’s enough light to read a newspaper and not have to squint to make out the words. There wasn’t any doubt about it as we entered Miami that day—it was a fine-print kind of morning.

  Spotting a couple of Negroes stirring outside a hut at the southern terminus of the street, I told Jim to go see what they could tell him. “The rest of you spread out,” I ordered. “If you find Lena, get her back here quick as you can.”

  While Jim headed toward the distant Negroes, I hurried across the street to intercept Casey and Punch. Casey started shaking his head while I was still some distance away.

  “Couldn’t find ’em, Boone,” he said as I came up. “We saw some ’tackies about a quarter mile south of here, but nothing carrying the Flatiron brand.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I replied, but before I could add any more, a scream pierced the air. I flinched, and all three of us—me and Casey and Punch—palmed our six-shooters. From the far end of the street, I saw a tiny figure burst through the sagging door of a palmetto hut and race down the middle of the street. Her cries rang over the slumbering village like church bells: “Papa Jim, Papa Jim!”