by Janie DeVos
“Joseph, m’ boy, you got the right idea about gettin’ on with one of the big ships out o’ the St. Johns port,” Captain Franks said to my brother as he pushed his chair back from the table and pulled his pipe and a pouch of tobacco out of a breast pocket inside his navy-blue seaman’s jacket.
Using his thumb, he tamped down a pinch into the pipe’s bowl, then pulled a match from the same pocket, struck it on the sole of his left boot, and drew in long and hard, trying to coax the dark tobacco into taking the flame. “Yes, sir,” he said, blowing out the match with a thick stream of smoke. “Them large ships ain’t quite as dispensable as the smaller ones are. They’ll still use the big ones to carry some cargo and fancy passengers on longer voyages. But the smaller ones—like our river ones—well, hell, you might’s well chop ’em up and use ’em for firewood ’cause that’s about all they’ll be good for once the trains finish comin’ through. Well, that and for carrying tourists who think it’s big adventure roughin’ it onboard a boat the size o’ the ones we’re runnin’ now. Shoot, them Yankees see a raccoon walkin’ along the bank, and they think they’ve been on some big safari.” He laughed and his head bobbed. I liked Captain Franks. Even with his crabby and crusty old ways, one couldn’t help but like him. Captain Franks was as consistent and reliable as a man could be and as seasoned and well respected as any captain on the river ever was.
I heard Papa laugh over something else the captain said, but I didn’t hear what it was. I was thinking that if the rumors were true, these weathered and toughened old men of the river, who knew everything there was to know about the moods and temperament of the Ocklawaha, would soon be part of a quickly vanishing breed. And I wondered if the river would know when they weren’t there anymore and would miss them riding on her, just as much as my father and his captain would miss being safely cradled between the banks of Mother Ocklawaha.
Chapter 4
Deer for a Tiger
Ivy stayed home until about noon the next day—at least her body did. Her mind was somewhere else, though, because we often had to ask her something twice. Finally, she’d had enough and said that she really needed to go because Mayoma was going to teach her how to make a new salve for lacerations. I heard Mama sigh when the screen door slammed behind her, though I wasn’t sure if Mama did so because she was disappointed Ivy hadn’t stayed any longer or if she was actually relieved she’d left. Mama was no fool. She knew her daughter and knew that Ivy had been itching to go all morning.
I finished shelling the walnuts that were going into Christmas cakes and cookies that we’d bake over the next several weeks. Some would be sent to friends and family in Georgia, while others would be given to our friends in the area. There was still another bowl of pecans to be shelled, but Mama knew that I wanted to get another story sent out in the afternoon mail, so she told me to go on. I tossed my apron on the counter, shook my light blue wool dress free of bits of shell, picked up my letters addressed to several magazines—this was a new avenue I was trying—and grabbed my straw hat off the rack by the front door. I knew the small riverboat the Sun Fish was picking the mail up about two o’clock, which only gave me about half an hour to get there. If I had to go on foot, I wouldn’t make it, which meant that my letters would sit at the general store until the next mail pick up.
“Okay if I take the wagon, Mama?”
“Go ahead, honey,” she said, after glancing back over her shoulder toward her closed bedroom door. “Your father’s dead to the world right now. Nice he could go back to bed after breakfast, and even nicer he’s got the whole weekend off. He’s ’bout worked to death.”
“I won’t be gone too long. You need anything from the store?”
“Well…” She stopped shelling nuts to think for a moment. “No, I don’t think so.” I started for the door but she stopped me. “Tell you what; if any of them hunters has some fresh deer meat, get me some for stewin’, would ya? I’m cravin’ it after all of that turkey.”
I screwed my face up at the thought of venison. It was too gamey for me, but Mama loved it and had eaten plenty of it growing up. She’d been raised by a father who was a mean drunk, and she, her two sisters, and her mother had suffered much because of it. He was out of work most of the time and took it out on them, sending them off to bed with welts, bruises, and empty stomachs on more nights than she cared to remember. Had it not been for wild game, Mama told us, they’d have surely starved to death. And much of that wild game had been killed by my mother, who had taught herself how to shoot to survive. I told her I’d see what I could find, then hurried out the screened door. Our old horse, Maggie, was eating some sweet feed out of a bucket inside of the corral. Apologizing for taking her away from her favorite treat, I quickly hitched her up to the wagon, and we started down the sandy trail toward Silver Springs.
It was nice to be alone. There were so few times when I was. I craved those moments and had to carve them out for myself when I needed to write without any interruptions or noise. I always headed deep into a hardwood hammock that was close enough to the river to catch a breeze but far enough away from the house to not catch my family’s voices.
There was a place I usually went to, where three massive oaks created a thick arbor that shaded me on the hottest days. It almost felt like a spiritual place, and whenever I was there, words seemed to pour from me as if my guardian trees were dictating them to me. Today, however, instead of focusing inward, I enjoyed all that was going on around me. The woods, or “Big Scrub,” as the locals called it, were busy. Critters argued and fought or played together in the sunlight and the shadows of the trees. Because the weather was cooler, animals were more active. Unlike the months of June through September, when the heat during the middle of the day could bring a grown man to his knees, the fall and winter months meant full days of busyness before comfortably curling up inside somewhere to sleep through the chilly evenings. Man and beast weren’t too different, I thought, as I made my way down the trail.
Suddenly, the reins in my hands were pulled to the left as Maggie, startled, sidestepped. She tossed her head and snorted, then tried backing up. “Whoa, Mags! Whoa, girl,” I said, trying to calm her while getting a tighter grip on the reins. I stood up in the wagon to get a better look ahead and spotted the cottonmouth moccasin that had spooked her. It was curled up in the middle of the trail, where it had been enjoying the heat of the noonday sun, but now it was on alert. It stayed completely still, but its head was raised as it assessed the situation.
“Go on, now. Get!” I shouted, pulling a walnut out of the bag sitting on the floor by me, which Mama had asked me to deliver to Mrs. Brody for her holiday baking. I threw it at the snake but just missed the thing. However, the nut whizzed close enough by its head that the snake didn’t wait for another. It slithered off the trail into a clump of palmetto bushes, obviously in no mood to mess with horse, rider, or walnuts. “It’s okay, Mags. We’re okay. C’mon, now.” I gently slapped the reins and we lurched forward. We needed to get a move on because I didn’t know how long the Sun Fish would be in port.
When we got into town it was unusually busy, especially for a holiday weekend. But, as long as the general store was open for business and boats were coming in and out, then I supposed folks would be coming in and out, too. I parked the wagon behind the store then grabbed my letters and the bag of nuts. I’d run out of stamps, so my first stop was the general store to buy some and deliver the walnuts to Mrs. Brody—and hopefully without Mr. Brody seeing or his wife’s holiday baking wouldn’t have many nuts in it.
As I came around from the back of the building, I saw that a few of the hunters were there with some fresh meat. Tom Bigalow had what looked to be alligator meat; and Rayne Longwood had a wild boar that was hanging from a rack. It looked as though it was asleep upside down, until you turned the animal around to face you and saw that it was fully gutted. And next to Rayne was Max Harjo, with nicely butchered sections of fresh deer m
eat. After delivering my mail to the Sun Fish, which was already in and loading cargo, I’d see what I could get from Max. It would have to be at a very decent price, however, because I only had thirty cents in my pocket, which I’d brought to cover stamps. Mama and I had forgotten about getting some money for the meat from the blue-and-white ginger jar she kept on the shelf next to her salt bowl. It held the cash she made from selling her goods at the general store. I decided to only get enough stamps to cover my outgoing mail and no extras. Hopefully, that would leave me enough to get the deer.
Fortunately, Mrs. Brody waited on me right away, so I was able to give her the nuts and get stamps quickly; then she checked the mail that an earlier boat had dropped off and handed me two letters. One was from Mama’s sister, Emma Jean, in Lexington, Kentucky, and the other was for me from the Saturday Evening Post. I had sent the magazine editor one of my stories just the month before so I was surprised to get a response that fast, if even one at all. After thanking Mrs. Brody, who made a remark about “getting a letter from such a fine magazine,” I quickly left the store while tucking the letter safely away in the pocket of my dress. I was dying to read it but needed to drop off my outgoing mail first.
I boarded the Sun Fish, along with several other passengers, and once on board, I heard someone call my name. “Well, howdy, Miss Eve!” Lucas Knight was up at the pilot house. “You fixin’ to ride along with us today?”
“Oh, hey, Mr. Knight!” Lucas was one of my favorite people at the docks. He was a long-running steamboat pilot who had worked on practically every boat with every captain. But he was getting up in years now, and only ran the river as a fill-in when someone’s regular pilot wasn’t available. Holidays were one of those times.
“You got more letters goin’ off to them big city papers ’n all?” he asked. Most of the people on the boats knew me through my father, but they also were constantly delivering mail to and from me.
“Yes, sir.” I laughed. “And I just got one back from the Saturday Evening Post, though I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.”
“Well, don’t let me stop ya!” I could hear the smile in his voice, if not see it on his face. He said nothing more as though he were waiting for me to pull the letter from my pocket so we could find out its contents together.
“Oh…well, I…” I really didn’t want to open it then. I wanted to wait until I was by myself to either savor the good news or be disappointed in private. The truth was, though, that I was getting rather good at keeping my chin up over the disappointments. If there was one thing I was learning as a writer, it was that you got far more rejections than acceptances, and you learned to take it in stride. “I’m kind of in a hurry…and I have to get some deer meat for Mama,” I quickly added. “If you don’t mind, I…”
“You go on, Miss Eve.” I could still hear the smile in his voice. “Sometimes a body jus’ gotta be by itself when it’s ’specting news. Might be he wants to shout to the heavens in happiness without nobody thinkin’ he belongs in the crazy house or shed a few tears without worryin’ someone’s watchin’. You go on now—but do let me know how it turns out, all righty?”
“All righty!” I enthusiastically said. “Next time I see you. I promise! Bye, Mr. Knight.” I started to leave but stopped and turned back to him. “And, thanks.” The wise old man tipped his cap. And I knew he understood. Stepping inside the main level’s salon, I found the steward immediately, gave him my letters, and climbed off the boat. Turning around on the dock, I waved at Lucas Knight, who I knew would be watching me from the pilot house. His white teeth were in contrast to his dark skin, and I could see that he was smiling broadly and waving. Lord, please make a few more like Lucas Knight if you’re working the production line today, I prayed as I walked away. Hurrying down the dock, I set my sights on the racks of deer meat. I wanted to be on my way as soon as possible.
Max Harjo was leaning against the side of the general store, smoking a thin cigar and wearing a broad-brimmed black felt hat that had a hawk’s feather sewn at an angle on the right side. When he saw me stop at his rack, he pulled the cigar from the corner of his mouth. “You needing somethin’?” His voice was low and deep.
“Well, yes, but…”
“But what?” He dropped his cigar, crushed it with his boot, then pushed himself away from the wall, and walked up to the racks. He was even taller than I’d thought he was, now that I was standing directly in front of him.
“Mama needs some deer meat for stewin’, but I don’t have much money with me. How much is a pound of it?”
He looked me up and down, assessing me. I wasn’t sure if he did so because he was trying to figure out if I was lying about how much money I had or if he was just being rude, as quite a few of the men in the area were known to be. Central Florida, which was sparsely inhabited but heavily wooded, was not an easy place for a woman to live. It attracted some pretty seedy characters who just needed to lay low for a while or for the rest of their lives. Max Harjo’s eyes followed my body all the way up until he was looking me dead in the eye. I was surprised to see that his were a very dark blue, which was a sharp contrast to his very black hair and tan skin. “How much you got?”
“After buying my stamps, I’ve got twenty-four cents left.”
With that declaration, the corner of Max Harjo’s mouth lifted slightly into a half smile. “I get thirty cents a pound for it. But I’ll tell ya what; you keep your twenty-four cents and tell Ivy she owes me some of her honey.”
“Oh, well, I…I couldn’t make a deal like that without asking her, Mr. Harjo. I mean it’s her honey and…and I…Couldn’t you just give me twenty-four cents worth of meat, and we’ll be fair and square?”
“Naw. I’d rather have her honey.”
His half-smile had spread into a full-blown one. He was obviously enjoying this, and it irritated me. “Never mind, Mr. Harjo. I don’t need it that badly.” I started to walk away.
“Hold on, heruse hvmken!”
I could hear him laughing, which infuriated me more than his blasted bartering, and he’d called me by some strange name, which was probably Indian and probably not good.
“What did you call me?” I turned around to face him, but he was no longer looking at me. Instead, he was standing at his butcher’s table, slicing into a nice slab of meat. I walked over to him, hands on my hips. “What did you call me, Mr. Harjo? I want to know!”
“‘Pretty one,’” he said as he rolled the meat into a sheet of newspaper. “But I should have called you kaccv hokte!” He tied a piece of twine around the package and held it out to me.
“I don’t want your meat, Mr. Harjo!” I said, turning to go.
“Ahhh, but your mama does,” he said without missing a beat while still holding the package out to me.
For a moment, I struggled over whether it was more important to refuse it and walk away, or swallow my pride so that Mama could have her deer meat for dinner. “Damn it,” I softly exclaimed as I snatched the package from his hand.
Max was laughing again. “Tell Ivy she owes me honey, little kaccv hokte!” he reminded me as I furiously stomped away. “Oh, and, Eve…”
I stopped dead in my tracks, startled by hearing him say my name. How did he know it? Did my sister talk to him about our family, about our lives? I slowly turned around to look at him. He was no longer laughing, but softly smiling instead.
“That means ‘tiger woman,’ and it fits.”
Chapter 5
Eruptions
I was still angry when I drove out of town. Though I was tempted to run Maggie as hard as I could to get away from Silver Springs—specifically Max Harjo—I needed some time to myself.
The nerve of that man, I thought. And, how does he know Ivy so well? It would have been a simple purchase if I hadn’t spent that money on those stamps for—My letter! I’d forgotten all about it! Pulling on the reins, I stopped in the middle of
the sandy trail, pulled it out of my pocket and ripped it open. When I unfolded the letter, a check fell out of it. Picking it up off the floor of the wagon, I saw that it was made out to me in the amount of ten dollars. Sticking it in my pocket, I began to read the letter. The editor of the Saturday Evening Post had loved my story and was going to publish it in the January issue. He also asked that I send stories as often as I could, and he thought my writing “painted a clear and vibrant picture of Florida.”
Thoughts of arrogant Max Harjo were all but forgotten as I slapped the reins against Maggie’s rump. I wanted to get home in a hurry now, and Maggie would get two sugar cubes for her efforts.
We were nearly home when we came to a place where the river cut further into the land, causing the trail to take a sharp bend. Making the spot even more difficult to navigate were the dense clumps of spiky palmettos that grew right at the edge of the trail, forcing me to stay in the middle of the road. There was so much heavy vegetation encroaching on both sides that it was hard to see or hear anyone coming, and because of that, we nearly ran into Mayoma’s wagon. She pulled hard to her right, and I pulled hard to my right, narrowly missing each other but trampling some bushes on each side. Backing the horses up, we got our rigs back on the trail and took a moment to make sure everyone was all right.
“Lord, chil’, you got the devil chasin’ after ya?” she asked but not unkindly so. There wasn’t an unkind bone in Mayoma’s body.
“No, I… No.” I was still a little shook up. “Whew! I nearly killed us all. I’m sorry, Mayoma.”
“We’re no worse for wear. But, what’s gotcha goin’ so?”
“I just got a letter from the Saturday Evening Post. They’re publishing one of my stories.”
