Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County

by Amy Hill Hearth

  “He can’t do this!” Jackie hollered, hurting my ear. “He’s stealing my name! I’m going to call my lawyer!”

  “Jackie, let’s turn around and go home and talk this over,” I said quickly. My instinct was to retreat, plan, and return to battle another day. Jackie’s instinct was to fight first, think later.

  Instead of gunning the engine, however, she drove like a civilized person (which, frankly, almost scared me more) until we were close enough to pull up a few feet from him. I could see that he recognized the car—of course he did. Everyone in southwest Florida knew that car.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Jackie said, like she was about to ask for directions.

  I almost felt sorry for Darryl. He was entirely flummoxed. “I thought I heard a car horn a while ago,” he said. “I guess that was you?”

  “Might have been,” Jackie said with that same edge to her voice.

  “You’re Miss Dreamsville, aren’t you?” he asked. “Mrs. Jackie Hart?”

  “Yes,” she said icily.

  “Oh, I see you’re in mourning. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “And I see that you have chosen to call your development ‘Dreamsville.’ The implication is that I am endorsing this project. You will be hearing from my attorney.”

  This was a side to Jackie I hadn’t seen. Although she was so mad I sensed she was quivering beside me, she had reined in her temper.

  “Well, actually, it’s going to be called Dreamsville Estates,” Darryl said without emotion. “Our slogan is Welcome to Dreamsville!”

  “What nerve you have!” Jackie said, struggling to maintain her dignity. “I am aghast! Never have I seen such audacity!”

  Darryl smirked. “All’s fair—”

  “—in love and war?” Jackie said, finishing the old saying for him.

  “And—when it comes to Florida real estate,” he added. “But you wouldn’t know that, would you? Since you’re not from around here.”

  “I’m not brand-new here,” she snapped. “I’ve lived here for two years.”

  “Well, whoop-dee-do,” Darryl said. “Two whole years. Lady, if you lived here for twenty years, you’d still be an outsider.”

  “Go ahead and laugh at me, sir,” Jackie said, lighting a cigarette and blowing a stream of smoke directly into his face. “You will be sorry.”

  “Is that a threat?” Darryl asked, pretending to be taken aback.

  “Take it any way you like,” she said, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Never underestimate a woman from Boston, or do so at your own peril. Oh,” she added, suddenly remembering I was there. “I believe that Dora here”—she gestured to the passenger seat—“would like to have a word with you before we leave.”

  Darryl leaned down and looked in amazement at me, hunkered against the far door. “Dora!” he said, clearly stunned. “What are you doing way out here?”

  I took this as my cue. My knees were wobbly, but I got out of the car. Now was the time. I was hoping Jackie would understand that I needed to be alone with Darryl for a few minutes, and despite her distress, she got the hint. “Dora, shall I come back later?” she asked.

  “No, Jackie,” I said quickly. “Just wait here.” We weren’t at the Dairy Queen, for pity’s sake, and while I wasn’t particularly afraid of Darryl, I didn’t want to be stuck out here with him, either. She nodded and moved the car a respectful distance away.

  “Do you want to talk in the trailer?” Darryl said, still looking shocked. “Or we can talk in my truck.”

  “Truck is fine,” I said. I could tell he was having trouble reading my mood. Angry? Sad? What? Well, the truth was that I was nervous as a rabbit at a hound dog convention but I was determined to hide it.

  He opened the door for me, then went around to the driver’s side and climbed in. The windows were lowered already, or the truck would have been hot enough to fry bacon. Even so, the seats were roasting.

  “Dang, it’s hot,” Darryl said, buying time.

  “Surely is.”

  “It’s really hot.”

  “Darryl, I need to talk to you about something other than the weather.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I thought you were in Mississippi. I didn’t even know you were back.”

  I cut to the chase. “Darryl, why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Ruining the swamp! Paving over the river! And on top of it, calling it Dreamsville! That’s not fair to my friend!”

  Darryl laughed. “You came all this way to fuss at me about that?! Let me tell you something, Dora, you’re just as nutty as your friend there. If you’d stayed with me, you could have been a rich woman.”

  “Darryl, what in tarnation has happened to your soul?”

  “Oh, so now it’s my soul we’re talking about. Gee, Dora, I never thought of you as being the Bible-thumping type. You trying to get me back to church? You weren’t there yourself every Sunday, if I remember correctly.”

  We had fallen back into our old pattern, the kind of fighting that makes you get madder and madder and gets you nowhere. “Darryl, let’s stay on the topic,” I said, trying to sound calm and mature, although I surely didn’t feel that way. “You and me—we grew up around here. We played here. You helped me rescue turtles, do you remember that? I knew you had changed. That’s why I couldn’t stay married to you anymore. But this—this development—well, I’m shocked, Darryl. Not only are you going to wipe out the animals and the birds, there are people living here, too. They don’t have anywhere else to go. If you do this, Darryl, there’s no going back. The ’Glades have been here forever; you’re going to change that?”

  Darryl was silent. “There’s a lot more ’Glades than just the part I want to build on,” he said finally. “This is just one piece of the ’Glades. Besides, if I don’t build on it, someone else will. Trust me on that, Dora.”

  “Well, I don’t trust you, Darryl. And it makes me very sad to say that.”

  “So you came here to try to persuade me to change my mind?”

  “Well, yes, Darryl. I thought it was worth a try. For old times’ sake.”

  “There’s something you should know, Dora,” he said, and his voice sounded different. “I was going to write to you in Mississippi. I’m getting married.”

  “I see,” I said as calmly as I could manage. I wanted to say, Well, that was quick, Darryl, but I curbed my tongue. “Oh,” I managed to say faintly. “Well, good for you, Darryl. What’s her name?”

  “Celeste,” he said, without providing a last name. “I met her in New York on a business trip. Well, her folks live in New Jersey. In Basking Ridge.”

  Basking Ridge, I thought. I couldn’t remember where I’d heard that before but at the moment it didn’t matter. “That’s nice, Darryl,” I said simply. “Thank you. I mean, thank you for telling me.” I suddenly felt tears stinging the corners of my eyes. Did this mean I still loved him? Or were they tears of a different kind—humiliation that we had failed as a couple and he had found someone new? I climbed out of the truck without looking at him, hoping he wouldn’t see. As I walked back to Jackie’s car, though, I realized he was following me. I figured he just wanted to get the last word. All I wanted to do was hightail it out of there.

  “Dora, you shouldn’t judge me!” he said, and now he sounded angry. He was right on my heels. “Aren’t you going to wish me good luck on my marriage?” This was said with so much bile that I was sorely tempted to turn around and slap him.

  “Now, you two settle down,” Jackie called out. She must have heard the last exchange of words, maybe more. I kept my stride steady and marched to the passenger side, got in, and locked the door.

  He muttered and fumed, then surprised me by turning and walking around to Jackie’s side of the car. “You know what?” he shouted in Jackie’s face. “If it hadn’t been for you and your Miss Dreamsville radio show, I wouldn’t have been able to get the financing. You put us on the map! So thank you very much for helping me get rich!” />
  Jackie looked stricken. She opened her mouth but no words came out. Darryl turned his back and stomped arrogantly toward his truck. A second later he was gone, tearing down the road at a reckless speed.

  I wondered if he knew how lucky he was. After taunting Jackie, he had walked right in front of her car. If she had recovered faster, my former husband could easily have become a brand-new hood ornament on the flashiest car in town.

  Eleven

  I hope Seminole Joe catches up to him,” Mrs. Bailey White said. We were sitting in her parlor, having skedaddled from Darryl’s construction site for a place to talk things out. Jackie was worn out, collapsed on Mrs. Bailey White’s good sofa after a marathon weeping session that was fueled by pure rage and peppered with threats and oaths about high-powered Northern lawyers and what they would do to Darryl for having the nerve to steal her name.

  “Who is Seminole Joe?” Jackie asked wearily.

  Mrs. Bailey White and I locked eyes, and Plain Jane, slouched in an oversized leather chair near the fireplace, looked up from the book she was reading and chuckled softly.

  “What’s so funny?” Jackie demanded.

  “Nothin’,” Plain Jane said, returning to her book.

  “Seminole Joe is a haint,” I said simply. I was sitting on the floor, trying to get better acquainted with Dream, who was having a good ol’ time with a set of alphabet blocks that Plain Jane had purchased at the Junior League yard sale.

  “A ghost,” Mrs. Bailey White added, translating for Jackie.

  I didn’t want to get onto the topic of Seminole Joe, not after the day I’d had, and surely not in Mrs. Bailey White’s parlor, where her kinfolk were lined up in jars on the mantel. Or, rather, the ashes of her kinfolk. The way I was raised—along with just about everyone else in Collier County—your body was supposed to be buried, not reduced to dust and placed in your home on the mantelpiece like a 4-H trophy. I had never got myself used to their presence.

  But Jackie, being Jackie, was not going to be satisfied with our skirting the topic. “I never heard of this ‘Seminole Joe’ before,” she said crossly. “Is this some kind of local secret?”

  “Seminole Joe is our boogeyman,” I said simply. I watched as Dream toppled the blocks by piling on one too many. She chuckled and clapped her hands in delight. “Maybe,” I added, “we shouldn’t talk about Seminole Joe until Dream has her nap.”

  “She’s too young to understand what we’re talking about,” Jackie said.

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” said Plain Jane, looking up from her book again. “It’s time for her nap, anyway,” she added. “I’ll take her up.”

  “So, who is this Seminole Joe person?” Jackie asked again.

  “As I said, he’s Collier County’s very own boogeyman,” I replied.

  “I hate that term, ‘boogeyman,’ ” Jackie said, lighting a cigarette. “And I don’t believe in ghosts,” she added between puffs.

  “You live around here long enough, you’ll believe in ’em,” Mrs. Bailey White said under her breath.

  “Well, what does this have to do with Darryl?” Jackie asked. “You said something about Seminole Joe catching up to Darryl. It may not be necessary after my lawyer gets through with him.”

  “Oh, it was just wishful thinking,” Mrs. Bailey White said. “I mean, that would solve all our problems.”

  Jackie said nothing. I could see she was taking this all in, though how she was interpreting it, I wasn’t sure.

  “Don’t you want to know who Seminole Joe was, I mean is?” I asked.

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” Jackie said.

  I looked at Mrs. Bailey White. Since she brought up the subject, it was her story to tell.

  Mrs. Bailey White took a ladylike sip of iced tea, cleared her throat, and began. “A long time ago, when white folks first showed up here, the Indians didn’t know what to think,” she said in a tone that reminded me of a schoolteacher talking to her pupils. “They were Spanish, and they showed up one day in their sailing ships. Before long they discovered there was a fresh-water spring on Marco Island and they’d stop there, regular-like, on their way to whatever they were doing. Exploring, I guess, but also raisin’ Cain.

  “Anyway, an Indian named Joe was killed by a pirate. Some say the murderer was the famous pirate Gasparilla, but no one knows for sure. After that, the ghost of this poor Indian fellow, Joe, started to attack them in their sleep and feed their body parts to the alligators. Or so the story went. After a while, the Spanish started avoiding Marco Island and the area we call Collier County altogether. As long as they stayed away, Joe was at peace.

  “During the War of Northern Aggression, deserters from both sides—Mr. Lincoln’s army as well as our Rebs—found their way to South Florida. They hung deserters in those days. The more skeert they were of getting caught, the farther south they ran. So here in Collier County we had the worst ones—the kind that had gone plumb jack crazy. In the First World War, they called it ‘shell shock’ but I’m not sure they had a name for it back in Mr. Lincoln’s War. And that’s when the stories about Joe’s ghost started up again. From that time on, folks started referring to him as Seminole Joe.

  “If you were in the swamp after dark, he might come after you with a hatchet. Lots of folks went missing on account of old Joe. He didn’t seem to bother the Negroes. He only went after the whites. Especially our Confederate soldiers, because they reminded him of General Andrew Jackson from South Carolina. If there was one person the Seminole Indians hated, it was General Jackson. Before Jackson became President of the United States, he made his name fighting the Seminoles. To this very day, don’t ever hand a twenty-dollar bill to a Seminole Indian or he will refuse it and spit on the ground, because Andrew Jackson’s picture is on the twenty-dollar bill.”

  Mrs. Bailey White paused for dramatic effect, then went on.

  “Old-time Collier County folks don’t like to talk about Seminole Joe because it was considered bad luck to say his name aloud. He was still roaming around when I was a young girl. The most famous case in my day was when a moonshiner named Gerry Brevard made the mistake of setting up his equipment right where Seminole Joe and his people are buried. Normally, Seminole Joe wouldn’t bother with a loser like Gerry Brevard but Seminole Indians are mighty particular about their burial grounds. Gerry Brevard had to go.

  “My daddy and Judge Harvey P. Decker are the ones who found him. He ran straight out into the road, and they almost hit him, but he was half-dead anyway. In his final breaths, he pointed to the swamp and said, ‘Seminole Joe.’ There was a sound in the swamp and my daddy looked up and there he was—the old Indian haint hisself, watching them. Next thing they heard was Gerry Brevard’s rattle of death, so they turned their attention to him. When they looked back at the swamp a moment later, Seminole Joe had vanished.”

  Mrs. Bailey White picked up her knitting, which was her way of letting us know she had finished her story. Jackie looked at me, started to say something, but changed her mind. I was trying to hide my excitement. Mrs. Bailey White had told the story of Seminole Joe in more detail than I’d ever heard it.

  After a few moments of silence, except for the little clicking noises from Mrs. Bailey White’s knitting needles, I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Mrs. Bailey White,” I said breathlessly, “I can’t believe you knew someone—your own father—who saw Seminole Joe!”

  “Oh, well, I saw him, too,” Mrs. Bailey White said, pausing in her knitting. “I was in the car. In the backseat.”

  “Sweet Jesus!” I said, jumping to my feet.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Dora, cut it out,” Jackie said. “It’s just a story.”

  Plain Jane came back down the stairs, having finally settled Dream for a late nap. “What’s going on down here?” she asked. I filled her in, and noticed that she was watching Jackie carefully.

  “So, Jackie, what do you think of all this?” Plain Jane asked, although surely she anticipated the answer.

  “I don’
t believe any of it,” Jackie declared, “but I suppose it would serve Darryl right if he ran into old Seminole Joe.” She laughed at her own little joke.

  Mrs. Bailey White and I looked at each other, a little alarmed. No matter what Darryl did, he didn’t deserve that fate. Plain Jane, settling back in her favorite chair, sighed and shook her head.

  “What book is that you’re reading?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

  Plain Jane held up the cover for me to see. “To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. I’ve been hearing about this book for years and years, and then Jackie suggested we read it.”

  “It’s a book club pick?” I said, feeling left out once again. I had wondered if the three members of the club who’d stayed in Naples would keep choosing and discussing books.

  “Why, Dora, we should have told you what we’ve been reading, and you could have been reading it, too,” Plain Jane said guiltily.

  “It’s okay, I read it anyway, a few years ago,” I said, adding, “I thought it was beautiful.”

  “Aw, everyone says they love To the Lighthouse,” Jackie complained.

  “You didn’t like it?” I asked, surprised.

  “Not as much as the others did,” Jackie sniffed. “I think it’s one of those books you’re supposed to love.”

  “What do you mean?” Plain Jane cried.

  “It’s one of those books people talk about at cocktail parties,” Jackie said. “Everyone trying to sound so terribly sophisticated says, ‘Oh, To the Lighthouse is my favorite!’ but half of them haven’t even read it.”

  “Oh, Jackie!” Plain Jane said. “I think you are so wrong. I just read it again and frankly it is unforgettable. There’s a passage I’m looking for . . .”

  “Dora, Plain Jane is right—shame on us for not letting you know what we were reading,” Mrs. Bailey White said. “We just thought you were busy with your adventure in Mississippi and we didn’t want to interfere.”

  “Ah, yes,” Jackie said. “Speaking of your adventure in Mississippi, are you going to tell us what you found out about your family?”