Part 8 (1/2)
The men in the other boat had already begun to move. The forklift operator gunned the engine. There was still a smile on Captain Dawkins's face.
”OK,” I said. ”Where do you want me?”
My height dictated that I catch and stack down on the boat deck with Dawkins. The boxlike stone crab traps were made of slatted wood and wire. In their bottoms was a two-inch-thick slab of poured cement to keep them down on the ocean floor. They weighed about forty pounds apiece. I learned quickly how to grip the top edge from the man pa.s.sing the trap down and then use the weight of the box to swing it down and up and catch it with the other hand. While we worked the deck together, Dawkins told stories.
”My granddaddy was the first to come down here. He was a deck hand on a merchant s.h.i.+p that made the trip from New Orleans to Key West and then north up the Gulf Stream to the Eastern Sh.o.r.e and New York. His own daddy had done the same all the way back to the days of sails and schooners.
”He was a G.o.d-fearing man, Mr. Freeman, and loved to fish. G.o.d, my grandmother Emma May an' fis.h.i.+n', them was his priorities.”
Dawkins looked up at his crew and winked. We were falling into a rhythm now and even if they'd all heard it before, the story was like a nip of soothing whiskey on the brain while the muscles strained.
”It was here that he met my grandmother, right over at Smallwood's Store, and she anch.o.r.ed him. They said he could unload mullet on these docks like a machine. He'd get done with a day's work and go home, dig up the rows in the little garden they had out back and then spend the night hand-fixin' catch nets.”
”And he had oxen?” I said, trying to lead the story without putting any spin on it.
Dawkins never wavered, just kept stacking and talking and I was grateful not to have to waste my own breath, which was in short supply.
”He got the oxen from some freight captain in 1918. Daddy said grandpa figured that captain had to have been drunk to agree to take the animal in the first place. He was supposed to s.h.i.+p it to Key West, but when he stopped here for a load of fish, the animal had already gone crazy tearin' up the hold and he was beggin' somebody to take it off his hands.
”Was a mean sumb.i.t.c.h and Daddy said n.o.body but Grandpa would dare go near it. He took and hand-built him a cart and then used 'em both to haul fish from the smaller boats from the docks up to the fish house.”
”So when the road crews came in to work the trail to Miami, your grandfather used that cart to haul dynamite for blasting?” I said. My arms and shoulders were aching, the lactic acid building up as I tried to keep pace with Dawkins. Each row of traps we stacked as high as the wheelhouse, and pressing the forty pounds up onto that six-foot top row was soon going to be impossible for me.
”They say there was plenty of work around Everglades City when the road crews were working. But Daddy used to say it was on and off, and the local folks didn't take too kindly to outsiders coming in to a place they didn't know or give a d.a.m.n about.
”But Grandpa just wanted the work, and when they said they needed somebody to take the dynamite out there on the roadway to the dredge site, he took 'em up on it.
”h.e.l.l, most of the locals didn't know dynamite 'cept to use a quarter stick to stun a school of fish once in awhile. An' most of them company boys was scared to be out in the Glades at night. So Grandpa, he just loaded up the cart and he and the ox made the trip by themselves. Sometimes Daddy said it would take him days to get out and back when the rains turned the trail into nothin' but slop mud.”
”And it was on these trips that your grandfather picked up mail?” I said.
Dawkins tossed up one more trap and whistled sharp and hard through his teeth.
”Y'all take a break now, fellas. Jordie, go on get us some water.”
The boy ran off and the men found places to sit in the shade. Dawkins picked up a small towel from the gunwale and mopped the sweat from his face and neck. I sat, exhausted, on one of the short rows of traps, trying to hide my heavy breathing.
”That was Ms. Emma's story,” Dawkins said, letting his voice go softer as he sat against the gunwale. ”Only Grandma would tell it.”
I said nothing and waited on him.
”When Grandpa hauled the dynamite out there, the foreman in Everglades City would have him deliver some kind of pouch to the job boss at the end of the line. Grandpa had never learned to read so he didn't know what the stuff was, but he did take a look-see, men bein' natural nosey, and they was only papers and doc.u.ments and maps and such.
”Sometimes out at the dredge site, if it was late, he would stay overnight and he was allowed to eat with the workers. They was a raggedy bunch. Most of 'em down and out. Some runnin' from the law, but that wasn't unusual out here.
”Granddaddy wasn't much for unG.o.dly men, so when he met a fellow out there prayin' before mealtime with his sons, they struck a friends.h.i.+p. He's the one who would give granddaddy the letters, and as soon as he got back, he'd go an' mail 'em out from the post office at Smallwood's, kind of secret-like.”
When Dawkins took a pause, I interrupted, the possibility too close.
”Was the man's name Mayes?” I asked. ”Cyrus Mayes?”
”Granddaddy wasn't much on names, Mr. Freeman. Like I said, he didn't read.”
I sat for a beat, thinking about another identifying mark, some way to tie Cyrus Mayes with Dawkins.
”There was mention in one of the letters of a gold watch,” I said.
”He gave it back,” Dawkins said, and his tone was suddenly defiant and defensive at the same time. The captain's tone stopped the young boy in his tracks as he was approaching with the water. Dawkins stood up and smiled at the boy and took the two spouted coolers from him.
”Thanks, Jordan.” He handed me one of coolers and I could feel the ice b.u.mping inside it.
”Ms. Emma told the story of the day Grandpa come back from a trip to the road crew and set down to show her a big gold pocket watch. Said the man who had him deliverin' the letters gave it to him in payment.
”Them were tough times, and it didn't bother Ms. Emma till she opened the watch. Inside the place for a little picture was empty but there was an inscription. Grandpa couldn't read it, but when Ms. Emma saw it was scripture and engraved to a man's son, she told him he had to give it back lest the Lord take it as a sin.”
Dawkins took a long drink of his water. There was a look in his eyes and I waited until he had enjoyed the memory of his family.
”These were stories, you know?” he said. ”Just stories of the old times told around the fire at night to us kids. Granddaddy tol' 'em. My daddy tol' 'em. I tell them to my own kids. They ain't written down.”
Dawkins stood up and let loose his whistle and the crews got up again and moved to their positions. As the lift driver rolled up with another pallet, I pulled on my own gloves.
”Captain Dawkins. There was one name that did appear in these letters. He might have been a local, name of Jefferson. That mean anything to you?”
For the first time, a darkness clouded the big man's face and he did not look at me when he spoke.
”I don't mind tellin' my family stories, Mr. Freeman, because they're mine. But other folk's families, those are their stories. If others are tellin' 'em, it's just rumor and I ain't gonna hurt n.o.body with rumor.”
While we finished the stacking, Dawkins engaged us with the story of the day Al Capone came to Everglades City on a fis.h.i.+ng trip and stayed at the Rod & Gun Club, and the embarra.s.sment of the staff when they realized they'd put the famous mobster in the same room earlier occupied by President Truman. He chuckled and we all sweated and chuckled with him.
When the loading job was finally finished, the captain thanked me for my help and asked if I wouldn't mind spending the next thirty-six hours with the crews as they went to sea and dropped the traps for the first true and legal night of stone crab season. I declined.
”Well then, you can come back next week when we start pullin 'em up,” he said, smiling again. ”Then you'll see the real work. And the payoff.”
”I'll see the payoff at a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale,” I said.
”Then pray for a high price, Mr. Freeman, and maybe we'll break even this year,” he said, and shook my hand.
As I walked away, the forklift driver was just pulling up with a load of frozen chicken parts and trash fish. Dawkins took up an ax, and the sound of his chopping blade faded behind me.
The captain had given me directions to the cafe. It was a fifteen- minute walk, and even though I'd taken only three or four steps at a time back and forth across Dawkins's boat deck, my legs felt rubbery and my hamstrings tight from the two hours of work. My arms and shoulders ached like I'd rowed the fifty-footer to Key West and back. When I got to the cafe, Nate Brown was sitting out front on a pinewood patio in the shade. He'd already eaten and had his heels up on a small wooden keg with a huge bowl of ice cream in his lap. I sat down at a table near him without a word. Within a few seconds, a middle-aged woman came out with a large ceramic cup of hot coffee and when I smiled up at her she said, ”Mr. Brown said ya'll would be coming. Can I get you something to eat, sir?”
I ordered a fresh grouper sandwich and when she left I watched Nate working his bowl of vanilla like a careful child who'd been warned it would be his last if he wasn't polite. From the cream- colored pile in his bowl the old man carved off a spoonful and then took only parts of it into his mouth at a time, sanding off the lump with his cracked lips three or four times before it was gone.