He did but said, “Do you want this?” meaning the towel, which he handed me, his eyes lingering momentarily on the leather-bound volume. It could have been one of those awkward moments but wasn’t. The gentleman from Richmond, Virginia, behaved like a gentleman.
I said, “What did you want to ask me?”
“Well, at the time it seemed like a good idea. Wait…” He signaled for my attention with an index finger. Turned, opened a forward hatch, then faced me, holding a mesh dive bag that looked new. Inside were a mask and snorkel, still in plastic, and cheap adjustable swim fins. “I bought these yesterday-no idea Carmelo is scared of the water. Then, when I saw what a good swimmer you are, well…” A humorous shrug.
I said, “You want me to see what’s down there, don’t you?”
“No. Well, unless you really want to.”
I had to think about it. Normally, I would have been eager. From the journal entries I’d read that morning, I knew that Ben Summerlin might have traveled this very river. If true, there was a chance he had scuttled his dory somewhere along its length. Which meant there was a remote possibility that Belton had found my great-great-uncle’s boat-astronomical odds, but why not take a look?
My bout of wild panic, that’s why. But I was feeling better, more sheepish than suffering any real fear of the river. Something else: I had an ulterior motive. The beer bottle… it was still clove-hitched to the anchor. To explain honestly, I would have to admit concealing information from a man who had been open and kind to me. Better to nab the bottle while underwater and broach the subject of the journal later.
Using the towel, I scrubbed at my hair. “I’d like to see what’s down there myself-if you’re willing to watch for alligators. And if the mask fits. I can check without going in.”
I didn’t expect the look of gratitude on the man’s face. “I’ll get Carmelo. It’ll be safer with a younger set of eyes. You are a valuable young lady, Hannah.”
He placed the mask and snorkel within reach and moved quickly, for a man his age, up the path toward the homestead.
WHILE I WAITED, I tested the mask, but only after retrieving the beer bottle and touching a finger to the water, then my lips.
Very salty.
My concerns vanished. Suddenly, the exact wording of an entry Capt. Summerlin had made in the summer of 1864 was important enough to sneak another look. I listened for noise, then opened both the journal and my notebook, hurrying so I could cross-reference a few entries before Belton and Carmelo returned.
9 June, 1864 (aboard Sodbuster): The Blues is camped at Ft. Myers & Labelle which aint much of a fort but they do have a supply shed & a brace of 4” canon that can shoot acrosst bank to bank. What they aint got is a shoal draft dory, nor a knowledge of the creek that branches north of Labelle & [NEXT FIVE LINES BLOTTED].
Hmm… the entry referenced the right boat and possibly the right river, but it was not the passage I was after. I continued reading.
12 July, 1864 (Old Tampa): Deserters & runaways of the roughest sort have slipped into Florida like filth from a honey bucket. The railroad yard smelt like shit too & aint no place for a ships master but it is wear sutlers deal Yankee silver for cattle. The Frenchman I was to met did not show & I fear it aint true he owns a locomotive nor even the boiler what sunk in the [NAME BLOTTED]. I got more faith in the Cubans I will meet come morn if this weather breaks…
Wrong entry again. But I read it all because my great-uncle’s sudden interest in trains and boilers seemed key to a bigger story. The same was true of an entry made in the spring of that year.
1 September, 1864 (Key West, Hawks Channel): Loaded aboard is 36 mixed longhorn @ $6 silver per head but not one hogshead of beef or mullet cause of this situation. The victuallers in Habana will be sore disappointed but the beef will turn a pretty profit & guarantee the money required. On the Sunday before Christmas we are promised to deliver 100 silver dollars which aint easy considering the cost of what follows in expenses…
Ben Summerlin had a plan. His plan included a train or a boiler, or both, and a river that fed into the Caloosahatchee from the north. He had sailed to Cuba to finance the project.
That made sense. To make salt for thousands of people, a boiler the size of a train’s might be required. But where was the reference that tied things together? Finally I found it by backtracking, a fragment from an illegible entry made earlier in 1864 I had failed to note in my time line.
27 May (Punta Rassa):… and what I tolt Gatrell & brothers they [NEXT FOUR LINES SMEARED]… that the bridge aint to far. A salt spring is there neath the surface owned by a Spaniard who is expert at [SMEARED OR BLOTTED] a master of trowel & square so this man is likely [ILLEGIBLE].
There! My subconscious had put it together, but here was written proof. The Spaniard was the Brazilian who had planted timber before selling the property to Charles Cadence. Proof that a master bricklayer had lived at this spot was the cistern I had seen only minutes ago. And I had just tasted the salt spring… neath the surface with my lips.
Additional proof: remains of a railroad bridge were only a mile from where I sat. I wasn’t certain the bridge had existed in the 1860s, but it might have. That was good enough for me. Ben Summerlin had guarded this river’s name, but, even if he hadn’t, the name had changed since Civil War days.
It all fit.
I felt sure of it. And, because I was convinced, I knew something else: whatever had sunk here wasn’t my great-uncle’s lost dory. Journal entries from late 1864 weren’t as badly damaged, so I knew from skipping ahead that he’d scuttled the dory while being chased by Union soldiers. Maybe the soldiers had discovered him making salt. Or maybe he had used salt as a ruse to spring a trap. The journal had yet to reveal the whole story, but Ben Summerlin was no fool. He wouldn’t have fled upriver-there was no escape in the cypress swamps and palmettos to the north. And he wouldn’t have scuttled his boat so close to another man’s dock.
Whatever the sonar unit had found on the bottom was too near the old homestead to be my great-uncle’s boat. In a way, I was disappointed. On the other hand, Sodbuster was somewhere on this river, still waiting to be found.
“We’re coming, Hannah dear!”
Belton’s voice reached me from the undergrowth. I closed the journal and slipped both books into my bag. I felt a twinge of guilt for being sneaky but then decided when the timing was right I would lay out the whole story, journal, notes, and all, for Belton to see. Who better to help than a retired Civil War expert with time on his hands and who was trustworthy?
But not Carmelo. There was something wrong about the man that had nothing to do with his weak intellect-or his simpleton act. I would have to feel out Belton’s loyalty before I moved ahead.
When the two men appeared on the bank, I had the mask pressed to my face, but it fell away-no suction to hold it in place.
“How’s it fit?”
I said, “It’ll be okay, I think.”
That was a kindness. If a mask doesn’t cling to your face, it will leak. I knew it but was unconcerned. Only two or three shallow dives would be needed for me to find out what was on the bottom. So I wouldn’t bother with the cheap strap-on fins either. But I would use the snorkel.
No… No, I wouldn’t. The tube leaked, which I discovered while breaststroking toward the deepest part of the river, an oxbow shaded by mimosas. So I swam back and tossed the thing into the boat. Unfortunately, Carmelo was busy netting seedpods, for some reason, and the snorkel hit him squarely in the forehead.