It was a little after five. It would be dark in an hour.
I said, “Are you absolutely sure there’s no chance anyone will see us?”
“There’s only one road in, and the same road out. They’d have to come on horseback, once we lock the gate behind us.”
“There’re riding trails? You don’t mean public riding trails. If that’s the case-”
“They’re private, hardly ever used. They’s from back in the quail-hunting days. You got nothing to worry your head about. I promise.”
This time, I did laugh, a sarcastic chuckle. How many times had the chauffeur said that? All my instincts told me to drive to the nearest hospital and deal with the situation honestly. Yet I heard myself respond, “How far did you say the camp is?”
“Take the next right, that’s Bronco Road. Honey”-Reggie’s boyish cackle again-“we’re almost there already.”
Tee-hee-hee.
Parked outside a smaller wrought-iron gate, crested with the Triple C brand-Chatham Cattle & Citrus-the chauffeur hopped out, saying, “See how the chain’s locked? No one here but us,” then leaned into the backseat. “Relax yourself, Governor. I won’t be long.”
I drove through, waited until the gate was locked and Reggie was in the backseat again. “You said the cabin was set way back. How far?”
I was concerned because the road we’d been on, State Route 74, hadn’t been overly busy, but there was a steady flow of semis, many of them open-bedded trucks piled high with oranges.
“No, ma’am, we still got a ways to go.”
I hit the gas.
An asphalt lane arrowed through wide-open pasture that reminded me of photos of Africa. Humpbacked cattle with horns grazed in isolated islands of shade created by oaks with canopies the size of rain clouds. White ibis, on stilt legs, perched atop the dozing animals and ambushed flies, while one massive Brangus bull stood guard next to a windmill that pumped water.
“That’s Jessie James,” Reggie said. “He’s famous in these parts. Weighs most of a ton, and he’s serviced every kind’a cow there is. Rumor is, he has a taste for Thoroughbred horses, too. Even a truck or two, if they don’t move quick enough. No sir, you don’t want to turn your back on Mr. Jessie James.”
“Is that the sort of crude story you share with all women visitors?” I asked. I didn’t mean it to come out as sharp as it did.
“Sorry, dear. Truth is, ma’am, I feel like laughing and crying all at the same time. Guess my emotions got the best of my manners.”
Through another gate, which was open, a mile of orange trees crowded in close. There was row after row, their odor fragrant, with the window down, yet they were a sad sight to behold. The disease, citrus greening, had curled and severed the leaves like a killer storm. The fruit, which should have been ripe on the branches, lay withered and bitter on the ground.
“Are all Mr. Chatham’s groves like this? He should be harvesting now.”
“That ain’t a happy topic,” Reggie responded.
“He lost the entire crop?”
“You’d have to ask Mr. Bigalow that question.”
“Our trees have it, too. Most of them anyway.” As I said it, I reminded myself of Marion Ford’s advice to check the entire orchard.
On both sides of the road, the citrus grove ended as abruptly as a cliff. There was a third gate, also locked, a log mantel above with a large lacquered sign:
Salt Creek Gun Club
Members Only
“We didn’t really sell memberships,” Reggie said, after opening the gate. “It was built more for socializing when the governor was running for election. ‘Shakin’ hands is good,’ he’d say, ‘but three fingers of scotch is better.’ You’d be surprised, Miz Hannah, at some of the famous names been here. Two U.S. presidents, I can think of, and Walt Disney hisself. Remember what you said about Mr. Disney?” (Reggie was speaking to his boss, I realized.) “You said, ‘That there man is up to something.’ He ain’t laid a card on the table, but you knew, yes you did. This was back when the Disney folks was buying up land under different names all around Orlando but keepin’ it secret. Only man in this state wasn’t surprised is sitting right here next to me.”
Not since the sheriff’s car had I risked a look in the mirror but did now: two old friends huddled shoulder to shoulder, one tiny and frail, the other big, with a lolling, chalk-white face, the Stetson no longer a necessary part of the charade.
A strange feeling came over me. I hadn’t known Mr. Chatham well, and didn’t approve of his affair with my mother, which I’d told him to his face. Yet the man had been kind to me. He’d treated me with respect-as an equal, in fact, which was rare for men of his age, or men of wealth and power no matter their age.
Even rarer, he had entrusted me with the truth regarding the affair with my mother, and also about his early drug-smuggling years. The man had owned three shrimp boats and kept them busy running between what he called Pay Day Road, which was south of Sarasota, to the Yucatán, and sometimes Panama. Rather than spend the bundles of cash, Chatham had had the foresight to live poor during that period and take his time converting the cash into silver and gold, which he’d hidden away. A small part of the profit was filtered into buying a car dealership, the first of several in Sematee County. The cattle ranch and citrus groves came later, as did his two-term lieutenant governorship.
His affair with Loretta had continued throughout those decades and survived Chatham’s two wives, three children, many grandchildren. It had also weathered at least one murder, several funerals, a brain aneurysm and two surgeries, after which the man, without me knowing, had privately, and sometimes anonymously, tended to my mother’s every need.
Once again, I had to wonder, Why had they never married?
I wasn’t Mr. Chatham’s daughter, as I knew for certain, but my biological father had abandoned us early on. As a child, this was a painful mystery until I had aged enough to understand that Loretta, even before her stroke, was wildly unpredictable and near impossible to live with. Yet, the famous man in the limousine’s mirror had, in his way, been devoted to her all these years.
Why?
I had never understood, nor had I summoned the ill manners to ask the man. Now the opportunity was gone.
Asphalt melted into a winding shell drive edged by oaks and shady moss. A wooden bridge clattered beneath our tires; cattails battled palmettos on both sides of the road, flattening into pine forest acreage. Beyond the rise of an archaic sand dune, a section of river and a two-story cabin appeared, each log layered by white caulking, beneath a pitched tin roof that flared to shade a porch with a view of the river. Through the trees were outbuildings, a barn and a corrugated-steel maintenance shed, with farm machinery, much of it rusty, sitting out beneath a warm winter sky. In a triple carport floored with sand was a beat-up truck that, according to Reggie, Mr. Chatham sometimes used to shuttle back and forth to his home.
It would be a way of explaining how the great man had arrived here alone.
“Don’t you think?” the aging chauffeur asked softly.
I wasn’t sure he was speaking to me, but replied, “About what?”
“Such a pretty ol’ Florida sort of place,” he said, “the way Florida used to be. Roasted many a hog in that fire pit yonder, and quail was thick along the river; they’d flush into the palmettos. Our pointers had them a time dealing with snakes. See that stretch of wire grass and river oats? That was a good place, too.”
This made little sense. “Should I park near the back porch or the front?”
He answered. “Either one, but pull up close. I’ll fetch a handcart. I ain’t as stout as I used to be.”
Then he got back to his original question, which was, “Miz Hannah… don’t you think this is where you’d want to die?”