An airboat is a weird-looking craft common to the Everglades, though I have seen them in Australia, and in Africa, too. It is a pan-flat boat, stern-driven, powered by an airplane propeller, and can fly over water, grass, even rock. This airboat looked like a red metal sled, bench seats in the middle, a captain’s chair bolted atop a massive engine, a Cessna type propeller mounted aft inside a circular cage.
There were two airboats of similar design tied at a dock. One was off-loading passengers via a short boarding bridge; the other was loading. The boats looked like they could handle nine, maybe ten, people at a time. There had to be fifty, sixty or more people waiting in line, their bodies attached to angular black shadows that moved beside them on the white coral parking lot. There were kids running around, bored, parents shifting from leg to leg.
I said, “I’m not waiting much longer. I need to get back to Sanibel and check my fish tanks. Plus, I’ve got an order for two hundred horseshoe crabs. This time of year, finding that many crabs is not going to be easy.”
Tomlinson said, “Your head’s hurting, isn’t it? You should get an X ray, as hard as that jerk hit you. We can stop at Naples Community Hospital on the way back.”
“Sure, sure, we can both check into the ER. You get your shoulder X-rayed, and they can do my skull while they’re at it.”
A safe offer to make, because Tomlinson despises hospitals.
Reacting to my impatience, he said, once again, that James would not have led us to his village without good reason, then added, “I think it has something to do with Jenny, the bartender. Joseph’s daughter. She’s a power woman. Understand what I’m saying? A buffalo woman—very centered, a leader. James might have been doing most of the talking, but she was doing most of the thinking. Maybe she’s supposed to call and check on us. Or contact someone else. Who knows, man? What I’m telling you is, the Egret Seminoles have invited us to the outer edge of their inner circle for inspection. We’ve got old Joe and Tuck to thank for that. Let’s not pull the plug now.”
I was watching DeAntoni motioning to us, signaling us to join him. Walking toward the canal, I told Tomlinson that I’d give it another half hour, no more, then listened to DeAntoni say, “You guys ever ride in an airboat? I’ve seen ’em on TV—the bastards scoot.”
For the first time, I got a sense of the kind of child he’d been—there was that sort of excitement in his voice. Probably a big, quiet boy; a secret little circus going on inside, but shy for a street kid. He was enjoying himself now; showing it.
Then he said to James, “James, tell ’em about your boat. You guys aren’t gonna believe how damn cool this thing is. What’d you say—it can go sixty, seventy, miles an hour?”
Frank DeAntoni, the carburetor-head, talking with his new Indian buddy, who had also gone through a personality change. James, the stoic cowhunter, had now become the racecar speed freak we’d suspected, and was suddenly an enthusiastic talker. We listened to him tell us about his new boat: twenty-one feet long, eight-foot beam, with a big-block aircraft engine, 430 horsepower with a 2:1 reduction system and a seventy-two-inch wooden composite Sensenich propeller.
The hull, he said, was laid upon yellow pine stringers, built up in Cross City by Freedom Craft, modeled after one of the original hulls built by O. B. Osceola, back in the 1930s. The twin aft rudder flaps were foam-filled aluminum, and they’d been custom-airbrushed, green on gold, with the head of a giant snapping gator.
The boat’s name,
Chekika’s Shadow,
was written upon each in red script.
“It’s similar to the newer Kennedy hulls,” James told us. “She’s a sweet one. The transom’s high enough, she doesn’t suck in backwash if you lay off the throttle too fast and hit the drag brake. She doesn’t porpoise, either, and there’s not a hint of hook in her bottom. She’s a clean boat. Solid.”
He paused, his eyes moving over the vessel, very proud. Then he looked from Tomlinson to me. “You want to go for a ride? I’ll run you out in the ’Glades, show you around.”
I turned toward the line of tourists standing in the April heat, waiting their turn.
Using my head to motion, I said, “What about them?”
James seemed perplexed by the question. He said, “Why should those people care? It’s not
their
boat.”
Riding in an airboat, when an accelerant G-force begins to roll your eyes back, causing facial flesh to flutter, your first sensory impression is that you are on a saucer, sliding out of control and destined for disaster.
That’s the way it felt when James first hit the throttle. Out of control. Iffy.
And not without reason. In a traditional boat, water is a built-in governor because you have to displace water to move. In a land vehicle, you roll along comfortably, reassured by the limitations of friction. But riding in an airboat is like being vaulted onto a plain of ice, an overpowered airplane propeller strapped to your butt.
It’s that kind of wild sensation.
But James Tiger knew how to drive an airboat. That became evident quickly. Had he not possessed great expertise, we’d have died within seconds—simple as that.
After handing us headphones and battery packs—portable communications systems—he took the captain’s chair above the engine, then directed Tomlinson and DeAntoni into the two seats in front of, and beneath him.
I had no choice but to sit on one of the bench seats toward the bow—which was fine with me.
I pulled my headphones on, pushed the wire microphone away from my chin—I had no expectations of talking—and listened to DeAntoni and Tomlinson chatter away while James started the engine.
Deafening. It may have been a conventional aircraft engine, but it was as loud as any jet I’ve ever heard—and one of the key reasons I don’t like airboats. I’ve
never
liked airboats. The noise spooks wildlife while negating solitude gained by the isolated places to which airboats provide transport.
Even jet skis aren’t as obnoxious—and jet skis (personal watercraft, they’re now called) were once the untreated offal of noise pollution until manufacturers began to quiet them down.
Gatrell built airboats, raced airboats, sold airboats and, for all I know, stole airboats—it wouldn’t have been a surprise. I grew up around the things; drove them when I had too, worked on their engines when it was required. Mostly, though, I avoided them.
Which is why I already regretted my decision to ride along. In fact, I was giving serious consideration to raising my hand, stopping James Tiger at the dock, and telling him I’d changed my mind. To go ahead without me. That I preferred to walk along the Tamiami Trail; do a little bird-watching and see what kind of fish cruised the surface of the canal.
I never got the chance.
The moment he freed the lines, James swung the airboat a gut-wrenching 380 degrees at full throttle, and then seemed to accomplish the impossible: He used the turn to generate momentum, running his new airboat up the grassy edge of a ramp as if it were a ski jump . . . vaulted about fifteen yards of coral parking lot . . . landed on another patch of grass, gaining even more speed. Then he used the bank of the canal as a second ramp that launched us over two lanes of asphalt—the Tamiami Trail—which would have been sufficiently scary, even if there had not been a truck coming.
But there
was
a truck coming: an eighteen-wheeler loaded with what, later, I would guess to be watermelons.
I could see the box-shaped cab speeding toward us as we careened airborne . . . could hear the diesel scream of the air horn as the driver first reacted . . . could see the driver’s eyes widen as he swerved toward the shoulder . . . could see a patina of bugs smushed on the truck’s chromium grill as James Tiger performed magic with the rudder flaps, turning us so that the cab passed at eye level . . . and then we landed in a controlled skid that pivoted us into sawgrass higher than our heads . . . and, then, the truck and civilization were abruptly behind us, as if neither had ever existed.
In my earphones, I heard DeAntoni, his voice strained, say, “Was that a Mack Truck that almost clipped us . . . or was it a Peterbilt?”
Calm, unconcerned—
no big deal
—I heard James Tiger reply, “Peterbilt. You didn’t see the big red oval on the grill? A Mack Truck, they got the silver bulldog on the hood. That’s how you tell.”
I listened to Tomlinson say, “Did you somehow make us turn sideways? Far
out.
Man, it was like, suddenly, I had this amazing unworldly conversion. I knew in my heart what it’s like to be a
butterfly,
man, bopping down a busy highway. The whole random beauty of it. One moment, I’m feather-light. Next moment, I’m part of a shipment of watermelons, bonded with Detroit, headed for Miami.”
James said, “Detroit? If you’re talking about the truck, Peterbilt’s made out in Iowa someplace, I think. Moline? Is that Iowa?”
Furious because we’d had such a close call so unnecessarily, I moved the microphone wire to my mouth, and said, “Why didn’t we stay on the south side of the road, like your other tour boats? Or maybe that’s not exciting enough?”
If Tiger caught the sarcasm, he didn’t let on. “On the south side of the trail, we got all the tourist stuff. We keep a little village out there on one of the oak islands where we pay our teenagers to wear traditional clothes, pretend like they’re cooking. Understand what I’m saying? Entertainment. Then the boats stop and watch one of my cousins wrestle a couple of gators we keep penned. But if you’re interested in the tourist stuff, I can give you my little speech if you want. Just sit back and listen. I got it memorized; said it so often I don’t even have to think anymore.”
Tomlinson said, “Then why
are
you taking us north? Your tribal chairman—is that the reason? Are you taking us to see him?”
James Tiger had a little smile in his voice when he answered. “Could be we’re heading that direction. Yeah, we’ll see how it goes. Maybe you
will
get a chance to meet
him.
”
The way he said it, I knew what I’m sure Tomlinson immediately knew, and maybe DeAntoni, too: The tribal chairman of the Egret Seminole wasn’t a
him.
The chairman was a woman.
James was serious about giving the tour speech he’d memorized. I listened to him recite by rote. Some of it was interesting. He talked about the cast of oddballs, eccentrics, profiteers, predators and zealots who’d lived in the area. Because Florida attracts wanderers and dreamers, Florida’s history is as remarkable as it is idiosyncratic.
As we planed westward, running parallel to the Tamiami Trail, he told us about Devil’s Garden, that it was named during the Seminole Wars for a famous Indian, Sam Jones, who retreated there after battling U.S. troops, and was never caught.
“The soldiers called him Devil Sam because he just seemed to disappear into a place so beautiful, all the cypress and moss and orchids. After that, white men came and farmed on the same high slough ground that Indians had been farmin’ for hundreds of years.
“The strangest folks who ever lived in Devil’s Garden, though—this is fact—was a group of people from up north, and they was nudist. They come to the Garden to live in a commune. They bragged to the local folks that they were all so intelligent, they were such perfect specimens of people, the men were going to breed with the women, and start their own super-race—this was back just before the time of the Nazis. Because of the mosquitoes, this is a rough place to go naked. They lasted less than six months.”
Through the earphones, I could hear DeAntoni laughing.
Then Tiger told us about other characters who’d spent their lives in the ’Glades near the two-lane highway.
There was a woman he called Mama Hokie, wife of Sam Hokie. The two of them made a meager living selling drinks and bait to passing fishermen—which explained the cryptic sign outside their shack: BEER WORMS FOR SALE.
Her Seminole neighbors called Mama “Alligator Lady,” and for good reason. One morning, back in the 1990s, when she went to the canal to dip water for her adopted stray cats, a gator lunged from the bottom, and bit off her right arm. Mama Hokie made her own tourniquet, watered her cats, and went on not only to survive, but to adopt a lot more cats—which she watered every morning from the same canal.
There was Al Seely, a northern artist with an alcohol addiction so severe that, in desperation, he loaded his car with pots and clothes and food, and made his wife abandon him on an island so remote that he couldn’t possibly escape to find booze. He lived in a shack in that brackish ’Glades wa tershed for years, painting striking primitives, and getting roaring drunk on the rare occasions when a passing stranger offered him a ride into Goodland, the nearest town.
There was Buffalo Tiger, first chairman of the Miccosukee, and an Everglades legend who, by flying to Cuba and shaking Castro’s hand, guaranteed the sovereignty of his tribe.
There was A. C. Hancock, who was born on Sand Fly Pass, just off Everglades City. He was a master boatbuilder, guide and, for a time, sheriff’s deputy, who scrambled to a complaint of “foreigners with machine guns” running a military camp in the ’Glades. He arrived to confront Anglo men in sunglasses: They were CIA officers training Cuban officers for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
“The Everglades is known for its strong women,” James’s voice said through my earphones—not talking to us, just playing his role as guide, reciting his speech.
I listened to him tell us about the legendary Smith sisters, Sarah and Hannah. Just hearing the name Hannah Smith squeezed at my heart, and caused a familiar sense of loss. I could feel Tomlinson’s eyes on my back as Tiger continued to tell us about the namesakes and relatives of a woman I’d known: a strong, good woman whom I had loved and lost.
Sarah was known as the Ox Woman, because she was the first person—male or female—ever to drive an ox cart across the Everglades. Hannah, who cut firewood and drove cattle for a living, was known as Big Six, because like her sister, she was a couple of inches over six feet tall. The tough men of the Everglades not only respected the sisters; they feared them.