What do you suppose Seminole Joe looks like?” Judd asked, wiping the sweat from his brow with
the hem of his T-shirt. He had fled to my little cottage to get away from the craziness that had been
going on all day, ever since the Naples Star landed in people’s driveways or hedges. Judd said the
phone had not stopped ringing with excited people wanting to talk to his mother about her column on
Seminole Joe. No wonder he wanted to hide out for a while at my cottage. And I put him to work,
helping me dig some new holes for the turtles to wallow around in. “Haven’t you ever seen the local
Indians?” I asked, surprised. “You mean selling baskets?” he said. “No one ever said they were
Indians. I didn’t know who they were. My teacher said we should stay away from them, that’s all I
know.” “Well, did you ever see the movie Key Largo?” I asked. He looked like he was racking his
brain. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “That was before my time.” Judd cracked me up. Sometimes he
sounded like a thirteen-year-old boy, and sometimes he sounded like a sixty-year-old man. “Well,” I
said, slurping on my iced tea, “Lauren Bacall was in it. And Humphrey Bogart.” “Seminole Joe looks
like . . . Humphrey Bogart?” I tried not to laugh. “No, no, Humphrey Bogart plays a man who was in
the Army in the war and visits his dead friend’s father and widow who live down yon in Key Largo.
There’s a bunch of gangsters in the movie, too— Edward G. Robinson plays one of them.” The word
“gangster” got Judd’s attention. He was behaving like a thirteen-year-old again. “So what happens?”
he said, completely focused. I noticed, once again, that he had Jackie’s blue eyes—the exact shade.
And yet he looked like his dad, Ted Hart, too.
“Well, the real star of the movie is a storm,” I said. “A hurricane. But maybe I shouldn’t tell you
more. Sometime maybe you’ll see the movie and I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you.”
“But—wait—what’s this got to do with Seminole Joe?” “There are characters in the movie who are
supposed to be Seminole Indians,” I said, “and I think some of them really are. So Joe probably
looked more or less like the Indians in Key Largo.” Judd looked disappointed. “But how am I going to
see the movie?” he said. “It could be five years before they show it on TV.” “You could go to the
library and see if they have any books on the Seminoles,” I said, and his face brightened. “They must
at least have a book about Andrew Jackson and the Seminole Wars,” I added. Well, that was the last I
saw of Judd that day. He was off on his bicycle like Paul Revere warning folks that the British were
coming, an image that fit mighty nice, considering that he’d spent the first eleven years of his life in
Boston. Judd’s energy was inspiring. After fixing myself a fried bologna sandwich, half of which I fed
to my turtles, I decided to go for a stroll on the beach to look for shells and clear my mind. To my
surprise, every little shell or pebble seemed to hurt my bare feet. In my year away from home, it seems
I’d become a tenderfoot on account of wearing shoes all the time. But the surf was gentle and soothing
as bathwater, and I realized, splashing along in ankle-de ep water, that I was happy. Not happy about
Darryl’s development plans or his remarriage to some Northern gal, of course, but happy with the
general direction of my life. I had learned a great deal during my year in Mississippi—some of it hard
to take—but I was more ind ependent than I’d ever been. I was going back to Jackson, not forever, but
for a little while longer. I was not going to run away from the city of my mother’s birth and the story
that was unfolding there about her past. My past. There was still plenty of daylight, so I went home,
found my old Keds, and walked slowly downtown. I told myself I was going to get a root beer float at
the Rexall counter but truth be told, I wanted to see if anything was going on. Sometimes, folks would
gather downtown when something important was happening. I’d be able to judge how big a reaction
Jackie’s
story was getting by the number of people—usually at home on a hot night in Naples—milling
around and looking for an excuse to talk. Sure enough, there were people gathered by the bench in
front of the post office, outside the Rexall, and by the Winn-Dixie. I recognized a few people from
high school but wasn’t eager to talk to them, especially Betty Jane Pomeroy, who was holding court
over by the Green Stamp Redemption Center. Betty Jane had a way of inserting the topic of her happy
marriage, brilliant children, and fabulous house into every conversation. Fortunately, I saw Plain Jane
walking along by herself from the direction of the Dairy Queen. We saw each other at the same
moment, and I was reminded, once again, how much my old book club meant to me. Before them,
especially since I’d gotten divorced, I’d felt like a stranger in my own hometown. Plain Jane and I
perched on the top st ep of the Everglades Savings and Loan, a good location for spying on people ever
since it was rebuilt at eight feet above sea level after being trounced by Hurricane Donna. “You know
what they’re talking about, don’t you?” Plain Jane said, between bites of an ice cream cone that was
melting faster than she could eat it. “I can guess,” I said. “Someone said Darryl is going to have a
press conference tomorrow,” she said. “Apparently she really stirred things up. You know, people
don’t talk about spirits, much less Seminole Joe. Everyone around here knows the stories but no one
has ever written about it in the newspaper.” This was true. Somehow, just the fact that Seminole Joe
had made the pages of the Naples Star made a scary story seem real. Official. Or, as Mama would
have said, bona fide. Hard to say where this was headed, though. Were they upset about Seminole Joe,
or mad at Jackie for writing about him? Would their fear become anger at Darryl for possibly
disturbing Seminole Joe? That night I didn’t sle ep well and I bet the same was true for half the
population of Collier County. I couldn’t decide which was worse: to sle ep with the windows shut and
die of the heat or leave them open and possibly be ax-murdered by Seminole Joe. When I finally fell
asle ep, my eyes were closed but my ears were wide open, and any little sound had me leaping out of
the bed. The next day, the Naples Star carried this story on the front page:
STRONG RESPONSE TO ‘MISS DREAMSVILLE’ DEBUT by the Editors
Collier County residents reacted with unusual animosity yesterday to an opinion piece by our new
columnist, Mrs. Jackie Hart, also known as Miss Dreamsville, after her famous radio show of that
name. Our phone rang off the hook yesterday from calls by readers incensed by Miss Dreamsville’s
(and this newspaper’s) decision to publish an account of the legend of Seminole Joe. A logbook k ept
by our staff showed that eighty-seven callers complained that Seminole Joe did not like attention and
that Miss Dreamsville’s column could cause him to rise from his ghostly grave and commit new
atrocities. We find this highly unlikely, although we are flattered that so many residents assume that
Seminole Joe is a faithful reader of the Naples Star. Collier County residents, let us remember that
“Joe” is a legend! This is 1964, the Modern Age, and as such it is time we put these superstitions to
rest, or at least ke ep them in check, or our fine community will remain stuck in the putrid fog of
backward thinking. We will be running a special Letters to the Editor section on Friday to address
readers’ concerns. In a related development, Mr. Darryl Norwood has announced that he will hold a
press conference today at 7:00 PM to answer questions about his project.
Well, I had the answer to my question. So far, at least, people were more upset with Jackie and
the newspaper than they were with Darryl. As I tried to decide what to do next, Judd came by on his
bicycle. He said he’d tried to call his father, who was in Tallahassee, but hadn’t been able to reach
him. “Mom was on the phone with a lawyer in New York City, then she got so mad she left the
house,” he confided. “I tried to call Dad but the longdistance operator wouldn’t make the call because
I’m a kid.” Judd left, but not before agreeing to go with me to the press conference in case Jackie
showed up and made a scene. I would rather have a tooth pulled without novocaine but I knew in my
heart I had to go—for Judd’s sake, at least. About two o’clock in the afternoon, while I was writing a
letter to Mrs. Conroy, my landlady back in Mississippi, I heard Jackie’s car pull up. To my surprise,
she marched right in—right past Norma Jean, Myrtle, and Castro. This was not a good sign. She was
so mad she forgot to be afraid of “those dreadful things.”
“That odious, r eprehensible, son of a lobster boat!” she hollered, by way of a greeting. I’d never
heard anyone utter that particular string of words before but, considering the circumstances, I figured
this was some kind of exotic, Northern insult. I was relieved somewhat by the realization that I was
not likely the intended recipient of her anger. She remained in the doorway, her hand still on the knob
of my front door, and yelled again. “He’s going to get away with it! He can use my name!” “Jackie,” I
said, my voice shaking, “come sit down.” I approached her gingerly, like she was a wild critter that
had es caped from Jungle Larry’s African Safari, a tourist trap on the Tamiami Trail. Carefully, I took
her arm and led her to Mama’s old chair, where she collapsed in a theatrical heap. I left her side long
enough to retrieve a tall glass of sweet tea and carry it back to her on a little tray with a napkin. After a
few sips, she was calm enough to tell me what had happened. She spoke in short, little sentences, like
she was going to blow a fuse if she tried to say a whole sentence at once. “I talked to the lawyer. On
the phone. I called him long distance.” I waited. “Well,” I said. “What did he say?” She swallowed
hard. “Darryl can call his development Dreamsville if he wants. He just can’t use my picture on any of
the advertisements. He can’t say that I endorsed it, since that would be a lie. But he doesn’t have to get
my permission to call it Dreamsville, or Dreamsville Estates.” “I see.” Actually, I didn’t understand it
at all. “I don’t ‘own’ the name Miss Dreamsville,” she added, sensing my confusion. “Not in a legal
sense.” “So you can’t sue him?” I asked quietly. “Well, I could sue him. But I wouldn’t win.” “And
that’s what the lawyer told you? On the phone?” Jackie lit a cigarette. “Yes,” she said. “That’s the way
it is. Unfortunately.” “And this was the lawyer in New York?” “I called two—one in New York, the
other in Boston. They both said the same thing.” I let this sink in. Jackie seemed more relaxed, like
she’d used up all her anger, but I was becoming madder by the second. What the heck was wrong with
Darryl that he would steal my friend’s name? Was this another
swipe at me? I had to admit it was, in a sickening way, an ingenious move on his part. Jackie had
put Naples on the map with her radio show. Even Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America,
had done a little segment on CBS Evening News about Miss Dreamsville. It would be easy for Darryl
to market his new development to Yankees by calling it Dreamsville Estates. I hoped Mama wasn’t
listening in on my thoughts. She never had approved of cussin’ in any way, shape, or form. But all I
could think of was, That odious, r eprehensible, son of a lobster boat.