Jonathon King - Shadow Men

"Slick move, Nate," I said, truly impressed.

He restarted the engine and turned us south onto what he called the Lopez River.

"Them boys in the helicopter got anything to do with what you're lookin' for?"

As he pushed up the throttle and we eased farther out into the channel, I told him about my discovery of the tracking devices on my truck.

"If any of this bothers you, you don't owe me, Nate. I don't want to get you involved in something you would rather stay out of."

He did not answer at first. His eyes, hard-creased from years of squinting into the sun, stayed focused ahead.

"You ain't," he finally said.

We motored up Chokoloskee Bay and for the first time since leaving the loop, other boats came into sight. We passed some low-slung utility buildings, and as the ground elevation got higher, some warehouses and marinas. Tall, invasive Australian pines rose up in spots along the water where the shore had been dug out for dockage or access ramps, but it was essentially a low, flat land and I wondered about its ability to take a heavy storm out of the Gulf. The Calusa Indians had created most of the land that was high enough to be habitable in the Ten Thousand Islands. The indigenous tribe had, by hand, piled up acre after acre of shells. For hundreds of years the habitual toil had built the shell middens that were the foundation. Gradually, the dirt and detritus carried by the wind and tides and trapped by the shells became its soil. Seeds eventually took root, plants grew, and the Calusa farmed. A civilization thrived where before had only been water. No matter how many times I'd read about it and seen its proof, it was an accomplishment that was hard to conceive.

Brown cut back the engine and idled up to a series of docks set against a bulkhead. Two commercial fishing trawlers were tied up against the wall. Old and steel-hulled, with similar cabins built forward, they were each fifty feet long and had a large, motor-driven winch mounted on the stern deck. Brown eased up to the dock ladder and slipped the engine into neutral, and a young boy jogged up and caught a line the old man tossed him. Brown tipped his hat and the boy did the same; then he cleated the line and left without a word.

When the boat was tied off we climbed up onto the dock. On a broad crescent of land stood a bare, tire-worn lot that served the two fishing boats and that buzzed with activity. Two men were aboard each vessel and another worked with the boy on the small wharf. A sixth man was driving a forklift from a corrugated shack nearby, moving pallets loaded with wooden crab traps. When he set the pile next to the near boat, the men jumped to and began a brigade line, passing the big, awkward traps down to a hand in the open aft deck, who would then stack it forward. While they worked the pile, the fork driver went back for another.

They were all similarly dressed in high rubber boots, faded jeans and either T-shirts or flannel rolled up at the sleeves, and they paid no attention to us as we approached. That is, all but one on the deck of the near boat. He was a black man with skin so dark that at a distance, I thought he was wearing a black T-shirt under his yellow bib overalls. When we got closer I could see he was shirtless. He also seemed to be the only one speaking, giving directions and keeping the work moving. When we got close enough, he stopped moving, tilted the bill of his cap up and smiled.

"Afternoon, Mr. Nate," he said, slipping off a thick canvas glove.

"Captain Dawkins," Brown said, and reached out over the water to shake the big man's hand. I noticed that the younger men had all stopped at the mention of Brown's name. Even the crew at the next boat was staring. It was like Ted Williams had stopped in for a visit. I saw one man lean down to whisper in the boy's ear and the kid's eyes went big.

"This here's the feller I was tellin' you about," Brown said, and I stepped forward.

"Max Freeman," I said. When I took his hand I could see four distinct lines of raised scar that lay nearly parallel across his forearm. They were smooth and pink and wrapped like pale worms over his black and nearly hairless skin.

"Johnny Dawkins the third," he said with a smoothness that let me know he always introduced himself that way.

"I'll leave you to it," Brown suddenly said. "I'm a walk up to the cafe for some coffee."

I swallowed, and when he turned to go I swear the old coot winked at me.

"So, Mr. Nate says you wanted to talk about my grandfather," Dawkins said, pulling my attention back, getting straight to it.

I lost a beat, now realizing who the old man had brought me to.

"Yes. I, uh, I've come across some letters written in the 1920s by the relative of a client. Mr. Brown said your grandfather might have had something to do with delivering them," I said, not knowing how much Brown might have told him.

"Client, huh?" Dawkins said, pulling his glove back on. "But you ain't a lawyer?"

He moved his eyes over me, my mud-caked boots, the white streaks of salt stain on my now-dried jeans.

"No, sir. Just a private investigator, looking for some truth."

"Well, Mr. Freeman, I don't mind talkin' 'bout my granddaddy's stories. And God above knows they're true. But I'm down a man here an' we got traps to load. So if y'all want to listen an' work, we got an extra pair of gloves."

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 passing 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 ship that made the trip from New Orleans to Key West and then north up the Gulf Stream to the Eastern Shore and New York. His own daddy had done the same all the way back to the days of sails and schooners.

"He was a God-fearing man, Mr. Freeman, and loved to fish. God, my grandmother Emma May an' fishin', 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 anchored 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 ship 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 sumbitch and Daddy said nobody 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."