Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,36
to my right, was kneeling now over some new revelation, then abruptly stood. “That’s me all over,” he said, meaning an area of scattered bones. And then smiled.
Futch was the first to realize it was a joke and he laughed. I laughed, too, which changed the dark mood of this place, but not much.
“You’ve been here how many times?” I asked.
The pilot was on his knees by an uprooted tree. “Uhhh . . . third trip since I was a kid. About a twenty-year gap between then and a month ago when I brought my nephew. I don’t think anybody else knows about this place.” He looked around. “I don’t see any sign, do you?” Garbage, he meant, the tin and plastic spore of our species.
Tomlinson said, “That’s wise. Keep it in the family.”
“That’s what we decided. We’d been exploring the creek, Daddy and me. Used a saw to cut our way in—this was back in my teens. He spotted those gumbo-limbos and knew there must be an Indian mound. I don’t know why he wandered this far back in the mangroves.”
“State archaeologists have to know about it,” I said. “From satellite photos, if nothing else.”
“Sure. But I’ve never seen another human footprint on this marl flat. That tells you something.”
Futch turned in the direction of the mound, a hundred yards to the west, the ridge shielded by swamp. Then looked up at the tree canopy, his mind still on the missing planes. “Thing about this place is, back in the forties it was off the normal flight grid. Key West, they’d fly up the coast to Buckingham or Fort Myers. Orlando, the flight line runs north of here. The air base at Miami or Lauderdale, it’s way to the southeast.”
“A plane crash wouldn’t have been spotted,” I offered. As I said it, we were suddenly aware of the sound of an approaching airplane. Single engine, a private plane, maybe a Cessna, flying low.
In unison, we looked up, but foliage blocked the sky. The engine noise suggested the aircraft was passing to the west where Dan had landed his Maule, then secured it with anchors and spring lines hitched to mangroves. So we waited.
“They noticed your seaplane,” Tomlinson said after several seconds. The aircraft had circled, but was now heading away. North or northwest, from the sound.
Dan shrugged, then returned to the subject of finding wreckage. “Even if search planes were scrambled—a spot this thick?—they might have flown right over. A lot of wrecks were never found. Just a few years back, I probably already told you, an Avenger was found in the Glades. Took a grass fire to uncover it. Ten years ago maybe? First time the wreckage was ever seen.”
His eyes returned to the uprooted tree while he laughed, “Besides, I just proved this place isn’t easy to find. Even when you know it’s here.”
We’d gotten lost. Despite a handheld GPS, for more than an hour we’d wandered in zigzags through swamp and ridges of shell. Finally, we’d hacked our way straight to the creek, then waded against the tide looking for familiar landmarks. Even then Futch wasn’t sure this was the place—one marl swamp looks like another—until he remembered the trick from childhood, how to focus and refocus until the bones made themselves known.
“I don’t think these are our pilots,” I said, getting to my feet. “The incisor teeth, you notice? They’re all filed flat on top . . . the ones over here, anyway. But it’s not intentional. I think these people ate food that was loaded with sand.”
“An ancient place,” Tomlinson agreed, referring to contemporaries of the Maya. The Calusa had been sea people, living mostly off fish and clams, anything they could kill and cook over a beach fire.
Dan said, “Then why aren’t they in the burial mound? That’s what doesn’t make any sense. Bones just laying out here on open ground. Or . . . it’s possible that we’re looking at remains from two completely different time periods.”
The remains of World War II pilots mixed with those of an indigenous people, he was thinking.
I turned to Tomlinson and suggested, “Burial platforms, maybe? I didn’t find any charred bones, so pyres are out.” Then said to Futch, “It’s just an idea, but think about getting archaeologists involved with this place. Discuss it with Kathy and the rest of your family, this could be an important discovery. How many know?”
Tomlinson was walking away from the creek toward a wall of vines, then stopped. “Not wind