Page 30 of Camino Ghosts

The warning finally came early one morning, about two weeks after Nalla landed on the beach. A small ship was spotted and it was approaching. It anchored a half mile off the island, and by then Joseph and his men were watching it from deep in the trees. A rowboat about thirty feet long was lowered, and four white men got on board. Four black men, slaves in all likelihood, also boarded and took up the oars. Slowly, the boat left the ship and picked up speed with the incoming tide. Joseph moved his men into position. The rowboat grounded in three feet of water. The slaves jumped out and tugged it onto the beach. The white men, each with a rifle, pointed here and there and gave orders to the slaves, who picked up packs of supplies. It was clear they planned to stay a few days as they looked for survivors from the Venus. One of the four black men stayed behind with the rowboat.

Because they knew nothing of the island, the white men landed to the far north, away from the settlement. Joseph tracked them throughout the first day and waited for darkness. The men walked across the island, found nothing, and turned south. Trekking through the dense forest was difficult and they stopped to rest often. As the sun began to set, the white men ordered the slaves to set up camp. Then they wanted dinner.

The slave left behind on the beach to guard the rowboat was napping in it when he was jolted to life by two strangers with dark skin. They explained that he was no longer a slave, but now a free man. They shoved the boat into deeper water, then rowed into a bay where other vessels were moored and hidden. Over the years, the men of Dark Isle had collected other boats from curious slave hunters and fishermen.

Long after the white men had finished their rum and fallen asleep, Joseph and his warriors eased into the camp. They seized the three slaves, who were horrified and thought they were seeing ghosts. They settled down soon enough when they were granted immediate freedom. They were given knives and offered the chance to kill their masters. They sneaked into the tents and slit four white throats. Their bodies would be dumped in the ocean.

At sunrise, the ship’s captain scanned the beach with his spyglass and did not see the rowboat. It had vanished and he suspected trouble. There was no conceivable reason for the crew to move it during the night. Something had gone wrong, but what was he to do about it? He had only two men and one slave left on his little ship. They wasted the day waiting and watching the beach.

Joseph and his men were watching them. The ship did not move throughout the day or during the night. The following morning, a smaller boat with two white men left the ship and rowed to the beach. The men appeared nervous and kept their rifles close at hand. They carried backpacks too small for tents. After trudging through the forest for a few hours and finding no one, they decided to leave before dark. But they were ambushed by Joseph and his men, taken prisoner, and tied to trees. After a severe lashing they told everything. There was only one white man left on the ship, the captain, and one slave. They were from Savannah and had been hired by the owner of the Venus to recapture slaves lost in the storm. A few had been found alive on Cumberland and Jekyll islands and up the coast to Savannah, but none in Florida.

Joseph threatened to shoot them with their own weapons, then decided to save ammunition. He cut their throats and left their bodies for the panthers to devour.

After dark, Joseph and his men loaded into the two stolen boats and rowed silently through the still water to the ship. They boarded with ropes, surprised the slave who was sleeping on the deck, and dragged the captain out of his bed. When he staggered onto the deck he was shocked at the sight of a dozen armed Africans waiting to kill him.

He asked about his men. Joseph told a lie that would become part of the legend of Dark Isle, one that he had contemplated for a long time. It was outrageous, sensational, yet utterly believable, and it spread like the gospel truth up and down the coast, all the way to Savannah and Charleston. The lie hung over the island for a century, and long after Joseph was dead those who ventured to within five miles of his island knew and believed the legend.

He told the captain he and his people were descendants of cannibals from the jungles of Africa. His men were being prepared for a feast.

He, though, would be spared. Joseph tossed him overboard and gave him the smaller boat, with one paddle. They watched with great amusement as the captain flipped it twice as he scrambled to get in. When he finally managed to keep it upright, he took the paddle and rowed furiously in the general direction of Camino Island.

The ship was taken to the bay and stripped of all supplies. There were medicines, smoked meats, barrels of rum, log books, and a small arsenal of guns and ammo. The five former slaves from the ship had worked in the shipyards and harbors and knew how to sail. They quickly taught the others everything they knew. They had wives and children back in Savannah and they wanted to rescue them. Joseph was not convinced.

3.

A month after Steven Mahon started the battle over the ownership of Dark Isle, the state of Florida filed its answer in chancery court. It was nothing unusual or creative, just the standard textbook denials from the Attorney General’s office. The state denied that Lovely Jackson was entitled to ownership because she had not adversely possessed the property for the past seven years. Overall, the response was tepid and predictable.

A week later, some heavier artillery entered the fray. Tidal Breeze, through its $1,000-an-hour lawyers in downtown Miami, politely asked Judge Salazar to allow it to intervene as an interested party, then went on for ten nasty pages setting forth all the reasons Lovely Jackson should not be awarded title to the property. In great detail, and obviously the work of some serious lawyers and paralegals, the response laid out the history of the island as gleaned from official records, of which there were so few. No records of births or deaths. No census data. No property tax assessments and no tax collections. No records of electrical or telephone service. Camino County had never built a school on the island and there was no evidence of any child from there attending an existing school. No health department records. No voters registered from Dark Isle. It was as if no one had ever lived there.

As for Lovely’s claim, Tidal Breeze made much of the fact that she admitted in her memoir that she had left the island in 1955, as a fifteen-year-old girl, and that she was the last living descendant. Thus, the island had been deserted for almost seventy years. This was not at all unusual in Florida, the response added helpfully in one of its many superfluous asides, because, according to official records (attached thereto), there were at least eight hundred deserted or uninhabited islands in Florida. And, every single one was considered the property of the state.

Tidal Breeze went even further by questioning whether Lovely had been born on the island, as she claimed, or even lived there at all. There was simply no proof of any of it.

Taken as a whole, the response was a masterful denial of the legend of Dark Isle. Where, in 2020, was the proof? Other than Lovely, where were the witnesses? Where were the records? Where was the evidence of ownership?

4.

Steven Mahon read the response twice and each time felt worse. Tidal Breeze was obviously committed to the long game and would spend any amount to gain title. He did not look forward to the inevitable discussion with his client. Lovely would not take kindly to being called a liar and having her entire ancestry challenged.

He emailed a copy of the response to Mercer.

5.

Like her students, Mercer preferred classes later in the day, certainly nothing before 10:00 a.m., and such a schedule allowed her to write in the mornings. Thomas was a night owl and they seldom crawled out of bed before 8:00. She brewed coffee, took a mug to her little workroom, and shut the door. Thomas read the morning paper online, went for a jog, and made sure she got off in time for class. Both enjoyed early solitude. They had the rest of the day to catch up with the gossip.

Mercer was writing every morning for at least an hour. With Lovely’s memoir as her guide, she was reliving Nalla’s story and often had trouble thinking of anything else.

The death of the slave hunters. The birth of Nalla’s child, a little girl with lighter skin. The death of Joseph’s wife and his desire for Nalla. Their three children together. The sporadic arrival of other runaways. The growth of the settlement. Its culture—language, food, customs, rituals, and fears, always the fear of being invaded and recaptured. The religion became a mix of the Christianity that had been forced upon the slaves by their white masters and the African mysticism they clung to. Joseph’s attempts to teach everyone, adults and children alike, the basics of reading, writing, and math. He had been fortunate enough to have received some education on the plantation. A few resisted his efforts, just as they rejected Christianity. His death from a disease that killed a dozen others in their settlement. Nalla’s heartbreak at his loss. The power struggles to take his place. The harshness of life on the island. The heat, mosquitoes, insects, panthers, snakes, storms, disease. The constant struggle for self-sufficiency by a people determined to avoid contact with the world and too afraid to venture off the island. Life expectancy was about fifty years. Half the children died at birth.

Mercer was consumed with her story and longed to hear Lovely’s voice. She wanted to spend hours on the phone with a million questions, but Miss Naomi could not convince her. Lovely had no phone, no television.

The more Mercer wrote, the more she disliked her job. She was in her third year at Ole Miss, her third teaching position, and she was tiring of the departmental politics. She assumed they were present on every campus and Ole Miss was no exception. With a master’s degree but no doctorate, and no plans to get one, she was deemed a lesser academic and one probably not worthy of tenure. What she did have was a publishing career that now included two novels and a collection of stories. Adding insult to envy was the fact that Tessa had spent four weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. At that moment, no one else on campus could make that claim. Indeed, according to Thomas’s meticulous research, it had been over thirty years since an Ole Miss professor had “hit the list.”

In spite of her misgivings, and she kept most of them to herself, the fall semester was clicking right along, with SEC football the main focus and academics somewhere down the list. Mercer and Thomas lived in a rented condo on University Avenue, fifteen minutes from campus on foot. Heading east in the other direction, they often walked to the picturesque town square for dinner with friends or drinks in one of the many student hangouts.

Six weeks passed before Etta emailed with the news that the contract with Viking was on the way. Mercer should sign immediately and maybe the money would arrive by Christmas. Publishers were notorious for taking their time with contracts and payments.

When Mercer received the emails from Steven Mahon with the responses from the state of Florida and Tidal Breeze, she read them twice and felt uncomfortable. She called him and they talked for half an hour.

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