Chapter Five The Defenders

The ten-hour drive home was scheduled to begin around 8:00 a.m., or at least that’s what they had tentatively agreed upon the day before. But the farewell party at Myra and Leigh’s had gone on later than anticipated, which was exactly what they should have expected, and Saturday was off to a slow start. By 9:00 they were barely awake and guzzling black coffee. By 10:00, the Jeep Cherokee was half loaded with luggage and boxes and other stuff they had accumulated during their two months on the island and felt compelled, for some reason, to take with them. Mercer filled a picnic basket with sandwiches, fruit, cookies, and bottled water, as if they would not be able to find food between Camino Island and Oxford, Mississippi. At 11:00, Thomas finally locked the cottage, wedged the dog into the backseat, and started the engine.

“Only three hours late,” he mumbled. She ignored him. Things were somewhat tense but within minutes both were breathing normally and beginning the transition from beach to campus. The truth was that they were both writers and accustomed to a life that was somewhat unstructured. Punctuality was not that important. Who cared if they arrived in Oxford at 6:00 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday in mid-August, with the temperature there at least ninety-five and the humidity even higher?

It was a summer they would always remember and treasure: the wedding on the beach; the honeymoon to Scotland, a trip they still talked about and relived through photographs and vowed to do again; the excitement of finding the story for the next book, and an impressive advance with which to write it. After two months of marriage—two months that followed two years of living together—Mercer knew she was in love with the right guy. They were compatible and shared the same interests. They laughed a lot, at each other and especially at everyone else. They shared the irresistible dream of writing full-time and traveling the world in search of great stories. The issue of children was still being ignored.

“You want to drive?” he asked.

“What? We’re not even off the island yet.”

“I know but I’m yawning.”

“Drink some more coffee.”

He was kidding, of course, and breaking the ice to let her know he was no longer irritated because they were three hours late. He smiled at her, rubbed her bare and beautifully tanned thigh, and kept driving.

High on the bridge over the Camino River, Mercer looked to the north and saw the distant tree line of Dark Isle. She was curious about how it must have looked on the horizon three hundred years earlier.

Being from an inland village, Nalla was not familiar with seafood and had never tasted an oyster or a shrimp. In her new home, though, the food came out of the sea, and there was an abundance of it. She and the other new arrivals were fed as often as they wanted to eat. Their stomachs had not been so full in months.

Communication was initially a challenge, though they were motivated to learn a new language. An older woman was also from the Kongo and spoke Bantu, and she became the English teacher. All the runaway slaves were from plantations in Georgia and spoke English along with a variety of African tongues.

They lived in small mud huts with thatched palm roofs. There were twenty of the homes in a perfect square around a central common. The entire settlement was heavily shaded by massive oaks and elms. The women cooked at night so the smoke from their fires would not be seen. They lived in fear and with the constant threat of being captured. Slavery had been forced upon them once. It would not happen again, not without a fight. Joseph, the unquestioned leader, explained to the new arrivals that the white men would likely return in search of survivors from the Venus. Therefore they must remain vigilant at all hours. The older boys and younger men watched the beaches day and night in a coordinated system of surveillance. If a boat approached, the men and some of the women would take up arms, a collection of homemade knives and spears, but their arsenal also included three rifles they had robbed from an earlier band of intruders.

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.

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?

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.

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.

“What is discovery?” she asked.

“Both sides get to poke around in the other’s case. Live depositions, written interrogatories, document swaps, the like. It’s one of the more unpleasant aspects of litigation but a necessary evil.”

“So Lovely will have to give a deposition?”

“Oh yes. I’ve explained this to her. She was less than enthusiastic. It’s gonna take some work and preparation, but she’s our only witness.”

“Has she told you about her notebooks?”

A long pause on Steven’s end. Then, “What notebooks?”

“She told me that she has a box full of notebooks that date back many years. When you read her book and you see all of those names and dates, you realize that someone had to write them down.”

“Well, I asked her about that. She said it all came from memory.”

A long pause on Mercer’s end. Then, “Okay, so what happens if she does in fact have notebooks?”

“The other side gets to look at them, and given the resources they have, you can bet they’ll go through everything with a magnifying glass.”

“She might not like that.”

“No one likes that, but it’s part of the litigation process.”

“Okay, but if she has extensive notes that date back years, wouldn’t that tend to support her story?”

“One would think so.”

“So what’s your next move, Counselor?”

“You’re watching too much television. I’ll do some interrogatories, same for the other side. We’ll slog through a document swap and so on. Nothing much will happen until they take her deposition.”

“We’ll be down for fall break early in October. I’d like to be around for the deposition.”

“A good idea. I’ll try but no promises.”

“Any word from Judge Salazar?”

“Not a peep. She’s known to lay low during the preliminary matters.”

“All right. Keep in touch.”

The early stage of the lawsuit generated only passing media coverage.

TheRegister and the Jacksonville daily ran stories when it was filed but had not revisited the controversy. The only letter to the editor of The Register was from a noted crank who habitually griped about property taxes and welcomed any new development that would generate revenues elsewhere. Around town, the sentiment was that Dark Isle had been forgotten for so long it wasn’t worth discussing.

The quiet was shattered by an op-ed piece penned by Gifford Knox, fresh off his latest book tour and obviously looking for trouble. He began with a brief history of Dark Isle, poked endless fun at its gimmicky new name of Panther Cay, a “slick marketing creation,” and tore into Tidal Breeze for its attempt at the “outright theft” of the island. Showing some impressive research, he described two other Tidal Breeze projects in the past ten years that involved the company’s “swiping” of public land by cozying up to politicians and bureaucrats in Tallahassee. He lamented the environmental destruction of even more of Florida’s natural beauty, blasted the idea that more gaming was needed to shore up someone’s tax base, and railed against yet another “chemically drenched” golf course.

His closing paragraph was a beauty: “Eighty years ago white people wrecked the ecosystem of Dark Isle by building a paper mill upstream on the Camino River. The pollution wiped out the oyster beds and abundant fish. Faced with starvation, the longtime black owners of the island were forced to flee. Now another white corporation intends to steal the island from its last owner and turn it into another gaudy resort for white people.”

For reasons she kept to herself, Lovely refused to meet with her lawyer anywhere other than Bruce Cable’s office on the ground floor of Bay Books. And since Bruce was always on the prowl for local gossip, or even regional, he welcomed Steven and his client whenever they wanted to meet. He offered them coffee and made sure they had plenty of privacy, then busied himself with some first editions in a narrow hallway where he could eavesdrop at will.

Only later did Miss Naomi reveal the secret to Bruce. Steven Mahon’s office was in a building that had once been a restaurant, which, decades earlier, had refused to serve black customers. Steven had no way of knowing this, and would have never known if Bruce had not whispered it to him.

Lovely had a long memory and carried many grudges.

With her granddaughters in school, Miss Naomi was as free and eager to take Lovely anywhere she wanted. Both women loved the bookstore because they felt welcome there. Bruce kept a long table near the front for African American writers and invited the ladies to the store whenever one was passing through. At Mercer’s request, he also kept Miss Naomi occupied elsewhere when Lovely was in his office.

Lovely assumed her position in her favorite chair, an old French chaise that Noelle had hauled back from Provence. Miss Naomi and Steven exchanged pleasantries as Bruce poured coffee. After a few minutes he left and closed the door. Steven placed his iPhone on the corner of the desk and said, “I like to record my client conferences, if that’s okay.”

Lovely glared at the phone, then looked at Steven. “Why you doing that?”

“It’s standard procedure. My memory is not what it used to be and I like to have a record. It’s no big deal.”

His memory was fine and he seldom recorded conversations with his clients. With Lovely, though, there was plenty of room for misunderstanding and he wanted to take precautions. She looked at Miss Naomi, who shrugged as if she had no idea.

Lovely said, “I suppose.”

“If it makes you uncomfortable, then I won’t do it.”

“No, that’s okay. Just treat me like you treat the rest of your clients.”

“I promise I am.” He picked up a stack of papers and said, “This is the answer, or response, to our lawsuit that has been filed. Two of them actually, one by the state and one by Tidal Breeze. As expected, both deny your claim of ownership. The one filed by Tidal Breeze may be a bit hard to swallow because they make a lot of allegations that are not true.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, well, the most blatant is a claim that you cannot prove you were even born on the island.”

Her face contorted and her eyes burned at him like lasers. Her bottom lip quivered and she bit it. “Who said that?”

“The lawyers for Tidal Breeze.”

“I know where I was born and I know the name of the midwife who birthed me. She birthed my mama and daddy. I know where they were born and where he was buried, same place I hope to be buried. How can you let people like that say such things?”

“Lawyers say a lot of things that aren’t true, I’m afraid. It’s just an allegation, that’s all. Just part of the lawsuit. Don’t take it personally.”

“So they can lie all they want?”

“No, they have to believe what they say, and since there are no records of your birth, they can claim you weren’t born there. Again, there will be other allegations and you cannot take them personally.”

“I don’t like this lawsuit business.”

Steven offered a smile, one that was not returned. “I don’t blame you, Lovely. Lawsuits are unpleasant business, but they are necessary. If you want to prove ownership of the island, then you have no choice but to go to court.”

She absorbed this without seeming to accept it. After a pause she asked, “Are those lawyers going to be in court?”

“Sure, that’s their job.”

“Don’t expect me to be nice to them.”

“You don’t have to, but they’re not bad people. They’re just doing their job.”

“And lying’s part of their job?”

Steven took a deep breath and let it pass. “I need to ask you about records, notes, memos, stuff like that. Paperwork. The other side is asking for all of our paperwork, especially any and all notes you relied on when you wrote your book.”

Lovely gazed at a shelf of Bruce’s first editions and seemed to get lost in them. A long minute passed, then another. Steven was learning that huge gaps in the conversation did not bother her at all. She talked and moved at her own pace.

Finally, “Who says I have papers and notes?”

“Well, do you have papers and notes?”

“If I say yes, then those bad lawyers get to look at them, right? If I say no, then there’s nothing for them to see. Right?”

“I suppose that’s correct. Do you have notes?”

“I did, but I lost them.”

She was not convincing, but Steven knew better than to push. In her world survival was more important than honesty. There would be ample time and many opportunities to discuss her source materials later. He said, “You must have an amazing memory.”

“I do. So did my parents and grandparents. We told stories, Mr. Steven. You see, way back in the early days most of my people could not read or write. A few could and they tried to teach the others. I got lucky because my grandparents could read. I clearly recall my grandmother teaching me to write my name. It was very important to them, but not to all the others. There was even a little school on our island and I went there as a child. Some of the other children did not go. We relied on stories, long colorful stories told by my parents and grandparents, the same stories they had been told by their parents and grandparents. The stories were important and they were kept like gifts to be passed down. Not everybody could read but everybody could tell a story. And the stories were true and accurate because if you told one and got something wrong, then there was always somebody to correct you. That’s how I heard the story of Nalla, the slave girl, my great-grandmother six times over. She landed on the island in 1760 and died there in 1801.”

“How do you know it was 1801?”

“Because every story happened in a certain year. That’s how we kept up with the time and the history. We always knew the year.”

“But how do you know it was accurate?”

“How do you know it wasn’t?”

“I’m just asking because the lawyers on the other side will ask you.”

“I don’t care. They can ask all they want. I know my history, Mr. Steven. They don’t.”

“Did you ever see any part of the history written down? Anywhere?”

She frowned at him as if he were an idiot. “No, didn’t need to write it down. We kept it all up here.” She tapped her left temple. “That’s what I’m telling you. The stories were kept alive by the telling because we couldn’t write them down. Long before I was born they didn’t have pencils and papers and books and such. But they had words and stories and imaginations. When I was a girl and heard stories about Nalla, I could just see her in my visions. I could feel her suffering, her pain of being led away in chains, taken from her family, her little boy, her village, and sold to the slave traders. I knew all of Nalla’s life’s story when I was ten years old, Mr. Steven.”

The lawyer smiled at the thought of his client taking the witness stand and giving her testimony. No lawyer in the country could cross-examine her, because she alone knew the stories and owned the facts.

However, the case was far from over. The law preferred hard evidence, such as birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, land surveys, deeds, and property tax rolls. Tidal Breeze and its horde of lawyers would have a fine time poking holes in evidence based on old stories, legends, and folklore.

Later that afternoon, Steven met a friend, Mayes Barrow, for coffee at a café on the waterfront. Mayes was one of two Santa Rosa lawyers hired by Tidal Breeze. He was a popular young lawyer with a growing practice and a well-earned reputation as a fine courtroom advocate. Since money was no object, the company used many lawyers and always associated a few local ones to help navigate politics and curry favor with the judges.

Mayes said, “The company has asked me to explore the possibility of a settlement.”

Steven was not at all surprised. Tidal Breeze could save a fortune in legal fees by simply buying off Lovely Jackson. It had much bigger court battles ahead. And for a company planning to spend at least a half a billion, a few bucks tossed to Lovely would be nothing but a rounding error.

“You want to pay Lovely to drop her suit and go away?”

“Yes.”

“She’s not going to settle.”

“You won’t know until you ask her.”

“The answer is no, Mayes. Why would I ask her? She doesn’t need or want money. She’s never had it and knows it will only complicate her life. And if she settles and gives your client a clear title to the island, then we go to war over the development. Our best strategy is to win the first round, clear the title for Lovely Jackson, and tell your client to kiss our ass all the way back to Miami. Surely you understand this.”

Mayes chuckled and nodded his head in agreement. “Makes perfect sense to me.”

“I know. You’re just doing what your client tells you to do.”

“Yes, and they pay very well, Steven.”

“So does my client. My retainer was five bucks, less than these two cups of coffee.”

“They’re offering a hundred thousand bucks right now.”

“That’s insulting. I will not take that to my client.”

“Do you have a figure?”

“No. And I don’t plan to discuss one with Lovely. She won’t budge, I assure you. The trial will be a lot of fun, Mayes, especially when I put Lovely Jackson on the witness stand. It will be something we remember for a long time.”

For the third semester in a row, Thomas was shelving his studies in creative writing and pursuing other projects, namely research for his wife. He had begun his master’s three years earlier and had been making progress until he found himself in a classroom with Ms. Mercer Mann as his teacher. He immediately lost interest in writing fiction and began studying her.

One lovely autumn afternoon he arrived at their condo with an expensive bottle of champagne and in fine spirits. The Atlantichad just bought his proposal for a long story about a missing Soviet submarine. The pay was $20,000, a record for him, with all expenses covered. The submarine, a nuclear job as long as a football field, had gone silent in the South Pacific, about five hundred miles north of Australia.

There were at least two hundred men on board. Not a trace of the sub had surfaced, and there were enough rumors to fill half a dozen books. His first research would take him to Washington, then on to Sydney. He would be gone for a month, their longest separation yet.

They were looking forward to a break. Mercer especially needed some time alone to jump-start her book. Thomas, who had seen far more of the world than his wife, was eager to travel again. He still saw himself as the adventuresome journalist dashing all over the globe looking for the next great story, and always with a possible book in mind. Mercer encouraged this because she loved him and wanted him to succeed, but she also cherished long stretches of solitude. After almost three years together, including four months of marriage, they liked their routines, solo and together, and they almost never fought. They were, at least so far, wonderfully compatible, and the sensual side of the union was only growing more intense.

They drained the bottle on the patio as they celebrated and talked about the damned submarine. Mercer had already heard so much of the story that she was almost dreading another six months of it, but she gamely hung on. A successful writer needed a sounding board, a first reader, a cheerleader, a person who loved them and wanted them to succeed. Thomas loved her work and couldn’t wait to read her next chapter. Likewise, she listened to his ideas for projects and read his early drafts.

He said, “I’ll finish my last Florida story tonight.”

“Which one?” He was working on several. Thomas was a dogged researcher who could dig deeper into the internet than anyone Mercer knew.

“General Dunleavy. Another story that Lovely did not include.”

“She probably never heard it.”

“That, or it was too gruesome.”

“Do you often wonder how accurate her stories are? We’re talking about oral histories handed down for almost two hundred years. There had to be some embellishment along the way.”

“Sure, and that makes your job easier, Mercer. With no one to check the facts, you can embellish all you want. You do write fiction.”

“Thank goodness.”

Florida was admitted to the United States as a slave state in 1845. Florida had been a territory since 1821 and slavery was widespread, especially in the north, on cotton plantations and citrus farms around St. Augustine. One of the largest landowners was Stuart Dunleavy, a roguish politician who had once been a soldier and still fancied himself a military man. He would later get shot at Gettysburg and lose an arm. Using bribes and connections, he had amassed huge swaths of land east of Tallahassee and grew cotton on four thousand acres. When Florida joined the Union, he owned more slaves than anyone else in the new state and boasted of having a thousand Africans toiling in his fields.

Like most plantation owners, he was plagued by runaways and angered that many of his slaves were escaping to Dark Isle. Its legend continued to grow, and it was widely believed that hundreds if not thousands of slaves were hiding there, flouting the law.

In 1850, General Dunleavy, as he insisted on being called, decided to do something about it. He badly needed more labor and was fed up with the idea that the slaves were living on Florida soil as free men and women. He decided to capture them, keep all of them for himself, convert them to Christianity, put them to work in the fields, and in general improve their lives. He leaned on the governor, who, for some cash, agreed to “rent” General Dunleavy an old steamer that had been converted into a gunboat by the navy. He rounded up some troops, a motley mix of white farm laborers, common criminals, mercenaries, and a handful of real soldiers, gathered them on Camino Island, and spent a few days trying to train them, but finally gave up.

At dawn one morning they launched from the main harbor at Santa Rosa, with Dark Isle in sight. A quarter mile from shore they dropped anchor, positioned eight of the ship’s cannons, and began bombing away. Dunleavy’s brilliant battle plan was to bombard the island with the cannons, terrify the savages into surrendering, and send in his “troops” to capture them on the beaches.

The bombardment continued nonstop through the morning. By noon, there was no sign of the Africans, so the general and his men broke for lunch. After a meal and a nap, he gave orders to recommence the attack. At 3:00 p.m. his gunners reported that they were running out of cannonballs. Still, no sign of any terrified slaves waving white flags on the beaches. At 5:00 p.m. the cannons went quiet because there was no more ammunition. With an eye on the island, Dunleavy waited until dark, then retreated to their camp on Camino Island where they spent the night. The next morning, they reloaded and sailed to the southern end of Dark Isle where there had allegedly been signs of human activity in the past. They shelled the hell out of a thick forest, but saw no Africans.

After lunch, the general gave the dreaded orders. Two thirty-five-foot rowboats were lowered into the water and a dozen men boarded each. No one had volunteered for the little assault. Indeed, it was widely whispered on the gunship that there could be a mutiny if the troops were ordered to go ashore. The legend of Dark Isle and its cannibals was well known.

The men hit the beach and tied off their rowboats. One squad went north, one south. All of the men were armed with rifles and long knives, but they were moving far too slow and timidly in the general’s opinion. He watched intently with his field glasses atop the wheelhouse. Finally, they left the safety of the beach and disappeared into the dense woods. An hour passed, then another. Late in the afternoon, gunfire erupted at the southern end of the island, and this pleased the men on the boat. Part of the legend was that the slaves had only spears and darts and such, the weapons of their ancestors. How could they possibly have modern weapons? The gunfire meant they had been found and captured after a quick skirmish. Then there was more gunfire. It was comforting to hear but Dunleavy began to worry about casualties. He needed to capture the slaves, not slaughter them.

But the slaughter was on.

He had given his men strict orders to return to the gunboat by dark. However, as nightfall came there was no sign of the men on the beach. Their two rowboats had not moved. They had no food or supplies for the night. As the hours passed, a sense of fear and dread engulfed the gunboat. The general wasn’t sure what to do next. He couldn’t abandon his men on the ground and return to Santa Rosa. He gave orders to pass around whatever food could be found on the gunboat and stand guard. A long night was ahead of them.

At the first hint of dawn, the lookout began yelling. The men woke up and scurried to the deck. The two rowboats had been cast off the island and were drifting with the tide. At first glance, they seemed to be empty. Dunleavy ordered his captain to start the steam engines and move close to the rowboats.

The horror revealed itself slowly. The rowboats were not empty. Lying in their hulls was a ghastly collection of bloodied and mangled corpses. The men had been shot, hacked, cut, and gouged—several were practically decapitated. Whole limbs were missing. Some had been gutted and their entrails ran down their legs.

Several of the men on the gunboat vomited. Most gawked for a moment then turned away. Little was said, and the word “cannibal” was never used.

They managed to capsize the rowboats and watched one sink slowly, then the other. Twenty-three men buried at sea. Twenty-one more safely on deck with no desire to do anything but go home.

The general’s slave-hunting expedition was over. If he wanted more slaves he’d have to pay for them. He turned his gunboat around and retreated to Camino Island.

Mercer was shaking her head. “And where did you find that little gem?”

“Dunleavy lived a long, interesting life and decided to share it by writing his memoirs, which he completed at the age of ninety. He lived eight more years. The book was copyrighted in 1895, and it probably sold about as many copies as Lovely’s. I saw it listed in some obscure bibliography and skimmed it online. When I saw the story about Dark Isle, I perked up.”

“You’re a genius.”

“No, but close.”

“Do you find it odd that Lovely did not mention this story? I mean, it had to be one of the most memorable events in the island’s history. An outright attack, two days of cannon fire, the ambush by armed soldiers and their killings. How was it forgotten?”

“Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Lovely heard the story a hundred years later and didn’t want to include it. It’s pretty gruesome.”

“It’s also pretty great. The ex-slaves who were thought to have nothing but spears, yet had more guns than the slave traders, and the general thought his men had been cannibalized.”

“So you’ll use it?”

“I don’t know what I’ll use. I can’t get started. I need to spend time with Lovely.”

“When is fall break?”

“Two weeks. I’m thinking of driving down.”

“I’ll be in Australia.”

“I know. I might miss you by then.”