Photo:  One of the cannons of Fort Zachary Taylor.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Yankee spy, Aaron Matthews, has been rescued from a wrecked ship (an unusual way to arrive at his new duty station). He has arrived in the island and soon will move in with a Key West family and begin secretly looking for a Rebel saboteur.   Josephine Marie Thibodeaux is in for a surprise when she pounces on her brother's bed thinking Richard hasn't gone to war after all.  

Enjoy chapter 3 of Mudsills & Mooncussers.  :)

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Minutes later, in the dusk at Fort Zachary Taylor, Colonel T.H. Good stood on the ramparts, 50 feet above Key West harbor and the Gulf of Mexico, observing the activities on Tift's Wharf through his spyglass. A noise attracted Colonel Good's attention—someone climbing the steps from the parade ground to the shadows behind him. The colonel did not turn to look at the newcomer.

"Matheson?" the colonel ventured.

"Matthews, sir," answered a deep voice from the shadows.

Colonel Good continued his observations, throwing his words over his shoulder. "Matthews, then. If I may say so, Lieutenant, you chose the devil's own way to get here. But for your encounter with Pelican Shoal, I might have had to arrest you for a blockade runner. A lot of help you'd be to me sitting in jail at Fort Jefferson."

"You would've had to catch me first." The silence lingered almost too long before Aaron added, "Sir."

Colonel Good lowered his spyglass and delivered an affectionate pat to a massive black cannon pointing toward the sea. "Lieutenant, if I thought there was a ghost of a chance we wouldn't catch you, I'd have blown you out of the water. And if I didn't, the Union Navy's blockade ships would. And if they didn't, the guns at Fort Jefferson would. We are the gateposts to the Gulf, Lieutenant. Nobody gets into our yard without being seen by one or the other of us."

"May I beg the colonel's indulgence to continue this audience in the colonel's office?" asked Aaron.

"You may not. This wind keeps the infernal mosquitos at bay, and I am partial to these sunsets."

The western sky glowed orange, red, pink, and purple as the sun sank into the Gulf of Mexico. Colonel Good and his cannon loomed as black shapes between Aaron and the dying sun. Aaron leaned well back into the shadows.

The colonel broke the silence. "What did you think you were doing, Matthews?"

"My job, sir. The one I've been given, not the one I would have chosen. Sir."

"Yes, yes, I know. The ignobility of it all. And what in God's name did you think you would do if you had not grounded on Pelican? Go on to Mobile?"

"Perhaps I would've been welcome there. I thought they picked me for this job because of my social connections in Charleston. I could have visited the homes of Confederate supporters—maybe even officers and politicians. I might even have done some good. ... Sir."

The colonel scoffed. "Until they caught you and hauled you before a Rebel firing squad. Your work is here. You will forego martyrdom for the time being, Lieutenant."

Aaron came to his feet, but before he could turn away the colonel wheeled to face Aaron and laid his spyglass gently but firmly on Aaron's shoulder.

"Tell me what you saw in the harbor when you left Havana," the colonel said.

"A couple of English-built sloops, very fast I think, and one frigate with nasty looking cannon."

"And you are not concerned, Lieutenant?"

"Ending this war is my concern, Colonel, and wasting my time and talents on this godforsaken, out-of-the-way piece of rock is not my idea of the way to do it." Aaron acknowledged the increased pressure of the spyglass on his shoulder and slumped back into his seat in the shadows.

Colonel Good slapped his telescope shut. "You want to end this war? Food, gunpowder, clothing, shoes, tools, weapons—I've got a shipment of LeMat grapeshot revolvers sent from France for issue to Confederate solders—these are the things that will end this war. The South has to ship raw materials out and finished goods back in, just like breathing. We can strangle it."

"Be my guest," said Aaron. "You don't need me or whoever's in Havana harbor."

"Wrong. I need you because of whoever's in Havana harbor. Practically everyone one on this island has closer ties to Havana harbor than you have to your own mother."

Aaron's tone was ironic. "That goes without saying."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean..."

"Permission to withdraw, sir. I need to see to housing myself with the locals."

Colonel Good nodded and seemed tired as he turned away. "Is your brother well, Lieutenant?"

"With General Floyd's troops near Sewell Mountain last I heard, sir. Just another loyal son of the Confederate state of South Carolina."

"At least it must be some consolation that while you're here you will not be shooting at him," said the colonel.

"Let's stop this war before someone else shoots at him, sir. How shall I contact you?"

The colonel sighed. "See the ship's chandler, Curry. But be discreet. Goodnight, uh, what name are you using, again?"

"Matthews, sir."

"Well, goodnight, Matthews."

Aaron was halfway down the stone steps when the colonel called to him. "Aaron. Several of the officers and enlisted men have honorable intentions with regard to local ladies. I'll not tolerate complaints of defrauded debutantes. I shall expect you to exercise restraint."

"I'll try, sir." Aaron disappeared down the steps and across the darkness of the parade ground.

...

At dawn the next morning, Josephine Marie Thibodeaux entered her brother Richard's bedroom expecting to find it unoccupied. She beamed with surprise and delight when she beheld a slumbering form behind the mosquito netting. Thinking Richard had somehow regained his sanity and stayed away from yesterday's war-bound English schooner, she leapt upon the sleeping form, hugging it about its middle.

"Wretched!" she cried happily.

The bed's occupant was shocked out of a sound sleep and bounded up to grapple with its attacker, sending them both to the floor in a tangle of bedclothes and mosquito netting.

After a frantic scramble, two heads burst from beneath the linens, one shouting "What are you doing here?" at the same time the other shouted "What the devil do you think—?"

Joe continued, "You're not Wretched!"

"As many ladies with ... intimate knowledge of me will attest," said Aaron Matthews with a grin.

They began untangling themselves from the bedclothes, Joe with the object of getting out of them—Aaron with the object of keeping at least a portion of them wrapped about his loins. The girl was fully clothed, but Aaron had been sleeping in the nude. Even in winter the nights were tropically warm on Key West.

"This is Richard's room!" declared Joe.

"Dear me, I understood it to be vacant. At least, that is what Captain Thibodeaux indicated when he let it to me last evening." Aaron finally succeeded in disengaging himself from her. He sat (appropriately swathed) on the bed while Joe backed across the room to press her posterior against the door.

"I had the impression from your parents," said Aaron, "that while your father and all the other wreckers were racing to the reef to save my unfortunate St. Gertrude, good old Wretched Richard was sneaking off to join the Glorious Army Of The Confederacy."

Joe was pressing door splinters into her backside in her haste to get out of the room. "I'm going turtling before it gets too light. I only came to get the poking stick ... here it is ... I'm sorry I disturbed you, Mister ..."

"Matthews. Joe, isn't it?"

"I gotta go. It'll be light." With that she slipped out the door and closed it behind her.

Aaron snatched up his clothes, from the chair where he had piled them, and jigged into them.

...

Minutes later, on a deserted beach, Joe had pulled the hem of her ankle-length lightweight cotton dress between her legs, back-to-front, and tucked it into her belt to form blousey pantaloons. Her floppy straw hat brim flapped like wings in the breeze as she strolled along hard-packed sand at the water's edge, three-foot poking stick in one hand, boots dangling by their laces in the other.

"Good morning, again," said a familiar bass voice.

Startled, she looked up to see Matthews sitting in the soft sand at the base of a tree, plainly waiting for her.

She walked faster. "Mornin'."

Aaron stood, brushed the sand from his clothes, grabbed his shoes, and hurried to overtake her. He had gone to considerable effort to determine where she might have gone and to arrive ahead of her. He had not asked himself why; it simply seemed important at the time.

The morning sun burned brightly. Joe stopped, squinted against the glare, and gestured to the distant shoreline in dismay. "Oh, see! O-o-o-h, I knew it would be too late. It's all your fault. We could've turned her."

Aaron squinted in that direction. "Turned whom?"

Joe pointed. "The loggerhead. See, she's gone back to the sea. Just a minute sooner and we'd have caught her on the beach. Maybe she's laid!"

At that Joe dashed to the turtle's tread-like marks in the sand and began back-tracking them away from the water, poking at the soft sand on either side of the tracks with her stick.

Many yards from shore she emitted a squeal of delight and fell to her knees, digging furiously.

Aaron trudged through the soft sand to stand over her excavation.

"Take off your pants, Mister Matthews!" she demanded, still digging.

"Young lady, not only am I shocked at that request, but I am unaccustomed to hearing it from people who do not know me well enough to call me by my Christian name."

Joe dug faster. "It's your fault we're late. The very least you can do is help."

"By taking off my pants?"

"You got drawers on, ain't ya?"

Aaron unbuckled his belt. "Indisputable logic if ever I heard it," he said.

Hanging his belt with its brass buckle over his shoulder, he stepped out of his pants and dropped them next to Joe on the sand. The heavy brass buckle of the belt dangling down his chest was wrought in the shape of initials: ABM.

Without giving him a second look, she tied knots in the legs of his pants, making them into a double-barreled sack, and began to fill the sack with turtle eggs.

Comprehending the goal, Aaron dropped to his knees and helped dig out the eggs and fill the makeshift sack.

"A hundred and ten!" Joe proclaimed. "Best me and Richard ever found was ninety. Cataline and Stepney found a hundred and thirty-two one time."

"What will you do with them?"

The two stood up and, carrying the full pants between them, walked toward town.

"Sell 'em at the kraals," said Joe, using the local name for the commercial turtle pens on the north side of the island. The South African word, meaning a corral or pen for animals, had arrived in Key West via sailing ship, as all things did.

"Ah," said Aaron, wondering what "the crawls" might be. "And will they bring enough money that you might forgive the blackguard who cost you the turtle by making you late this morning?"

Joe smiled fully upon Aaron for the first time, and he was unprepared for its effect on him. Guilt showed in his face for an unguarded instant.

"Wretched would like you," Joe told him.

"High praise indeed," he said. He looked again at the eggs. "This reminds me, what do we do about breakfast?"

...

Fire was always a danger on Key West, with its wooden houses built so close together that gossip traveled from porch to porch with nobody being troubled to leave home in order to visit the neighbors. Cooking was done in small, separate structures built in back of the main house, so that kitchen fires did not spread to the home.

Later that morning, in the Thibodeaux kitchen building, Lucy Drake, a skinny black woman, was doing the baking before the day's heat reached its zenith.

The open doors at either end of the small white wood frame building revealed the rear yard of the Thibodeaux house, shaded with avocado, orange, mango, papaya, and banana trees interspersed with witch hazel, bougainvillea, and elephant ear plants. Two goats grazed at the rear fence. Most Key West households kept a goat or two as convenient garbage disposals.

Joe's head appeared in an open doorway. "Mornin', Lucy! I'm starved."

Lucy went on about her work. "And well you might be, off fishing or crabbing while the whole world breakfasted! You might stay 'round and be some comfort to your mum just now ... her grievin' over poor Mister Richard gone off to war ... Good Lord, child! You stink like old mullet nets!"

Joe swung on the open door as she listened to Lucy's lecture then entered the kitchen, pulling Aaron behind her. "That stink ain't me, it's Mister Matthews's trousers. We found a loggerhead's nest on the beach this mornin'."

"I had drawers on...,"Aaron responded sheepishly to an accusing look from Lucy.

Lucy turned her look upon Joe with, "So, you've been to the kraals instead of eating breakfast like civilized young ladies."

"But look, Lucy!" Joe produced some coins from her pocket and pressed them into Lucy's flour-coated hand. "We can add it to the Freedom Fund." Joe turned to Aaron to say, "Cataline's going to marry Lucy soon as we can buy her papers from Mister Dennis."

Lucy gave Aaron a sideways glance and pocketed the coins.

"Aren't you going to put them—?" Joe protested.

Lucy cut her off, "I know what to do with them, Nosey Josey. You get on about your business and let working people get on about theirs."

"Speaking of business," said Aaron, "I believe I'd better get myself cleaned up and pay a visit to the honorable Judge Marvin at the admiralty court. See what may be left of my investment in the St. Gertrude. Miss Lucy, I fear these trousers have seen better days. Do you think you might be able to—?"

"Leave them out. Mister Richard used to come home in the same state. Nobody in town gets turtle stench out like Lucy Drake. Nor as often, seems to me!"

"Thank you," he said. "I'll pay you, of course."

Lucy was abrupt, apparently eager to be rid of him. "My wages is paid to Mister Dennis, sir," she said.

"Then perhaps you will allow me to make a small contribution to the, ah, Freedom Fund?"

Lucy ignored this. "You'll find fresh fried roe on the dining room sideboard under the linen towel. Scones and guava jelly on the table, and fruit in the basket."

Joe turned toward the house with considerable enthusiasm. "Thanks, Lucy. Come along, Mister Matthews."

Aaron doffed a nonexistent hat to Lucy as he left, but she looked up from her work only after he had gone. Her hand floated unconsciously to the pocket where Joe's coins rested.

After she was sure no one was within sight or sound, Lucy loosened and removed a brick from the rustic hearth and hid her coins in the hole that constituted her Freedom Fund "safe."

...

Having breakfasted and dressed for business, Aaron Matthews walked the wide, sunny avenues of Key West until he stopped on Eaton Street across from a two-story white house built over an arch-covered brick carriageway. He looked left and right, decided this was the place, and crossed the street.

In the courtyard of the Arch House, Aaron entered via the brick carriageway, under the latticework arch, and followed a winding path through jungle-like foliage to a low, wooden building shaded with slatted Bahama shudders. It was a cigar factory. The air around it was redolent of rich tobacco, pineapple plants, and hibiscus blossoms. Aaron climbed the low steps and went inside.

Entering, he found himself in a cramped front room where Arnau, the swarthy, gnarled factory owner, hunched over a desk. A vividly multi-colored macaw perched behind the desk. Most of the long, narrow building was through a door opposite the one Aaron had used. He could see through that door a narrow room where sixteen men rolled cigars by hand at long tobacco-stained tables.

"You are Arnau?" asked Aaron.

The factory owner squinted up at him. "En qué puedo servirle?" he asked.

"My humidor is empty," Aaron replied. "Your sister in Havana told me you would fill it with the very best."

Arnau lost interest in the paperwork on his desk. His gaze was more direct now. "Do you keep an apple in your humidor, señor?"

Aaron answered, "Without one, even the best can become dry and tasteless."

Joe's voice came out of nowhere, "I didn't know you had a sister, Arnau!"

Both men's eyes swung to the interior doorway, where Joe was emerging from the factory proper. Arnau recovered first. "You think because you ask the million questions that Arnau tell you everything, chiquita? Even from you I have my secrets."

She smiled, accustomed to his teasing, and moved across the office toward the exterior door, exchanging a nod of greeting with Aaron. She called to the old man, "I'll see you tomorrow, if I can," and to the macaw, "Goodbye, Ulises."

The bird squawked, "Buenos Días! Buenos Días!"

Arnau mocked Joe's voice, "Goodbye, Arnau."

The door closed behind Joe as she exited. The room was quiet again. Aaron and Arnau exchanged a serious look. Arnau rose from his desk.

"Come," said the old man. "I show you the birds."

...

An hour later, in the white-bright sunshine on Tift's Wharf, Aaron, Captain Thibodeaux, William Curry, and a small group of townspeople, including two or three Yankee soldiers, watched the U.S. Marshal nail a notice to a warehouse wall. The placard read:

U.S. MARSHAL'S SALE

By virtue of an order of sale from the Hon. William Marvin, Judge of the Admiralty Court for the Southern District of Florida, I will sell at Public Auction on the 15th inst., from the Ware House of F.A. Browne, Esq., all the cargo then unredeemed by the payment of Salvage and expenses of the ship ST. GERTRUDE, lately wrecked on her voyage from Liverpool to New Orleans, Consisting of Iron in bars, crates of Crockery, Hard Ware, Sugar boilers, castings of Machinery, etc. Terms of sale—Cash on delivery—ten days to be allowed the purchaser to pay for and receive his goods. Consignees in Havana may have their goods delivered to them at any time before the day of sale, by the payment of Salvage and expenses.

J.B. BROWNE, U.S. MARSHAL

Key West, 4 April 1862.

The marshal completed his work, gathered up his tools, and turned to give the crowd an authoritative stare. They parted to allow him egress. Mr. Curry, a diminutive, mild-mannered Scots storekeeper, hopped birdlike alongside the departing marshal.

"You should specify 'No Confederate Currency.' It's only good business, regardless of your personal politics," said Curry.

Marshal Browne, a notorious Confederate sympathizer, glared at the Scotsman and at the Yankee soldiers in the crowd then moved on without responding.

The crowd finished reading the notice and began to drift away. Thibodeaux, Curry, and Aaron were left.

Thibodeaux clapped Aaron across the shoulders, saying, "There you are, lad. In a few days it will all be liquidated and you'll have a fair amount left over after the fees are paid to the wrecking master—in this case, yours truly."

"A position Joe earned for you by getting you there first, you old lobster," teased Aaron. "Which, by the way, could be a bit suspicious, you know. How did you find us so quickly? Couldn't be you knew where the wreck would be because you knew where you'd laid the false light, could it?"

Thibodeaux rubbed his nose and grinned. "Any Conch worth his wrecking license can smell a salvageable vessel in the dark from miles away."

Curry tugged on Aaron's sleeve, and Aaron looked down into wire-rimmed spectacles.

"You are Mister Matthews, lately master of the ship St. Gertrude?" asked Curry.

"I am. May I assist you?"

Curry looked pointedly at Thibodeaux, who knew an unspoken request for privacy when he saw one.

"Well," said Thibodeaux, "I can't stand here jawing all day. If you gentlemen will excuse me." They nodded to one another, and Thibodeaux left.

When they were alone, the Scotsman said to Aaron, "I am William Curry. I operate the mercantile store and ships' chandlery. I'm to tell you to be at Colonel Good's office tonight after bellring. Now I must bid you good day."

Curry darted back to his store, leaving Aaron to murmur at empty air, "Good day, Mister Curry."

...

That night after the 8:00 p.m. curfew bell rang sending the Conchs to their homes, Aaron Matthews slipped past a young, sleepy sentry into Fort Taylor's parade grounds. Moments later Colonel Good reacted to a knock on the door of his quarters, rose from his desk, and admitted Aaron. "Were you seen?" the colonel asked.

Aaron wagged his head a quick no. "Everyone seems to watch the sea more than the land. What's the news?"

"I had hoped you would tell me. I confess I was piqued that you didn't tell me first."

Aaron looked confused. "Tell you what?"

Colonel Good opened a desk drawer and produced the leg band from a carrier pigeon. Unfolding the message contained therein, he handed it to Aaron, who moved closer to the lantern to read it.

"One of my men was hunting at dusk," said the colonel, "and got this one by mistake. I have cautioned him to avoid anything that looks even vaguely like a messenger pigeon in the future. Now kindly decode that for me and let me in on your discoveries to date."

Aaron continued to stare at the message paper, front and back, in light and in shadow. He answered without looking at the colonel. "It will take a while to decode it, but I can tell you now what I've discovered—and you may have given your marksman bad advice."

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With no telegraph, radio, or telephone service at that place and time, spies (and other people, as well) often sent their messages by wrapping a tiny coded note about the leg of a specially-trained pigeon. One species of carrier pigeon has since become extinct, but today there are still hobbyists around the world who enjoy training their birds and sending messages to one another.

Aaron is fairly certain the bird accidentally shot by Yankee soldiers was carrying a message from the Rebel spy he seeks.  Who else on the island has access to such useful birds?

Thanks for reading.  Don't forget to register your vote and leave a brief comment.  Your suggestions, questions, or personal memories of Key West are always valuable to me.

Iris