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17

Still irritated, I listened to Arlis awhile longer, exaggerating my attentiveness, hoping Tomlinson would get the hint and realize it was time for the old man to move along.

No luck. Tomlinson, who was perceptive in elevated ways, could also be obtuse. Now, for instance. Sitting there guzzling my beer, straddling a lab stool as if he were in some Key Largo bar instead of a working laboratory. Goading Arlis to drone on and on via the intensity of his interest. Mr. Sensitive showing respect for oral history.

Or maybe he was encouraging the old man to talk because he knew it aggravated me.

Um-huh, Mr. Sensitive. Sensitive as a damn anvil.

“Well,” I said finally, “some of us have to work.” And moved away.

My headache had returned. Arlis’s nasal twang had found the rhythm of blood throbbing in my temples and every word had a serrated edge. I made an effort to tune him out. Fragments of sentences registered, though. They caught my attention on a level of consciousness that stays alert for useful information.

I checked the transformer’s voltage meter, adjusted the rheostat, then retrieved several more encrusted objects. His voice wasn’t as penetrating from the other side of the room, where I began chipping away at barnacle growth with a stainless pick.

“Bunch of Cuban fishermen washed up afterward, and we buried them right there on the beach, close to the lighthouse. Bloated, but no vultures around ’cause even the birds had been killed…

“…we didn’t get no warning, so people rode out the hurricane of ’44. Some famous people, too—or just missed being here. This was a sleepy part of Florida, but some of the world’s biggest names, they knew about these islands…

“…beautiful women? We had film actresses. I saw a woman on the beach, she’d make you ache. Still can see her face, if I close my eyes…

“The night the storm hit, one of our Coast Watch cruisers was out. Got a report someone saw lights. Maybe a U-boat, they said, but it was probably them Cubans. The Coast Watch boat—I can’t remember her name. Anyway, she never came back…

“Thomas Edison lived here, but was dead by then. Charles Lindbergh, though, I saw him many a time. And his wife, Anne…? I think she was here. Staying at her cottage on Captiva, where she wrote books.

“…John L. Lewis, too. He was almost as powerful as FDR in them war years. The great labor man; the coal miners’ union. Mr. Lewis, he loved to fish. He had a place at Pineland, up on the Indian mounds. You could see it from Captiva…

“Henry Ford, his house was on the river, and his family used it. You know the place, the mansion next to Edison’s where they have tourist trolleys now…”

I paused, as my attention vectored, drawn by the association of names. It was an eclectic list. Worth remembering, I decided.

Consciously, I summarized details: In the fall of 1944, four of America’s most famous and influential people, and/or their family members, had ties to the Sanibel area: The inventor of the automobile, the president of the United Mine Workers, the first man to fly the Atlantic solo, and his literary wife.

Yes, impressive.

Arlis was now saying, “I think there was a famous poem writer here, too. She had a hard name to remember. Saint-something. Edna…Saint-something, that’s close. She came almost every year.”

The name came into my mind as Tomlinson said it. “Edna St. Vincent Millay? She was an amazing poet; one of our first great feminists.”

“That’s the one,” Arlis said. “When the Sanibel Palms Hotel burned, the book she was writing got burned up with it. It made the newspapers, how sad she was about losing all those pages. But that was a few years before the storm, as I remember…”

Five powerful people, not four. Both women Pulitzer Prize winners.

Somewhere in the past, I’d heard that Millay had stayed on Sanibel. She’d written one of my favorite stanzas: “Whether or not we find what we are seeking/Is idle, biologically speaking.”

I was also aware that Ford, Edison, and the Lindberghs had lived in the area, and were friends, but I’d never heard their names connected in this way.

I listened to Arlis tell us, “I met Mrs. Millay. She was nice. Smart, too, and she knew it, which wasn’t considered polite for women in those days. That’s probably why some folks gossiped about her. Not the locals—it was always outsiders. She liked her whiskey, that’s what I heard.” Arlis lowered his voice. “She liked men, too. Young ones. And girls. What they mostly talked about, though, was her being a Commie.”

I glanced at Tomlinson to see his reaction. “She was a socialist, that was no secret. Most intellectuals of that period were. Still are, as far as I’m concerned. She wrote some very heavy stuff about the movement.”

“Well,” Arlis said, “in the war years, because of all the censorship, the only way to get news was to talk to outsiders. That’s what we did, so you never knew what to believe. People said Mr. Lewis was a Commie, too. And you shoulda heard some of the stories that went around about Henry Ford.

“They said that Mr. Ford went to Germany and built a car factory for Hitler. That Ford and Colonel Lindbergh was both secret supporters of Hitler. They were all close friends, you know, Mr. Ford, Colonel Lindbergh, and Thomas Edison.”

Tomlinson was nodding, aware.

“At Mr. Ford’s house, there was a German employee or two—that kept the rumors going. He had a bunch of them working for him in Detroit. Germans, I’m saying.

“People worried they was spies. Who knows? The first time we marched our POWs to Mr. Ford’s mansion to work, those Germans pretended like they weren’t happy to see more Krauts. But they were, I could tell.”

I was listening again, interested. “You took POWs to Ford’s home more than once?”

“Not me. The captain in charge of the Page Field camp. In ’44, there was a big storm in August, too. Not a hurricane, but enough to knock down trees. We liked to keep them Krauts busy.

“One thing I do know for certain,” Arlis added, “is that Hitler gave Mr. Ford a medal. Check the history books, there’s photos of Ford wearing it on his chest. A cross of some kind, a famous award, but the name of it’s gone from my memory now.”

I watched Arlis turn to lean toward the reduction tray. The sodium hydroxide was bubbling as the old man’s reflection colored the surface. “Mr. Ford’s medal wasn’t as fancy as this one, though. Bigger, maybe, but not as fancy.” He meant the silver death’s-head.

The lenses of his glasses caught the light. “You figure those are real diamonds?”

I’d looked at the stones under a microscope. No visible scratches. I said, “I think they are,” then asked for his opinion again: How did Nazi medals end up on a wreck off Sanibel?

Arlis shrugged, and used the back of his hand to wipe his face. “Hard to say. There’s a story about a sunken U-boat, but it’s bullshit—us old-timers would’ve known. They can’t be off a German warship or freighter, neither. We’d a blowed the bastards out of the water before they made the Florida Straits.”

He thought about it for a while, then impressed me, saying, “A plane, maybe? I’ve read that some of the Nazi big shots, the really bad ones—the ones who did experiments on people? I read some of them escaped before the war ended. They had new identities, the routes all planned. They left Europe on a U-boat headed for South America, or even the U.S. Once they got ashore, they could’ve switched to a plane. In those days, planes crashed a lot more often than they do now.”

He was silent for a few moments more, then impressed me again. “Know what, Doc? A medal as fancy as this, it’s the sort of thing generals wear. Except for all those diamonds. The diamonds, they just don’t fit. Think about it. Who would you give a medal that’s covered with diamonds?”

I was still processing the question when Arlis and Tomlinson both spoke at the same time. They said: “A woman.”