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ever’ foking ting!”
    One evening Msyoo Chevelier asks my kids if they would like to help him collect birds, and wild eggs, too. He spells out all the kinds he wants. When he says “swaller-tail hawk,” I smile and say
“Tonsabe.”
At that he flies right at my face—“Where you hear
tonsabe
?” I tell him that is Indin speech for swaller-tail hawk, and he asks real sly, “
Which
Indiang?”
    â€œChoctaw,” I says—that’s my mother’s people. He shakes his head; he is grinning like some bad old kind of coon. “
Tonsabe
is
Calusa,
Ree-chard, it ees not?”
    He had took me by surprise and my face showed it. That word ain’t Choctaw and it ain’t used by Mikasuki nor Muskogees neither, it come straight down from my Calusa granddaddy, Chief Chekaika, who killed off them white settlers on Indian Key. But Chekaika was a dirty word to white men, so I only shrug, try to look stupid.
    He sets down careful on a fish box so we’re knee to knee. “Vair few Calusa words survive,” he says, holding my eye like he wants to read my brain. He’d studied the archives in Seville, Spain, and every big Calusa mound along this coast. Said Calusa warriors in eighteen canoes attacked the first Spaniards, killed Ponce de Leon. Calusas layed low in these rivers to escape the Spanish poxes, which done ’em more harm than all them swords and blunderbusses piled up together. Said Chatham Bend was a Calusa village before Spanish times—that’s why he wanted to dig it up so bad. And somewhere not far from the Bend, well hid from the rivers, there had to be a big burial mound full of sacred objects, built up higher than the village mounds, with white sand canals leading out to open water.
    The Frenchman gives me that skull smile of his when I do not answer. “You know where ees it? You tekka me?”
    â€œHeck, I ain’t nothin but a dumb old Indin,” I tell him.
    He sits back, knowing he is pushing me too hard, too fast. “Indiang pipple say ‘dumb Indin’; white pipple say ‘dumb Injun’—for why?” I ponder some. “You reckon dumb Indins are too damn dumb to say ‘dumb Injuns’?” He waves me off. He ain’t got time for dumb-ass Indin jokes.
“Ay-coot,”
he says. “I am vair interest Indiang pipples. Foking crack-aire pipple are know-nothing, are grave robb-aire!” He was a real scientist, born curious, but I seen his crippled hand twitch while he spoke: this man would rob them graves himself, being some way starved by life, bone greedy.
    â€œWell, now,” say I, “my oldest boy and me, we was out robbin graves one sunny mornin, had twelve-thirteen nice redskin skulls lined up on a log, y’know, airin ’em out. One had a hole conched into it, but a pink spoonbill plume we stuck into that hole made it look real pretty. Them redskin skulls done up artistic for the tourist trade might bring some nice spot cash down to Key West.” I hum a little, taking my time. “Chip the crown off for your ashtray, fill that skull with fine cigars? For a human humidor you just can’t beat it.”
    Kind of weak, he says, “Where this place
was
?”
    â€œNosir,” I says, “I wouldn’t let on to my worst enemy about that place!
Indin
power!
Bad
power!” I drop my voice right down to a whisper and I tap his knee. “When we lined up all them skulls, Msyoo? All of a sudden, them ol’ woods went silent.
Dead
silent, like after the fall of a giant tree. Seemed like them old woods was waiting, see what we would do.” I set there and nod at him a while. “Oh, we was scared, all right. Got away quick and we ain’t never been back. Left them skulls settin on that log grinnin good-bye. Know what that ringin silence was? That was the ’vengin spirits of Calusas!” And I show that Frenchman my Indin stone face, refuse to