Legend has it that frontiersmen in Miami had to cut and nail the wood while it was still green because it was impenetrable after it dried. A row of cabinets hanging on one wall may have dated back to the original owner. Windows are centered in all four walls, and the high ceiling is shaped like a pyramid with a cupola at the apex, which lets the warm air rise and escape while drawing cool air up from the shade below.

I started a pot of coffee on the shack's single-burner propane stove. There was also an ancient potbellied stove in one corner, but stoking it took time and I do not do well waiting on coffee. While it was brewing I put away supplies, then put my clean clothes in the old oak armoires that lined one wall, and added two new books to the stacks on the top mattress of the bunk bed. It was an odd collection that included new and old Florida history, travel books that I'd read and reread while waiting out the rain as a bored cop on night patrol, and some Southern literature, including a masterpiece by an old Philadelphia Daily News columnist that I always carried with me. The only other pieces of furniture were the two straight- backed wooden chairs and an enormous slab of butcher-blocked mahogany that served as a table.

By the time the coffee was ready only a weak light was leaking through the western window. I poured a cup, lit the clear glass oil lamp and set both on the table. I picked up the sheaf of transcribed letters that Billy had given me, and in the silence of my own corner of the Glades began to reread the sketchy account of Cyrus Mayes, an out-of-work schoolteacher whose eighty-year-old story had set a rough stone of unknown truth rolling in my head. My familiar but often unhealthy grinding had begun. My Darling Eleanor,

Forgive me for my past letters if they have caused you distress or undue worry for us. This time I send you good news.

After our long and fitful train journey we arrived at the port of Tampa.