Thom stood on the gun-deck of the fort and looked down into the courtyard as a group of Native American men set up chairs around a large drum. The chairs were folding chairs, provided by the National Park Service, as was the portable PA system positioned in front of the group. The 10 men sitting in the circle each drew a drum stick, long, slender with a heavy pea-pod shaped end from a cloth sack as they passed it around the circle. As each man, some in their twenties and thirties, several in their fifties, drew a stick, he removed his hat, some farmer's caps, others big straw cowboy-type hats.
Outside the circle of seated men stood an equal number of women. The women's ages ranged from the very old to teenage: the very old wore traditional dress; the very young worn jeans and pullover shirts from The Gap. All stood with a heavy reverence as a man in native dress came to the microphone and spoke.
Thom strained to hear his low bass voice over the wind that was picking up. It was middle of the afternoon and the wind was out of the southeast; warm because it was out of the south and damp because it came off the ocean a mile away. From the gundeck of the three century old fort, Thom could see the breakers of the Atlantic Ocean and the small whitecaps of Matanzas Bay. Off to the south the towers of the cathedral and the 100 year old hotels reached above the tree tops.
He looked back at the speaker and again strained to hear the explanation of the ceremony: not a dance or a pow-wow, not a performance, but a memorial for Native Americans held in the fort in times past. Then they began to drum and sing.
Thom looked down into the square courtyard where these free people were held captive for a moment by their duty to remember those who had not been free. Thom remembered. He was struck by the remembrance of things past and actual that occurred on the streets where he walked every day.
He could see Osceola as he strolled in the courtyard, perhaps talking with Coacoochee, encouraging him to pursue his plan to escape, and forgoing any urge to accompany his fellow Seminole. On the very spot where these Indians drummed, Cherokees had sat facing Seminoles, each in full dress, each on wooden benches provided by the US Government, the Cherokees speaking and the Seminoles listening. The US Army had brought the recently defeated Cherokees to the fort, now a prison, to see if they could convince the Seminoles to give up their fight, to agree to walk west to the dry and arid brown lands of Texas and Oklahoma.
The wind picked up as the intensity of the drumming increased and the voices of the men grew louder. Thom’s eyes teared-up, not from the sadness of times past, but because his heart was overwhelmed with the reality of times past. These things really happened and in his heart he felt them. The reality of the past made him shake with an awareness as if he had been there himself.
The wind picked up sand from the fort’s dry moat and hurled it across the gundeck, and Thom felt the grains against the back of his hands as the men began the second song of the memorial. Thom thought the spirits of people past threw the sand at him to get his attention and, if only for a moment give him a tiny bit of discomfort.
Osecola’s last days in Florida were in this fort. When he left he walked to a ship that took him to Charleston where he died 30 days later. The last day he was free was the day before he entered the fort.
Another gust of wind whipped strong across the bay and over the fine sand in the moat and up along the walls and over the gundeck of the fort. Thom felt the gust and the sand gave his neck a gritty feel. As he turned, a speck landed in his eye and caused him to flinch and reach quickly to protect himself.
The drumming grew louder and seemed to echo off the clouds that rolled overhead. The pounding reverberated off Thom's chest and came into rhythm with his own heartbeat. The beat was the heartbeat of those who drummed and those for whom the drummers drummed.
When the drumming stopped and the drummers were gone, the fort was once again besieged by tourists from the Ohio Valley and the Upper Peninsula and Four Corners and the Piedmont. Thom felt alone and left behind. He strolled across the wide green lawn stretching out from the fort’s high walls and drove silently home.
The following night, on an evening of a full moon, a front had moved through and clouds kept the moonlight off the earth but offered aglow that silhouetted the oaks and the hanging moss, hanging still in the damp night air. Thom stood in his yard and looked into the sky and could feel the approaching spring under the thick blanket of clouds. The drummers were still in the city, holding ceremonies. From more than a mile-and-a-half away, Thom heard the drumming and feel the rhythm of his own heartbeat and the heartbeats of so many who had walked the streets he walked each day.