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One piece of land might be better than another to grow crops on, or there’s oil or gas or diamonds and gold or other valuable minerals in it. And as far as religion is concerned, everybody should be left alone and leave others alone to worship as they please.”
    “Why don’t they?”
    “Most do, Roy, but some people get carried away. They believe their way should be the only way. It’s when people think they’ve got an exclusive on being right that the world goes ape.”
    “I once heard Dad say to a guy, ‘If I had to get a job done right and I had to choose between you and an ape to do it, I’d take the ape.’“
    “I’ve had enough of Vicksburg, baby. How about you?”

Where Osceola Lives
    M OM, DID YOU KNOW that the Seminoles are the only Indian tribe that never gave up? They hid out here in the Everglades and the soldiers couldn’t defeat them.”
    “I know that the Glades was much larger then, so the Indians had more room to move around and evade the army.”
    “The Seminoles weren’t really a regular tribe, either. They were made up of renegades and survivors of several different tribes who banded together for a last stand in what they called the Terrible Place. Their leader was Osceola, whose real name was Billy Powell, and he was mostly a white man.”
    “If I’m not mistaken, Roy, the road to Miami that we’re on now was originally a Micosukee Indian trail. Imagine how difficult it must have been to build the highway here,”
    “Really dangerous, too. There’s alligators and panthers and water moccasins all around. The Seminoles somehow survived everything, even swamp fevers that killed dozens of soldiers.”
    “In the movie Key Largo , there are two Seminole brothers who’ve escaped from jail and the cops are looking for them. Even though he’s seen them passing in a canoe, the hotel owner doesn’t tell the cops because he likes the brothers and believes they were treated unfairly. Later, just before a hurricane is about to hit, the Seminole brothers and other Indians come to the hotel for shelter, as they’d always done during a big storm, but a gangster who’s taken over the hotel refuses to let them in.”
    “What happens to them?”
    “They huddle together on the porch of the hotel and ride it out. The Seminole brothers survive/’
    “Remember Johnny Sugarland, my favorite alligator wrestler at the reptile farm up in St. Augustine?”
    “Sure, baby. The boy with three fingers on one hand and the thumb missing on the other. “
    “He’s a Seminole. Johnny told me about Osceola, so I got a book about him from the school library. Nobody except the Seminoles knows where Osceola’s body is buried. Some of them say that Osceola is still alive and hunting with an eagle, an owl, and a one-eyed dog as old as he is way back in a part of the Terrible Place that no white man has ever seen.”
    “Crazy Horse, the Sioux warrior, is another Indian whose burial place is kept secret. Supposedly, no white man knows where his grave is, either.”
    “I’d go into the swamp with Johnny, if he’d take me. It would be great to see where Osceola lives.”
    “I’m sure he’s dead now, Roy. For the Seminoles, it’s Osceola’s spirit that’s still alive.”
    “I think I like the Everglades more than any other place I’ve been.”
    “Why is that, baby?”
    “It’s got the most hiding places of anywhere. If you don’t get eaten by a gator or a snake, or get swallowed up in quicksand or die of a fever, you could disappear from everyone for as long as you wanted."
    “Roy, there’s a reason the Indians called this the Terrible Place.”
    “I know, Mom, but I think I'd be okay, as long as I remembered the way out,”

The Crime of Pass Christian
    Y OU KNOW, MOM , the best time for me is when we’re moving in the can I like it when we’re between the places we’re coming from and going to.”
    “Don’t you miss your friends, or sleeping in your own bed?”
    “Sometimes. But right now