A Land Remembered

Born in 1857, Zechariah “Zech” MacIvey is the only child of Tobias and Emma. Even at the age of six, Zech shows great courage and determination in protecting his mother from a bear attack when his father is away herding cattle for the Confederates. He also possesses great affection for animals and is devastated when Nip and Tuck are murdered by bushwhackers. He risks great danger by insisting on burying the dogs rather than fleeing the area, telling Frog, “I ain’t going to leave them here for buzzard bait” (157).

By the time he is 17, Zech is tall like his father and considered very handsome. At the Christmas frolic, Glenda tells him, “Every girl here has her eye on you and would stand in line to dance with you” (210). As a young adult, he is sensitive to the harmonious qualities of nature and the failure of man to live up to the egalitarian standards of his animal counterparts. The drive of 1875 is a particularly formative experience for Zech. His experience at the drought pond, where he sees predator and prey alike operating “under a truce understood only by themselves” (168), stands in stark contrast to what he learns from James and Willie about the mistreatment of Seminoles by the white man. His belief that man should share natural resources with one another is inherited in part from his father, though for Zech this philosophy has its limits. Unlike Tobias, Zech recognizes that men are not like animals, and therefore it is necessary to own land rather than merely act as a squatter and hope for the best.

Zech is also pulled in two directions by the women he loves, Glenda and Tawanda. Despite his marriage to Glenda, Zech carries on a multi-year affair with Tawanda, fathering a child with her. Rather than take responsibility for his infidelity or address his grief honestly, Zech thinks of his tryst with Tawanda as a thing that “could not have been prevented under the circumstances” (255). While Zech’s ability to compartmentalize his feelings about society and nature is a useful trait in building on his father’s cattle empire, it manifests as something more toxic when it comes to his feelings about Glenda and Tawanda.

As Zech grieves a series of lost loved ones over the course of his adulthood, he becomes sensitive to the cycles of violence that persist on the prairie. He hopes to end one such cycle by killing Wirt McGraw and his bushwhacking gang of criminals. However, the cycle continues unabated, as Zech loses both Glenda and Frog to the Brahma bull attack and eventually dies himself, an indirect consequence of the gunshot wound he suffered during the raid.

Born in 1883, Solomon “Sol” MacIvey is the only child of Zech and Glenda. He is so named because Solomon is known in the Bible for his wisdom, and Zech hopes that Sol will be the first MacIvey to receive a formal education. As early as age 12, Sol exhibits a great deal of wisdom indeed, though his intelligence comes less from books and more from a keen instinct for frontier capitalism. In Palm Beach, Sol collects baby buzzards from the trees and sells them for $25 apiece to unsuspecting wealthy tourists as exotic “kookaben” pet birds.

After the deaths of virtually his entire family—and without Zech’s harmonious influences—Sol grows up to be a callous practitioner of capitalism, destroying much of the wilderness that supported the two previous MacIvey generations. His behavior raises questions about the lines between surviving nature like Tobias does, taming it like Zech does, and conquering it like Sol does. In the first two cases, nature is both antagonist and ally. But in Sol’s case, nature is solely his antagonist. For example, when the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane kills his girlfriend Bonnie, Sol swears revenge on mother nature itself, yelling, “Damn you! Damn you! You’ll not do this again! We’ll dike the lake so you can’t do it again!” (395).

Sol’s efforts to build the Okeechobee dam inadvertently divert much-needed water from his half-brother Toby’s home in the Big Cypress Creek, further severing the bond they shared as children. The two do not reconcile until Sol is 85 years old and ready to die. While Toby is happy to see Sol after all these years, he warns him, “You are trying to capture the fog, and no one can do that” (6). Toby is right: It is too late for Sol to recapture what he’s destroyed, and he dies alone with nothing but memories of the wilderness and the loved ones he’s lost.

As Tobias’s wife and Zech’s mother, Emma MacIvey suffers the most grueling hardships of frontier life as her husband tries to carve out his livelihood in the Florida swamps. Although she suffers significantly during these early years, she never resents Tobias:

The sacrifices she made she made willingly, and if the choice were offered to her anew, she would follow Tobias into the wilderness again with only a frying pan and the clothes on her back. This was her destiny, an avenue life offered which she accepted without hesitation, and she never looked back or complained about things she might have missed along the way (232).

Her status as a first-generation pioneer requires her to absorb non-traditional gender roles, and she serves as an indispensable member of the droving team not only for her cooking but for her wisdom and problem-solving ability. Nevertheless, she hopes that her sacrifices will allow Glenda to embrace a more traditional role of wife and mother. While this may seem regressive to modern readers, Emma merely wants Glenda to have the life she didn’t have.

The precise meaning of her final words to Tobias—“I’m sorry”—is left ambiguous. Based on her generous nature and concern for others, it may be interpreted as a recognition of the profound loneliness Tobias will feel in her absence.

Glenda Turner is the daughter of the general store owner in Fort Drum who later becomes Zech’s wife. “She had flaming red hair that flowed past her shoulders, pale green eyes, and white skin not burned brown by prairie sun” (152). Despite her genteel nature and upbringing compared to Zech, Glenda eagerly embraces the role of frontierswoman, first out of her love for Zech but later for the sheer excitement of the range:

Here things were happening, things beyond human control; and there was no house to take refuge in for protection, no doors to lock or windows to close. It was them against nature, winner take all, and the reality of it both frightened and enchanted her (238).

Glenda’s love for the frontier continues unabated even after she loses her unborn child in the attack by bushwhackers. Her formidable survival skills, however, perhaps blind her to the full danger of the Brahma bull that gores her to death in Chapter 37.

Tawanda Cypress is a young Seminole woman who falls in love with Zech when he visits her village in Big Cypress Creek. They carry on a multi-year affair that produces a child, Toby Cypress. She is described as “slim and firm, with black hair that swirled down to her hips” (194). Zech appreciates her in large part as a counterpoint to the white, genteel Glenda, and thus his infatuation with her—combined with the rather sketchy manner in which her character is drawn—veers close to exoticism.

Despite knowing that Zech will never leave Glenda, Tawanda’s love for him does not falter. However, Tawanda dies in labor while giving birth to Zech’s stillborn child.

Skillit is an ex-slave who joins the MacIvey cattle operation after Tobias gives him food and shelter in return for helping him rebuild the smokehouse. After the war, he built a small cabin and farm, but he was driven from his land by Ku Klux Klan terrorists. He is six-and-a-half feet tall, and his strength and determination make him an indispensable member of the MacIvey crew. Like all members of the operation, Tobias considers Skillit as close a family member as any blood relative. For example, when Skillit uses the MacIvey name on a property deed, Tobias is overjoyed, telling him, “Hell, that’s fine, Skillit! We’re proud took the name. You’re welcome to it” (263).

Skillit marries a woman named Pearlie Mae with whom he fathers five children. After he departs the MacIvey homestead to live on his own, his fate is left unknown.

Frog is a lowly drifter recruited by Tobias for a one-time cattle drive who later becomes a permanent member of the MacIvey Cattle Company, and thus a member of the extended MacIvey family. Exactly what about Frog’s first impression makes Tobias believe he would be a trusted ally on the range is a bit of a mystery. After watching Frog get thrown out of a saloon in Kissimmee, Tobias comments that he smells “like a skunk” (100), a comment that Frog—who hasn’t washed since “sometime back in sixty-five” (100)—does not dispute. Nevertheless, Tobias clearly has an eye for talent, as Frog proves himself to be a loyal, honest, and hard-working member of the MacIvey clan for decades to come. After the Brahma bull gores him to death, he is buried in the MacIvey family plot next to Tobias, Emma, Glenda, and later Zech.

Keith Tiger is a Seminole who returns to Florida after the US government forcibly removed him and most of the surviving members of his tribe to Oklahoma. He first encounters Tobias while on the run from white men who wrongly accuse him of cattle rustling. Tobias offers Keith food and protection, forging a bond between the MacIveys and Keith’s Seminole community in Big Cypress Creek that lasts for three generations. Over the years, Keith and Tobias carry on a symbiotic relationship in which the former provides specialized marshtackie horses and access to his tribe’s medicine man, while the latter provides cattle and ammunition, which most white men are reluctant to sell to Seminoles. Keith dies of old age five years before Sol returns to the Big Cypress Swamp in the early 20th century.

Toby Cypress is the son of Tawanda and Zech. Despite Zech’s fatherly interest in the boy, Tawanda insists that Zech not interfere in Toby’s life, aside from brief visits to the swamp. When Zech seeks treatment for his gunshot wound from the Seminole medicine man, he brings Sol, who immediately bonds with Toby. By the time the boys are adults, however, their relationship is fraught. Enraged at Sol for destroying the wilderness around his community’s sacred land, Toby screams, “Will your infernal machines not stop until they come here and crush my mother’s grave?” (370). More than 50 years later, Toby and Sol briefly reconcile mere days before Sol’s death.