by Miami Blues
“Something like that. That’s interesting, Susan. I didn’t think you could figure out something that complicated.”
“I wasn’t always a thoughtful person. When I was in high school in Okeechobee, all I thought about was having a good time. But at Miami-Dade, the teachers want us to use our minds.”
“Where’s Okeechobee?”
“It’s up by the lake, when you drive north to Disney World.”
“What lake?”
“Lake Okeechobee!” Susan laughed. “It’s the biggest lake in the whole South. Everybody gets their water down here from Lake Okeechobee.”
“I’m from California. I don’t know shit about Florida.”
“I don’t know shit about California, either. So I guess we’re even.”
“Lake Tahoe’s a pretty good-size lake in California. Have you heard of Tahoe?”
“I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know where it is.”
“Part of it’s in Nevada, and the rest is in California. On the Nevada side, you can gamble in the casinos.”
“You can’t gamble in Florida, except on horses, race track and trotters, on dogs, and jai alai. Oh, yes, you can gamble on cockfighting and dogfighting, too, if you know where to go. But all other forms of gambling, the governor says, are immoral.”
“Is the governor a Jesuit?”
“That’s a Catholic, isn’t it?”
“An educated Catholic, the way it was explained to me.”
“No, he’s a Protestant. It would be a waste of money for a Catholic to run for office down here.”
“Tell me about Okeechobee, and tell me why you came to Miami.”
“It’s a lot hotter up there than it is here, for one thing. And it rains more, too, because of the lake. It’s a little town, not big like Miami, but there’s lots to do, like bowling and going juking, or fishing and swimming. If you don’t like country, you wouldn’t like Okeechobee. If a girl doesn’t get married, there isn’t much future there, and nobody ever asked me to get married. I did the cooking for my daddy and my brother, but that didn’t stop me from getting pregnant. That’s why I came to Miami, really, to get me an abortion. My father said it was a disgrace to get pregnant that way, and he told me not to come back—”
“The Reader’s Digest said about forty percent of the girls who get pregnant aren’t married. What’s he so uptight about?”
“My brother, Marty, had a big fight with him about that. He told daddy it’s the Lord’s right to punish people, and that daddy didn’t have any right to sit in judgment on me. So the upshot of all that was that Marty had to go with me, and he was told not to come back either. Daddy doesn’t believe in much of anything, and Marty’s really religious, you see.”
“So you both came down to Miami?”
She nodded. “On the bus. Marty and me are really close. We were born only ten months apart, and he’s always taken my side against daddy.”
The waitress interrupted. “You want more tea, or d’you want to order now?”
“I’ll have the Circe Salad,” Susan said. “I always get that.”
“Me, too,” Freddy said.
“You’ll like the Circe Salad. Daddy gets mad, but he always gets over it. I think we could go back now, and he wouldn’t say a word. But we’ve done so well down here, we’re going to stay a long time. We’re saving our money, and when we’ve got enough saved Marty wants to go back to Okeechobee and get us a Burger King franchise. He’ll be the day manager, and I’ll manage nights. We’ll build a house on the lake, get us a speedboat, and everything.”
“Marty has it all figured out.”
Susan nodded. “That’s why I’m going to Miami-Dade. When I finish English and social science, I’m going to take business and management courses.”
“What about your mother? What does she think about you two leaving?”
“I don’t know where she is, and neither does daddy. She was working the counter at the truck stop, and then one night, when I was only five, she ran off with a truck driver. Daddy traced her as far as New Orleans, paying a private detective, and then the trail got cold.
“But Marty and me are doing real good here. He’s got a job collecting money for the Hare Krishnas, and he gives at least a hundred dollars of it every day to me to put in the bank. It’s a hard life for Marty, compared to mine, because he’s restricted to the camp at night, and he has to get up at four A.M. every morning to pray. But he doesn’t mind working seven days a week at the airport, not when he makes a hundred dollars a day for us to save.”
“I think I saw one out at the airport today. I don’t understand this Hare Krishna business. What are they, anyway? It doesn’t sound American.”
“They are now. It’s some kind of religious cult from India, a professional beggars’ group, and now they’re all over the United States. They must be in California, too.”
“Maybe so. I never heard of them before, that’s all.”
“Well, Marty saw the advantages right away, because it’s a way to beg legally.”
Susan leaned forward and lowered her voice.
“What he does, you see, is put a dollar in one pocket for the Krishnas, and a dollar in another pocket for us. The Krishnas, being a religious organization, can beg at the airport, whereas if you were to go out there and beg, they’d put you in jail.”
“In other words, your brother’s stealing the Krishnas blind.”
“I guess you can put it that way. He said they’d kick him out if they ever found out. But they aren’t going to catch on. I meet Marty every night by the mailbox outside the Airport Hotel, which is right inside the airport. While I pretend to mail a letter, he slips the money into my purse. He’s got a partner who’s supposed to be watching him, but Marty can always get away for a minute to go to the men’s room. What I can’t understand is why those passengers out there hand him fives and tens, and sometimes a twenty, just because he asks for it. He says they’re afraid not to, that they’re all guilty about something they’ve done bad. But he sure collects a lot of money on a twelve-hour shift out there.”
The waitress brought their Circe Salads: large chunks of romaine lettuce, orange slices, bean and wheat sprouts, shredded coconut, a blob of vanilla yogurt, and a topping of grated sugar-cane sawdust soaked in ginseng. The salad was served in a porcelain bowl in the shape of a giant clam shell.
“I’ve never eaten in a health food restaurant before.”
“Me neither, till I came to Miami. You don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it.”
“I don’t like the ginseng root. Do they put it in everything here?”
“Just about. It’s supposed to make you feel sexy, so they use ginseng because they don’t serve meat here. That’s the reason, I think.”
“I’d rather have meat. This would be all right without the ginseng taste. How’d you do this afternoon?”
“Fifty dollars. One Colombian, and an old man from Dayton, Ohio. Counting all those clothes you gave me, it was a good day for me. Besides, I got to meet you. You’re the nicest man I’ve ever met.”
“I think you’re nice, too.”
“Your hands are just beautiful.”
“Nobody ever told me that before. Here—take the rest of my salad.”
“You didn’t even try the yogurt.”
“Yogurt? I thought it was soured ice cream.”
“No, it’s yogurt. It’s supposed to taste a little sour.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I’m sorry, Junior. I guess I should’ve had you meet me at the Burger King. It’s right across from the school.”
“I’m not that hungry. I had a club sandwich in my room, before I bought these new clothes.”
“Your blue shirt matches your eyes. Did you buy it because it matched your eyes?”
“No. I liked the extra pockets. It’s too hot to wear a jacket, and I need the pockets. Is it always this hot?”
“It’s only about eighty-five. That’s normal for October. In the summ
er it gets really hot, especially up in Okeechobee. And then there’re mosquitoes, too. It gets so hot you can’t do anything even if you wanted to. When you go out to a drive-in movie at night, all you do is sweat and drink beer and spray Cutter’s.”
“Cutter’s?”
“That’s mosquito spray, and it really works, too. Oh, they’ll still buzz around your ears, but they won’t land on you—not if you spray on enough Cutter’s. There’s another brand, when you spray too much on, you get a rash. But you don’t care about the rash, because you’ve already got a rash from prickly heat. We better pay and go to class.”
“I’ll pay. Give me the ticket.”
“No, it’s my treat. If you want to, you can go to class with me. It’s air-conditioned, and Professor Turner won’t mind. He’ll think you’re a member of the class anyway. He told us that he doesn’t learn our names. He finds out the names of the A and F students soon enough, he says, and the rest of us don’t matter. I’m only a C student in English, so he’s never even called on me yet.”
There were thirty-five students in the class; thirty-six, counting Freddy, who took the last seat in the row by the back wall, behind Susan. There were no windows, and the walls, except for the green blackboard, were covered with cork. The city noises were shut out completely. The students, mostly Latins and blacks, were silent as they watched the teacher write Haiku on the green board with a piece of orange chalk. The teacher, a heavy-set and bearded man in his late forties, did not take roll; he had just waited for silence before writing on the board.
“Haiku,” he said, in a well-trained voice, “is a seventeen-syllable poem that the Japanese have been writing for several centuries. I don’t speak Japanese, but as I understand haiku, pronounced ha—ee—koo, much of the beauty is lost in the translation from Japanese to English.
“English isn’t a good language for rhymes. Three-quarters of the poetry written in English is unrhymed because of the paucity of rhyming words. Unhappily for you Spanish-speaking students, you have so many words ending in vowels, you have the difficulty in reverse.
“At any rate, here is a haiku in English.”
He wrote on the board:
The Miami sun,
Rising in the Everglades—
Burger in a bun.
“This haiku,” he continued, “which I made up in Johnny Raffa’s bar before I came to class, is a truly rotten poem. But I assure you I had no help with it. Basho, the great Japanese poet, if he knew English and if he were still alive, would positively detest it. But he would recognize it as a haiku because it has five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. Add them up and you have seventeen syllables, all you need for a haiku, and all of them concentrating on a penetrating idea.
“You’re probably thinking, those of you who wonder about things like this, why am I talking about Japanese poetry? I’ll tell you. I want you to write simple sentences—subject, verb, object. I want you to use concrete words that convey exact meanings.
“I know you Spanish-speaking students don’t know many Anglo-Saxon words, but that’s because you persist in speaking Spanish to one another outside of class instead of practicing English. Except for giving you Fs on your papers, I can’t help you much there. But when you write your papers, pore—p-o-r-e—over your dictionaries for concrete words. When you write in English, force your reader to reach for something.”
There was a snicker at the back of the room.
“Basho wrote haikus in the seventeenth century, and they’re still being read and talked about in Japan today. There are a couple of hundred haiku magazines in Japan, and every month articles are still being written about Basho’s most famous haiku. I’ll give you the literal translation instead of a seventeen-syllable translation.”
He wrote on the blackboard:
Old pond.
Frog jumps in.
Water sound.
“There you have it,” Mr. Turner said, scratching his beard with the piece of chalk. “Old pond. Frog jumps in. Water sound. What’s missing, of course, is the onomatopoeia of the water sound. But the meaning is clear enough. What does it mean?”
He looked around the room but was unsuccessful in catching anyone’s eye. The students, with sullen mouths and lowered lids, studied books and papers on their armrest desk tops.
“I can wait,” Mr. Turner said. “You know me well enough by now to know that I can wait for a volunteer for about fifteen minutes before my patience runs out. I wish I could wait longer, because while I’m waiting for volunteers I don’t have to teach.” He folded his arms.
A young man wearing cut-off jeans, a faded blue tank top, and scuffed running shoes without socks, lifted his right hand two inches above his desk top.
“You, then,” the teacher said, pointing with his chalk.
“What it means, I think,” the student began, “is that there’s an old pond of water. This frog, wanting to get into the water, comes along and jumps in. When he plops into the water he makes a sound, like splash.”
“Very good! That’s about as literal an interpretation as you can get. But if that’s all there is to the poem, why would serious young men in Japan write papers about this poem every month in their haiku magazines? But, thank you. At least we have the literal translation out of the way.
“Now, let’s say that Miami represents the old pond. You, or most of you, anyway, came here from somewhere else. You come to Miami, that is, and you jump into this old pond. We’ve got a million and a half people here already, so the splash you make isn’t going to make a very large sound. Or is it? It surely depends upon the frog. Some of you, I’m afraid, will make a very large splash, and we’ll all hear it. Some will make a splash so faint that it won’t be heard by your next door neighbor. But at least we’re all in the same pond, and—”
There was a knock on the door. Annoyed, Mr. Turner crossed to the door and opened it. Freddy leaned forward and whispered to Susan. “That’s some pretty heavy shit he’s laying down. D’you know what he’s talking about?”
Susan shook her head.
“Us! You, your brother, and me. What’s that other word mean he keeps talking about—onomatopoeia!”
“It’s the word for the actual sound. Like splash, when the frog jumps in.”
“Right! See what I mean?” Freddy’s eyes glittered. “You and me, Susan. We’re going to make us a big splash in this town.”
6
Professor Turner stepped back into the room and cleared his throat. “Is Susan Waggoner here today?”
Susan raised her hand.
“Come out into the hallway, please. Bring your things with you.”
Susan put her books into her oversize bag. Freddy followed her into the corridor, carrying the laundry bag. The teacher frowned at Freddy and shook his head.
“This doesn’t concern you, son. Go back to your seat.”
“If it concerns Susan it concerns me,” Freddy said. “We’re engaged.”
Sergeant Hoke Moseley, looking at the floor, lifted his head and nodded when the student assistant asked him if she could leave.
“Susan,” Mr. Turner said, “do what you’ve got to do, and stay out of school as long as it takes. When you return to class, see me in my office and I’ll let you make up any assignments you missed.” He looked sternly at Freddy for a long moment. “You’ve already missed several classes, but the same goes for you.” He returned to his classroom and closed the door.
Hoke showed the pair his shield. “Sergeant Moseley. Homicide. Isn’t there a lounge somewhere where we can sit down and talk?” Hoke hadn’t expected to see such a young girl. She looked more like a high school kid than a college student. But if she was engaged to this hard-looking jock, she was probably older than she looked. It was a help to have the fiancé present; maybe he wouldn’t have to drive her out to hell-and-gone Kendall after all. Her boyfriend could take her home.
“There’s a student lounge down on the second floor,” Susan said. “W
e can go there. I haven’t done anything bad. Have I, Junior?”
Hoke smiled. “Of course you haven’t.” Hoke started toward the elevator. “Let’s go down to the lounge.”
They sat at a glass-topped table on three unstable wire Eames chairs in the study area near the Down escalator to the main floor. Hoke lit a cigarette and held out the package. When they shook their heads, he took one drag and dropped the cigarette into an empty Coke can on the table.
“I’ve got some bad news for you, Miss Waggoner. That’s why I wanted you to be seated. Your brother, Martin, in a freaky accident at the airport, died today. And your father, when we called him in Okeechobee, asked us to have you identify the body. We’ve got an ID already from the other man who was working with your brother at the airport, so there’s no mistake. It’s just that we need a relative for a positive identification. After the autopsy we can turn the body over to either you or your father. You are eighteen, aren’t you?”
“Nineteen,” Susan said.
“Twenty,” Freddy amended.
“Just barely twenty. This is hard to believe. How did it happen?”
“An unidentified assailant broke your brother’s finger, and Martin went into immediate shock and died from this unexpected trauma to his middle digit.” Hoke pursed his lips. “It happens sometimes.”
“I’ve changed my mind, officer,” Freddy said. “Can I borrow one of your cigarettes?”
“Sure.” Hoke offered the pack, and held a match for Freddy to light the cigarette.
Susan shook her head, looking bewildered. “The airport’s a dangerous place to work. My brother’s been attacked out there before, you know. A man in the men’s room gave him a black eye once, and a lady from Cincinnati kneed him in the balls one morning. He walked bowlegged for almost three days. He reported both cases to the security people out there and they just laughed.”
“I’m not surprised,” Hoke said. “Your brother was a Krishna, and the airport lost its case in court when they tried to get them barred from begging out there. So I can see how security would turn their heads the other way when Krishnas are attacked. On the other hand, the Krishnas annoy a lot of people with their aggressive tactics.”
