Cold Florida

Home > Other > Cold Florida > Page 16
Cold Florida Page 16

by Phillip DePoy


  ‘Nice,’ I agreed.

  ‘Can we please go back to the lodge,’ Lynette insisted. ‘I’m cold, I’m really straightening out, and I’m starting to get some muscle cramps, so, OK?’

  Philip got down off his horse immediately, transistor radio in hand. ‘Get out,’ he said to me, but not in a rude way. ‘You’re going to ride my horse. I’m going to drive my Jeep.’

  ‘Me?’ I said, not moving. ‘On a horse. Seriously?’

  The Coltrane tune started up, soothing and peaceful, like a rainy Sunday afternoon in a really nice apartment in Manhattan.

  ‘Yes, you, on a horse,’ he said. ‘I assume you can’t ride, so there’s not as much chance of you getting away.’

  ‘Because I don’t know how to hotwire a horse, so I can’t steal it, right?’ I smiled at John Horse.

  ‘Don’t make me change my mind about you,’ he said. ‘Get out of the Jeep.’

  ‘OK, but it’s a little low on gas,’ I told everybody. ‘Plus, I’m going to need some help getting up on that horse.’

  ‘You never watched a Western?’ Philip said. ‘On television?’

  ‘We didn’t have television when I was growing up,’ I told him. ‘We had radio. My mother and my aunt didn’t believe in television. It was hard to tell how the Lone Ranger got on his horse over the radio.’

  ‘OK but get out,’ Philip said again.

  I crawled out of the Jeep. John Coltrane’s ballad was making me feel very calm until I realized that my right arm was sore from all the honking, and I ached in general from all the roughhousing with the Seminole kids.

  ‘So, what?’ I asked, staring at the horse. ‘Does it bend down a little, even?’

  The kid that I chopped in the noggin spoke up, very sweetly under the circumstances. ‘You put your foot in the stirrup, hoist yourself up, then fling your leg over, and there you are.’

  ‘Easy for you to say,’ I muttered.

  Without offering the embarrassing details, suffice it to say that after a few tries and some very uncomfortable physical comedy, I found myself atop a horse for the first time in my life. And I hoped to my soul it would be the last.

  ‘I’m Joseph,’ said the kid who offered me the horse-mounting advice. ‘This is Taft.’

  ‘The Indian Taft?’ I rejoined.

  ‘They call you Foggy,’ said John Horse, ‘and you’re worried about a Seminole named Taft?’

  ‘Good point,’ I admitted, ‘and stated, if I may say so, in a very Jewish manner.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  All the horses started moving, including mine, like they understood what the old guy had said. I decided that it was best for me to let the horse do the work, since it obviously knew more about what was going on than I did.

  Philip started up the Jeep, turned on the headlights, gunned the engine, and we were off.

  ‘How far away from the lodge are we?’ I asked Joseph.

  ‘We’re closer to John Horse’s house,’ he said.

  ‘So I was going in the right direction to get out of the swamp.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he admitted. ‘That’s pretty good, really. When I first came here? I got lost a lot.’

  ‘You weren’t born here?’

  ‘God, no. I was born in Oklahoma, where a lot of the Seminoles were taken – boys especially. We were supposed to go to school there to learn how to be more white.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘How’d that work out?’

  ‘Apparently better than you might imagine,’ John Horse spoke up. ‘He let his ass get kicked by a Yankee Hebrew twice his age.’

  The kid looked down, and you could see that he was genuinely embarrassed.

  ‘Look, it’s not your fault,’ I told him, trying to help, ‘I was raised in the streets by criminals and miscreants all my life. None other than Red Levine, you know, who retired from the Combination in the late ’40s, actually took me under his wing in 1962, when I was just a teenager. And although I did not wish to zotz anybody, I was nevertheless versed in that particular vernacular, because I learned a lot about it from him. This is the Red Levine we’re talking about.’

  Joseph raised his head. ‘I don’t know what most of the words you just said mean. I don’t know what a Red Levine is, or the Combination, or the word zotz. I can kind of tell that you’re trying to make me feel better, but you have to speak English, OK?’

  ‘He’s trying to say,’ John Horse interrupted, ‘that if you had been raised by your own people, people who know ways to help you survive, who could teach you things you really needed to know, you would have been a lot better off.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly my point. God knows what would have happened to me if I’d been born in Oklahoma. I mean, what can a person learn to steal there? What do they have in Oklahoma?’

  ‘Dust,’ said Joseph right away. ‘There’s a lot of dust.’

  ‘Stop talking, please,’ John Horse said gently. ‘I would like to enjoy the night air and the music and the sounds of the swamp for a moment.’

  So I shut up. And, to tell the truth, the sounds of the swamp were very nice. The moon came up, and there was that magic that happens when certain black skies turn almost lavender with moonlight and the humid air from the swamp. Tree frogs and night insects and birds and the wind, they all worked together, and it was just like a soft palate of strings or something behind Coltrane’s solo, which, all of a sudden, was making me so lonesome for New York that I almost cried.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Back at John Horse’s house I said goodbye to Lynette, baby, and Philip and the rest. John Horse and I hunkered down in his bungalow. The only light was from an oil lamp and the only sound was the monstrous noise of the local fauna. It was very loud.

  ‘How do you sleep with all this noise?’ I asked John Horse.

  He was sitting in his chair, and he’d found me a pillow to sit on, back against the wall, slumping down.

  ‘When I was in prison,’ he said, ‘there was a lot of noise from other men. Talking, yelling, crying, cursing – that was hard to sleep through. When I went to Chicago, once, for a convention, the traffic and the street noise almost made me lose my mind. This? I don’t really hear the frogs and the insects. What do they call it, when you have a sound that can mask other sounds?’

  ‘White noise, I think,’ I told him.

  ‘White noise.’ He seemed to find this amusing.

  The sounds of nature were, indeed, a kind of mask. There might have been people talking in other houses close by, but I couldn’t hear them. There might have been other cars or Jeeps or trucks out in the swamp, but all I knew was that tree frogs were very loud individuals.

  ‘Are you going to tell me,’ I began, ‘why you fed me such a line of crap about Lynette and her baby?’

  ‘It usually works with most white people.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but that wasn’t what I asked. I asked why you said that the baby was a water spirit and Lynette was like the Virgin Mary.’

  ‘Virgin Mary,’ he repeated. ‘It’s a very funny religion, this Jesus religion, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s a scream.’

  ‘You don’t get a holy creature in any other culture on the planet, that I know of, without some sort of copulation.’

  ‘This was not really my point either, John Horse. You are something of a master at changing the subject. I want to know why you made up such a story.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t make it up. There really are water spirits, if you care to look at it that way. And there really is something special about the baby Lynette had. But I can tell that you’re not a fan, exactly, of metaphorical language, or not properly educated in the—’

  ‘I’m not a fan of metaphorical language?’ I asked, ire dripping from every syllable.

  ‘You are, then?’

  ‘Plenty,’ I assured him. ‘Metaphorical language is my middle name.’

  ‘Crap,’ he suggested. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You
think I’m a jerk? Just because I’m not college educated doesn’t mean I’m not smarter than most other people I meet.’

  He lifted his eyebrows. ‘Easy to say. Maybe if you gave me an example.’

  ‘Leonard Cohen’s Story of Isaac,’ I said right away. ‘The entire song is a metaphor, a beautiful metaphor.’

  John Horse stared at me for a minute. Then he said, ‘You aren’t exactly what you seem to be – or you’re more complex than you let on. I would imagine that you surprise people all the time.’

  ‘I don’t mean to,’ I told him, ‘but there you are changing the subject again. You’re really good at it.’

  He nodded. ‘It’s something you learn in my line of work.’

  ‘And what, exactly, is that, your line of work?’

  ‘I’m a real estate agent,’ he said, but he had a grin on his face that, once again, told me that he was throwing around the old horse manure.

  ‘Am I going to get anywhere with you,’ I asked him honestly, ‘or are we just going to call it a day? I’m beat and I don’t much feel like going around the metaphorical mulberry bush.’

  ‘I don’t know the song,’ he said in another of his whiplash-inducing left turns. ‘The song you just mentioned. Tell me about it.’

  ‘Why do you want to know about a Leonard Cohen song?’

  ‘Indulge me.’ He leaned forward. ‘It might lead somewhere.’

  ‘OK, but I’m not drinking any more of your damned tea.’

  ‘The song,’ he insisted.

  ‘It’s about … it starts with Abraham and Isaac. From the Bible. You know the story?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘God tells Abraham to kill his son, name of Isaac.’

  ‘Why?’ John Horse interrupted. ‘What had the son done wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘God was testing Abraham, to see how far he’d go in the service of the Lord, see?’

  ‘This is a Hebrew story?’

  ‘Yes. So Abraham takes his son high up on a mountain and he’s about to kill the kid when all of a sudden God says, “It’s OK. Stop. I just wanted to see if you’d do it.” And he let Abraham off the hook.’

  ‘And Isaac.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And that’s the song?’

  ‘The song goes on,’ I told him, ‘to talk about men of power who are willing to sacrifice children on golden altars, but these are men, Leonard Cohen says, who have not spoken with God. These are millionaires and billionaires who rule the world, men with power, who only know how to scheme. He says, “a scheme is not a vision,” this is what Leonard Cohen says.’

  ‘Yes,’ said John Horse, sitting back in his chair. ‘A scheme is not a vision.’

  ‘And it’s a pretty great song. Maybe not my favorite one of his, but a great song nevertheless.’

  ‘What is your favorite?’ he asked.

  I started to think about it until I realized that, for the third time in a couple of minutes, he’d done it again: thrown me off the subject.

  ‘My favorite Leonard Cohen song is kiss my ass,’ I said, in no uncertain terms. ‘Why are we talking about it?’

  ‘Calm down,’ he told me. ‘You don’t realize what you’ve just said. My telling you about the water spirit baby may have been a little contrived, but when I said that you were directly involved in all this business? That turns out to be right on the money.’

  ‘What?’ My voice was nearly as loud as the tree frogs.

  ‘I don’t know how,’ said John Horse, ‘but you have some sort of connection with all this. And you know more about it than you think you do – more than your conscious mind is aware of.’

  ‘My conscious mind?’ I asked. ‘Did you study Freud when you were in prison too?’

  ‘Look,’ he said, trying as hard as he could to sound reasonable. ‘We may have gotten started on the wrong foot. You don’t trust me because you think I kidnapped you. I don’t trust you because you escaped from Philip’s house and stole Lynette. But, from what I can tell, objectively, we’re on the same side. I see that now.’

  ‘This is what I was trying to tell you back at the bonfire,’ I said. ‘I realize now that Lynette is much better off here than in Fry’s Bay, what with the baby’s father … wait.’

  John Horse folded his arms. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m thinking, all of a sudden, that I don’t know who to trust,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’ve just convinced Lynette that the baby’s father is out to get her. That’s what she thinks. And she made me feel like a bonehead for rescuing the baby from Lou Yahola. And for rescuing her from you. But I am, just now, getting another uncomfortable feeling. What if that’s more bullshit from you guys? What if you’re not telling the truth and just making up more baloney about the father so that you can keep Lynette and the baby here?’

  ‘You’re tired,’ the old guy said. ‘You probably need some sleep.’

  ‘Why are you keeping Lynette Baker here?’ I demanded. ‘Why did you steal her from Fry’s Bay? What the hell is so important that you have to keep the baby away from hospital care?’

  ‘You’re getting all wound up,’ he said.

  I scrambled to my feet. ‘Yes I’m wound up and with good reason.’ I took a step in his direction.

  And out of nowhere, John Horse produced the very significant handgun that Philip had taken off of that McReedy character. It was pointed right at my gut.

  ‘Please sit down,’ he said very calmly.

  I didn’t. I was judging things. Things like, how far I was from the man with the gun and how good was the old man’s coordination. How dark would it get in the room if I kicked over the oil lamp, which was only a few feet away?

  Then John Horse said, a little louder than before, ‘Taft?’

  The door to the house opened slowly and in stepped the Indian Taft. He was holding his rifle very tightly.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘Do you happen to know,’ John Horse began, not bothering to hide his gun, ‘what your mother made for dinner?’

  ‘Turtle,’ said Taft.

  ‘Mmm,’ said John Horse right back. ‘Your mother’s turtle is very good. Is there any left? I think Mr Moscowitz would enjoy it.’

  ‘I’ll check,’ he said, and he was gone.

  ‘Please sit down, Mr Moscowitz,’ John Horse told me. ‘I don’t want to shoot you. Not even a little bit.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, about to begin a tirade.

  ‘The millionaires who run this world, like in your song.’

  That was all he said. But it was enough to give me pause.

  ‘How, exactly, do you mean?’ I asked, still standing.

  ‘Of all the things you could have said to me, under the circumstances here in my home, you picked a quote from a song about the rich men who make most of the world’s decisions. Politicians are their stooges, of course, and other people sometimes have the illusion that they run something, but they don’t.’

  ‘Are you changing the subject again?’ I asked, confused.

  ‘I’ve been talking about the same thing the entire time you’ve been with me. I don’t know what you’ve been talking about.’

  At that point I had to sit.

  ‘You want to know about the father of Lynette’s baby,’ he said. ‘You want to know why we’re keeping Lynette here. You think that you want to know these things because you were given a job to do and you want to finish that job to your satisfaction. You also have a strong subconscious motive for protecting the baby because of something that happened to you in Brooklyn when you were, let’s face it, a different person. You want to know why these things are happening to you. And I’m trying, in the only way I know how, to tell you the answers to all these questions. It’s just that, sometimes you think you’re asking a question about, say, a hired killer in a small town in Florida, and the answer is actually turtle.’

  And, swear to God, at that exact moment the Indian Taft came barging into John Horse’s house with a steaming bowl in his right hand and said, dir
ectly to me, ‘Turtle!’

  ‘It’s a stew,’ said John Horse. ‘That’s how she gets it so tender. It cooks for a long time. It’s not the turtle steak we were going to have at Philip’s house. I think it’s better.’

  ‘It has little potatoes in it,’ said Taft, smiling down at the bowl. ‘Be careful. It’s hot.’

  And, as it turned out, I was suddenly famished.

  I took the bowl, grabbed the spoon that was in it, and began to devour the turtle stew. It burned my tongue and the roof of my mouth, but that didn’t seem to stop me.

  For a while, the only sounds in the cinder block cabin were the ones I was making with my spoon and my bowl, plus the occasional, embarrassing sounds of my enjoyment.

  At length, I was finished and I set the bowl down. I saw that the floor was nothing but dirt, and I was a little surprised I hadn’t noticed that before. I was usually better with details.

  I looked up at Taft, about to express my undying gratitude for the stew, but he beat me to it.

  ‘I’ll tell my mother that you enjoyed it,’ he said, still grinning.

  ‘This would be an understatement,’ I told him. ‘Could you please say to her that it’s better than my aunt Shayna’s brisket, which, until tonight, was the best thing that I’d ever eaten. And then, if you don’t mind, please tell her not to mention anything about what I just said if she ever finds herself in Brooklyn.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  He swooped over and picked up the bowl, and he was gone.

  ‘God in heaven that was good.’ I leaned back.

  ‘The secret is slow cooking. A lot of white people today are interested in how fast something can get done. Instant food. Fast food. It’s one of the main things wrong with them; their food.’

  I nodded, but I was wise to him at last, I thought. I didn’t entirely trust him, and it was still possible that he was a bad guy, but I was confused by turtle stew. Can anything truly evil come from a people who make food that good, I asked myself.

  ‘You’re trying to tell me something,’ I said. ‘You’ve been trying to tell me something since I came here yesterday, although it seems like about a week ago to me at this point. But now, I get it. I get, from your little speech before my dinner, and then again from your little speech about the food itself – you, John Horse, you cook things slow.’

 

‹ Prev