The Man Who Ivented Florida df-3

by Randy Wayne White

  "Where'd The Gatorhook go?" Joseph was looking around, trying to remember the place. He hadn't been to Pinecrest in ten, fifteen years.

  "Burned down a little while back. Maybe two months ago. The state people won't let 'em rebuild it, neither."

  That was a surprise. Joseph didn't know how to react to news like that. Why would anyone stay in Pinecrest with The Gatorhook gone?

  Tucker said, "Best thing that coulda happened. Only way to get Ervin to put down his fiddle and give up whiskey long enough to get any work done. Him and me went for a little airplane ride a while back. In that crop duster his wife flew, the two-wing job? Never woulda got him up there if The Gatorhook was still around."

  Joseph had flown with Ervin once, and shivered at the thought of it. "I ain't goin' up in no plane with Ervin. You got that on your mind, you better tell me right now. He don't even have a license."

  Tuck was peering ahead-it was dusky now, with thunderheads showing themselves over the trees, way east toward Miami. "He don't have a license to drive a car, neither. Or to fish and hunt gators, but that never slowed him. He does okay in that plane. Gets lost, he just flies around until he finds a water tower. Cities paint their names on water towers, and Ervin can read just fine. Say-" He was looking through the trees toward what Joseph remembered as Ervin's shack. "What is that, some kind of big tire? Leaning out backa the house."

  Joseph knew what it was, one of those new antennas for a television. But before he could say anything, Tucker said, "I'll be damned, a satellite dish." He got Roscoe walking again. "Ervin musta got another check."

  Sitting there with a cigar in his teeth, his flat Celtic face alight in the television's glow, Ervin T. Rouse said, "I'd come with you, but I got this now. It keeps me pretty busy."

  Meaning the television: a nice one with a great big screen, like the kind Joseph had seen in the store windows at the Cypress Gate shopping mall the time he'd stopped to buy beer.

  "Ervin, you promised me." Tucker was sitting in the rocker looking at him but not getting much response. Ervin had a glass of whiskey in his hand, a baseball cap on his head-it read FLORIDA MARLINS-and he was wearing an old Seminole jacket, all colors of rag ends tied into it-red, green, yellow, lots of blue. "You said you'd come along with us to Mango, help us get some publicity. You're the only famous person I know that's not already dead."

  "You got a television?"

  "Got a radio."

  Ervin hooted. "Hell, I threw my radio out the window the day I got this. Heard my song played one too many times and just gave her a toss." He held the remote-control unit out, pointing it like a pistol. Talking to Joseph, Ervin said, "Watch this," and began to flick the channels, stopping only to explain them. "See this one? This here's Cable News Network. Goes all over the world. People in India probably watching it right now. Can't get that with an antenna! And looky here-hear those people talking? That's a foreign language. Could be Jewish folks, for all I know. Maybe French. Their cameras take a picture and radio it up to outer space. Then the satellite radios it back down here to the Glades. Hits my dish on the button, every time."

  "You promised me, Ervin," Tucker pressed. "When we was flyin' back in the plane, that's just what you said. 'I promise.' "

  "What I promised was, we'd probably get back alive. That's what I was talking about. Us being in the plane." Ervin sunk down in his chair, irritated. "Them ailerons creaking, the horizontal stabilizers corroded from being parked in the barn so long. Hell, I didn't mean nothing by it. I just thought it'd bring us luck." He began to flick channels again. "Besides, that was right after The Gatorhook burned down. I wasn't in my right mind."

  "You give your song more publicity, you'll just make that much more money. Hey," said Tucker, "you could buy a bigger dish. And they'd want to buy the songs you and me wrote. Now those are some good songs. 'The Mango Tango'? That's a song people'd buy just to dance to."

  Ervin said, "Uh-huh, I notice all the reporters crawling around here. What, they out hiding in the bushes?"

  That was the wrong thing to say to Tucker. Joseph knew it and saw Tuck's expression change. "We missed our connections, that's all. But I guess a rich man like you don't need any more money." Not trying to hide his sarcasm or his anger; Tuck had a way of making his voice sound sharp, like a blade. "Sure was lucky, you having a friend smart enough to hook you up with that lawyer so you could get them royalty checks. Not that I mind doing favors-"

  "Favors, hah!" Ervin turned his glass up and took a gulp. "Seems to me, I was the last one to do you a favor." He looked at Joseph, knowing Joseph would understand. "No radio, bugs in the cockpit, coulda been arrested for a hundred different reasons, and I can't even swim. 'Want to take a little trip,' he says!"

  "How many years you been getting checks now? One little ride in the plane takes care of all that?"

  "If it galls you me getting checks, you can breathe easy, because I'm not getting them no more. That's what this here is. An entertainment system, that's what it's called, and I signed a paper giving that Miami lawyer all the rights in trade."

  "For a television?"

  "Nicest one they had. Felt bad about all the money the lawyer had to pay for it, but you got to be tough when it comes to business."

  "I'll be damned. Why didn't you just give him your house while you was at it?"

  "I don't see that it has anything to do with you, Tucker Gatrell. Turns out that lawyer owned mosta the song, anyway-don't ask me how that happened. Figured giving him the rest for something nice as this was a pretty smart deal."

  Tuck started to say something else, but Ervin cut him off. "Can't you close that trap of yours for two seconds? Joseph and me are trying to watch a show." Then to Joseph, he added, "Wait till you see the kind of Western pictures they make now. The women take their clothes off and the Indians almost always win."

  Tucker stood abruptly. "If you can't get your mind off that television long enough to talk about this, I guess I can find a way to do it." Going out onto the stoop, letting the screen door bang closed behind him.

  "Let him go," Joseph said. He was watching the screen now, hoping Ervin would flip the channel. He wanted to see one of those new Westerns.

  Ervin yelled toward the door, "Don't you touch that dish!"

  "Ain't gonna touch it. I'm gonna shoot it!"

  Ervin got slowly to his feet-he weighed more than two hundred pounds-then went toward the door in a hurry. Looking through the screening, he said to Joseph, "He's going through the packs y'all brought. He got a gun in there?" Then he hollered, "I'll call the law on you! Lordy, Lordy"-he was talking to Joseph again-"he doesn't mean it, does he? He's not going to hurt my dish?"

  Joseph said, "The way I put it together, he mighta been the one who burnt down The Gatorhook."

  "No."

  "Seems he's pretty serious about this."

  From outside came Tucker's voice. "I heard that! I heard that! I never did it! I'd never burned down The Gatorhook!"

  Ervin said, "Damn if he doesn't still have that white-handled pistol of his. Uh-oh, he's gonna do it-"

  Joseph got up quickly and put his hand on Ervin's shoulder, trying to get him away from the door. "Let's get down behind the couch. He could hit the house, the truck, anything. Maybe us, the way he shoots." That made Joseph think of something. He turned his face toward the screen and hollered, "Tuck, you hit Buster, I'll… I'll cut your head off and hide it!"

  "No sir, by God, I'm not going to let him!" Ervin pulled away from Joseph, pushed open the door, and stood looking at Tucker, who had the cylinder of his revolver open, putting in cartridges. In a quiet voice, but deadly serious, Ervin said, "Tuck, I believe you've finally gone around the bend. I believe your brain's finally gone crazy."

  Tucker looked up at him and said just as quietly, "That may be, Ervin T. It may be my brain ain't as healthy as it used to be. But by God, you promised."

  Ervin T. Rouse stood in the silence for a while. Finally, he said, "I never pictured you in the water-sellin' busi
ness. That flimflam preacher used to take me around, he did a little of that. Called it medicine. I just figured never to go back to it. What he did to us boys…" The way his voice trailed off, he sounded sad to Joseph. Far away and sad. The only other time he'd heard Ervin sound like that was when his wife died.

  "I ain't that preacher, Ervin T."

  "True enough. Reckon if you was, I'd kill you. Shoulda done it back then."

  Tucker said, "And you ain't no boy no more."

  "Nope. I'm sure not no boy." Ervin cleared his throat and put his hands in his pockets, looking around. "Welp, if you're that set on it."

  "I am. I plan to get this thing done."

  "I see that… I see that." Then after a long time, as if he was listening to the crickets and the owls, Ervin finally said, "I'll go. But I'll drive my wife's truck, you don't mind. I don't have a horse, and I'm sure not riding that steer."

  It took Ervin a few days messing around Pinecrest to get ready. "I've got affairs to put in order," he said. What he meant was, his fiddle was broken and he had to wait to pick it up at the repair shop in Miami.

  That was okay with Tucker and Joseph. Tuck had things to do, and Joseph finally got to watch one of the new Westerns Ervin had described. The women didn't take their clothes off, but the Indians did win, and that was almost as good.

  The only thing Tucker wanted to watch was the news. He kept calling the stations from Ervin's wall telephone, but no one wanted to talk to him.

  "I don't get it," Tuck kept saying. "They know who I am."

  Joseph thought, Yeah, that's the problem, but he kept his mouth shut.

  Mostly, Tucker used Ervin's truck and drove different places. "Getting ready," he explained. "I know what we've been doing wrong now."

  They never did see themselves on the television.

  On a Sunday morning, the first of November, they finally got going. Tuck had Ervin's truck fixed so that there was a flashing orange light on the roof ("Make it easier for the cement trucks to find Buster," he had chided Joseph), and he bolted a big hand-painted sign to the truck's bed. The sign read:

  GLADES SPRINGWATER

  MANGO FLORIDA

  FEEL FLORIDA FRESH

  Ervin didn't like it. "That's my wife's truck," he kept saying, talking as if she'd be mad if she found out. But he didn't press the point. Tuck had already confessed that he might be crazy. And he was wearing his pearl-handled pistol right out in the open now. Kept it in a holster belted low on his hip.

  With Ervin following in the truck, light flashing, they rode the Loop Road back to Monroe Station, then turned west onto the Tamiami Trail. With the truck to carry the packs, they didn't need Millie anymore, but Tuck had insisted on that, too-taking Millie. "How you going to have a cattle drive without cattle?" he wanted to know.

  Joseph just kept quiet and towed the steer, hating the way those cars whistled by. There was always a lot of traffic on the highway, but Sunday was the worst. Even in early November, hurricane season. Once was, the tourists only came to Florida in the winter. But now, judging from the license plates-Ohio, Michigan, New York, Iowa-there was no slow season. All those cars flashing past, throwing a hot wind wake. Some honked. A few cussed them out the window because they had to hang back until it was safe to pass. Most, though, slowed to gawk and take pictures.

  People in the cars yelled things, too.

  "Hope that water tastes better than the Everglades smell!"

  "I bet I know where that water comes from!" Pointing at the steer.

  Tucker didn't seem to mind when the drivers said stuff like that. He just grinned. "Advertising," he yelled back to Ervin. "Doesn't matter what they say about you. Just 'long as they say somethin'."

  But Joseph cared. He didn't like strangers looking at him. He especially didn't like them taking his picture. He had heard somewhere-maybe his grandfather had told him-that it took a little piece of a man's spirit, having his picture made. His grandfather had been wrong about almost everything else he'd ever said, but the cameras the people used made sharp clicking noises, like the sound of scissors snipping away.

  It made Joseph uneasy. He didn't like that sound, and he didn't like all those people staring. He wondered what they thought, seeing them riding along the edge of the road. Probably thought they were old crazy men.

  But they didn't. Most didn't, anyway. For the tourists in their station wagons and Toyota vans, seeing men on horseback was a welcome break from the saw-grass monotony of the Everglades. A pleasant diversion from the pressured arguments about routes and vacation schedules. Something to point out to the kids: two old riders wearing western garb-hats and neckerchiefs, even a gun, and that one looked a little bit like an Indian. See how they tipped their hats? See how slowly they went? See how peaceful their smiles were out there beyond the air conditioning, the FM noise, the wrinkled road maps, and the sour cups of 7-Eleven coffee? An orthopedic surgeon from Grand Rapids who, only moments before, had snapped at her husband for some small error in navigation, suddenly turned to him and smiled sheepishly. "I'm sorry," she said. "For a moment there, I forgot we're on vacation." Her husband watched the riders momentarily and felt the same strange, sweet longing. He smiled back and said, "I wonder where Mango is?" A man from New Jersey who drove as if every car on the road was his private enemy actually slowed and let a Greyhound bus pass him, and a bank president from Omaha gave his road-weary, bedraggled wife a playful pinch on the breast and said, "Ya know, I can't think of a single reason why we have to make it to Disney World tonight. Check the map for that place, Mango. We'll stop and see if there's a motel."

  Hundreds of cars passed them; thousands of people saw them but Joseph got no sense of well-being from it. Which was why he didn't protest when Tuck reigned up at an access road with a sign that read:

  PALM VALLEY RANCH A PLANNED MODULAR COMMUNITY AFFORDABLE LISTINGS!

  Tucker considered the sign for a moment, then said, "This might be a good place to stop, rest the horses for a while. What is it, 'bout noon? I bet they got some beans cooking, too. From here, we can go backcountry through the Glades."

  Joseph studied the sign for a moment, then said, "It ain't that kinda ranch." He looked back at Ervin, who was getting out of the truck, probably wondering what the holdup was. Joseph called to him, "You ever been in here? What is this, some kind of golf course place?"

  Tuck said, "Hell no, it's a ranch. Says so right on the sign." To Ervin, he yelled, "Let's head in here, get some food."

  Ervin was nodding his head, unsure of what they were discussing. "A restaurant? Yeah, they probably got a place in there. It's big enough."

  Tuck said to Joseph, "See there? A ranch so big, it's got its own restaurant." He touched his heels to Roscoe, talking to the horse. "You're the only one don't argue with me every two minutes. Guess that's 'cause you know me so well…"

  The access road wound through a forest of shabby gray melaleuca trees on one side and a massive mown weed field on the other. After half a mile or so, they rounded a bend and saw a whole city of trailers: row after row after row of mobile homes, lined up like cartons that gleamed in the November heat. Each trailer had a neat patch of lawn, a white cement drive, a couple of dwarf palm trees, a citrus tree or two, and a carport. Narrow roads branched off the main road, and all the roads led to a massive circular commons area where there was a swimming pool and a big red aluminum building shaped like a barn. The barn was gated by two rearing plaster horses.

  Montana Circle, Nevada Circle, Gold Rush Lane: The streets all had names like that.

  "Jesus," said Joseph, "I didn't know there was this many trailers on earth."

  Tuck was oddly quiet, riding along, slouched in his saddle. After a while, he said, "I thought it was going to be a goddamn ranch! I mean-I mean, I feel just a little bit stupid. Kinda dumb. What the hell kinda world is this when they can tell lies on a big sign that's right out in public?"

  Joseph said, "There's some people over there. We can ask them about a restaurant." He motioned
with his head, taking no joy in Tucker being proven wrong. It happened so often.

  To the right of the aluminum barn, a cluster of people stood near a block of green runways-shuffleboard courts-watching as the riders and the slow truck approached. Retirement-aged men in shorts and sports shirts, their hair combed. Holding long sticks, though they didn't seem to be using them. No one seemed to be playing shuffleboard; the men just standing there talking to three or four ladies who sat on chairs in the shade. A couple of the ladies were pretty good-looking, Joseph noticed. Had button-up blouses and nice skin.

  Tuck steered Roscoe toward the group, tipping his hat as he did. Smiling when one of the women said, "You're a day late for Halloween!"

  "Miz?"

  "Halloween-that was yesterday. We all dressed up like cowboys yesterday. You could have come to the party." The people laughed in a friendly sort of way, as if they were glad for the company. Then the lady said, "You know, you look very familiar somehow… I've seen you… Have you ever been here before?" Touching her chin, thinking about it as she studied them, then lifting her head a little to look at Ervin just getting out of the truck. "Not him, but I've seen you two somewhere…"

  Joseph sat up straight on Buster, trying to look his best. He liked the woman's face. Her bright green eyes and whitish hair piled up on her head, everything nice and neat, like she took good care of herself. Probably had a nice neat trailer, too.

  The woman said, "I bet I know where!" Her eyes widened a little. "I'm sure of it…Say, wait right here." Then she jumped up and walked quickly toward a row of trailers.

  One of the men said, "What in the world got into Thelma?" The whole group was watching her, interested. The man stood and held out his hand to Tuck, saying, "I'm John Dunn. Is there something we can help you with…?"